by Brian Smith
“Most, if not all, Crandall Foundation–affiliated companies have been kinetically targeted and destroyed. Our own company offices are effectively gone, and we’re trying to determine whether it’s all somehow related to the current revolution. I’m going to be tied up down here for another day or so on Crandall Foundation business. I want you to assume command for now and boost for Earth. Deliver the payload and the people we already have loaded for Federov Propulsion, and then park Thuvia over Luna and wait for me. I’ll get Banth One back to you soonest, but I need her for now. If I can raise ship soon enough to manage a rendezvous before you get too far, I’ll make contact and have you cut thrust so we can catch you. If not, we’ll sort it out later. Capiche?”
“I don’t like this, captain. You can’t fly from here to Earth in Banth One.”
“I hear you, but don’t worry about that right now. You have your orders, Gina. Priority one is keeping the ship and crew safe: make that the basis of all your decisions.”
“Okay, captain. We’ll get going, then. Stay safe down there!”
“You stay safe up there! See you soon.” He cut the link.
Half an hour later, Ashburn was back in the rolligon with Ayers, Hutton, and Takeshi, and the four of them were rolling almost due west, away from Lone Star Habitat. It didn’t take long for them to pass beyond visual range of anyone else.
Soon enough, they were alone on the barren Mars-scape. Hutton was driving; her temper had calmed considerably by the time Ashburn returned, and she just seemed to be in pain, grasping occasionally at her hip and gritting her teeth as she manually navigated a vehicle that Ayers had effectively severed from all external network connections. With any luck, they were at least invisible to the Marsnet.
Just behind the two front seats, Ayers settled in across from Ashburn and handed him a sealed bulb of scalding-hot, nuclear-strength black coffee. Ashburn took a sip and closed his eyes for a moment in unabashed pleasure.
“Now that’s a cup of joe!” he complimented her.
Ayers grinned. “Finally, someone who appreciates it! Now,” she went on. “Let’s start from the very beginning. If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like you to just relax and tell me the story of your involvement in all this. It’s not an interrogation. There are just pieces of the puzzle we’re all trying to put together and solve. Between your knowledge and ours, maybe we can finally start unraveling this thing.”
Ashburn nodded, took another slug of coffee, and started from day one.
Chapter 17
December 2093 (Terran Calendar)
Kasei Echigo (Kusaka Family Freehold)
Isara Valles Region, Mars
“That ship doesn’t look like it can go from here to Earth,” Cheryl Ayers remarked to Mike Ashburn as their rolligon approached Kasei Echigo.
Ashburn was looking intently through the viewport, using the magnification function in his denetworked oculars to zoom in on Banth One. To his relief, she was intact and not strewn about in pieces on the Martian surface. In fact, there was nobody outside at all, even though it was midmorning and the sun was up. He guessed that whatever external work Kusaka had needed to complete must already be done.
“Normally, she couldn’t,” Ashburn answered. I’ve been running some keplers on the drive back, based on Kusaka’s modifications. If they work as advertised, I could fly us from here directly to Earth in about twenty-one hours, based on the planets’ currently being about 1.8 AU apart, using an acceleration of 20-g.”
“Bullshit. Sir,” Ayers grinned, rubbing a dirty hand through her greasy, sweat-matted hair.
“I know, it sounds nuts, doesn’t it?” Ashburn grinned back. Over the past two days, the two of them had done a lot of talking and each had decided the other was okay. “It will take Thuvia just under a week to make the same trip, boosting at Martian gravity. By the way, quit calling me ‘sir.’ I’m still a civilian.”
Ayers chuckled. “For a few more hours, anyway. As soon as we get back on the network, I’ll bet you a month’s pay your recall to active duty is waiting in your message queue.”
“No bet. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if the ship can go even faster than that, because we won’t do it. I wouldn’t even do the twenty-one-hour version of the trip at this point.”
“Why not?”
