Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (22 page)

He thought about Emma and her mom in the kitchen. Smell of roast chicken in the apartment. Em’s mom fussing over the table. It was Thanksgiving and they always had a big meal around the table after the Martian Spring arrived. They’d had a good harvest this year, in no small part because of the extra materials they’d brought back for tools. Dad and Tam were there laughing, but he was sad. His Mom wasn’t there this year.

“Go to your bunk.”

Jerem woke up, realized he had been asleep on the console and blinked. Drowsy.

“I was just having the most amazing dream. We were all at home. Emma and her mom were there. They were making roast chicken for Thanksgiving…”

“Son, go to your bunk.” Hal smiled at him and practically kicked him out of the pilot seat.

“God, I can still smell it.”

“Quit it. You’re making me hungry.” Hal put his breakfast bar down on the console, apparently uninterested now.

“Ok, fine. G’night.”

“Good morning, Son.”

The lights on the ship were shifting from pink to blue as the daytime program started up.
 

057

Calypso.

Edson woke up to a headache. It felt like the back of his skull was throbbing. He blinked. His vision was blurry so he blinked again. It didn’t improve, but his head hurt more.

He couldn’t remember what happened to him.

He reached up to try to rub his eyes but couldn’t move his arms. He squinted down and a fresh wave of pain traveled through his head.

His wrists were tied to the bunk and he was belted in.

He was thirsty.

“Help.” He croaked out the word. Barely audible. “Somebody help me.” Slightly louder.

“Captain, you awake?” A Ben-sized shape loomed into view.

“Water?”

“OK, stay put, I’ll bring you a bulb.” Ben moved away. He could hear voices echoing around. Outside?

He drifted.

“Here you go, sir.” Ben squeezed some water into his mouth and Edson lost some of it, nearly choking when he tried to swallow. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“Damn, you don’t look so good.”

“Captain? Edson? Do you remember what happened?”

Edson squinted. Was that Carl? Nausea made him close his eyes and drift. Floating in his bunk.

He couldn’t think straight. Just needed to sleep some more.

Carl looked at Ben. “He’s out of it.”

Ben shook his head. “No wonder. You brained him good.”

“Shh. He can still hear us. Let’s get up to the cockpit.”

Carl grabbed the rungs of the ladder and hoisted himself up. The bright ship’s lights augmented by the festive LEDs strung around the console were marred by spots of dried blood. He settled into the pilot’s seat and started loading his nav programs.

Ben floated up.

“I really hope you know what you’re doing. You’re the only pilot left in this thing.”

“Don’t I know it. Buckle up, we’re maneuvering in two minutes.”

Carl checked the engine status. Giving it a night to rest had cooled everything down again. The board read green, though the test would be when they lit it up. Steady 0.2G was going to feel like a day in the park after the last few days.

He needed two rotations for his first maneuver to orient the ship. The first was a roll negative five degrees. Next was a pitch up one hundred and forty degrees. They’d be facing away from Mars and the Sun would be aft and to port.

Carl considered filing a flight plan but thought better of it. Better to play dumb for as long as possible. Lighthouse could figure it out. Besides, he needed time to think about how to deal with this situation. He slid the controls into position in front of him.

“Ready for rotation. Maneuvers in five, four,…”

Ben gripped the sides of his chair. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Carl.”

Carl ignored him and focused on the maneuvers. He could let the ship do it, but he wanted to hold the sticks. If anything went wrong with the control systems, he’d have to do this on manual anyway.

First roll was a small one. Nudge of the right stick left and the gimbal rolled with the ship as the attitude thrusters fired, then again to settle their new orientation.

Next, the pitch adjustment. Back on the right stick and the ship heaved around them. The stars in the window above tilted hard about the ship as they spun about. Negative thrust and the rotation slowed, then stopped. The gimbal wobbling in its case.

Carl checked their angles, the optics outside verifying their position against the stars, the nose now pointed up just off of Chara in Canes Venatici.

“Green board. Burning in five, four, three, …” He powered on the reactor.

A warning buzzer sounded from the console. Red light. Reactor offline. Authorization required.

The Captain had locked out the engine.

Ben shook his head in the seat behind him. “Dumbass.”
 

058

Lighthouse.

Commander David Mancuso trudged onto the command deck. He’d been in the boardroom for nearly two hours catching up on messages. He’d just been informed he was scheduled for a meeting with the chairman of the Council. He’d been doing his best to avoid Grayson for the past day, but now he was going to have to brief them.

He looked up at the board. MSS02H Terror was still dashed, no telemetry. MSS18 Calypso adrift though telemetry had them performing a rotational adjustment nearly an hour ago.

“Sunil, what’s going on with Calypso?”

Pradeep looked at him with a weary eye. “We don’t know. No change in flight plans, no communications.”

“Open a channel to them, please. Broadcast: Control to MSS18 Calypso, please update with status. Control out.” Mancuso contained his frustration and trod over to the science station. Wilkins and Emma were on deck, tablets and screens arrayed with jumbled diagrams and math in front of them.

“Wilkins. Any updates from science team?”

Wilkins looked at him. “Not much, sir. The object’s period seems to have decreased to one flash every eight minutes.”

“Any change in trajectory?”

“Not really.” Wilkins coughed, looking uncomfortable.

Mancuso became aware of Emma watching him intently.

“Franklin? Something to report?”

“Just a theory.” Emma was fidgeting. Anxious.

Wilkins looked at her and shook his head.

Mancuso ignored him. “Well, come on then, we don’t have a lot of time here.”

“Sorry. Ortega doesn’t like unproven theories, but this looks pretty solid.” She could see Mancuso becoming impatient and hurried up. “The period changed around the same time as Calypso’s altered plan. I mean, when they drifted past their next scheduled burn, the object’s flash-rate increased.”

