Chapter 64 – Ashore
"Alright, we'll be docking in a while, and then we're going to take care of the shipment. You're free, just remember to be back at least before we accelerate to sublight. Fifty four hours by schedule." Dragha says to us as we stand in the command deck and watch the blue-orange, cloudy planet on the display.
"Mhm. Will it be alright if we head out now?" Letty asks.
"...Should be. Sure." Dragha glances at us. "If you ask me, more problems would be if you wanted to head out after docking. You know the procedures, so feel free to go."
"Alright." My girlfriend nods and turns around form the display to me. "Let's go then. See you, mom." She waves to Dragha as she walks out of the room.
"See ya!" Comes a cheerful reply as we're in the door.
"Do you have any plans?" I ask Letty curiously as we're walking through the corridor.
"Mmm, not really plans." She shakes her head. "I have a couple places I want to show you though, and I'm thinking how to put them all into around fifty hours. That's a bit less than a day on Tau Ceti f. If nothing bad happens, we'll have a lot of free time even after that."
"Alright." I nod with a chuckle. "I have no idea what's there, so I'll be relying on you completely."
"Mhm!" Letty nods happily, dropping down the hatch. "Oh, please close it after yourself!" Her voice comes from the ladder.
"Sure!" I reply, stepping down more slowly and sealing the exit after me. When I'm down on the floor, I turn to Letty standing by the door to the docks. "Are we flying out now?"
"We've nothing to bring with us." She shrugs. "If you're fine with the clothes you're wearing, then we can go. Though... On second thought, let's bring change of clothes with us."
"You can make them with Nihility, no?"
"Ah, right." Letty rubs her nose in embarrassment. "We don't need to bring anything, huh? That's a bit... like, common sense says you've got to bring something with you for a long trip."
"Advantages of being a Star and a Machine, I guess." I reply with a grin and take my girlfriend's hand as we head down to the docks.
"Mm, yeah." She nods with a smile dancing on her lips. "Then let's go."
...
"Tau Ceti f Independent System, this is a standard message. Foreign unit detected approaching atmosphere." A flat voice resounds out of the speakers of the jet suddenly at some point as we're flying down and approaching the planet. "Identify yourself."
"Private space jet 'Black Needle', registered under private unit 'Abyssa'." Letty replies without batting an eye. "Requesting permission to enter atmosphere."
"Identified, permission granted." Comes out after a moment, and the voice stays silent.
"...You need permission to enter atmosphere here?" I ask curiously. "I'm pretty sure you don't need it on Gaia."
"Mhm, yes, but Gaia is another matter. First of all, this place is restricted for visitors, unlike Gaia. You can't just come here and stroll about... I mean, you can, but, uh, it's complicated. This place is owned by no one, no countries or anything, and people created an autonomous AI that takes care of it all and reports any unusual events. Just the fact that this place isn't really known to the general public makes any arrival unusual."
"Alright, that's fair." I nod. "How does no one own the planet though? Isn't it strange?"
"After what happened here throughout the centuries, not really." Letty says with a chuckle. "It would be a hell lot of explaining if I wanted to describe it all, but in essence it's a shared property. Or more like neutral ground? Yeah. Basically, everyone can do whatever they want as long as other people have no problem with it. It's just that the outsiders... well, tend not to understand it properly, and after a couple of incidents they put the whole system in place."
"Hm, okay." That's pretty strange from perspective of Gaia, where everything belongs to someone and you can't do anything without four different permits and other shit, but I guess it's inevitable that things here would be different. Better as well, if you ask me, though my opinion might be skewed.
"Say, Helia, did you see a lot of nature on Gaia?" My girlfriend asks me after a while of silence.
I think for a moment, looking at the planet before us and placing her question in context. From this perspective Tau Ceti f is a massive, dark, blue-orange sphere sparsely covered in white, and I have to say it's an impression. It's one thing to see photos of planets, but completely another when you have something this massive covering half of the display in the jet we're using.
And if you add the fact that it barely moves at our current speed of thirty two kilometers per second relative to the planet, it really shows how massive those things are. Tau Ceti f is in reality significantly larger than Gaia, because it has over one and a half of it's diameter, and that is another factor contributing to the impression.