“Safety. It’s untried technology. I can’t afford to let a range-limited spaceplane get going so fast that she can’t slow back down without the modification. For example: say the modifications work and we pull a 20-g burn for Earth and then the whole thing craps out at midpoint turnover. After ten hours at 20-g, we’re moving at over 7,000 kilometers per second. That’s better than two percent of the speed of light—far, far faster than Banth One can ever go in her stock configuration. She normally doesn’t have the fuel capacity to burn long enough to get going even a fraction of that speed. If she can’t accelerate to that speed normally, she can’t decelerate from it, either. ’Kay?
“Now, say we’ve let ourselves get going that fast, and now we have a problem and can’t get the modifications working again—now I can decelerate at maybe 2-g, tops, without killing Jen and Shiguro after several hours. Or say the inertial damping still works but I lose just the drive efficiency from the mass-reduction field. At that point I have a choice: burn harder with the dampers and run the tanks dry in a few hours, or go easy without them and run dry in half a day or so. Either way, the result is the same when we run out of deuterium and the torch dies: we would still blow past Earth on a free-fall trajectory into deep space, moving faster than anyone would ever have a chance of recovering us before we ran out of air and died.”
Ayers shook her head. “You lost me right after the word ‘safety.’ So if this ship can’t safely get us to Earth, where are we taking her? You said you sent Thuvia ahead, right?”
“Right,” Ashburn replied. “We’re going to catch her and rendezvous, probably inside of about six to eight hours. It depends on how fast we can get airborne.”
“And these modifications your friend is making—they come from some of the same the data we found on the cores?”
Ashburn shrugged. “Earlier versions of it, I’m guessing. I’m not an engineer on the level of Bill Campbell or my friend Shiguro. . . . I’m not an engineer at all, really. My guess is that Campbell’s AI supercomputer helped them get this far. At least that’s what Shiguro seems to think—he puzzled over that for a long time, until Campbell finally fessed up about the computer. As for the rest, bigger brains than mine are going to have to study the contents of those cores. Some of it I sort of grasp. The rest would be the same as if I were Benjamin Franklin and you handed me a pair of snoopers to figure out.”
“You and me both,” Ayers agreed.
She’d spent a good portion of the return trip poring over the data partitions inside the cores. They’d reached the site where they were buried, unearthed them, and brought them back here without any complications or interference. There was far too much on them to be looked at in detail in the course of half a day. The contents of those data partitions would require months, perhaps years, of study by specialists in many fields. The one thing most abundantly clear was that the four data cores were currently the most valuable possessions held by the human race: they contained a windfall of technological and scientific information unparalleled since mankind had discovered fire and invented the wheel. Among the information were complete schematics on not just the Omnisynths themselves, but on the factories that produced them, and the components used in their makeup, such as the Q-gel, and in turn how that was made.
Hutton looked back at them from the driver’s seat. “Once we get going, I’d like a look at those two Omnisynths you’ve got bagged up aboard your spaceplane,” she said.
“You’ll have plenty of time,” Ashburn assured her.
The entire Kusaka clan was waiting for them when they arrived, along with Jen Hansen and Carter Drayson. While the cores were being loaded and secured aboard Banth One, Hutton took Drayson aside for a
brief one-on-one interview. They returned about the same time that Ashburn and Hansen were thanking the Kusakas for their hospitality; Hanako and her mother provided one last round of fresh food and bottles of tea for their trip to rendezvous with Thuvia, and offered to service the Aberdeen rolligon. Takeshi would be driving it back to Nuevo Rio, where he would report a successful outcome of this endeavor to Colin Harper.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” Ashburn asked when Hutton and Drayson returned. “Is he under arrest, or what?” He was only half joking.
“Change of plans. I’m remanding him to navy custody for the time being, Captain Ashburn. Chief Warrant Officer Ayers will be responsible for him until your recall notice appears, at which point you’ll be the ranking officer, responsible for him if he hasn’t already been handed over to COMTHIRDFLT at Armstrong Station. Once he’s there, he can lawyer up and the powers that be can decide how to handle him. By his own admission, he has a lot to discuss with the TOA authorities.”
Ayers frowned slightly. “I thought you were coming with us.”
