Mission One

by Samuel Best

“No problem,” Jeff said. “If you can’t get the power working, give me another call and I’ll let you out. Maybe.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  The nearest security guard stood in a wide stance, his thumbs hooked lightly in his belt. He kept his eyes locked on Kate as she approached.

  “Hi,” she said. “You mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  He didn’t give any indication that he heard the question. Kate was just about to turn away when he said, “Just extra security, ma’am. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Then he winked.

  Noah walked briskly to his desk from the elevator.

  “Lights full!” he shouted. White light flooded his office as he sat at his desk and pounded the intercom button. “Neil, get the head of Blackbird security on the line. I have a situation.” Silence on the other end of the line. Noah smacked the button again. “Neil!”

  “I sent your support staff home,” Frank said as the elevator door opened. “You won’t be needing them for the duration of the mission.”

  Noah picked up his phone and started dialing a number. He looked at the receiver in confusion when he didn’t hear a dial tone.

  “No internet,” Frank said. “No outgoing phone calls. I’m sorry, but I have the only communication link anywhere in the building.”

  Noah sprang up from his chair and stormed toward Frank, intending to let him know, in vitriolic detail, what he thought about his presumptuous interference. He slowed to a stop when Frank stepped out of the elevator, followed closely by a muscular security guard who wore a satisfied smirk on his face and a heavy pistol on his hip.

  “What’s this about, Frank?”

  “Hand over your cell phone.”

  Noah stuck his hands in his pockets and lifted his chin. “You’re fired. I want you out of here immediately.”

  Frank gestured to the security guard, who stepped forward eagerly. He rested his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol. Noah sized him up, then pulled his phone from his pocket and tossed it to the guard.

  Frank nodded. “Thank you. I was hoping to avoid this uncomfortable situation, but you leave me no choice. As I said earlier in the conference room, we don’t have time to do things your way. I know your methods, Noah. You’ll get right up to the edge, then pull back if it looks too dangerous. I can sense it happening even now. It’s not a fitting trait for a man who strives to accomplish as much as you. To be honest, sometimes I’m surprised you’ve gotten so far.”

  “I’m not pulling back from anything.”

  “Not yet, no. But what if everyone on North Star is dead? You’ll order the crew of Explorer to break away from the artifact and build the station on the far side of Titan, if you let the project continue at all. You don’t risk lives when risking lives is the only way to progress.”

  “And what would you do?”

  “Study the artifact, even if means the crew lingers at Titan past their departure window.”

  “They can’t stay out there indefinitely, Frank.”

  “True. Yet they signed up for this mission, and by extension, for any exigent circumstances that arise along the way. Gleaning every iota of knowledge from the torus being chief among them.”

  “We can always go back for it.”

  Frank snorted. “What if it’s gone? Would you risk it? The artifact enables instant communication across half the solar system! What if that were merely a hint of the object’s vast capabilities? What manner of propulsion is it using? What kind of power source? We have to know these things. Progress at any cost, Noah.”

  “That was never my motto.”

  “No, but you knew it was mine. That’s why you hired me. Don’t lie to yourself – you rely on me to make the uncomfortable decisions. Well, this is one of them. Explorer stays at Titan until we figure out a way to drag the torus back to Earth or to replicate its technology.”

  Noah looked at him as if he were an undesirable sample in a petri dish. “You really did alter the test results for the antimatter drive.”

  “You’re damn right I did. We were sinking millions into solving the stability problem. Each successive probe we launched proved we were almost there. Then came number six. All the way to Titan, and it even managed to take a picture. That’s all the proof I needed that a manned vessel could make it.”

  “You buried the real results. You withheld crucial data from me, Frank.”

  “Yes.”

  “You put the crew on the launch pad, knowing full well it might explode. That’s the real reason you kept the press away during the launch, isn’t it? They could have been invited to a barbecue.”

  Frank glared at him defiantly.

  “Did you have Michael Cochran murdered?” Noah asked.

  A shadow crossed Frank’s face, and he scowled. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “What about Rick Teller? He didn’t show up for work this morning. I have security footage showing him breaking into the sealed archives. What did he find in there, Frank?”

  Frank waved away the questions. “Enough. Here’s how it’s going to work. I assume full command of the mission. I don’t want to lock you in your own office, Noah, but I will if I must. Are you going to behave?”

  Noah glanced at the muscular security guard standing behind Frank. He looked like a man who wanted people to disobey.

  “Yes.”

  Frank nodded sagely. “Good. Then there’s no reason to confuse everyone on the operations floor with the details of our new arrangement. You’re going to thank me for this, in the end. I’m doing something you couldn’t. Deep down, I’m sure you’ll agree this is the way it should be.”

  Noah crowded into the elevator with Frank and the security guard. For perhaps the first time in his career, he couldn’t begin to guess what awaited him in the hours to come.

  It would take Jeff just under five minutes to get back to Explorer, moving at what the Flight Op techs in Mission Control called the ‘nominal speed’ – a veritable snail’s pace of about three meters per second.

