by Devin Hanson
The
Enceladus
Incident
The Enceladus Incident is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Devin Hanson
All Rights Reserved.
Sarah Aveline leaned against the spaceship’s bulkhead and looked upward toward the orb of Saturn. She had to crane her neck to see the planet. There were better views out of the USS Carbuncle’s forward viewports on the command deck, but that was the pilot’s domain, and he was crotchety about nonessential personnel invading his cabin while on landing maneuvers.
Motion behind her drew Sarah’s attention reluctantly from the gas giant, and she turned around. One of the passengers, a middle-aged man with the greasy assurance of a lawyer, stopped at the window to look over her shoulder. He had blonde hair and the over-styled coiffure of a big-city businessman. That, along with his liberal cologne, marked him as a civilian.
“Is this your first time in Saturn space?” he asked. There was a condescending crook to his lips and the leer of a man who saw only a woman, not a trained crewmember.
“I’ve only recently been assigned to the Carbuncle,” Sarah replied, avoiding his question. There wasn’t much call to go out past Jupiter. Only the corporations, spurred by their avaricious expansionism, had any outposts beyond Jovian space.
He nodded and turned away, already dismissing her. Sarah watched him go forward, unable to summon up more than a casual dislike of the man. The Carbuncle was a shuttle and a search and rescue vehicle with a nearly constant turnover of passengers. If she got bent out of shape from contact with every low-brow scuzz they took on board, she’d never get anything done.
The stars swung about outside the window as the pilot, Alec Lacey, brought their trajectory around for the braking burn. Sarah had a moment of vertigo as Saturn went by. The gas giant was so big her mind insisted it was ground and expected to fall toward it. She closed her eyes and focused on her inner ear until the vertigo passed.
She opened her eyes. Saturn was gone, replaced by distant Titan, a pale orange disk. From this distance, it looked about half the size of Earth’s moon. Her reflection in the window stared back at her: small nose, brown hair pulled back in a severe pony tail, blue eyes set in an oval face. She was tall by space travel standards, at nearly five and a half feet. She was lucky, in a way. High exam scores in the academy offset her size and earned her a place on space-going vessels.
Sarah felt a vibration run through the ship as the main engine kicked on. The ship’s intercom clicked open and the captain’s voice came through. “This is Captain Alastair. Please report to the second deck for briefing.”
With a last glance out the window at Titan, Sarah made her way down a deck. The gym was the largest open space on the Carbuncle, the only place with enough room to have all the crew and passengers come together at once.
As she traveled closer to the center of the Carbuncle’s spinning habitat, gravity lessened until her steps turned into gliding leaps. The Carbuncle was an older ship, and her artificial gravity generators were temperamental at best. More often than not they were disabled awaiting repairs, leaving the crew to rely on centrifugal gravity. She made it to the gym early and found a spot in the back next to the storage cabinets where she could watch the people trickling in.
The crew of the United Space Service Carbuncle arrived intermingled with the civilian passengers. The civilians were immediately recognizable as they bumbled their way along in the low gravity. It took months of living in space before switching between null G and standard became second nature.
Captain Alastair arrived last. He was a compact man, an inch or so taller than Sarah. Dark hair showed gray at his temples, but he seemed to have the combined energy of two younger men, wound down tight and closely contained. His brown eyes flicked around the room in a quick headcount then he held up a hand for silence.
“There isn’t much time before the Carbuncle touches down,” he said without preamble, “and most of you know the score already, so I’m going to make this quick. Essence Microsystems Corporation operates a surface-side station on Enceladus. One week ago, communications with the station were lost. EMC chartered the Carbuncle for a search and discovery operation. Our objectives are to restore functionality to the station, or, failing that, to determine what resources would be required to do so.”
The man Sarah had run into earlier raised his hand and cleared his throat. “Captain, if I may–”
“You may not, Mr. Eckhart,” Alastair said firmly. “This is my ship, my crew, and we’re doing this my way.”