“I planned to,” Hutton said, “but I can’t just run offplanet now. I took off after you before the dust from that drone strike had even settled, and it hasn’t been sitting well with me. My office in New A is desperately short staffed now, and most of my colleagues are dead. I talked to Rico about riding back with him. He’s going to drop me at Lone Star, and I’ll make my way from there back to New A. The dusters have done a number on us: U.S. and TOA authorities are very thin on the ground right now, and we saw what a mess things were at Lone Star. You’re going to have to look over those dismembered synths without me and get the pieces and parts back to our people for the proper analysis. Tell ’em we need the Marines up here when you get back to Luna, okay?”
“I’ll do it,” Ayers replied, glad that she was wearing her helmet and nobody could see the tears welling in her eyes. After what the two women had seen and been through, nobody understood better than she did that her friend was headed straight back into danger.
Hutton turned to Ashburn. “This isn’t a joke, captain—I’m dead serious about Drayson, and it’s all getting officially logged the moment I’m back on the network. You let him just walk off your ship at Earth or Luna, and it’s going to be your ass that needs to lawyer up. Understood?”
“The one thing I never have is any problem understanding you,” Ashburn replied dryly. He turned to Drayson and Ayers. “All aboard.”
“Go ahead,” Ayers said to Drayson. “I’m right behind you.” She took Hutton’s elbow and led her aside, killing her suit radio and pressing her helmet against her friend’s so that they could speak privately. “I’m going to look you up when this is all over! We’re going to go somewhere tropical and get really hammered! Keep your head down, kid!”
Hutton’s demeanor softened once she was done with Ashburn and Drayson. She looked uncertain, young, and scared—not at all like the tiger she’d been for the past two days. “Cheryl, I meant to talk to you about Jim Ford, and about the James . . .”
Through her tears Ayers forced a smile. “I’m sure they’re fine! They were deployed in the belt when the strike happened. I’m sure he’s worried sick about you!”
“Let him know I’m okay, will you? God knows what he might have heard by now!”
“I’ll make it a priority. I promise,” Ayers replied. “I owe you my life, you know. If you hadn’t pressed for it—if your office hadn’t asked for me—I’d be dead!”
Hutton shook her head under her helmet. “There’s no way to know stuff like that! It just happened the way it did, thank God! You saved my life the night before last. You take care of yourself, too, okay?”
The two women tried to hug one another in their exosuits; it was clumsy and awkward, but the emotions were real. Then Hutton turned and limped back toward the rolligon. Ayers watched her for a few moments and then switched her radios back on, before heading for Banth One’s main airlock.
***
Ashburn found Kusaka back in the engineering bay, seated on the deck and scrolling at a virtual display that only he could see in his oculars. Kusaka sensed movement behind him and, when he saw it was his friend, turned and grinned. “How did it go?” he asked. “What happened?”
“I’ll bring you up to speed once we’re underway,” Ashburn replied. “Please tell me this is going to work, because I sent Thuvia ahead yesterday. We can’t catch her now without your mods.”
“We don’t need to catch her,” Kusaka replied. “We can beat her to Earth by five days.”
“We can, but we won’t—I’ll explain my reasoning later. So you’ve got it all up and running?”
“Hai. I’m just reviewing the coding changes I made to her software, but the work is done. Once the components are built, the actual modification is simpler than it has any right to be. I set her wingbody to its hypersonic cruise configuration and locked it there before placing the field projectors—based on my computations, that was the best configuration.”
Ashburn was silent for a moment and then nodded. Hansen had come up behind him, and she was grinning from ear to ear. “What do you think, Jen?” he asked. “Will she fly, or blow up?”
Hansen shrugged, looking extremely confident about the whole prospect. “We didn’t really dig into anything, captain—we just placed some gadgets around the exterior and interior of the ship and wired them to the power systems. And Mr. Kusaka here has been coding like a mad fiend overnight. We didn’t tinker with the torch or the hybrid motors at all. . . . Do we have an extra passenger?”
“We do. I’ll introduce everyone once we’re on our way. Anything else you need to do, tovarich?”
