Torino Nine

by Mark Anson

  ‘Negative result. Protocol completed. Patient cannot be—’

  ‘Command override! Shock him again, maximum charge!’

  ‘Maximum charge, stand clear.’

  His back arched, and fell back again. No response.

  ‘Negative result. Patient cannot be revived.’

  ‘Shock him again!’ A bead of sweat trickled down Clare’s forehead. ‘Come back, Collins, you’ve got to try—’

  ‘Maximum charge. Stand clear.’

  The shock came and went, and as his lifeless body fell back again, Clare sighed, and bowed her head. She knew the machine was telling her the truth. She was just making dead meat jump about. It must have been the revival sequence, but what the hell had gone wrong—

  ‘Output.’

  Clare’s head snapped up. The red traces on the console were recovering, going orange, and green.

  ‘Can you keep him going?’

  ‘Lieutenant Collins is stabilising. Administering emergency medication. Please stand by.’

  Clare wiped the sweat from her face and watched as his pulse increased, raced, then steadied. At least he wasn’t convulsing any more. He must have torn out his lines and prevented the medical system from doing its work. Gods, what if she hadn’t got to him in time—

  Collins coughed into his breathing tubes, and opened his eyes. They flew wide as he saw Clare standing over him.

  ‘It’s okay, relax. No, lie back, you can’t get up!’ Clare pushed him back down. A panicked moan came from his breathing tubes. ‘Don’t try to speak. Nod if you can hear me.’

  Collins nodded once, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘You’ve had a reaction to the revival sequence. The machine will take care of you, but you’ve got to lie still for a while. Don’t try to speak or get up. Do you understand?’

  Another nod. His eyes stared into Clare’s, wanting to know.

  ‘Don’t worry. You’re okay. Just let the machine do its stuff, alright? I won’t leave you.’

  Collins nodded, and his eyelids relaxed. His left hand reached out and touched her arm. Clare held it briefly, to reassure him, and turned her attention to his medical console. His vital signs were stabilising, but his heart rate was way up – not surprising, given what had just happened to him.

  ‘Try to relax,’ she said, ‘you’re doing fine.’ He nodded, and he closed his eyes. ‘Are you okay if I check our position?’ Another nod, slower this time. Good.

  She reached across to the command console on its articulating arm, pulled it towards her, and punched up the navigation display.

  She frowned. She was expecting to see them in the approach corridor to Venus orbit insertion. She stabbed at the display again, but there was no change. Venus was nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe they had been revived too soon. She checked the date – 22 July. They had only been in stasis for a month; they weren’t due at Venus until mid-November. She sighed. Something must have happened to the hibernation—

  She froze as she stared at the date. The date was 22 July, 2149. November had been and gone, and another eight months after that. They had been in stasis for thirteen months. She zoomed the display on the screen outwards in horror, the display shrinking as the view went out past the orbits of Venus, Earth, Mars – hell, they were beyond Mars – until she found the tiny icon for the ship. She stared at the display in disbelief. The Mesa was climbing up and away from the Inner Solar System, heading out toward the Outer Planets – Christ, they were half-way to Jupiter!

  Her first thought was that there had been a catastrophic navigation error; that they had missed Venus completely, or the orbit insertion burn had failed. But then why hadn’t the revival sequences kicked in at Venus? She punched up the navigation log, her fingers moving quickly, and scrolled back through the events.

  No – they had encountered Venus on schedule. But instead of making a braking burn to enter orbit round the planet, the main engine had fired to increase their velocity, and used Venus’s gravity in a ‘slingshot’ manoeuvre to accelerate the Mesa outwards again, towards the outer reaches of the Solar System.

  So, it was deliberate. But such a major course change would only be possible if the ship had received and accepted a mission update after they had gone into stasis … She scrolled down further, looking for – ah, there it was. Her eyes flickered over the details of the update.

