GENETIC WARS 2101
Utopia

Based on The Genetic Wars, by Jonathan S. Coolidge and Thomas R. Weigel
Additional character concepts by Heather Varley and Alicia Vogel

Xal’s feline ears flicked back as a ringing noise woke her up.  Her hand-held computer made the noise of an old style telephone.  Outside it was still night, and she noted that her computer showed the time to be 2:38 am as she held it up to her face.
“Xal Carrigan,” she mumbled, adding “I may be part cat, but it’s still two-thirty in the morning.”
“This is Michelle Stewart, from the L.G.F.F.” a female voice answered back over the device.  No image was supplied; the screen showed only the Lycanthrope Global Freedom Federation logo of a light blue wolf head on a white background.  A small icon indicated that the transmission was encrypted with a quantum algorithm.   “I wanted to verify your registration with Tri-Star and the Prometheus on the Exodus Contingency.”
Xal stretched for a moment, backward-bending with inhuman flexibility, before replying, “If I did, would I tell that to a stranger over the phone?”  She then heard a noise outside her apartment door.  Xal reached under her bed, picked up a pistol, and silently ran to her front door.  She looked through her peephole to see outside a fellow feline anthropomorph holding a similar handheld.  “Is that you outside?”
“We’ve had to step up the time table,” the voice over the handheld answered as the spotted lady outside spoke into her device.  “We leave for Tau Ceti in thirty six hours.”  Xal opened the door.
Michelle was an older figure for someone genetically engineered; she was in her early forties, with a fuller figure than the young Xal, whose gaunt shape suggested a circus contortionist.  Both were covered with fur, accented by leopard spots, the stigmata of genetic engineering.  While Michelle had cat-like eyes, ears and facial features, however, she still had more or less a human-like face.  By comparison, Xal’s head was nearly fully that of a leopard, a sharp contrast to her soft voice, which formed words surprisingly well, though with an exotic accent.  “I thought,” Xal said, “that the Prometheus wouldn’t be ready for another three years.”
Michelle squinted her eyes slightly.  “That’s the official story.”  She held out her hand, adding, “pack your choice belongings, and welcome aboard the underground railroad.”

In the span of an hour, Xal collected her most treasured valuables, including a collection of coins—mostly from the 2050s, but including a few early Euros and American statehood quarters from the turn of the millennium.  She crammed her music, video, and photo collections onto two portable hard drives and slipped them into a pair of bracelets.  Her choice clothing fit into a modest carrying case.
She then left a note—hand-written, not electronic—and placed it in a folder inside a desk full of backup papers.
“To my providers, I leave my unpaid account with Shann Enterprises, and I resign from my entertainment job at the Universal.  I have no doubt that slavery will be declared illegal on Tau Ceti 2.”
Michelle guided as her car drove the two of them out of the apartment complex and navigated them a distance away from Shann Enterprises’ housing district.  She then asked Xal to show her hand, the same one that she used to access the front gate.  Michelle held a small Cozalien object over Xal’s paw-like palm, causing her metatarsal bones underneath her furry and padded skin to illuminate.  A small chip inside disintegrated as Xal yowled, retracting her hand reflexively.
“Your I.D. is also a tracking device,” Michelle explained, releasing the Cozalien form out the vehicle window.  “This small Cozalien entity will continue broadcasting your signal; they’ll think you’re out for a long walk or something.”
“OK,” Xal answered, “but, now I don’t have an identity.”
“Of course you do,” Michelle snapped back.  “That’s the point of all this.”
They traveled to the outskirts of town, where they came upon a large truck parked in a lot, surrounded by smaller cars.  Though most of the cars were fairly contemporary, the truck was a restored cargo rig that must have been more than a hundred years old.
“What’s with the old diesel-fueled classic?” Xal asked, stepping out of her ride.
A lycanthrope in near-human form approached her, answering, “this is not just any diesel-fueled classic.  This, my friend, is a fully-restored and rebuilt 1984 Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler, complete with an authentically styled load box.  Trucks were really beautiful back then.”
Michelle interjected an explanation.  “Being an original hundred-year-old truck, it’s exempt from the cargo tracking registry network.  In other words, we don’t have to email everyone on the planet that we’re escorting about a hundred refugees inside.”
Inside the truck’s cargo hold, a number of other human-like beings sat, huddled in close groups, while Michelle and three others wandered among them to provide water and coffee.  Two portable bathrooms sat at the far end of the chamber.  As the truck began moving, the ground began to roll back and forth.
They rode for hours; outside, the cold, dark night gradually shifted into an amber sky, in turn yielding to day.
Xal sat next to a young lycanthropic man carrying among his possessions a bulky collection of faux fur and a strangely cute wolf mask.
“It’s my grandfather’s old fur suit,” he explained.  “Back around the turn of the century; he was a Furry before the Gardener and Taylor announcements.”
“A Furry?”  Xal answered back.  “I read about them.  They would have loved living in these times—in spite of the Shann government or the Cozalien War.”  She took the head of the fur suit and smiled, looking at the large-eyed fox-like form.  “I didn’t catch your name.”
“I go by Rath.  My real name is Gordon Simon Waldenrath.  That’s why.”
“You have a strange family, Rath.”  She extended her paw-like hand.  “I’m Xal.”
“Sounds Cozalien.”
“It is.  My creator was a native Cozalien-engineered.  She settled on the Moon after the war and became involved in genetic engineering through TRI before the merger with the STAR Corporation.”
Rath looked back at her.  “I think you probably have my ancestry beat.”
She held up the fox head, smiling back at her.  “I don’t know about that.”  Xal then focused on a bearded man, wearing a red overcoat hand chatting with several children.  “What’s with Santa over there?”
“You haven’t heard about him?”  Rath tilted his head towards the man.  “He’s a regular celebrity among the were community.  He’s a were-polar bear; he got it during the Cozalien War, went nuts, and decided he was Santa Claus.  He’s since regained his marbles, but he still plays the role.”
The truck’s cargo hold began shaking and lunging, indicating an acceleration.  The sound of sirens blared outside, and then the truck slowed down to a stop.  Even as Xal and Rath looked at each other, the others began huddling, mumbling their worries.
Their fears were confirmed as several soldiers in black Kevlar armor threw open the doors.  “Everybody get down!  Now!”  Abruptly, more soldiers poured in, one by one grabbing refugees.  Unprepared for the onslaught, they had no chance to decide whether or how to resist as the storm troopers started collecting them, binding their wrists with tie straps.
As Rath and Xal were forced outside, however, a triangular object descended from the clouds.
“Holy shit!”  One of the soldiers called out, as a Cozalien battleship swooped overhead into a hovering position, carrying a smaller, more Earthlike undercarriage beneath it.  A voice echoed from the vessel as several smaller Cozalien tactical fighter craft flew out from the entity.
“This is Anderson Conus of the League Star Ship Conus One.  Your disruption of a refugee convoy is illegal under the terms of international law.  You are disadvantaged both ethically and technologically, and I strongly suggest that you withdraw.”  As the ship spoke, the smaller craft took closer positions, hovering over the scene.  Numerous diamond-shaped forms swarmed out of the ship, descending upon the stopped convoy.  One by one, these objects shone light upon the engineered and therianthropic emigrants, drawing them upwards into the crystalline crafts.
The soldiers, once intimidating and demanding, were now themselves confused and ill-prepared to respond.  In the distance, however, more vehicles were arriving.
One of the soldiers then started shooting.  A series of gunfire echoed back and forth, while the Cozalien entities responded with a focused series of sparks.
As the soldiers began retreating, one of the tactical entities dropped to the ground, and a lycanthropic form emerged, running to a wounded cat-like being, a refugee struck by the crossfire.  She grabbed the animal hybrid and pulled him into the crystal object.  Finally, another tactical entity carved a beam of light over the top of an armored police van, and three people rose out of it, into the hovering craft, including the former driver of the old rig, now left abandoned and hollowed out.  The swarm of Cozalien pods and fighter craft disappeared back inside Conus One, and as a small military arsenal arrived, the great ship pulled up into the sky.
“I am Minh Nguyen of the L.G.F.F. League.  Welcome aboard Conus One,” a middle-aged man greeted Xal and the others, as she and several other animal hybrid beings cut their makeshift handcuffs.  “Since we’ve had to forego stealth operations, I’m afraid things may get a little bumpy over the next two days.”  The ship jarred and rocked slightly.
Outside, a swarm of black, angular fighter crafts chased through the clouds, barreling down on the translucent red Conus One.  One by one the squadron planes released missiles.  Conus One’s jagged back end released a series of sparks, intercepting some of the weapons, but the remaining ones split apart into numerous smaller fragments of tactical hardware, which rained against the ship’s hull.
The gray feathers covering Anderson Conus’ scalp stood up as he leaned over the black werepanther Elvedea at a control console.  She looked back at him, holding her hand back from a series of key strokes that could end the fight.  “What are those fools thinking?  We outgun them a hundred to one!”
“Politics,” Conus answered.  “If we shoot back, C.A.T. can gripe about how we and our wedge of doom bullied the underdogs.”
“But, they fired first!”
“Debaters and wife-beaters,” Conus muttered back.  “With both there’s never a right answer.”  Ahead, a bank of enormous, jagged windows showed clouds rolling by.  Above, an enormous triangular view screen showed the craft struggling to keep up with their larger, alien opponent.  Conus added, “If we’re damned anyway, we might as well.  Take out the lead ship.”  The sky spun around through Conus One’s array of windows, until the view from them matched the overhead screen, creating the illusion of the front of the ship being open to the thin air above the cloud layers falling down.
Conus One fired a series of blazing spikes, and one of the dark gray fighter craft broke up into smoke.  A survivor flew out of the cockpit, falling away.  The other planes swept apart to avoid colliding with the gigantic ship as it swept into them.  The crystalline ship’s outstretched side arms folded up again, and the entity darted upwards again, this time in a vertical ascent.

