by Allen Stroud
“Yes, sir, although not many are, as there’s very few goods that require an atmosphere during transit.”
“But the crew could pressurise a container?”
“It’s possible.” There’s a scratching noise and some chatter on the bridge that I can’t hear. Le Garre is talking to the others, I guess. A moment later, she’s back. “Captain, Ensign Jacobson suggests an easier method of surviving would be to get into an EVA suit and plug into one of the atmosphere feeds.”
I smile. “Tell the ensign those few hours’ sleep appear to have woken him up. Good work. Can we check these feeds?”
“We can, as soon as Duggins restores local power.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to him about it,” I say. “If we’re going to search the cargo hold, we’ll need to deploy drones. Otherwise we could be here forever.”
“I’ll let the technical team know, Captain.”
“Thank you.”
I turn back to the work at hand. The portable power unit has been cabled up to a mechanised arm magnetised to the hull. It’s being operated by remote control, and as I watch, it grabs and slowly turns the emergency hatch release.
“Looks like we’re in,” Duggins says. There’s a smugness to his words. I can almost hear him smiling.
“We’ll make for the bridge first,” Keiyho says. “We unclip now. Stay in sight of each other. I’ll go first.”
He clambers into the ship. The others begin disassembling the arm and the power unit. I follow Keiyho, stepping into the airlock.
It’s dark in here. I can’t remember ever having explored a spaceship without power. I activate my suit lights and switch my magboots to walk mode. They’ll respond to the different ambulatory pressures of my prosthetic feet. This whole process isn’t how I’d like to work, but for now it’s required, so we’re all moving at the same pace.
“Obstruction ahead,” Keiyho says. I raise my head to see. The corridor looks like it’s crumpled inward. There’s a pile of crates wedged in here too, blocking our way. This is strange. Any crew gear wouldn’t be stowed in an access corridor, and any cargo should be in the hold.
“It might be worth staying here, near the airlock, so we can link up the power unit to a terminal,” Duggins suggests. “That way we can get a diagnostic before we move too far from our exit.”
Keiyho turns toward us. “How long will that take?” he asks.
“About twenty minutes.”
“We’re tanked for three hours. I want to assess the bridge in that time.”
The two visors turn toward me. “We should split the group,” I say. “Duggins, you make a start here and call over the rest of your repair team when you need them. We’ll move on toward the bridge.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Duggins says.
“Team to Khidr, we’re splitting up,” Keiyho announces. “Three heading forward, three staying at the entrance. Prepare the repair team to follow us in.”
“Affirmative, team,” Travers replies.
Tomlins moves past me. He’s a lab tech by specialty, but also has seven years’ experience as a marine, ideal for this kind of situation. I let him and Keiyho take the lead. The two of them move up to the crates and start moving them to one side. The job’s more difficult in zero gravity; you have to have something to brace yourself against.
I wonder…
There’s a knife on my belt. I draw it and clump over to one of the crates. I jam it into one of the catches, and it comes free. I do the same with a second and a third.
“What are you doing?” Keiyho asks.
“They shouldn’t be here,” I explain. “They’ve been put here to block off access from the airlock. I think the freighter crew were expecting visitors before someone blew a hole in their bridge.”
There’s a symbol on the lid. A sort of spiral inset into a circle in black and red. I make a mental note of it as I try to grip the handle with the thick fingers of my suit. Eventually, I get a finger into the gap and pull it open.
“Well, well,” I exclaim. “That’s a surprise.”
Chapter Eight
Shann
Inside the crate are test tubes, hundreds of them. The contents are frozen. I pick one out. My suit lights illuminate something in the centre of it.
“They’re carrying bees,” I say.
Tomlins is beside me. He pulls out another. “I’ve seen these before. They’re miniature cryogenic pods. There’s an electrical current passing through the glass from a microcomputer in the lid. They have portable power units so they can carry on working for weeks, independently of a ship or laboratory. The military uses them to transport cultures.”
I stare at the container. “Why are they transporting bees? What are they for?”
“The large hydroponics gardens on Mars use bees to replicate the plant fertilisation process,” Tomlins explains. “It’s more efficient than any kind of manual or mechanised system.”
“Where could they be taking these? You think they’re setting up a new garden on Ceres?”
“If they are, no one’s talking about it.”
I put the tube back in the crate. “We’ll deal with this later. Let’s get to the bridge.”
Keiyho is still clearing the rest of the debris. Tomlins and I join him to help. Between the three of us, we manage to make a path and move into the access corridor.
Keiyho has a portable screen in his hands. “We turn right at the end and then climb up two floors,” he says. “That should put us on the bridge.”
“What are you expecting to find, Lieutenant Commander?” Tomlins asks. “If that’s where the hull breach occurred, there may not be much to find.”
“We still need to confirm that.”
We move to the end of the corridor and make the turn. The access hatch to the upper decks is sealed. “We’re stuck here,” Keiyho says.
