“Commander!” Musa said. “Look.”
The Shengli’s cabin lights flickered on.
Oh, Shit.
Time's Up
“Musa,” Dylan said in the calmest voice he could muster. “Stay cool. Like I said, we have a trick or two up our sleeves.”
“What do-” Musa said.
“Explorer, we have a SNAFU,” Dylan said.
“What happened?” Ian asked.
“The Chinese regained control of their ship earlier than expected. They’re still in weapons range and headed to you next. Do what you can to prevent them from boarding. Jupiter Express, out.”
“We hacked them for nothing,” Musa said.
“Not necessarily,” Dylan said. “They’re already past Europa, so if they fire a missile, it will have a harder time reaching us. Rather than having the advantage of their ship’s velocity, it now has to overcome it.”
“OK, but still. You think we can outmaneuver a missile? We really have a trick or two up our sleeves?” Musa bore a resolved expression. His voice quivered.
“Yep, we sure do,” Dylan said. “Pull up the topological survey of Europa. We will adjust our orbit a smidgen.” Dylan studied a detailed holographic projection of Europa’s surface then programmed the Jupiter Express to descend from an orbital altitude of eighty kilometers down to two hundred meters.
Musa’s eyes grew wide as he observed the course correction. “Are you kidding me? We’re going to travel fifty-two hundred kilometers per hour right above the surface?”
“Don’t worry, Europa’s pretty darn flat. We’ll be fine.” Unless a geyser erupts in our path. Or Jupiter’s gravity twists the ice sheet. Or I made the slightest miscalculation. “Besides, it’s more like five thousand kilometers per hour down that low. Now get into your environmental suit. Time to depressurize the ship. If we are hit by a missile, we don’t need venting atmosphere to tear us apart even more.” It wouldn’t take a missile. We’re moving fast enough to get from Houston to El Paso in thirteen minutes. Just touching one of those jagged ice spires would more than do the trick.
The Jupiter Express descended and flew low and extremely fast over the icy surface of Europa.
“You ready to rodeo?” Dylan asked.
Musa’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Let’s do this.”
“Shengli, this is the Jupiter Express. Come in,” Dylan spoke over the radio. A minute passed. Two. “Shengli, this is the Jupiter Express. Come in.”
“This is Commander Long. I assume you did this. It was not a random malfunction?” The commander didn’t expect an answer. “Last chance, Commander Lockwood. Order your crew to withdraw.”
“Commander Long, you and I both know I can’t do that. I’m sure we can work something out like reasonable men. If I might suggest-”
“Enough!” Commander Long said. In a quiet, firm voice he said, “Kāihuǒ!” For a moment, only static reached the Jupiter Express. “I ordered the launch of a missile targeted at your ship. For the next two minutes, I can order it self-destructed. You have that long to order your men to withdraw from Jupiter orbit.”
“Not likely, commander.” Dylan closed the communication channel, stared momentarily in the general direction of the Chinese ship, then activated the holographic view of Europa’s terrain. “All right, Musa. Look. There’s one of those long cracks up ahead. It’s about twenty meters deep and nearly straight. Let’s try and fit in there.”
“Do you think he really fired on us?” Musa was pale.
“In my experience, the Chinese don’t bluff.” His voice was low and serious. Dylan performed a fast calculation, then nudged the ship toward a crack nearly five hundred kilometers long created on the moon’s surface by the intense gravitational tug its planet exerted. The ion drive, though amazingly efficient for long-range space travel, provided meager thrust. The Jupiter Express turned agonizingly slow toward the refuge of the icy trench. “Do you see a missile on lidar?”
“Nothing yet.” Musa’s voice was strained. “There. I’m tracking something inbound. Estimated impact in eighty seconds.”
The ship inched toward the trench and down toward icy spikes lining both sides. “Time to impact?”
“Fifty-five seconds.” Musa’s hand shook.
“We’ll get out of this, son.” Dylan pushed the drive output to one hundred ten percent. This is going to be damned close. The ship dipped below the edge of the trench, ten-meter spikes racing by half a football field away in either direction at over five thousand kilometers per hour. Dylan glanced left and right at the blurry ridge. I might just be a few pickles shy of a barrel. “Is it still tracking us?”
Musa studied his sensors for a heartbeat or two. “Yes, Dylan. Yes.”
