Novel Excerpt: "...And With Ignominy Reproach"

[RJDiogenes]

This is Chapter Five of my WIP novel "...And With Ignominy Reproach." I started it for NaNo and I'm still working on it. If you've seen the brief excerpt on my NaNo page, this is the chapter it comes from, but here we have the whole thing. The story is set in my Space Opera universe, which I've mentioned before, called Spacious Skies; I describe it as sort of a cross between Star Trek and Arthur C Clarke. Visually and thematically, it would resemble Trek, but in terms of SF, it would be very much in the Hard SF vein-- no transporters, deflectors, time travel and so on. It's all set within the Solar System, just following a 700-year Dark Age, during a period when the New United Nations is exploring again, attempting to make contact with habitats that have been isolated for centuries (allowing for Trek-style first contacts with various civilizations). This story is set in an era analogous to TOS, so visualizing in that style would give you the right idea of how it would look and feel. Also, the emphasis on the stories, as in Hard SF, would be more on ideas than action; I don't want to feel compelled to have space battles every twenty minutes. I'm going for the "sense of wonder" and "literature of ideas." So, without further ado, I will let you eavesdrop on a meeting of the bridge crew of the spaceship Columbia.

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Chapter Five
© 2011 by Rick Hutchins

“So nice of you to join us, Professor Martinez,” said Captain Bombay, his eyebrows raised in amused irony.

For the first time in history, Martinez had arrived five minutes late for a scheduled briefing. The rest of the senior staff sat in their accustomed places.

“Sorry, captain,” replied Martinez, blushing under the gaze of his fellow officers as he took his seat. “I was preparing some last-minute visual data to present."

Bombay’s eyebrows wrinkled in curiosity. “Your UFO is back?”

“No, sir, no.” Martinez shook his head, frowning, as if he had already forgotten that particular enigma; but he was obviously excited. “It’s Minos Rama. And it’s absolutely Minos Rama. You’ve got to see these pictures, captain. May I use the large screen?”

“Go ahead.”

Martinez pressed one of the switches on the table in front of him and a panel on the side wall slid up to reveal the four-by-five screen. He slid a blue plastic memory stick into the port next to the switches and the screen came to life.

“These are the pictures that were sent back by the probe,” the professor said as he slowly cycled through the images.

The first showed the full length of Minos Rama from a moderate distance; like all Rama-class habitats, it was a simple cylinder, albeit one many miles long, that spun on its long axis to simulate gravity on the inner surface. The angle of the picture showed the fore end of the cylinder-- North from the perspective of the habitat-- where the large circular entrance lay in the center of the disk. Though this entrance, which appeared to be closed, was probably a half a mile across, it looked small on that massive structure, like the dot in a cartoon eye. Low buildings called the Pillbox Structures, barely visible at this distance, ringed the entrance.

But there was something odd about the surface of the Minos cylinder, though it was hard to see as it angled away from the viewpoint of the probe. It appeared to be mottled somehow. The staff leaned in closer to get a better look.

“Watch now,” said Martinez quietly.

Subsequent pictures grew ever closer to the habitat, and more detailed. The eyes of the Columbia officers grew wide and a reverent quiet settled in the Briefing Room.

What had appeared to be mottling from a distance proved to be gigantic murals and frescoes that quilted the entire surface of Minos Rama. The colors were many and vibrant, though dulled and damaged in some areas from centuries of exposure to space; but the imperfections only served to accentuate the overwhelming sense of antiquity. For these gigantic works of art, most of them miles long, were reminiscent of those found in the ancient palaces at Knossos and Fornou Korifi on Earth: Swirling spring flowers bursting forth from tall grasses in geometric perfection, abstract butterflies soaring among them; men in loincloths with elaborate, multicolored headdresses and bare-breasted women with long, black, pearl-studded hair; fishermen displaying their catches; horses running through fields; naked athletes vaulting over charging bulls; bright blue dolphins swimming among rainbow fish.

