The team assembled in the meeting room. The furniture and technology had been upgraded since that first day, but the room was the same. It brought back feelings in everybody of that fear and uncertainty of the first day. The truth was, even after the months of training, there wasn’t much more certainty for any of them. Albrick came into the room, and took his spot at the slate. He smiled at them all.
“Well, you guys made it. You survived the most rigorous training we could come up with, and you’re ready to make Homestead a reality. You have already learned what you need to know, there’s nothing left for me to teach you. You don’t need another briefing on your mission, you’ve had so many of those already. So today, on the eve of your launch, I’ve arranged for a special guest to come and speak with you, and hopefully provide a little motivation. Mister President, will you please join us?”
The team all looked to the door, as it swung open, and two of the suited twins walked through, with their dark glasses and earpieces, wearing emotionless faces as usual. Then the man walked through the door, Zeke Rennet, it was really him. He stood a little less than two meters tall, broad shoulders, clearly muscular and fit. His hair was dark, cut medium short, and perfectly groomed in the fashion of a politician. His face was clean shaven, and his blue eyes peered through thick rimmed glasses, which was unusual, since most people had their vision surgically corrected, many people assumed it was to show off his wealth, as the frames were made from solid mahogany wood.
His presence was intimidating, partially because of his importance, and partially because of his size. It was rare for people to grow tall, since proper nutrition was difficult and expensive, so height was usually an indication of wealth or a genetic rarity. Clearly President Rennet was the former. His fortune was made in air recycling equipment. His father had invented the most frequently used large scale machine, which was enough to fund Zeke’s education in business and economics. After school, the company, under Zeke’s direction expanded their business into small home units, which flew off the shelves as fast as they could build them. As a result, the Rennet fortune grew. Zeke Rennet was a household name from that point forward, which helped bring him to the position he was in that day, as president of the NAR. He was widely known to be a likable, friendly, if slightly conceited guy. His smile was broad and welcoming as he addressed the team.
“When we first started your team, there was a significant amount of debate over whether to have it be included in the Artemis program, or to make it its own. We ultimately decided that it would be independent of Artemis, but under the cover of the program’s name. But we needed a name for this program. I knew that Homestead would be the perfect name. Homestead gives the feeling of possession, of value. A person’s home is the place that matters most to him, and cannot be taken from him. So we seek to declare the planet as our homestead. We will not give up in our struggle to survive. We will do whatever we need to do to make life on Earth easy and carefree once again.
“When we discovered what work was planned on Mars before the Travesty, our immediate thought was about how we could use any technologies developed for that project to sustain life on earth, and maybe even return to the surface one day. The potential to do such good for the planet could not be ignored. Unfortunately, the documentation for the Mars base was very slim, and difficult to find, and that is where all of you come in. You are the hope of our race. You are the light shining in the distance. Your success in this mission will bring a new era to the people of Earth.
“Now, I know this does not come without sacrifice, and we recognize the sacrifices you have all made in being here today. The secrecy does not come easy, even to someone such as myself who deals in it daily. And the knowledge that this program could take your life, well, I could not be so brave as all of you. I admire each of you for the courage that you exhibit by sitting where you do today.
“Allow me to share with you a brief story. A few years ago, when Artemis was just a note on an agenda, I came across a mother with a small child. The mother was sick, she had frequent coughing fits. She told me that she had lived her whole life in the lower reaches of Boston. Her husband had been killed in a tunnel collapse, and she feared that her illness would take her life before her young daughter was fully grown. She told me that the one thing she wanted for her daughter was a better world. She dreamed that her daughter would one day walk the surface of the Earth, feel rain on her face, and breathe clean, fresh air. I was devastated that I could not answer her plea. It broke my heart that I could not snap my fingers and fix the world. I was able to provide an air unit, hoping to help her illness, but I knew that would not help her dream to come true. I determined at that point that the NAR needed to take every opportunity to make the world a better place, no matter what the cost. I decided at that point that her story would become the shared dream of this region. Thus, Artemis, and eventually, Homestead were born. Godspeed to all of you, and I look forward to your return.”
That night, the team slept the dreamless sleep of drug-induced rest. They could not risk the possibility that any of them would not be fully rested before the launch. They all assembled for the launch at 5:30. They walked as a team to the elevator that took them 5,000 meters below New Washington, into the space dock chamber. They each loaded into their seats in the A-537 craft, sitting four wide across the craft. They fastened acceleration straps, and all held hands as the electromagnetic rail launcher began hurling the craft towards the end of the tube. With increasing speed, felt only by the forces pushing them into their chairs, the titanium craft flung itself through the blackness of the subterranean tunnel. After several minutes of the constant acceleration, they could feel their bodies pushing down into their seats as the craft began the slow curve upward towards the surface. By the time they could see the light appearing at the exit of the tunnel, they were darting towards it at 3,000 Km/h.
They could hear a massive pressure wave as they exited the tunnel, left the rails and flew free away from the earth. Elliot watched the monitor as the rear-mounted cameras showed the landscape of the planet as they travelled away. He could see the blue glow of the Fusion-Plasma thrusters as their craft began powering itself towards the edge of the thin atmosphere. As the A-537 finally arrived at the edge of the atmosphere, they could feel the acceleration reduce as the engines were able to relax and perform their final thrust towards escape velocity. The engines clicked off and Garst rotated the craft so the crew could watch the planet through the plexi-crystal windows as they floated towards the moon.
Elliot marveled at the view he saw. What he saw was not the blue-green and cloud-streaked planet depicted in ancient photos. The planet he looked upon now was very different. The blue was still there, with mostly brown landscape, and clouds were heavy around the center of the earth, but very sparse near the poles. He became sad as he looked down at his dying planet, and had a sinking feeling that their research would be in vain. They had set something in motion that could not be stopped. He wondered if it would come to sealed cities, completely closed off from the rest of the planet. He knew that a lot of their research would be towards that end. It was a depressing resignation, but he knew that survival sometimes required undesirable things.
Elliot was amazed at how dull actual space travel was. He expected excitement the whole time, but once he got past the view of Earth, the rest of the journey was terribly boring. It was a lot of waiting and floating, and he welcomed the docking procedure when it came the next morning. Garst’s control of the craft was masterful as it began its orbit of the Moon. After two orbits on a decaying path, they approached the Moon Base runway, and he set the craft down lightly on the tarmac. The team disembarked into the sealed tube that was attached to the hatch. The thing they all noticed the most was the gravity differential. They went to explore the base as the Armstrong crew began to unload the cargo they had carried from Earth.
It took a few hours for the reality of what was happening to sink in for Elliot. He was actually standing on the Moon. As a person who had only rarely been to the surface of the Earth through his life, the idea that he was standing on the moon was startling. He reflected on the events that had led him to this point, and he was amazed that in such a short time, he had gone from an ordinary family in Inner-London to actually travelling off the surface of the planet. And a week from that day, he would be travelling to an entirely different planet.
