“There’s nothing to talk about,” the God-like voice replied. “Stop work immediately, or I’ll fire every last one of you.”
“Kirsti, please. Come down, and let’s talk,” Lana pleaded, with a note of sadness this time. All eyes followed a cylindrical glass elevator, as it descended a clear tube towards them. It opened, and a schoolmarm-ish woman exited, wearing a sharp black skirt suit, her hair done up in a bun. Her nose was slightly hook like. She strode angrily towards Lana. Crap, Kato thought, as his last meal threatened to make itself known again.
“H… how did you know?” Lana asked.
“Having Gansevoort docked here for one,” Kirsti snarled. She was now a meter from Lana, as Kato and Martin looked on from further away. “And then we get called by the police, reporting a theft from MX9!” Kato’s heart did a little jump at the thought that the ablators had been successfully taken.
“Kirsti, someone’s life is at stake!” Lana said. “We’re her only hope!”
“We don’t have the budget for this! And now we’re facing criminal charges! Or at least, whoever is flying our ship is. One hundred ninety million orbs worth of iridium blocks. I’m putting a stop to this right now. I’m going to disable everyone’s access badges.” At that, Kirsti turned and strode towards the office.
“Oh no!” Martin said, turning white.
“No, you’re not!” Lana yelled. At that, she sprang at Kirsti and tackled her to the ground. Kirsti managed to flip over, push Lana back, and knee her in the stomach. Lana bent double. “Aaaaarruuughh.” She clutched her midsection, unable to breathe. Two high-heeled shoes, one from each woman, arced through the air. Kirsti, with her back to the floor, pushed Lana up, so she floated momentarily in the low gravity. Kirsti then crashed her right fist into Lana’s face. Blood bubbled from her nose, the droplets forming slow arcs as they headed to the floor. Lana fell back onto Kirsti, who then pushed the injured, breathless woman off herself, and tottered unsteadily to her feet. Kato and Martin stared, dumbstruck, as the furious Kirsti made towards them. Kato realized she was heading not for them, but for the office door, five meters to his right. Kirsti stopped, pulled her remaining shoe from her right foot, and threw it angrily into the distance. Kato looked back at the other combatant, who was curled on the floor, motionless, in the fetal position. Lana… He started towards her, to help. A shape rushed in from his left, charging directly at Kirsti as she walked towards the office. It was Arvid. Kato was behind Kirsti, and she had no clue that he was coming. Kato, in mid-stride towards Lana, stopped just in time to avoid being knocked off his feet. The charging Arvid sprang from the floor, and locked his arms and legs around Kirsti’s upper body. Both of them flew through the air from his momentum, and slammed to the ground, sliding until they hit the office wall. Kirsti’s head took the impact. She was knocked unconscious.
“Boris, throw me some damn duct tape!” Arvid yelled. Kirsti was still firmly in his grasp. A thick, silver roll shot toward him from somewhere near the clean room door. Arvid caught it easily in his right hand, while his legs and left arm restrained the now limp woman. Arvid freed his left arm, and proceeded to run the tape round and round Kirsti, binding her arms to her sides. Kato snapped out of his shock at the utterly surreal scene, and looked around. Gaping, stunned faces all around, especially the clean room. Lana! He resumed rushing to her aid. Two others had beaten him to it. They had sat her upright, to allow the blood to exit her nose instead of being inhaled. It cascaded over her mouth and chin, turning her white blouse bright red. Lana turned to her left, and looked at Kirsti. “Get her to the med bay now! But, keep her there. Block comms from that section so she can’t call out.”
“Yes ma’am,” one other, somewhat gray haired tech said. He started towards Kirsti, as Arvid held her sitting upright. He supported Kirsti’s head.
“We’d better get you there too,” Martin said to Lana. Someone arrived clutching paper towels, which they gently pressed up to Lana’s nose.
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “Everybody back to work! The spit’s already hit the fan. We’re up to our necks in it. Nothing we can do about it now. Let’s get this thing done!”
“Kato! How the hell are ya, buddy?” Allen, IIX’s pilot said, hugging Kato and slapping him on the back. The two men stood in the ship’s circular bridge. Kato merely sighed, and looked at Allen. The man’s gray hair and aging face exuded wisdom and peace. “I just wish it were under better circumstances,” Kato said. Allen nodded.
