Tellus Seconda

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Stella knew this happened to be true. As her name suggested her parents had always been obsessed with the stars; this universe; and most importantly - our place in them. As a young woman she had always been fascinated by the prospect of returning to space, and to live like her parents had when they were her age, but she knew deep down this was unlikely, just a dream cemented in her consciousness that she clung to, day in and day out, about adventuring our cosmos. She found the symmetry quite beautiful – her parents, forever grounded on this newfound planet, proud of their accomplishment of finding a new home; and her – forever grounded on this newfound planet, trapped away from her forgotten one, the first planet, Planet Earth.

She was not ungrateful nor clueless to think that the stars, outer space, held no danger or fear; nor was she guileless enough to believe Earth – just a single century away from desolate - held anything for her, but she wanted to explore, and the stories that she had been told – no doubt blamed on her parents unjustified over-protectiveness – had left her with little but questions. She wanted to be among the stars, just as her parents had not but 20 years ago.

Stella’s parents loved to extol about how this planet was so much like home - how the stars looked just as beautiful when there were no “street lights”, and how the fresh air reminded them of the briskest of summers, and how – and most important – it was like the freshest air they had ever smelled; her mother always told her it smelled exactly like a cold dew on freshly cut grass just after it had rained, as it had on the countryside that she grew-up around when she was a very young child – clean, crisp, and earthy, but it was always so hard for Stella to wake up every day, and look up every night and see what it was that they saw. Where her parents found hope on this ground, Stella found hope at the sky; she had always thought this should be a point of agreement with her parents, given their long history with the stars, but that was never so. To Stella this planet was home, and she longed to be an explorer.

It was not just over-protectiveness, she believed, that kept her parents so secretive about their time in space; it was their concern for her rambunctious spirit: “You go to space and fly, your family has aged 2000 years. Relativity is not your friend,” this was their motto.

This was not an exaggeration she knew, but Stella never wanted to fly decades, like her parents had, and she felt they always discouraged her because they had left their family so young to pursue a new life in protection of humanity’s perpetuity. They missed their family and their home, and the colony ship that she herself had been born on certainly didn’t make it here unscathed. She had been a baby when their ship landed on Tellus Seconda, and Stella had never been told the precise details, but it wasn’t exactly in any shape to fly ever again, and no one had been exactly honest with her about how many people were aboard. Space is dangerous – the only message she had received from anyone who made their mission aboard The Minoa.

The Minoa was a ship of legend and mystery – not because it was a Pioneering Ship and not because it was part of The Inter-Galactic Corp’s military fleet, but because it had been a relatively unremarkable ship – the ninth colony that had launched after the planet had been deemed safe and the pioneers had created the settlement of Kiopolis; it had not been the only starship to perish en-route, but it had, however, been the only ship to crash land on Juniper, the largest of planet's three moons; all aboard had been presumed dead. The settlement had been therefore aghast when The Minoa’s signal had come back online after entering the atmosphere, and had landed safely – but rather tumultuously - on their new planet, just over a year after losing contact, and rumors swirled: the star ship had been the only ship to encounter alien life; the spaceship had been the only to ever traverse a wormhole; The Minoa had lost every engineer onboard in an explosion, but only after they fixed the fuel injector. Stella could only roll her eyes at the last one - several engineers that had been on board were currently very much alive.

“Stella!” Captain Che shouted, rounding the corner into docking bay, “Get off that spaceship!” he ordered. “Now.”

Immediately scrambling to stand, Stella called back to him, “I am so sorry, Sir. I -I,” she stuttered, and called again, “I don’t even know how I got up here – really, I wasn’t thinking, please don’t tell my dad,” Stella pleaded with the captain. This was not the first time she had been caught after the transports had left for the evening.

“Of course, I’m telling your father. Stella, you know better,” Captain Che chided her sternly. “That ship and this dock – this is not a playground. You could be hurt.”

Stella found herself many times in what she called the “shipyard” - the location just next to the transporter carriers docking station where The Minoa and her sister ships had been retired - contemplating her history. The Minoa was one of the three sister ships that were colloquially - and sardonically, known as the Civitas Fleet. The fleet was so named due to the starship’s manifest. The Minoa was one of three ships carrying the most promising minds, and one of the six ships tasked with the care and delivery of physical archives; The Atlas with its quantum intellect could still not reproduce the creative ingenuity and tribulations from which humanity had so gratefully gained, and yet so painfully suffered.

Stella’s parents, Jacob and Eleanor Sharpe, while civilians, worked closely with The Inter-galactic Corp. Jacob had been a promising Chemical Engineer when he boarded The Minoa. Her mother, Eleanor, had been similarly promising in the fields of Theoretical Physics and Physical Chemistry. True erudites, they obtained their PhDs at the tender ages of 24 and 23. Like many others whose families had been involved in scientific and research pursuits, hers had been contracted to the Corps rather abruptly, and their careers were quite enforced.

“This is a nebulous but necessary agreement,” Jacob would chastise Stella, when Stella’s opinions – beliefs that she shared with her mother about the Corp - would meet the reality that her parents were more than cogs in The Inter-galactic Bureau of Justice, indeed, they sustained it; or at a minimum, it’s military branch.