Scott Gardener ambulated along a trail inside the edge of a large glass dome, holding in an atmosphere from the cold, gray lunar landscape outside.  He moved carefully and deliberately, taking care not to throw himself off the ground too forcefully in the Moon’s low gravity.  Scott stopped to gaze at the soft gray hills outside, and the gibbous Earth against a night sky.  A familiar scent approached, and he heard howling.  He howled back.
An elderly lady with a long blue cloak approached, carrying dark green robes and an ornate, crescent-shaped piece of gold-colored metal.  At her side walked a black and dark gray wolf, who shifted upright, becoming another frail form, a dark-skinned woman whose beauty had over time  shifted from sexually driven to one that is now more the result of an arcane presence.  The first lady handed her the robes, and after donning them, she placed the metallic crown over her head.
Scott stumbled forward, nearly falling as he overstepped in the gravity.  The first lady braced him as he nearly fell into her.  “One small step,” Scott muttered.  “First words ever said around this place—and no, I’m not that old.  I missed Apollo 11 by a good four years.”
“Well,” the blue-robed woman answered back, “you can’t complain about my calling you ‘Old Wolf’ now.”
“Selena,” Scott answered, addressing her.  “Your name means that of a moon goddess.  Add to that that you’re a fellow lycanthrope, and you have to admit, this place would be a great place to retire.”
“My place is with you,” Selena answered.  “You still have a lot of history to make.”
“Really.”  Scott held up his frail hand, allowing it to shift awkwardly into a gray paw.  “I’ll be lucky if I survive the trip to Tau Ceti.”
“That’s why we’re archiving each of us again,” the darker lady said.
Scott circled the women and then looked back out into the landscape.  Earth floated in the distance, perpetually fixed to the horizon even as the stars would eventually rotate through the sky.  Scott thought about how, just beyond the glass, the ground appeared not unlike a sandy beach.  “Tau Ceti 2 is a long way from home.  If only we could settle here, or even Mars.  Why am I sending us so far away?  Am I giving up on Earth, handing it over to the likes of Shann?”
“Of course you’re not abandoning her,” Elodea answered.  “We are taking with us the essence of Earth.”
“And,” Selena added with confidence, “we will come back to her.  Shann may rule for a hundred or a thousand years, but he cannot rule forever.  We are simply moving to safe harbor until the storm passes.”
“Or,” Elodea added, “until we can invent a machine that breaks up hurricanes.  It’s a lot easier to build one when you’re not in the eye of the storm.”
In the distance, Conus One appeared along the horizon, circling around.  “Looks like our plane is coming in,” Scott said.  “Maybe I shouldn’t keep archiving myself.  Maybe I should find out where old werewolves go.  God, I hope the medieval church had it wrong.”
Overhead a siren sounded, coupled with the announcement, “Warning: unauthorized vehicle in airspace.  Alert level red.”  Outside, a squadron of spacecraft flew overhead to intercept Conus One.
“Personally, I’m for the legend that we come back as vampires,” Elodea answered.

