by B. V. Larson
In the communication pod, they sent their files, and Lev made a short report. Kira added her input and they sent the data. The ship dutifully transmitted a burst of packets toward the distant Earth.
“What do we call these things?” she asked him.
“They have arms like ropes and climb like apes. How about rope-apes?”
She transmitted the information, and the two of them moved on toward the bridge. As they approached, they saw movement and shadows, but heard no speech, no human sound. The lights were out, and most of the LEDs they’d found along the way had been disconnected or broken.
“They don’t like light,” Lev whispered. “I’ve got a flash grenade. I’ll toss it in there, then rush them. Hang back.”
“We might be able to reason with them,” Kira whispered. “Let me have ten seconds. That’s all I ask.”
He looked at her, shaking his head. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“Lev, I thought the Americans were bad, but we’ve been worse. We attacked these people from the very start. We fired projectiles at them from space. Then you shot the first one you saw out on the ice. They attacked us after that. Give me a chance, at least, to talk to them. Peace with a new species—that’s worth more than any single life.”
“I’m to get you out of here alive,” Lev said. “Those are my orders.”
“I know, I know, and you always follow orders. But they don’t mean anything anymore. This ship is a wreck. I doubt we’re getting home. This is bigger than us now. This is about the entire human race.”
Lev was conflicted. He saw the logic of what she was saying, but it didn’t match with his mission parameters. He had to agree, they’d already lost most, if not all, of the crew. There were aliens crawling all over the ship and he couldn’t shoot them all. The odds they would fly this thing home together were low.
“All right,” he said. “But come back in one piece. We’ll get home again, the two of us, just as we did aboard the sub, if we have to.”
She smiled at him, touched her helmet to his, and then edged forward into the bridge compartment.
Kira had her hands outstretched. She began making gestures that between any two humans might indicate she was no threat, that she wanted to talk.
Unfortunately, the three spidery figures inside didn’t want to talk. They all had silvery outlines, as if coated in a single soap-bubble. They fell upon Kira and ripped at her suit. Gas escaped and hissed. Blood appeared at her shoulders and her ankle, as their multi-limbed forms touched vibrating blades to her joints. They pulled her body apart with surprising strength.
Long before they finished the task, Lev emerged and popped several rounds into each of the three. They shivered and died on the deck.
Lev rushed forward and began applying pressure to Kira’s wounds. She cursed and howled in pain.
“They attacked me!” she cried. “Did you see that? They didn’t even give me a chance!”
“I was an idiot,” Lev said, cursing rapidly. “I’ll kill them first from now on. Every one that I see.”
“We’ll never have peace that way.”
“Kira, everyone wants peace, but most don’t go about it the right way. Peace is maintained by fear.”
“That’s madness,” she said, her voice quieter.
Lev noticed she was no longer moving much. He’d stanched her shoulder wound and moved down to her ankle. That’s where the reality of the situation really struck him. Her foot—it was hanging loose. Blood flowed freely over the deck. They’d severed it.
“You’re going into shock,” he said. “Keep talking to me.”
“I don’t feel much of anything.”
“Keep talking.”
“I’m cold.”
He cursed. “What else?”
“You should really give peace a chance, Lev. It might surprise you one day.”
“The trouble with peace between two distrustful groups is it takes everyone to maintain it and only one man to break it.”
She chuckled and coughed. “And in this instance, you were that man.”
He did his best with his limited equipment and training. But despite everything, Kira bled out on the floor of the bridge.
Lev felt his eyes sting. He was angry and uncertain. Was she right? Had he caused all this?
He decided after a minute or so that the truth didn’t matter at this point. His mission had shifted to one of search and destroy. He would finish them, or they would finish him. Perhaps there were a million of these things under the ice and the task was hopeless. Perhaps there were only a dozen. He would kill them until they were all dead, or he was.
Before he left her, he removed her implant and pocketed it. The slimy thing wriggled and died quickly, but he knew that its recorded memories of her final experiences could provide his country with valuable intelligence on the enemy.
He stood up and left the bridge, aiming his weapon ahead of him as he moved through the dark, silent ship.
Chapter 60
Final approach to Europa, Aboard Starfire
Starlight
After riding down toward Europa inside Starfire, the American science crew was stunned and quiet. Jackie had tried everything she could think of. She’d used Brandt, having him touch and attempt to operate any instrument of alien origin she could think of. None of the devices responded to his touch any longer.
“They sucked us in,” Brandt said. “What clever bastards. They let us think we were in control when really we were nothing more than guinea pigs.”
Jackie tried to shield the engine, to interrupt the signal that was coming up from the moon and grabbing control of their ship. All these efforts failed.
“Cut the control lines,” Brandt suggested.
“I can’t do that!” she said. “We won't be able to fly it either.”
“You can’t control it now. Cut the control lines, so they can’t do what they want with us.”
“We’d be cast adrift. Locked on our current course, we’d either hit Europa or sail on out of the Solar System.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But that’s better than being captured by some ET.”
