Tevun-Krus #101 - The New Frontier

Esperance - A Story by @jinnis

Esperance

by jinnis

The best thing about space travel is to reach the destination. I mean, who cares to spend aeons in cryosleep? You can't dream while you float in a non-feeling, non-thinking limbo with your body a glorified ice cube. And then the worst part, the waking-up process. Did you ever wonder how the ice cube in your drink feels when it melts?

I didn't until the moment I was the ice cube. It hurts and feels like dying a thousand deaths, with each individual cell of your body howling in agony. And then, when your tortured and disoriented mind knows you can't take it anymore, a more intense wave of pain overshadows the last one, sending you into a state of hopeless despair. That's when I lost consciousness.

Next thing, the cheery face of a dark-skinned woman greeted me, her perfect teeth a row of shiny pearls in a broad smile. "Now, here you are—a piece of cake." She glanced at the name tag on my cryopod. "Roxanne, is it? Nice name. Welcome to Trappist 1e, Roxanne."

She tore the defibrillator pads from my chest and whistled a merry tune while she moved to the next cot in the sleepers' bay, hips swinging. Halfway there, she glanced at me over her shoulder. "Don't overdo it with breakfast, sweetie. Your stomach will be queasy. And don't worry about the itches. As soon as your kidneys filter the remaining cryochemicals out of your blood, you'll feel good as new."

I tried to give her a saucy answer, but my vocal cords only allowed for a strangled screech she ignored.

To tell the truth, she was right. My sense of humour returned with my humanity, step by step, and three days later, I found the courage to invite my dark angel for a drink in the settler's bar. Mara declined first and said she didn't intend to have a fling with a dustsider. Which made me wince. But I couldn't really blame her. In a few days I'd be dropped off on an uninhabited planet, and the Mary Barbara would carry her back into civilisation.

Despite her reluctance, she joined me for a farewell meal the evening before the drop. It was marvellous. Not the food, but the company. Mara was witty, had travelled the galaxy up and down and from left to right, and owned the most beatific smile I'd ever seen. The evening ended with both of us in the observatory, staring at the pale, blue-and-purple planet I'd call my home from now on. For her, it would only be another exotic badge on her smart uniform.

And that was that. Two hours later, I got the call to enter the drop ship. With two hundred other excited weirdos, I was chuted down to the planet we were supposed to prepare for settlement.

~ ~ ~

The following years taught us colonisation is not a game for those weak of heart or mind. Terraforming sounds great when it's presented by a sales agent with a fancy 3d-projector. In reality, it's backbreaking work. For every success, we registered a failure. But we prevailed.

When the Mary Barbara returned two years later to drop a larger batch of settlers, we had homes to invite them in and homegrown food to offer for a welcome dinner. I was delighted to see unfamiliar faces. Many of the first batch were lucky enough to reunite with families they had left behind while preparing the colony.

Unlike most others, I had neither bonded with another colonist nor close ones amongst the new arrivals. When I left the welcome party, I realised that the warm and cosy spot of unfulfilled dreams in my heart was still occupied by the girl with the pearly smile—Mara. I looked up at the sky. Was she still aboard the Mary Barbara?

To my surprise, I got the chance to find out. Spacecorp showed interest in our progress and asked for soil samples of Esperance, as we called our new home. As the colony's geologist, I was tasked with collecting and delivering the material to the landing site. The Mary Barbara sent down a small lander to pick my load up.