  Two minutes into his return journey, Riley and Silva reported that North Star was uninhabited – completely empty of life except for a row of wilted plants on a secured shelf in the science lab. Jeff was toying with the notion that the ship had been launched without a crew – that perhaps MarsCorp had decided on a rushed, automated mission in the hope that the mere presence of their vessel at Titan would signify a binding ownership of its resources. When he asked if that were the case, Silva told him there were signs that North Star had indeed been crewed until quite recently. Eating utensils clumped with food floated slowly in the dark command module as Riley tried unsuccessfully to pull up the flight record. Without power to the main systems, the centrifuge couldn’t rotate, and anything unsecured floated freely throughout the ship.

  The video feed window of his HUD kept Jeff’s full attention until he was nearly back to Explorer. Riley and Silva hadn’t seen any sign of North Star’s crew on the other side of the airlock, nor in the T-junction leading to the command module.

  Jeff muted and shrank the video feed window, leaving it as only a thumbnail in the lower left corner of his HUD. He decelerated early, giving himself plenty of room to maneuver safely into position just aft of the cargo hold, over the secondary fuel line access panel. The insulated, two-meter-long panel opened onto a mere snippet of the overall fuel line, but also onto most of the sensors monitoring the complex system.

  He hooked his safety tether to an anchor loop on the hull, then grabbed the multipurpose hex driver strapped to the side of his pack and unscrewed the panel’s fasteners. Small rivets on the end of the fasteners caught against the underside of the hinged panel, preventing them from floating away.

  Two thick fuel lines ran the length of the compartment, propped up from the hull several centimeters. A dozen small, black boxes surrounded it, bolted to the hull. Multicolored braids of wire connected the black boxes to the fuel lines.

  Jeff shined his helmet light into the comp
artment. Silver labels on the black boxes gleamed as he searched for the one containing the faulty sensor.

  “There you are,” he mumbled to himself.

  He popped a latch on one corner of the box and pried open its stiff plastic cover. Inside was a five-centimeter copper cube etched with fine, geometric lines. If he were to yank out all the sensors monitoring the fuel line, the pumps wouldn’t be able to regulate the flow on an active system, and the engine would overload, triggering a catastrophic explosion. A temporary loss of one sensor was still considered safe. Losing more was an unacceptable risk.

  Inaccessible to Jeff were the contents of the copper cube: a delicate sensor array, the components of which were suspended independently of each other in a clear gel. He ran a gloved finger inside the empty black box, checking for any sign of leaks or corrosion. It was clean, as was the copper surface of the cube. He tucked the cube into a Velcro pouch on his right thigh.

  “Canaveral,” he said, “the faulty fuel line sensor has been removed. No signs of corruption. Sensor array was probably scrambled inside. I’ll replace it with a new sensor now.”

  “Copy that, Jeff,” Frank said over his headset. “Proceed to the cargo hold for that replacement fuel pump after you wrap it up.” Jeff paused for a second – he had been expecting to hear Kate’s voice. Frank sounded different somehow – world-weary, as if he had shouldered an enormous burden since he’d last spoken to the crew.

  The spare sensors were inside a latched compartment set into the hull between the fuel lines. Jeff retrieved one of them and gently pressed it down into the empty black box. After he resealed the box, he said, “Sensor replaced. What’s the verdict?”

  “Clearing error code,” Ming said. “Looks like you did it. Good job.”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. “At least now we’ll know we’re going to blow up a few seconds before it happens.”

  “Cherish the small things.”

  “I’m headed to the cargo hold.”

  “Copy that,” Ming replied. “Don’t forget to–”

  She cut off suddenly and gasped.

  “Ming? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh my God,” she said slowly.

  Jeff was about to ask her what she was talking about, then he looked down at the small video feed box in his HUD and got his answer.

  “They found the crew,” Ming said.

  He quickly magnified his HUD’s video feed and unmuted the audio, but heard only the quick, stopping breaths of Riley and Gabriel.

  Riley’s camera looked from the end of the T-junction at the crew module extending toward the back of the ship. He and Gabriel had apparently given up on the power problem and left the command module to explore the rest of the ship.

  The only lights came from Riley’s and Gabriel’s helmets – wide halogen beams flowed over every surface as they looked around. The floor layout of the centrifuge was identical to Explorer’s, with low walls compartmentalizing specific areas. A central pillar ran down the axis of the ship, extending from above the camera’s field of vision to the back of the module.

  A red Mark III Constellation Space Suit, slightly bulkier than the Mark IVs, floated into view, filled out as if it contained a person. The bright, sealed space suit reflected the powerful beam from Riley’s helmet light. The Mark III rotated slowly to face the camera, and Riley’s light spilled over its helmet, revealing a vibrant splash of blood on the inside of the clear face shield.

  Gabriel’s helmet light played hesitantly around the module, landing on three other sealed red Constellation Suits, adrift in the darkness.

  “Mother Mary,” he whispered, followed by a string of rapid Portuguese Jeff didn’t understand.

  Riley spoke with grim determination. “Canaveral, Dr. Silva and I are going to check for survivors. Stand by.”

  The four bodies of the North Star crew drifted casually within the crew module.