Jackie shook her head. “Get Sandeep to issue the order, and I’ll consider it.”
Brandt walked off, and Jackie moved to her acceleration couch for safety reasons. She couldn’t do any more engineering, so she was just one more passenger now. She tuned into the command channel to see what the flight crew was doing.
She listened to the astronauts with admiration. They were the professionals, the only members of the crew who truly belonged up here in space. They never gave up. Colonel Dyson and her people went through every routine, every possible route to regain control. They did this with rigid repetition, even as the others gave up and fell into fearful silence.
“Switches four through nine, down and locked,” she ordered.
“Switches four through nine, down and locked, confirmed,” answered the copilot, sounding as calm as a pilot of an airliner might during a routine landing.
“Give me a pressure reading on the guidance jets.”
“We’re down to sixty-four percent.”
Listening in, Jackie grasped their new plan. It wasn’t just sheer repetition. They couldn’t control the main engines—no one could turn them off or alter their thrust, not even Brandt. But they could work with the attitude jets, which adjusted spacecraft through nudges, rather than brute force. In space, a small change in course was significant as the miles whirled past.
“What are they doing?” Victor Perez asked her from a neighboring acceleration couch.
“I think they’re going to push hard with the attitude jets—it’s all they’ve got.”
“You mean altitude jets?”
Jackie’s face twitched, and she might have smiled if she hadn’t been so worried they were all about to die.
“No, that’s a common mistake. Attitude jets are vernier thrusters—essentially small chemical rocket engines. They can’t lift the ship, but the
y can be used to maneuver in space. They’re most commonly used during docking operations. We installed six of them outside the ship, just like the old shuttlecraft used to have, to provide backup control.”
“This seems like an appropriate time to use them,” Perez said.
“Let’s just hope they don’t crash us into something.”
Perez frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“We’re coming in toward Europa’s atmosphere at an oblique angle. I think Dyson means to make the angle even shallower and bounce us off of the atmosphere. If she succeeds, we’ll get another orbit to figure out our next move.”
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you think this is going to work? Maybe you should go up there and talk to them.”
Jackie shook her head. “No. This is their moment. They know far better than I do what they’re doing now. My only purpose on this mission is to keep the EM-Drive working—and it’s frozen up on me. I’ve never piloted a vehicle like this through space. I’m going to let the experts do it.”
Victor looked less than convinced, which Jackie took as a compliment. He must think she was pretty competent to put her up against three NASA specialists.
The ship continued its descent. They were able to read data input from outside, even though the ship’s main drive was out of their control. On their screens they watched Europa, an orange-and-white snowball, loom bigger with each passing moment.
“All right, let’s do it,” Dyson said. “Half-burn, ten seconds. Let’s see what happens when we nudge the ship off course.”
“Roger, fifty-percent burn…mark.”
The ship shivered and there was a hissing sound as fuel was pumped to the exterior jets. Jackie tried to relax, but her hands gripped her chair tightly.
“Anything?” asked Victor.
“Yes…I think we’re drifting away. Recalculating course—we’re still going to hit the atmosphere. It’s thin, but the hull temperature won’t rise high enough to reach dangerous levels. I think we’re good.”
“What do you mean by good?”
“We won’t land next to the Russian ship. Hard to be precise, but I’d place us forty miles off.”
Perez looked at Jackie. “That’s good?”
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
“Listen,” he told her. “I think they’re wasting whatever resources we have. At this point, I’d welcome another human ship.”
She looked at him uncertainly.
“They’re trying to exert control over the ship just for the sake of doing it. They don’t like being out of control. They’re control freaks, if you ask me.”
“All astronauts are,” Jackie admitted. “They’re pretty much OCD. They have to be.”
Perez stared at her. “Well? Are you going to do anything about it?”
“Dyson is the pilot. I’m the engineer. It’s not the same thing.”
Perez turned away. She could tell he was agitated. The situation had gotten through the former detective’s cool exterior.
“Let’s do another burn—a full burn this time,” Dyson said. “What have we got left?”
“Forty-one percent.”
“Roger that, let’s—”
Perez was staring flatly at Jackie, who checked her instruments and finally spoke up.
“Colonel Dyson?” she asked.
“What is it, engineering? Have you got that drive working again?”
“Negative. I was just going to suggest we conserve our fuel for the final approach.”
“We’ve made a difference already, Linscott, and with a full burn this time—”
“Excuse me, sir,” Dr. Linscott said, “check your navigational boards again. The EM-Drive is countering.”
There were a few moments of silence.
“Damn,” Dyson said. “Even a full burn may not be enough.”
“Colonel,” Jackie said, “you can’t out push the EM with a few pounds of chemical rocketry. I recommend you stand down.”
“What good is it then?” Dyson demanded.
Jackie could tell Dyson was frustrated but trying to maintain a professional demeanor.