"I didn't really." I reply to Letty. "I spent most of my life in Arcology Elysium, and most of what I've seen was either the greenhouses or in VR."
"Hm, then you'll probably like what I want to show you first." She muses in response with a small smile. "Oh, I think Gaia had no adapted flora, did it?"
"Mhm, not much." I nod. "Last I paid attention most of the efforts went to cooling down the planet further, and the wildlife was almost only on the mostly uninhabited south pole. North was too industrialized, and no one bothered making plants that would survive there."
"Yeah. So basically this planet has it's own plants that survive in the current thin atmosphere. That's because Tau Ceti was colonized over six centuries ago with the help of some of the first Mechanical, and they didn't have the resources or the labor force to make this planet as similar to Earth as they could. They chose more... drastic approach, you could say. There are whole new plants here, and almost all humans have inherited bioaugments that assist in breathing, with temperature regulation, and with increased gravity."
"...Interesting." I comment, and only then realize what I heard. "Wait, what?" I jolt up and look at Letty in shock. "Inherited? Wasn't it like experimental? And prohibited?"
Both cybernetic augmentations, augments for short, and genetic modifications are common nowadays, normal even in most places, but bioaugments inherited by children are completely another matter. It's essentially almost the same as mitochondria in cells, just on completely different scale. A separate in origin part of the organism that's inherited by future generations.
And the thing is completely prohibited to use on Gaia, from what I know, after the mess after the first experiment with them that caused less than one in ten survivability among newborns. Among over a thousand tested people.
"Yes, it is. Not only on Gaia." Letty replies with a giggle. "It's called a biotechnological wonder beyond it's time for a good reason. It essentially made people here biocyborgs, at least according to the less rigorous definitions, but it's history is pretty dark..." Her voice trails off. "Oh, turbulences will begin in a moment. They won't be severe, because f has thin atmosphere, but they'll be noticeable."
"Alright." I nod, taking my girlfriend's hand into mine with a small smile.
A few seconds later the jet indeed starts shaking a bit and distinctly slowing down. Though not nearly enough to be a hindrance. The turbulences' intensity and the drag is increasing slowly, but Letty ignores that as she continues speaking. For both of us physics are no longer such large authority as they were before.
"The whole colony on Tau Ceti f has it's origin in a small group consisting of around three hundred people. One of them, he was called Max Rhobet, proposed the solution of bioaugments, and it was accepted by the colonists. I think eight died shortly after transplanting those things, and it significantly lowered the birth rate for a few decades, and at that time he was the most hated person in the colony. But nowadays, after a ton of improvements to the thing, he is seen as the greatest visionary and researcher in history, and not without reason. He successfully bioaugmented a whole society three hundred years before others even properly tried."
"...Wow." I let out. "That's almost sounds like dark science fiction."
"Mhm." Letty smiles. "There were also Mechanical there, including my dad and mom later on. They weren't directly involved in the project, at least not officially, but they knew Max and my mom strongly supported it."
"...Yea, I can see that from her." I smile wryly and she mirrors my expression.
"My mom is a child in more ways than one, yes." Letty mutters. "But anyway, you should also know that this colony is really small, comparing to other systems. There are about six hundred thousand people, among which, uh..." She pauses for a moment. "Fifteen don't have bioaugs and ten are Mechanical. The people here live basically in one city, though various workstations and other things are strewn around a much larger area."
"Wait." I ask when she pauses for a moment. "How is it so much? That's two thousand times of an increase. After six hundred years I'd expect a huge increase… but not that huge."
"Uh, yeah. Before and during the Mechanical War... many things happened, there were some conflicts and it finally resulted in cutting the colony off from Sol. Then to quickly increase the population, they used incubators and built much more Mechanical, just enough to raise the number quickly but not be an... abrupt increase. It was something like three point six birth rate, I think? It slowed significantly only at the beginning of twenty sixth century and it's been increasing at a slower rate since, but the habits and traditions mostly stayed, so the birth rate here is still really high."