  About one month before encountering Venus, toward the end of their original planned voyage, the Mesa had received a priority update from USAC Deep Space Control. Such events were unusual, but not unknown; sometimes arrival times needed to be adjusted by a few days so that a transfer could take place, or for other operational reasons. But destination changes were exceptionally rare; the constraints of orbital mechanics meant that planets had to be in the right place as well.

  On this occasion, the Mesa had been rerouted to fly past Venus, but not to another planet. Instead, the target point was just a set of coordinates and times. Where were they going? Clare scrolled through the update, but there was no mention of the target. The medical sequencer had been reset to keep Clare and Collins in stasis until just before they arrived at their destination.

  Which meant that, whatever their target was, it must be close. She returned to the navigation display, centred it on the Mesa, and zoomed in again, to show a radius of a days’ travel at their present speed. Nothing. She zoomed out a little further, but found no other objects apart from …

  Psyche. One of the largest asteroids. Well, Psyche was in a stable orbit, and had absolutely zero chance of being a threat to any inhabited planet. And it was two hundred and fifty kilometres wide, so none of the Mesa’s weapons would make even the slightest difference to its velocity. So, if they were heading out to make an urgent deflection, it must be something that wasn’t on any charts.

  Radar? She changed display, and checked the long-range radar along their line of flight. Again nothing. It might be something too small to show up on radar at this range. In which case—

  ‘Hey.’ She was startled out of her thoughts by Collins, who had had removed his intubation guide and was looking up at her. ‘How am I doing?’ His voice was hoarse.

  She glanced at his medical console again, and gave him her best reassuring smile. ‘You’ll live. You had a reaction to the revival sequence – you pulled out your lines. I had to put them back in again so the machine could bring you round.’ She made light of the situation; there was no point in him hearing just how bad it had been, not until he was feeling stronger.

  ‘Do I have the sickness?’ he asked, his eyes searching hers closely. She looked back at him levelly.

  ‘We won’t have a diagnosis until your condition stabilises. It could be nothing, just a bad revival.’

  ‘Or it could be hibernation sickness,’ he said flatly.

  ‘How do you feel? Do you have any symptoms?’

  ‘I feel hot and cold.’

  ‘That’s not unusual after a revival.’

  ‘Feel weak.’

  ‘Any nausea? Dizziness?’

  ‘A little. Getting less.’

  ‘How about your vision?’

  ‘Seems fine.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  He shook his head, and reached for the squeeze tube of syrup next to him. Clare nodded, and casually tapped the symptoms into the medical console.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know what you’re doing. What does it say?’

  ‘It says you have to lie there for another hour. And that’s all it says. Worrying about it won’t help.’

  It was easy to say, of course, but it wasn’t her lying there. Stasis syndrome, or hibernation sickness as it was more commonly called, was a set of adverse reactions to stasis, usually triggered by some event – a bad revival, a medical condition during stasis. Nobody knew the real cause, but once you got it, it never went away, and each subsequent attempt to induce stasis caused a progressively worse reaction on revival, until it was n
o longer safe to try. Anyone diagnosed with the condition was grounded, permanently. She knew what it must mean to Collins to be facing the possibility. But he seemed well enough – from what she understood of the symptoms, he would be almost unable to speak if he had the sickness.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Do you remember our mission plan? Do you know where we were heading?’

  Collins thought about it a moment. ‘Venus. We’d made the deflection. We’re going to Venus.’

  Clare nodded. That was a good sign; he could remember recent events. She decided to risk telling him what had happened. ‘We were going to Venus, but we had a mission update. We’ve done a slingshot round Venus, and we’re – we are back out in the deep asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.’

  ‘Fuck … How long were we under?’

  ‘Okay, you need to prepare yourself. We’ve been in stasis thirteen months.’

  ‘What the hell—!’

  ‘Hey, take it easy!’ Clare put her hand on his arm, as he tried to get up. ‘Lie back – you need to rest! We’ve both made it okay. I’m just going through the log to see why we’re out here.’

  ‘Is it another interception?’

  ‘That’s what I’d guess, but there’s nothing on our present course, or on the radar. The only thing we’re going anywhere near is one of the big asteroids – Psyche.’

