Ravana's Shadow (13) (Patreon)

Kit paced nervously back and forth in the conference room. She adjusted her tail, straightened the bow in her hair, and made sure her stockings were up as high as they would go. But still no shoes—it wasn't like they were having this important meeting out on the surface!

There were only two others in the room so far—Jay at his chair beside hers, flipping between a few pages on the screens of their tablets, and Emma. 

The Institute's head chef and chief doctor was attending in both roles today, though her early arrival was mostly the former. She checked over the tray of cookies with as much care as any of the engineers and scientists had for their designs. A few of the individually decorated pieces didn't meet her standards, and she hastily tucked them away into a box of rejects.

Kit made her way over, if only to keep herself busy. She watched from Emma's shoulder as she took a few fresh cookies, along with a pack of multicolored icing. Both huge bunny ears stood alert atop her head, as though she was some wild animal, scanning the wilderness around her for predators. 

"The mouse already looked good. Jay wouldn't mind."

Emma didn't look up, though her tail did twitch slightly at the interruption. "I'm too old for good. Do something long enough, and eventually only perfection will suffice." She straightened after a few seconds, then looked between her frosted cookie and Jay's intensely focused expression.

"Now that's great." She set the frosting down, then eyed the squirrel cookie inside her box. She tugged Kit's tail around far enough to see its color, before nodding in approval. "Yours too."

They weren't portraits, just illustrations of the animal each of them included in their templates. "You had enough time to make these and still get ready for today?"

Emma straightened, resting one hand on her shoulder. She had kept her full template, giving her at least five centimeters on Kit. For a little while longer, anyway. "Director, all I have to do is convert a few hurt meat-people into humans. If I could put you back together, they'll be easy. Uplifting is settled science."

Kit nodded, her ears pressing flat. Whenever her friends talked about meat people, she couldn't help feeling unsettled. They'd used words like that for her at first. Barbarian, barely human.

Now they knew better. But what if they'd found her under other circumstances? Would they still treat her like a human being?

"Guess that makes sense." Kit nudged her shoulder. "Even though you'll have to get shorter for the trip?"

Emma shrugged. "Still almost a year away. By then I might be one of the last ones left. Only for us to bring in enough mass that no one ever has to be small again."

"We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves on a transition like that," Maddie said, slipping through the door and carrying a tablet and several rolls of real paper over to her seat. "We don't have an industry to process the material, or a strategy to bring it down from orbit in acceptable quantities. It will take a decade at least before the supply shortage is over."

Emma shrugged. "We'll see. Everyone knows where you stand. But it might be more of a priority for the rest of us. Once we can get our height back..."

Maddie flushed, her own ears folding flat. She settled back in her chair, curling her legs beneath her. "Kids won't want to upend everything just because we can."

"Most cannot," Forerunner said. He spoke from Maddie's tablet, though Kit was close enough to hear. "With the exception of newly fabricated colonists, most of Mara's population would not adapt well to a radically new body. Many might need to branch terminate and re-instance from baseline."

A shiver passed through Emma at those words. Kit almost asked what they meant—but then the others started pouring in.

Many were from Engineering or Fabrication—Rich, Kaden, and Abel were all there, along with Sam from Systems and Pat from Life Support. Even Sadie made her way to the meeting, representing Logistics.

Once they were all seated, Kit finally took her spot, curling her tail around her legs beneath the table. She couldn't hide behind it now, not with Mara's whole population looking to her for strength.

"Before we get started, I want you all to know: Forerunner will be recording this meeting. The expectation is that we'll be sending it to Ravana when we finish. Garrick wants reassurances that we're really able to do this. Only what we say at the beginning and the end won't be part of the message."

She looked around the room, into each face. Her colonists might be tiny, they might have weird ears and tails, but she wouldn't trade them for a whole team of the best and brightest from her own time. "So, before we start recording, I want you to know how much I trust you. I know Mara hasn't sent rockets anywhere before, but... this is exactly the kind of mission you've all been preparing for. A new challenge, some new science, and all your friends working beside you.

"We will get a ship to Ravana. We'll bring every last survivor back with us. This is your first chance to put all that research you've been doing to the test."

"Us and Forerunner," Rich said. "We could never do it without him. It's all new, but building rockets is what he was designed for."

"I was designed to help humanity seed the universe with life," Forerunner said. "To spread to the farthest star and nurture the descendants of the ones who sent me. That does include this mission."

Kit tapped the computer in front of her with two fingers. "So we're all clear, this is the last chance to change mission details. When we walk out of here today, we'll have our goals decided and timeline marked. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do to extend the timeline. If we don't get there while Garrick is still alive, it's a failure. Complete success or nothing. Maddie, why don't you begin?"

