The Harbinger

by Graham Leslie

  I’m going to see if I can get the vessel on-course for a Jovian shipping lane. If we can do that, we can send out a local distress signal and get picked up by another passing transport ship. I’d rather make investigating the Harbinger someone else’s problem, and it’s probably about time I get back to Mars and get this stupid tech in my head and chest fixed.

  “Ops, plot a course to the nearest high-traffic shipping lane,” I command. Navigation thinks for a few moments, crunching numbers for astral navigation using only the airjets, then acknowledges it has managed to plot a course to get us drifting right into shipping lane out of Europa.

  “One problem has been detected,” Ops informs me. I command it to elaborate. Apparently, a master valve has shut, preventing the highly compressed air in the tanks at the aft of the ship from supplying the remaining airjets on the outer hull. That’s strange, given that we used the airjets to correct the high-g roll. Somehow, the valve has closed since then. I instruct the agent to resolve the problem for me, but, naturally, I discover I’m going to have to resolve this one myself. Apparently the valve is manually actuated, and the agent-mounted ion-jets don’t have the propulsive power to turn the mechanical valve.

  I sigh heavily and feel a wave of exhaustion pass over me. I didn’t realize how long I’ve been at this. I check the time with the agent and realize it’s been nearly a full ten hours of activity since I’ve gotten any break. Without the normal sun cycles humans expect from their evolution on Earth, I can easily break circadian rhythm and lose track of time entirely. I need to at least get some more water and food, and ideally find some uppers.

  I unbuckle from the Ops chair and scoop up my drifting water bottle, then pass through the Ops port and glide through the corridor, over the Spine, and arrive back at the port to my quarters. I open the port, and frigid air blasts out, catching me off guard. The cold rush of air causes my eyes to water and lose focus. I drift back from the blistering cold and refocus my eyes — then suddenly the cold is gone.

  Another hallucination, maybe. It felt real, but I’m not entire sure that it was. I need to get my head on straight.

  In zero-g, my quarters are an absolute disaster. Given I didn’t exactly plan on a high-g roll, I left my things scattered throughout my quarters. Jumpsuits float around the room. The pieces of my shattered coffee cup drift through the air, surrounded by a cloud of cold, stale coffee.

  I bat aside some bulbous globs of floating coffee and drift over to the supply cabinets that line one wall. My hands methodically swing the magnetic doors open one-by-one. Inside, rations and supplies are confined to their slots. The soft packages have all survived the roll. I grab two protein bars, tear them open, swallow them down, then I glide over to the water dispenser. As I hold the bottle to the nozzle, water escapes as my hands tremble, floating around the room in zero-g. It’s fine. Water will be picked up by the life support air circulation and recycled. I search the medicine cabinet and find a caffeine-theanine pill. I wash that down with another sip of water. It should help with focus. Keep me going a bit longer. Need to move. I slam the cabinet —

  Shit, I realize I’m panting I’ve been rushing so fast. I need to calm down. I’m going to end up making a stupid mistake. I still need to move fast; get the Riyadh on-course for rescue before the hallucinations get worse. No mistakes, Apollo.

  Deep breath. Deep breath.

  Ok — let’s go. Airjets. I need to get to the air tanks and crank the primary valve to open airflow to the external jets. I reopen the cabinet, toss my water bottle in a slot with some room to spare and swing the cabinet shut; magnets hold the cabinet door in place. The bottle clanks around a bit in zero-g before settling unseen.

  I turn and push off the cabinets and drift to the port. I open it and push through. I drift to the Spine, grab a handle, and pivot to swing myself through the access panel I opened earlier. I propel myself down. Beyond is Chip. I tell him to come with me and we drift downwards, past a few cargo decks, past the midsection of the ship where the EVA port is on the back side and the docking port is on the belly side, and then pass more cargo decks. Finally, I reach the bottom of the vessel. I buckle my knees and gently come to a stop at the bottom of the ship. To the back of the ship is the powerplant with an unsafe fusion core, where I have no intention of going. To the belly is the life support machinery, where all air and water circulate to for scrubbing, treatment, and recycling. Beneath me is a maintenance port to the oxygen tanks.