“This is Anderson Conus of Conus One, arriving as scheduled to pick up cargo to deliver to the Prometheus.”  As he spoke, the ship rocked back and forth from weapons fire.  He turned towards his bridge crew, adding, “I guess they’ve been alerted to our actions back on Earth.  I just hope the old wolves aren’t getting detained.”
“Conus One, you are ordered to divert to John Glenn Earth Force Base, to release into custody 134 individuals wanted by C.A.T. authorities.”  Even as they issued their demands, the weapons fire continued.
Conus looked up at the triangular view screen overhead, speaking out, “you realize that this is a Cozalien tactical entity capable of neutralizing half of Earth’s defense force?”
A cluster of missile fire struck the underside, with a series of explosions splattering against the modular, human-designed undercarriage of the ship, destroying its spherical front end and damaging several of its engine clusters.  The ship’s side arms arced upwards as the ship responded, firing a massive volley of glowing artillery blasts at the swarm of interceptors.  Several of them spun back, while the others flew apart in scattered directions, regrouping for another attack.
Elvedea examined her tactical station, listening as one of the pilots’ “mayday” calls echoed.  “One of the fighters’ main power systems was critically damaged.”  The craft fell to the lunar surface and exploded in a burst of light.
“Damn it,” Conus slumped back, “we’re trying to do this without any casualties.”  He keyed in a series of signals on his control deck chair, and then shouted out, “we’re transporting refugees and political hostages from slavery.  We don’t want to use force, but if you insist on exchanging demands, then how is this?  Turn back at once, or I will be forced to wipe you out!”
Elvedea threw up her arms.  “They’re coming about again.”
“Fine.  Take them out.”
The ship lit up from a dull amber glow to a brilliant translucent maroon and orange, and a pair of fiery beams shot out from the front of the ship, destroying two of the remaining attackers.  The side arms and the forward hull both fired out large volleys of glowing bolts, impacting against the other fighters.  The entire squadron broke apart, spinning and falling away.
Elvedea looked back at Conus.  “One of the damaged planes tumbled towards the lunar colony’s glass dome!”
“Use us to block it’s path!”
The ship dived, folding in its side arms as it swooped over the lunar city, ramming the damaged fighter and hurling it off its hull.
The young lady Ipanema bounded through the lunar corridor towards Scott and Elodea.  “Conus can’t stay around very long.  We’ll have to hurry.”
“Easy for you, Shelley—you’re thirty again.”  Ipanema had the unique distinction of being reincarnated from the memories of Scott Gardener’s sister.  The process used reverse-engineered Cozalien technology, and no subsequent attempt at restoring a mind clone archive into a physical body had ever succeeded, making her as much of an enigma as Scott.
She picked him up, carrying him easily in lunar gravity as Elodea and Selena shifted and tumbled along as wolves.  “If you can be a werewolf…”  She reached for a portable computer, retro-styled to look like an old-style cell phone.  “Seabiscuit to Man-O-War.  I’ve got the Triple Crown.”
A rumble shook through the hallway, and a brief gust of wind blew out the ceiling as a giant diamond-shaped red form tore in.  The four entered the Cozalien crystal entity, which erupted out, pausing to fire a series of cutting beams, closing the hole it created in the atmosphere containment.
“Well, Scott, you’re officially an outlaw,” Ipanema told her elderly brother.  “Same goes for you two,” she added, addressing the two wolves, who shifted into anthropomorphic form.  “The Prometheus cut itself off from C.A.T., but they’re not letting it go, and they’re really pissed off at Anderson Conus and that Wedgie of Doom of his.”

Conus One, as formidable as it seemed against small fighter craft, appeared itself dwarfed against the Prometheus.  More than two miles long, the giant interstellar colonization craft consisted of numerous bulky modules, including a pair of rotating false gravity habitat rings in its mid-section and an enormous Cozalien crystalline organism modified and restored as an engine.  The ship was built over decades at considerable expense, having long since recovered from the 2076 near-miss with the North American Eastern seaboard.
By comparison, even Conus One’s 400 meter-long triangular main body appeared dwarfed but noticeable.  Its aggressive design implied formidability in spite of the battle damage visible on its lower module.  However, even as warnings about Anderson Conus radioed through space and towards the Mars colonies, Conus One joined a small group of smaller ships on their way to the Prometheus.  The damaged undercarriage was still operational; it unlatched from its mother ship and floated over to the underside of the blocky control module section at the front end of the Prometheus.
Conus’ star associate Xau Zolan stood at an engineering station inside the smaller docking module of Conus One, guiding it while almost a hundred people huddled, floating next to railings and makeshift bus seats.  Among them were Gardener and Taylor.  A series of docking procedures played out, followed by the hiss of an airlock.  A voice echoed through the chamber.  “To the passengers of Conus One, Captain Rick Adamo of the Prometheus welcomes you aboard.”
As Gardener and Taylor floated through the entry corridor, rows of security officers, engineering crew, and other Prometheus shipmates stood in formation on magnetic plates.  They drifted by security chief Rhonda Collins, who lifted off a plate and propelled herself along beside them with a hand-held air gun.
“Well, you’re famous again.”
Scott sighed.  “I’m used to it by now.”  He reached out to give her an affectionate hug.  “You amaze me, Rhonda; you look good for your age.”
“You, too, Scott.  You’re still alive.”
“I know,” he answered back with a deep, quivering voice.  “I may die of old age just yet.  I was always afraid it would be something else.”
Several meters behind them, Xal and Rath floated forward, watching the spectacle of their arrival.  Xal kinked an ear as she looked over at her friend, a werewolf holding a cute fox head mask.  “I didn’t expect such a spectacle about us.”
“I didn’t either.”  As they drifted to a portal, crew members helped them catch a pair of side railings to guide them up to a series of gates leading to various check-in stations.  Rath Followed Xal, adding, “I think we’re both getting assigned quarters in section D-37 on the second habitat ring.  In case we get separated, mind if I get your contact number?”
Xal grinned slightly as she opened up a small panel on one of her bracelets.  She poked on it a few times and then waved her arm over Rath’s handheld computer.  “I just hope these things still work when we get there.  It’s going to get pretty primitive for the first few years.”
“Not counting, of course, the twelve or so years in high gamma,” Rath said, folding up his device and tucking it with his stack of personal effects.  “In a few hours we’re going to be kind of frozen in time, squashed flat, and tremendously heavy.”
Xal looked at herself.  “Good.  I could use a few pounds.  My geneticist watched too many of those old Hollywood movies and made me a stick.”