“No, sir, Mike-san. We’re ready to give it a try.”
“Need to take five to say goodbye to your family?”
“I already did. Let’s go.”
“Okay, then,” Ashburn sighed. Am I the only one worried? he fretted as they took their places. He made sure Ayers and Drayson were comfortably strapped into their passenger seats in the cabin. Drayson had already taken the liberty of pouring himself a stiff scotch from the ship’s stores—he looked like he needed it. Ayers asked if “they had any coffee on this thing”; Ashburn grinned and told her he’d take care of it shortly.
On the flight deck, he slid into his familiar place behind the controls, networked his oculars to the ship, and brought up the checklists. Kusaka slid into the copilot’s seat beside him, far more intimate with the systems than ever before, after a day and a half of doing modifications. When the electronic checklist appeared in Ashburn’s AR display, he saw that a few line items had been added in various places, the text highlighted in gold rather than the standard cyan. He normally ran through the checklists with a speed born of overfamiliarity. This time he went slowly, pausing for a beat between each step and feeling cautiously tense about the whole process.
Finally, with systems powered up and the hybrid engines online, he came to the first gold-highlighted item on the checklist. “Inertial dampers—as required,” he read. He glanced at Kusaka, who nodded eagerly. “On,” Ashburn commanded, completing the line item. The ship’s computer switched on the system. In Ashburn’s AR display and on the physical console, the newly added synoptic for the inertial damping system changed from white to green. Ashburn didn’t feel a thing, and he looked at Kusaka again.
“Keep going,” his friend prompted him gently.
“Mass reduction field—as required,” Ashburn read. “On,” he added. Another synoptic showed a line diagram of Banth One, which was now enveloped in a translucent green aura. His power monitor showed an increase in consumption, and two digital displays showed him the spaceplane’s actual mass, versus its apparent mass relative to the outside universe. As advertised, apparent mass was reduced by three orders of magnitude. Again, he physically felt nothing—he guessed it was because they’d switched the dampers on first. “What if we’d done those two steps in reverse order?” he asked.
Kusaka shrugged. “It’d f
eel the same.”
“Aren’t we violating the mass-conservation principle, somehow? It seems like we are.”
“You don’t actually mass any less than you did before. This is an electrogravitic-field effect. Do you want a Tsong-physics lesson, or do you want to fly your ship?”
“Sorry,” Ashburn replied sheepishly. He finished up the checklists and got to the point where they were ready to lift off. “Any final issues I need to know about?” Ashburn asked before taking the plunge.
“Just remember that your drive efficiency is now a thousand times better than it was, relatively speaking. Even with just the rocket hybrids, this ship will accelerate like nothing you’ve ever experienced. The catch is that you won’t feel the acceleration at all—if you don’t monitor your acceleration and velocity carefully, you may not realize how fast things are happening. In space it won’t matter so much. However, until we break atmo, be careful. Accelerate too fast and we’ll melt ourselves.”
“Got it,” Ashburn replied. He keyed the crew circuit. “Hey, Jen—you all set back there?”
“Ready to go, captain. Cabin secure.”
Ashburn slapped the acceleration alarm, giving them a burst in the back. “Attention, crew and passengers, this is the pilot. Stand by for upthrust.” He glanced over and noticed Kusaka grinning at him. “What?” he added privately.
“The acceleration alarm. It’s not necessary. Nobody is going to even know we’re moving unless they access an imager to look outside.”
Ashburn laughed at himself, dispelling some of his own tension. “Jeez, tovarich—you’re asking me to chuck an entire professional lifetime’s worth of procedure and habit! All right, let’s make history. Ready?”
“Be-e-e-e-en ready!” Kusaka drawled in a drawn-out singsong.
Ashburn took one last breath, blew it out, and raised ship. He immediately sensed that something was wrong: nothing was happening! It was only after a moment that he realized his inner-ear sense of motion detection was betraying him. Inside the ship, they all sat in a comfortable Martian-g field. Outside, Banth One was going straight up in her VTOL mode, accelerating fast.