Skyler’s expression was a sight to behold. It clearly had never crossed his mind that he might have to crew one of the landers. Jack almost pissed himself laughing. He set Alexei off, and Meili also went into a fit of giggles. Skyler’s expression turned murderous.
They were sitting around the kitchen table, with the debris of a hearty meal before them. The hydroponics were still in a shambles, so it felt like eating lunch at a table unaccountably left behind after a hurricane flattened your house. Their empty bowls testified to Meili’s liberal hand with Szechuan spices, which had turned a stew of carrots, zucchini, potatoes, and reconstituted soy protein chunks into a feast. Hannah had even baked loaves of her special bread. The general feeling of ebullience after their safe arrival made laughter easy. It was Skyler’s problem if he couldn’t take a joke.
“I’m just saying, shouldn’t the MOAD be our priority?” Skyler protested. He forgot to say ma’am this time, Jack noted.
“Absolutely,” Kate said, and smiled, tigerishly. Jack suddenly got a sinking feeling. “But that won’t take long. A few hours? Fire up the engine, boost our orbit, achieve a safe separation of a hundred klicks or so. Then, bombs away.” She opened her hands as if releasing a weight. There was dead silence around the table.
Jack erupted, “You’re joking. After coming all this way to investigate it, we’re going to blow it up?”
Alexei said, “With what? I’m sorry, but shooting that thing with our railguns will be like firing an AK at an aircraft carrier.”
“You would be correct,” Kate said, measuring out her words, “if we only had standard slugs to work with. As it happens, we’ve also got a number of plutonium rounds.”
“What?” Jack yelled. He’d done ammunition inventory himself a number of times. He knew for a fact that the ammo store outside the storage module only held standard steel slugs. Everyone else looked equally blindsided by this revelation—even Skyler, although he could be acting. The NXC agent, Jack knew, was very good at hiding his thoughts and feelings. And if there was a secret stash of plutonium rounds on board the SoD, the NXC must’ve had a hand in getting it there. “Where?” Jack demanded.
“You don’t need to know that right now,” Kate said. “I’ll tell you when we’re ready to fire them.”
Jack subsided. He sprawled lower in his chair, knees wide apart, the posture of a sulky schoolboy.
The argument waxed noisy and circular.
Should we blow up the MOAD?
She said several plutonium rounds. I wonder if we’ve actually got enough.
Ollie—Jack mentally addressed his dead friend—what would you do?
He noticed that Hannah was taking no part in the argument. She sat with her elbows on the table, chin in her hands, watching the debate as if it were a game of ping-pong.
Renewed guilt intruded on Jack’s thoughts. He heaved himself forward and cut another hunk of bread, hoping that he would win some points with Hannah if he showed appreciation for her baking skills. He spread it with butter—a perishable that froze nicely, so they still had enough of it for special occasions. “This’s terrific,” he said, through a mouthful. “I could eat the whole loaf.” Hannah shot him a wary glance and went back to watching the argument.
“Enough,” Kate finally yelled. “This is an order from Mission Control. It’s not up for debate.”
But her upper lip glistened with a delicate sheen of sweat, and her hands made white-knuckled fists on the table. Jack had a lightbulb moment. Mission Control had not ordered any such thing. Kate had been alone on the bridge when she talked to Houston. She was making this up.
Jack had wanted her to ditch Mission Control’s party line. He had wanted her to accept that they were the ones out here, and should be making the crucial decisions.
But this was the wrong decision.
Even Skyler evidently agreed with that.
“I’m just not getting it,” Skyler said. “Why have they suddenly reversed an established policy?”
“Our mission,” Kate said, “was to determine whether the MOAD represents a threat to humanity. It’s clear that it does.”
“How is that clear?” Skyler demanded. “We have not boarded the MOAD, we haven’t scanned or photographed it, we haven’t done any of the shit that we came six hundred million kilometers to do! This is bullshit.”
“You’ve got a short memory, haven’t you, Skyler?” Kate said. “Remember how the goddamn thing almost killed us, less than twenty-four hours ago? Yeah, that. Now tell me it’s not dangerous.”