The man lowered his hand and turned away. Sarah caught a look at the disdainful sneer on the man’s face before he schooled his features to impassivity.
“I’ve drawn up a landing party. I will be going, along with the EMC personnel and select crew. Mr. Eckhart is the leading EMC representative. Introduce your team, if you would.”
Eckhart offered the captain a sardonic bow. “I am Walter Eckhart. The Enceladus Refinement Plant and Observatory is my responsibility. With me are my engineers, Jaden Ulrich and Vivian Ulrich.” The couple stood up from where they were sitting next to Sarah and waved. “Last is my systems specialist, Anton Gervais.” Anton was a squat man, just shy of obese, with round glasses perched on his beak of a nose. The lenses of his glasses were so strong they distorted his eyes into watery pits. He waved nervously and scratched at a patch of dry skin under his chin.
“Thank you, Mr. Eckhart,” Alastair said. “Among my crew will be Chief Pascal Ordontes, Dr. Lin Chow, and Petty Officer Sarah Aveline.”
Sarah waved when the captain called her name and smiled to hide the sinking feeling in her stomach. She had hoped to be passed up on this mission. What did she know about repairing space stations? Still, there wasn’t any use complaining about it. Captain Alastair rarely did anything without purpose.
Walter Eckhart stood up with a boardroom smile fixed on his face. From behind, Sarah saw his back was stiff with affronted dignity. “Captain Alastair, our contract with the USS protects our intellectual rights. We had no arrangement for your crew to be accompanying us onto the station. Frankly, it isn’t necessary.”
“I understand that, Mr. Eckhart, and my crew will respect your privacy. However, while you are aboard my ship, and while your survival is reliant upon my crew, you are under my command. As such, under the codes of the USS, it is my call to bring whom I wish.”
“Perhaps, but there are too many eyes,” Eckhart protested. “The security of our research depends on secrecy.”
“That’s the whole point,” Pascal rumbled. Pascal was a rarity in space. Where mass was at a premium, there weren’t many who were six foot four and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. “We need more eyes.”
Eckhart turned at the sound of Pascal’s deep voice and scowled. Pascal returned his gaze calmly and gradually the company man’s glare wilted. “Fine,” he growled, but the threatening look he swept over the Carbuncle’s crew lacked his earlier confident fire.
The intercom chimed and Lacey’s voice came through. “We have matched Enceladus’ rotation, Captain. I have visuals on the station and a clear landing beacon.”
Captain Alastair raised an eyebrow, his lips pursed in thought. “Thank you, Lacey. Mr. Eckhart, please come with me to the command deck. I would like your insight on our approach. Everyone else, prepare for egress.”
Sarah caught up with Pascal on the way to the landing bay and fell into step beside the towering man. Pascal moved with a careful economy. The passages and environment on board the Carbuncle wer
e designed for smaller people, and he had to take care lest he break something.
“Why me, Chief?” she asked.
Pascal looked down at her, his face expressionless but his eyes hinting at the worry contained within. “It stinks. EMC isn’t being clean with their dealings. We need brains down there, so you’re it.”
“Finally, someone who wants me for my body,” Sarah grinned.
Pascal smirked. “EMC received a lot of radio traffic from their station before it went silent, but they’re not sharing. Something went wrong and the captain doesn’t want us walking into their mistakes without being prepared.”
They reached the landing bay, with its rows of equipment lockers. Dr. Chow was already there. The petite Chinese woman had pinned back her shoulder-length black hair and wore simple fatigues. She had the ageless look some Asian women were blessed with and could pass for thirty or sixty based on the way she wore her hair.
Sarah set out her space suit and started going through the checks. A hundred years of civilian space travel after space elevators had made it cheap to escape Earth’s gravity well had evolved the bulky suits of the early twenty-first century and slimmed them down considerably.
