Bastion Saturn

by C. Chase Harwood

  When she was finished, a sheen of sweat covered her whole body. She looked at her long lean limbs with both admiration and appreciation. With a tinge of guilt, she took another sponge bath, then, exhausted, turned in.

  She hated sleeping in zero G and glanced at her mates strapped to the walls while slightly envying their state. She tossed and turned for a long time before she slipped into a semidream state and had a nightmare about being blown off Dione, ending up as a spec in the icy dust of Saturn’s rings. Frustrated, she opened her eyes and listened to what was clearly a struggling motor somewhere in the cabin. The sound slowly became her singular focus and began to drive her nuts. She zipped out of the sleep sack determined to find it, her ear to the walls until she got to the galley and felt the counter above the small vibrating refrigerator.

  Great. Now the fridge in its death throes. She rested her hand on the counter and got a flash memory from her childhood. Her father had insisted on using an old-fashioned riding mower. As far as she knew, they were the only family in their whole town that didn’t have either a fake lawn or a genetically modified one that grew to a certain height. Her dad insisted on “good ole American grass,” but he hated mowing it and “to hell with them robot grass cutters.” Paying a gardener was out of the question when he had a perfectly healthy daughter to pull weeds and mow the lawn. The mower had introduced Jennifer to the orgasm and ultimately, her ability to sustain them over and over. She loved to mow the lawn. Her dad often yelled at her that she was going to destroy it cutting it so short.

  She smiled at the thought, her hands still on the counter. She always slept better after enjoying a mini-death. She thanked the rattling compressor or whatever it was, sat on the counter, and soaked up the vibrations until a sigh slipped from her lips.

  Limply, she sent herself floating back to the sleep sack and drifted off.

  Chapter Five: Winging It

  Jennifer didn’t need the CO2 warning to know that the game was almost up. She felt a little light-headed. The autopilot had alerted her an hour before that the ship was approaching Phoebe and that they would be in position to orbit or land in twenty hours. A decision had to be made. She had used the simulator over and over attempting to at least get into an orbit. She had succeeded twice in twenty-five attempts. There was fuel for one try. A miss meant floating off into the universe forever, not a terrible grave but a harsh death. She needed to wake Caleb, but wasn’t sure if there was enough air left for the two of them. Even if they did get into an orbit, what then? There was still no response to Monty’s distress call, which told her that they were truly personae non gratae. There was no missing that call now. To his supposed friends on the rock, Monty had included a personal voice note in the message.

  Jennifer blew out a big breath. Even if they put themselves into orbit and begged for help, no one might come. She looked over at Caleb hanging in the suit that was too small for him. She decided she’d better get started. Assuming that she could revive him, who knew how long it would take before he got his bearings. Saanvi had calced out roughly 16 hours to warm an individual back to consciousness, adjusted pluse or minus an hour or so based on body weight.

  The pain was excruciating, yet Caleb couldn’t put it in context outside of his own head. His body felt as if it were on fire. Maybe acid. Dipped in acid. Especially the fingers and toes. A hot rod had been shoved through his head. Wherever he looked, everything was red and swirling sparks and pops. He was in hell. The real one. Oh fuck, hell is real. He had died and gone to hell. Oh sweet Jesus! I know I always said you were bullshit, but I so take it back! The demons, or a demon, kept whispering his name, questioning him, tormenting him. “Caleb? Caleb? Caleb?” Then the red sparkling veil began to slowly lift. The pain dissipated and his vision filled with the figure of an angel—a naked angel. The sound of his name poured out of the angel’s lips in the most loving and gentle way. With cracked lips, he croaked “Jesus! Jesus! I love you, Jesus!”

  Jennifer was thrilled to hear Caleb make an intelligible statement, even if it was an overtly religious one. He had been back to 37C for an hour and a half. She’d detected a pulse at 35C and watched him take a breath shortly after, but that had been it.

  Suddenly, he seemed to recognize her. His eyes took her all in. She looked down and realized that she had forgotten to put on clothes. She had been blissfully naked for a week. She grimaced at the thought of putting on the discarded elastoware, but decided it would be best to distraction. She smiled at Caleb as she began to pull them on, then soured. It was like pulling a crusty nylon stocking over her whole body.

