Rendezvous With Rogue 719

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Claudia hurried to take his feet and, together, they moved Reyes to the sled and strapped him down securely. Wilkes then climbed on the front of the mobile and indicated she was to sit behind him. When she was settled, he started the machine, revved it, and then turned in a slow arch and headed down into the valley again.

  From her position on the skimobile, she could see very little, and the engine was loud enough to drown any attempts to communicate, so she had to contain her curiosity until they arrived and Wilkes shut the machine off.

  “Any sign of Shelly and Johnson?”

  Wilkes tipped his head. “They’re trying to rig a pulley system to drag the supply hab out of the lake.”

  Claudia had followed the direction he indicated and was stunned to see what looked like liquid water. “It’s water? How?”

  “From the temp it seems a fair guess that it’s a thermal vent.”

  “What’s the temperature?” Claudia asked uneasily.

  “Around a hundred here at this edge. About two hundred where the supply hab is sitting and then it’s around 500 over where the greenhouse landed.”

  Reyes was lucky. The water was lapping at the med lab, but that portion was mostly on the ‘beach’.

  Unfortunately, they had to wade through several inches of water to get to the airlock and Claudia slipped as they were trying to maneuver the makeshift gurney through the door and nearly dropped her end. They got him inside without further incident, however, got him out of his suit and on the treatment table.

  Wilkes got the scan set up and powered up and then they stood back and waited for the machine to complete the cycle.

  The news wasn’t good. He’d ruptured his spleen. And he had blood poisoning from it.

  Claudia and Wilkes began to prep for surgery to remove it immediately, connecting an IV drip and preparing a sedative and then moving the robotic surgeon into place and inputting the data the scan had just collected.

  They stood tensely by while the robot used lasers to precisely remove the damaged organ, seal or connect veins and arteries, and then sealed the wound.

  Afterwards, Claudia settled to wait for him to come around and Wilkes left to help Johnson and Shelly in their efforts to haul the supply hab out of the lake.

  Reyes surfaced, briefly. Opening his eyes, he glanced around the room until recognition dawned and then closed them again. “You should’ve taken the offer. Not sure I’m gonna make it,” he muttered.

  Claudia was so stunned for several moments, she was speechless. As it sank in, however, that he must be talking about her ‘hallucination’ and grabbed his arm. “Reyes! You saw him?”

  He didn’t answer and she realized he’d sunk back into unconsciousness.

  Getting up, she checked the machines helping to keep him alive and began to pace, trying to decide whether his comment meant he’d actually heard the conversation she’d been convinced was only taking place in her head.

  Did it matter?

  Was there anything this alien’s ‘healer’ could do that they hadn’t done already?

  That seemed doubtful, even assuming that it really had happened and they existed.

  Truthfully, she realized she’d moved past any real doubt a while back.

  She felt that she would’ve known if there was anything actually wrong with her and that meant she wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating.

  Beyond that, it didn’t make sense to her that she’d keep dreaming about the same man, alien, that she’d never met, or that she would see—dream up—places she’d never seen.

  He was alien. He was real or at least had been and he’d been showing her the world as he must have known it.

  So was he—like a machine now? Dead many hundreds or maybe even thousands of years, but his consciousness recorded and playing back for her?

  And, if he actually existed somewhere, maybe projected to her from some sort of alien technology, how would she find him?

  Should she try to?

  Had the offer to help been sincere and selfless? Or did he have an agenda? Was he just using her distress over Reyes’ condition to lure her in for … whatever nefarious plot he’d hatched?

  And, saying she got the chance to take him up on it, should she? Was she really willing to risk her own life for Reyes?

  Could she sit and watch him die by inches and do nothing?

  She sat with Reyes for hours, watching, waiting, hoping he would wake up again. Finally, when she felt like she would explode from nerves, she put her helmet and gloves on and headed outside where she discovered the remainder of the crew had managed some success in retrieving the supply hab. They hadn’t managed to get it entirely up on the beach, but they’d hauled it close enough they could wade out to it.

  The three of them had just entered the airlock when she saw them, leaving her to wait somewhat impatiently for them to exit the airlock so that she could follow them inside. By the time she joined Wilkes and Shelly they’d removed their helmets and gloves and were munching on salty nuts while they inventoried the supplies.

  Johnson was nowhere in sight, but she could hear banging and cursing coming from the deck below.

  “What’s Johnson up to?” she asked as she reached them and found a bag of the nuts for herself.

  “He went down to see if the tractor was recoverable. I’m guessing he’s trying to repair something,” Shelly volunteered.

  “It’s a shame Reyes isn’t in any shape to help. I’m sure he’d have it going in no time.”

  Wilkes frowned. “Johnson can get it going if anybody can. How’s Reyes?”

  Claudia discovered the urge to burst into tears was nearly overwhelming. She mastered it with an effort. “Not so good. He’s sleeping.”

  “He can live without a spleen,” Shelly said off-handedly.

  Claudia narrowed her eyes at the other woman but refrained from slapping her head off. “Not well.”

  Shelly shrugged. “But he can live without it. When we get home, they can build him a new one.”