“Colonel, we might need those final nudges when we land. There are irregularities on the surface. If we have enough power to miss a spike of ice, for example—”
“You’re right,” Dyson said suddenly. “Thank you, engineering. Standing down. We’ll ride this thing their way.”
Jackie looked over at Victor, who gave her a ghostly smile and nodded.
“Who knows?” he asked. “Maybe you just saved the ship.”
“Sure,” she said, but internally she was thinking saved it for what?
The rest of the descent went by with relative smoothness. At the end Dyson did fire the jets twice, trying to make sure they landed in an open area free of chasms and spikes.
Landing with a crunch on the icecap brought none of them any joy, however. There were no whoops or high-fives. The crew was white-faced.
The ship they were riding in was no longer their friend. Jackie realized she’d become familiar with Starfire, regarding it with an almost caring concern. But that was gone now. She feared the ship, it was a servant of the unknown.
The ship’s true masters had finally shown themselves. What fools the humans had been all these years to think they were in control. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the only reason the ship had suddenly started operating back on Earth was due to a signal from Europa, rather than anything she’d done.
Sandeep’s voice came into every helmet over the ship-wide channel. “All right,” he said. “We’re down. This is what we came for, people. Let’s get outside and see what’s happening.”
Brandt was the first one out of the airlock and discovered a grim truth. He signaled the group he wanted to make an announcement. With some trepidation, Jackie opened the channel.
“I can’t get back in,” Brandt said flatly. “That’s the acid test. The ship has booted me. If you don’t want to leave the ship, stay inside. I can’t open it back up for you once the airlock closes automatically.”
“We’re left with a hard choice then,” Sandeep said. “Whoever controls the hatches controls this ship. I still say we leave the ship. We can’t just sit here forever. Anyone that gets out can’t get back in.”
A voice answered him—it wasn’t one of the expected people. It was Perez. “What if the ship just lifts off and maroons us here?”
There was a resounding silence in reply.
“Well,” Sandeep said finally. “I would ask a complementary question. Are you volunteering to stay here inside this vessel, while the rest of us leave and investigate?”
Jackie, listening in, didn’t know what he meant at first, but then it dawned on her. Maybe the Russians could help. As long as the crew was inside Starfire, they weren’t in control of their own destinies.
“Stay inside Starfire?” Perez asked. “I’m not volunteering for that duty.”
“Good. Everyone out of their seats. Suit up, take extra oxygen and any essentials you might have. We’ll head for the Russian ship.”
They piled outside. Fortunately, the hatches still allowed them to exit. Jackie wasn’t sure if the exit-only doors were an oversight or something done by design. Either way, the entire crew was soon trudging on ice.
No one stayed behind. Jackie thought they probably feared being entombed within the ship as much as they feared walking on the surface of this unknown world.
They began a long walk. There was an air of doom over the group, but there was hope as well. The Russian ship was relatively close, no more than a few kilometers. It sat just beyond a yawning dark chasm and a hill of frozen methane.
As they walked, Jackie thought it felt like more than two kilometers in the crystalline darkness. She was reminded of a group of New World explorers she’d once read about. They’d been searching the Arctic for a Northwest Passage that simply didn’t exist. Some expeditions had become locked in ice and struggled for years to s
urvive, only to finally all die out. They must have felt hopeful and full of purpose, just as the people around her did now.
Many of the scientists in particular were excited. They spoke of discoveries, toyed with their instruments and gasped at the views. She was hard pressed to enjoy the natural beauty of the place. It was all surreal to her, and the closure of the ship behind them felt as if the lid of her tomb had slammed down.
As the group topped a blue-white mound of slippery frozen methane, Jackie felt absurdly exposed. She was a tiny spot of warm flesh on a giant radioactive ice-ball. She found herself walking close to Perez. She’d looked around for Brandt, but soon after they’d begun the march, he’d shuffled off among the piles of ice and vanished.
Most members of the crew pulled sleds of supplies after them. There were oxygen bottles, rebreathers and tools everywhere. They even had water and food leaching systems.
Her relaxation was short-lived however. As soon as they came within direct visual range of the hulking Russian ship, she knew all was lost.
The ship was listing, almost lying on its side. Had it crashed? Had it somehow been forced to land just as they had?
Hushed moans and sighs went through the group. The Russian ship had been their unspoken salvation. Secretly, they’d all been pinning their hopes upon it.
“There it is,” Sandeep said. “We’ll sort this out shortly. I want everyone to be on their best behavior now. Turn on all your suit lights so they can see us coming. We don’t want to surprise anyone.”
People began to comply, but the flight crew did not. The astronauts had their own ideas.
“The Russian ship is dark and half sunk into the ice,” Dyson pointed out. “Company, halt.”
The group instinctively followed her orders. They weren’t on the ship anymore, and everyone knew that Sandeep had no more idea what he was doing out here than the rest of them. Probably less.
Dyson waved her two flight crew members forward. They followed her. The group waited, peering.
Jackie couldn’t see any light at all coming from the Russian ship. Could it truly be dead?