by Allen Steele
Here again was Jupiter, looming large against infinite space, a king surrounded by his royal court. Fiery Io and icy Callisto, pale blue Europa and harlequin Ganymede, and all the lesser worlds: Leda, Himalia, Elara, Lysithea, Anake, Carme, Pasiphae, Sinope…and tiny Amalthea. As different as members of a family, each remote from the other yet bonded by common bonds of gravity and shared heritage.
I gazed upon them as the Medici Explorer fell toward the sun, bearing the weight of all our dreams.
Kronos
3.10.2070 2316Z—PARN Intrepid
Consciousness returns to Kinnard like an aerated bubble rising from the bottom of an aquarium. He stirs within the zombie tank as the last dregs of the biostasis drugs that kept him under are flushed from his bloodstream.
When he finally opens his eyes, it is to the dimness of the hibernation deck. The lights have been turned down low, but the dull blue glow of the status panel above his tank’s open lid nonetheless causes him to squint and blink. He takes a deep breath; his lungs are assaulted by antiseptic cold air, making him cough. There is an urge to vomit, even though there is nothing in his stomach to bring up.
“Easy, Captain…easy.” A voice from the darkness, softly accented, warm and familiar, the last voice he heard before his eyes closed nine months ago. “Keep shut your eyes, take shallow breaths.”
He shuts his eyes. A plastic mask is placed over his nose and mouth. Pure oxygen forces the nausea down, diminishes the pounding in his temples. The voice murmurs something unintelligible to another person, then the mask is lifted away. “Try again,” the voice says. “Don’t rush so this time. Everything’s copa.”
Kinnard carefully opens his eyes again. The status panel blurs, then gradually focuses, resolving into an electronic quilt of lines and graphs. Thin plastic tubes filled with blood and phlegm-colored liquid dangle from sacs suspended above his body, leading into major veins in the crooks of his elbows. No strength in his arms, legs, or back; the soles of his feet tingle painfully, his bladder feels ready to explode.
A face comes into the light. Narrow and fine-boned, with albino-pale skin tattooed with intricate swirls and whorls resembling a magnified fingerprint. Above dark blue eyes twice the size of his own is a Gaelic cross, its spiked bars running across a hairless forehead and down the bridge of an aquiline nose.
“Peter…” he gasps, his lips and mouth parched and dry.
“A second, then be done.” Intrepid’s doctor nods to his assistant. She steps into the weak light: Anna Christ-Webster, the ship’s cargo master, Peter’s first-wife. Anna’s face is also marked with the Gaelic cross of Christ clan; unlike her husband, whose skull is shaved bald, Anna’s blond hair is tied into a long braid that tumbles over her narrow shoulders like a loose rope.
A plastic waste-disposal bag is in her tattooed left hand. Before Kinnard can object, Anna reaches beneath the sheets, her long fingers sliding across his groin in search of the catheter. She carefully secures the bag around his penis. Anna’s intent is anything but sexual, but his member involuntarily stiffens at her touch; her pale skin blushes beneath the tattoos, her large blue eyes making brief contact with his. It’s an embarrassing moment for both of them.
“Sorry, Marion,” she whispers. “Take just a moment.”
“Deep breath, hold it,” Peter says.
Kinnard obliges, then Anna releases the catheter and his bladder lets go for the first time in nine months. He gasps in agony, almost wishing that they had left him under.
When it is over, Anna takes the bag to the recycling chute. Peter gently pulls the tubes from Kinnard’s arms and gives him a soaked sponge to suck on; then, without being asked, he reaches up to a ceiling monitor and switches it to a real-time image from outside the ship.
There, on the screen, is his destination. Kinnard stares for a long time at the immense ringed planet. “Ship?” he finally asks.
“She’s fine, Captain.” Peter favors him with a rare smile. “A-okay, everything is. All conditions green.”
Kinnard nods. He raises his head a little. Eight men and women still sleep in tanks arranged along the walls of the hibernation deck. The captain wonders what strange dreams float through their slow-time minds; he cannot recall his own.
“Good,” he says, his vocal cords rasping from disuse. “Thanks for…taking care of me.” He pauses and swallows. “Now get…me out this thing.”
