Chapter 55 - Proxima Centauri B

Three hundred and seven years ago, the Grand Traveler made its maiden voyage to Alpha Centauri.  It was a test of its star drives and they worked perfectly, hurtling the ship and its crew safely across deep space in mere seconds what would take several years for light to travel.  The technology of the star drive was a mystery and the best our scientists could surmise the ship didn't actually move, but the star drive somehow would bend space and time between the ship and its final destination like the folding of a piece of paper onto itself.  The ship would then be nudged forward and it would have made the leap almost instantly.

What madam Olivia and the sisters who first manned the Grand Traveler discovered was what Pei had thought was rumor.  They found a habitable planet similar to Earth, but in considerable decay and full of ancient ruins.  They also found evidence of previous human space travel and they had established a small outpost on the planetary surface to excavate and study the alien technology.

It was as if mankind was looking at a fun house mirror when they studied the ancient aliens of Alpha Centauri who looked much like us and in time as they began to decipher the ancient languages they grew with increasing angst that they were looking at themselves.

A large crater was gouged out of one of the continents of the dead planet and it was made by man.  The sisters then understood that the massive space rock that was excavated was brought back to Earth and was the missing substance used by the Pacific Ocean foundries to build the thousand ships.  The path to the stars rested in the graves of our oldest of ancestors.

A small group of sister marines remained on Alpha Centauri while Olivia and the others returned to Earth and never made mention and forbid any future deep space travel, that became interpreted as an inoperable star drive.

Sophia began sharing this with Pei and myself as she wanted to prepare us for the eventual return of the Grand Traveler to Alpha Centauri.  She gave us the old journals of madam Olivia and everything they cataloged.  It is likely there are descendants of those few sister marines who remained.  Even Olivia never shared why she chose to leave a dozen of her sisters on Proxima Centauri B who repaired and restarted the ancient human outpost.  Sophia believed she left them to form a colony as a sort of insurance policy if mankind finally failed in its new frontier as shortly after the inner and outer rim colonists began their petty wars.

What is known, at least one of those sister marines was a descendant of Olivia and likely Ninya's own child Maria.  So Olivia must have had good reason and belief that such a small colony had a good chance of thriving on that dead planet.  It was something worth discovering for ourselves and in a few days time the Grand Traveler would make its new maiden voyage.

Captain Gregor and Kallos father spent most of the time checking everything and plotting their course.  They estimated that if things were to fail the Grand Traveler could return at near light speed and would take about ten years to get back to our solar system, but by then nearly everyone onboard would have perished from lack of air, food and water.  Yuna programmed the ship's computers with this doomsday scenario and they accepted only volunteers of the original crew that dwindled to thirty strong.  They were at first hesitant to allow Kallos and I to accompany them, but with much cajoling they relented and Pei would follow as she reminded me I still had my training to fulfill.

The fateful day arrived and the Grand Traveler positioned itself in orbit around Mars and pointed its nose towards Alpha Centauri.  Yuna made several last minute checks of the systems and they fired up the star drives.  In an instant the stars seemed to stream towards us as we peered through the screens on the ships bridge and saw everything pass by us at great speed.  It didn't feel like we stepped from one side of a sheet of a paper or another, the ship felt like it was moving as such phenomenal speeds.

And as quickly as it happened, we all let out a gasp as we were in orbit around Alpha Centauri and could see the binary stars with Proxima Centuari B in orbit.  The ships sensors began detecting several objects and as Sophia had prepared us for were the remnants of old stations and dead satellites.

Gregor had the ship come closer and orbit around the planet and continue to scan the surface as it picked up the ruins of great cities, roads and it picked up a faint, but active beacon from the human outpost on the southern continent.  Yuna translated the message repeating in the beacon and it was in old English.  This shocked most of the crew to hear the words of our own ancestors speaking to us from an alien planet.

Kallos and I accompanied the Captain and several of the crew in a shuttle.  We docked with the outpost whose lights had long since dimmed, but there was movement and we were all floored as people greeted us on the landing pad.  There were seven survivors, all shabbily dressed in tattered uniforms that Pei recognized having old insignia of the sister marines.  The leader of the survivors Andrea welcomed us and shared their origin story of how everything came to be.  The original colony at first was prosperous and grew to several hundred inhabitants, but a few years before our arrival a terrible storm destroyed most of their food sources and many died from starvation or from the infighting that erupted over the last remaining supplies.  It was a very dark time and in desperation some resorted to cannibalism.

The survivors were divided into two tribes.  Andrea and her sisters remained on the outpost and periodically fended off the larger group of about thirty members who moved to a nearby ruined city and were the ones who embraced and practiced cannibalism.  They tearfully had lost an eighth member only a few weeks prior who was dragged away during another of their raids.

Pei embraced Andrea and she brightened up realizing they were both sisters.  They went away to speak as Captain Gregor decided to send the shuttle back to the ship to ferry over supplies and re-establish the outpost by repairing the power generators and weapons systems.  He sent both Kallos and I back to the ship as he prepared for a fight.

Andrea confided in Pei that what she had shared was true and then told the rest of their groups story.  Olivia had left the sister marines with the plans of soon returning.  They were to continue exploring and learning more about our past.  The sister marines anticipated leaving in less than a year.  After several years had passed, most felt betrayed by madam Olivia.  They accepted their fate that they were permanently stranded and began making a home.

For generations they lived mostly on the outpost and ventured only a few hundred miles.  About a hundred years before our arrival they discovered an ancient library and were able to decipher the Alpha Centauri language and learned of a billion years of our ancestors history.  They were a long lived race who had already populated the stars and visited other galaxies.  Their numbers exceeded the trillions upon trillions and they had ships larger than giant moons zipping about, but then everything collapsed and went silent.

A disease, a virus of unknown origin began to spread through the entire Alpha Centauri race and in time nearly all succumbed to it and died.  The virus prevented them from having children and with all their advance technology, nothing could prevent their eventual extinction.  In their waning days as their galaxy spanning civilization collapsed, they discovered a rare few individuals were resistant and immune to the disease.  But these individuals were considered inferior and by all measures stupid.

Our ancestors felt whatever gods may have existed were mocking them as the most lowliest of low of their race would inherit the greatest of their achievements.  In their anger, the Alpha Centauri's planned to kill off even these rare few than tarnish their legacy that no one would be around to ever care or know about.  A sympathetic System Lord in another remote star system rescued a few of those survivors and sent them to Earth.  It was then realized that the entire planet of Proxima Centauri B was one of those giant ancient starships, long since going silent and rotting from within.

Proxima Centauri B had served as a sort of staging platform as those Alpha Centauri loyal to the System Lord prepared the simpleton survivors for their future existence on Earth.  They sent the survivors in waves spanning thousands of years until the last of their kind died out.

It was painful to discover the true origin of our past and the utter disdain and hatred of our ancestors for mankind.  And by some instinct Olivia abandoning deep space travel was to protect us from learning this awful truth.

After a brief discussion with Captain Gregor.  Pei convinced him to abandon the outpost and take Andrea and the six survivors back with us to Mars.  We left several years worth of provisions and supplies and messages for the other survivors that we would return for them.