The fox stood up. The projector lit up on its own and filled the wall with an image of the rocket. Thanks to her ribbon, she didn't touch the remote.

"Mission is going to be in three stages. First is the launch vehicle—this here." The majority of the rocket lit up, becoming transparent to show the various engines and fuel tanks within. "This gets us almost all the way out of Mara's gravity. Up to [distance]." She gestured at the screen, and a brief animation played, showing the launch. "Separation with the other two stages happens here."

"Why not the rest of the way?" Emma asked. "Looks like there's still some fuel left at the top, is that just for show?"

"No. That's the safety margin. And if we're lucky, we can use that to guide the first stage back to the ground. That's a lot of mass we don't want to lose."

Emma nodded and settled back into her seat. 

"Stage two accelerates us out of Mara's orbit, and onto a rendezvous trajectory with Ravana. Finally, the third stage is the crew module. It's responsible for matching velocity with the asteroid and attaching us there. Once we get there, it's our base of operations until Forerunner can build something better on site."

"And if he can't... there's no way to fly back," Sam said. "What happens if something goes wrong?"

"Depends on when." Maddie folded both arms, glaring at him. "If it's on launch, statistics say we're dead anyway. If it's anywhere in Mara's orbit, or before this part of the acceleration burn..." She highlighted the dotted line showing the Neophyte's trajectory. "We could alter course and return for powered descent and landing on Mara. The third stage has thrusters that should be able to bring us in for a soft landing. Soft enough to preserve cognitive centers, anyway. Our squishy bits will be... everywhere."

She shuddered, then advanced through the slides back to an illustration of the Neophyte itself, rather than the other two stages.

"This is where most of you come in. This ship needs to sustain a crew for the 45-day mission, then as long as we need before it's safe to leave. How long could that be, Forerunner?"

"I would allocate 180 days beyond transit time, so we have a significant margin of safety for design faults, complications, or trouble negotiating with Ravana. Longer would be ideal but would increase the risk factors of an overdesigned launch vehicle. That should be a healthy compromise between risk and safety."

"180 days," Maddie repeated. "You'll notice, I haven't said anything about how we will get Ravana back with us to Mara. That's something we get to figure out along the way. Which is why we have this." 

The crew section faded, leaving only the cargo block below it. "One of Mara's three cornucopia machines. Full fabricator for tech, bio, and structure. We'll have two dozen Forerunner drones with us in a wide variety of configurations, plus a dedicated persona coprocessor. Data we have on the asteroid suggests a few ways we could get it back here. But that's not what we're worried about. We get the gear there, and the rest solves itself."

"Except..." Pat began. "The whole reason we're helping them is their colony failed, right? Are we sure the same thing won't happen to us?"

"Reasonably," Forerunner said, before anyone could reply. "The likelihood of a second coronal mass ejection impacting their orbital path is incredibly remote. But even if it sabotages most of my drones, so long as we can communicate you should be able to rebuild. Several citizens on this mission will separately have the tools and training to repair or even rebuild a fabricator from base materials."

Kit waited for him to finish before continuing on. "Thanks, Maddie. We can get into more detail in a second. But before we do..." She looked around the room again, checking each face in turn. "No mission is without risk, certainly not this one. I won't lie and try to convince you it isn't the most dangerous thing anyone in the Institute has ever done. But that's what you're all doing here. We don't make this mission safe while we're up there, we do it now. Every important piece you test, every redundancy you find space for on the Neophyte, every drop of extra fuel or power we can squeeze, that makes all of us safer."

"But you're not going to force anyone to get on, are you?" Abel asked. "Not saying we won't do good work. But when this rocket is sitting on a launch platform, I think I'd feel safest as far away from it as possible."

Kit nodded. "No one is forced to come. I want every ki—every citizen aboard the Neophyte to want to be there. It's much harder than anything you've ever had to do—months, maybe years of work, without Remedial to hide in if you get overwhelmed. How many spots do we have?"

"Eight," Kaden said. "And that's hot bunking with minimal facilities. Everyone aboard is going to be real close friends when this is over."

Kit flipped through a few of the slides herself, until she was back to the one showing the inside of the Neophyte. This was more of what she expected, tight quarters and every surface used for something productive.

Compared to this, even the Aether would feel spacious. Homeworld had been far less constrained by material or launch costs, despite the more primitive technology available to them.

"I have confirmation from Maddie and Sadie," Kit said. "With me, that's three. I'm eyeing a pilot down in Remedial who would make four. One of those spots is for our doctor. Emma?"

The bunny shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Still thinking about it. Don't pressure me now!"

