The Dark Colony

by Richard Penn

  ‘Sou, I want a detailed flight plan, that takes us from here to a crater that meets all Tommy’s criteria. We must keep the enemy within the safe zone of the fairing as we go in. Is that possible?

  ‘I’m bringing the deadline forward. Thirty minutes from now, fully worked out with figures. I’ll work with you, Sou.’

  Minah and Stjepan worked as research assistants, calling up data from Dancer’s copy of the Internet, providing coffee, posting up charts as each team made them up. Five minutes early, both teams were ready.

  Sou presented first. ‘Here is our target. It’s near the north pole, well away from the enemy ship. The walls are gravel and small stones, some snow. It’s permanently shaded from the sun, so it hasn’t had ice sublimation and it’s ready to fall if you talk too loud. We can get there without moving the nose more than 3 degrees from optimum, maybe less if we use the lift motors judiciously. Fuel is within range. Main risk is that the enemy has something in orbit as we’re coming in. If that is the case it will probably spot us. We will have to flip for landing, but that can be done in the last ten minutes when we’re under the horizon. Tommy wants the gig and the blob undocked and landing independently, that’s do-able too.’

  Tommy put up a slide which looked like a Bedouin tent, a low curving roof with Dancer underneath it. ‘I propose to loosen the bolts holding the fairing underneath Dancer while we are still in flight, using the blob. In the final ten minutes, I will remove that part, and the gig will launch and insert a post in the upper part so that it has more clearance from the vessel. Both boats will stand clear as Dancer lands, with her nose buried in the cliff. I will then place the previously-lower portion of the fairing over the back of Dancer, while the gig docks in its usual place. I will then fire two missiles on a kilometre high lob, fly the blob back into its dock, and wait while the cliff collapses on top of us. Although the surface is cold, the separation of the fairing will keep vacuum between it and the naked Dancer, so there will be no strain on it or loss of heat. It all pans out. Estimated time uncovered on the ground, two minutes.’

  Sou and Lisa looked over the figures. ‘Why do you undock the gig?’ asked Sou. It doesn’t seem to do much. The blob should be able to insert that post.’

  ‘You’re right, it can,’ said Tommy. ‘If everything goes exactly according to plan. Any fumble or jammed bolt, and there is no safety net. It felt safer to have both boats in play.’

  Tommy thinking about safety, that’s good, thought Lisa. ‘I think it plays better with Sou and I in the boats,’ she said. ‘And I think the blob should stay out during the avalanche, narrow the time window by firing directly. Whoever’s in it can help dig us out.’

  ‘I know construction work better, and you need to be here for the orbit burns,’ said Tommy. ‘With respect. Cap’n, ma’am.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Lisa. ‘Sou and Tommy in the boats, and the blob stays out. That’s the plan on the table, and it’s a go/no go from here. Concerns? Objections? Notes of sanity… Make it so.’

  Within minutes, Tommy was in the blob, and launched. For forty minutes, he buzzed around Dancer like a honeybee, loosening every bolt holding the lower fairing, replacing every other one with a thin wire tie, leaving the others unbolted. Dancer was approaching the asteroid rapidly now, and it seemed a little scary even to Tommy, to be out of the ship as it grew larger and larger in the sky.

  ‘Approaching horizon in three minutes, said Lisa. ‘Prepare to launch the gig.’ The horizon was the point where they expected to be out of sight of the enemy, and could turn Dancer around.

  ‘Aye-aye, captain,’ said Sou from the gig. ‘Ready on your command.’

  As the invisible horizon came up, she gave a countdown, and then ordered the launch. ‘Braking acceleration in four minutes. Detach shroud.’ They were already on it, Tommy cutting the wire shrouds as Sou attached cables to the corners and centre. They wanted to land it without folding it up, if they could.

  ‘Braking acceleration in sixty seconds…’ Three of the ties remained, and Sou was still securing the last of the suspension wires.

  ‘Shroud is free,’ called Tommy as Lisa counted thirty seconds.

  ‘Taking the strain,’ called Sou from the gig, beginning to fall behind Dancer and move a little to the side, dancing to control the ungainly load.