  If you can even call those bodies, Kate thought. She clenched her abdomen to fight down a rising sickness that had been working its way up into her throat since Riley had shined his light directly into the clear face shield of the first suit.

  There had been no distinguishably human characteristics of what he’d discovered inside. The suit was still sealed and pressurized for EVA activity. Every molecule of whoever was in the suit during the violent, terminal event was still in there now – only changed. Kate had looked away as soon as the light hit a warped mass of red that had no particular shape, yet still projected what looked like a screaming mouth.

  Riley started slowly making his way to the second suit, intending to illuminate whatever macabre scene awaited within. Kate forced her eyes over to Gabriel’s camera feed. He was mercifully trying his best not to look at the suits, instead studying the kitchen area of the centrifuge, above which he floated, holding on to the central pillar.

  Some or all of the crew had been eating immediately before putting on their suits. In addition to the floating eating utensils, meal trays rested securely under elastic straps on top of the round dining table. The hinged rehydrator door hung open, an unopened meal pouch slowly spinning within.

  The crew had stopped mid-meal to don their suits, which meant they had known something was coming for them. Helmets and gloves were kept in the airlock, so the crew would have had to collect them and bring them back to the crew module. Kate wondered if someone in the crew had detonated an explosive device in the airlock to try to fend off whatever had gotten inside. It had been a small-yield bomb, yet powerful enough to immobilize the internal manual override and warp the doors, making it nearly impossible to crank them open.

  Riley looked into the helmet of the second suit. Kate saw two bulging eyes staring at her from a congealed and silently screaming horror.

  She grabbed the small trash can from under her desk and dry-heaved into it. She had lost whatever food had been in her stomach earlier, after acknowledging the very real possibility that Jeff might not make it home.

  Kate wiped saliva from the side of her mouth and kicked the trash can back under her desk, expecting to need it again soon. She wasn’t quite ready to look back at the display wall, so she tapped the touchscreen on her workstation monitor and called up a video replay from Gabriel’s camera feed when he had been in the airlock.

  After Riley had popped open the override access panel, Gabriel shined his light into the compartment containing the fused lever. Kate paused the video replay and leaned in closer to her monitor, studying the black, blooming gouges emanating from the compartment, as if the walls of the airlock had been shredded by the talons of some terrible, clawed beast.

  “Looks like they put the bomb inside the panel,” Noah said from behind her, and she jumped in her chair, her heart pounding. “Sorry,” he added, moving to stand next to her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Kate looked warily over her shoulder. Frank sat alone in the conference room, his legs up on the table and fingers locked behind his head, engaged in a casual conversation with someone on the other end of the conference phone line.

  She turned back to look at the still image on her workstation monitor, glancing around the room in the process. The mood was subdued, yet busy. Like her, the others had realized something was different – that there had been a shift in the weather. To their credit, they hadn’t let it interfere with their work.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Just a slight change in management,” Noah replied stiffly. “I’ll be taking a more… traditional role for a while.”

  “Can’t you fire Frank?”

  “I tried. One of his big friends was there to help me change my mind.”

  “They took all of our cell phones.”

  Noah nodded. “I believe we’re stuck here, Ms. Bishop. I’m just trying to distract myself until things get back to normal.”

  He looked down at Rick’s empty workstation. Kate followed his gaze and stopped on Rick’s chair. In that moment, she realized he was probably dead. She had willfully dodged the pos
sibility until then, pretending instead that he was holed up in some doomsday bunker of his own construction, until whatever shadowy group pursuing him lost his scent.

  Noah gripped the top of Rick’s chair. Regret and sadness tugged at his face in turns.

  Kate looked at the old picture of herself taped to her workstation monitor. Back then she had just been slapping ship components together while other teams worked real magic – slinging humanity to the stars. The room at NASA had been a closet compared to Mission Control at Diamond Aerospace. Before her current job at D.A. and a year at Boeing before that, Kate had worked four of her six years at NASA in an entry-level position for entry-level pay. She’d come a long way since then.

  Her eyes in the picture looked eagerly into the camera, the hopeful naivety plain for all to see.

  Maybe I’ll see you soon, Kate thought, if none of this works out.

  “I know about Michael Cochran,” she said softly. “And the unstable antimatter drive.” Noah’s grip on the chair tightened, and his frown deepened. He nodded again, giving silent assent for her to continue. “I sent a message to Jeff. By now the rest of the crew will know they shouldn’t risk any more major burns. Did you know about the engine?”

  “I promise you, I knew nothing about the instability. If I had, we would never have launched.”

  “So Frank remote-triggered the major burn we all thought was a glitch?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  It was Noah’s turn to look back at the conference room. Frank now paced near the table, a smile on his face, waving his hands enigmatically as he spoke.

  “I tried sending an email,” Kate added. “He’s blocking all outside communication.”

  “Not from the conference room,” Noah said acidly.

  Kate hated the inconvenient tears that brimmed to her eyes as she stared at Rick’s chair.

  “Noah?” she whispered.

  He turned to her. “Yes, Ms. Bishop?”

  “What happened to my friend?”

  “If Frank knows, he isn’t telling me anything,” Noah replied. He gestured to Rick’s chair. “May I please sit?”