She had finished her inspection and was starting to don the suit when the captain joined them and wordlessly started going through his own checklist. Sarah was still getting into her suit when the EMC crew walked into the bay. She couldn’t help but eye them with suspicion after the chief’s warning. What were they hiding?
The corporate crew unpacked their suits from a crate and climbed into them. Sarah’s worry faded as she watched with envy. The civilian suits were as far evolved above the USS standard issue as a sports car was above a horse-drawn buggy. They were slick and nearly skin-tight, with low-profile bulges where life support hardware resided.
Sarah fit her helmet on and watched the internal display light up. A last check of oxygen and power levels, and she flicked a thumbs-up gesture to Pascal.
She heard the intercom squeal on, and Lacey’s voice came through, muffled by her helmet. “Touchdown in two minutes. Approach is green, Captain.”
Almost immediately, Sarah felt the Carbuncle surge under the braking force of landing jets. The atmosphere of Enceladus was essentially nonexistent, but there was enough to make the ship shake, and she staggered. Pascal caught her elbow and steadied her, and then suddenly the turbulence was gone. For the space of a long breath, everything was still. Then the Carbuncle touched down with a jolt.
“Welcome to Enceladus,” Lacey said over the intercom. “External temperature is negative two hundred Celsius. I hope you’ve brought warm socks.”
“Suit check,” Captain Alastair requested. “Call them in, please.”
“All green, Captain,” Pascal reported.
“Green here,” Sarah said.
Dr. Chow reported her suit as ready, and then there was a confused tangle as the EMC crew chimed in, speaking on top of each other and confirming their readiness.
“Acknowledged. Starting bay depressurization,” Alastair said and keyed in the sequence on his suit computer.
Immediately, Sarah felt her suit pull away from her skin. With a quiet hum, the onboard life support systems kicked online, and she focused on the readouts until she was certain there were no problems.
“Ninety-eight percent vacuum,” Lacey reported a minute later. His voice came from inside Sarah’s helmet now, over the closed circuit.
“Opening the doors,” Alastair announced.
The doors to the bay cracked open and the air fogged as lingering trace moisture froze instantly. Sarah took an unconscious step forward. This was why she had joined the USS in the first place – to set foot on remote worlds and explore the edges of known space.
Enceladus was all shades of white and gray. Where they stood a few degrees from the south pole, the ice was flat and featureless. Saturn hung half over the horizon, with the foggy band of the E ring making a stripe across the sky. Stars blazed overhead, a million gleaming points that looked as crisp as laser light. A hundred yards away, the surface installation bulked: a few interlinked pressure domes.
“We will walk from here,” Alastair said.
“Don’t you have a surface vehicle?” Eckhart complained.
“We do, but it will be faster to walk than to prep it,” Alastair replied. “Besides, it would take an hour to ferry everyone across two at a time. I want this mission to be done as soon as possible.”
One of the EMC crew muttered something about USS surplus and got a muffled snort of amusement. Sarah traded a look with Pascal and rolled her eyes. Leave it to the corporates to complain about USS gear. It was corporate taxes that paid for the majority of the Service’s expenses. If they wanted better equipment, then maybe they should pay for it rather than trying to find ways to duck their taxes.
“That’s enough,” Alastair cut in. “It’s only a hundred yards.”
Never one to lead from the rear, the captain walked down the extended ramp and stepped out onto the ice. His boots crushed through an inch of blown ice dust and left clear imprints behind. Sarah followed eagerly. This was her first landfall beyond Jovian space and a thrill ran up her spine as she followed after the captain. The ice dust crunched beneath her boots with every step and the surface beneath felt hard as stone.
As they grew closer to the domes, they crossed over the crisscrossing track marks of the station’s vehicles. The installation wasn’t a new one, and some of the tracks were older than Sarah was, yet they still maintained a perfect, crisp edge.
