The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  Shaila launched herself toward her coverall-slash-uniform, twisting her body mid-flight so she could slide the lower half on as she progressed down the storage bay toward her boyfriend-slash-shipmate. “I’m just better at this than you are. And I can multitask better, too.” She arrived just in time to loop an arm around his waist, ending her zero-g flight with a caress and a hug, her black hair flowing all around them, dark Indian skin contrasting with his paleness.

  “You mean? While we were . . . you were making sure we hit nothing?” Stephane asked, brushing aside a strand of his blond hair from his eyes. “I thought I did a better job than that!”

  She slid up his torso and planted a kiss on his face. “Don’t worry. You were fabulous, as usual. I wedged myself in before you really went at it.”

  “All right,” he demurred, returning her kiss with one of his. “Thanks for this. I always wanted to try.”

  “Was it what you expected?” she asked.

  He laughed quietly. “Yes and no. It was . . . different. Parts were very good. Parts were just confusing.”

  Ever since the Joint Space Command Ship Armstrong launched four months ago for Saturn—humanity’s first manned mission to the ringed planet—Stephane had been asking to give zero-gravity sex a try. With manned spaceflight well into its second century, they weren’t really breaking new ground, except on a personal level. But Shaila, a Royal Navy pilot and the ship’s second in command, had heard all the stories about zero-g antics, and knew that the fantasy wouldn’t quite measure up. Stephane could be awfully persuasive, however. And today seemed like a good day to experiment.

  “Happy two years together,” Shaila said.

  “Give or take,” he replied. “Funny you measure our relationship by what happened that day on Mars. You were not even out of medical for more than a week after that.”

  Unbidden, Shaila’s memory raced back two years, to the longest three days of her life, during which the red planet was wracked by earthquakes, her mining colony nearly collapsed around her, and her life was nearly taken by the first alien species ever to come into contact with humanity.

  On this side of the fence, she reminded herself.

  “Sometimes really bad shit has to happen before you realize how lucky you are,” she said, reaching up to snag Stephane’s coverall, which was languidly floating past over his head. “I thought you were some asshole playboy.”

  “I am,” he smiled. “The planetary geology thing, this is just a fake.”

  “Yeah, well, then you had to go and save my life a few times. Cat’s out of the bag, darling.”

  Stephane’s reply was cut off by the ship’s intercom: “Archie to Jain, Archie to Jain, please report to command. Over.”

  Shaila looked up at the comm speaker in surprise; it was Dr. Dean Archibald’s watch, but for months, all a watch entailed was running diagnostics, relaying communications, and staring out the window as Saturn began to get larger day by day. What would he need her for? On the other hand, he didn’t sound an alarm, so it’s not like the ship was in trouble.

  Shaila turned to see Stephane with a wide-eyed, oh-shit look on his face. “Do you think he saw us?” he whispered incongruously, looking as if he got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

  It was enough to make Shaila laugh. “We’re not the first people to have sex in space, you know,” she said, shaking her head as she launched herself across the cargo bay toward her socks and shoes while sending various articles of Stephane’s clothing back at him as she went. “And it’s not like JSC can up and fire us out here. We’re a billion clicks from the unemployment queue.”

  She turned to look at Stephane as he struggled into his coverall, which produced a series of cartwheels along with another bout of swearing in surprisingly lyrical French. Zipping up her own coverall, she quickly slid her socks and shoes on. “I’ll catch up with you later. Don’t forget you’re on mess duty tonight—don’t make me write you up for tardiness!” As she pulled open the access hatch, she plugged the camera’s feed line back into its socket—a little joke, one of many on this trip, at Stephane’s expense. He generally took them well, and Shaila had no idea why she insisted on pranking him. Sometimes she wondered if she was so unused to actual happiness that she subconsciously tried to sabotage it.

  Whatever. Stephane was a good sport—and besides, it would take a minute for the system to reboot and his indecency broadcast to the entire ship. He’d be fine.

