#SciFriday

Challenge 27 - Coming home

"Sergeant? Come have a look at this!"
The use of the military rank still stings. But then, they take it as part of my name and nothing I do can convince them otherwise. At least they dropped the major somewhere along the line - together with my real name. I clumsily stomp over to where N'ijik is waiting for me. The grey dust covering the ground swirls around my boots. Moving in the heavy suit is inconvenient and energy consuming. But better uncomfortable than sorry. The radiation level is still high and a heavy cover of clouds dims the daylight of this world captured in eternal winter.
N'ijik's head lifts as I approach. His big silver eyes blink in confusion and he points to a grey slab of crumbling stone. I kneel down to touch it with my thick glove. It's concrete, not stone, and ancient. I wipe off more of the dust and follow the outline with my finger. The slab must have been perfectly rectangular once upon a time. With a look around I take in the ruins of the city, broken walls and debris covered by the omnipresent grey dust. N'ijik watches me expectantly. I shrug.
"What's so special about this place?"
"I get a signal. It's faint but discernible. Check it out."
Reluctantly I hold my wrist over the slab, activating the sensor with a twitch of my thumb. Instantly I receive the data on the inside of my visor. The alien script doesn't bother me anymore. Hmm, interesting. Or maybe even more than interesting. Involuntarily I feel my heart rate speeding up. This might be what I hoped for most - or what I feared most. I look up into my alien friend's eyes.
"If there is something or someone alive down there, we can't break it open. It would kill them."
"We will have to check, make sure. Do you have a means to contact them? It's your people after all."
I sigh. Is it? If they are alive down there, they won't be the same as I am. It's been a long time, a very long time maybe. I never found out how long exactly. The concept of time with N'ijik's people, the khijatha, differs from the human one. And our initial jump was uncoordinated to say the least.
While N'ijik and I brush more of the dust away from the concrete structure I allow my thoughts to wander.
The government rushed the development of space travel with the ongoing war, hoping to find a way to win what was already a lost cause. The mission was top secret and the troops on the ship cobbled together from special elite teams of all the armed forces. We were to win the war raging on earth from space. But, as a guy called Murphy once said, 'anything that can go wrong, will go wrong'.
We took off nicely, soon watching old earth fall back behind us. But then something hit. I'm no engineer, so I never understood what happened. Instead of going into steady orbit the ship accelerated. Soon it became clear that we had a problem, but no Huston to solve it. Our speed increased further and our course seemed erratic, even for us soldiers without special training in ship handling. The crew did their best, I'm sure. But that wasn't good enough. Last thing I remember we were heading for the sun.
When I awoke all was quiet and dark. I got off my cot to check for my team. Some were dead. Some seemed to be apathetic. Finally I found Fiona and Mark, doing the same, namely wandering around the ship and trying to find out what happened and where we were.
The khijatha found us shortly after. The crew were dead. Of the troops, maybe a fifth survived, mainly those situated in the inner cabins. Of those, only four were unharmed - Fiona, Mark, a guy called Peter and me. The other roughly three thousand were alive, but apathetic, which in this case means completely unresponsive. The khijatha brought us to their planet. They tried everything to help. But nothing worked. We four were fine, the others lived but showed no reaction. We probably  survived because of a dubious experiment they did with our DNA prior to our hasty departure. Fiona, Mark and me were considered volunteers as part of a marines special force. They included Peter, a medical doctor, to supervise the development of the experiment. While the special treatment saved us, it made us suffer the pain of seeing our friends reduced to thoughtless vegetables.
Finally we decided to let them go, it seemed the humane thing to do. I realised too late that Mark would join them voluntarily. I should have known, his girl was Jess, our radio operator. Fiona killed herself some time later. She had trouble adjusting to khijatha food and atmosphere. I also know that she left a family back on earth. Maybe she lost hope the day N'ijik found out that our planet was reduced to a radioactive hell.
That left Peter and me. We did all we could to make our way home. N'ijik was our main supporter from the beginning. But it took years as the khijatha count them. We never found out for sure how our ship was able to make the big jump from earth's system into khijatha space. It certainly wasn't built for it. Their scientists think that we accidentally accelerated on a parabolic course around the sun and involuntarily got catapulted through space and maybe even time. I'm no scientist, but they must be kind of right. The ruins of this city look far more ancient than they should in my estimation. But who am I to judge?
Finally N'ijik and me succeed in freeing the concrete slab of dust. It's sort of a heavy door, with rusty hinges on one side. We look at each other, khijatha silver eyes meeting human brown ones. Hesitantly I knock on the slab, once.
We wait silently. Suddenly it occurs to me that I have to tell Peter, show him what's happening. Quickly I open a channel back to our little scoutship.
"Gjinik, are you receiving? We think we found something."
"Sergeant? Is that you? The signal is not very good. Is N'ijik with you?"
"Yes, he's with me. We found kind of a door and are receiving a signal. Is Peter awake?"
"Sorry, Sergeant, he's asleep. You know how he is these days."
Yes, I know. He is old, much older than me. He was military personal in retirement, only along on our unfortunate ride as medical doctor. And we know, all of us, that he won't make the trip back to the khijatha planet. With new vigour I repeat my knocking, first twice, then three times. If someone is alive on this forsaken planet, I want Peter to know that earth has still a future.
N'ijik and I both step back startled when we hear a distant rumbling noise. I try to calm my accelerated breathing. N'ijik has a hand on his side weapon. I can't blame him. He switches on the small camera on the side of his helmet and signals me to do the same. Now Gjinik can see what happens from two angles. I feel sweat running down my back and fight contradictory feelings. There is hope to find living humans, to no longer be the second last of a dying species. And there is fear of another disappointment, of finding only enemies or unrecognisable survivors of the terrible war.
N'ijik's calm helps me to cool down, to wait patiently for whatever is rumbling down there. After a while the rumbling stops. Slowly the slab starts to open, turning on screeching hinges, the metal protesting after a long time of not being used.
We stare into a dark hole. Dusty steps lead down to a glassy door. I hold my breath as it swings open to reveal a figure with a spherical helmet not unlike my own. Slowly the stranger climbs the steps. Nervously I shift from one foot to the other. There are three persons coming out of that door and climbing into the light. I glimpse several others that stay down there.
Only when the first of the suited up figures reaches ground level I realise how far off all our hopes and estimations were. This are not the survivors of the Great War. Well, not the kind of survivors we came looking for. And it's not possible that mere years or decades have passed since that ill-fated departure of humanity's first starship.
I look into a face that I last saw in biology class way back in primary school. I remember hanging fascinated at my binoculars, studying a micro world full of wonders. Now I stare speechless into those huge compound eyes, recognise the antennae and the strong mandibles of a giant and obviously very intelligent ant soldier.