“Only for a little bit,” I say. I activate a comms channel. “Shann to bridge.”
“Bridge receiving, Captain.”
“Deploy drones to the freighter. Send one up to us with a supplementary power unit and another cutter. Nothing too big, just enough for us to get through a door.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Might be quicker to bring the equipment up from the airlock,” Keiyho says.
“It might, but then Duggins would have to stop what he’s doing,” I say. “Both objectives are necessary.”
“Of course, Captain.”
I turn to Tomlins. “If the Hercules was transporting classified hydroponics equipment, what else could we expect to find around here?”
“Seed catalogues, tissue samples, chemical fertilisers, soil, everything to supply a greenhouse, I’d guess,” Tomlins says.
“But why would this be classified?” Keiyho asks. “Expansion to the lab gardens on any facility has to be a good thing that the public would be pleased to hear about.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” I say.
We fall silent, waiting. My thoughts turn to Drake and the investigation. Le Garre can’t make any progress while we need her on the bridge and I’m down here with one of our suspects. I’m watching both of my companions, holding back all the time. If Keiyho is our traitor, he’s giving nothing away.
I look around. The chaos tells me this place has a story to tell. If we can get access to the computer systems, we might be able to obtain the security camera footage. Then we’ll learn more about what happened.
A light appears at the end of the corridor. Instinctively, my hand moves to the low-velocity pistol on my belt, but then I recognise the drone and relax. “Le Garre, transfer control to Keiyho’s screen.”
“Aye, aye,” she replies.
The drone floats past us all toward the hatch. Tomlins steps forward and detaches the portable power unit and the cutter. Both are smaller than the ones we brought up for the ai
rlock.
“Keiyho, before we start applying brute force, can you do a scan of the chamber behind the hatch?” I ask.
“Sure,” Keiyho says. “What am I looking for?”
“There must be a reason this door was blocked,” I reason. “Perhaps this was a second line of defence.”
Tomlins looks around, his suit lights illuminating the walls. “There’s no sign of a fight in here,” he says.
“Maybe they found another way through?”
“Or changed tactics,” I say. “Just in case, run a scan.”
“You think someone survived?”
“I think we need to run a scan.”
Keiyho guides the drone forward. The controls are tricky to manage through the thick gloves of our suits, but he’s done this before. A blue light bathes the wall as the machine moves through its repertoire of detection systems. Then it moves forward and lands on the hatch. The readouts scroll across Keiyho’s screen, and as he reads them, he lets out a low whistle. “Quite a hunch you had there, Captain.”
“What did you find?”
“There’s micro-vibration and some kind of heat source behind there,” Keiyho says. “The vibration is rhythmic. Could be someone banging on the door.”
“Start recording,” I say. “Get the drone to compare with our signal database. Could be Morse or a variation of it.”
“Doing it now,” Keiyho says.
“If there’s someone in there and they’ve got atmo, it’ll be hard to get them out,” Tomlins says.
“We’ll find a way,” I reply.
“I have a translation,” Keiyho announces. “You were right, Morse code. Message reads, ‘HELP ME’. Looks like we have a survivor who needs rescuing.”
“We’ll try,” I say. “We’ll try.”
* * *
An hour later, I’m back on the bridge of the Khidr, staring at the Hercules.
“So far, we’ve searched eight per cent of the cargo hold,” Travers reports. “There’s some signs of disturbance, either from the ship’s listing or the crew breaking into some of the containers. We’ve found no other possible survivors so far.”
“How’s Duggins doing?”
“They’ve wired the power unit into the freighter’s system. They’re trying to isolate the data access from the emergency reboot sequence.”
I nod. This was a problem we’d identified. Once they are activated, the life support systems of a spaceship are hardwired. Shutting them down properly requires a complex sequence of commands. If the Hercules lost power suddenly, then none of those commands will have been executed. That means the ship will try to activate all those systems the minute we hook it up. If that happens, our portable generator will be drained immediately.
To get around the problem, Duggins has been trying to isolate the computers from the rest of the ship’s systems. He’s working on a terminal near the airlock, which he needs to use to patch into the bridge computer that can tell us what was happening in the moments before the freighter lost power.
The whole process would be a lot easier if we could get to the bridge and access those computers directly, but the access corridor is blocked.
So, we have to do things the hard way.
“Captain, drone number six has entered the ship through the breach and reached the bridge,” Travers says. “We’ve got a camera in there.”
I activate the drone’s feed on my screen. Roving torchlight reveals my worst fears. This is the aftermath of violence. The metal walls are rumpled and torn; there are bodies and equipment floating around the ruined space. Once people worked here, performing the kind of jobs we’re doing now, and then in a flash, they were turned into this, so much charred flesh and dismembered limbs. I can only hope no one survived that moment, that for everyone, it was a quick end.