  Shaila quickly propelled herself down the access corridor that spanned the ship’s length, using regularly spaced handholds to guide her flight. Behind her were the two cargo bays, which were positioned just fore of the ship’s reactor room and engine core—the very latest in nuclear propulsion technology that made the trip to Saturn a reasonable length. After the cargo bays were the access hatches for Armstrong’s landers, which would be used when they arrived in the Saturn system to explore the four moons on deck for this mission—Titan, Iapetus, Enceladus, and Tethys.

  She quickly flew past the ship’s hub, where four access tubes spun idly around the central axis of the ship. These tubes led to the ship’s outer ring, which rotated around the axis in order to create artificial gravity aboard. Crew quarters, labs, and the medical berth all spun around the ship at 2.5 rotations per minute in order to give the crew about 85 percent Earth gravity. Combined with exercise, a carefully constructed diet and a regular dose of pharmaceuticals, it was enough to stave off the worst effects of space travel on a two-year mission.

  Shaila grabbed a handhold just before the door to the ship’s command center, which was an ambitious name for a glorified cockpit. She pulled open the hatch and entered a hemispherical space about three meters in diameter, with enough seats for three people; the three other seats were on the zero-g science lab and observation lounge, located directly under the command center.

  Inside the command hemisphere, Shaila found Dr. Dean Archibald, one of the foremost nuclear engineers in the world, a certified mathematical genius with a second Ph.D. in physics to boot. He was 90 years old and still fit enough to pass muster with JSC’s medical staff. That was a good thing, because not only did he design the Armstrong’s next generation nuclear propulsion system, but he was one of a bare handful of people qualified to run it.

  And at the moment, the wiry engineer with the handlebar mustache and snow-white hair was sitting in the command center as if he were suspended in space itself, his gloved hands outstretched and fluttering in the darkness. Armstrong featured the latest in holographic command-and-control software, which essentially projected the space around the ship on the surfaces inside the command center. The goggles Archie was wearing projected holographic controls into his field of vision, while the computer measured where his hands were in that holographic space and the gloves provided tactile stimulation. Archie could be plotting the course of a rogue asteroid, running a diagnostic on the ship’s reactor, or simply writing an e-mail to his girlfriend, about whom Shaila had already heard far too much. He was old, after all, no matter his conditioning.

  “What’s up, Archie?” Shaila said as she floated into the room, grabbing a pair of goggles hanging off the armrest of the command chair next to Archie and sliding into the seat. She buckled herself in and slid the semitransparent headset on. Immediately, her surroundings included her piloting controls, a communications panel, a general computer workstation and her lucky holographic fuzzy dice. She looked over at Archie and saw he was working on a communications diagnostic. The headset also gave her the latest on Archie’s workflow for the watch; he was efficient as usual, it seemed.

  With a practiced wave of his hand, Archie slid his holographic screen closer to Shaila’s seat and widened the view. “We were just getting our usual data dump from Houston when we had a seven-second interruption in the feed.”

  Shaila studied the screen intently. Armstrong kept in constant contact with Earth through the latest in laser-guided communications. Houston sent data destined to the ship to any nu
mber of satellites situated in Earth orbit, in the Earth-sun Lagrange points, and around Mars as well. Armstrong’s communications suite would seek out signals from each of these sources every second and recompute their positions vis-à-vis the ship, which was hurtling through space at nearly 11,000 kilometers a second. When the computer latched onto a signal, laser beams would send microsecond pulses across space with startling accuracy, forming the ones and zeros of data packets. While it took a lot of pulses to create a full data packet, it was still a lot more efficient than old-fashioned radio.

  Archie’s screen showed the typical cascade of data packets—the pulses of light transmitted from Houston—and then a strange millisecond cutoff. From there, a different set of data packets had taken over before a second millisecond blip. The normal feed had resumed after that.

  In data terms, seven seconds was a very long time. Shaila could see numerous parallel tracks of data being sent, in packets large and small. It was enough for a couple thousand e-mail messages, a few dozen vid-mails and maybe a snippet of a holovision show. “It wasn’t just an interruption. It was a different signal,” she said quietly. “Who else besides Houston would be trying to talk to us?”