Kit's tail dropped, and she held up both hands. "No pressure. Could be someone else." Though who was, of course, not an easy question to answer. The only other doctor Kit knew of was part of the first generation. Unless they wanted to bring the deer. But would he give up his antlers to fit on the ship?

"That's two more. Both of those will be engineers. I believe anyone in this room would qualify."

Rich tapped his fingers on the tabletop, loud enough to make them all look up. "Should we really be picking that now? There's not even a rocket yet. You can make it sound like it's already built, but there's a lot of question marks here. Things we don't know if we can fabricate right, parts we have to test with the available materials. Can't we pick the crew when we're finished?"

"We can't." Jay spoke up from just behind her. But after hearing Kit go over so much of this mission before the meeting, he knew almost as much about it as she did. "Because everyone on the crew has to have an EVA suit, has to get their template ruggedized, and get the certs for it all. If we waited until the Neophyte was finished to start training, we'd miss the launch window."

"Then I'm right out." Rich pushed his seat back from the table, though he didn't actually stand. "I'll be lucky if I get my parts of this thing finished in time. Somebody else can go."

"The slots do not need to be filled from members of the senior staff,” Forerunner explained. “Many of the Institute's citizens would qualify. It may be better to intentionally omit some of the most skilled individuals from the manifest. Also, not all eight will be required to be successful. Your odds are meaningfully similar with as few as five on the crew. But I anticipate at least one volunteer later becoming unwilling to go, so seven is an ideal number to target."

"To boldly go," Kaden said. "If no one else will. I already have the antigrain implant."

Kit looked back at Jay. The mouse stumbled over his words for a few seconds before answering. "I would go. B-but… you might be better off if I stay. By the time this mission happens, I'll know as much about Mara's operations as Kit does. I could fill in her spot while she's gone."

"I've lived here long enough," Abel said, folding his arms across the table. "I'll have to cancel my game to make time for the extra training. I'm ready to take a chance on something new."

"Unless you want to give Wren a call," Rich said. "Maybe she's stopped being insane and she's ready for her old post. She'd be a great interim Director... since it was her job to start with, and all."

"No," Forerunner said, before anyone in the room could answer. "Wren will not be available for that duty for the foreseeable future."

Kit settled back into her seat. "There we go. Every one of you who volunteered will be training with me once every three days from now until launch. Three hours, mandatory. Sadie and Forerunner will make sure your schedules have an opening. Except for right at the beginning, since it will take time to have your suits ready, and a few of you need to go into the biofabricator to get upgraded. But after that..."

"Alright space explorer," Abel said. "We know how excited you are. But we should save time for the important part of this meeting. We can't build a ship unless we agree on how it looks."

"Right.” Kit glanced sidelong at the fox. "Maddie? Back to you."

The fox stood up again, bouncing with excitement. "Right! Forerunner already got me the proposals from each of your departments. I've tried to integrate them into the mission parameters, except where they won't work. We're going to go down from the most critical systems to the least. Each of these has a few fixes, but a few will need some radical redesigns. Good news is, I think most of what you gave me will work. We'll start with structure. There are some loading issues with..."

It was easily the longest meeting Kit had ever attended. Minutes turned to hours, and they were still in their seats. They ate through all the snacks Emma had brought, and Kit drained every paper cup of watermelon-flavored not-juice in the cooler.

They went over every part of the mission, from the hydrogen fuel all the way to the fission reactor that would sustain them during the return trip. They talked about protection from cosmic rays, redundancy, various levels of life support.

Some topics required considerable argument, with Forerunner stepping in to ultimately arbitrate the solution he thought would make the mission successful. But in the end, it was the Director who had to make each determination.

Despite the vast passage of time between her departure and Mara's founding, a surprising number of the Neophyte's critical systems were recognizable to Kit, even if the exact technologies they used were new. No massless drive would propel them forward. Instead, the rocket would use similar liquid fuels to her own era, in engines that even looked similar. True, there were some differences—complex fuel-oxygen intermix chambers, fully reversible life support systems that required no toxic chemicals, and sealed reactors that could ramp between power states over the course of only a few minutes.

Kit could almost imagine her older self sitting beside her, though her head would've scraped the ceiling in the conference room. That ghostly version of Kit had no tail, no ears, and no fear. She had already volunteered for a mission far more dangerous than this one, for no greater reason than the desire to see human science advance.

Forerunner made her small, and its cognitive filter changed the way she perceived the world. But the fundamentals were all still there. Kit knew the questions to ask when the meeting got stuck, and even had opinions on some of the critical systems. For the first time since taking her position as Director, she did more than just encourage Mara's citizens.

