~~~ Special thanks to Strangebuddy for providing the inspiration for this story ~~~
~~~
"Rodger Houston, I'm hearing you loud and clear up here. All systems are go. I'm going to initiate Phase 4 on your go-ahead."
"Copy that Hermes III. Systems are nominal. Proceed with Phase 4."
You slowly type in the last sequences into the computer. You double check everything. Triple check. This is going to be a long journey, and you can't afford a mistake. It all looks good. "She sure does look beautiful from up here Houston" you say with a wistful tone in your voice, staring down at the globe of the earth.
It's a 40 year mission. Well, for those on earth it will be 45 years. From your perspective it will all be over in about... oh... 10 minutes or so. The Hermes III is the newest Orion class ship. With its nuclear propulsion drive you'll reach just over 10% the speed of light. Proxima Centauri is 4.22 light years away. So 42 or so years at 10% light speed, plus a few years here or there for speeding up and slowing down time. The boys down at JPL managed to round it off to an almost even 45 years. Some of them might still be around when you get there.
You're stalling. It's time to get this mission going. You hear the familiar click of the radio as you turn on your transmitter. "Alright, initiating pre-detonation power check... Main Reactor... check. Backup Reactor... check. Bomb launch system... check. Internal computers... check. Cryogenics apparatus... check."
"Rodger Hermes III. Initiate Phase 5 whenever you are ready."
You lean back in your chamber. Now that you are here, it's starting to look eerily like a coffin. Oh well. It's too late to turn back now. "Keep a light on for me down there. Initiating Phase 5 in 4...3...2...1...MARK" you slam your arms back into the casing, activating the pull bar and launching the Hermes into its most dangerous stage. You can feel a metal churning as the first payload is let free. Meanwhile, the coffin lid of the cryogenics chamber slides down over you. There is a thrumming noise, and you are thrust back in your chamber as the first detonation lurches the Hermes forwards. A hissing sound of the chamber fills your ears and soon your vision goes hazy. You can feel more thrummings in the distance, your body lurching in time with each. Soon your vision blacks out and for a moment you can feel yourself sliding through space before you slip into unconsciousness.
~~~
Yeah something is not right. You cough and wheeze as the cryogenics chamber rattles open. You are in ROUGH turbulence. If you weren't strapped in you would be shaking around the cockpit like a bouncy ball in a barrel. Out the porthole all you see is the fire of re-entry. You're headed into a planet's atmosphere. That is DEFINITLY not right. Your head is spinning, but you distinctly remember this is NOT right. You should have been brought out of stasis several hours before approaching the planet. The telescope images of the planet weren't good enough to choose a landing site. You were supposed to go into orbit and then spend the better part of a day or so deciding where to go down. This is not good.
You hold on for dear life as the Hermes III groans and screams as it races through the atmosphere. There's nothing you can do now; you'll land where you land.
A few moments later the fire outside dies down, and the turbulence becomes more bearable. You can't see much looking out of the window "Blue-green sky... Guys back home would love to see this..." you ponder absently.
KACHUNK -- the parachutes deployed correctly. Probably. In any case, you are lurched back in your seat at the parachutes kick in. Your view through the porthole shifts and now you think you can see some of the ground. It looks like there is a brown-orange mountain range in the distance. Good. Land is good.
CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK -- the secondary parachutes snap out in quick succession, signaling your approach to the ground. Then, moments later, you land, softly enough. You exhale a breath you didn't realize you were holding and unbuckle yourself from the coffin.
You lean forward and start tapping the computer. What the hell happened? Why weren't yo- Huh. That's... Wait... that can't be... No... no it...is... You slouch back in your chamber and run a hand over your face, then look back at the screen. Same thing.
It's a log of your course. About 7 years into the trip something went really wrong. You'll have to dig into the instrument data later and figure out what, but 7 years ago your course changed. Drastically. Well, as drastically as a nuclear powered rocket can change. Between years 7 and 10 there was a 2.7 degree change in course. You missed Proxima Centauri by several lightyears. Where the hell ARE you?..
~~~
Beta Trianguli Australis. Fucking Beta T-r-A. 40.37 light years from earth. And, according to your propulsion data, that jerk at year 7 -- whatever it was -- threw the ship completely out of alignment. That means those nukes were detonating at an ablate angle from the pusher. Meaning their pushing power was reduced. A lot. Down to about 39% it looks like. 40.37 light years at 39% of 10% the speed of light. 3.9% the speed of light... A little over 1,035 years to get here... wherever here is... How the hell did your system last that long? You have no idea if there were known planets around Beta TrA when you left Earth. You never bothered to check. But apparently there is one. And somehow, through sheer dumb luck, you managed to land on it. Well, let's hope this one has a breathable atmosphere like the one around Proxima Centauri.
You stand up. Well. It seems like the gravity is about right. You look over the power display. Looks like one of the nuclear reactor backups is still running, at a drastically decreased rate. That explains how you got out this far.
The Hermes doesn't have external atmosphere sensors. You thought you knew where you were going. Your suit has limited life support. Well, unless this planet is somehow habitable you'll probably be dead in a few hours. Might as well take a look around outside and then write a few log entries. There might be enough power left to send a transmission. To... wherever.