  “No idea,” Archie said. He widened the view again so that only the interfering data packets were showing. “These are encrypted to hell and back, and they’re not using any key that we have. I’ve got the computer working on it now.”

  Shaila nodded. Armstrong’s quantum computers were expensive as hell, but the multistate hardware would make short work of most encryption schemes. “It’s probably some kind of stray transmission from the Moon or Mars. Pop a message off to JSC to let them know that we caught this. They’ll probably want to run some diagnostics on their comm gear, and get some military folks to do the same on their end.” She smiled over at Archie. “It’s not like anybody else is out this far.”

  The old engineer began composing an e-mail message to Houston, copying and dragging the image of the data interruption into his message screen. Shaila gazed out at the star field in front of her, her gaze being drawn to Saturn, about half the size of the Moon as seen from Earth and getting closer every day. The computer immediately highlighted the view and provided the ship’s course and distance to the planet. Just twenty-three days to go.

  Suddenly, a second message popped up in her field of view, and a soothing female voice sounded in the room. “Partial decryption completed.”

  “Show us,” Archie said. Immediately, the message screen widened to accommodate the decrypted data from the comm feed interruption.

  They were Chinese characters. Several dozen of them.

  Shaila and Becker looked at each other in surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned. Translate,” Archie ordered.

  A moment later, the pictograms were replaced with English words.

  . . . has gone to Shanghai to find work. It is about time he left that horrible village. In the meantime, Mei-Lien misses her daddy and says to say hi. She hopes you will bring her ice from Saturn’s rings and . . .

  Shaila sat there in shock. Ice from Saturn’s rings? “Where’s the rest of the message?” she demanded.

  “This was the smallest partial data packet available for decryption and translation,” the computer responded. “The others will take anywhere from several minutes to eight hours.”

  Shaila’s fingers flew across her holoboard, pulling up intelligence reports and maps of orbital Earth and Mars. She studied the data silently for several minutes while Archie—whose security clearance was far lower than Shaila’s—updated his message to Houston and logged everything carefully.

  Finally, Shaila had her answer, and it wasn’t one she was happy about.

  “I think we’re getting company,” she said, a look of despair on her face.

  August 2, 1798

  HMS Fortitude plunged through the dark night sky, her helmsman struggling valiantly to keep her ruddersail true. Attempting the descent from Void to sea was hard enough during the day, but at night, in the middle of a seeming gale, with a battle raging below? In all of the great naval battles of history, there was no record of a ship making keel-fall from the Void onto the sea in the midst of combat. And yet that is exactly what HMS Fortitude and her captain, Thomas Weatherby, were about to do.

  Not everyone aboard was excited about making such history, however.

  “Wind’s picking up!” Folkes called out. “She’ll be setting down hard at this rate!”

  The officer next to him simply nodded. “Understood, Folkes. Straight on until the captain says otherwise.”

  Folkes’ arms were getting quite sore, and he could see the tiny flashes of green and red alchemical shot from the sea below. There had to be thirty ships down there, and it was nigh impossible to tell friend from foe. “Can ye not at least tell him, Mr. Barnes?” he pleaded quietly.

  Second Lt. James Barnes frowned, but still stood ramrod straight, staring ahead across the deck toward the ship’s bow and the sea below. “Mind your station, man. The captain has sailed into far worse.”

  A blast of wind shook the Fortitude violently—no mean feat for a 74-gun ship of the line, one of the workhorses of the British Royal Navy and home to more than six hundred souls. Even the officer shifted his stance in order to keep his feet. After a moment, once the ship stopped heaving, the second lieutenant walked away from the wheel toward Weatherby, who stood stoically at the very back of the quarterdeck, the gold piping on his uniform and hat signaling his mastery of the ship.

  “Captain, the wind’s getting worse,” Barnes reported. “Can we not tack in sail?”