  Clothed, she inserted a water tube into his mouth and gave it a little squirt. She felt relieved to see him swallow. Saanvi had said it would be a good sign of passive neural activity. She gave him another tiny sip and said, “Say my name, Caleb.”

  Working his tongue around his teeth, he stammered, “Hi, Jennifer.” Then after getting some saliva going, “Your choice of revival-wear was unexpected, but very appreciated. It certainly helped me to snap out of the nightmare.”

  Her brow furrowed as she took in his face. His skin had a waxy appearance and was pale enough that his veins took on some prominence. “How do you feel?”

  “Like shit. Much worse than coming out of a real hibernator.”

  “But it worked, thanks to David and Saanvi.”

  “It was your idea.”

  She shrugged slightly, acknowledging the credit. “So, not to jump right into the next emergency, but we are three hours from Phoebe, the air in here is almost completely toxic and we don’t have enough fuel to land, at best one shot at making orbit.”

  “Huh. That sucks. I’m hungry, I have a headache and I’m cramped up in this suit. You mind?”

  She allowed him a little less than a teaspoon of food and a little more water. Saanvi had explained it to them before they had proceeded, the importance of not shocking the digestive system after a week offline, but that didn’t stop him from wishing he could gulp down everything in sight. He was having a devil of a time concentrating, and his mind drifted into a sort of fugue, as Jennifer urgently struggled to gain his attention. The exterior cameras showed them fast approaching the moon. Monty had said there would be a flashing beacon on the landing zone of the research facility. There was no flashing beacon, but the autopilot seemed to be functioning, aiming them toward that portion of the satellite. At roughly half an hour to no-turning-back time, it became clear to Jennifer that Caleb was not going to be able to physically put the ship in orbit. His hands had not stopped trembling, and his whole body would intermittently jerk in sudden spasms of shivers. She teared up from the strain of simply watching the monitors and trying to accept the reality that the craft would likely fly right past salvation. Caleb made a feeble effort to either comfort or inspire her, putting and arm around her and giving her a squeeze. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like his hand was intentionally shaking along the side of her left breast. She gently extricated herself from his embrace and sat in the pilot chair.

  Caleb said, “Look. It seems like nobody is home, so putting us in orbit is pointless anyway.” He paused for moment, shaking off a shiver, then added, “When I was a kid, I stole my dad’s car for a joy ride. What I didn’t know was that he had been working on it. Well that’s not true, he was always working on it. Anyway, he happened to have been working on the brake system that day. We lived in the countryside in Vermont on one of the few roads that wasn’t twisty, and I really opened it up. I mean really enjoyed the thrill of my body jammed into the seat. Maybe a hundred and seventy. Flying along, the road to myself. Still, at some point I had to stop. Right?”

  Jennifer nodded and smeared her drying tears on her sleeve.

  Caleb continued. “About a klick ahead, the road came to a T— a busy road. I think I was pushing—aghhhhhh bblllllluuuugh.” He let the spasm take its course, then shook it out through his shoulders. “Sorry. God, that’s unnerving. I hope it stops. Anyway, I was pushing maybe a hundred and sevent
y and I tapped the brakes to prep for slowing.” To reassure her that he had already become at this point in his young life a master driver, he said, “I’d taken my dad’s car on a lot of joy rides. I was probably fifteen at the time. Anyway, I tap the brakes. And nothing. I’m flying down the road, so now I mash the brakes to the floor. Still nothing.” Jennifer had completely stopped tearing up. He had her full attention. “There were big rigs and everything else crossing on the road in front of me.” He paused to swallow. It looked painful. “Water. I need—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She shot a sip of water between his lips.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. So?”

  “Another sip, please.”

  She gave it to him, and he smacked his lips with satisfaction. Her eyebrows raised with annoyed anticipation.

  “I drove into the corn.”

  “Huh?”

  “There was a big corn field on my right, and I drove right into it. Spent the rest of the summer working off that debt, harvesting our neighbor’s crop, but I stopped the car.”

