Chapter 27
While the commandos managed the logistics of moving the cargo to Dawn, Christopher, Aleksandr, and Zara studied the ship’s controls intently. Aleksandr managed to program an interim trajectory, with a new, final one to follow in the next few days. Christopher replaced the encryption key with their own, severing the link to Chinese mission control and establishing the link to their makeshift sea-bound mission control center. Specialists aboard the lower, hidden levels of the Sea Scavenger salivated over the sudden influx of data that lit up their screens, and began eagerly mapping out the ship’s systems and trajectory. Eris’s interior was reconfigured for extra seating, and the prisoners were transferred, together with a garbage bag each containing personal belongings. The moment that Zara was both anticipating and dreading had arrived. Everyone was now back aboard Eris, save Christopher. She and Christopher floated in the laboratory that served as the anteroom to Eris. The old man and the young woman looked at each other, with much nonverbal communication passing between them. They hugged each other tightly. “We gots to go, Christopher,” Aleksandr said into Christopher’s earpiece.
The intensity of the moment could not be overstated. Their embrace over, Christopher smiled at Zara, his eyes twinkling. “You have the spirit of your grandma in you,” he said. “If you haven’t seen her exploits in Martian orbit, you should. For all her love and sensibility, she’s pretty hardcore.” Zara nodded, while trying to keep from crying.
“Here, I want you to take this,” Christopher said. He handed her a St. Christopher necklace. “This is a talisman. Doubly appropriate, since he was the patron saint of travel, and he’s named after me!”
“Thanks,” Zara said.
“Take this, too,” Christopher continued. “It was mine when I was a little boy. I want it to go to the stars.” He handed her a small silver toy rocket ship, which looked like something out of Flash Gordon. “This is what got me hooked on space. I never dreamed of all the things that would come from that. In some ways, this has been more fun—and certainly more badass—than going to Mars was.”
Zara nodded. “This ship’s a thoroughbred,” Christopher continued, “and she’s barely begun to walk yet. Once you get it going at even a fraction of its top speed, you won’t just break the human spaceflight speed record; you’ll smash it to pieces. Nobody will fly faster than you for a very long time—certainly not in our lifetimes.”
Zara smiled through her tears and nodded. “Thanks for everything,” she said. They hugged.
“We must leave now,” came the message from Aleksandr.
“Say hi to your dad for me,” Christopher said as he turned to leave. Zara watched him float down the docking tunnel and close the hatch at the other end. The tunnel remained in place so it could be used to dock with the Eternity. Eris detached from it. Zara floated up to the atrium and watched Eris departing, still aware of the slim possibility that there might be a bomb on board. She had to pinch herself to make sure this wasn’t all a long, vivid dream that she would soon wake up from. She watched all alone in the vast ship as the sun set. She kept watching as it rose again forty-five minutes later, not wanting to take her eyes off Earth. Zara knew she would soon leave it far behind. Strangely, the possibility of a violent explosion didn’t faze her. She was now at peace.
Kato was twenty-one billion kilometers from Earth, having passed from the Solar System over a year ago. The Sun looked just like any other star now. The shock he had felt as he crossed the invisible boundary of interstellar space was much worse than he had expected. The invisible, minute amount of solar wind, however tenuous, had served as a last connection to humanity. Now that its force had been had been overtaken by the wind from other stars, his aloneness was complete. Kato completed his fitness regimen for that day, had lunch, and settled down to read an early twenty-first-century science fiction novel named Chimera. A news ticker scrolled by at the edge of his display, showing typical fare: economic reports, conflicts, et cetera. Then, the entire ticker went red and showed only one headline: SPACESHIP DAWN HIJACKED. Kato stared for a moment and then said, “Computer, expand headline.” A talking-head female reporter appeared: “…we have just received word that the spaceship Dawn, on its way to study the moons of Jupiter, has been hijacked in space only two days after departing the International Space Station 2. Her crew of ten have been removed and are being held on another ship, the Eris, commanded by the daughter of Kato Sasake-Robbins, the billionaire robotics mogul, and interstellar astronaut…”
Kato couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His head swam and his vision blurred. He rewound the broadcast and watched it another five times. Zara? What? Why? How? Who else is involved? This can’t be…
Chapter 28
“Deorbit burn set for thirteen minutes and fifty seconds,” Aleksandr said. “Cross-range good, visibility at the landing site is good.”