  ‘But that’s … did you say Psyche?’

  ‘Yes, but that can’t possibly be our target – it’s in a completely stable orbit, no risk at all.’

  Collins opened his mouth to speak, and then frowned. ‘I don’t get it – why are we here?’

  Clare shook her head. ‘I don’t know. There’s nothing in the log – no new orders or anything. I’m going to call DSC and find out.’

  ‘How’s our passenger? Is he still in stasis?’

  ‘That’s a thought. I hadn’t checked. Hold on.’ Clare walked over to where their mysterious passenger lay in his stasis chamber. She was fully expecting to see him still lying there, deep in stasis, so she was completely unprepared for what she saw.

  The stasis chamber was empty – the cover was wide open, and the disconnected electrical lines and tubes trailed over the edge of the chamber. Clare stared at the sight in disbelief.

  Their passenger had awoken before them, and was somewhere on the ship.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Clare swung open the heavy hibernaculum door, and clambered swiftly down the ladder to the command deck. The Mesa was rotating about its centre of mass, so ‘down’ was in the forward direction, towards the front of the ship.

  The main lighting was still off, but as she emerged into the command deck she could see a man sitting in the commander’s seat, illuminated by the glow from the flight deck displays. He turned around as she approached. Her hand instinctively dropped to her sidearm.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘Move away from the controls!’

  He was a tall man, about fifty years old. Olive-coloured skin, with a neatly-trimmed beard around his lips and chin.

  ‘You must be Captain Garcia.’ He spoke with a deep voice, and a trace of an accent that Clare couldn’t place. He was wearing the standard dark blue overalls of a civilian passenger, and had clearly been awake for some time.

  ‘No, I’m Captain Foster, and this is a USAC warship, and we’re carrying nuclear weapons. Get out of the seat and move away from the controls.’

  His eyes dropped to where her hand rested on her gun. He rose out of the seat carefully and stepped aside, a faint smile on his face.

  ‘Of course. I meant no harm.’ He spread his hands wide.

  ‘Stand over there, please.’ She indicated a place by the window where she could keep him in sight. He moved slowly across. ‘Have you touched any of the controls?’

  ‘No. I wondered where we were.’

  ‘Okay. Stand there and don’t move.’ She slid into the commander’s seat and checked the controls rapidly. The ship was still on autopilot, which was a good thing, and the main controls still appeared to be in their cruise settings.

  ‘See, captain. I haven’t touched anything.’

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Who are you, why are you awake before me, and why didn’t you come and help me back there?’

  His smile disappeared. ‘Help you? Has something happened?’

  She regarded him carefully. ‘Yes. My lieutenant had a bad revival – he nearly died. Surely you heard the alarms.’

  ‘I heard no alarms.’

  ‘You heard nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. Not until you opened the door and came up here just now.’

  It was possible. The alarms might not have been audible beyond the thick walls of the hibernaculum.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Mordecai. I am a scientist, specialising in stasis techniques.’

  ‘And you’re travelling to Venus.’

  ‘Apparently not.’ He indicated the nav display. ‘We are a very long way from Venus; we are approaching the asteroid Psyche.’

  ‘Do you know why we’re here?’

  A pause. ‘Yes. Although I was expecting Captain Garcia, and to be on the Las Vegas.’

  She stared at him. ‘The Las Vegas was lost during an interception attempt. Captain Garcia was injured and has had to return to Earth. This is the Mesa, and we took over the mission from the Las Vegas.’

  ‘I see.’ Mordecai looked troubled. ‘Have you had any briefing at all on this mission?’

  ‘No, and what mission are you talking about? My orders are to take you to Venus.’

  ‘I – may I sit down again, captain?’

  Clare considered the request carefully. ‘Okay, but in future keep away from the flight deck, and the ship’s controls.’

  ‘Yes captain. I’m sorry if I caused you any concern.’ He looked around for a place to sit. There was a jump seat on the wall nearby, and he pulled it open and sat down. ‘How is your lieutenant? Can I help in any way?’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘Of sorts. I specialise in hibernation. If he’s had a revival incident, I may be able to help.’