  “That’s it? That’s your story? You drove into the corn? Thanks for the short distraction from our pending doom.”

  “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought. Pay attention. I stopped a speeding car by decelerating it via friction from external objects.”

  She said nothing, struggling to make the connection.

  “You need to land this ship the same way.”

  “Into the corn?”

  “Phoebe doesn’t have the kind of gravity that a jetliner on Earth has to negotiate when crash landing. You’re going to skim this baby along the surface until it comes to a stop, hopefully close enough to the door so that it’s a short walk to safety.”

  Jennifer stared at the controls that she had spent so many hours trying to master. None of the rehearsals required this. She turned back to Caleb. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Good. More food?”

  The autopilot was already set to account for Phoebe rotating on its axis every nine hours. The trick was guessing how far back from the original touchdown sight they needed to aim the craft. It was impossible for either of them to calculate in the time they had left. They would need to tally the combined effects of the speed of the ship, the moon’s gravity, the consistency of the surface, and the amount of skips the ship was most likely to make. All that Jennifer had was experience skipping stones on the surface of Dione. That she had actually done such a thing and thus could envision the ship doing the same, was slightly reassuring to her.

  The research station was located in the large Jason Crater at the edge of the even deeper Erginus Crater. She didn’t want to overshoot and skip down into the deep Erginus. She chose a relatively flat spot that was roughly five klicks from the Erginus Crater’s edge and the entrance to the station, which was carved into the side of the Jason Slope.

  Caleb nodded in agreement as she punched the chosen landing coordinates into the autopilot. They also had to reprogram the angle of descent so as to be almost skimming the surface before first contact. That’s when the autopilot baulked. The ship was more or less a big box with permanently fixed landing gear underneath it, designed for a thrust-related drop to the surface not a glide path landing. There was no command for such a landing.

  “I guess I do this part manually,” said Jennifer.

  Caleb laughed at the absurdity of the situation. The moon was coming up fast. “You better get into your suit. I suspect a ship breach is inevitable. Guess I’m taking this ride on the outside.”

  “Really?”

  “My suit’s attached to the hull.”

  She got into her exosuit, then helped him to the small airlock hatch that lead into his own suit, which was designed to ride on the exterior, thereby leaving dirt and other contaminants outside. He’d already warmed it up, so it was just a matter of slipping inside through the rear shoulder area and pulling the hatch closed behind him. Before he got in, he turned to Jennifer. “I’ll be able to see really well from out here, so I’ll talk you through anything that seems out of alignment. Just remember, rock, ice, and dirt are harder than corn.”

  “Thanks. Jerk.”

  He offered her a roguish smile and leaned in for a kiss. She placed a hand over his mouth. “Um, no. Not happening.”

  He mumbled under her hand, “Sure? We likely won’t get another chance.”

  “I appreciate your confidence in me. Either way.”

  “Your loss. Safe landing.” He slipped inside, turned to blow her a kiss, and pulled the hatch shut.

  Jennifer had been alone for a week, yet as she strapped herself into the pilot’s seat, it was the first time she had actually felt alone. Caleb’s voice broke in over her com, and a flood of relief shot through her veins. “You gotta come up another two degrees at least to put our ass at the right descent angle. And remember to plug the com into your heads-up relay jack.”

  The pilot’s console fed its information into her irises with a laser array that created a 3-D effect. It was useful, but she still felt disconnected from the world outside. She looked around the console, grabbed a retractable fiber cable and plugged it into a jack on her wrist. Suddenly she became the ship, or that’s what it seemed like. Her view made it feel as if she were sitting right out front. The landscape was crystal clear, filling her entire field of vision. She was skimming along, perhaps a thousand feet above the dark, pockmarked, potato-shaped moon. The logic of Caleb’s advice became immediately evident, and she made the adjustment to the ship’s attitude.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “OK. Going to initiate the burn.”

  “Not yet. Wait for it.”

  “But we’re at three-hundred meters.”

  “But about twenty klicks ‘til touchdown. Wait for it.”