“Our evac resources are in place,” Arthur said. He motioned toward the prisoners. “These guys will have to make their own arrangements.” Shortly after that, Eris turned 180 degrees, now facing backwards to their direction of flight and in a slightly nose-down attitude. Her engines burned for thirty-four seconds and she was now on a downward trajectory that would intersect with Earth’s atmosphere. Eris turned back around. Upon reaching the first tenuous wisps of air, she began a series of wide S-turns to bleed off velocity, soon becoming a white-hot fireball as her heat shield endured the heat of reentry. The craft streaked in, lower and lower, across the Atlantic Ocean, and then across the coast of Morocco. Finally subsonic, she cruised in through the lower layers of the atmosphere. At ten kilometers altitude, she turned north.
The baking heat of the desert sun had long since cracked the runways of the Ben Guerir Air Base. It had closed decades previously and was now home only to snakes and scorpions. Its deserted hangars and mess halls echoed with the whistling wind and faded, non-classified papers littered the floors. Had anyone been standing at the end of the runway, they would have seen a most amazing sight. It looked at first like a mirage: a small blob in the sky, reflected in the glassy lake of heat that was the runway at midday. It descended and rapidly took on the form of a space plane. Landing gear down, it approached in a nose-up attitude and touched down, kicking up a cloud of dust and sand as it did so. A large parachute deployed, slowing it down. It came to a stop a few hundred meters before the end of the runway. A hatch on the side of the spacecraft opened and a ladder extended to the ground. The occupants started to file out—ten in all. They ran across the asphalt to a waiting helicopter 150 meters away. Its rotors were already turning, and they climbed on board. A palette of bottled water and nutrition bars was pushed out into the bone-dry sand. The machine kicked up a cloud of sand as its rotors bit the air. It rose, then turned and headed west, through a range of low mountains, hugging the desert floor to avoid detection.
Ten more dazed occupants stumbled out of the spacecraft. They slowly made their way to the supply drop and found a portable radio distress beacon of the type used by ships. The device had a large red button on top. They pushed it. Their location lit up on a screen at a maritime rescue center two thousand kilometers away.
Arthur watched the camera feed showing both the inside and outside of the Eris as their helicopter cruised thirty meters above the desert floor. Satisfied that the craft was now empty, Arthur took out a cell phone. He dialed a number and waited. A few seconds later, the space plane exploded in an almighty fireball, raining burning debris on the runway. The crew of Dawn, already unable to believe their circumstances, were speechless. Seung Yi, having had the tape removed from his mouth, spat contempt. Dawn continued making ever larger circles around the Earth, oblivious to the fury and uproar below. Eventually, she broke free of the planet’s gravity and made for deep space. Constantly gathering speed as the months passed, she crossed the orbits of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally humble, stone-cold Pluto. She kept accelerating. Early in her flight, a message was sent to Eternity’s ground station.
It was then forwarded to Dawn’s floating control center, 800 kilometers south of the Aleutian Islands, and on to Dawn:
KATO: ZARA, WHAT IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU DOING?
Zara smiled, knowing that this message would come sooner or later.
ZARA: I’M COMING TO SAVE YOU, DAD. I EVENED THE SCORE WITH SEUNG YI, AND AM COMING TO YOU.
KATO: ZARA, I TAUGHT YOU THAT STEALING IS WRONG. RETURN THAT SPACESHIP TO EARTH NOW, AND GIVE YOURSELF UP.
ZARA: NO.
Seung Yi’s rage reached boiling point, and then spilled over. His greatest triumph had become his greatest defeat. As the months passed, he began to slip into psychosis. Eventually, he was forcibly committed to a mental institution. Several months later, the right mix of medications to restore his mental balance was found, and he was released.
