Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1) by T.J. Sedgwick Read Free Book Online

of recognition. A few tentative nods met his quick-look survey.
    “Anyway, there’ll be a special course devoted to the fast probes later this month. Right, where were we? Oh yes, so Module 2 is purely for the military and the waking home to the detachment of two hundred marines. Module 3 is science and research, including some extremely powerful telescopes. Module 4, habitation, recreation and civilian training is where you and most other civilians will spend their time when not in stasis. Module 5 is the stasis module. Six is landing and colonization. That’s home to the planetary shuttles, land vehicles, temporary shelters and so forth. Once you arrive—”
    Kate whispered to Luker, “Where you from?”
    He smiled broadly and caught a whiff of her perfume as he turned to answer her. Her face was closer than he’d anticipated, but that was fine with him.
    “L.A … Idaho, originally. You?”
    “Boston … Lisbon, Portugal originally. Portuguese mom, American dad.”
    Luker checked Kate’s left hand—no ring. He wasn’t over Juliet—not by a long shot—but Miss Kate Alves sure was attractive. Pleasant too.
    Dr. Kosmos was still giving his run down, “Module 7 is stores. It’s a long mission and it may be some time until the colony on Aura is self-sufficient in terms of food and supplies. The stores include food, equipment, materials, but also genetic material—seeds, animal embryos, microbes and the like—and the technology needed to grow them. The penultimate module is Module 8—engineering. This place is where you’ll find the four fusion reactors and enough fuel to last at least double the mission time. It’s also home to the robotics facility and manufacturing suite. Should the ship ever run out of fusion power—highly unlikely, of course—then the back-up solar arrays will deploy from Module 8. Finally, we have Module 9—propulsion—housing the four quantum-resonance engines and chemical rocket maneuvering thrusters.”
    Dr. Kosmos went on to explain how the Juno Ark would accelerate to twenty-seven percent the speed of light and take one hundred and twenty years to reach the Aura system, sixteen-point-one light years away. The first half of the trip would be acceleration, the second half deceleration. For all on board, most of that time would be spent hibernating in stasis. A month into the voyage it’d be lights-out, with wake up over a century later six months before Aura-c orbit.
    Dr. Kosmos had worked up quite a sweat with his animated explanations.
    He stopped abruptly and said, “Okay, time for a ten-minute break, after which we’ll continue.”
    Luker followed Kate to the coffee table outside the lecture hall and they lined up for their turn.
    Kate turned to face Luker, looking up at him a good ten inches above her. “So what do you do, Dan?”
    “I’m … I was a cop. How about you, Kate?”
    “Teacher. Primary school grade.”
    “So what made you wanna sign up?”
    She looked skywards, then threw her head back with a chuckle.
    “I’m still asking myself that question. I mean … no real ties, I guess. Correction … I’ll miss my kids … the ones I taught that is. I don’t have—”
    “Sure, go on …”
    “I guess, I just love little kids … love their minds, their unjaded innocence … their perspective on the world. I suppose I just want to make a better world with a clean slate. None of the baggage on Earth’s communities. We get to shape the colony just like they did here in America centuries ago, except this time everyone’s been selected. So, hopefully, that all works out better. So that’s my story, how ‘bout you Dan Luker?”
    “Many of the same reasons I guess …”
    Luker explained but skirted around his recent past, his loss and how conflicted he felt inside.
    Kate reached the head of the line and her coffee reward there. A tall, nerdy-looking guy with floppy blonde hair and glasses brushed past Luker a little too close, knocking his elbow and spilling