  I get closer to the port and realize it’s frosted over. I put my hand on the cold steel and the heat of my fingers melts the frost, leaving a handprint of cold water. This must be another hallucination. Life support should be keeping the interior of the ship at a stable twenty four degrees Celsius, and barring some decompression that would automatically shut off the HVAC ductwork, all areas of the ship are environmentally connected.

  I grab the latch and rotate it to unlock the port, and swing it open to my side. A second blast of cold air expels as the port opens. I glance in, ignoring it this time, eyes watering from the cold air. This section of the ship holding the air tanks is very cold and very dark. The air is thick and moist. Despite brining the power back up, lighting is offline, and for some reason the emergency LEDs are offline too. I turn back to my agent companion.

  “Chip, give me some light in here,” I command. I drift aside from the port as the agent moves by me and shines its forward-mounted LEDs through the open port.

  The view is stunning. Droplets of water, no, droplets of ice dot the empty space between the panels. The agent’s light refracts through the ice, casting a beautiful kaleidoscope of multi-colored patterns. The spread of the LED array is small, so only a fraction of the area is clearly illuminated at a time. The agent passes through the port, and I follow behind it. We slowly drift parallel to the ladder that leads down the bulkhead, and pass each short, corrugated metal deck and the stairs between the, meant to be used with gravity under thrust. We drift further down, following the air tanks that run the length of the section. The primary valve is at the bottom. While the agent illuminates the path directly in front of us, the ambient lighting darkens as we travel further from the port. The journey is claustrophobic; the room which we have to move in between the air tanks is small given that open-space is a luxury on spacefaring vessels, and nothing on this ship is within the same solar system of the word luxury.

  The primary valve comes into view: the large, circular, frost-covered valve glistens with frost. The mechanical valve, made to be turned by human hands, is ordinarily only closed to perform airjet maintenance that is usually done at port.

  “Chip, keep the light on the valve.” The agent complies. I drift forward and put my hands on the valve, my warm hands once again turning the frost to cold water. I plant my feet against the bulkhead beneath the valve to use it as leverage. I brace, and begin to slowly turn the valve open. Suddenly, the light quickly veers off, and I’m nearly blind.

  “Chip, where’s my light?” I yell, frustrated. No reply. “Chip!” I hear a crash of metal on metal to my side, and I turn my head. I freeze up, surprised. Then the light comes on for a split second, pointing at an awkward upward angle away from the valve. For a moment the light travels like the agent is in a spin. Then, I see a part of the profile of a human for a split second, then the light goes off again. Surprise immediately becomes concern.

  Shit! There’s someone on the ship!

  In a panic of flight or fight, I chose flight. I propel off the bulkhead nearly as hard as I can for maximum velocity using my feet. I fly past Chip and his struggle with the intruder and head for the port, my face pelted by floating droplets of ice, but I launched myself too hard and out of control. Damn it, I’m going way too fast and headed straight for a deck. I try to kick my legs to spin myself around so they can take the brunt of the —

  A shearing pain explodes from my right shoulder where I hit the deck. The pain travels down my shoulder to my side. I tumble off and my other shoulder collides with the
next deck. I take it and come to a stop, crumpled on the ceiling of the deck. As quickly as I can, I twist around to face the intruder, but my vision is obscured by a cloud of drifting blood from the gash on my shoulder. I squint and wildly fling the blood off my eyes with my left hand. I open my eyes, but there’s still too much blood. Come on! I cup my hand and catch most of the remaining blood and fling it away, just in time to see the Chip come flying upwards, barely missing me. The agent is propelling itself madly using its ion-drive. It must have calculated that its best chance of completing its duties is to get out of here. Thanks for the loyalty, Chip. The agent must have been damaged by the intruder because it veers off course, over-corrects, and smashes into the bulkhead surrounding the open port. A nasty crack reverberates against the bulkheads and leaves Chip drifting. I turn my head back to look for danger and prepare to scurry up and out of the port, but I stop.

  Before me floats a human. They look horrible, even through the blood-red blur. Their face is sunken and covered in blisters and boils. Eyes as dull as steel. Patchwork hair barely covers their rotten scalp. They are clothed in ragged Earth-clothes, not the jumpsuit of a spacecraft. The clothes are too big for their lanky, malnourished body.