  ‘Ten… five… main engine firing,’ called Lisa, echoed by similar calls from both the boats. Video showed slight buckling of the shroud, and it was flapping about in the exhaust from the gig, making it very hard for Sou to keep the line.

  Two minutes later, most of their speed towards the surface was stopped, and they were over the target crater. They all slowed to a walking pace, the tiny gravity hardly affecting their movement. Dancer pitched up to level and yawed nose-in to the cliff, relying now on the lift motors to finally slow the motion. Lisa did not trust that cliff. Avalanche too soon, and the shroud would not be covered. Sou was right behind her, also pitching up. The suspension rig was so loose that the shroud turned very slowly. She had to hover for twenty seconds before the angle and position was correct and she could let the shroud go, covering Dancer’s top fairing to form a tent, but leaving gaps at the ends so the boats could get in. Dropping the suspension rig, she drove downward into the gap, yelling ‘Clear’ as she approached the dock. Just as her hatch joined with Dancer’s she heard ‘Fire in the hole!’ from Tommy.

  They all watched on their screens as Tommy’s two missiles zipped a short way from the blob to the cliff, and the whole scene was enveloped in snow and ice. The blob was in a snowstorm, with lumps of ice and small rocks raining on the hull.

  ‘Blob! Sitrep!’ called Lisa, from the controls of Dancer. Sou had entered the bridge unharmed.

  There was no response.

  ‘Terpsichorean ship. Identify yourself,’ came a strange voice, on the radio in the equipment rack, rather than their phones.

  29 Rock Three

  ‘Blob from Dancer,’ said Lisa urgently. ‘Do not move, repeat do not move. We’re getting hailed by the enemy and he may be looking for signs of life. We cannot hear you, and I’m hoping that’s a comms problem and you are not in need of help.’

  ‘Sou, you’re deputy engineer. See if you can find out more about that enemy signal. Is it near or far, beamed, anything you can tell. Folks, don’t panic. I saw the end of that video and the blob was absolutely engulfed in snow. If one of us was a rockhound, we’d have anticipated it. It’s quite likely Tommy is fine and either his antenna or ours is damaged.’ I hope, she thought.

  ‘Could be he’s just buried in snow,’ said Sou. ‘Radio waves don’t like snow. The enemy signal is quite low frequency. Suggests it’s a broadcast. Also I’m not getting radar pulses, which I’d expect to see if they knew our location.’

  ‘Fishing expedition?’ Lisa asked. ‘That would—’

  ‘Terpsichorean ship from Long Chuanbo harbour control. We know your location. Identify yourself.’

  ‘That means “Dragon Ship”,’ said Shani. ‘It is probably the name of their ship.’

  ‘OK, Mister Long’, said Lisa, ‘tell me my location, then I’ll believe you know it. Cat from mouse, which hole am I in?’ Naturally she was not broadcasting this. They all looked at the ceiling, as if expecting to see the enemy peering down at them.

  ‘Terpsichorean ship from Long Chuanbo harbour control. Identify yourself or be fired upon. You have sixty seconds to respond.’

  ‘Well, skiderik dig Mister Long, I’d rather die than give you the satisfaction of knowing you’ve got us.’

  There was a countdown, followed by a launch command. If there was a boat hovering over them, they would know in a few seconds. Fiery death did not occur.

  ‘Those boys are shooting at shadows, I think,’ said Lisa. ‘Maybe they saw the flare go off? It’s awfully small, though. Anyway. I don’t feel dead, any of you?’

  ‘But if they shot down the flare, we still haven’t told the world,’ said Minah. Can we try again?’

  ‘I’
d hate to try and replicate Tommy’s work,’ said Sou. ‘Priority is to find him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Belay that order to be still, Tommy. We don’t think they are in the vicinity. If there is some way to get to us, please use it. We are sending a search party as soon as we can. Shani, Stjepan, suit up and get out there, please. He should be about fifty metres away, fifteen degrees left from the stretcher lock.’

  The gig dock was right next to the stretcher airlock, and Shani fetched a suit from there. Stjepan was getting into the bright green medic suit, testing systems. They found shovels among the tools by the lock. Without a stretcher they were both able to squeeze into the airlock together, and they cycled through.

