by Melanie Edmonds
Guest’s personal log, 08:19, 20 March 2214 Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System Status: Stationary Log location: Guest quarters Log recording initiated by ship Where am I today? Let’s see. Kess, personal journal entry, March… 2214? Yes, 2214. I’m currently aboard the Starwalker, a ship I have been hunting for over 40 […]
Ship’s log, 10:14, 21 March 2214 Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System Status: Stationary I probably shouldn’t have peeked at Kess’s personal log. But I can’t tell if she’s a guest or a prisoner right now; she stays in her assigned ‘guest’ quarters most of the time, and she doesn’t go anywhere […]
Ship’s log, 10:43, 21 March 2214 Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System Status: Stationary On the planet far below my orbit, the news is bleating about riots and increasing pressure for governments to do something about the solar flare activity. It’s causing storms and knocking out power grids, disrupting everyone’s lives. Up […]
Ship’s log, 07:18, 27 March 2214 Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System Status: Stationary It has been a long week. Simulations and permutations and more simulations. Calculations so repetitive that I almost miss the excitement of looping. (But only almost. I’m not that bored.) For generations, scientists have tried to build reliable, […]
Ship’s log, 23:41, 27 March 2214 Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System Status: Stationary When we first came to this system, we avoided the Moonbase. I had forgotten about that until 15.4 seconds ago. More precisely, I had forgotten about why we had avoided the Moonbase, and 15.4 seconds ago, a sensor […]
Ship’s log, 14:18, 28 March 2214 Location: Entry corridor to Earth atmosphere, Home system Status: On final approach for entry It’s about time. Sixteen hours in orbit, slipping around like a spastic fish so that we stay out of range of sensors on the Moonbase, waiting for landing control on Earth to designate us […]
Ship’s log, 14:39, 28 March 2214 Location: Spaceport, Seville, Spain, Earth Status: Landing External communications line STARRY: (Spanish) Landing on platform A-16, acknowledged. Are the docking clamps really necessary, Port Authority? We’re just dropping someone off. SEVILLE PORT AUTHORITY: (Spanish) Regulations, Starwalker. You must wait for take-off clearance with docking clamps engaged. STARRY: (sighing) […]
Ship’s log, 15:27, 28 March 2214 Location: Spaceport, Seville, Spain, Earth Status: Docked and powered down Most of my people are outside, surrounded by an angry mob, and stupid docking clamps have me pinned in place. Can’t do anything except watch, as it all goes wrong. External sensors (Halfway across the landing platform, […]
Ship’s log, 19:32, 28 March 2214 Location: Near Spain, Earth Status: Exit vector to Earth orbit Four hours. I can’t believe we’ve wasted nearly four hours since the light of the solar flare reached us. I’ve never seen a flare like that before. Not even all of Dr Cirilli’s archives hold anything like it. […]
Ship’s log, 22:17, 29 March 2214 Location: Orbit around Terra Sol, Home system Status: Maintaining orbit It is done. I am smoking and glowing in places I shouldn’t, but I’ve done everything I can here. I can’t begin to describe the past day. I thought about starting up a log a thousand times, but […]