  As Jennifer held her breath, the ground grew ominously close. They were approaching at over 13,000 kilometers per hour. In her peripheral vision, a red light began to flash urgently, and she cringed. “Ship says now. Now?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She touched the re-entry button. Nothing happened. She touched it again. Nothing.

  “OK. Now would be really good,” said Caleb in a high-pitched tone.

  “I did. I hit it. I’m hitting it over and over.”

  “Did you arm it?”

  Jennifer glanced at the flashing red light. It repeated a question over and over: Arm? Arm? Arm? “Darn! Yes. Arm!” She touched the flashing button. The re-entry button glowed green, and she hit it again. Her view became distorted as the cameras adjusted to the sudden brilliance of the rockets firing.

  “Holy shit, that’s awesome!” yelled Caleb. “Just let it burn baby. Let it . . . barghhhe blllllllughh.”

  “Caleb? Caleb, you okay?”

  “Jesus. Crazy tremors. I hope I didn’t fuck up my nervous system.”

  The ship’s engines kept firing for a few more seconds and then flared out. They were roughly one-hundred meters above the surface and descending fast. Caleb said, “Retro. Retro four. No! Three! Sorry. Crap. Four would put me on the belly side.”

  “You said four before you went outside.”

  “Did I? I meant three. I think I meant three.”

  “Which one!”

  “Three! Now!”

  A retrorocket fired out of the nose of the ship slowly lifting it, then with a soundless smack, the skids touched ground and skipped across the lip of a crater, caught on the edge, and sent the spaceship into a cartwheel. It careened end over end, bouncing across the landscape, leaving gouges and scrapes. Outside, Caleb lost all sense of direction, as if he were tumbling in a huge wave, the sky and the ground blending together in a swirling, twisting, vomit-inducing crush. “Emergency eject!” he screamed. Behind him his suit detached from the hull of the ship and he shot out like a golf ball from a tee, hurling across the sky in a great arc.

  He was fully prepared to go splat, and experienced a thrill of relief at the gentle touch of Phoebe’s pussy-ass
gravity field. He bounced a bunch of times, but it didn’t hurt much. When he finally came to a stop, he was oriented perfectly so he could watch his ship cartwheel straight across the Erginus Crater and into the side of the surrounding Jason Slope where a huge plume of dust shot up into the airless vacuum, some of it breaking the small moon’s gravity well and hurling into space..

  “Jennifer? Jennifer, you copy?”

  Chapter Six: Phoebe

  Caleb sat in the dust feeling infinitesimally small. He was a tiny spec on a little rock that but for the gravitational force of Saturn would be just another asteroid floating in the void. Incredible. The distant Sun was shining, but its light was dim. The ground around him was a dark mixture of fine particles and small rocks. He could see the trail created by his bouncing, scraping, twisting landing. It stretched almost all the way to the curve of the horizon. He aimed the rangefinder in his heads-up to the approximate spot where he had first hit. It read 10089 meters. He felt surprisingly fine, no major injuries, but his muscles had atrophied in the past week. Even in the light gravity, he groaned as he got to his knees.

  He felt incredibly exposed on the open plain. Alone, with only the sound of his breathing to keep him company, he suddenly longed for the green of earth and the warm womb it provided, the trick of blue sky making him forget that even at home he was naught but a bit of celestial stuff, a spec of insignificance against the backdrop of infinity. Like a hungering mouth gushing with saliva, his mind played games with him, filling his head with a recurring memory of night insects. For Caleb, growing up in the verdant Vermont summers, insects had always been a burden of one sort or another, irritants to be reckoned and casually dismissed as background noise. Now, here he was, standing on the surface of a dusty ice ball, the equivalent of his mind’s saliva glands flooding his skull with a stabbing desire for the sound of crickets, cicadas, and sex-starved frogs.

  Phoebe was a desolate place. Only the vastness of its colorful ringed mother planet offered solace and company in a place that was otherwise a dead thing floating through the abyss. Agape, experiencing a transcendent moment, he slowly turned, scanning his surroundings until the crash site brought him out of his reverie.