"...Wow." I mutter. "I didn't hear about any of it in school or in media, but good seventy percent people on Gaia would condemn all of that." If I asked my parents back there, their opinions on incubators would probably be very similar to those about trans and gay people. Something about people being intended to birth naturally as intended by God, or something similar. Eeeh.
"Mhm, yeah." Letty nods. "The worst turbulences will be now, by the way." She tells me and I look at the screen.
The planet is already pretty close, but still much too far to see any details, especially with clouds obscuring around fourth of the surface. They are small and thin though, and they obscure much more than fourth of the view.
The shaking, steadily growing since a while ago, is now strong enough to make us sound weird when speaking. So we both shut up under a silent agreement, and a glance at one of the graphs shows that the drag is still sharply increasing, but the rate it's going at is slowing down.
When drag reaches the peak a while later and starts gently falling, the jet is slowing down at speed over twenty times higher than Gaia's gravity is... which is pretty damn much. But that's another time I'm reminded of the value of antigravitons, which reduce that effect inside the ship by around fifteen times, making it a still significant force, but in an entirely different realm of significance. About enough to strongly pull me forward, but not nearly enough to need Energy affinity even without any seatbelts as I help myself stay in place with my tail.
"Alright." Letty says with a small smile, taking hold of the control panel. "I can go from here."
I hear and see in my magic perception as the engine of the jet comes to life and the pressure on me lessens suddenly, then Letty raises the nose a little bit, making the screen show only clouds, and leans back casually.
"Good. Now we bleed out some speed and admire the sights, and when we slow down to about Mach 5 I'll show you where I raced a few times." She turns to me with a grin.
"You raced?" I ask curiously. "With this jet?"
"Yup." My girlfriends nod her head with that hint of pride in her posture. "I won once, and then I didn't bother participating in races. I started flying by myself."
"...You had no opponents?" I ask, tilting my head as I think back to her words about technological advancement.
"Exactly." She grins. "It's not that I'm a fantastic pilot, but it's about this little girl." Her finger taps the wall on her side. "I mean, I can't deny I'm a good pilot, great by some standards, but I completely lack the passion and the experience some people have here. You could try instead." She looks at me with raised eyebrows.
"I, uh, I'll pass." I smile wryly. "Maybe free flying, but not racing. I'd like to try sometime, but I'm nowhere near the required level. Last time I flew anything other than simple hoverers was on an exam in school, so... about one and a half year ago, I guess. I barely passed because of stupid rules." I add the last part in a quiet grumble I know full well my girlfriend hears.
...
"Alright, we're almost below the clouds. Now the sights truly begin." Letty informs me with a smile a short while later, after some small talk, and I look at the screen in anticipation, waiting for the thin cloud to clear.
No more than five seconds later the surface of the planet becomes visible under the jet, and in a few more seconds the jet flies out of the cloud, revealing the sun-scorched stone in all its glory, making me smile wide. I'm not sure if Letty intended to fly this way, but we are flying exactly along the frayed, dark orange coastline, with dark blue waves of the ocean gently breaking on the massive rock formations jutting out of the water. They resemble slabs of stone layered on top of each other and weathered by time, but their sheer size is simply incredible.
Each layer has from a few to hundreds of meters in height, and some of the cliffs they form are over a kilometer tall, maybe as much as two kilometers at the tallest drop in between two crevices water flows through. Hm, now my enhanced sight becomes useful, because I kinda know the distances here, unlike the blind guesses I'd be doing before.
Anyway, some kilometers into the land the erosion seems to mostly stop and the stone forms a massive, mostly flat surface decorated with loose rocks and thin layers of stone protruding above the rest. There are no plants here, at least at first glance. I don't know what to look for after all, but all I see are rocks in various shades of orange, some bordering on red.
"Hm, we're close to the place." Letty says quietly with a smile. "We should arrive in five minutes or so."
"How fast are we even?" I ask curiously.
"Um, almost Mach 8." My girlfriend replies and I look at her with eyebrows raised in doubt, since it feels inaccurate to me, but I don't manage to ask before she explains. "One Mach is much less here though. We're flying at about one and a half kilometers per second, so on Gaia it wouldn't even be Mach 5."