“All right then, time for Plan B.” Dylan forced his voice to be calm. He angled the ship toward the ground, drifting even closer to the frozen wasteland below. “Warming the chemical rockets. Stand by for maximum booster thrust.” The chemical rockets, far more powerful than the ion drive, were meant to provide brief additional power to pull the alien structure, the Quadriga as the folks back in DC now called it, rapidly out of Jupiter’s radiation field. “Give me a countdown.”
“20 seconds. 15.”
Dylan snapped the ship’s nose straight up, away from Europa.
“12, 11, 10.”
Dylan activated the rockets, throwing both men back in their seats.
Strained, Musa continued, “5, 4, 3, 2.”
Shrapnel ripped silently through the Jupiter Express, tearing massive holes in the command deck. Broken fragments of the control panel cartwheeled wildly and shattered against the far wall. First, the starboard engine failed, then the port engine. The ship spun rapidly clockwise. Europa’s deadly landscape raced across the viewscreen only meters away. Sensors failed, and the viewscreen went dark. The ship’s controls flew, in jagged fragments, out of a tremendous gash in the port wall and into space.
Shit! Not again. Musa! I will not lose another man to these sumbitches. “You OK, son?”
“I’m still here.” An exuberant holler erupted from Musa’s throat. He pounded his fist into his hand. “Yes!” He took several sharp breaths, the cadence of his breathing slowing with each one. He looked around. “I’m not sure I can say the same for our ship.” The stars and the moon were visible through enormous tears in the hull. “We have to get this spin under control. I’ll check on the thrusters and see if I can find a way to fire them manually.”
“No, Musa. I’ll go.” Both men locked eyes, then threw down their fists. “Rock, scissors, paper!”
“You have got to be cheating!” Musa said. Dylan’s scissors cut his paper.
“Nope, son. I’m just that good.” Dylan unstrapped from his chair and moved expeditiously toward the living quarters, holding tight to whatever he could to avoid being thrown about. The common area was even worse off than the command deck. Dang, that hole’s tall enough to ride a Percheron through while wearing a ten-gallon hat. He found a tool bag in a cabinet that was somehow untouched by the destruction, lashed a carbon-fiber tether to a bulkhead, then pushed out through the gaping tear. Dylan picked his way over the wrecked hull, toward the maneuvering thrusters. The radiation shielding was shattered, water streamed into space from numerous tiny holes, and at least two oxygen tanks were destroyed. How did Musa and I not get hit? Just like when my jet went down. Guess I have a blue-ribbon guardian angel watching over me.
The ship’s wounds were large enough to pass through, but a misstep could puncture his suit. Dylan slid out of an airlock on the starboard side of the common area and surveyed the exterior damage. The fuel tank aft of the exit was a tangled mess of shrapnel. He moved toward the top of the ship where the damage was less severe, picking his way past twisted metal and exposed wiring. There it was. Texas, bent up and away. An airbrushed picture of the United States, one a young artist created back on Scobee Station to remind them of why they undertook the mission, was torn apart by the explosion. California, Oregon
, and Arizona were gone. The Southern states were exposed to space. Texas was riddled with holes. Damn Chinese. You don’t freaking mess with Texas.
Dylan worked his way around the damaged mural, toward the rear of the Jupiter Express. The fractured hull glowed yellow-orange, strips of torn metal reflecting Jupiter’s light. The rotation of the ship was not too difficult to handle in the middle, by the crew quarters, but the centripetal force grew as he neared the thrusters. He latched on with another tether near a control junction. Well, there’s the silver lining right there. The explosion had torn open the portion of hull covering the thruster control lines, granting him easy access. The lines themselves were severed. “It looks like I can manually power the thrusters, but it will be all or nothing. Stay strapped in.” He hooked two wires to a diagnostic unit from his tool pouch and reprogrammed it to apply a voltage. A thruster immediately fired. His second tether slackened as the rotation slowed, sending him careening into the hull. Ouch. He bounced off the ship, toward Europa. His tether snapped tight. Another, shorter burst of power brought the rotation to a slow roll. That’ll do for now. “Musa, I’m coming back in. Are the coms working?”
“You’re kidding, right? Nothing’s working.”
“Can you boost the signal in your personal com to reach the Explorer?”
“Hold on.” After a few moments, Musa said, “Yes, I think I can rig something up.”
“Great. Raise the Explorer on an encrypted channel as soon as you can. Let them know what happened.”