  ‘He went into VF during his revival sequence. He’s resting now, but you can take a look at him later. His vital signs are okay.’

  ‘Any sign of neurological issues? Does he know where he is, who you are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. That’s a very good sign. He’ll probably be fine. What happened?’

  ‘Look, mister, or doctor, or whoever you are, we can do this afterwards. Right now, I need to know why we’re all the way out here, and not in orbit round Venus.’

  ‘Doctor. I am Doctor Mordecai. And I think that everything would be much clearer if you listen to the message that’s waiting for you, from USAC Command.’

  ‘There’s a message?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded at the comms console.

  She gave him a sharp look. ‘How do you know it’s from Command?’

  ‘They told me there would be a message for you.’

  Clare punched up the message on her display, keeping Mordecai in sight.

  ‘Mesa, Deep Space Control. Stand by for a coded transmission from USAC Command, priority, AA-1, commander only.’

  She paused the message. ‘You need to leave the command deck,’ she told Mordecai. ‘You can go take a look at Collins while I listen to this.’

  ‘Of course; I’ll attend to him immediately.’ His faint smile returned. He got up, walked across to the ladder, and started to climb up, back towards the hibernaculum. She waited until he was out of sight, and then punched in her command code to decrypt the message. This far from Earth, with a round-trip radio delay of nearly thirty minutes, a normal conversation was impossible, so all messages were sent as uninterrupted transmissions.

  The display cleared to show the thin and lined face of a senior officer, sat at his desk. Clare recognised him instantly, even without the name plate in front of him – Major Ge
neral Wesley, Deputy Chief of Staff at USAC Command. Holy shit.

  ‘Good morning Captain Foster. What you are about to hear carries the highest security rating and must not be discussed with anyone else, including your immediate command structure, without my express permission. As you now know, your flight plan was altered while you were in stasis, to bring you round Venus and out to your present location. The reason for this unscheduled change can now be given.’

  Wesley paused before continuing.

  ‘Sixteen years ago, the USSV Ulysses was declared lost with all hands on its maiden voyage, the first manned mission to Saturn. As you may remember, the official report concluded that the Ulysses had suffered a failure of its main power plant beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and the crew never came out of stasis. When the batteries gave out, the ship’s transponder failed, and the Ulysses disappeared from our deep space tracking network. It was never relocated.’

  Clare listened, riveted to the screen. The loss of the Ulysses was part of USAC’s history; she remembered studying the accident when she was in her training. That far from the Sun, if a ship’s beacon stopped transmitting, it was almost impossible to find the ship again.

  ‘I can now reveal that certain details of the mission were withheld for security reasons. The Saturn mission was the first operational test of a new form of stasis technology, which we had been developing in an effort to increase the duration of deep space missions. The new technology had performed well in the lab on test subjects, but a real test, on a long space voyage, was needed to prove it out.

  ‘The mission was going well, and the Ulysses was approaching Jupiter in preparation for a slingshot manoeuvre to boost it towards Saturn. We had completed the daily routine contact with the ship’s flight computer, to check that all was well. A few hours later, all hell broke loose. For reasons that we do not understand, the crew revival sequence was triggered, and the whole crew was brought out of stasis.

  ‘What happened next is still unclear. We did not receive the contact from the Ulysses’ commander that we were expecting after an unscheduled revival, and all our attempts to make contact went unanswered. Two hours after revival, the remote command system was deliberately disabled, so we couldn’t take over the ship. Shortly after that, we lost the downlink and all the telemetry. Our only contact after that was the ship’s automatic transponder, from which we could determine the ship’s state vector. From analysis of the ship’s subsequent trajectory, a major course change was made as the ship rounded Jupiter, but the new course wasn’t aimed at any of the planets. Before we could get a more accurate reading, the transponder was switched off, and from that moment, we lost all contact. A frantic search was conducted to locate the ship, but as you know, all our efforts failed.