  Oh my god. It’s one of the people from Boston. The decrepit people we were there to help.

  I blink, and they’re gone.

  Shit.

  I’m losing it.

  I float with a dead-man’s grip holding me to the railing behind me, trying to process what I just saw. That’s when I realize the artificial regulator attached to my lab-grown heart is beeping an alert at full volume. Beep! Beep! Beep!

  My vision continues to blur, and then fades to nothing.

  Chapter 6

  I open my eyes. It’s dark. My eyes slowly adjust, and I realize I’m still drifting in the air tank section. I blink a few times and try to shake it off. I feel a heavy, dull pain near my shoulder. I try to move it and the pain becomes much sharper. Ok — let’s be more careful with that.

  I look around and take in my surroundings. The ice droplets have melted, transforming into liquid water droplets filling the void between the tanks. Some water has collected on the tanks and decks, strangely clinging to those their faces with surface tension.

  I see dead Chip drifting below me.

  Oh no.

  Logic says that shouldn’t be here if I was just hallucinating. I don’t see the person anywhere. I know they were a hallucination, but Chip was really damaged.

  Did I do this?

  I pivot so my feet are on the deck and push off with a slow, controlled glide. I make it to the bottom of the air tank section, at which point I’ve rotated to land on my feet, straddling the main valve. I square myself up over it, then place my hands at three and nine. Feet firmly planted, I start to turn and my shoulder erupts in pain. Holy burning hell that hurts! I push through it. I slowly crank the valve until it reaches its farthest point and stops. Good. Open. The airjets should be operable again.

  Finished, I push off past the decks and past dead Chip to the port, where I use my left hand to guide myself through. I emerge out the other side, swing the port closed, and promptly latch it shut. I don’t want back in there.

  Blood trails behind me. I need to get this shoulder patched up. There are a few medical kits placed strategically along the length of the Spine, so I propel off the bottom and come to a stop by the nearest kit mounted to the bulkhead. I grab a handhold with my left hand and slowly unlatch and open the kit with my right hand, careful not to agitate the gash on my shoulder. I fumble through, some gauze and bandages drifting away, until I find a canister of quick-spray wound adhesive. I pop the cap off with my thumb and haphazardly spray over my shoulder. I can feel the tightness of my skin as the adhesive solidifies on the surface and reacts with the blood to quickly clot and seal the wound. It’s not an ideal way to treat a laceration, but I don’t really think it’s time to sit down and try to remember my emergency medicine crash course; it’ll do for now. The adhesive should hold for some time, and react with new tissue to dissolve and be replaced by fresh skin. I toss the canister back in to the medical kit, close the lid, and shut the latch. I’ll deal with the ugly scar after I’m rescued.

  I need to get up to Ops and have the computer re-plot an updated course back to a shipping lane now that the airjets should be working. Medical kit secured, I propel myself off the bulkhead and up the length of the Spine, through the access panel, and down the corridor until I enter Ops. I get back in the chair once again. It’s good to be back in a place where I feel in control. Hell, as in control as I can be given what’s going on around here.

  “Ops, update the course to the European shipping lane and execute,” I order. The artificial intelligence acknowledges, and after a few moments, I can feel the slight shifts in gravity as the airjets fire precisely along a pre-programmed maneuver.

  “Maneuver successful, we are on-course,” Ops informs me. We are on the way to rescue. Good, a small victory. I instruct the Ops to have the Communications subsystem prepare a distress signal. I type in a brief message summarizing the Riyadh’s condition. I opt to leave out any details about the encounter with the Harbinger. The last thing I need is to be caught by my employer having hallucinated, and then somehow be held liable for all this. I queue up the distress signal and schedule it to blast out using the close-range broadcast transmitters at a high amplitude once we’re near the shipping lanes. I’d rather wait until we’re closer and blast it out with more power than transmit over a longer period of time with less power.

  “Ops, run a quick scan with the scopes. Any other vessels in range?”

