by Allen Stroud
“That’s understandable,” Le Garre says. “Do you trust him?” she asks me.
“Yes, implicitly,” I reply.
“I’ll interview him first then,” she says. “We can call it vetting. Once we’re confident he had nothing to do with Drake’s death, we can bring him in.”
“A good solution,” Duggins says.
“It still puts us behind,” Le Garre replies. “We have to anticipate that our traitor has already thought about this.”
“I agree,” I say. “When I looked at the files on my screen and the command history, everything was easy to find. There was no reason for files to have been moved and deleted. They were quickly recovered too.”
“If someone had access to your screen with your log-in, they could have deleted all the clues, wiping out any trace of what they’d done,” Duggins says. “None of us would know.”
“So, what’s their objective?” Travers asks. “I mean, if we’re finding these clues, either they’re sloppy or they want something else.”
“Maybe distracting and dividing us is the objective?” Le Garre suggests.
Duggins grunts. “If it is, it’s working.”
“There’s something else I need to share with you,” I say. I reach across the table and activate the flip-up screen. I log in to the system, pull up my personal messages and select the one with the encrypted data archive. “This was sent to me from Fleet. It includes permission for me to share it with the senior officers. I’ve not accessed it yet. I wanted to make sure we all looked at it together.”
“When we spoke before, you mentioned it was an automatic message?” Le Garre prompts.
“Yes, it seems to have been triggered when we sent the first request for the Hercules’s cargo manifest. There’s no name, or sender.”
The authorisation panel comes up. I input my Fleet ID and the highest authorisation code that I know. The whole screen goes black for a moment, and then a date flashes up – 22.02.2116 – just over two years ago. An Asian woman’s face appears, and she’s looking directly into the camera.
Then the image freezes and a second password box pops up. I input my codes again, but they are rejected.
“Why would you be given an archive that you can’t access?” Travers asks.
“No clue,” I reply.
“Perhaps the crew of the Hercules will have answers?” Le Garre says. “Maybe we were sent the information so they can provide us with limited access codes?”
“Possibly,” I say. “A shame we don’t have the answers now.”
Duggins taps the screen. “We could try to crack it,” he says. “Like you said, Johansson’s focused and good with computers. Given some time, she might get through.”
“We can’t be sure of her yet, and I don’t want to break regulations. We’ll go by the book.”
“Well, we don’t know who sent us this. It might not be Fleet command.”
“We’ll assume it was for now,” I decide. “Besides, Johansson’s working on something else.”
“Oh?”
I quickly explain the audio files and the isolated words. I can see Duggins absorbing the information and adding it to his plans. “Thanks,” he says when I’m done. “That gives us more reason to think we’re dealing with a drive shutdown.”
“I wonder what ‘please don’t, sir’ means,” Le Garre muses.
“Could be anything,” Travers says. He scratches his beard. “Have you had a complete report from Johansson yet, Captain?”
“No. She’s being thorough.”
“Will you share it when you do?”
“Of course.”
I sign out of the system and look at each of my three officers. They’re tired and confused, driving against an enemy none of us can name. We’re two steps behind, trying to jump ahead. There’s too much we don’t know and too much at stake.
* * *
Humanity is a miracle and a solitary miracle at that, according to what we’ve found in the last three centuries of space exploration. Yes, we’ve found signs of extinct life on Mars, possible traces of life on Titan, but nothing to rival our own civilisation.
Our satellites and spacecraft continue to search the stars for habitable planets that we might travel to one day. They also look for signs of others who might exist like we do, imprisoned in their own solar system with an umbilical tether to the mother planet.
Earth isn’t without problems in its past. Our home has seen five mass extinctions in its history, ranging from giant asteroid impacts to massive volcanic eruptions. Add in the World Wars and the twenty-first-century environmental crisis, and we’ve had three man-made disasters of nearly equal world-changing effect.
Many scientists and entrepreneurs have been on record in their endorsement of humanity finding ways to live on other planets. We have to expand into our solar system and devise technologies to take us farther into the stars.
The reasoning is straightforward: when the next giant asteroid heads our way, we must have the resources to deal with it. If we don’t, we need to be someplace else; otherwise we’ll be extinct. If the situation is worse, like a nearby star exploding, or our own sun destroying itself, we may not be able to save anything on Earth, Mars, or anywhere else around here. We can’t afford to wait around and find out.
Settlements, outposts and colonies have to become self-sufficient to survive, and humanity can learn from all the mistakes we made on Earth. History helps us to improve ourselves, and it’s working. You can tell because of our successes. The life you have today is far better than the lives people lived twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago.
All we need is to keep looking forward and striving for the betterment of ourselves and our species.
Speech from Oludare Adisa, President of the United Astro-Physics Foundation.
Chapter Seven
Shann
I’m back in my chair on the bridge when Keiyho says, “Hercules within five thousand klicks, Captain.”