Enceladus was cold. After a certain point, temperatures dropped past the human scale and into an increasingly narrow window of survivability. At negative two hundred Celsius, that window was down to seconds. Without her suit, Sarah would freeze solid before her body tipped over and hit the ground. Her suit hummed as it worked to keep up with the chilling temperature. Despite the suit’s efforts, she could feel the cold seeping through the soles of her feet.
They reached the domes after five minutes of careful walking. In the low gravity, only one percent of Earth’s, they had to step carefully lest they lose their balance or bound off at an unintended angle.
The airlock, such as it was, reminded Sarah more of a mud room back home than something intended to keep atmospheric pressure contained, and she saw why once they passed within.
The domes were not built to be habitable. They barely qualified as tents, designed to keep the slow accumulation of drifting ice dust off the equipment stored within.
“This is it?” Pascal asked over the radio. “How do you live here?”
“No, this isn’t it,” Eckhart sneered. “The station is beneath the ice.”
Eckhart led the way to one of the side domes, and Sarah felt the sudden tug of generated gravity and barely caught herself before she stumbled. “There’s still power?” she asked. A wide, polymer structure with the interlocking leaves of an iris portal was set into the floor. The dome was only slightly larger than the portal, leaving a limited walking space around it.
“Of course there is. Without power, the whole station would be torn out by a massive geyser.” Eckhart paused by a console set into the wall and tapped on it gingerly, keeping the contact of his fingers on the surface to a minimum.
Lights flickered on and a vibration started up, one that Sarah felt through her boots and her rapidly numbing toes. Eckhart kept talking, speaking quickly as if trying to get the discussion out of the way so he could deal with more interesting things.
“The station is anchored to the underside of the ice shelf. We stand on the edge of the thinnest section of ice, where it is only twenty-one miles thick. We’ve built above an active geothermal system that keeps the surrounding water above freezing. We’ll ride the tram down to the station. Gravity will be Earth-normal there, with a pressurized atmosphere and comfortable temperatures.”
“Twenty-one miles of ice?” Alastair asked doubtfully. “That will block all radio transmissions.”
�
��Of course.” Eckhart’s tone suggested he kept the derogatory name-calling silent only through an effort. “That’s the point. Complete isolation is vital to our research.”
“What was the personnel count in the station?” Dr. Chow asked.
“We kept a standard crew of forty researchers and personnel.”
“So there will be forty corpses below,” she said.
The conversation was plunged into silence. Despite the grim thought, Sarah wanted to high-five the doctor. Eckhart’s attitude cried out for someone to put him in his place, and Dr. Chow had managed it perfectly.
The vibrations rose to a crescendo, and the lights changed to a pulsating red. A railing lifted up around the portal and it spun open, making way for what looked like an oversized elevator cab. It came to a stop and the doors chimed open, releasing a gust of humid air that froze instantly into a swirling cloud of ice.
“Welcome to Essence Microsystems,” Eckhart said with a broad after-you gesture.
The trip down through the ice tunnel was marked by the slow increase in gravity. There were viewports, but they showed nothing but a featureless blur of ice passing at high speeds. After roughly fifteen minutes, Sarah felt the forgotten tug of a full G of gravity and the cab came to a stop.
The doors slipped open, revealing a short, gray polymer tunnel that appeared to have been spray-coated over rough-hewn ice. A heavy airlock awaited them, with a robust construction that set Sarah’s mind at ease. The station might have suffered a catastrophic failure, but it had kept its inhabitants alive for decades prior.
They cycled through the airlock, and Sarah felt her suit relax and touch her skin again. At the same time, her overtaxed life support suddenly powered down. Humid air froze against her faceplate in blooming patterns of ice. After a moment, the ice melted as warm air brought the external temperature of her suit up above freezing.
Dr. Chow stepped forward, holding a probe in front of her and staring at her handheld computer. “Atmosphere reads normal. There are slightly elevated levels of hydrocarbons and organic compounds, but nothing toxic. We should be safe to breathe the air.”