Commander Rhonda Collins floated up to the bridge, joining Captain Rick Adamo and the other officers as they took positions.  All around, the sounds of various stations reported in, in preparation for the flight to Tau Ceti.
“Prometheus to Conus One.  We are skipping tertiary preflight surveys.  We may require additional analyses en route via your auxillary data processors.”
“Affirmative, Prometheus, we can format and reserve in-flight feedback subprocess for you.”
“Habitat spin has disengaged for ring two.  We are standing by for EM pseudogravity.”
“Primary magnetic shield is engaged and will be at optimum strength in 37 minutes.”
Adamo sat back, gripping the shoulder straps keeping him from floating out of his chair.  Rhonda made her way to a seat beside him, griping, “So much for eloping out quietly in the middle of the night.  Conus is a wanted man, and C.A.T. isn’t exactly happy with the rest of us.”
“He got out as many refugees as he could.”  As he answered, he sighed, with a look of regret.  “There’s still a lot of people down there who wouldn’t mind coming with us, but at least we got all the people who were seriously committed—with our native ship population, that’s about sixty-five thousand people in all.”
Rhonda poked at a hand-held instrument slate and then looked back at Adamo.  “I’m a bit uncomfortable about our bypassing some security protocols.  I know we’re crunched for time, but we’ve never been a bigger target—even when Christopher Bartlett…”
“Incoming!”  A signal came from Xau Zolan, visible on one of the instrument panels from his station on Conus One’s control deck.
A bridge officer on the Prometheus examined his own console.  “I’m not picking up anything.”
Adamo switched his own monitor to view Zolan.  “Conus, are you sure about this?”
“They’re stealth missiles,” Xau answered.  “I picked them up by remote view.”
Rhonda smacked her forehead.  “So our first line of defense is that kooky white wolf and his stepping sideways between realities?”
“Remote viewing is a well-documented fact,” Adamo answered back.  “Granted, an inconsistent one.”  He turned back to the monitor.  “Conus, can you locate and intercept them?”
“I’m on it,” Anderson Conus answered back.  On the main view screen, Conus One swooped forward towards Earth.
Rhonda sighed.  “What the Hell; we’re already on alert level red.”  She then turned back to Adamo.  “I don’t know whether to hope he’s right about this, but if this astral stuff works, I could really use some help getting security somewhere vaguely close to decent before we get to Tau Ceti.  I’m really worried…”
A series of flashes occurred on the view screen, as Conus One in the distance rocked about.  “Conus reports two missiles neutralized.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Planar,” Adamo answered.
“…That I’ll never again finish a sentence,” Rhonda muttered with a sigh.  She poked at Adamo again.  “I’ve got a really bad feeling about all of this.  You do realize that there’s a century rollover in mid-flight.”
“I know you want to do your job,” Adamo said, “and I certainly appreciate the need for security.  Remember, I was there with the Bartlett incident, too.  But, we don’t have the luxury of a comprehensive preflight analysis.  I know we need at least a week, but we’re counting down less than an hour, and we’ll be lucky if that’s enough time.  Just give me your best under these circumstances.”
“I will—I just don’t think the best right now will be good enough with all these last-minute passengers and changes.  There’s going to be a lot of gaps.”
Conus gripped his seat on his namesake vessel’s control deck.  “Bring us around, vector one thirty-seven and minus fifteen.  That should match Zolan’s premonition.”  Elvedea tapped away at her console.  Conus then looked over at Zolan.  “Busy day today.”
Zolan, a white-furred lycanthrope in hybrid form, walked away from his console and closed his eyes briefly.  “Consider scanning vector minus thirty plus twelve.  I’m seeing another round…”
“Do it,” Conus answered.
“I’ve compensated for their stealth mechanism,” Elvedea stated from her console.  “Incoming, three transplanetary ballistics from both directions—just as Zolan predicted.”
Conus One’s side arms lurched upward, firing a series of bolts as the forward hull shot out a blazing pair of cutting beams.  The volley struck two out of three incoming missiles from one direction, while the remaining missile separated into a swarm of smaller ballistics.  Conus One threw out a second series of spikes from its hull and side arms, and the ballistics sought each other out in a complex dance of explosions.  The Cozalien ship flew unharmed through the display, up to the second set of three weapons.
Zolan threw his eyes open and ran over to Elvedea’s console.  “Don’t fire!  Those have nuclear warheads!”  Elvedea gritted her teeth as Conus grabbed his seat’s control panel.
“Magnet control,” Conus spoke, wiping his forehead.  “You’ve got to raise our magnetic shielding—give me everything you can.  You’ve got to make us as big a target as possible.”  Conus then looked at the overhead triangular screen.  “We can try to disrupt their guidance system—hurl them into a vacant area of the Moon.”
Conus One’s dark red glow shifted to a mixture of iridescent red with a scintillating prism of color flares erupting from the two eye-like constructs across its back end.  The ship pulled a hard turn towards the Moon, with the three weapons following.
“Oppenheimer Crater,” Elvedea suggested, pointing ahead as a pair of crosshairs pinpointed a region on the Moon’s display overhead.  “It’s on the dark hemisphere, and the nearest outpost is an unmanned astronomy station more than four hundred kilometers away.”
“That’s a decent margin for error,” Conus answered, “at least for the Moon.”
Zolan, at another console, spoke out, “Its calculating a disruptor wave form now, but it’s going to take a few seconds.”  Elvedea and Conus watched as the Moon loomed larger and larger on both the overhead viewer and outside the jagged windows ahead.
“Now would be nice,” Conus said.
Xau looked back, panting.  “If it gets it wrong, the missiles could detonate, hurling us ahead with considerable force.”
“Then try not to get it wrong.”  As the Moon grew larger on the overhead, Conus looked back at Zolan.  “But can’t it round off a little?  We’re kind of in a hurry.”
Suddenly, the control deck’s lights and computer stations flashed off and back on, causing the control displays to reboot.  Conus, Zolan, and Elvedea grabbed their seats as the room’s magnetically generated pseudogravity temporarily stopped, restarted, and lurched a few times.  Then, the ship pulled a hard turn, incompletely reduced by the vessel’s internal complex magnetic field generator.
Zolan closed his eyes.  “The weapons are now on a buildup to detonation, but they’ll hit the Moon first.”
A brilliant explosion flared behind Conus One as it pulled away from the Lunar landscape below.  The ship then headed back towards the Prometheus.
Adamo and the Prometheus bridge crew appeared on Conus One’s triangular overhead.  “You gave us a scare for a moment.”  Adamo said.  “We lost your signal.”
“You might lose it again,” Conus answered.  “We sent out a magnitude seven disruptor pulse.  At your distance, it should only cause a few small glitches, but there’s a lot of Lunites who are probably pretty unhappy about us right now.”
“We’re at five minutes to launch,” Adamo replied.  “Can you match us?”
“We’ve had a pretty busy day so far, but that shouldn’t be a problem.  We can resume ship-to-ship diagnostics.”
Adamo punched his control chair and then addressed his own bridge crew.  “OK, for the sake of argument, final flight status.”  A humming vibration began building up around them.  “Go or no go.  EM?”
An engineer at a computer console held up his thumb.  “Go.”
“CZ interface?”
“Go,” a being with antlers answered, working with a cluster of Cozalien crystals.
“Habitat?”
“We are go,” another responded.
“Control module?”
“Go.”
“Power transmission?”
“Shaky, but we are go.”
“Navigation?”
“Go.”
Adamo leaned over to Rhonda.  “Security?”
Rhonda sighed.  “It’s borderline, but go.”
An overhead voice from the main computer announced “T minus four minutes.”
Rhonda stared closely at her portable tablet, and brought up a display of a crew of security officers at another station.  “Ron, I’ve got one of those gut feelings.  Keep a watch over any passenger who signed up in the last six months, and see if you can get Xau’s help.  He has this annoying habit of being correct.”  She looked back over at Adamo, adding, “Just once let me cry wolf and not be right.”  She looked back at her reflection in the glass of her slate computer, seeing her eyes shifted to amber and her eyebrows thickened.  “Wolves—you can’t get away from them, can you?”
“T minus three minutes,” the computer announced with a reverberating echo.  The bridge began to tilt back, creating the feeling of the seats facing upwards, putting everyone on their backs as the ship’s electromagnetic system powered up.  A few of the crew reached for various instruments and computers, but some of them to slipped and fell to the back wall with a clatter.
“Incoming transmission,” Lieutenant Planar told Adamo.  “It’s from Thomas Shann.  It says that he promises asylum for the refugees if we surrender.”
Rhonda answered, “tell him to put a sock in it!”
“Conus reports that we’re looking good,” one of the others called out, raising his voice over the noise of the building engine.
Adamo leaned over to his console, glancing at an image of Thomas Shann, declaring, “…the outlaw acts of aggression by Anderson Conus, Richard Adamo, Scott Gardener, Elodea Taylor…”  He rolled his eyes and picked up the display panel, allowing it to fall behind him.
“T minus two minutes.”  Overhead, the main display split up into one large and three smaller views.  The larger cycled images of the Earth, a star field ahead, and a diagram of the flight path to Tau Ceti.  The three smaller views flashed numerous camera angles of the ship and its interior.
One of the smaller panels cycled to Scott Gardener and Elodea Taylor, both laying down on a bed-like surface.  Scott spoke out, “Captain, I hope this goes more smoothly than my run to Utopia.”
“We’re doing well so far,” Rhonda answered.  “They didn’t try to nuke you last time, did they?”
“T minus one minute.”
Anderson Conus appeared on one of the other displays.  “They’re trying to hit us again!  We’ve got sixteen transplanetary ballistics closing in.  As long as we proceed with launch, we’ll both outrun them.  Just in case, I’ll deploy a few targets—this time they’re far enough away that we don’t have to play tag.  And, once we get to Tau Ceti, I’ll need to regenerate and refuel.”
“There’s the two gas giants,” Elodea answered.
“Thirty seconds.”  Everyone gripped their seats as the noise of the ship’s enormous and powerful drive systems built up.  “Ten…nine…eight…”
Conus One assumed a position at a distance from the Prometheus, close enough to exchange information but far enough to avoid its bulkier and less sophisticated magnetic field.  The Cozalien entity at the back end of the Prometheus glowed a mixture of amber and red, before extending its side arms and emitting four gold sparks.  Then, it flared a bright white light, and the ship barreled forward.  Conus One sped up to follow along the larger ship’s starboard side.  The two ships both glowed a gold color as their drive systems propelled them towards the Sun and then below the elliptic plane, towards their destination, a yellow-orange star 12.7 light years away.
Conus watched as his ship’s overhead display showed a series of explosions recede behind them.
“We’re about half Mercury’s distance from the Sun,” Elvedea commented.  “The last Cozalien ship to get this close was during the Cozalien War.”
“I know the one,” Conus nodded, remembering that a little over thirty years ago, a Cozalien entity the size of a moon was driven into the Sun, with the heroic sacrifice of numerous human captives on board and with the help of a young Xau Zolan and his pack mates.  Today, however, Xau was not only Conus’ star engineer; he was now also a fellow refugee.
“We’ll pass fairly close to Pluto, but other than that, it’s mostly Oort cloud dust until day nine, when we pass the Lutyen 726 binary.  Still, I’m sure we could spare a few sensory arrays for some science.”
“Even so, I still want to make sure the Prometheus gets top priority,” Conus answered.  “I’m sure we’ll all have plenty of science to play with once we get there.”  They looked up as their larger companion fired a second burst, increasing its acceleration.