  To Barnes’ very great surprise, Weatherby gave him a small smile. “She can handle it, Mr. Barnes. Besides, you were right. I’ve made keel-fall in far worse conditions than these. Come with me a moment.”

  Weatherby immediately strode forward, Barnes in tow. They clambered down the stairs to the main deck, quickly walking forward amid a flurry of salutes from the men, all of whom were secured to the ship with body lines in case their descent proved more violent than even the captain had wagered. Finally, they clambered up the stairs to the forecastle, or fo’c’sle, where another officer stood watch with a looking glass.

  “Any luck?” Weatherby asked the first lieutenant, widely considered to have the best eyes of any man aboard. There were few others whom Weatherby trusted so closely as he.

  “I see two lines moving on either side of a third, sir,” Lt. Patrick O’Brian replied. “The third is caught in the crossfire between the two, but they’re returning fire well enough. The southern line is quite close to shore, though. I imagine one or two might run aground if they’re not careful.”

  The captain nodded grimly. “That sounds like Nelson. He always enjoyed taking risks. Any room for us to make keel-fall?”

  O’Brian offered the captain his glass. “Southern line. It appears one of ours is out of the fight at the moment. We could splash down right next to the two largest French ships. Could be rather difficult, though, sir.”

  Weatherby eyed the scene below. “I see it. ’Tis a tight fit, Mr. O’Brian, but we’d rake the French before they knew what hit them.” He snapped the glass shut and handed it back. “Mr. Barnes, beat to quarters, if you please.”

  The younger officer turned and shouted back down the length of the ship. “We shall beat to quarters! All hands to stations!” He then quickly left the fo’c’sle and began seeing to the ship’s readiness as one of the marines began drumming a martial beat. Men quickly pulled their cannon away from the hull and began loading, while the rest of the marine detachment—with body lines firmly secured—began climbing up to the tops, their muskets slung around their bodies.

  “How bad do you think?” O’Brian asked quietly, once again peering out toward the battle below. Nearly twenty years in service together brought forth a familiarity that extended beyond rank.

  “Us? We shall do our duty,” Weatherby said. “Them? Hopefully far worse than we.”

  With a clap of O’Brian�
��s shoulder, Weatherby made his way back to the quarterdeck. They would splash their keel upon the Mediterranean Sea in mere minutes. Thankfully, the men of Fortitude were well drilled, and Weatherby expected they should be ready to fire as soon as they made keel-fall. But it would be a close thing. Such a descent took an incredible toll on the ship’s timbers, not to mention exhausting the alchemical workings that kept it aloft in the first place. They might turn the tide in this engagement, but it would take some repairs before they were fit for the Void once again. They had been en route to Portsmouth when a chance meeting with a Sunward Trading Company sloop brought them news of Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson’s pursuit of the French through the Mediterranean. From there, it was simple deduction as to the French destination, and a decision to beat them to it. The French, however, were already there. As was Nelson.

  Just as Weatherby ascended to the quarterdeck, the four men on the wheel lost their grip upon it. The captain rushed forward, driving his left shoulder into the space between the spinning spokes. A sharp jab of pain told him he was successful; he knew then that he and the ship’s alchemist-surgeon would meet later on.

  “Captain!” Wilkes cried as he once again regained control. “I’m sorry, sir! We couldn’t hold her!”

  Weatherby gingerly straightened up, his left arm now dangling limply at his side. “Then ask for help next time,” he said, trying to make his tone paternal despite the pain and frustration. “It’ll do us no good if we land upon our allies.”

  “Aye, captain. Sorry, sir.” Wilkes immediately shouted for two other men to come join their efforts.

  Weatherby turned to see O’Brian had followed him astern. “Shall I call for Dr. Hawkins, sir?”

  “No, I think not,” the captain said, managing a small smile through the obvious pain. “He’ll be nervous enough as is. I should be the least of his worries about now. Guide us in, Mr. O’Brian, and have the larboard battery ready to fire on my command.”