Torino Nine

by Mark Anson

  The tall man and the slim woman were motionless under the clear plastic covers, and the green LEDs on their status panels assured her that they were fine. Here in the heart of the ship, protected from the cosmic radiation by thick layers of dense plastic, the heavy mass of the ship, and by the hundreds of tonnes of fuel in the surrounding tanks, they would be safe while they slept through the long voyage.

  The nurse floated up to the doorway, and grabbed hold of its circular rim. She paused for one last glance round the chamber, then switched off the lights, and pulled herself through the doorway, closing and locking the heavy door behind her.

  PART II

  Interception

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Clare awoke.

  Her first reaction, as always, was to fight for breath. The plastic intubation guide that held her airways open made her feel like she couldn’t breathe, and she struggled uselessly in the elastic straps, her breath wheezing through the plastic mouthpiece, until she remembered where she was. She fought the urge to struggle against the restraints, and made herself relax, take a deep breath, then another. Waves of heat and cold washed over her, making her alternately sweat and shiver.

  After a few moments, she tried again, making her movements slow and deliberate. Her right arm was still clamped in the stasis sleeve, but the left was only held by an elastic strap at the wrist. She pulled it out of its restraint, reached up and pulled the intubation guide out of her mouth, trying not to gag. Her throat was dry and sore, despite the nebuliser mist in the chamber, and it hurt to swallow. She knew she had to lie quietly, and let her body recover before she tried anything else. She closed her eyes, and focused on breathing deeply for a while, and started to feel better.

  She opened her eyes again. Outside the plastic lid, the hibernaculum was bathed in a soft, comforting glow. An empty syringe wrapper, missed when the nurse was sealing the chamber, drifted past outside. So – they were in zero-g still. She flexed her right arm gently inside the stasis sleeve, but there was no sensation of anything inserted into it, so the machine had completed all the injections and was finished with her. The thought made her feel better. Nothing was wrong and she would soon be able to leave the chamber, but she waited for the automated instructions; there was no hurry.

  A drink container was in easy reach, and she popped the top open with her thumb and squeezed it into her mouth. It was sweet, and tasted of orange, but Clare knew that it contained a careful mix of nutrients and stimulants to help her body recover, and get back to normal functioning. The cool liquid coursed down her dry throat.

  The instruments must have detected some change in her vital signs, because a few moments later an automated voice spoke for the first time:

  ‘Welcome awake, Captain Foster. When you are able to, please press the green ready button.’

  By now, she was more than able, and she pressed the button as directed, to show that she was awake and able to follow instructions.

  ‘Very good,’ the voice said. ‘When you are able to, please disconnect your monitoring lines.’ Clare reached up and unplugged the connector that led to her biomedical patches.

  ‘Well done. Your stasis sleeve is being released. There may be a small amount of blood. Do not be alarmed.’

  The two halves of the sleeve surrounding her right arm popped open with a hiss, and she withdrew her arm with relief. The skin was puffy from being held in the sleeve, and there were the usual bruises and spots of blood round the catheter sites, but nothing untoward. She flexed her muscles and rubbed the skin gently.

  ‘Revival sequence is complete. Please take care for the next twenty-four hours, and follow the post-revival instructions. Your stasis chamber will be unlocked, and you can leave. Please close the lid behind you for disinfection process.’

  The lid of the chamber unlatched with a clunk, and sprang open a few centimetres. She unhooked the leg and waist restraints, and pushed the lid open wide. Mist flowed out into the air of the hibernaculum. She cleared her throat.

  ‘Hey Collins, you awake?’

  ‘Sure am,’ her executive officer’s deep voice replied from the stasis chamber to her left.

  ‘Feeling okay?’

  ‘Never better. You all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She breathed deeply of the cooler air in the hibernaculum, and sat up carefully. The room was circular, and had four stasis chambers arranged at regular intervals around the wall. ‘How long have you been awake?’ she asked.

  ‘About fifteen minutes, I think.’

  There was a display on an articulated arm next to her, and Clare pulled it over. She tried to read it, but her eyes wouldn’t focus, and the letters and numbers swam in front of her. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Let’s see …’ there was a short pause as Collins checked his own display. ‘We’re just short of Zeta Two Reticuli, not even reached the outer rim yet.’

  Clare sighed at the line from an old movie. ‘Okay, where are we really?’

  ‘Outside the orbit of Earth, on course and schedule. We’ve been in stasis for – a hundred and thirty-one days; it’s June sixteenth 2148. Target is just over twenty-four hours away. Ship’s fine, no alarms, reactor’s come up to high idle. We can take our time.’

  He had barely said the words when a voice broke out in the chamber:

  ‘Mesa, Arlington, come in.’

  ‘Looks like you spoke too soon.’ Clare collected her thoughts and keyed the transmit on the console. ‘Arlington, Mesa receiving.’

  ‘Glad you’re awake, Foster. What’s your situation?’ The abrupt tones of Colonel Randall came over the radio.

  ‘Just in revival, sir. Situation normal, on course and schedule.’