“There isn’t time for chit chat,” Wilson, IIX’s engineer said gruffly, half facing the other two, as he rushed over to his station at the rear of the ship’s bridge. One button press brought up a midair display in front of him. Wilson scanned its glowing controls, charts, and other readouts, in a few seconds. “All okay,” he muttered. “Aux power… ignition pulse…” He pressed several buttons in rapid succession. Some readouts changed, over a period of half a minute. “ZP source is online,” he announced to the other crew.
“Everyone okay?” Karla, IIX’s young, pretty, olive-skinned physician asked, as she too made quickly for her seat.
“Never better,” Elias, the captain grunted. He was standing at the front of the bridge, and looking intently at a midair display in front of him.
Martin walked in from the open door on the right side of the bridge. “Where do I sit?” he asked Elias. Without looking up, the captain pointed to a seat on the left side of the open area.
“Lift hookup complete,” an unidentified voice said, over a speaker in the bridge.
“Water tanks are full,” Elias muttered.
“Beginning warp systems check,” Wilson announced. A glowing progress bar began to creep along the top of his display. He squinted, watching it intently. His eyes occasionally darted to other readouts for a couple of seconds. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. A 3D model of the Solar System appeared in the center of the bridge. It was roughly two meters wide. Allen turned around, and focused on it intently. All the planets were shown, of course; Earth in blue, Mars in red, Venus in green. Jupiter was a small reddish orange orb, quite a bit further from the yellow, glowing Sun than the others. A quarter of the way around the Sun from Jupiter, and nearly halfway around from Mars, was a tiny sand-colored dot. Ceres. Right next to it, on the sunward side, was a tiny cone. Above it was a label. It showed: Huo X-37-B. Also on the label was shown; Distance from Ceres: 567,009km, ETA: 4h 11m. The distance figure was dropping, even as Allen watched.
Kato also watched the numbers. He became quiet. Martin followed his gaze. He touched Kato’s right arm. “It’s gonna be okay, buddy.”
“God, I hope so.” Kato turned to Martin. Fear was in his eyes. “We’ve come so far, but we’re now only at the starting line. What if she’s not on that ship, Martin? Or she’s already dead?”
Martin’s brow furrowed, as he looked into Kato’s eyes. “We’ll get her, Kato. I’m sure of it.” Other crewmembers read off status checks, but Kato didn’t hear them.
Martin appeared to suddenly remember something. “I’m gonna take my leave,” he said to no-one in particular. “Just gotta make a quick call.” Elias’ head snapped around. “No. Sit down and strap in. There’s no time.”
Martin nodded and did as instructed. Once the belt had fastened itself around him, he looked off into the distance, and said: “Message to Kyle Hasselbacher. This is it, dude. IIX is ready to go and I’m along for the ride. I had no idea I’d be flying in this thing, and definitely not this soon. We’ve got about four hours to rescue her, or die trying.” He sighed, and then continued. “Everything’s been checked as thoroughly as it can be, but if something goes wrong… give my love to everyone, and tell them it’s been one heck of a ride. We will be in the news, whatever happens. End call.”
Three people that neither Kato nor Martin recognized were also on board, and taking seats on the bridge, to the rear of the solar system display. “Hatch is closed,” Elias said. “Airlock control, begin the lift.”
Chapter 33
Lana looked up in awe, as the pistons that been supporting IIX retracted into the floor. The suspension cables now bore her weight. The clean room had been emptied of equipment, parts, and people. Its roof had long since been retracted to allow the ship to be lifted. IIX now rose slowly, towards the giant airlock at the center of the Space Engineering Facility. Lana, Arvid, and the 150 mostly white-suited technicians around them, looked fit to drop. They had worked tirelessly for three days. “Guys,” Lana said loudly enough to be heard by the small crowd, “we pulled off the near-impossible. Our jobs are now done. We did them well; as best we can tell until she actually flies, anyway.” Lana turned her gaze from the ascending ship to the gathered knot of people. “I honestly don’t know what the future holds for us all; our jobs, etcetera. But, let’s not think about that right now. The rescue will be over in a few hours. Go back to your units in the hab, chill, and keep your eyes on the TV.”