~~~
Well, the atmosphere is breathable. This place is actually a lot like earth. The sky is a sea-green, and the ground has an orange tinge to it, but besides that things look pretty... normal. You've walked a few circuits around your landing site. The area is mostly just rock. In the distance you can see those mountain ranges you saw coming down. And it looks like behind you is a decently sized hill. You haven't gone up there yet.
You sent a series of transmissions back towards earth. You don't really know why. It's been over a millennia. There might not even be anyone back there now. Still, you felt a... duty... to report that you arrived here. It'll take 40 years for your transmission to reach back, but what's a few more decades?
There are some plants around. They are a red-green color, but the leaves look normal enough. You aren't a biologist but they seem normal enough to you. You've taken some samples and have them being analyzed by some of the instruments in the Hermes III.
Well, the next course of action is to scale this hill and see what's around. Since there are plants, there must be water somewhere nearby. Maybe a river or a stream or something. There's no going back. The nuclear section of the Hermes is still in orbit, but the fuel line of the lander was damaged. You have no way to launch back into orbit. And it's not like you can go back to earth. Best case scenario it would take you almost another 400 years to get back. More than that. The place might not even be habitable anymore.
Your original mission was a 100 year mission. 45 out to Proxima Centauri, 10 there, doing exploration, experimentation, sample collection, etc, and 45 back. You are 46 (or, you were when you left), so you would have been around 56 or so when you left Proxima Centauri on the way back. The stasis halts the aging process. Obviously. And, there was always the option to leave early if you couldn't find a food source on Proxima Centauri, or if something went wrong. Hell, the boys at JPL told you there was a 40% chance you would arrive and have to just turn the Hermes around because the atmosphere actually wasn't breathable after all. But now you are 35 light years off course and more than a thousand years from home. That sort of makes the distance seem small... In any case, this is home now.
~~~
You trudge up the side of the hill. The incline is rather steep actually. You are huffing and puffing by the time you near the top. A few more steps and you crest the ridge.
Never in 1,000 years would you have expected the site before you. Rows and rows of... houses. Perfectly neat in uniform rows. Each two stores tall. A lawn out front. All... the same. Stretching into the distance. You rub your eyes to wipe away the mirage, but when you open them the buildings are still there.
They look like upscale townhouses, like those new complexes that have been popping up in the Texas suburbs for decades. But in those complexes they try to make the houses look a bit different. Here, all the houses are identical. Same color. Same shape. Same everything. And there are thousands of them. You stand there for a moment counting the streets in front of you. They are laid down in a perfect grid. It looks like it's 20 blocks wide or so, and it stretches as far as you can see; all the way to the horizon.
Could it be possible that in the 1,000 years you were asleep humans came out this far and settled? These certainly look like human homes. If you didn't know better you would think you were back on earth somewhere. The two moons hanging high in the sky tell you otherwise.
The edge of the complex appears to be about a half mile away at the base of the hill. Well... time to go meet the locals you suppose. But first...
You make your way back to the landing site and rummage through the equipment. You pull out a mining laser torch. It's handheld, and won't do much as a weapon, but it's better than nothing. Besides, they won't know what it is. If you hold it threatening they'll just have to assume it's a weapon. Hopefully it won't come to that. Best to be prepared though.
You make the climb up the hill again, then begin your journey down to the complex. You make your way slowly and carefully. With all the climbing you have done your suit is covered in dust, providing a bit of camouflage. You try to stick behind trees or some of the red-green plants as you move down the slope.
It doesn't look like there are any vehicles around. And you don't see any people either. Now that you are a bit closer to stoop down beside a particularly large boulder and take a closer look. The nearest house is only a few hundred feet away. There are a few things about the scene you would describe as out of place.
The road has no paint lines on it. Instead, there is some sort of track going down the middle of it. It looks like railroad tracks, but they are a lot wider apart. They also look thicker than the railroad tracks you are familiar with. About 6 inches across you think. The tracks are embedded directly into the asphalt of the road.
There's something else odd too. There are no telephone wires, but there do appear to be some sort of pole that looks sort of like telephone poles. At every corner there is a tall metal pole, almost three stories high. At the top there is what looks like an electrical box. It is of a sleek design, and is painted in a deep blue and green pattern.
As you watch there is a whirling sound and all the telephone-electrical-box-things at the top of their poles sort of... open up. A panel on each of their four sides springs open, and some long rods that look sort of like a cross between a solar panel and an ironing board spring out. Then there is a loud sound, three chirping high notes, like the call of a small bird. It is exceptionally loud, almost painful to the ears. It echoes across the streets and houses. Then, a moment later, there is another whirring sound and the panels fold back up and go back to looking like they originally did.
Moments later the doors to the houses start opening up. People start walking out. The ones that have cloths on are wearing skimpy lingerie in metallic colors. Gold, silver, bronze, rust, iron. There's men and women both. Most are fully nude, and you spot only a few women that have both their breasts and crotch covered.
Several people emerge from each house. Some houses have only two people, others have almost half a dozen. All the people look like they are in their 20s or 30s, and everyone looks attractive. It's like every person you can see is an A-list celebrity... or porn star.
