The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  “’Tis more than just vexing, Mr. Barnes,” Weatherby said sternly. “It is outright infuriating that we somehow allowed enough French men onto one ship to become a problem, and that they have enough leaders aboard to rally their men. It is unforgiveable that we managed to somehow miss the fact that there was a quantity of Mercurium on this ship that we did not take for ourselves, which not only failed to bolster our stores but gave the damned frogs a rapid means of escape!

  “And what’s more,” Weatherby continued, realization dawning upon him, “it is intolerable that we should somehow fail to notice all this, given that Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt seemed to be a terrestrial affair. Why would he even equip a vessel, let alone an 80-gun third rate, with Mercurium when it is so damnably rare and expensive for the French? No, this ship was meant to leave Earth and go somewhere else as part of a greater plan, Mr. Barnes. And our bumbling efforts in her capture have allowed her to continue upon this course!” Weatherby spun ’round once more. “Mr. Walling! Why are we not in the Void yet?”

  The young mid now looked quite terrified, given his captain’s tirade. “Sir! I—”

  Walling’s sentence was cut off as the Fortitude suddenly nosed up and began her own climb toward the stars. Buffeted by the winds, the men quickly hunkered down lower and began tying their body lines on. Weatherby, however, stood tall and began peering after Franklin once more, leaving it to the unflappable Gar’uk to tie the captain’s body line around his waist.

  “Where are you going, Franklin?” he muttered. “And why aren’t you more like your namesake?” Then again, he remembered that particular namesake as a brilliant, cagey man. It seemed the ship had aspirations of emulation after all. Mostly, however, he felt immensely guilty he had not seen to the ship’s security in person, having instead tried to engage in the politics of the service. He could only hope it would not cost his first lieutenant his life.

  June 16, 2132

  “I still can’t find them!” Stephane groused he scanned the space around Armstrong. “They must be using some kind of camouflage or shielding or something. Sensors aren’t picking up anything!”

  This had been the case ever since Armstrong detected the errant transmission from the Chinese weeks ago. Multiple searches along their possible trajectory—from Earth, from Jovian satellites, from the Armstrong itself—resulted in nothing.

  But while the search turned up nothing new, their situation was very different—the Armstrong was minutes away from a series of complex maneuvers to enter the Saturn system. And the last thing they wanted was to hit an errant Chinese spaceship en route to Titan.

  “Keep scanning,” Nilssen ordered. “Shaila, how we doing?”

  Shaila smiled, her hands gripping the holocontrols firmly thanks to force-feedback gloves. She wore the visor that allowed her to see space in a nearly 360-degree configuration, with the bulk of the ship behind her outlined against the black of space and Saturn’s bright rings. “We’ve a good wind at our back, sir,” she quipped. “All systems nominal.”

  “Incoming message from Houston,” Archie said, switching his holocontrols over to comms. “Want to hear it?”

  Nilssen nodded and a quick headshot of Admiral Hans Gerlich, chief of the U.S./E.U. Joint Space Command, appeared at the corner of Shaila’s field of vision. “Armstrong, this is Gerlich. You’re on approach, so I won’t take up too much of your time. Nothing new on the Chinese—the government’s still denying they’re even there, and we certainly can’t find them. In the end, I hope you guys are still first. Either way, you’ve already done us proud. Good luck and safe travels. You’re go for insertion into Saturn orbit. Gerlich out.”

  The headshot winked out, leaving Shaila to scan the horizon in front of her once more. Below her, through her HUD, she could see some of the larger individual chunks of ice that made up Saturn’s rings. Those chunks quickly coalesced into a flat plane of rings stretching out before her. Armstrong’s course was taking the ship just 10,000 kilometers above the ring plane at its closest point. The ship would then slip in between the rings and Saturn itself, using the gravity of the gas giant to slingshot around and, with a timely jolt from Armstrong’s engines, place the ship into an elliptical orbit that, in a few days’ time, eventually take it to Titan, where history—and an orbiting food and fuel depot ship—awaited.

  Stephane’s voice chimed into her headset from his sensor station below on the observation deck. “Remember, cherie, you are not a leaf on the wind.”

