Commander John Altermann of Starship Alpha, three days later into the trip to Aenim's distant star system. He had come to know from his cabinet a great deal about the war in the colonies, but more specifically, the importance of his mission into Aenim. They were still most of nine months away, in best human and electronic estimation, and he felt ominous truths lurking behind the words in the documents he read, all but that final one that could only be read in nine months.
Time moved so slowly, hadn't it? This had not been his first venture into the unknown, and that was likely the reason for his paranoia, he knew. Sometimes you had to do even more than read between the lines. Sometimes you had to feel out the situation you were in, and this certainly felt like a critical situation if he had ever felt himself involved in one. And he had; many of them. So he knew there was something coming down the track. He kept this close to his vest, as he always had. In all likelihood he was where he was because someone higher up the pay scale than he was knew how he would react. Maybe even planned on it.
It unsettled his stomach, and he grabbed at it often.
He had heard the rumors and the gossip as much as anyone else on Starship Alpha, and found most of it quite customary and expected on any mission. It was harmless, of course. No message could be sent back to the colonies, even on the outer rim in Earth's starsystem and therefore it didn't really matter what people were saying, only how they were saying it. They were on their own now, all the talking and gossipping could come to no harm in his wise opinion.
Negativity, however, that was another issue. If he discovered that any serious negativity would have to be smote from his ship immediately. He didn't have anything like a morale plan, or even a consideration of what he should do when that negativity, a certainty he knew, showed its ugly, malignant face.
He did know, however, that there would need to be a series of debriefings on the way back. He hadn't a clue what Aenim might look like now. The vivid descriptions he read described relative Utopia when, 57 years earlier, under now outdated Warp systems, the semi-synthetic planet, a new place for humanity to go, would be far more suitable for humanity than any colony he had been in or heard of in the current, fragile Colony system in Earth's starsystem.
Commander Altermann had seen places like that in his youth--mostly synthetic workups of Second Millennial Earth, before AI, before the Greens and the Greys, back when Earth thought itself unique, all alone in the galaxy--and could only hope that Aenim would be that place.
How they managed to herd--he forgave himself the crude word, men and women were not animals, but part of some higher develepmental system akin to many other races in Earth's Starsystem--the millions of humans to inhabit Aenim, he did not know and, with great gratitude, a problem beyond his set of aging skills very well could develop it.
On a mission, it seemed to him now that age tugged on him more and more, there was more thinking and talking and thinking some more than anything else. It was invaluable time to get your shit together, he knew, but it was also miserable because time crawled along in deep space.
He would get them to Aenim, see what they would see, and would see his crew back, that would be his job. He suspected once coming to Aenim in whatever system it's beacons drew Starship Alpha, not unlike magnetic responses between fine metals, it would take some time---years, likely--before an accurate report could be made and brought back to the Colonies near what was left of Earth.
If it was still there when he returned. There were no certainties.