Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (13 page)

Ben coiled up, then kicked off of the window, arms at his sides, diving straight through the hatch towards the galley.

Edson hollered after him at the empty hatch, “Don’t get feet on my windows.” Then to Carl more quietly, “I hate smudges.”

Carl sipped his tea and nodded.

Edson opened his tablet and continued reading his book. Some 20th century adventure yarn about sailing the high seas. Ever since he was a boy, he was fascinated by the idea of wind-powered sailing ships on oceans of water. Space ships were as close as he could get.

“Uh, Skip?” Carl was looking at him from his seat. His bald head shiny in the deck lighting and festive LEDs Edson had festooned his cockpit with.

Edson lowered his tablet, glasses on his nose. Not annoyed, but unable to get into the story he was trying to read. “Yes? What is it?”

“What’re we doing here? We’re building a bomb and pulling hard gees. You going to let me in on the story?”

Edson put his glasses in their case and the tablet on his console. He picked up his tea bulb and took a sip. “Well, the bomb was your idea. I thought it was a good one. We’re pulling gees because now it’s a race.”

Carl looked at him and frowned, his forehead wrinkling around the scar on his temple, apparently unsatisfied. “C’mon. You have to be planning something.”

Edson tilted forward, his goatee jutting out towards Carl. “All I know is that there was some kind of ship, or asteroid, or… thing that wrecked the Pandora. I want to get ahead of it. And if it gets close to us, I’m going to blow it the hell up.”

Carl looked at his Captain. Edson was still leaning forward staring right back at him. His eyes white in the craggy shadows of his dark face.

“Ok, Skip. I get it. We’ll beat this thing.”

“Damned straight.” Edson turned back around and tightened his harness. He unlocked his console and brought the controls in close from their dogged positions. “Rest is over. We burn in one minute. Stations!”
 

031

The Terror.

Francine sat in the command chair playing solitaire on the console. The navigation screen obscured by cards. Vanessa lounged on the couch behind her, reading her tablet.

They’d been burning almost a full gravity for most of the day, their ship now oriented almost ninety degrees to the ecliptic. They needed to make up the separation from the orbital plane to intercept Making Time, Francine still intending to follow them in.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Vanessa almost jumped out of her seat. “Jesus Reggie, what the fuck?”

Francine maintained her composure, dealt three cards, turned up one. Five of spades.

“Whoah, hey now, settle down girl!” Reggie grinned showing his mostly white teeth and some metal as he made calming gestures. “Why so tense?”

Vanessa turned back to her book on her tablet,
Dynamics of Interplanetary Bodies
, Dr. T. Powell (2157). “Probably because some assholes like sneaking up on people on this ship.”

Reggie feigned a hurt look. “If you’re gonna be like that, I’ll go hang somewhere else.” He bit his lip in a mock gesture of exaggerated sexiness, turned and slid down the ladder below deck.

“Why do you keep that guy around again, Captain?” Vanessa was half-looking at Francine.

“He’s useful.” Deal three. Turn up one. Jack of clubs. Move some cards around.

Somewhere below, Winston bellowed. “Jesus fuck, Reggie!”

“Seriously? He’s a menace. And possibly creepy.” Vanessa was watching her Captain still engrossed in her game.

“Yep. Seriously. Best technician I’ve ever had on a ship. Been working together nearly ten years now. Not a bad pilot either. Decent navigation skills. He’s a good all-rounder. Little rough around the edges.” She looked up from her card game over at Vanessa. “He didn’t do anything to you did he?”

Vanessa shook her head, her face reddening. “No, no, just joking around. As he does.”

“You guys have been out a couple times now. I figured you knew what he was like. If you want me to talk to him just say the word.”

Vanessa shook her head. “No. No, that’s ok. I can deal with him if he crosses any lines.”

Francine was watching her younger co-pilot’s face. Vanessa was still new to the ship, but had a lot of potential. Francine could see a lot of herself in there. She just didn’t want to see her get damaged along the way. “Look, this is a different situation for all of us. This thing out there… Everybody’s on edge. I think Reg is just blowing off a little tension, but you know, I don’t want him to go too far.”

“Thanks, Captain.” Vanessa stood up and stretched, twisting her back. “Think I’ll hit my bunk. Get some sleep.”

“Yeah, good idea. I’ll get you up for your watch in six hours.” Deal three. Turn one up. Four of clubs.
 

032

Lighthouse.

Mancuso was pacing in the control room. The lights were running their evening dim red program. Faces illuminated in blue screen glow from their terminals. Quiet group tonight. Heads down, crunching data. Ortega and Wilkins in a tight huddle at the science station. Wilkins, agitated, gesturing with his hands.

The main screen was showing recent telemetry compiled from Watchtower data and the currently filed and predicted flight plans from the inbound ships. Previous mission tracks were ghosted out, showing Calypso’s recent changes.

The screen showed a curved dotted line from Pandora’s last position towards Calypso’s general volume. That was the object. Each dot a flash in space cutting a lateral track across the inner asteroid belt.

Oddly, Calypso had updated their flight plan with a new, slimmer trajectory. Captain Franklin was burning hard into Mars at a shallower declination than originally intended. Heavier burns too, according to the acceleration profiles. Was he hoping to outrun the object?

Mancuso sauntered over to the science station, Ortega and Wilkins hunched over their screens talking. “Any change in the object’s trajectory?”

Ortega blinked at him, pushing whatever conversation he’d been having with Wilkins away and adjusting to Mancuso’s question. “Some minor variations in the object’s blink period.”

Wilkins shifted in his seat. Looking back and forth between Mancuso and Ortega. To Ortega, “Are you going to tell him?” Then back to Mancuso.