  And she had doubted her grip on reality!

  Wilkes glared at her and shook his head fractionally.

  Like she gave a shit whether the bitch got hysterical or not over having her illusions ripped from her when she’d acted so callous about Reyes! Tamping the urge to tell her to act her age not her IQ, Claudia turned away to assess the damage to the supplies.

  It looked like everything had been through a blender—hardly surprising since the hab had crashed. They were lucky the structure was in one piece and owed that, she knew, at least in part to the self-healing outer skin of the craft. It looked like the boosters Reyes had repositioned had slowed the hub wheel down enough that it had held together on impact and simply broke apart, mostly, where the segments had been bolted together. She hadn’t seen the rest of the hab wheel, but the med lab had been in fair shape and this appeared to be and even the greenhouse looked as if it might be.

  “Johnson thinks he can use the snow cat to move the greenhouse to a more accessible spot?” she asked as that occurred to her.

  “We used the drones to attach the cables to this and a pulley system Johnson put together, but it barely held together long enough to get the supply hab out. He’s going to try to run cables out to it with the drones and use the tractor instead of the pulleys.”

  Hearing the start of the tractor’s engine, as one they pulled helmet and gloves back on and abandoned the inventory for the moment in favor of watching the operation Johnson planned.

  They discovered when the drones reached the greenhouse that it was perched on the edge of a deep abyss.

  “If it falls, it’s liable to take you and the tractor with it,” Wilkes said grimly.

  Johnson paled. “We can just release the cables. We need the damned thing if we can get it!”

  “Nobody is arguing that! We have a lot of food, but no idea yet how long it’ll hold us and renewable is always better.”

  “We need an anchor,” Claudia said decisively. “Do we have enough cable to
anchor the hab in the ice before we try to move it?”

  “Nothing that will reach that far. I’m not sure the two I have will reach it to pull it out.”

  “Well, if it’s too short, maybe we can anchor the tractor to the ice as an extra precaution?” Claudia suggested.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Wilkes agreed.

  Johnson didn’t look too happy about it, but it was better than no back up if anything went wrong so they set about sinking tie-downs into the ice and then Johnson backed the tractor as far into the water as he dared and they set that as the limit on the cable. Then they used the drones to attach cables to the greenhouse hab and started slowly dragging it across the lake.

  They’d managed maybe half the distance when one of the cables snapped and took out one of the drones.

  “Fuck!” Johnson raged, standing up on the seat of the snow cat to see if he could see the downed drone and then glancing at the other crewmembers. “God damn it!”

  That was when they discovered the drone wasn’t the only casualty.

  Fortunately, it was only a glancing blow or it would’ve taken her head clean off instead of just cracking her faceplate and knocking her unconscious.

  Chapter Six

  Shelly began to come around and mumble incoherently as they reached the med hab with her.

  “It’s ok,” Claudia said reassuringly. “We’re just going to get you on the table where we can do a scan and make sure you’re ok.”

  She had a concussion. They set her up to monitor her brain swelling and gave her a drip feed laced with meds to help prevent it, reduce the chance of blood clots, nausea and vomiting and pain.

  She’d been lucky they were all agreed, but she wasn’t entirely out of the woods.

  Johnson went to search for a replacement cable—hopefully something stronger—and Claudia and Wilkes went back to the supply hab to see what could be recovered and calculate how long it would last them.

  The crash had rendered roughly a quarter of the rations unusable and they’d lost nearly a third of their water. Oxygen and fuel were roughly half what they’d expected to find, but they had a good bit of useable equipment.

  They put in a full day organizing and inventorying consumable supplies and then went down to the hold to see what they had that could be used to replenish dwindling supplies.

  They found the chemical processor and compressor in one piece but non-functioning and Wilkes settled down to tinkering with it to see if he could get it going. If he could, they could use it to break the ice down into fuel (hydrogen) and water and air. And they would be in pretty decent shape then in terms of a long term survival effort.

  This was something they really needed Reyes for, Claudia thought as she watched him. She hoped Wilkes could get it going but Reyes was the one that was really talented in that arena. If he’d been working on it, she would’ve had no doubt it would be working by end of day.

  Leaving Wilkes, she headed to the medical hab to check on him and see how Shelly was doing.

  Her heart leapt with gladness when she saw that Reyes was awake. “Hey you! How are you feeling?”

  They’d had to intubate him, though, and it was clear the tube had irritated his throat. The minute he tried to talk, he started coughing. By the time he’d gotten that under control he seemed weaker and less alert.

  “You don’t trust him?”

  It was said barely above a scratchy whisper. Claudia had to lean down to hear.

  Straightening, she glanced at Shelly to make sure she was still out and turned to Reyes and whispered, “Who?”

  “Offered to help. Why? If he didn’t mean it?”

  She was inclined to agree—which worried her. If she had one fatal flaw, it was that she was under-suspicious, too trusting, too eager to trust and nearly impossible to convince that some people just couldn’t be trusted.

  In vain, she’d tried to cure herself of trust that hadn’t been earned.