  Shaila’s grin grew wider. She had used that phrase a lot in training, until Stephane reminded her of what happened to the character who once said it, long ago in a 2-D space flick. “Roger that. I’m still going to soar,” she replied.

  “Cut the chatter, you two,” Nilssen said, though he bore a faint smile himself. “I need all aboard to keep eyes open. You see something out there, you flag it, even if it doesn’t look like it’ll impact insertion.”

  This was, of course, somewhat redundant, as the ship’s computer was also scanning the space around the ship far more frequently, and with greater thoroughness, than the crew could possibly manage. Shaila knew that Nilssen believed in keeping all hands busy during stressful periods, even when 99 percent of the mission was in the hands of the computer and the pilot—Shaila herself.

  The ship vibrated slightly and, a moment later, Shaila saw a chunk of ice explode into shards several dozen kilometers below her. The HUD zoomed in dutifully for a moment, and Shaila quickly scanned the readout next to the image. The ice had been roughly the size of a chair, and would have come within two kilometers of the ship. The computer thus used its high-frequency microwave emitter to blast the ice into snowflakes.

  The emitter was a legacy of JSC’s 2128 voyage to Jupiter aboard Atlantis. A routine survey of the Galilean moons turned into a nightmare when a small meteor slammed into the ship as it emerged from its braking maneuver. Of the eight crew, seven were lost, most succumbing to intensely painful radiation poisoning due to the loss of their rad shielding. The surviving crew member managed to place the ship in a long, slow orbit back to Earth, but it took nearly thirteen months to return home.

  It took Shaila, the sole survivor, another three years—and a brush with another dimension—to put it all behind her. Mostly. She tried not to flinch at each emitter burst, but couldn’t help gripping the holocontrols a little tighter. In the back of her mind, she hoped the force-feedback gloves wouldn’t short out.

  “Coming up on main engine burn in thirty seconds,” Shaila said, prompted by the notification in her HUD. “All systems nominal.”

  She flicked a holoswitch and her flight path appeared before her, superimposed against the looming mass of Saturn and the plane of its rings. They would alter course slightly in order to slip in between the planet and its innermost rings—roughly 6,000 kilometers of space between the innermost D-ring and the upper reaches of Saturn’s atmosphere. The trick here was to fly over the D-ring without causing any major perturbances within its structure. The D-ring was made of very small, fine particulates, primarily ice, that would easily scatter in the wake of Armstrong’s approach if they weren’t careful. The result could be a shower of particles spinning planetward at several hundred kilometers per second—potentially endangering the ship.

  Snow swirling across a starry sky.

  Shaila shook her head to clear it. Not now. There was too much to do, too much to monitor. She blinked several times and flexed her fingers. There wouldn’t be an issue, she told herself. The flight path took them more than a thousand kilometers over the inner edge of the D-ring, and any particles dislodged from orbit would rain down upon Saturn well behind the ship. At least, that was the idea. If they rained down on Tienlong, well . . . the Chinese should’ve filed a bloody flight plan, then, shouldn’t they?

  “Go for main engine burn in three . . . two . . . one. Main engine burn,” Shaila intoned, once more fully focused on the task at hand. Immediately, the ship’s preprogrammed flight plan fired the engines, an
d the ship’s attitude adjusted slightly, headed for the dark gap between planet and ice.

  “Signal detected! Incoming object!”

  Stephane’s voice echoed in Shaila’s ears a moment. Immediately, her HUD drew her attention to a point above and to her left. Something was racing toward the planet just as quickly as Armstrong.

  “What is it?” Shaila demanded, throwing protocol out the window for a moment. She was, after all, the one flying the damn ship.

  “It’s the God damn Chinese,” Archie said before Stephane could respond. “Got some kind of antireflective coating on the ship, but we’re close enough to get sensor readings. Titanium, electrical and . . . yep, there’s their engine burn.”

  “Projected course, Archie,” Nilssen said. A moment later, the other ship’s course was highlighted in yellow on Shaila’s field of vision.

  The two flight paths would cross roughly 3,000 kilometers above Saturn.

