The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

the shotguns the other three were carrying, and for a second his expression flooded with fear.
    Then it simply went blank.
    He’d seen Garner.
    After a long moment the man swallowed and said, “Sir.”
    Garner accompanied the airman back upstairs to speak with the rest of the crew. Twenty seconds after they disappeared, all the alarms cut out.
    Travis and Paige and Bethany sank into three of the row seats, side by side, and Travis leaned his head back and shut his eyes.
    “Did they interrogate you?” Paige said.
    He nodded.
    “Are you okay?” she said.
    He opened his eyes and looked at her. He took in every detail of her face: the strands of hair hanging past her forehead and in front of her ears, the subtle, rhythmic movements of her throat as she breathed.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    Garner came back down five minutes later. By then the twilight outside had deepened nearly to black, and the landscape below had lit up in soft blues and oranges: bright street grids and dotted parking lots.
    Garner sat down just across the aisle from the three of them. He exhaled deeply and for a moment said nothing. Travis couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a person look so weary. He turned to Travis and said, “Tell me everything Dyer told you, so I know where to start.” He indicated Paige and Bethany. “They need to catch up on it too.”
    Paige looked from Garner to Travis, confused. “Who’s Dyer?” she said.
    Travis spent twenty minutes explaining it. By the time he’d finished, Paige and Bethany looked rattled, but both clearly understood it all.
    “Dyer told you everything,” Garner said. “Everything I told him, at least.”
    “The second half of Ruben Ward’s message,” Travis said.
    Garner nodded. “I never would’ve told you any of this—either half of the message—until as late in the game as possible. I would’ve waited until days before you’re supposed to enter the Breach, if I could have. There was just nothing to be gained by telling you sooner, and plenty to lose. It adds unpredictability to bring anyone new into the fold. Even you.” He paused. “But I guess that horse is already out and galloping.”
    For a long time, fifteen seconds at least, Garner said no more. He rested his hands on his knees and looked down at them.
    “I’m sure all three of you have at least a grasp of the physics implied by the Breach,” he said. “The rough theories—guesses, if you like—as to how wormholes function. Maybe you’ve read Stephen Hawking, and know that space and time aren’t really separate things. A wormhole can cross both of them.”
    Travis nodded, as did Paige and Bethany.
    Garner looked up and met their gazes.
    “On the other side of the Breach is a starship,” he said. “It’s orbiting the binary star 61 Cygni, a little over twelve hundred years in our future. The ship was designed and subassembled by General Dynamics in Coffeyville, Kansas, in the first half of the 2250s, and built in low orbit over the next twenty years. It was christened July 17, 2276, the EAS Deep Sky. It has a crew of eight hundred thirty-nine people, including an executive officer named Richard Garner, and a commander named Travis Chase.”

Chapter Forty-Five
    Travis waited. He understood that Garner was neither lying nor joking.
    “Ballpark figure,” Garner said. “When do you think the last veteran of the American Civil War died? Don’t crunch the numbers. Just take a shot from the hip, any of you.”
    “The 1930s,” Travis said.
    Paige nodded. “My guess too.”
    “Around there,” Bethany said.
    “There are disputed claims,” Garner said, “but the most agreed upon candidate is a Union veteran named Albert Woolson. He died in August of 1956.”
    Travis traded looks with the others.
    “It doesn’t sound right, does it?” Garner said. “The mind tends to chop off the tails of the bell curve when it makes an estimate. But do the math. Three million people fought in the Civil War, most of them very young, many young enough that they had to lie about their ages to serve. You could safely estimate a few tens of thousands of them were fifteen or sixteen when the war ended in 1865. Which means they were born around 1850. Out of that number of people, a handful could be expected to live to a hundred. A much smaller handful would make it a bit further, or would’ve been a little younger than fifteen when they served. Either way, the mid 1950s would be your best guess, even if you could