“Tell me what?” Mancuso growled.

Wilkins answered hastily. “It’s varying its period depending on Calypso’s velocity. It looks like it’s adjusting its speed to intercept them.”

“Have they been notified?”

Wilkins shook his head. “We were waiting to verify the data.” He looked back at Ortega pointedly.

“Just send them the data. They can make what they will of it.” Mancuso sat down in his seat heavily and checked his messages. New message from Brennan at the university. He opened it up and read. Looks like they’d picked one of the students to join the science team. Emma Franklin.

Captain Franklin’s daughter.

He really hoped this wasn’t a huge mistake, but they needed smart people. Wilkins and Ortega couldn’t handle all this themselves. They needed some support.

Mancuso rubbed his aching chest automatically. He skimmed through the rest of the unread messages in his inbox. Incident reports. Messages from the Council. Message from Doctor Lau, the chief station physician.

Subject: Re: Test results.

He took a breath and opened the message.

David,

I’d like you to come and see me sometime this week. Don’t worry about booking an appointment, just come by during office hours. We need to discuss possible treatment options for you.

I know you have a lot going on right now, but you should consider taking some down-time. Let your people take over for you. This is treatable, but we need to get started right away. It’s spreading rapidly and if we don’t catch this, it’s going to be much worse.

Peter

Mancuso closed the message and squeezed his eyes shut. There was simply no time to deal with this now. Treatment was going to take him out of commission, probably for good.

He remembered his father telling him nobody ever made it to old age in the space program. “Too much radiation,” he’d tell him. Maybe he should’ve listened, but he just couldn’t give it up. Space, science, engineering. It was all he’d ever wanted since he was a kid. Fifty years later it was the thing that was going to kill him.

He wasn’t ready to be turned into compost. David Mancuso squeezed his left arm against his side, feeling the lump constricting in his armpit and wincing at the pain it caused. He straightened his jacket and stood up, walked into the small boardroom to deal with the incident reports.
 

033

New Providence.

“Can I get you anything, Tam?” Greg was speaking through the closed door to the bathroom in Tamra’s apartment.

“No.” she managed to answer. “Not now.”

Tamra was lying on the floor by the toilet after another round of dry heaves that gave way into stream of wracking coughs. The floor was cool on her skin as she lay there, breath wheezing out of her.

She felt the small bathroom start to spin around her again. Her head hurt. Everything hurt. She held on, feeling like she was going fall off the floor.

Space. Zero gravity. Tamra was in a suit orbiting above an angry red Mars. Phobos off to her right, small and round and pitted. It loomed large in her vision. Larger than it should be in the sky.

The sky spun around and she realized she was falling. She had no thrusters. No controls. The suit’s oxygen supply was reading low. Falling, space wheeling around her.

Phobos loomed larger still spinning in front of her. She was falling into it. Picking up speed. The nav displays on her suit were blurred out. Her helmet cracked.

That’s not right.

Her suit was filling with water.

Cold water. Had she sprung a leak? She tried to remember where her suit repair kit was. It was supposed to be on her belt. Her helmet was filling up.

Why was she naked?

The water continued to engulf her and she realized she was going to drown.

She was in water.

Blue water. Light streaming from above. Cool blue water. An ocean? Was she on Earth? Green plants sent clingy fronds from the sandy soil under the water and grabbed at her arms and feet, pulling her down. Bubbles rose up from her nose and mouth. It was warm. Comfortable. A hand reached up from below, reaching up towards her.

A face emerged, light brown hair billowing around it. A ray of sunlight lit the woman’s face.

“Mom?”

The hand beckoned to her, drew her down deeper into the water.

“No.”

She fought to stay above, but the warm water called to her. Her mother, arms outstretched below.

“Tam?” a distant voice. “Tam? Can you hear me?”

She floated there. She could see the sun rippling through the surface above her. It looked warm. The seaweed waved around her in the reef.

“Tamra!”

She gasped and lifted her head. Greg was staring at her, holding her head and shoulders in his lap in the shower. Water beating down around them splashing on the tiles.

“Greg?” she spluttered.

“She’s awake now. Yes. I’ll keep an eye on her.” Pause “Alright. Thank you!” He closed the connection on his tablet sitting on the floor in a puddle outside the shower stall. He looked back down at her, her face in his lap, wet hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead. “Hey!” He gave her a big squeeze. “I thought you’d checked out.” He turned off the cool running water and it rolled into the drain to be taken to reclamation.

He lifted her up out of the nest of wet towels and frozen gel packs and lowered her naked into a blanket, wrapping her up in it. Both of them dripping all over the floor. Greg’s clothes drenched.

“We’ll get you back in bed. Doc says that should have broken the fever.”

“Mom was in the water.”

She was so tired. And cold. She shivered in the blanket as Greg carried her to her bedroom. Her eyes closed before he lowered her onto the bed.
 

034

Ascraeus Mons, Gagarin Terminal.

Emma had arrived at the space port nearly three hours ago. She’d been taken to the station’s quartermaster and fitted for a suit. She spent the next two and a half hours in a classroom running through their suits’ systems. Safety seals, visor readouts, radio controls.

It was a recap for her, she’d already spent time in one of these things before. The difference was this time she’d get to keep it. She was going to get a name patch. FRANKLIN, E. Just like her dad’s.

Emma was taken to the locker by the crew specialist. She was glad she’d been assigned a female instructor. Her patch read, HARDING, G. “How long have you been doing suit orientation, Ms. Harding?”

“A couple of years now.” She smiled at Emma, hazel eyes crinkling for a second around the edges. Thin lines on her face.