3.11.2070 0610Z
The Pax Astra Royal Navy frigate Intrepid falls toward Saturn, inexorably drawn into the planet’s gravity well as the vessel continues its long deceleration burn.
Sixty meters in length, Intrepid is relatively small for a ship with for a maximum range of nine a.u.’s. Designed for military missions rather than exploration or trade, few accommodations have been made for passengers and none for freight, other than the two missile pods slung on either side of its forward hull and the manta-like shuttle moored beneath its wasp-waisted midsection. Imagine a half-liter bottle—the payload module—with its spout glued to that of a three-quarter liter bottle—the engine module—and you essentially have the warship’s architecture.
Mounted beneath the forward module is a large round aerobrake shield. Its ceramic tiles, each a different color, have been carefully arranged so that they form the warship’s figurehead: an angel with a sword, her wings spread wide as if flying through space.
Intrepid’s nuclear-pulse main engine has fired continually ever since the ship left the Moon two hundred and seventy-five standard days ago, its lasers fissioning the deuterium pellets constantly fed into the reactor chamber, causing the uninterrupted string of tiny nuclear explosions which gradually accelerated the ship, at the end of its boost phase, to nearly one-tenth light speed. As Intrepid passed through Jupiter’s orbit one hundred and sixty-eight days ago, its crew flipped the ship around until its bell-shaped engine nozzle was pointed in the direction of flight. Ever since then, the ship has been applying the brakes as a long prelude to entering Saturnine space.
“Begin MECO at ten, on my mark…”
“Copy that, sir. Ready for MECO.”
“Mark. Ten…nine…eight…”
A tattooed hand lingers on a throttle yoke as its companion hovers over a set of toggle switches.
“Seven…six…”
A pair of wide blue eyes framed by a Gaelic cross watches the readouts on a comp screen. “Guidance positive. On course for transorbital insertion.”
“Five…four…”
Another pair of hands flits across a keyboard. Lights flash from red to green. “Main feed valves closed, central tank offline. Dumping residual core reactants.”
“Three…two…”
“Heat regulators on, radiation buffers engaged, main tank pressure nominal. All systems copacetic…”
“One…now, please.”
As if choreographed by a stern dance master, hands and AI systems execute a complex fandango that charms the nuclear beast to bay. A disgruntled tremor runs through the ship as, for the first time in nine months, the white-hot glow in the exhaust bell quickly diminishes to orange, then red, then fades out altogether.
“MECO complete.”
“Reactor shut down and safe, Captain.”
“All systems on standby, sir.”
Kinnard floats upward against the straps confining him to his seat. Little more than six hours has passed since he was brought out of biostasis, just enough time for his body to readjust to even low-gravity. Now that Intrepid is in free fall, his arms and legs don’t ache quite as much. He wants to sigh with relief, but that would be an inappropriate response. His crew might interpret it as a sign of weakness.
He glances at the men and women seated at consoles arranged around the circular command deck. In the company of bioengineered Superiors, a baseline human is a freak, and not vice-versa. His rib cage isn’t anorexically compact. His arms aren’t long and sinewy, the fingers of his hands don’t resemble articulated pencils. His legs aren’t double-jointed at the knees and ankles, his
toes haven’t been expanded to become a second pair of hands. He has no cerebral implants which allow him to interface with computers, and his eyes don’t look like dark blue chicken eggs with a second set of translucent lids.
When the Navy assigned him command of the Intrepid, Kinnard was informally warned that Superiors—or “googles,” as Admiral Coonts referred to them, when they were alone in his office at River House—harbored a certain disdain for unmodified Primaries—or “apes,” as Superiors often refer to baseline humans, under equally private circumstances. Superiors are born and bred for space; the first gene-tailored embryos raised in a secret lab in Mare Tranquillitatis just before the Moon War have come of age. For them, the cosmos is not a frontier, but a birthright; their origins as egg and sperm donated by lunar colonists is an embarrassment, not a heritage. Even the Christ clan, which has embraced neo-Mormonism instead of the extropic philosophies of the Superior families which have migrated to the outer system, could be condescending toward their Primary captain; his weaknesses were forgiven, but not easily forgotten.