Instinctively, I’m looking out into space. The shutters are up. The black expanse seems no different. It’s impossible to determine our velocity without something to see moving past. I glance down at my screen. A red cross marks a spot in the top left corner; a set of decreasing numbers appears. “Time to rendezvous?” I ask.
“Thirteen minutes, twelve seconds.”
“Increase braking,” I order.
“Aye, aye.”
My body is pressed against the seat straps. We’re decelerating at just over one gravity, a gradual decrease in speed to match the velocity of the freighter. The Khidr has been prepped for the encounter. The rotation deck is stopped and locked, other deployed panels and antennae retracted. This won’t be an easy maneuver. Our computers have been tracking the Hercules for hours, plotting its trajectory from a series of laser scans and transponder pings, but we can’t be precise until we’re very close.
I glance down at Johansson’s completed report. Since we dropped out of resonance, there have been no further transmissions picked up. We can’t be sure if the resonance drive affects the echoing, beyond the distortion we filtered out. There hasn’t been enough research to determine whether travelling in that state enhances the sensitivity of our receiver systems.
Johansson isolated more than thirty individual words. Four of them might be ‘Hercules’. That can’t be a coincidence. The chance of the communication being an EVA transmission is tiny. There has to be something else in what she’s found.
“There she is!”
Duggins is standing up in his seat, pointing. There are ten or more people on the bridge, with everyone called up for the rendezvous moment. I’m staring at where he’s pointing. There’s a bright silver box-like shape, growing larger and larger. Suddenly our speed is noticeable.
“Bring us in, Major,” I say.
“Aye, aye,” Le Garre replies.
<
br /> The boxlike shape extends into an oblong. Details begin to appear. The freighter is huge and designed as a cradle, a vast scaffold structure with engines at one end and a habitat/control module at the other. Out here, there’s no gain in creating sleek lines and pretty shapes. Cubes and cuboids offer the best storage solutions. When these ships are unloaded, they are empty shells; when packed with goods and supplies, they’re a tame whale in space.
From here, the sense of scale is impossible to get straight in your mind. There’s no frame of reference. I’m reminded of the old films where they tricked people into believing things were big or small by placing them near or far away from the camera. Forced perspective, they called it. Here, we have no perspective. I know the Hercules is still ten kilometres away, but I keep thinking I can reach out and pluck it out of the black background.
“We’re detecting thrust wash,” Keiyho says. “Their drives have been active recently.”
“But they’re not active now,” Jacobson says. “There’s no engines online.”
The Hercules is listing and rotating slowly. This’ll make docking with her pretty difficult. “We need more visual data,” I say. “Get me a hull scan.”
This is my eighth freighter rescue encounter in six years. Maybe that’s a testimony to the robust design of these behemoths. Each encounter was different, presenting its own challenges and dangers.
The Khidr is approaching a little to the left of the Hercules. Le Garre adjusts our attitude for maximum view, and the freighter rolls around us so we’re approaching from below. The major is overworked and tired, but still the best pilot we have on board. We close to single digits, and the engine section fills the upper half of the screen. Clusters and eruptions of hollow rocket cones, like the strange plants you see underwater on rocks.
“Any response to communications?” I ask.
“None so far, Captain,” Jacobson says. “I’m increasing our transmission output as we get closer, adding frequencies, but there’s nothing coming back.”
“Not even the automated distress call?”
“No. Nothing.”
That’s strange. Very strange. Whoever sent out the call wanted someone to respond. Why turn it off? “Park us up near the habitat section,” I say.
“Aye, aye,” Le Garre replies.
The pressure on my straps eases a little. We’re passing massive container after massive container, packed full of supplies for colonies and outposts beyond Phobos Station. This shipment maintains lives out at the dangerous fringe. Almost every commodity people on Earth take for granted has to be shipped out in continuous and consecutive runs every few months. The logistical planning for all this is done years in advance. The freighters themselves are a kilometre long and built to last for decades.
The Khidr is slowing noticeably now. We’re drifting over the last of the storage. Next, there’s the vertically mounted gravity carousel and in front of that a final cuboid – the control section.
“Wow. Imagine having to fix a problem on that thing,” Jacobson says.
“You may just get your wish, Ensign,” Duggins growls.
“The rotational deck isn’t moving, Captain,” Le Garre observes.
“Nice to see someone’s paying attention,” I say. “Any other signs of life?”
“Our ship’s illumination profile makes it difficult to pick out anything, Captain,” Duggins says. “I think I saw some exterior lights, but I can’t be sure. We’re not picking up any stray data from their internal network.”
“Okay, send a wire.”
“Wire, aye.”
A ‘wire’ is a nonhostile projectile attached to a cable. It’s fired from Keiyho’s console and designed to attach itself to the hull of another ship to access its internal electronics. Once we’re ‘plugged in’ we can begin a system diagnostic. The cable remains a loose and controlled connection, so if there’s a movement discrepancy between the two ships that we can’t fix, we can detach quickly.
“Wire deployed,” Keiyho says.