  ‘Captain from Medic,’ said Stjepan, ‘Send the stretcher through after us please. We may need it.’

  ‘Medic, will do. Minah, see to that. Sou, tune up that equipment and see if there is anything which will help us find him.’

  They were seeing the video from the shoulder cams of both Stjepan and Shani now. ‘Shani,’ said Lisa, ‘switch your camera to IR, please.’ The chaotic picture of snow flying off their shovels became green instead of white.

  Stjepan broke through the bank of snow into the open crater, Shani right behind him. They both scanned around the sky looking for enemies before concentrating on the cliff wall to their left. The whole scene was white, with the cliff face slumped across their makeshift shelter. All of the structure was covered. On the other side of the crater, a drift had built up, presumably thrown up as the avalanche hit the opposing cliff. Tommy had to be under that. They bounce-walked over, looking from different angles to try to see the blob. There was a furrow about the width of the boat, near the right side of the mound, so they decided to start there. In the low gravity, shovelling was easy, but it took time.

  ‘Here!’ shouted Shani, as her shovel struck something solid. Once they spotted the window, they concentrated their efforts on clearing it.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Stjepan, pointing his helmet light through the glass. ‘He is unconscious, I see him breathing, no sign of cyanosis. There is pressure in the boat. What is the mass of this boat?’

  ‘Two hundred kilos,’ said Lisa, ‘possibly twenty more with fuel. What do you intend?’

  ‘The two of us should be able to carry it to its dock. I see there is a clear tunnel in the snow there. It will be better to get him there without extracting him from the boat. With your permission, captain.’ A medic on duty could give orders, but given time it was courteous to make them requests.

  ‘Go ahead, medic,’ said Lisa. Shani was still shovelling, clearing the snow from around the blob. ‘Sou, suit up and assist.’

  Shani and Stjepan lifted the boat clear of the ground, taking care not to roll it, but it was difficult to get traction to move it along. It only weighed a couple of kilos in the weak gravity, but it still had all its inertia. Seeing the problem, Sou attached a rope to the blob dock and ran it over to the boat, tying it to the front. From there it was as simple as moving cargo in the hold.

  ‘Medic, let me take over and you cycle inside,’ said Sou.

  Stjepan climbed in to the lock and quickly ran a sample of the snow from the suit through the test gear. There was always the possibility that surface snow or dust contained toxins. ‘Tox scan on surface snow is clear, Captain,’ he reported.

  ‘Roger that, Medic.’

  By the time Sou and Shani had pushed the blob into its docking port, Stjepan had clambered the length of Dancer to get to his patient, towing his padded medical bag behind him and leaving a trail of melted snow.

  ‘Captain from Medic. Patient is unconscious due to a blow to the head. There appears to be no skull fracture, but assessment of other injuries is difficult in an unresponsive patient. I intend to keep him steady here and wait for up to an hour before moving him. With your permission.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Lisa. She relaxed a little, and began studying frames from the video of the crater, to see how they might look from space. Shani cycled back in through the airlock, but Lisa asked Sou to stand by. She sent her around with the shovel, covering raw parts with fresh snow, and building drifts in the entrances to their steel tent, to make the crater look as natural as possible. If the enemy bothered to look, they would know there had been a landslide, but that must happen all the time. Solid ice explodes when hit by strong sunlight, that is why comets outgas when they near the sun.

  They heard low moans from the end of the habitat, and Stjepan reported again. ‘The patient is now conscious and appears to be free of spinal injury. Please bring up the stretcher and I will move him to sickbay.’ Shani had already brought the stretcher in, and they nudged Tommy through the hatch into it, strapping him down and negotiating all the hatches to the other end of Dancer.

  ‘Sou, inspect the blob for damage, then come inside. Medic, prognosis, please.’

  ‘All signs are good. I have given him mild pain medication for the headache, and he has a sprain to his right wrist, but apart from that he should be fine.’ Lisa suppressed a comment about wanking, which Shani seemed to pick up telepathically. Sou came inside, and the four women settled around the bridge. Sou reported that the blob appeared undamaged.