Lana looked up again. IIX was disappearing into the football field-sized double fold access door, high above. “Godspeed,” she said. Lana kissed the tips of her right fore and index fingers, and held them up towards the departing ship in a gesture of salute. One by one the others did the same, until they were united in a show of silent solidarity. The airlock doors closed, and the spacecraft’s silver hull was visible no more.
“Vacuum achieved,” the disembodied voice announced on board IIX. Airlock doors opening.” With a wave of his hand, Elias commanded the front wall of the bridge to turn clear. At first, only darkness was visible outside. Then, a hexagon began to open, showing the reddish-brown surface of Mars, far below. It expanded, until a large swath of the planet was visible. With a small burst from her close maneuvering thrusters, IIX proceeded out of the vast maw of the airlock. Kato marveled at the spectacular scene: the beauty of Mars’ mottled surface, and the haze of the atmosphere at the limb of the planet. It was visible all around except for the easternmost edge, where the shadow of night spread slowly across its face. Looking to his left, the dark metal circle of the SEF was visible, spinning slowly. Above and to the right of it was the spaceport where Kato and Martin had arrived. Both contrasted with the light gray, rock-blasted surface of Phobos. Gansevoort was long gone.
IIX turned so that Mars was to the starboard side instead of straight on, and then Kato felt the kick in his rear that had become so familiar. The ZPR engines kicked in, illuminating Phobos with their great light, and speeding the ship forward. For now, the bridge was almost completely quiet, as everybody was completely focused on their stations and displays. Kato turned to Martin, who was seated to his right. “Here we go.” Martin nodded.
For the next ten minutes, nobody said a word. Then Allen grumbled: “I wish to God we could have gotten far away from Mars, both for safety and to recalibrate the gravitometers. There’s no way to recal in this strong of a gravitational field, especially on the fine detectors.”
“I hear ya,” Wilson said. “I didn’t even bother trying. They’re still using the same settings from the last time. This is not good, since we dewarped in the middle of nowhere. We’ve just gotta hope they’re still good, else we could end up anywhere in the Solar System. Or even dewarp inside Mars, in which case we’re dead.” He turned to Allen. “How far away can we get before warping?”
“We’ll go for about an hour,” the pilot replied. “At our maximum half a G, that’s roughly thirty-two thousand kilometers.” Allen turned to face Wilson. “Not exactly the hundred million K we should be standing off before we do this.”
Elias turned around, having listened to the conversation. “My biggest fear isn’t going into warp, it’s coming out. We need those fine gravitometers to be able to control where we dewarp with any precision. To rendezvous with the X-37-B, it’s like hitting a pinhead from ten thousand K away.”
Wilson nodded gravely. “This was always going to be the longest of long shots, so to speak. I…” he looked over at Kato, who was barely three meters away, and cut his next sentence short. He looked back at Elias. The two exchanged looks loaded with meaning, and then turned back to their workstations.
Elias looked at the Solar System display. The label above Huo X-37-B read ETA: 2h 54m. He then looked over at Allen. “You… are… aware of how little time we have, right?”
“Yes!” Allen snapped. “It’s a fine balance between leaving here safely, and getting there in enough time. You know that. If they’d have given us the ten hours launch window we were supposed to have, instead of four…”
“Yeah.”
“Spinning the warp machinery up now, Captain,” Wilson said. “We already have an initial solution computed. We can go whenever you’re ready. It’s as good a time as any.”
Elias nodded, and looked at Wilson. “Do it.”
“Aye.” Wilson scanned his display one last time, his practiced eye and brilliant mind taking in and processing the data all in one go. “May God keep and protect us.” He pressed the blue square at the bottom of his midair control panel. Kato involuntarily grabbed the sides of his seat as the view outside turned black. All eyes turned to the Solar System display, and fixed on the small, glowing cone representing IIX. It began to move, slowly at first, away from the Red Planet. “We’re gonna do point six billion kilometers in around eight minutes,” Wilson said. Kato got goose bumps as he thought about how fast their equivalent physical speed would be.
Elias smiled, and shook his head in wonder, never taking his eyes off the display. IIX cut a straight line in towards the Sun on a tangential path that intersected the orbit of Earth. Then their track took them back outside of the Blue Planet’s orbit, and back across the orbit of Mars. They now headed quickly towards the asteroid belt. “Range: three hundred million K,” Allen said. “ETA: four minutes, twenty-two seconds.”