  “Shit,” Nilssen swore. “Hall, take over on comms and get on the horn. Tell those fuckers to adjust course. All comm protocols.”

  A moment later, Hall’s voice came through their headsets: “Attention, unidentified ship. This is the JSCS Armstrong. You are on course to impact this ship. Our flight plan is pre-approved by the U.N. Space Treaty Directorate. Divert immediately. Repeat, divert immediately.” She then launched into a carefully pronounced Chinese version of the broadcast, helpfully translated by the ship’s computer. Of course, the Chinese would probably have a translation subroutine aboard as well, but nobody was taking chances.

  Seconds ticked by in silence, with Shaila splitting her attention between the Armstrong’s systems and the little red dot that was drawing closer and closer.

  “No response,” Hall said.

  “Put it on a loop and repeat ad nauseum,” Nilssen ordered. “I want them to be sick of it by the time all is said and done. Archie, time to go to plan B.”

  “Already on it,” the engineer said. While not technically the ship’s navigator, nobody else on board could wrangle the computers as quickly as he could, and his reflexes tested out as second only to Shaila’s despite his age. “If we deviate much, we’ll lose Titan,” he said. “It’s gonna be close.”

  “That’s why Jain gets the big bucks,” Nilssen said. “Give us options. We’ve got our second engine burn in three minutes.”

  Shaila thought about remarking that she really didn’t get paid well enough for this, but figured she’d been hanging out with Stephane far too long and kept her mouth shut.

  A moment later, three white tracks appeared on their holodisplays. “Primary still gets us to Titan, but a day or two late,” Archie said. “Secondary and tertiary put us into a different orbit that takes us past Rhea and Enceladus first. Primary is gonna be real tight, and it depends if they change course or not.”

  Shaila zoomed in on the primary course adjustment. It looked like the two ships could come within a few kilometers of each other. “Close doesn’t begin to describe it,” she muttered. “If they blink, we’re either shooting off to Uranus or diving into Saturn.”

  “That’s our course,” Nilssen said simply. “Hall, broadcast our updated course to our friends out there and advise them to stay on their present heading. If they don’t, tell them they’ll probably kill us all.”

  Shaila turned quickly to see Nilssen frowning at his display, his forehead creased with worry despite the nonchalance in his voice. “Think they’ll play ball?” Shaila asked quietly.

  “Depends if they feel like being assholes or not,” the colonel responded. “Or maybe they don’t have enough fuel to change course. Maybe they want us to skip Titan. Who the hell knows? Bastards.”

  “Colonel, if we don’t hit Titan first, we could lose out on the rights,” Hall said from the observation deck. “That makes this mission a huge wash.”

  Shaila and Nilssen traded a look. “I recognize, Liz,” Nilssen said. “Right now, I just want to get us into orbit in one piece. If they screw us over, you can sue the hell out of ’em.”

  “We’ll do that anyway. And . . . OK, sir, getting a lot of comm traffic off the Chinese ship now that we’re close enough,” Hall said. “They’re sending a lot of signals back to Earth.”

  “Can you hack in?” Nilssen demanded.

  “It’s encrypted to hell and back. It’ll take a few hours to decode.”

  “Record it,” the colonel said. “At least we can figure out what their deal is.”

  Shaila saw the timestamp in her HUD ticking down. “Looks like fifteen seconds to new engine burn,” she reported. “Still go for primary alternative course.”

  Suddenly, alarms sounded throughout the ship, and a pulse of red drew Shaila’s attention back toward the Chinese.

  They were adjusting course, heading straight for Armstrong at 5,000 kilometers a second. And their own microwave emitter was powering up.

  “Colonel, recommend evasive. Now,” Shaila said, the coolness in her voice masking all else as she flipped holoswitches and prepared to wrest control away from the computer.

  “Go for evasive,” Nilssen said. “Archie, get the comp to recalculate a course ASAP.”

  “Love you, Stephane,” Shaila muttered before grabbing the yoke and sending Armstrong into a dive straight toward Saturn.