  Plenty of people in her life had already taught her too many reasons why it was just bad, not safe, to trust too easily.

  But she was wired that way and it took a strenuous effort to remind herself to be cautious.

  So, was Reyes right? Did they have no reason not to trust the alien who’d called himself Torin? Was she looking for ulterior motives when there were none?

  Except, maybe, an attempt to offer friendship?

  And that was assuming they actually did exist, because as comforting as it was to discover she wasn’t hallucinating, no longer thought she was the only one that had seen him, that wasn’t enough to prove anything conclusively.

  Torin had, or might have, appeared over and over, but he was the only one she’d ever seen.

  Maybe he was nothing more than a computer simulation? AI?

  It made more sense than believing he was alive somewhere on this world that had gone rogue and been pitched from the solar system where it had formed. It had to have been wandering for a very, very long time.

  The closest solar system they’d been able to find was 4.5 light years away and that would be a thousand years in darkness traveling at light speed, which this rogue wasn’t doing—close to half that from the readings she’d managed to get before they crashed …..

  For him to be alive, his people would have to be virtually immortal, or have been in stasis, or were somehow living below the surface.

  She realized after a moment that she was actually making a case for trying to contact the alien and asking for help.

  If they were just AI they shouldn’t be dangerous.

  But was it worth the risk?

  Maybe a better question was could she afford to dismiss the offer? Reyes wasn’t doing well since the surgery and she was pretty sure he was declining rather than improving, as hard as she tried to convince herself that he was getting better. It was just going to take time for him to heal.

  * * * *

  “Interplanetary Expedition One, this is Houston. Do you read?”

  The delay should have been close to an hour. Instead, less than ten minutes passed before they got a response. “We have laser communications established via the pods you guys sprinkled through the system like breadcrumbs on your way out.”

  Claudia felt a bubble of happiness and relief fill her chest. Logically, she knew Houston was still too far away to be much, if any, help, but it felt like they were closer to home.

  And, in point of fact, Kennedy, the director at NASA, confirmed that when he came on a few minutes later. The first thing he asked was what their situation was—how they were fixed for the essentials.

  Claudia felt almost giddy with the report they were able to send back that, barring any disasters, they had the essentials for a minimum of three and a half to four months.

  “What are the odds of stretching that to four and a half to five?”

  Wilkes looked a question at them, but he knew as much as she and Johnson did. “Fair to very good, depending on what kind of shape the greenhouse is in and if we can get it close enough to be accessible. We can cut down to half portions if necessary and stretch it a bit and if we could find the rest of the hab wheel, we could gather up more emergency rations to help carry us.” He paused and shrugged. “And if we can keep the AWF going. I haven’t had the chance to run the data on it, but its currently producing maybe half our daily needs for air, water, and fuel to power us. We have some reserves, still, but that part is a definite maybe … unless Reyes recovers and can make magic on the equipment.”

  There was a prolonged silence on the other end and they were beginning to think Houston had broken communications, or lost it, when the director spoke again. “We think we might have figured out how to get you guys home. It’s radical, it’s dangerous, and the odds aren’t in your favor, but we don’t have a lot of options.”

  Claudia thought for a moment that she would break down and sob like a baby. She’d never expected to see home again, hadn’t thought there was any chance for them at all!

  “We’re open t
o anything that even might save our asses,” Wilkes responded, his voice shaky with his own excitement.

  “Ok—well we still have to do some figuring, but this is the situation as it stands: From the speed and trajectory, we’ve calculated that the rogue you’re on should shoot through the system without incident. There are two close encounters that are possible—Uranus and Jupiter—but the numbers indicate you should miss both by a fairly comfortable margin. The fly in the ointment is that it’ll pass Jupiter close enough that Jupiter could affect the trajectory, pull it off course.

  “At this point we don’t believe it will create any major headaches. We think it’ll be a quiet visit. But we are taking any and all necessary steps to do what we can down here to make sure we’re as prepared for the worst as we can possibly be.

  “As far as you guys are concerned, the path we’ve calculated will give you a window of opportunity when it passes Jupiter. If we can rig up the ship with a launch capable rocket, we can send someone to rendezvous with you and bring you home.”

  Claudia felt her heart sink. That was an awful lot of ifs to her mind. Too many to consider the idea more than half-baked. Granted, Houston wasn’t in the habit of doing anything half-ass. As wildly improbable as it sounded, they’d been number crunching and calculating and figuring and it was, theoretically, doable or they wouldn’t have said anything at all.

  The problem was, none of them knew exactly what their situation was. And even they, the crew, couldn’t be one hundred percent certain the ship would be space worthy.

  And that was assuming they could find what they needed to modify it.

  “We haven’t found either of the landers,” Wilkes informed Houston. “Of course neither of them would have the range to do us a lot of good even if we did find them since they were designed strictly for ship to surface and surface to ship flight ….”

  “We’ve focused on the main ship. You should have everything you need to handle the modifications. You have four months to make this work,” Director Kennedy said. “I suggest you get on it as soon as possible. The sooner the better to know if this is doable. If it isn’t, we’ll have to try to come up with something else.”