It was over a year until Seung Yi was able to resume his duties at the helm of MX9. His overt rage now became a cold fury that he was able to control in most circumstances, but never let go. Some day, some way, he thought, I will get even. I can’t see how right now, but the opportunity will come.
Two years and three months after launch, Dawn reached her maximum velocity as she flashed through space at a blistering 685 kilometers per second. Then she turned around and began to decelerate in preparation for her meeting with Eternity. Zara was rapidly tiring of the Asian food on board. She played chess with people on Earth, though it was maddeningly slow with a light round-trip time of over forty hours. She tended to the plants on board, never tiring of the view from both the top and bottom of the atrium, as the diminishing sunlight slanted through the glass decks and plant life. Gardening was extremely satisfying to Zara, and she would have done it even if the shape-shifters intended for maintenance tasks like this hadn’t turned into killers and been destroyed. The plants also made good subjects for watercolors, and she painted many of these—though paper and canvas were an extreme luxury and had to be budgeted carefully. This activity took on extra meaning as the Sun receded into the distance and eventually became just a point of light. Zara’s love of astronomy reawakened, having been buried in her self-indulgent, out-of-control years. Dawn had been blessedly equipped with a one-meter reflector telescope, and Zara used it extensively to study the stars and planets—though she didn’t pass close to any of the gas giants.
Looking through the crew’s spacious cabins in the lower ring, she found many personal items that hadn’t been collected in the hurried evacuation of the ship: letters from loved ones, small trinkets such as beads and religious symbols, photographs, notepads, clothing, and jewelry. Through these, she learned much about their personalities and how much they had anticipated the voyage. They weren’t evil; they were just scientists and mission specialists, on the trip of a lifetime. Regular people, like me. All except Seung Yi, who seems to be a crazy megalomaniac.
Zara began to learn Chinese and was eventually able to read most printed materials and displays on the ship without using her goggles. The upper ring made a superb running track and she would get a good cardio workout by jogging around it barefoot. Zara found that thoughts of a certain Australian physicist crossed her mind quite regularly. She looked at the University of Melbourne’s website and found that he still worked there. She created a new web-based email address and sent him a message:
Josh, you planted the seed of an idea that night on the train. I guess you didn’t know what you unleashed!
Love,
Zara Sasake-Robbins
The reply arrived almost as soon as the light round-trip time would allow. It read:
Oh… my… God! I did wonder if it was you I’d met that night, when it hit the news. Of all the unbelievable stuff! Wait till I tell the lads at the bar!
Your friend,
Josh
They struck up a relationship, which spanned the years and the vast gulf of space.
Chapter 29
At three years and four months into the voyage, the distance between Dawn and the Eternity, which had been as high as twenty-three billion kilometers, closed to less than one billion.The distance was still beyond the comprehension of both parties, but they found a renewed excitement—despite Kato’s utter disapproval of what Zara had done. They were now less than one light hour apart.
ZARA: DAD, I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU AGAIN.
KATO: ME TOO!
ZARA: IT’S A LITTLE LATE TO TURN AROUND AND HEAD BACK TO EARTH NOW, HUH?
KATO: YES, BUT I’M STILL GOING TO GIVE YOU A SLAP ACROSS THE WRIST WHEN YOU GET HERE.
ZARA: SEUNG YI HAD IT COMING.
KATO: IT COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED TO A NICER PERSON.
Zara opened another message. It had been sent forty hours earlier, by Aleksandr:
“Hi, I hope all is well aboard Dawn. The investigation is still ongoing here. Incredibly, they haven’t been able to pin it on anybody: everyone either had plausible deniability due to the cover story, or was in disguise (Christopher and I). Arthur’s crew just melted back into the shadows.
“The Chinese couldn’t get any evidence from the Eris, of course: she was totally obliterated by the time they reached her. Chris and I have both been living on the Sea Scavenger for the last six months—strictly in a mission control capacity. I’ll never look at seafood in the same way again, though! On to practical matters: telemetry shows that Dawn is still functioning well. You’re twenty weeks out from rendezvous with Eternity, and down to 328 kilometers per second. We’ve sent you what should hopefully be the last course correction, plus the automatic docking program. It’s been tested thousands of times in software simulations, so hopefully it works in real life! Chris sends his love. Alex out.”