“Very good,” Elias said. “The technology’s holding up so far.”
“If anyone notices physical ill effects, I need to know immediately,” Karla said. The others nodded. Kato and Martin both remained transfixed on the Solar System display. “How does this thing work?” Kato asked.
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Martin said.
Kato managed a weak smile. Then a look of concern crossed his face. “Can they detect us coming in?” he asked Elias.
“No, since we’re outside of spacetime. As soon as we dewarp they’ll know we’re there, of course. What happens then is anybody’s guess.” Kato nodded. Soon, the display zoomed in and just showed the sand-colored dot. The space between it and Huo X-37-B was now just discernible, at the much smaller scale. Soon, IIX was also visible. She tracked in towards the other ship, and was beginning to slow down.
“Gravitometry?” Allen asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Wilson said. “Nothing to compare the readings to. Once we dewarp, I can get our exact position from radar, and re-cal from that.”
“Fair enough.”
“What’s the deal with gravitometers?” Kato asked Martin.
“Two things,” Martin said. “One, when we’re warping, we’re riding waves in spacetime. The structure of the fabric of the universe, if you will. As Einstein proposed, this is shaped by gravitational fields. We have the most sensitive gravity detectors ever built. And two, we’re completely blind when we’re warping. There’s no way we’d know where we’re going otherwise!”
“The X-37-B’s traveling at a fair clip,” Elias said. “Dewarp somewhere between her and Ceres, so we can match her speed.”
“Aye,” Allen said. “Gravs are good. Dewarp in five seconds. Standby…”
Stars reappeared outside. The Sun was much smaller. “BINGO!” Allen said excitedly. “Huo’s right where she should be, heading in at twenty-one kilometers a second. We’re one hundred and five thousand kilometers from Ceres. Which is over there, by the way.” Everybody’s eyes followed where Allen pointed. The thousand kilometer-wide dwarf planet was about the size of a pea held at arm’s length.
“Hold on,” Allen said. He turned IIX. The
ZPR engines kicked in again, pushing everyone back in their seats. “Intercept in forty-two minutes.” The other ship was not yet visible.
Kato looked at Ceres again, which was now directly in front of them. “Seung Yi,” he said slowly. “Never thought I’d be this close to him again. Or that we’d both exist hundreds of years later…” IIX picked up speed.
“I’m monitoring all frequencies, to see if they’ve picked us up yet,” another man said. He looked around twenty-five, with short black hair. “I’m Mark Watney, by the way,” he said to Kato. This is it, Kato thought. If there was any chance of rescuing her, it would be then. Another hour, and she would be lost forever. Can’t think about that. Let’s think about… kittens. Haven’t even seen one in centuries. Kato decided he would get a cat once all this was over.
Elias cleared his throat, and pressed a button. “Huo X-37-B, this is the Interplanetary Interstellar Explorer. Please acknowledge.” Nothing. Elias tried the transmission again, with similar results. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. Every eye on the bridge was glued on him.
“Range to that ship?” he asked.
“Just over eighteen thousand kilometers,” Wilson said.
Elias hit the transmit button again. “Huo X-37-B, this is the Interplanetary Interstellar Explorer. We have reason to believe you have a prisoner aboard; Zara Sasake-Robbins. You are in violation of international space law. Dock with us, and deliver her to our custody.” He touched the button again, ceasing transmission. “And nobody gets hurt,” he added.
Chapter 34
Huo X-37-B was less than five kilometers away. Everyone stared, rapt, at a telescope image of the ship. It appeared to be little more than a power and engine block at the rear, connected by a long thin metal truss to a cockpit and living quarters at the front. The only reason any of these things existed was because of the articles attached to the metal frame; large, white, cargo containers. There was a cluster of six of these at the rear of the ship, centered around the ship’s backbone. Forward of these was another identical cluster. Huo had her cockpit pointed away from Ceres. Her engines shone brightly as she shed the last of her great speed on approach to her home port. IIX’s engines also worked as hard as they could, to match Huo’s deceleration.
Kato's War: Book Two of the Kato's War series Page 16