  CHAPTER 4

  August 20, 1798

  The glass beaker bubbled with an angry percussiveness, each pale blue sphere disappearing with a pop and releasing a fine mist into the air as the flame below continued agitating the mixture. The elixir was nearly complete, and the dozen young faces surrounding the table upon which the beaker lay were rapt in wonder and attention.

  “Now, let us remember the key steps,” Finch lectured slowly, in Arabic, to his students. “First, we must break down the substances, which we did by placing the Ioian ores and Venusian ur’lak root into the sulfuric acid. Then the purification, which is what we’ve done with the flames here, and that bit of Europan ice. What’s next?”

  Four hands went up at once, but Finch looked for the stragglers, settling upon one bored looking boy of perhaps twelve, the one whose father didn’t believe would make a warrior. And so, he would learn alchemy. It was those that gave Finch the hardest time. “Mohammed?”

  The boy stared at the floor and recited the words from rote. “It is the rubedo, murshid. The final stage in which it is refined.”

  “Indeed it is, young one. So given these ingredients and processes, what do you think should be applied to generate a healing elixir for wounds?” Finch asked the class.

  Another flurry of hands were raised. Finch pointed to another of the boys—they were all boys, of course. “It is jasmine flower!” the boy said proudly.

  Finch smiled. “Not unless you want to fall in love with your doctor,” he said, which produced a slew of giggles. “The properties of jasmine are far too weighted toward Venus for our purposes. Anyone else?”

  Mohammed raised his hand tentatively. “What would the blood from a Martian sand beast do?”

  The murshid frowned at this, memories coming back quickly and unbidden. “Most likely your internal organs would instantly explode,” Finch said sternly. “That is, of course, if you survived the experience of harvesting the blood in the first place!” He reached out to give the boy a rap on the head, but this did little to erase Mohammed’s grin, for the thought of exploding innards was universal in its appeal to boys his age.

  A third hand shot up, this from a boy named Fareed. “Salamander’s tail?”

  “Yes! Very good,” Finch said, his smile returning. “Remember, alchemy does not necessarily require us to harvest the rare and unusual from the Known Worlds. At times, a simple salamander’s tail will suffice.” Finch pulled a small, desiccated strip of reptilian anatomy from a box atop the table and dropped it into the beaker. Immediately, the color seeped out of the mixture, leaving a clear, bubbling liquid.

  Finch pulled the candle from under the beaker and blew it out. “We leave this cool for an hour and it’s rea
dy to use,” he said. “Remember, the ingredients are important, but it is less about the individual items and more about what they can do together. An alchemist with the knowledge and Will can produce wonders from the simplest things.”

  Another boy—Finch forgot his name at the moment, for he was new to the class—piped up. “And what of the Franks, murshid? Do they bring powerful alchemy with them?”

  Finch was surprised it took the class that long to bring up the French. He had been back in Cairo for more than a week, and this wasn’t his first session with his charges, many of whom had families directly affected by Napoleon’s invasion. More than half the boys had already lost a father or brother to the Battle of the Pyramids, or subsequent battles. The rest found their families’ power and wealth in varying levels of distress; the merchants, naturally, had the easiest time of it, as not even the French could simply walk in and take what they would.

  “The French question is interesting,” Finch allowed. “I have seen many scholars with them, but I do not know how skilled they may be in the Great Work. And remember, alchemy is named for Egypt itself. Surely the knowledge of Al-Khem is on par with any the Franks may bring, yes?”

  The faces before him broke into wide grins, especially that of Mohammed. Perhaps, Finch thought, the boy might find a way to use his burgeoning knowledge to pursue his dreams after all. He wouldn’t be the first warrior to study alchemy for its battlefield applications.

  Finch’s attention was drawn to the doorway of the study, where Jabir stood looking anxious and holding up a small piece of paper. “All right,” Finch said. “We’re done for today. Thank you.”

  The boys each left their coins upon the table—as with other scholars, Finch charged by the lesson—and dashed from the room and out of the house. They were excused early today, but Finch felt that the lesson had been a good one. Besides, they would each get a small vial of the curative tomorrow.

  “What is it, Jabir?” Finch asked in English. The boy needed work on his language skills anyway.