  ‘Roger that. Get yourselves sorted out, and be ready for squadron video call at zero eight thirty. Out.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Clare released the transmit, and sighed. ‘Well, there goes our nice, relaxing wakeup.’ She glanced across at Collins, who was still lying in his chamber. ‘Say, what does a captain have to do to get a coffee round here?’

  Two hours later, Clare and Collins sat in the flight deck of the Mesa. Clare had restarted the ship’s rotation to provide some gravity, and they had each managed to have a shower and some food – liquid only at this stage, while their digestive systems recovered. The squeeze tubes of syrupy liquid did not satisfy hunger, and Clare’s stomach rumbled as she waited for the video call to start.

  The interceptor tumbled end-over-end as it swept through space, rotating about its centre of mass at a leisurely four times a minute; this gentle acceleration provided about one-third of Earth’s gravity to its crew. The flight deck seats and command consoles were mounted on powered struts so that they could be reoriented for weightless flight, when a good view was needed forward, along the interceptor’s line of flight. For now, though, the seats faced ‘outwards’ for a more natural position under gravity, facing the flight deck window.

  The Mesa was a Philadelphia-class interceptor, based on the earlier San Diego-class deep space tug, but the resemblance ended there. At eighty metres, the Mesa was somewhat longer than the original tug, mainly due to the additional equipment carried on the squat crew module up front. Interceptors carried relatively small crews, and were stripped down to save mass, to allow the maximum possible velocity changes and bomb loads.

  Most of the Mesa’s length was taken up by thirteen fuel tanks stacked in two clusters – seven huge tanks, each thirty metres long, held liquid ammonia for the nuclear engine, and six smaller tanks contained liquid propane and oxygen for the manoeuvring engines. At the rear, behind a thick neutron shield, a gas core nuclear reactor provided the interceptor’s power source and main engine, while six rocket engines, set on pylons spaced sixty degrees apart around the hull, allowed the ship to perform more delicate manoeuvres.

  The nuclear engine did not burn fuel in the same way that the rocket engines did; instead its nuclear furnace worked by flash-heating liquid ammonia and expelling it as a superheated, incandescent gas to provide hug
e amounts of thrust. It was considerably more efficient of fuel than a conventional rocket, but at the expense of lengthy startup and cool-down periods between firings. It was normally only used for the enormous changes in velocity needed at the start and end of a mission, and at this moment it was barely ticking over, providing electrical power for the Mesa’s systems.

  At the forward end of the ship, in front of the cryogenic tanks, the crew module provided living space and command facilities for the flight crew, most of it in the ten-metre diameter command deck. In the centre of the deck was a circular opening with a narrow handrail, through which a vertical ladder ran, giving access to the docking module at the front, and the hibernaculum to the rear, nestled in the cylindrical space between the six cryogenic fuel tanks.

  At the very front of the Mesa, jutting forward from under the crew module, was the long barrel of the bomb cannon, designed to fire the nuclear charges towards their target and give the ship time to get clear. A large dozer blade at the front of the ship allowed it to physically push against smaller asteroids, or the blade could be used as a blast shield. Two smaller weapons, a thirty-millimetre rotary cannon and a powerful carbon dioxide laser, mounted at the very front of the ship, could be used to blow apart small objects or vaporise the surface layers of icy bodies, imparting a small thrust in the process.

  This impressive array of asteroid-moving technology was used entirely for peaceful purposes, but for all intents and purposes the Mesa was a space-going warship, and the rack of five thermonuclear bombs that it carried, each capable of flattening a major city, was a sobering reminder of the fact.

  Clare had darkened the window glass to block out the view of the stars wheeling past outside, as this could induce motion sickness, and her reflection looked back at her from the cockpit windows.

  She looked gaunt and pale – stasis used up the body’s fat reserves, and it would be some time before she was back to her normal body weight. Her cheeks were hollow, and she had deep shadows under her eyes. She smiled to herself.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Collins asked from the copilot’s seat, on her right.

  ‘I was just thinking, one hundred and sixty-nine days’ sleep, and I still look like I haven’t had any.’

  Collins chuckled. ‘Yeah, we’ll just manage to recover from stasis and it’ll be time to go back under again. Say, is this call going to happen, or what?’

  ‘I guess they’re waiting for the Las Vegas to come on line.’ Clare glanced at the radar display, which still showed nothing; the three ships were still too far away from each other to be detected. Only the long-range transponder signals showed where they were; three little crosses, converging slowly on an invisible point in space, barely one day away.

  ‘Oh, here we go.’ Collins nodded towards the main displays in front of each of them, which had cleared to show the seal of the US Astronautics Corps behind the words COMMAND CONFIDENTIAL. Clare and Collins stared straight ahead, keeping their faces expressionless for the camera.

  The screen faded to show a camera image of Colonel Randall looking back at them, hovering above five other camera images of the captains and XOs of the three ships. Behind Randall, the crew of the Arlington could be seen moving about on the command deck. Randall’s face had been sharpened by five month’s stasis into a lean and wasted countenance, giving him a fearsome look as he scowled at them.