  “Scanning,” then, after some time, “Nothing detected in short range; however, scope coverage is degraded due to inoperable scopes,” Navigation replies. No rescue for now, but no Harbinger either.

  I sigh and relax as we drift towards the shipping lane, the first I’ve been able to do so yet. I’m exhausted. I close my eyes.

  The distress signal from Rhea. The Harbinger. The figure in the red spacesuit. I’d nearly forgotten the details in all this mess. I left Mars years ago, hopped on a freighter like this one headed to the moons, and never looked back. Since I got the gig with Al Harbi I’ve been on ships like this mostly bored out of my mind crossing the vast expanse. But, frankly, it’s what I wanted. I wanted to get away from the doctors who made me their science experiment and the missionaries who felt guilty, like they needed to atone for what happened. I guess I just wanted to get away from everyone.

  I hear faint, distant beeping.

  The solitude was lonely, but lonely was my solution. Lonely was good. Now, I need to get out of here. I’m seeing things. Snow in space, the person in air tank storage. I’m getting myself hurt.

  I hear the beeping grow closer.

  How much is real? How much is in my head? The message from Rhea? The Harbinger? The figure in the red spacesuit, who looked at me from thousands of kilometers away, through the scopes? That still doesn’t make sense. That’s when it started. That’s when I started seeing things.

  The beeping grows closer yet.

  After that, disaster. It was like the ship collided with a ghost and sent us into that uncontrolled roll. Punctured the fusion core. Sheared off our tight beams; nearly took off our solar array. What has the power to do that? I saw the outside of the ship, that damage was real.

  The beeping is right next to me.

  I open my eyes, squint, and can make out the holographic display fronting the rusted bulkheads of the Ops deck. I must have drifted off in the chair. I shake my head and wipe my eyes, trying to overcome my fatigue. I managed to fall asleep despite the caffeine-theanine pill. They probably expired some time ago. The beeping — it’s from the damaged holographic display in front of me. I refocus my eyes and see it’s an alert from Communications, preceded by an alert from Navigation. I read the alert.

  Yes, finally — rescue! A short while ago while I slept, Navigation picked up a vessel on our scopes and s
tarted blasting out the distress signal. That vessel has detected us, and Communications received a tight beam sent our way. Evidently we can still receive, just not send.

  THIS IS THE CARGO TRANSPORT VESSEL WATNEY; WE’VE RECEIVED YOUR DISTRESS SIGNAL AND ARE EN-ROUTE. BE AWARE, LOCAL AUTHORITIES ARE ALSO EN-ROUTE. DO YOU HAVE NEWS OF RHEA? WE ARE BURNING TO DECELERATE, MATCH IF ABLE.

  My stomach drops. Rhea. Focus, Apollo. Focus. They mentioned the local authorities to caution us in case we are pirates setting a trap, or worse, had something to do with whatever happened on Rhea. I draft up a quick message that we have no news of Rhea, and that I will decelerate as much as able with airjets because our ion thruster is disabled so we can’t flip and burn to slow down. I instruct Communications to send that out in a local broadcast. I then have Navigation plot a maneuver to use the airjets to slow us down as much as possible. We’ll burn up a large portion of our air using this maneuver, but I’ll let Al Harbi worry about having the tanks refilled filled when the ship is under repairs and I’m sipping a Red Dirt IPA on my way to Mars.

  Navigation has the maneuver ready, so I strap in to the chair and instruct Nav to initiate in five minutes. In the meantime, I have the Ops agent go down and fish dead Chip out of the air tanks. The last thing I need is for an agent to collide with the tank and blow our air reserves while we’re mid-maneuver. The agent will leave Chip strapped in the near-empty cargo hold.

  Once I’m back on Mars I’ll get this stuff in my head and chest fixed. The neural nets need to be re-calibrated to can these hallucinations. I imagine I’ll probably have a legal battle with Al Harbi to get paid for this trip given that their ship will end up in space dock for repairs. A new tokamak fusion core isn’t exactly a small expense. But I have the logs of the bizarre gravitational anomaly that put us in this mess. I make a mental note to copy the navigation logs to a data card as a redundant copy. That’s my insurance to make sure there’s proof this wasn’t my fault.