At five thousand kilometers, using the telescope, Zara had been able to see Eternity’s navigation lights blinking in the darkness. At one thousand, she could make out the point of light that was the observation bubble, with the lights on. At fifty, she could see her father waving. Now, at last, the two vessels were alongside each other. They were illuminated only by each other’s external floodlights in the inky blackness, forty-four billion kilometers from Earth.
“Damn, that’s a fine ship!” Kato said.
“Back at ya!” Zara said.
“Not long now!”
With small puffs from her thrusters, Dawn slowly maneuvered her bulky self until she was at a right angle to Eternity. Ever so slowly, the docking adapter left in place by Eris approached the other ship’s hatch. The centimeters reduced until the giant ship made contact with her target. A few minutes later, the pressures were equalized, and Kato opened the hatch. Zara launched herself through it giddily. The two embraced, without a word being uttered, for several minutes.
Kato brushed the tears away from Zara’s eyes—they had nowhere to flow in zero gravity. “Oh baby, am I glad see you!”
“Me, too, Dad. I’m sorry for everything.”
“So am I, baby. Please forgive an old fool!”
He looked at her with tears of joy filling his eyes. “There was never a dad in all the world who loved his little girl more than I love you.” Zara nodded and smiled. They hugged for several more minutes.
“So, are you going to show me this most perfect spaceship you hijacked?” Kato said.
“Of course! Come on over!” Zara gave him the guided tour, all the way from one end to the other. They paused at the bottom of the atrium.
“It looks like there was a fire here,” Kato said, eyeing the scorch marks all over the floor, walls, and ceiling of deck one.
“Yes,” Zara said. “There was a robot fight. They set shape-shifters on us. Luckily, we’d brought some of our own and the two sides annihilated each other.”
“Damn Seung Yi,” Kato said, shaking his head slowly, his jaw clenched. “I pledged never to use that technology for destructive purposes.” He paused and looked at Zara. “You put yourself directly in harm’s way to save me. You could easily have died, either during the hijacking or on the sprint out here. Why did you do it?”
Zara looked directly a
t Kato. “Because you’re my dad.”
“But… I made my own bed,” he said. “I initiated this mission, and I was responsible for hiring Seung Yi. My fate was mine alone. You had your whole life ahead of you on Earth.”
“But, you’re still my dad.”
Kato hugged her tightly and the tears flowed freely.
A little while later, Zara said, “Dad, I found this ping-pong set in one of the crew cabins. Batting a ball against the window is getting boring. Wanna play?”
“Of course!” he said. “Your grandma and grandpa used to play zero-G ping pong on the Mars flight.” The bridge became a makeshift court, and Kato was beaten soundly. Lunch was taken aboard Dawn.
“Damn, this is some good food!” Kato said. “These guys were intent on living it up on their trip to Jupiter.”
“Honestly Dad, I’m so tired of it I’d almost rather eat toilet paper.”
“Then dinner’s at my place!”
After dinner, Zara took her leave and went back to Dawn to retrieve something. A few minutes later, she rejoined Kato on the Eternity’s flight deck.
“This is for you,” she said. She handed Kato a small, very lumpy, glazed ceramic bowl. It was turquoise, with flecks of green where different colored clays and glazes had been mixed together. The edges flared out about an inch at the top and stamped into the edges were the words HAPPY FATHER’S DAY FROM ZARA. “I made it for you in kindergarten,” Zara said, “but I didn’t give you it because I was so angry with you over Mom’s death.” Her eyes teared up again. Kato took the bowl and looked at it as though he had just been handed the crown jewels. He held it carefully, even though there was no way he could drop it in zero gravity. “I’m so sorry for the way I treated you, Dad. Especially when I was a teenager. I was a very mixed-up kid.”
Zara's Flight: Book One of the Kato's War series Page 11