We wait a few minutes. Then there’s an audible ping on Duggins’s console. “Connection established,” he says. “Okay, this is unusual.”
“What’s unusual?”
“The Hercules, she’s powered down, completely turned off.”
The words float around the crowded bridge. I chew my lip. Powered down? Suddenly the mission parameters have changed. This is more than a rescue and repair. In all the previous freighter incidents I’ve dealt with, this has never happened. I can’t remember an incident like it happening to anyone else, either.
I glance around. Everyone is looking at me, waiting for me to make a decision and get us moving.
“Keiyho, I want a security team assembled to board first, before the repair crew.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Duggins, assign one of yours to the detail. I’m going; Keiyho’s in charge. Travers, you’ll have the bridge until I’m back.”
“Captain, are you sure that’s—”
“It’s decided. Let’s get moving.”
I’m out of my chair and moving before there are any more questions. I can feel the eyes on me, making their own judgements. Let them; the call is made.
* * *
Our airlock is correctly aligned with the Hercules’s habitat module. More ‘wires’ have been sent over to secure us. We could dock the two ships airlock to airlock, but that would leave us vulnerable. We’d be locked to their ship and its listless drift. Khidr engines would be no match for the Hercules if they suddenly reactivated and it would take time get us loose, so instead, we’ll tether and EVA across.
I’m in a full astro-suit, wearing prosthetic legs and magged to the deck. The suits are standard issue, so the legs are required. I don’t need them to move around, but without them, I’ll be dragging half the getup with me.
The magnetic boots are another necessary burden. While it’s safe enough to fly around inside our ship, outside I can’t take risks. There’s a voice in my head that says I’d be fine, but it’s wrong. Another thing the human mind can’t process properly.
Five others are prepped, Duggins and Keiyho among them. All I can see are people in suits and reflective visors, until Arkov, one of the techs, starts applying name patches to our shoulders. Someone is carrying a portable power unit. Someone else has a hull cutter.
We’re all carrying low-velocity firearms.
“Team ready,” Keiyho says over the comms.
“Wilco, team, depressurising the airlock now,” Le Garre says from the bridge.
“Aye, aye.”
Spacecraft have to make use of every resource available. Depressurisation of a room requires that room to be drained of air, which is sent back into the ship’s reserves. Opening the compartment to the outside might be quicker and easier, but it’s wasteful. So, we go through a gradual process of creating as near a vacuum as possible by bleeding the air back into the tanks.
Then we open the compartment door and the residual low-pressure atmosphere leaks out into space.
I’m clipped on to the cable with a motorised carabiner and connected to the other team members with a safety line. When we’re all ready, the wheels on the carabiner will power their way along the cable to the Hercules habitat module airlock. Once we’re there, Keiyho and Duggins will open the outer door with the emergency release.
Keiyho clips on in front of me and attaches his safety line to my waist. “Let’s go,” he says over the comms.
And with that, we’re moving, out of the ship and into space.
My first proper EVA was during my six-month tour on Earth Five. There were only four of us on rotation at any one time, so anytime we needed a trip outside, all of us would be involved. One to do the work, one as backup, one monitoring from the bridge and one supervising from the airlock.
Back then, we were out cleaning solar panels
and replacing a communications aerial.
This is something altogether different.
We’re moving down the line. The Hercules is three hundred metres or so away, I guess. Lights from the Khidr are illuminating a large section of the fuselage, and as I get closer, I notice scars and pockmarks crisscrossing the freighter’s shell.
“Captain,” Le Garre says from the bridge, “we’ve identified a hull breach in the habitat section.”
“How serious is it?”
“Pretty serious. According to the schematic, it’s close to the pilot housing.”
“Okay.”
The information has been broadcast over the team channel. Keiyho and Duggins will know the same thing I do. The others all around me will know too.
We’re close to the hull. Keiyho unclips himself from the cable and grabs the safety rail. He begins working his way along to the outer hatch.
I unclip myself and follow; everyone else follows me.
Keiyho grabs the emergency release handle for the hatch. He braces his feet against the hull and tries to move it.
No luck.
“Wait until we’re all in position,” I say. “Hopefully, we can apply a bit more brute force.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
I move hand over hand toward him. I go past him, securing a line to the safety rail on the other side. The other members of the team move up. I make room for them, and I switch channels to private. “Le Garre, what else can you tell me?” I ask.
“Not a lot, Captain,” she says.
“If power on the ship is out, could there be any survivors?”
“We have some ideas,” Le Garre replies. “If the Hercules was equipped with cryo-freezing tanks, the crew could have taken refuge in those.”
“That’s a stretch. Why would a freighter have that kind of tech on board?”
“Captain, with all the gaps in the registered manifest, anything could be on there.”
I try to imagine a hull breach crisis and eight crew fleeing into a cubic kilometre of the cargo hold. “They wouldn’t have had much time to organise something,” I say. “But storage containers can be pressurised.”