“Young Miss,” Captain Che started, decidedly calmer than when he entered the docking bay, “I know you are not this daft. It is dangerous -”

“I know,” Stella interrupted, “I came after the ships had…” she was looking down, trying to maintain her balance as she was climbing down The Minoa’s behemoth body, but it gave her pause when she looked up at the withering look with which Captain Che was leveling in her own direction.

“This is a government facility.”

And there were no other words to exchange. Damn, Stella thought, serious trouble this time.

***

The situation in which Stella presently found herself had been unexpected. Seated at a mess hall table in the local chapter of The Inter-galactic Corp, she was surprised that Captain Che had not escorted her home; both parents had been at work, and in the office. How strange, she pondered. Their contracts had concluded several years ago. Jacob’s had been closed for five. It was disconcerting for Stella to be back here. From her vantage at the steel table, through the colossal transparent wall, she had an excellent view of the agency’s military-esque campus. The local chapter of The Inter-galactic Corp’s exterior, with it’s expansive titanium buildings, convex in their façade, the majority proudly standing 30 stories tall, were obviously meant to intimidate, but Stella knew that this design was also functional: it was meant to control the airflow from the planet's aggressive wind.

Stella was dragged from her ruminations by her father, who came into her line of sight as he turned the corner, passing in front of the glass wall. He caught sight of her at the table and she could see the relief on his face. Jacob, only in his late 50s, looked no older that he had at 30. His wavy honey blonde hair shone brightly in the sun, not a gray strand in sight, and his turquoise eyes still shone bright and hopeful, but fuller of wisdom, Stella always imagined. She looked nothing like her father, favoring Eleanor’s coloring.

As Jacob walked toward Stella, she braced herself for his ire. Stella was therefore shocked when he did not appear angry that she once again disobeyed their wishes - and Kiopolis rule of law, which she had always felt were more safety guidelines. As he approached, he reached out to pull her into a hug and leaned down to her ear, “Go wait in the rover.” he told Stella, his voice low and serious, “It’s parked behind the office. Your mother and I will there in a moment.”

Unnerved by the unusual circumstance, and her father’s uncharacteristic behavior, Stella did as she was told. She walked to the giant glass door that started to slide open when she was near enough to the censor and exited the hall. She passed the captain, who was speaking to three others, no doubt officers of the Corp. He glanced briefly at her, but she avoided the eye contact, instead favoring the view the of the ground, and turned the corner of the mess hall, briskly walking toward the front offices.

When she arrived, she climbed in the back seat, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath; she had a terrible pit in her stomach. She had heard rumors of an upcoming mission to Juniper and had thought to be concerned for her friend Kara’s parents...and William. Oh, Will, she thought and sighed – he had been her greatest concern; she had been as excited as he had been when he began to unexpectedly train on the Starship Valor, a powerful warship, but all she could muster now was concern. He was a talented pilot. And his officers had been eying him oddly.

Stella had formed an unlikely friendship with the 28-year-old pilot. A contentious relationship initially, in part blamed on their over eight-year age difference, the other to Will’s seemingly surly attitude, their relationship had been anything but harmonious; but during the three years she found herself wandering to the shipyard, they had become fond of each other, and she was always grateful for his presence when she thought she desperately wanted to be alone.

But to be concerned about her parents? That hadn’t occurred to Stella, they were both over 46 years old, civilians, and grounded, at least back on Earth. That a mission to a not-so-distant moon would not have the same regulations hadn’t occurred to her - Jacob and Eleanor Sharpe’s service had been done.

Stella was pulled away from her thoughts when her parents had abruptly climbed in the front seats of the rover, and Jacob flipped the switch and immediately began driving away from the agency’s base. They had been suspiciously silent on her recent transgression as Jacob piloted their rover back to Zone G. Stella searching for a semblance of normalcy asked, “Aren’t you upset me with me.” She could have been speaking to brick walls. After several minutes passed, and she knew they would be seeing the beginnings of her home in several meters, she said, “So, the sky’s pretty tonight, huh?”

As Jacob pulled toward their home and parked the rover, Eleanor turned to face her, but Stella couldn’t understand her mother’s face, and with good reason - no one on this planet or the other could best Eleanor Sharpe’s poker face. Jacob turned back to look at her, and as he started to rub his closed eyes with his thumb and middle finger, she realized how haggard her dad looked, how tired and sad each of them looked, in fact. The dread in her grew. They were drafted, she thought, trying to keep her panic at bay, but the look of horror must have been on her face.

“Stella,” Eleanor started to say, as her father turned back to look out the rover’s front window at their home, she paused and reached for Stella’s hand, and all she said was: “I’m so sorry.”

Stella would keep a brave face, but she was terrified. In space, she feared, that they would be thrown headlong into some space object, or that wretched moon, by the celestial object that nearly destroyed The Minoa 20 years ago, and she would have to watch the deafening silence of the crash when the footage was declassified, and inevitable aired to the settlement. This was unacceptable to Stella Sharpe, and she intended to take matters into her own hands.