Beyond the nearly-inhabitable outer atmospheres of Earth; Early Third-Millenia. Approximately 3101 A. D. The Starship Alpha.
"Sir, where are we headed?" A scared, young ensign asked Commander Jon Altermann. The young woman looked at the aged commander, but not necessarily because she had any respect for the man, she had but only met him for the first time.
What she was doing was watching the Commander's face and looking for those sensations to come; it had been a trick her father had taught her when she was still in the Academy. It dawned on her that that had only been but a few months prior, Starship Alpha her first official duty assignment. Her father never got the chance to see her ship off, of course.
The Commander had deep age-derived lines carved into his face. One such scar of age was a deep, severe line that jutted up from in between his eyes, nearly the entire distance to his retreating hairline. That was when the glare of the harsh, white lighting in the room bearing down on them all, like a subjugating force to be reckoned with in some way.
The rest of his face hung in places, sagging towards the floor slightly for with age brought a gut that the Ensign thought for sure was hard to mitigate against. Where it hung, the skin was red with the obvious touches of rosacea. His eyes, though. That was what she watched most. They were dark and sincere, and gave Sara the distinct feeling that he was filling up with emotion, either that or he was dealing with something that distracted him.
It took him a few minutes to reply. "Aenim of course, and quickly," he replied, though lowly and gripping one shoulder of Ensign Sara Hansford. She had never heard of Aenim. In fact, she felt should she need to say the name of the place—whether it be star or planet or system—she might be proven foolish in her pronunciation of it.
"That's Light-years away," she insisted, though a little bit proudly. "It's our territory isn't it?"
"Indeed," Alterman paused, "and we better have good news when we return. And we will return. I've every faith that we will do so." He promised though the phrase, Sara noticed, never met his eyes. Though she fought against it, she knew that concerned her. After all, he was the Commander.
If he doesn't know, not really know, what to say to us now…, she thought, never fully forming the thought. She became distracted.
"Come back?" Hansford asked as though she couldnt possibly understand. There wasn't much to come back to. She had seen that with her own eyes. This had been her salvation, that she wouldn't have to come back.
"If theres something to come back to, we'll do so; I've my orders, same as you, Ensign."
She nodded willingly enough, understanding completely. If there were a prayer she felt she had a place in speaking it would be that something happened so they wouldn't have to come back. Prayers hurt nobody, yet she held her tongue, prayed anyway.
Her only orders, really had been administered to her only days before leaving Earth's moon, the only real refuge that Earth had.
Her training officer had told her simply, "You've been selected to accompany Commander Jon Altermann. He will provide you further instruction." She hadn't been sure exactly what Sergeant Melinda Tyler meant. What had further instruction been meant to mean in this instance? Was she still training, or had she been given the chance to show what she had learned?
She didn't know because she hadn't asked. Her own anxieties prevented her from asking. After all, one didn't want to seem stupid. She thought she would be considered stupid for asking. So she did not, not to Sergeant Tyler nor to Commander Altermann.
She knew little about Aenim--she didn't have the security clearance necessary to know much of anything, but people talked, all kinds of people, with all kinds of security clearances. What the Ensign did know was that before, against counsel from Earth's United Council, AI, the machine's own entity, officially declared war against both The Greens and The Greys, both of which were at war amongst each other. That war still raged on Earth, the banded Human Colonies living under domed environments, taking up an oath of neutrality from the war taking place there.
Sara didn't think those tiny, glass-enclose environments would survive two wars at once very well at all. She had pushed their very existence out of her mind.
Before the war was waged, less than a century before or so, both substantiated and unsubstantiated information decreed, AI and EUC had enacted something called Project Aenim. They had found a way to synthesize matter--they needed each other to do so, she knew--and had began to grow an inhabitable civilization there. What happened, and where the mass had gotten off to was classified, but it was far enough away that Ensign Sara Handsford had to sign a very lengthy, and well worded Non-Disclosure Agreement. Being she knew nothing anyway, she signed willingly enough.
In addition, young Handsford had to sign on for a minimum of ten additional years with the United Human Forces, making her total twenty human years at the projected end of the term; that was three years ago, and now she headed outside known airspace into the beyond with the UHF, under Commander Altermann, a highly decorated man if rumor could be believed. She had no real choice to indulge what could turn into nothing but rumor.
She hoped as hard as she could that that wasn't so.
With all the strength she could bear she hoped the next seven years would bode well for her.
"Commander Altermann," Sara dared, "what do we do when we get there, or is that overstepping my bounds."
For a few, long tense moments she looked at the large, domed head of Altermann and wondered if she really had made an oversight, or if she hadn't broken his thinking. Then: "When you've overstepped, we'll both know, Handsford, and we'll deal with it accordingly," he paused, then when she was afraid that was all the Commander of Starship Alpha had to say, he began again,"I'd tell you if I knew, Ensign. Once we reach the relative perimeter, and only when we reach that airspace, I have electronic orders to be opened at once. So, for what it's worth, when I know, you'll be in the small circle to know exactly what the sealed orders say," he smiled.
It made sense to Sara Handsford, she'd heard of the Administration's similar handling of sensitive orders on missions with highly-classified intelligence; that she was on such a detail, she'd be only a fool to think. It was a feeling at the center of her ample chest that she had known all along something serious was going on: there would've been no need for so much paperwork, digital and otherwise, needed if she was going a few rotations to the Human Colonies on the Earth Moon, Mars, or similar, closer locations than she currently had been ordered to send Starship Alpha. She had tapped in a lengthly location that even the greatest warp-drives—ones even beyond the power of the four that Alpha posessed—she was looking at six to nine months of unchartered territory before they likely get within distance to hear those orders Commander Altermann promised.