Skyler fell back on, “We would need a UN resolution before we’re legally allowed to fire on the MOAD. They can’t have passed anything yet. The UN takes more than twenty-four hours to scratch its ass.”
“Extraordinary circumstances,” Kate said glibly. “Listen, Skyler, let me worry about the paperwork. As commander it’s my responsibility to preserve the lives of my crew and the integrity of my ship.” She turned to Jack. “Soon as we’re done eating, I’d like you to execute a short burn to boost our orbit.”
“No,” Jack muttered.
She obviously heard him, but decided to give him a second chance. “Say again, Jack?”
Jack had a split second to decide whether to accuse her to her face of lying about the order from Mission Control. If he did, that would spell the end of the official command structure. It would be Mutiny on the Bounty, deep space edition.
Their wrangle over restarting the reactor had already set the stage for mutiny. Kate had said nothing about the incident since, and Jack had hoped they could draw a line under it. Least said, soonest mended. But now, already, he had to decide whether to disobey her again.
Don’t do it, Meeks’s ghost counselled him.
But the ‘orders’ were bullshit. Glancing around, he confirmed that Skyler knew it, Alexei knew it, probably even Giles knew it.
Meili was nodding along with Kate, probably on the naïve assumption that their commander would not lie to them. And Hannah …
Hannah cleared her throat. “I would like to raise a related issue,” she said. “That last burn drained our external tanks. We still have plenty of water for the life-support system, but as far as propulsion goes, I’m actually not sure we’ve got enough reaction mass to boost our orbit. So the whole thing might be moot, for the time being.”
Jack grinned to himself in relief. He knew they probably had barely enough reaction mass for a small orbit adjustment, but it would be a close-run thing. Anyway, Hannah was giving him an out.
“The MOAD isn’t going anywhere,” Hannah continued. “So I think we should prioritize recovering our reaction mass from Thing One and Thing Two.”
Kate frowned. But she seemed to recognize that Hannah had offered her an out, as well. Grudgingly, she said, “That’s a good point, Hannah. I am hesitant to expose the ship and crew to the risk of another HERF. But we do need to retrieve the reaction mass. I can tell Mission Control that we’ll have to hold off on the kill strike until we have completed that operation.”
Jack felt a surge of disgust. She was still clinging to her lie! He said, “Shrapnel from a kill strike would fall out of orbit, and might well damage Thing One and Thing Two. That’s the kind of risk I don’t like. I’d rather not pilot the Dragon through a debris field, either.”
“Oh really, Jack?” Kate shot back. “I thought danger was like crack to you.” She pushed back her chair. “Prepare the landers for launch.”
*
Skyler found Alexei running the electric sander in the machine shop. He’d just returned from an EVA with Meili, fingertip-checking the Shenzhou Plus for any damage it might have sustained during their voyage. His muscles quivered with fatigue. Walking didn’t cut it as exercise, after all. He couldn’t imagine how he was going to get through four round-trips to the surface.
Alexei balanced in the foot tethers at the machine shop, which was a workbench in the storage module, equipped with basic tools. The sander whined. The extra-powerful vent over the workbench suck
ed metal dust away.
“What are you doing?” Skyler said.
“Sanding,” Alexei said.
“Whoa, thanks, Captain Obvious.” It looked like Alexei was putting a point on a four-inch length of welding rod. He had already done a bunch of them. The points glittered like needles.
Jack popped out from the storage locker next to the machine shop, which had turned into a walk-in locker as they drew down their supplies. “Found the sheet aluminum.” He held two large pieces of it. “Oh, hey, Skyler. Ready to go?”
“Doesn’t look like you’re ready,” Skyler said.
“We’re just making a few last-minute preparations,” Jack said.
“I wish we had PVC pipe,” Alexei grumbled, ignoring Skyler.
“The aluminum will work,” Jack said.
“Look, hey, guys, what are you making?” Skyler said.
Alexei snatched a meter-long length of iron from a clasp under the bench. He jammed one end of it into his shoulder like the stock of a rifle, and pointed it at Skyler’s face. “Bang,” he said.