#
“Well, here they come,” Ian said.
“Yep.” Chad crossed his arms over his chest. Both men floated near the top of the transparent ceiling over the alien ship’s bridge. The Shengli was now a football field away and creeping closer. Chad pulled off his helmet and removed his thin gloves.
“I thought you were worried about alien microbes.”
“I feel claustrophobic in this thing. It’s hard to think. Anyhow, aliens smart enough to build this should be clever enough not to leave a biological booby-trap behind. If they wanted to trap it intentionally, I’m sure we’d already be dead.”
Ian nodded and removed his helmet and gloves.
“Are you positive you don’t want to try to escape? Go help the Jupiter Express while we still can?” Chad asked. “It sounds like they’re in a world of hurt.”
“Dylan’s orders were clear. Hold down the fort. Don’t let the Chinese get the ship.” Ian scanned the bridge, eyes darting about, searching. “Anyhow, if this thing is a ship, we’ll be a whole lot more useful if we can get it moving and pick them up. From the sound of it, the Jupiter Express isn’t ever leaving Europa orbit. The Explorer doesn’t have enough power to get us home in our lifetime.”
A call came over the radio. “American astronauts, this is Commander Long of the Chinese Air Force. I claim this structure in the name of the People’s Republic of China. I order you to withdraw. If you comply, I will grant you passage home on my vessel.”
Chad flipped the Shengli the bird. “Think they see that?”
“I hope so,” Ian said matter-of-fact.
“So, what now? Do we just wait for them to board?”
“Well, we don’t have any weapons. Nothing to barricade them out with. There are two of us, and there’s a ship full of them. Only one of us is even trained to fight.” Ian tucked into a roll, pointed his head toward the door, and gave a short blast with his get-around.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m the one of us trained to fight. I’ll hold them off. You try to figure out if this thing even has an engine and get us the hell out of here.” Ian replaced his helmet and gloves then vanished down the hall.
Chad got back to work, examining everything on the bridge. Is this really a bridge? Do I only see it that way because I’m human and not… whatever built this? Maybe it’s an observation deck. Or a nail salon. It’s probably something we can’t possibly imagine. All right, start with the assumption the ship can be controlled from here. It seems the most likely place. Think. He drifted from seat to seat, examining every detail. Nothing looks remotely like a user interface. Maybe they don’t have hands like us. Maybe they don’t see like us. Think. Is something visible in infrared? In ultraviolet? He pulled out a tiny, digital video camera. With a screwdriver, he pried off the glass cover protecting the lens, which also served as an infrared filter, converting the camera to an infrared sensor. He linked the camera output to a screen integrated into his helmet and swept the room. Let’s see now. Nothing. He pulled out a thin sheet of glass ceramic doped with crystalline nanoparticles that absorb UV light and re-emit it in the visible spectrum. He held it up to Jupiter and saw the planet’s ultraviolet auroras come to life. Sweet, it works. He swept the room again, this time with the makeshift ultraviolet sensor. Again, nothing. Hmm. What if their skin is bioelectrogenetic? Perhaps they manipulate the surfaces around here with electric fields. He rigged a voltage generator to a piece of wet fabric and began touching things. AC. DC. Different voltages and frequencies. Nothing.
Thump! A dull sound echoed through the bridge. “Ian, what’s happening?” Chad radioed.
“I guess they’re trying to find a way in. There’s been a faint tapping noise for a few minutes. Sounds like they tried to hit the hull with something stronger now.”
Thump! Thump!
“I think I know where they’re trying to get in,” Ian said, “though the sound appears to be coming from all over. I rigged a little surprise to slow them down once they board us, but it won’t hold them off for long. Are you having any luck?”
“Nothing yet. I still have a few more things to try.” All right. Think of something else to try. Anything. Chad tried ultrasound, infrasound, polarized light. Microwaves. Olfactory clues? Hmm, nothing here to build a molecular sniffer from. If I could get to the Jupiter Express, something might be built. If the components are still there and not scattered across Europa. He sniffed the air. I need a shower.
Ting, ting, ting, ting! A rapid, higher-pitched sound filtered onto the bridge.
Chad tucked in, gave a quick blast from his get-around, and started performing slow somersaults over the central chairs. Well, that’s it. I’m out of ideas, aren’t I? It won’t be long before they figure a way in, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. A few hours with technology centuries, maybe millennia, ahead of our time and I’m about to lose it all.