“Captain, we’ve got the photographic analysis of the habitat breach,” Jacobson says. He sounds worried. “You’re not going to like this.”
“What’s the computer conclusion?”
“Impact is consistent with a weapon impact.”
“What?”
“Eighty-six per cent probability it’s a weapon impact, Captain.”
I feel cold. I look down at my screen. Jacobson’s data has arrived, along with the analysis. I can see trajectory speculation, chemical compound residue testing, impact and damage evaluation. The words ‘explosive compound’, ‘targeted pressure breach’, and ‘exterior close quarter battle launch’ are listed underneath the animated diagrams.
What do I—
“Verify that calculation, Ensign,” Travers orders from the pilot’s chair.
“Lieutenant, the computer says—”
“I don’t care, run the numbers again!”
I’m grateful to Travers. A double check gives me a moment to rally, to digest and comprehend what we’re dealing with – the aftermath of a battle, an attack in space.
There’s never been a moment like this in the history of human space exploration. The Cold War of the twentieth century was exactly that. The subsequent geopolitical proxy conflicts that became the death throes of the world’s last two superpowers, America and China, in the late twenty-first century never had battle lines drawn beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Fleet’s ships are equipped with weapons, but all the scenarios in which they’ve been deployed have involved encounters with asteroids, or stray debris. In those situations, we’d fire a guided rocket at range, or in close quarters we’d warm up the ship’s laser. Any situation we’ve dealt with has involved an adversary that doesn’t fire back.
There’s never been an incident like this.
Who do I have up here? Which of them do I trust? Travers is in the pilot seat, Jacobson on navigation/communications; Ensign Chiu, Duggins’s assistant, is in the engineering chair, and Ensign Thakur is on tactical.
These people are my crew. They are relying on me. I have to trust them until they prove untrustworthy.
“Communications?”
“Aye, Captain?”
“Once the verification is complete, I want a priority signal sent to Earth and Mars colony immediately relaying our findings. Package up all the supporting data we have. Engineering?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“How many of the crew are currently aboard the freighter?”
“Eleven, Captain.”
“How many involved in the rescue operation?”
“Five.”
“Inform Keiyho and Duggins of our findings. Tell them to prioritise the rescue. We can always come back for the data. I want an ETA on completion. Tactical?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Start a field scan of our surroundings. I want our eyes outward. If there’s anything out here, I want to know about it before it knows about us.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Ship-wide announcement, we’re going to action stations. Get everyone in position. We’re going to need them.”
People start moving and disappear quickly from the bridge, leaving five of us in our seats. I think about Le Garre. When I got back, she left her seat to get some rest. This alert means she’ll have to come straight back to take a position. Johansson was exhausted too, from completing that report. She’ll have gotten some sleep before the alert will bring her back.
I look down at my screen. There’s a whole selection of drone camera feeds, a view of Duggins’s team at work in the airlock, and Keiyho’s at work at the jammed hatch. The latter is a tough situation to resolve. The person on the other side doesn’t have an EVA suit or any air reserve. That means they can’t cut through the door without depressurising the space, but if they don’t get inside soon, the survivor will be poisoned by the buildup of carbon dioxide. Keiyho’s been trying to rig up a temporary ejection chamber, using one of the fabric corridors we have for ship-to-ship transfer. They’ve just
got it pressurised and have started to cut their way through the hatch.
I’m still thinking about Johansson. I activate communications directly to her quarters. “April, this is Captain Shann, are you there?”
There’s no response.
“Ensign, this is the bridge. Are you—”
Johansson appears on the screen. She fumbles with a headset and settles herself into the chair. “Yes, Captain?”
“April, I need you to go over your audio files again,” I say. “We’ve new evidence that seems to validate your idea that the Hercules was talking to another ship. It looks like they were attacked. If that’s the case, I need a fresh interpretation of the message fragments you picked up and a timeline, please. We may be able to use your work to get a picture of what happened.”
“Okay, Captain, I’ll get on that.”
“Thank you. Stay in your room and alert the bridge if you find anything new.”
“Aye, aye.”
I touch the screen and close the window. I quickly flip through the drone feeds. We have twelve drones deployed; each one is going farther and farther into the cargo hold. The more of it they explore, the less we find. Everything looks undisturbed. That doesn’t make sense. If attacking the Hercules was an act of piracy, surely whoever did it would try to steal things. Why has everything been left where it was?
Drone number five turns a corner, and its lights illuminate something in a corner. I key up the controls immediately and get it to stop. “Travers, bring up the camera on five,” I say.
“Got it, Captain,” Travers says. “I see it. What do you think—”
“That’s an oxygen feed,” I say. “Those pipes are looped into the container behind.” I manipulate the controls, and the drone moves closer, picking out the equipment lying discarded on the floor. “Someone stowed away on the ship.”
“That someone could still be there, watching our people,” Travers adds.
“That’s not an encouraging thought.”