“We’re starting to get some navigational distortion from the high gamma,” a technician explained on the control deck of the Prometheus.
“We’ll cross-check your data with ours,” Xau answered, from the control deck of Conus One.  Xau squinted his eyes for a second.  In the background of Conus One, the great window array in front of the control deck were covered by protective plates to block out forward light waves, which had blue-shifted into deadly high frequency radiation.  “When I concentrate on Earth, I get a blur of activity—it’s hard to pinpoint anything.  Pulling myself out of linear time was always tricky for me.”
“Not any more,” Conus answered back.  “A year is now a day.  As far as they’re concerned, we’re practically suspended in time.  I’m sure astral metaphysics can relate to that somehow.”  He stood up and walked over to the front of the control deck, looking out the sharp, angular cluster of windows beyond, and to the Prometheus.  “Oh, and Happy New Year again.  It’s now 2101.”
“Oisin and Rip Van Winkle,” Xau answered back.  “Faerie legends of the one-way trip to the future.”

Elodea strolled through a garden inside the habitat section of the Prometheus, passing around several boxes bearing cargo supplies and private possessions, and past several people busily cleaning up spilled clumps of landscaping.  She looked upwards at the ceiling overhead to see against the backdrop of a solid black sky a cluster of giant girders and rods connecting to more structures making up the hull of the ship.  Except for the closer girders, the ship rotated; now that they were in flight, the simplified approach of centrifugal false gravity was in place, though the ship’s magnetic pseudogravity was still in use to prevent crushing the ship and its inhabitance from the acceleration changes, or the high wavelength radiation resulting from ramming through light waves and background radiation at near-light speed.
Elodea had never known her true age.  Her life span had been artificially extended a quarter of a century by another trip to Tau Ceti and a round trip back to Earth.  However, she was born in high gamma on board a Cozalien entity in an unknown year, arriving as a child on Earth in the late twentieth century.  For all she knew, she could be over a thousand years old.
But, time had altered her.  Her skin, once smooth and even, had become toned and textured.  Her lips had become thin and blackened, while her lower face had become more prominent.  Her shifting abilities had become slightly blunted, and her dark gray hair had an unmistakably lupine texture and layers of coloring as it extended down her back.  She carried herself slowly and deliberately in her green dress and gold crown.  She came upon a young lycanthropic man, also looking up at the black sky.  He looked over at her and grinned.
“Ms. Taylor, an honor to meet you.”
She sniffed his hand and then stroked it.  “You’re one of mine, aren’t you.”
“You bit my grandfather, Ian Waldenrath, back in 2013.  He drove all the way from Los Angeles to Seattle to meet you.”
Elodea took on a mischievous smile.  “I trust he wanted me to.  I once accidentally bit this one poor guy who just wanted to shake hands.”
“Oh yes—my granddad used to tell me how it was the greatest day of his life.”
“A lot of people wanted it back then,” Elodea pondered, circling Rath and clearing her throat.  “But, back in those days, there were real fanatics, too.  Even after Scott and I went public.”  She sniffed over his back and shoulders.  “You’ve got yourself a girlfriend.  Smells like she’s part cat.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Rath answered, taking in the aroma of Elodea’s slightly furry neck briefly.  His own eyes took on an amber color and a backlit glow.  “She and I just met, and I don’t know how we’ll do.  She’s engineered, so if she wants kids…”
“Alexander Conus is a great genetic engineer—one of the best, and he’s with his father right out there.”  She pointed up to the sky, towards Conus One, visible as a formation of triangles against the starless sky.  “I’m sure we’ll have an engineering outfit up and running inside of ten years.”  She leaned her face into his and bared her somewhat pointed teeth in a smile, purring with her voice.  “Until then, you and she can have a lot of extra time for your own fun.”
“Well, I…”
“Surely it’s not because she’s engineered.”
“No,” Rath sighed.  “That’s not it.”
“Good.  You would not believe all the fuss people made about me and Scott way back a century or so ago, because I was either black or African-American, or whatever they called us back then.  Imagine—no werewolves, no Warlords, no Cozaliens, and people still found crap to argue and bicker about.  Seems even stupider now than it did back then.”  She continued to inspect him with her now bright yellow eyes.  “So, if that’s not it, what is?”
“Well, a week ago I had never seen her before.”
“But, I can tell by that look that you were thinking about her.  You have to start somewhere.”