"That's still a lot, you know?" I mumble and shake my head. "So that like... four hundred kilometers still."
"Yeah. That's nearby for me. Distances are relative, especially in space." Letty says with a wry smile and pauses for a while. "This is officially named Magellan's Coast, but locals call it The End of the World sometimes. Inland we have Great Colorado Desert, which covers almost two thirds of this continent at four to five kilometers above the water level, and on its other side you'd find Ganai Mountain Range, then Lush Valleys and the Plains with majority of the population. The race track crosses about three fourths of the desert."
So we fly for a few minutes in silence, during which Letty lowers the jet under the surface of the desert and slows it further to about Mach 5, and at some point she turns the jet gently to the left. To the ocean, that is.
"We're here." She says with a grin and turns to the right, putting a massive crevice in the steep walls of stone directly in front of us. It seems to drag much further into the desert than any other, and reaches as far down as to the ocean itself... holy shit.
"That's a river?" I blurt out before I can stop myself, and Letty shows a toothy grin.
"Exactly. The Great Canyon of Colorado. It was supposedly named after a place on Earth before the Mechanical War, but mom says it's much better than the namesake." She explains as I stare in amazement at what I realize is a three kilometers high and tens of kilometers wide valley with a massive river flowing at the very bottom, only fully opening up to us as Letty flies into the crevice... Can it be called a simple crevice at this point? Probably not.
"During the races the only rule is not to fly above the desert surface, so participants have about two and a half kilometers of wide canyon to maneuver. It's much less than it seems at first glance, because the atmosphere is thin here, and coupled with high gravity any maneuvers are exponentially harder here than on Gaia for example." Letty says as the jet deceptively slowly flies into the part she is describing.
Sure, she can be flying at almost one kilometer per second, but just the deepest chasm with the riverbed is over a kilometer deep and a few kilometers wide, depending on the place. The whole canyon, including all the side inlets, is at least three times wider, and in some places further from the coast it becomes good tens of times. And it's length...
"Letty, how long is that thing?" I ask, glancing at my girlfriend, sitting with that small smirk on her lips.
"The main riverbed itself has over fifteen thousand kilometers, though the actual canyon isn't really that long because it twists a lot and it's very shallow close to the mountains." She replies. "We'll be flying through it for about seven thousand kilometers, and last two thousand will be a boring flight above the desert till we reach the mountains."
"Alright." I nod, already, or maybe still, enraptured with the massive canyon. "That's still absolutely massive though."
It's simply incredible, and while I've seen a lot in VR and on various images, it's completely another thing to be flying through this with towering walls of stone on both sides. I've also been flying quite a lot in VOW, but this is on completely different scale comparing to what I've seen there. Plus it becomes impressive in another way when you realize there was completely no magic involved here, unlike in VOW where the amazing sights can be explained by the presence of mana.
Here though... a particular rock formation draws my eye and I sharpen my eyesight slightly to see it more clearly. It's a massive cliff inside a bend, reaching from the bottom of the riverbed almost to the level of the desert. Three kilometers of stone, pointing almost straight up. Ridiculous. And it's not the only amazing view we pass, because each minute new things catch my attention.
"How does it even stand? It must have been long millions of years for something like this to form, and there's volcanic activity here?"
"Mmm, sorta? We don't have the technology to be sure, but this planet is large, which makes the lava currents pretty weak despite its size. When it pours out, then a lot of volcanoes form, but this whole desert is one massive tectonic plate."
Huh. Still seems a little unreal, but I'll take it.
We didn't even land, and I'm already glad we came here.
Would be better if something exciting or interesting happened, but I guess I shouldn't expect much from this place in that regard. But just the value of seeing this planet and society completely different than the one I grew up in would probably make me come here sooner or later. And the fact that Letty is taking me here... ehehe.
Just a glance at my magic perception shows my girlfriend looking at me with a small, happy smile. Me, that is a giddy little demoness sitting with eyes glued to the screen and grinning, tail waving behind me.