Martinez smiled. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said.

“It really is,” agreed Bombay.

“That’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,” murmured Seti, enraptured.

As the slideshow progressed, the motion of the probe and the turning of Minos in space brought more and more of the murals into view. The Columbia officers soon realized that, in addition to the palaces and labyrinths and ships at sea that were to be expected, the artists of Minos Rama had also chosen more modern subjects. Ships of space floated against a background of abstracted stars, geometric interpretations of Jupiter and Saturn repeated here and there, spacesuited figures stood on a Lunar landscape and, in one amazing fresco, an ancient Minoan longboat with a half dozen men at the oars was flying through space, away from Earth and toward a representation of Minos Rama itself.

The slideshow ended, leaving everyone speechless.

Finally, the captain spoke. “Thank you, professor,” he said. “You have taken our breath away and reminded us of how privileged we are to be alive in this age of rediscovery. Maybe as we’ve moved out to reclaim the Solar System we’ve become a little too blase, a little too accustomed to the amazing. We should never lose our sense of wonder at the incredible beauty that Humanity is capable of creating.”

“Hear, hear,” grumbled Doctor Milton, rapping his knuckles on the tabletop.

“It was my pleasure, captain,” said the Science Officer.

“Please share that presentation with the crew on the Info Channel.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Commander Seti,” said Cicero, “Has anything like this ever been seen before?”

She shook her head. “There have been a few cases of habitats customizing their exterior surfaces, of course-- words, signs, artwork, insignia-- but nothing on this scale. Of course, we’ve only charted a small fraction of what’s out there.”

“I can’t imagine how they did it,” said Cyrus. “Or how it lasted so long. Ancient nanotech is just....” She trailed off, at a loss for words, and chuckled. “Never mind. I’m going to be up all night thinking about this.”

“We all will be, I’m sure,” said Bombay. “Well, I hate to bring up business after that, but we do have a couple of routine matters to check off. Professor Martinez, you said you’d have make and model confirmation for Commander Seti?”

“Yes, sir. Commander, our close-up observations have confirmed what the Gideon researchers surmised: Minos Rama is a Ceres Unlimited Archipelago model 3.”

“Excellent,” said Seti. “That’s the scenario we are most fully equipped to handle. There are only three possible Operating Systems that would be running on an Archipelago 3, and we have all the programs necessary to reinstall, reboot, repair and recover all known systems and subsystems. We have the specialty tools needed to repair the hardware and a large inventory of proprietary components to replace what can’t be repaired. The Tech Support teams are all fully rated on the infrastructure and layout of the Port and Life Support areas.”

“Very good,” said Bombay. “Looks like we’re ready for anything Minos has in store for us.”

“We’re not equipped to fully restore the infrastructure if there have been massive system-wide failures, but we can certainly bring the core systems online. In any event, the ecology of a habitat is mostly self-sustaining and the backup reactors for the life support systems are passive and close to zero maintenance. It’s likely that the environment will be somewhat degraded, but probably not too badly, if experience proves true.”

“And it’s always possible that the Minoans have been maintaining their own systems all this time, “ offered Cicero.

“Possibly, but unlikely, lieutenant,” said Seti. “We’ve only seen that a handful of times. Although, after seeing Minos Rama firsthand, not much would surprise me.”

“Mister Cicero,” said Captain Bombay, “you’re fully prepared for final rendezvous maneuvers?”

“Very ready, sir,” grinned Cicero. “I can’t wait.”

“Try not to leave my stomach half an AU aft this time, please.”

“This time it’s only a minor vector change, captain, I promise.”

“After which, you will have earned a week’s liberty for a job well done,” said Bombay. “Planning on taking any trips?”

“Well, sir, Minos Rama was designed to simulate a Mediterranean environment....”

Bombay laughed. “We’ll see, Michael, we’ll see. Dismissed. See you all in the morning.”