Rath stopped by his quarters, changing out his clothes and digging through his backpack before picking up again a small cluster of roses.  He looked at his reflection in a small console mirror next to a toilet and sink.  His hair appeared somewhat disheveled until he retracted parts of it.  Some filaments fell out, but most entered into his scalp as a row of light-tipped dark fur replaced it.  Rath tossed his arms out.  “I look like I dye my hair.”  He regrew his human hair, hoping that it would come back more orderly, but several clumps of wolf hair broke loose and left it appearing disorderly.  He wandered around his cramped room and searched through his possessions, while his grandfather’s fur suit head stared back at him with a silly grin.  “My kingdom for a comb.”  Finally, he gave up and used his hands.  He looked back at his reflection, tossing a tuft of hair away from the left side of his face.  “Screw it, I’ll go anthro.”  With that, he tossed his shirt and shifted into hybrid wolf form.
“Awrigh Erodea, I’rr…”  He shifted his neck somewhat, pausing to practice speaking in hybrid animal form.  “Alright, Elodea, I’ll give it a try.”  Rath then picked up his small bundle of flowers and exited his quarters, into a small hallway.
With a sigh, he knocked at Xal’s door.  A latch inside slid, and Xal opened it, looking at the flowers and then at Rath.
“I…well…”  Rath sighed again.  “I hope I’m not reading too much into our friendship.”
“You talk pretty well in animal form,” Xal answered back, her tail twitching back and forth.
Then suddenly the ship shook with tremendous force, and a rumble echoed as an alarm sounded.  Xal and Rath both ducked into her quarters to view a monitor, as the flowers dropped to the floor.
“Fellow shipmates, this is Captain Adamo.  I am issuing a full scale evacuation of population ring two to ring one.  An explosion of undetermined cause has caused critical damage to quadrant B.”  Xal huddled closer to Rath as the display showed numerous fires breaking out on the opposite side of their habitat ring.  A low, creaking, vibration shook the chamber, and an angled pull towards one wall gave testimony to the fact that the ring was stopping, and that soon false gravity would give way to weightlessness.  “We are salvaging as much as we can.  Please evacuate in an orderly fashion along designated pathways.  Do not attempt to go into the fires.  We will help you reunite with loved ones when it is safe.”

Conus and the control deck crew stared with disbelief as explosions continued to erupt from the back habitat ring.  “Deploy all shuttles,” Conus ordered.  “For some people, we may be their only way out.”
The fires across the habitat ring dissipated abruptly in the vacuum of space, but even as one fire went out, another appeared in a chain of explosions eating into the giant structure.
Inside the inferno, security officers and firefighters scrambled to evacuate survivors.  The bald, muscular 2-Ring B Fire Chief pushed his way past exiting people, all the while gesturing them along, stopping once to help a stumbled older man regain his footing.
“This way…  this way…” he continued to urge, before speaking into a heat-rated mobile computer.  “It’s spreading along the power relays.  If we can stop it from getting to the main support arm, we should be able to keep it from getting to the fuel conduits.”
“Roger that, Grady,” a voice answered.  “We’re mounting a defense along A and C borders.  Any chance we can salvage B?”
The officer answered back, “that’s a negative!  We’ve already lost quadrant B!  We just need to keep those exits open as long as possible to get as many out as we can.”
The ring continued to roll about as it grinded to a halt.  A small swarm of Cozalien diamond forms dropped upon it, burrowing into the metal and then slipping back out towards Conus One.  However, amidst the cloud of debris trailing away from the ship, the fragments of numerous human forms burned up in the radiation of near-light-speed momentum.
On the bridge, the navigator turned towards Adamo.  “We’ve decoded the signal from Earth—it was sent on a high frequency carrier wave, compressed to correct for…”
“Never mind all that,” Adamo snapped back.  “Put it on.”
Adamo stood up on the bridge as the image of Thomas Shann appeared.  “Greetings, gentlemen.  I hope you are well.  Assuming you survive to your destination, I wanted you to know that my agents are among you, and that collectively we thank you for helping to extend our territory.”
“What’s he saying?…”  Adamo muttered, dreading the answer.  “He caused this—we have spies and terrorists among us.”  He turned to face Rhonda.  “For the love of justice!”
“I may have to be very draconian about peoples’ personal lives for a little while,” Rhonda answered back, her lupine features starting to erupt.  “But I’m going to find every one of them.”
“Two section B…”  Adamo ran from his station on the bridge, climbing downward frantically towards the inferno as he shouted into his hand-held.  “Gardener and Taylor were in Two-section B!  So are the memory archives…”
The navigator looked back at him from a miniature screen.  “You’re going into the fire?  I hope you know what you’re doing, Captain.”
“When I give the signal from the 2B data core, transfer the archival memory first—give it top priority and a wide bandwidth straight to Conus!”

Xal and Rath were two among hundreds of people clambering along railings and hurling themselves in a swarm-like fashion through sequential airlocks.  Xal’s gaunt form carried Rath’s furry fox head cradled in one arm, while they made their way across a series of channels.  A rumble emanated from outside, and overhead through a thick window a bright orange cloud could be seen erupting, spilling more ring fragments out.  A security officer held fast at the gate, guiding people through and ensuring good crowd flow, coordinating with other agents.
Rath stopped long enough to ask him, “what about you and the other officers?”
“We’ll cross our fingers.  Your job is to make it to Utopia.”
Overhead, a large piece of metal crashed into the window, smashing into it a complex spider web pattern.  A gust of wind started blowing towards it, venting atmosphere into the void beyond.
“Containment leak in D-7!”  The agent shouted into his networked hand-held.  “Divert the others.”  He glanced up and then at the crowd.  “Everybody, keep moving!”  Suddenly, the window broke open, and the wind became a torrent.  The gate that was moments earlier a slight drift away was now a tremendous uphill struggle against the wind force.  Many of the people there could do no more than grab on to whatever railings they could, while still others formed a chain to catch those without a nearby object.  Xal abandoned the fox head in favor of an anonymous stranger, who held on to her hand even as several others blew away in the torrent.
Abruptly a Cozalien interceptor entity dropped over the gap, wedging itself against the current.  It opened up, and a lycanthropic form inside tossed out a cluster of parachutes, opening over the gaps with metallic support beams.  The same air pressure that moments before created the hazard now repaired it.  People fell back into free-fall and to the railings as the interceptor’s pilot floated out, holding the hands of a woman with numerous decompression bruises around her skin and eyes, and radiation burns.  She trembled as she held a smiling fox head, handing it towards Xal and Rath.