Mancuso stared hard at her. “Pretend like I’m stupid.” Wilkins snorted at that.

Emma took a breath and tried to explain herself more carefully. “Calypso had a scheduled burn around four hours ago. When she missed that burn, the object increased its flash frequency.” She swallowed. “I don’t have a lot of data yet, but it looks like the most recent flashes have been closer together. In space. I think it’s slowing itself down based on Calypso’s speed.”

Mancuso considered this and checked the wall clock. It’d be a few minutes still before Calypso replied, if at all. He wondered if they could use this information to their advantage somehow, though it still sounded like the object was reacting to whatever the ships did. Could they confuse it somehow?

“Thanks Emma. Let me know if you figure anything else out.”

She smiled at him. “Will do, sir.”

Wilkins stared into his terminal, his shoulders tense.

Mancuso lowered himself into his chair and looked out the window at Mars slowly rolling below them, burning dully in the sunlight. They were crossing over Tyrrhena and he could see a huge dust storm roiling high above the surface even from here, obliterating the details underneath it. Springtime on Mars. He wondered idly if this one would reach the domes around Ascraeus Mons.
 

059

The Terror.

Francine Pohl checked her board one more time. “Ok, I’m cutting the engines in five, four, …” The crew braced in their seats, inside their suits. The Terror’s engines shut down and the big ship rolled into a drift, her occupants heaving against the sudden torque. Francine corrected the roll and levelled the ship out.

“Alright, we’ve got four hours to make these repairs and get our bearings. Reggie, Winston, you’re outside. Vanessa, you’re in here with me on the Pup. Be careful out there.”

Reggie and Winston checked each other’s suits over one last time in the equipment room. Winston gave Reggie a pat on the helmet and a thumbs up. They backed into their thruster harnesses, a difficult maneuver in zero-G and felt them click into the mounts on their suit’s pack. Once secure, they kicked off for the airlock.

Reggie’d already loaded the replacement antenna into the lock and it made a tight squeeze for the men in their suits and bulky harnesses.

“I have no idea if this thing’ll work.” Reggie bent forward and looked down at the shiny metal antenna he’d assembled from aluminum sheeting and spare parts. He’d spent the last hour soldering a wiring harness together with some long leads and scraps from the electronics drawer.

Winston shook his head. “If anyone can make that thing talk, you can. I get to patch a leaky faucet. And I’m no plumber.”

Their helmets crackled with Vanessa’s voice. “You guys having fun yet?”

The airlock cycled and the air drained out. Red light. Hard vacuum. “Oh, yes indeed.” Reggie grinned. “Winston, you go out first, I need to move this thing out.”

“Yup.” Winston hooked himself into a ring with his belt tether and slipped through the lock. He hung on to the rails on top of the ship’s hull, waiting for Reggie to come out.

Reggie dropped his visor and pushed outside. He ran through a couple of tests on his harness, verifying his suit was working properly, then grabbed an aluminum strut on the back of the makeshift antenna, pulling the dish outside.

“I need to use thrusters to get this up to the nose. I can’t climb with this thing in my hands.”

Francine acknowledged. “Ok. Use your lines.”

Winston ran his own tests on his harness and satisfied, began hauling himself down the hand rails. “Harness checked out. Going down.” No need to burn fuel.

When he passed the curve of the hab module, Winston looked down at the cargo pod beneath his feet hanging in space. The shiny trail of water crystals from behind had caught up to them and were covering the pod in a shiny halo. “Hey check it out Vanessa. It’s kinda pretty.”

“Yeah, I’m watching it from up here. It is pretty.” Spot, their remote drone was out there somewhere with its eyes pointed back at the ship.

Reggie made a gagging noise over the radio giving Winston a moment of panic when he thought he was having a suit malfunction. When he verified that Reggie wasn’t actually choking, he flipped his visor down, embarrassed. “Don’t joke around out here, man.” He paused in his descent to keep an eye on Reggie’s maneuvers.

Reggie took a deep breath and exhaled, fogging the inside of his visor. The condenser in his suit taking a moment to clear it. He grabbed the end of the tether on his belt and hooked into one of the eye rings outside the airlock. He pushed away and dragged the antenna with him. Using the thruster controls in his glove, he negated his outward velocity with a short burst then rotated so he was facing “up”. Towards the nose of the ship.

Winston watched him from the ladder on the port side of the hab. “Lookin’ good, Reg.”

Reggie dabbed the thrusters and began gliding forward along the hab towards the cockpit, tether spooling out behind him. He had the antenna braced on his legs and abdomen with his arms on either side of the dish to keep it in place.

Reggie reached down with his right hand and squeezed his tether’s reel, slowing his transit along the hull, the tension on the line pulling him back down to the ship’s surface.

The ship’s exterior tapered slightly towards the nose. The cockpit section like a blunt cone stuck on the end of the cylindrical hab with a large, segmented dome window instead of a point. Thruster ports lined the sides of the ship in the nose section.

Reggie touched down on the surface and grabbed a hand hold, the dish sliding forward and bouncing off the hull. He got it under him and held on, careful to protect the feed antenna sticking out from the dish’s center.

When everything had stopped moving, he attached a carabiner around steel line from his belt and hooked it into the rung. “Ok, I’m secured.”

Winston continued his climb around the hab section to the undercarriage towards the cargo pod. He had to squeeze between one of the bulbous outboard water and hydrogen tanks on the side of the ship, but there was plenty of room. He hooked onto the bottom rung of the ladder with his tether. He had enough line to get him to the aft end of the cargo pod from here.