With her body sustained electrically and no true need to sleep, Kit wasn't even sure how long the meeting went. It might've been two full days, with kids shuffling in and out when their own parts of the ship weren't implicated, and they wanted a break. Her faithful secretary gave up after a few hours and curled up to sleep near Kit's tail. No one seemed to notice.

System by system, the ghostly outline of the Neophyte grew into something real. Until at long last they had answered every question, and Forerunner declared the design complete.

"This design relies on 96% existing or lightly adapted components from my database," Forerunner said. "4% is well above the typical threshold of 1% experimental components I prefer for manned missions. But given the constraints, I don't believe we have an alternative. Exhaustive modeling and virtual testing will be required to reduce the odds of mission failure within acceptable margins. Even then, I identify several hundred required physical tests. I will attempt to divert the workload away from human labor as much as possible.

"Each of you should be aware of the significant alteration to routine this will introduce. Non-critical fabricator requests will be refused. Construction will require most of our industrial capacity. Testing may produce noise pollution. Computational and laboratory resources will be redirected from every other field."

"Which means..." Kit finished, rising from her seat. She stretched, arching her back and uncurling her tail. Even her enhanced, bioengineered template body ached from the length of this meeting. If there weren't so many people here, she'd probably just curl up next to Jay and sleep right there on the floor. 

But she couldn't, not with everyone watching. Maybe if they left back to their quarters, she could ask Forerunner to turn out the lights. "I already knew it was gonna be hard on everyone. But this is going to push even more of our citizens down into Remedial. Even the ones excited about the Neophyte might still get overwhelmed by the stress."

"That is likely the case," Forerunner agreed. "Each department should be mindful of the resources available to it. It is preferable to delay a specific milestone than to lose labor resources that cannot be easily replenished."

"We get it." Emma stood up too. "You all have fun. I'm gonna find a quiet corner of the habitat dome for a nap." 

The others excused themselves one by one, with varying levels of excitement. At least none of their faces seemed obviously hostile to Kit. Even Abel and the other skeptics were convinced, if only by the odds facing Mara. Success gave them a future. Only time would tell if it was worth risking their lives.

Kit sunk down to the floor beside the mouse. Jay stirred, looking up at her. "Oh. Meeting over?"

She nodded once, then wrapped her tail around herself. "Finally."

The lights dimmed without her request, but that didn't mean they were left alone. A few seconds later, and a familiar face poked around the chair. How Maddie's ears could still be alert and her eyes so energetic after working through the details of an entire space mission, Kit couldn't say.

"H-hey fox. Can we maybe... talk later? I'm still new, so... need more sleep than all of you."

The fox nodded once. "I figured. Here." She stepped back, and one of Forerunner's drones appeared around the corner. This was one of the soft models, the same as the ones used in Remedial. It deposited several heavy pillows on the ground around them. Maddie reappeared a few seconds later with a huge, fluffy blanket. "If you're gonna sleep in a pillow-fort, at least make it comfortable. The Director deserves better than carpet."

Kit was too weak to protest. Maddie nudged Jay closer to her, then tossed the blanket over them both. Finally, she stood up, beaming. "Normally I'd love to stay for a nap. Still need to figure out how soft that tail is." She glanced sidelong at Jay, and the barest hint of embarrassment flashed across her face.

Almost as quick as Kit noticed, it was gone. "I've got a ship to build. But before I go, one last thing to think about." 

She dropped down next to Kit, where she could whisper into her ear. "We didn't have time to talk about what happens after we attach to Ravana. Have you thought about any of it?"

Kit forced her eyes open. Turning towards Maddie took a Herculean effort, especially now that she was comfortable and warm. "You mean building a reactor? Healing all those people?"

"No. I mean making sure those survivors keep up their end. Somewhere in all that red fluff is a dangerous barbarian from ancient history. Just this once, try to think like she would. Can you keep us safe?"

Maddie stood up again, running one nervous hand through her tail. She took one step away from the table, ears sagging flat. "I still remember... what it's like, to be small when others are big. Just because Garrick says he'll cooperate doesn't mean it's true. Sadie... means well. She's been great security for Mara as long as I can remember. But I don't think a spray bottle will do very much against the people who could be waiting on Ravana. Chase is a good shot, but he never had to fight for real before.

"I'll make sure we get there safe. But after that... you have to protect us. I hope you still remember how."

Maddie backed away before Kit could reply, and the light switched off.

Jay nudged her to the side, before whispering back to her. He no longer sounded even a little tired. "Do you really think you can do that? Protect us from the people on that colony?"

She nodded. "I'll figure out a way. I think I know who to ask."