Kinnard has been captain of this vessel for three years now. He has come to trust his trust, and believes that they trust him. But their differences are more broad than their similarities, and he never permits himself to forget this fact.
“Very well.” Kinnard loosens his seat straps as he rotates it to face the bow windows. “Isidore, initiate rollover maneuver. Jon, finalize trajectories for Saturn atmospheric refueling and Titan rendezvous. Cayenne, ship status?”
“All systems nominal, sir. A full report is on your screen.” Cayenne Christ-Caswell doesn’t resort to the broken-English patois most Superiors use when they’re not in the presence of Primaries. Even after two voyages with her, Kinnard still doesn’t know whether he should be complimented or insulted.
Kinnard calls up the report and pretends to study it, but cannot help looking up as Intrepid turns end-over-end until its bow is pointed toward Saturn. Even at the distance of twelve million kilometers, the planet fills the deck’s portals. He involuntarily sucks in his breath as the ringed giant glides into view. He has twice been to Mars and—during the short-lived Callisto Station insurrection, which Intrepid helped put down—even the Jovian system, yet even Jupiter’s vast and terrible beauty pales next to the serene majesty of its cousin. No photo, film, or VR simulation he has ever seen has prepared him for this first glimpse of its intricate rings, nor the dull yellow-orange bands of its cloud patterns.
A hushed silence falls upon the deck as his crew takes in the spectacle. “Kronos,” Isidore Christ-Ortega murmurs, using—as common practice among Superiors—the ancient Greek name for the planet. “Heshe is beautiful, eh?”
Kinnard smiles. Considering Superior stoicism, his first officer’s reaction is a small wonder in itself. Yet understandable; Intrepid is only the second crewed vessel to venture this far into the outer system. His people are among a rare handful to see Saturn through naked eyes, bioenhanced or otherwise…
And no one knows what happened to the first group of visitors.
This thought brings Kinnard back to the present. “Okay, let’s get back to work,” he says. “Plenty of time for sightseeing later.” He catches Jon’s eye and favors him with a wink. “Specially you, navco. You get the fun part.”
For this, he is rewarded with the fleeting grin. Jon Christ-Caswell can’t wait for the challenge before him. This is noticed by Cayenne, who lapses into google-speak. “Cut you no tether now,” she warns her first-husband. “This ship not built for joyriding boyshit, hey?”
“Ease off the feedback, fem.” Jon turns back to his console. “We copy, over.”
Kinnard ignores this as he reluctantly unbuckles his harness. “Marie, have you received anything from Hershel Explorer?”
“Word nyet, Captain.” Slender wires leading from the back of Marie Christ-Ortega’s skull drift about her braided black hair as she shakes her head distractedly. Her eyes are unfocused; her brain’s MINN—Mnemonic Interfaced Neural Net—is linked with Intrepid’s comnet, so her attention is divided between com deck and cyberspace. “Negatory on all channels. Solid telemetry link on Q and A bands, but nada talkback.”
Isidore turns to look at his first-wife. “Huygens Station, try microbeam downlink with them, eh?”
“Do that, okay.” Her lips move silently as she subvocalizes a message to the outpost on Titan’s surface, her long fingers pantomiming keyboard strokes as she opens a microbeam relay to the base.
Kinnard pushes himself out of his seat and, pulling himself along ceiling handrails, moves to the map table. A holographic one-quarter slice of Saturnine space materializes before him. Intrepid is a tiny silver spot passing through the orbit of Phoebe, the outermost moon. Eleven million klicks away, past the orbits of Iapetus and Hyperion, is Titan.
Kinnard punches up the course that Jon has laid in. Studying it, he absently smiles, satisfied that the navigator has done his job. Intrepid arrived at Saturn with its fuel tanks nearly depleted; this was necessary sacrifice of constant thrust that approached one-gee when the ship began its midcourse deceleration. However, the frigate was specifically designed for refueling by an aerobraking maneuver through the planet’s upper atmosphere, during which gaseous helium-three would be scooped from the thin stratospheric layer high above its swirling cloudtops. This raw fuel source was less efficient than deuterium pellets extracted and refined from the Moon’s regolith, but it was enough to get Intrepid back home. Indeed, his crew had safely performed much the same maneuver during the Callisto mission two years ago.
