Lodos had dedicated all of it's remaining fuel to travel to Earth, only with a little safety factor for the unlikely case of navigation mistakes. It's engines were deactivated long ago, and were now waiting to be reactivated for the deceleration and Earth orbit insertion phases of the flight. Until then, the ship would coast silently, but not stealthily, towards it's destination.
Tachibana's shuttle had disappeared already, and even the closest ships the sensors could pick up were several hundred thousands of kilometers away.
I got the helmet off and looked around the bridge, exhausted and bored. I had many worries, but nothing to do about any of them; Nuan, Tachibana, Lodos, the Republic, myself...
To distract myself, I put the helmet back on and tried to observe the stars. Controlling Lodos' telescopes, I began stargazing. Binary star systems, open star clusters, nebulae, pulsars... What a shame we were trapped in a single star system! If I had the chance, I would take a starship to the remotest parts of the Milky Way Galaxy, and never think of returning home. If I had the chance, I would hop between galaxies and superclusters, travelling the vast distances without looking back.
Everything was right there, but too far away... And despite all the speculations and concepts, faster-than-light travel was still looking impossible.
And so we were trapped here, in our only star system.
I longingly stared towards the parts of the universe I would probably never get to visit in my lifetime.
"What if I uploaded my mind to a computer and sent it away from the Solar System?" I said to myself. "Would I really be traveling, would it be worth the investment?"
The Pleiades cluster didn't give me an answer.
"What if I froze myself cryogenically to wake up at my destination?" I then asked. "Is our technology good enough to preserve a human for thousands, or millions of years with no interruption?"
The Orion Nebula didn't give me an answer.
"What if we built a generation ship and sent it away, so our thousandth descendants would arrive at the destination? Would they remain a part of the human civilization, or become something else in that duration?"
Neither Epsilon Eridani nor Tau Ceti gave me an answer.
"What if..." I said. "What if..."
I took the helmet off. It was not working, I was still worried. I got up from the command chair and left the bridge. With slow, short steps, I was walking towards the medical bay.
"Doctor? Mr. Rafael?"
"Mr. President? What were you looking for?" he appeared from nowhere.
"Nothing, really." I said. "Are you free?"
"I think, mostly free right now." he said, holding a metal apparatus in his hand.
"I was just going to ask you about our patients. How are they doing?"
"To be honest, I don't really know." he said. "It is my first time dealing with something like this. I mean, sure, of course I've seen people with brain damage before, but 'brain tampering'... It is difficult to really say anything. I don't know if they will ever fully recover or not."
"But they will recover in means of physical health?" I asked.
"It is hard to say as well. You know, one of the two guys that went unconscious after they disabled their Vineuras died."
"I know..." I said. "How is the other one?"
"There is no telling. I am trying stuff that I've never been taught in school."
"How about Nuan?" I asked. He sighed.
"I-I-I..." he stuttered. "I simply can not touch her. I don't want to do anything wrong, it is human life after all, there is no trial and error. I would rather wait for a professional surgeon or Vineura expert to come help me. This is way past my expertise."
"Is she okay for the time being?"
"Mr. President, I see how worried you are, but there is just no telling." he said.
"Can I take a look at her myself?" I asked.
"I would advise against it." he replied.
"Why? Is it dangerous?"
"It is not dangerous for her, but it is not good for your own well-being." he said. "Sometimes, there is just nothing to do. You've been visiting her every few hours... Worry about something else for a change, I beg you."
As if she was trying to support the doctor's ideas, Lodos activated it's alarms.
"Environmental alert." I said. "I must go."
I ran to the bridge, but apparently, Mei was quicker than me. When I arrived, she was in the command seat.
"What is happening?" I asked.
"Radiation." she said. "Lots of radiation. You won't believe how much radiation we are getting."
"From?"
"The Sun. It would fry us, burn us alive if we didn't have a spaceship around us."
Mei had rotated the undamaged parts of Lodos' armor towards the radiation source, and put the outermost hull material into extreme reflection mode. This would ensure the crew members would get as little radiation exposure as possible.
"If we were in any other ship, all of us would die from cancer in weeks." Mei said. "Lodos is probably shining like a small star right now, reflecting all the light."
My eyes opened wide.
"Could it be... Is that..."
I couldn't bring myself to say it.
"Yes, Mr. President, that is what you think." Mei said it. "Our Federation friends are firing 'the beam' again, and we were almost caught in it's path."
I silently sat down in a corner and got my head between my hands.
"What is the target?"
"Ceres." Mei answered without hesitation. "And there goes half the mining facilities..."
Soon afterwards, Lodos' alarms stopped.
"Tachibana?" I asked. "Was he near Ceres?"
"I have no idea." Mei said. "But it is likely."
We both went silent for a few minutes.
"Hey." I said. I was looking directly ahead towards Mei, who was looking up to the ceiling, both of us completely still.
"Hm?" she replied with the lowest and coldest possible voice. The lifelessness in both of us was filling the atmosphere.
"If frying half of our planet isn't a declaration of war..." I said. "What else could it be?"
"What reason does the Federation have to declare war on itself?" she replied with a question. "A Federation state declaring war on another Federation state means the end of the whole Federation."
"Yes, but then what?" I asked.
She went silent again, and so did I.
I kept staring at her, she kept staring at the ceiling.
And then, Lodos received a transmission.