Adamo pushed his way past a series of airlocks before coming upon a crew of firefighters frantically working crowd control while preparing a series of gas charges as the last people exited.
“Captain?”  One of the men looked at him with disbelief.
“I need a suit—I’m going to the 2B data core.”
The fire officer began stripping off his own overcoat, handing the pieces of the space suit to Adamo.  However, he expressed his concern, “Sir, it may not even be active.”
“If I don’t make it back, Rhonda’s in charge.”  Adamo secured his helmet and crossed the airlock.  “Give me a minute to get down the hall before you fire the charges.”  He then pushed himself down the corridor as the firefighters closed the hatch behind him.  One of them gestured a Catholic cross in the air before him.
Adamo dove deeper into a series of industrial girders and support structures as a series of explosions erupted around him.  He crossed his arms in front of him as he fell into a plume of fire.  Adamo held his breath and drifted through the cloud of smoke before emerging through to a clearing.  He grabbed a rail and clipped a wire from his suit belt to the metal plating.
Adamo tore loose a metal panel, exposing underneath a cluster of electronics.  He entered a series of commands, and a screen and instrument panel lit up.  “2B Archive Core, security override, by order of Richard Adamo.  Code thirty-four, zero, four, thirty-four.”  A light shone out, scanning his retinas.  Then, an announcement echoed.
“2B Archival Database is now open and available to all networks.”
Adamo punched at an instrument panel.  “Conus, this is Adamo.  Gardener and Taylor are probably dead, but I’m sending you their memory archives.”  He poked at the panel again.  “And, it looks like Selena Hawthorne is in here as well.”
“We’re getting it,” Conus answered back on the monitor.
Adamo sighed with transient relief.  “We weren’t paranoid enough to stop this catastrophe, but we were too paranoid to put the old wolves on an open network.  There’s got to be a better middle ground.”  The room began rumbling and vibrating.  “It looks like the chamber is about to blow.  I’ll keep broadcasting as long as…”  In a flash of bright orange, the entire room disintegrated around Adamo, consuming him.
Conus looked up at the static on the overhead viewer, followed by an external view of the Prometheus, still emitting a few scattered fragments.  “Adamo!  I can send someone…”
“He’s gone,” Xau answered back solemnly.  Conus nodded, sitting back down as his eyes flared avian gold and black, and his hair feathers sank back.  He dropped back into his command seat.
“And the memory archival?”
“We got 83 percent.”  Xau probed his own cluster of display panels.  “It looks like we got Taylor and Hawthorne.  Part of Gardener came through—but it’s not going to be enough to make a cohesive personality.”  Xau walked away from his console, shifting towards hybrid form and dropping his head.  “Historic interest at best.”
Conus punched a display panel next to him, and overhead Rhonda Collins appeared, on the bridge of the Prometheus.  He looked up at her, droning out quietly, “Commander Collins, we lost contact with Adamo.”
“I know,” she replied.  “And the memory archives?”
“Two of them made it.”  Conus pulled a gray and white feather from his scalp and added, “Gardener is dead.”
“Wait,” Xau answered.  “He may still be at the archival facility—at Alden, on the Moon.”
Conus answered, “even if we had the fuel to do a full about face, it will have been ten years.  Surely by then, C.A.T. will have gotten hold of it.”
Xau retook his station, answering, “all the more reason to go back.”
“I need you,” Rhonda said over the overhead screen.  “We need you.  We’re still getting the fire under control, and while we’re picking up the pieces, we’re going to need all the help we can get in getting what’s left of this ship over to Utopia.”

“Damage control reports no further fires.”  A young officer reported to Rhonda, who had pinned awkwardly a captain’s insignia over her commander’s rank logo.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Planar.”  Rhonda sat back and scrolled through a list of confirmed deaths, unconfirmed deaths, and missing persons.  “Gerald Wilson, the lycanthropic comedian, confirmed dead.  For all he’s done for werewolves wanting a normal life, I never had a chance to thank him.”
“Some day soon, death itself will be a thing of the past,” Planar answered, reviewing a stream of repair data.  “It’s so unfortunate that so many of them missed it by so thin a margin.  By the time we get to Utopia, I’m sure they’ll have improved the archival technology back on Earth.”
“Immortality for the rich,” Rhonda scowled.  “I’m sure that’s how it will be back on Earth.”  She stood up from her chair, pacing the bridge.  “Once we get to Utopia, we’re really going to have our work cut out for us.  We’ve got to ensure basic civil rights and liberties while spies are all around us.  We’ve got to build from scratch a civilization.”
“It’s funny,” Planar answered, looking up from a navigational console.  “What it takes to build a civilization from scratch—that reminds me of what Scott said in his autobiography, about having to hide in Yellowstone.  When he did that, he thought about how our ancestors built everything we have today, starting from Earth’s wilderness.”
Rhonda continued scrolling through names.  “I think everything now is going to remind us of Gardener and Taylor for awhile—or a Gerald Wilson skit, only without the funny ending.”

Anderson Conus held onto a small, conical, tan seashell covered with tiny triangular designs.  “It was a gift of Scott Gardener.  Conus gloriamaris, a seashell sharing my name.  He even told me a rather chilling premonition about the Cozalien War involving this thing.”  As he set the shell into a small, padded box, Xau Zolan continued working on a series of crystalline Cozalien memory banks, as well as a series of display panels of more human design.
“I think I’m ready to try it.”
Conus drew his attention to Zolan, and to a cylindrical column before him.  “I hope this works.”
“It should,” Xau answered.  “Doing another Ipanema, however, even before going into the ethical ramifications, that’s going to take longer.”  He rotated several crystalline forms, pawing at them and poking several times at the display panels.  An amber light formed in the column.  Then, Elodea’s disembodied voice echoed.
“Where am I?”
“You are on board Conus One, a League star ship,” Conus answered.  “Can you see anything?”
“I can see two of you, but I can’t smell anything.”  The light flickered slightly.  “Where is Raj Patel?”
Zolan and Conus looked at each other, and the Cozalien engineer Zolan sighed.  “Dr. Rashema Patel was a scientist who worked with her and Gardener a hundred years ago.  Don’t worry; her orientation should get better soon.”
“I can’t tell what form I’m in,” Elodea’s voice said.  “I can talk, but I feel like I’ve got four paws.  What’s going on?”
“Her memories are firing simultaneously,” Xau continued to explain.  Then, suddenly, the light flickered out.  Xau looked up.  “Elodea?  Can you hear me?”  All was silent.  Xau gritted his teeth.  “I’m sure this is temporary—something resetting itself.”  However, he panted slightly.  As Xau placed his hand over one of the crystals, Elodea called out.
“This actually is not too different from human flesh.”
“Really,” Conus answered back, partially smiling.  “Progress at last.”
“Don’t get to reassured,” Xau said, continuing to analyze Cozalien data streams.  “It’s a memory about eating pork.”
Conus, taken aback, muttered, “I’m afraid to ask what else is in her memory record.”
“It’s on the table,” Elodea continued.  “Next to the lamp.  Tell Shirley and the others I may be late again.  You don’t think she suspects us?”  Xau continued working, inspecting a series of crystalline patterns, as well as a diagram of a brain with pulses and signals.  Elodea’s voice continued to spill a series of disconnected fragments.  “That’s actually the second time you’ve asked me that… Does this have anything to do with your sleepwalking all the way to my house?...Aware?  What are you aware of?”  Xau pulled a crystal out of an assembly, and then Elodea’s voice and the yellow light both abruptly stopped.
For several seconds, the only sounds were Xau setting down the first crystal, reaching for another one, and sliding it back into the assembly.  Then, the cylinder flickered a bright light and filled the room with sparks.
“I am aware.”  Elodea said.  Conus and Xau both stood up, beginning to recognize for the first time the scope of their accomplishment.  Xau hesitated for a moment before turning the crystal.  A series of sparkling, scintillating patterns rolled and curled, until a dark brown, naked female form appeared, the likeness of Elodea around the biological age of 30.
Elodea looked at her hands and then out at Conus and Xau.  She reached out, but her fingertips sparkled and flickered against the edge of the projection system.  Then she looked up and around, sniffing the glowing air around her.  “What happened?”
“We just brought you back,” Zolan answered.  Then, Conus stepped forward.
“What is the last thing you remember?”
“I was on the Moon, archiving my memories…”  She frowned, wrinkling her sharply slanted brow.  “I must have died.”
“You’re a transhuman now,” Xau explained.
“I was on the Prometheus, with a young boy.  Then, there was an explosion.”
Conus looked at Xau.  “That doesn’t make sense.  Could she remember things that happened after the archive?”
“I don’t see how… and I wasn’t expecting an AI to exhibit psychic phenomena.”
“Scott…”  Elodea called out.  “He was with me.  Did you get him, too?”
“No,” Conus answered back.  “I’m sorry—we tried.”
Elodea’s image fell back and began tearing.  She sat down, shifting into a wolf form.  She emitted a long, mournful howl as lights flickered off and on throughout the room.

