They lost fewer crew members than Finley had been expecting.
Only twenty decided not to continue and were quickly replaced by the volunteers from Walker Hospital.
Finley kept her word and simply put them on a voluntary reassignment to the hospital and gave them and their replacements an hour to switch places.
"Ended up with an even split," Russo commented as he scanned through twenty new files. "Ten Federals, ten Republicans."
Finley snorted, "I'm sure Winters had something to do with that." She turned to Evan. "Everyone onboard?"
He nodded. "We're good to launch. Let's get out of here before something else explodes." He'd been ridiculously cheerful all morning.
Russo had handed off the investigation to Walker Hospital's Security Forces and didn't expect to ever hear anything about it again. As much as it annoyed him not to have answers, he was going to have too much on his plate to try and run the investigation while the Loss carried out her mission.
Finley turned to Callahan, once again in the pilot's seat. "Let's go."
An hour later, they were clear of the Walker Hospital docks and sailing to their jump point. Daniel was with the hyperdrive engineers, and Nemo had already called the engines ready to jump.
The jump would shave two weeks off their trip to Titan, and while they didn't necessarily need to do so, it was smart to test out the hyperdrive before they crossed the wall.
Hyperdrives had been developed a century before the meeting and war with Alari and had been refined with their help once the war was over. It had been lifesaving during the years of exploration, but once the light wall had been built, it had fallen out of use as it required a significant amount of power that wasn't really justifiable with the relatively short travel times within the solar system.
The risk of a surprise wormhole or Sudden Surprise Objects (SSOs) that had moved or shifted from their previous charted locations also meant that pilots had to be on constant alert during the jump. Their reflexes had to be fast enough to avert disasters like the CPS Mao, one of the first ships with a hyperdrive installed. It had jumped through a well-travelled part of space, encountered a previously uncharted comet, and its pilot hadn't been able to react in time. The CPS Mao had slammed bow first into the comet, killing everyone onboard.
The comet, named Disaster, was still circling the Milky Way, and the hull of the Mao was still visible on its surface hundreds of years later.
There were even a few close calls of ships that had nearly collided during the war. Finley had even heard stories about two ships colliding, but she'd never been able to confirm it was true.
The jump to Titan would take four days, with a break from the jump after the initial twenty-four for Daniel and the engineers to check the system for the day, and then a final forty-eight-hour jump to Titan itself. Since Sky Colony was just on the other side of the light wall, there would be plenty of time for the power draw from the jump to recover.
The jumps themselves were pretty boring, which probably seemed odd to those who weren't familiar with the feeling of being on high alert for entire days. But waiting for something to happen could be just as boring as not waiting for anything and much more exhausting.
Thankfully, the first jump went without incident, and aside from Daniel complaining about the way they'd integrated the hyperdrive, which was his problem with most of the ship's systems, everything seemed to be working fine.
There was a moment of excitement on the second jump, when Kaplan, Finley's Chief Pilot during the war, was in the pilot's seat and another ship jumped across their path. It had startled the Command Deck when it appeared out of the blue, but there'd been enough space that they'd avoided an actual collision.
All in all, it was good news as they dropped out of hyperspace four days after they'd left Saturn's orbit. Arriving at Titan on schedule was a minor accomplishment, but it made Finley and the Command Team proud, as does the speed with which they download and load equipment.
There's not much to do on Titan since it's mainly a monitoring station for the light wall and houses mostly scientific personnel and workers.
For a brief moment, Finley wished they'd had time to stop and visit Europa. The moon was, next to the Rings of Saturn, her favorite place in the Solar System and one of the few places that had spawned life without human interference.
After centuries of speculation, when humankind had finally reached Europa and found a way through the surface to the sea beneath, they'd been stunned to find it teaming with ocean life, including huge whales that resembled what had once lived on Earth.
Cetotherium europaeum, generally nicknamed Ice Whale, was considered one of the greatest discoveries of human history, and on the heels of whales on Earth staging a comeback in protected waters, the Europa Whales had become a symbol of the strength of life.
Finley had taken a trip to see them once, joining a scientific expedition attempting to learn if they communicated through song the way whales on Earth did.
They did, and Finley still listened to the haunting recordings when she was working through challenging emotions.
Enceladus, Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto had also proven to have subsurface oceans teeming with life, but their whale-like creatures weren't as large or considered as beautiful as Europa's Ice Whales, whose coloring was similar to the great glaciers on Earth.
Triton's ocean, to the surprise of everyone, had only just started producing life when humankind reached space, so scientists monitored it constantly, watching as life developed from nothing in real time.
Hopefully, Finley would survive this five-year mission and have a chance to see them again when she came home.
Or maybe they'd find something just as amazing somewhere the human race had never been before.
Maybe Finley would just die discovering that and not have to deal with the mayhem that was going to take place if they returned.
~ tbc