  ‘Well folks,’ she said, leaving the phones on so the men could hear. ‘That was the easy part, and we got off pretty lightly. I’m convinced our Long Chuanbo friend doesn’t know where we are. We are alive, QED. But I propose to lay low until the morning, in case they are on a search pattern. Let’s have some dinner, and think about what’s next. Sou, take the watch. Minah, cook please. And let’s have some more of that port.’

  Sleeping arrangements were mixed up that night, with Tommy hooked up to the sickbay equipment, but by breakfast the next morning he was up and about, and they all gathered to plan the next step.

  ‘We have some more toys that might be relevant,’ said Tommy, looking a little dazed still. He reached into the equipment shelves and returned with a small flat box, the sort you might keep a set of darts in. From it, he extracted a delicate little thing like a spider the size of a tea plate, and four tiny things that looked like flies. They were all familiar with real flies from working the ‘dirty end’ of the farming tunnels, but did not expect to see them being handled with such reverence.

  ‘These,’ said Tommy, ‘are bugs. Not the type that suck up germs and spread them round the colony, but the type that listen to your conversations.’ He pressed a button on the box, and the screen on the wall showed the view from the surface of the table. A few more buttons, and a bug was flying around, showing views of their faces. ‘They are capable of some autonomous action. Bug one hide.’ The bug flew to the top of one of the equipment cabinets, and looked out over the edge. ‘Bugs find heat,’ and they all moved toward the stove, hovering over the coffee pot. ‘Bug one come here,’ and it hovered in front of his face. But their best trick is, they can hear, as well. The sound of his voice came loud over the phones. ‘Bugs go home,’ and they all went back to the box.

  ‘And this,’ said Tommy pointing to the spider, ‘is a drone. I won’t fire it up in here, it’s mostly meant to be used in space. It works like those toy quad-copters we had as kids, but in low gravity, it can travel around in vacuum. As you can see, it’s pretty inconspicuous, more so than an inflatable cat anyway. Range on the bugs is only tens of metres free flight, so we need to get them into a person’s hair or clothes. Range on the spider is 500 metres. Spider has electromagnet feet, can attach to anything steel.’

  ‘Our good friends in the military lent us these. They said they wanted them back if we weren’t dead.’

  ‘Engineering officer Thomas Hansen, I perceive that you are in possession of yet another plan,’ said Lisa.

  ‘Pretty simple one, yes,’ said Tommy. ‘Fly the blob near the Long ship, fly the spider from it to an airlock. Wait for it to cycle, then fly the bugs in, have them give us a grand tour. Bob is, as they say on Brit night, your uncle.’ Brit night at the station was Friday, with “fish” and ch
ips.

  ‘Range on the control gear?’ asked Lisa.

  ‘A thousand metres in free space,’ said Tommy, ‘losing about a hundred for every steel bulkhead.’

  ‘So if it’s taken out in the boat it needs to be controlled from there?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Tommy. ‘It can be remoted over the phone system if needs be. I’m not sure what you have in mind.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Lisa, ‘nor am I. What about lifetime. They have batteries, or what?’

  ‘Very small batteries, good for about five minutes in the dark. But they can run on ordinary room light. They have photocells in their wings. Not the spider of course, it runs out of propellant after a while. Flying lifetime depends on gravity. Maybe five minutes in hover, here. On the ground, it can run off room-light, too.’

  ‘And their radios? Are they detectable?’

  ‘Same chips as our phones, undetectable without serious gear.’

  ‘Can they talk, then?’ asked Lisa. ‘That could be important.’

  ‘The flies can’t, they’re just too small. The spider can.’

  ‘That is awesome. Thank you feds! And thank you too, Tommy.’

  ‘Captain,’ said Sou, ‘I’m concerned about using the blob. Thinking through our contact from the enemy yesterday, the most likely thing is that they picked up a smudgy echo from the blob while we were on approach, while it was dancing about ripping our shroud off. They must have got a vague idea we were coming in without being able to get a fix. Hence the bluff.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Lisa. ‘Tommy, you were going to make a new shroud for the gig out of our tent. Is there enough material left for that?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Tommy. ‘The whole underside is redundant now we’ve landed. I can get cutting now, if you’d like.’

  ‘Not with that wrist, Tommy,’ said Stjepan.