Skyler despised everyone on board the SoD at the moment, but right now he despised Alexei most of all. The Russian enjoyed bullying those weaker than himself, and what really got under Skyler’s skin was the knowledge that Alexei considered him weaker. Negligible, as a man and an astronaut.
He had wanted to talk to Jack and Alexei about Kate’s supposed orders to carry out a kill strike on the MOAD, but now he changed his mind. “Fuck you too, Ivanov,” he said dismissively, and floated towards the keel tube.
Bang.
That reminded him, actually.
CHAPTER 16
The Shenzhou Plus drifted away from the SoD, burping hydrazine gas from its rotational thrusters. Skyler and Meili, buckled into the red-upholstered seats, wore their spacesuits. Before today, Skyler hadn’t worn his spacesuit in two years. It still smelled of vomit. The last time he wore it, boarding the SoD, he’d baptized it with puke. He had to do better on this outing, to prove that he wasn’t deadweight.
At least, thank God, he didn’t feel nauseated. Yet.
He peered at the LCD displays in the high-tech console in front of him. One of them showed an external camera feed.
He was hoping for, and dreading, a glimpse of the MOAD.
Instead, he saw the SoD, seeming to elongate as the two craft changed their relative positions, until the screen framed its entire length.
Outlined by sunlight glinting on its trusses, and dotted with warning lights, the Spirit of Destiny resembled nothing so much as the Eiffel Tower with a rotating restaurant on top. Further back, the bioshield—the steel disk that shaded the hab modules from the reactor’s lethal radiation—stuck out all around the truss tower, like a platform to catch jumpers. The architectural comparison broke down at the back of the ship, where four gigantic external tanks ringed the engine. Those tanks had held the SoD’s reaction mass. And were now as good as empty.
They had to refill those tanks, if they were ever to get home.
Meili smiled sideways at him. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“The SoD?”
“Yes.”
“It is,” Skyler said, surprised how strongly he agreed. “Most beautiful thing humanity has ever built.”
“They’d slay me for saying this at home, but it’s even more beautiful than Tianzi Mountain.”
Skyler noticed that Meili had some odd little marks on her cheeks. They looked like dark red freckles. He was pretty sure she hadn’t had those yesterday.
“OK, SoD, we have 200 meters of separation,” she said into her headset.
“Shenzhou, you are cleared to de-orbit,” Kate’s voice said from the radio.
“Roger,” Meili said. “Here we go.”
She keyed in a throttle command. The Shenzhou Plus’s main engine ignited with a loud, low-pitched roar. A wallop of thrust gravity smooshed them into their seats. They thrust against their direction of orbital travel, bleeding off velocity, until they began to fall down towards Europa.
Skyler was just the passenger; Meili was driving. She controlled the lander with a sure touch. An experienced pilot, she’d flown more than one manned Shenzhou launch during the SoD construction process. Not that this lander bore much resemblance to the original Shenzhou, which was a Soyuz knock-off.
Originally, the SoD had been meant to carry two Dragons—which would’ve been a massive win for SpaceX and the United States. But the Chinese had gotten their panties in a twist about that, and they’d come up with this modified Shenzhou to take one of the lander spots. NXC sources suggested they had had to enlist Russian help to build it. The new design featured a restartable engine, so Skyler and Meili would be able to get back into orbit, which was a good thing, yup, a very good thing indeed …
Europa filled the screen, and Skyler marveled that he wasn’t more scared. He trusted Meili to get them down safely. And how fucked-up was that? He worked for the NXC. She was a CNSA taikonaut, who might still turn out to be the saboteur. He’d sent the malware trigger home to Earth, but it would take them a while to analyze it. This Chinese-made landing craft might even be the vector for the malware. It might have been built to fail …
Meili engaged the retro-rockets. Inside her fishbowl helmet, strands of black hair wafted over those odd freckles. She jerked her head unconsciously to get her hair out of her face, and reported to Kate that they were on vector to land at their target coordinates. Her cool competence calmed Skyler’s jitters. He was a sucker for a woman who knew what she was doing.
The camera feed turned black.
Skyler braced for a bump, like when you landed in the Mojave desert or on the plains of Kazakhstan.
He felt nothing.