Jon has laid in a trajectory that would graze the top of Saturn’s atmosphere below its rings. Before Intrepid made its refueling run, it would drop off its shuttle, Excalibur, near Titan. By the time he and his crew were viewing the rings of Saturn from below, the landing party would be on Titan’s icy surface, trying to discover why all contact had been lost with Huygens Base and the Hershel Explorer.
This is the single aspect of the operation that makes Kinnard nervous, although he wouldn’t dare admit it to any of his crew. He alone is aware of certain aspects of this mission that no one else aboard knows yet, and what little he knows scares the hell out of him.
Marie interrupts his thoughts. “Microbeam with Hershel, no can do. Got nothing, see nothing.”
Kinnard peers at her through the holo. “No contact at all? Not even with the AI system?”
“Nada, Captain. White noise, all down the line.”
Kinnard nods. He was half-expecting this. “Open a channel to Moscoviense PADSS,” he says, referring to Pax Astra Deep Space System, located in the Sea of Moscow on the lunar farside. “Use Priority One daybook encryption and have it relayed direct to CHNAVINT at River House.”
Jon and Cayenne glance up from their consoles. Communiqués from the Intrepid are normally directed to FLTCOM at Descartes City on the Moon. CHNAVINT is Sir Lucius Robeson, the Chief of Naval Intelligence. His office is located in River House, the Pax Astra’s seat of government in the LaGrange colony of Clarke County, and it is well-known fact that his de facto power is second only to the Prime Minister himself. “Inform them of our arrival,” Kinnard continues, “that we’ve received nothing from either the Hershel or Huygens Base.”
“Going in, then?” This from Isidore, who has silently come up behind him and is now clinging to a ceiling handrail with his toes. “Launch a rescue mission, we do now, eh?”
Kinnard turns to look at his first officer, knowing that this is not a question at all. His clan has piloted the Intrepid across eight and a half a.u.’s without knowing the full details of their mission; now they learn that their captain is reporting directly to Naval Intelligence. Clearly there is more to this than simply finding out why contact with the Titan expedition was lost ten months ago.
“It’s still a rescue mission,” Kinnard says, “but there may be more to it than just that.”
Isidore stares at him. “And when do we learn more, Captain?”
Kinnard hesitates
. As commanding officer, he is within his rights to simply refuse giving an answer. Or he could tell everything he knows, now, and let the chips fall as they may. He takes neither option. “When we receive a message from River House,” he replies. “Until then, we proceed with the mission as scheduled.”
Kinnard looks past Isidore to the chief engineer. “Cayenne, when you’re done there, get Excalibur prepped and ready for launch.” She silently nods, and Kinnard prods his jaw with his fingertips. “Peter? How are our passengers?”
“Slow coming up, Captain,” Peter’s voice says in his right ear, “but they’re awake.”
“Good. Soon as they’re able, have them report to the wardroom. I’ll meet them there.” He gives Isidore a sidelong glance. “You and Anna come, too,” he adds. “In fact, I want everyone aboard present for the briefing.”
“Copy that, Captain.” A pause. “Briefing is when?”
“Soon as we hear from FLTCOM. I’ll let you know.” He signs off, then looks at Christ-Ortega. “Fair enough, jefe?”
“Straight wire, Captain.”
“Copa. I’ll be in my cabin if you need me.”
Isidore gives him a short wave over his shoulder as he somersaults back to his seat. Another PARN commander might consider this insubordinate, but Kinnard knows better. Superiors have their own ways, as commanding officer of the only PARN deep-space vessel crewed almost entirely by a clan, Kinnard has to accept this.
The Christ family is one of the few clans that has sworn allegiance to the Pax Astra; most Superiors have either proclaimed political neutrality, or secretly aligned themselves with the Jove Resistance during the Callisto rebellion. On one hand, Kinnard counts his good fortune that his crew, as inscrutable as they often were, is willing and capable of following his orders, even during the nine long months that he had spent in the zombie tank.