014: Home Ground

   

The Great Fleet: Voyage to TRAPPIST-1

Chapter 14: Home Ground

Excerpt from the Parchment Memoirs of Orion Voss-7

In the twenty-second year of the voyage, TRAPPIST-1 stopped being just another star in the sky.

For more than two decades it had been a bright but unremarkable ruby point ahead of us — one among thousands. Now, as the Discovery continued her long deceleration, the red dwarf began to dominate the forward viewports. It no longer looked like a distant spark. It looked like a sun.

Its disk was visible to the naked eye — small, but unmistakably a disk — glowing with that deep, steady ruby light we had tuned our ship’s illumination to mimic for so long. The star felt close. Personal. Like we had finally turned onto the right street in a vast cosmic neighborhood and could see the lights of home glowing at the end of the block.

On certain viewing angles, when the ship’s orientation was just right, you could even see the planets.

Not as full worlds yet — they were still too distant for that — but as tiny, steady sparks orbiting their parent star. TRAPPIST-1e and 1d were the brightest of them. We would watch them for hours during observation shifts, tracking their movement against the ruby backdrop. The children (Virginia Dare Ruiz now seventeen and fiercely protective of the younger ones) would crowd the blister and argue over which spark was which.

“It’s like pulling onto your own street,” Virginia said one evening, her face pressed close to the viewport. “You’re not home yet… but you’re on home ground. You can feel it.”

Commander Elias J. Voss spent more and more time in the observation blister during this period. The Long Burn had aged him into a man who looked closer to seventy than his actual fifty-eight years. Yet his eyes still held that quiet fire.

He stood beside me one cycle, watching the ruby sun grow.

“Grandfather used to say the hardest part wasn’t the journey,” he murmured. “It was believing the destination was real while it was still just a point of light. Now look at it. It’s a sun. With worlds. Waiting for us.”

The crew’s mood shifted in subtle but powerful ways. People walked faster. Conversations in the galley grew louder. The hydroponic domes produced record yields, as if the plants themselves could sense the approaching light. Even the torch seemed to burn with renewed purpose.

Virginia Dare Ruiz began spending long hours studying the incoming telescope feeds. She had grown into a sharp, thoughtful young woman with her mother’s scientific mind and her “Uncle Elias’s” steady calm. One night she brought up a high-resolution image of TRAPPIST-1e — the dayside plains covered in the faint electrical glow of the Carpet.

“I keep trying to imagine what it will feel like,” she said. “The first time my boots touch something that isn’t deck plating. Something that’s alive.”

Commander Voss placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You will be among the first, Virginia. And when you do, remember to speak to the Carpet. Tell it we came in peace. Tell it we came carrying every dreamer who believed this was possible.”

She smiled — that bright, hopeful smile that had sustained the ship for years.

“I already have. In my head. A thousand times.”

The ruby sun grew larger every day.

We were not home yet.

But we were finally on home ground.



 

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The Great Fleet: Voyage to TRAPPIST-1
V 3.0

NOTE: this is a unfinished Draft of a in progress work.  © Curtis Neil, May 2026

ARTISTS COPYRIGHT, Curtis Neil May 2026 

Curtis Anthony Neil/Grok 4.0/ LibreOffice. MAY 03rd. 2026 AD. MAY 08th.2026

Bakersfield, California, USA, North America, Planet Earth (Terra), the third planet from the Sun (Sol), Solar System, Orion Arm, Milky Way Galaxy


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