The remnants of the second habitat ring of the Prometheus remained attached to the great vessel, sitting dark and lifeless while the first ring glowed with numerous pinpoints from its crowded inhabitants.  The ship trembled as it neared its destination.  Beyond, the stars were again wrapping around from the pinpoint front blaze of near-light travel, into the full sky of familiar time flow.
“We’ve had to burn additional fuel to get us back on course, but with the reduced mass, we’re OK.”  Rhonda explained to Conus.  “It’s also throwing off our magnetic field calibrations quite a bit.  We should be at essentially normal gamma in about two hours.”
Conus looked back at Rhonda through their respective displays.  “I don’t regret foregoing a detailed Luyten 726 survey.  We have a lot of more pressing matters right now.  In high gamma, we wouldn’t have gotten very much anyway.”
“Agreed,” Rhonda answered.  She shifted her tone.  “How about Elodea and Hawthorne?”
Conus glanced over at his display for updates, and looked back up.  “Elodea is taking it pretty well; she’s pretty upset over Scott, and she’s pushing for a rescue mission once we get you settled on Utopia.  I told her I can’t make promises, but I’d talk it over with you and whatever provisional governing council we can assemble.  It’s a little unsettling how quickly she’s assimilating knowledge and upgrading her own program, however.”
“You do realize they said the same about you.”
Conus sighed, contemplating his own experimentation with Cozalien implant devices.  “Selena Hawthorne proved to be a challenge.  We’ve got her up and running now, but her memory files might have been corrupted.  A lot of her early memories looked like something out of fantasy novels—at one moment, she’s being adopted by her parents in Texas, and in the next, a goddess figure named ‘La Gardienne’ is sending her through warps in reality.”
“I’d be very curious to see how Xau took it, finally seeing how the rest of us feel.”  A panel on Rhonda’s command chair blinked, and Rhonda poked at it.  “Oh, shit.  It says someone spotted a large, cream-colored wolf-like form, nearly horse-sized—six legs, four eyes.  How can you miss a neotherianthrope like that?  I knew security would have some gaps, but come on!”

Ipanema continued to fumble as she worked through stacks of handheld displays inside a Cozalien data bank on Conus One.  Alexander Conus, Anderson’s son, worked with her, sorting genome archives bearing the logo “Project Noah.”
“I’m sorry; you’ll have to bear with me.  I’m still getting over Scott, and being on your father’s Wedgie of Doom instead of where I had originally signed up to be isn’t helping my stomach.”
Alex glanced at a text on equine genetic engineering, one authored by Ipanema herself.  “You do realize that horses are going to be a lot more practical than cars for a long time.  By the time we could get any roads built, we may have engineered horses that could beat 150 kilometers an hour or more.  They’ll be more ecological.”
“Yes, not screwing up your biosphere is nice.”  She put down her pile of displays.  “Scott’s back there somewhere in C.A.T. territory.  If Shann finds him, who knows what he’ll go through?  If Conus doesn’t go back for him, maybe I’ll build a ship myself.”

As the Prometheus decelerated, her crew continued working frantically to rearrange their cargo and passenger load.  Amidst the chaos, Rath and Xal huddled together among a crowd of passengers as the ship creaked and groaned, lunging them forward.  Outside, stars were visible again, no longer blanketed out by the darkness of near-light travel.  The remaining habitat ring had ceased rotating in lieu of the momentum changes as the Prometheus made its final approach to the Tau Ceti system.
“We’re almost there,” Rath said, looking at a hand-held device showing the ship’s position.  “Homesick for Earth yet?”
“Yes, but I still don’t regret coming.”
“Just think,” Rath continued, stroking her forehead, “soon we’ll set foot on an alien world.”
A few hours later, the Prometheus and Conus One both approached a blue and white world, covered largely by ocean but with a large, broken, crescent-shaped continent.  Nearby a single large moon drifted, appearing a dull, slightly yellowed gray.
As the Prometheus stopped, the illusion of gravity towards the front of the bridge gave way to weightlessness.  Rhonda stood up and looked ahead at Utopia.  On Conus One, Conus and Zolan did likewise as his crew gazed onward to their new homeworld. 
“There.  Freedom Mountains.”  Conus pointed at a smaller monitor at Elvedea’s console.  “The river valley there is where we’re setting up a colony.”
On the planet surface, beneath a cloudy sky, rays of Tau Ceti’s light would periodically shine through, reflecting on baroque foliage and strange, blue-green latticework.  Over a series of mountains, the sunlight cut through shadows and reflected against a gentle, wide stream.  A large, triangular shadow dropped across the landscape.  Conus One drifted over the valley, dropping several landing pods.

At the foot of a small but prominent mountain, Rhonda Collins, Anderson Conus, Xau Zolan, and a large gathering of others appeared.  Ipanema stepped forward first.
“My brother, Jonathan Scott Gardener—he lived a long life, and he lived it well.  He made a habit of making history.  He frightened the world when he gave his ‘legends are true’ speech, and then he became a legend himself—not once but several times over.  Now, he is neither alive nor dead, but in some strange, in-between state.”
Anderson Conus then came forward.
“I will remember you, and I will go back for you.”
Zolan lit a small tea candle and set it adrift on a float in the water.  As it floated, it joined with numerous others, which became a blanket of pinpoint lights.  Across the river, a large crowd gathered, holding candles.  As they gathered, they looked back across the river, where one could now see a line of people one by one approaching Collins and Conus.  In the distance, one could hear another announcement.
“Minh Nguyen, L.G.F.F. courier.”  Xal spoke out.  “We met only briefly, when he rescued Rath and me.”
“William McKennitt, firefighter and active member of the Scottish Therianthropic Historical Society…”  As more names were read, howling could be heard among the mixture of people and animal faces.  Above, a yellow-gray alien moon hung over a feral world, reluctantly greeting newcomers.