#
“Are you coming back in, Dylan?” Musa asked over the intercom.
“I’ll, um. I’ll be in shortly. Just, uh, going to spend a few more minutes out here.” Dylan tried to rub his chin. His gloved hand thudded into his helmet. I’ve got to be one bubble off plumb. Why the hell didn’t I insist my ship be armed? My crew, too. I know damn well how the Chinese play the game. A Texan shanghaied without so much as a six shooter to fight back with. Never again. He glanced down at the frozen crust of Europa. The moon’s surface whizzed by in a blur. Not that there’s likely to be an ‘again’. Our orbit’s too eccentric. In a matter of hours, Europa’s gravity will bring us smashing back down. He chuckled, quietly at first then louder. His laugher grew to be almost manic. Who knows, with our DNA all spread out over the ice, maybe we’ll become the genesis for life on that Popsicle down there. He looked up at the stars, and at Jupiter. It is damn peaceful, though. Beautiful. Not a bad way to go.
“Are you all right out there?” Musa sounded concerned. “Better check your oxygen level.”
“I’m fine, Musa. I’m fine.” He pushed two dozen meters away from the ship with his get-around. The main structural components were mangled beyond repair, twisted past the breaking point in the brief moment the chemical rockets still fired after the Chinese warhead shredded the ship. From farther back it looked like a nightmarish Jack-o-lantern, cut out and aglow with the orange-and-yellow light of Jupiter. This horse ain’t going to ride again. I suppose we can try a low-power burst from the thrusters to delay crashing into the ice, but even if that succeeds, we’l
l die from lack of oxygen.
Something out of place caught Dylan’s eye. A flash of gold stood out against the gray and white remains of the hull, ten meters forward of his location. He scooted in. There, hanging by its chain from a twisted strip of metal was his compass, the Christmas gift from Santa. He reached out, took the compass and tugged gently until the chain worked loose. So that I might always get my crew home. He glanced up at Jupiter. Dadgummit. Where’s my Texas spirit? I’m ready to give up, come crashing down on that moon, and abandon the rest of my crew, too. I might be dead before the day’s done, but I ain’t going out without a fight. He studied the wreck to which he and Musa clung.
“Musa,” he said over the radio, “these chemical rockets are basically just bolted on. What do you suppose it would take to unstrap them and slap on a simple guidance system?”
#
Thought. Chad’s mouth pulled into a smile of deep satisfaction. That’s the common denominator. I wanted in, and the ship opened. I felt claustrophobia, and the wall turned transparent. Apples… the apples. The crew on Mars Station gave us apples as a welcoming gift. Somehow, the ship decided it was appropriate. But how?
“I’m on to something here, Ian. What’s your situation?” he radioed.
“The thumping’s stopped. There’s a shaft off a passageway, similar to the one we entered through. I think they’re trying to get in there. Hold on. Shit. The hull is starting to open.”
“Can you hold them off for a bit?”
“Will it make a difference?”
“Yes. I think it will.”
“Damn. OK. I should be able to slow them down for a few minutes, but you better hurry. They’re probably armed, and I don’t have anything that will stop a bullet.”
Chad’s eyes scanned the presumed bridge. He had already searched the walls, ceiling, and floor as thoroughly as he could with the equipment at hand. The air. I didn’t check the air. Inspiration flashed in his eyes. He used the laser solderer to cut a palm-sized chunk from the inside of his glove then pulled the layers apart with tweezers, revealing a thin Mylar film. He fished around in his pack and produced a vial. His fingers raced to pull the cap off and apply a thin, clear liquid to the edge of the chunk. It began dissolving the glue bonding the film to the rest. Slowly. Come on now, let’s go. Chad fidgeted. He pulled the edge of the Mylar sheet back and applied more of the chemical. Chad pulled the Mylar free from the piece of glove and rubbed it vigorously on his hair. He floated through the room, holding the statically charged sheet in front of him. After a half a minute, he pulled a compact microscope from his pack and inspected the Mylar. Got you! A half-dozen tiny machines clung to the film. Nano-sensors. There must be thousands of them floating around, forming a network that picks up the electromagnetic signals generated by the brain. I think and the ship understands. Like a distributed MRI machine. They’re picking up my thoughts and translating them into action. But not all of them. What’s the key? How do I reliably control this thing?
The Gods We Make Page 27