Meili waved her glove in front of his helmet. “We’re down!” Her voice came over the radio link. She was grinning, and Skyler grinned back.
“You stuck the landing,” he told her.
“It’s Europa,” she said. “Gravity of thirteen percent of one gee.”
Each of them weighed less than half as much here as they did in the SoD’s rotating hab.
“OK,” she said. “We want to absolutely minimize our time outside the lander. Remember the rems.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Skyler said jokingly.
“The most dangerous type of radiation is Bremsstrahlung. That’s when you shield against high-energy beta particles with dense materials, like metal, and it actually makes it worse. But not to worry. Our suits aren’t shielded, anyway.”
“Great.”
“Oh, there’s the water loop, that helps a bit. But basically we should consider that we are unshielded. So we get out there, hook up the hoses, and then come back inside while we pump. Ready?”
“Ready.”
They checked each other’s helmet seals. Then they wriggled out of the crew module, through the pressure door behind their seats, and into the second service module, which held a basic survival kit and repair tools. They crammed into the airlock overhead. They had already been breathing pure oxygen all the way down, so there was no need to wait.
They scrabbled up into a new world.
The Shenzhou Plus incorporated extra tankage, which made it eleven meters tall, including its engine. It now sat on its tail, giving Skyler, up top, a panoramic view of Europa.
Jupiter squatted on the horizon, scary-big.
Cracked white terrain reminded him of the Arctic.
Here and there, little hills blistered the frozen expanse.
Thing Two stood a short way off, casting a columnar shadow.
Skyler started to descend the ladder. Meili’s boot came down on the rung above his head. Then she said something to herself in Chinese and jumped off the ladder.
Arms spread, she floated down to the ground, staggered, and pirouetted. Her laughter crackled into Skyler’s helmet. “I did it!” she crowed. “I did it! I am the first human being to walk on Europa! Wheeee!”
Skyler said severely, “That was very childish.” But he co
uldn’t help smiling. Her spontaneity befitted the moment.
“I did it, I did it! Wo zuo daole!”
“Remember the rems,” Skyler said, and then his own boots touched the ground. Virgin snow crunched under his soles, and a shock of awe overtook him. He understood Meili’s euphoria. He was literally standing on another planet!
Well, moon.
Lashed by an invisible blizzard of radiation.
“C’mon, let’s get pumping.”
They moved in low-gravity bounds towards Thing Two. Meili really had stuck the landing. Only twenty meters separated the two craft.
Thing Two, in keeping with its Seussian nickname, resembled a cartoon space rocket. The ‘rocket’ was actually a tank left over from NASA’s space shuttle program. It had started off full of water, which had powered Thing Two’s voyage to Europa. When it got here, the tank had been empty. But as soon as it landed, Thing Two—remote-controlled by the probe operators at JPL—had sunk a drill deep into the ground, and started sucking up crushed ice.
Thing One, a few klicks away, had done the same.
By now, they should both be full of water again.
Europa, after all, was pretty much made of H2O.
The Things had melted the ice with radioisotope generators snuggled inside their tall tanks. They had kept most of it in the form of liquid water, and electrolyzed the rest into LOX and LH2. Those reactants were for the Dragon and the Shenzhou Plus, to fuel their return journeys into orbit.
Thing Two’s tank and electrolyzer assembly stood on top of a hexagonal shed with six stumpy legs—its engine bell.
Each of the legs slanted out at an angle, for stability. They elevated the engine bell about five feet off the ground. The drill descended behind it. The snow and ice was all churned up back there.
Meili jumped to catch the ladder on the side of the engine bell. She climbed up, unhooked Thing Two’s LOX hose, and tossed the end down to Skyler. He made the catch, and felt proud of himself for not fumbling it.
Running in big leaps, remembering the rems, he dragged the hose back to the Shenzhou. He climbed up the ladder. The metal connector on the end of the hose stuck to his gloves. Liquid dribbled from it, bubbling like hot water from a kettle, and instantly vaporized. The temperature here was -180 Celsius, very close to the boiling point of liquid oxygen. Clumsily, he attached the end of the hose to the port on the lander’s tank.
Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2) Page 11