  ‘Glad you’re all awake,’ he said, in tones that suggested the opposite. ‘This is a squadron call for the deflection mission on asteroid 2010 TG4 at zero seven thirty Zulu tomorrow.’ Randall was speaking on an encrypted, narrow-beam link between the three ships, to avoid any chance of the transmission being intercepted and broadcast. ‘You’ve all got your briefing notes and detailed navigation timings, so I won’t repeat those here, except to say that this is a very tight interception, and a precision bombing run is essential. I’ve rechecked the state vectors of all three ships and the Las Vegas is slightly behind where it should be. We can’t fix that without disturbing our interception sequence, so Foster in the Mesa – you’re going to have a few seconds less to get in and place your charge after the Las Vegas completes its run.’

  Clare’s image on the screen below Randall nodded carefully. Even with the most accurate navigation, tiny errors crept in and built up over long voyages – equipment calibrations, slight perturbations in orbits, even the effect of sunlight. The three ships were timed to intercept the asteroid in a precise sequence as it flashed by, and if they attempted to play around too much with the ships’ trajectories at this late stage, the laws of orbital mechanics could result in one of them missing the target by hundreds of kilometres.

  ‘Our approach trajectories take us over the sunward hemisphere and out over the leading edge of TG4. The target sites for the de-rotation are on the sunward side, and the deflection site is on the side in darkness, so Las Vegas and Mesa – you’ll have to use your radar sights to line up for those.

  ‘The Arlington will go in first and we’ll attempt to complete the de-rotation in one blast. We’ll take a spin measurement on the target immediately afterwards, and depending on the result, the Las Vegas will either repeat the de-rotation attempt or fire the main deflection charge. TG4’s rotation will have slowed whatever the outcome, so Las Vegas – you will have to wait until the site comes round again if you need to repeat the de-rotation. Mesa, you will come in last and you need to be ready with the backup deflection charge.

  ‘It is essential that we complete this mission successfully. The next feasible interception opportunity for us is nearly four years away, on the other side of the Solar System, and TG4’s not in the best position then. I want a detailed simulation rehearsal at twelve hundred hours, so remind yourselves of the mission timings before then, and let’s make sure we iron out any issues before then. Don’t wait for the simulation before you tell me about a problem, do it this morning, is that clear?’

  The five heads below his image nodded dutifully.

  ‘Okay, let’s go over any issues that have come up during the voyage. I’ll go first. The Arlington has developed a fault in its secondary antenna mount, so there will be brief periods when the ship’s structure is in the way, when you might get a fade in our transmissions. We’re working the problem now. Las Vegas?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Captain Garcia nodded at the camera. His trademark moustache and Hispanic features made him look like some pirate of the space lanes. ‘Apart from the position error, we’re in good shape.’

  ‘Mesa?’

  Clare pressed the transmit. ‘No issues, sir.’

  Randall seemed to be looking directly at Clare as he finished up: ‘Good. Let’s keep it that way. Okay guys, get your ships ready for interception, and be ready for the simulation run at twelve hundred hours.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘You’ve got a message.’ Collins looked up as Clare came back to her seat. ‘It’s coded Priority, C-1.’

  They had just completed the second simulation of the bombing run and Clare had taken the chance to go to the bathroom. Colonel Randall hadn’t been satisfied with the first one, so they had repeated it all over again.

  Clare raised her eyebrows. C-1 was pretty high up the list.

  ‘Must be something important. I’ll take it in the hibernaculum. Give me a shout if anything comes up.’

  She went over to the ladder well in the middle of the command deck, and started to climb upwards towards the hibernaculum. It was only a short climb – the crew modules of interceptors were much shorter than the tugs on which they were based – and she swung the heavy door closed behind her as she entered the chamber. Lighting came on automatically around her. The four stasis chambers were silent and inert, their plastic lids closed, and she went over and sat down at the medical console and tapped her personal passcode, and then her command passcode to decrypt the message.

  On the screen, the Corps seal materialised behind a PERSONAL CONFIDENTIAL logo. Clare felt a worm of disquiet move inside her; she hadn’t expected this
to be a personal message.

  The screen faded to reveal an image of her mother, seated in a chair, with the flag of the United States just in shot to one corner. Clare knew instantly that something was wrong – terribly wrong, and she felt an icy rush of dread.

  Judith Foster looked old and drawn, and was obviously reading from a script; her eyes darted from side to side as she spoke in an expressionless voice that Clare hardly recognised:

  ‘Hello Clare, this is your mother here. I hope you are okay and that the mission is going well. I’m afraid I have some bad news to tell you, so you need to sit down if you are able to.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your father died on May eighth after a short illness. I know this will come as a terrible shock to you; I can scarcely come to terms with it myself. It was his heart, I’m afraid; we both knew something was wrong just before you set off in January, but he didn’t want to worry you, and the tests came back, and he had severe arrhythmia. Doctor Benson gave him some medication to take care of it, and everything was going well, and then – well, I think it was the stress of selling the house that did it, you know how he loved this place, but we just couldn’t keep up with all the work, and then suddenly he collapsed one day. He was rushed into hospital; he’d had a huge heart attack and – well, he had another while he was in there, and he – he died. I was with him all the time.’ She swallowed and looked down.