Food that other nations wanted.
Charles had been there at the great unification, when the United States had, for all intents and purposes, annexed Canada and Mexico. It wasn’t an aggressive move, instead, the two neighbors begged for it. In exchange for food, the two nations became buffers against the rest of the world.
That was five years ago, after the great announcement.
He had been on board the USS Obama on deployment in the North Sea. Some kind of training exercise with Sweden. Submarine hunting. Always ready if the Russian bear would ever rise up against the west. Funny how looking back, the bear was about to be skinned alive. He was flying a helicopter over the North Sea, a clear yet cold day. It was the third day of the exercise when it came to an immediate halt. All craft were called back in. That night, he had watched with intrigue, as the horribly unclear images were replayed over and over again on the ships monitors. He had the security clearance to hear the news when it first came out. The object was headed towards Earth, and it was slowing down from near light speed.
The Captain sat directly across from the mission commander, Benjamin Kelly. The two had formed the most unlikely of friendships, at least Charles considered it so. In any other place in the solar system, the two opposites would have never had anything in common. Charles was a lifetime military man, fit, bright, and a man who enjoyed to speak his opinions. Ben was a lifetime scholar, a manager, shorter than Charles by a bit, and rounder too. He had trimmed up quite a bit after two months of isolation on the Europa base. There was always time to work out here, and it was encouraged in the minimal gravity. Magnetic boots and shoes kept one attached to the floor, but the muscles atrophied anyways.
Each of the men had been chosen for the mission for similar reasons. They were both leaders of men, just in different capacities. Both were outgoing when needed, and both were cool under pressure. Charles always thought that’s why they got along so well.
The mission on Europa was historic and its significance beyond important. Despite that, there was plenty of free time. Digital books and movies were a crew favorite, but the two men had started a friendly, weekly, game of Risk. It was mostly a game of luck, with the results dependent on the roll of a dice, but both men pretended to be great strategists. And so the two had opened up to each other. They knew about each other’s wives and children, troubles and politics. Charles voiced his concerns over potential wars and Ben expressed his concerns over troubling developments in technology. Both were tied in and both seemed millions of miles away. Sometimes it felt as if only the two men were really still in touch with reality. That reality was 365 million miles away.
Today was a cause for celebration though. The mission had one objective. Unearth, or un-ice, the Jupiter Artifact, determine its contents, and bring it back to Earth. Charles was there in case they weren’t supposed to bring it back. The biggest problem was the artifact was under nearly a mile of ice. So for the first two years, the ice engineers had been digging and carving out pathways to the artifact. In order to help pay for the mission, NASA had allowed for several side missions to take place during the two years. Studies on the effects of low gravity on humans, growing plants in low gravity, and the effects of time on humans stuck in a sardine can for two years, were just some of projects the other crewmembers kept busy with. And it was up to Ben to keep the order.
For the most part, he had.
There had been the video issue with Emir, which was a pretty thorny one. There had been a love triangle between Susan Adams, the botanist, Cary Hughes, one of the research coordinators and Gary Fletcher, the mission surgeon. Horace Tanner, the mission psychologist had a field day with that mess, but after some fist fights and a broken nose, the issue settled itself. The trio were now a ‘happy’ couple. Horace was probably going to win awards whenever he submitted his findings on that matter.
For the most part though, the two years had gone smoothly. The base engineer, Geoff, was a savant in low gravity structures. There had been no issues at all. Susan had been able to get plants growing in one of the domes that also served for additional oxygen and CO2 scrubbing. She had done so well, she was sure the crew could survive for years if anything happened. It didn’t matter of course. NASA shipped supplies up that arrived every three months. They had cracked open a huge tub of ice cream from the latest supplied and the central command room was now party central.
The room was full of laughter, music and a general sense of completion. The work was far from over, but the longest and probably hardest phase was over. They would get to the artifact next, deal with it, then go home.
“If there is a home left to go to,” Ben grumbled.
“Not this again. The last briefing I got from command in Norfolk was that there were scheduled meetings with our diplomats and European, Chinese and South American diplomats. Command was very confident.”
“Don’t you read the other news? You know, the ones not supplied by your brainwashing command?”
Charles laughed at his paranoid friend.
“I have,” Ben continued. “There are riots all over the world. Lots of small nations are toppling their governments. Africa is a giant mess as the drought is hitting there really hard. Those that can are leaving that continent heading north. You can guess how that’s going to play out.”
“We’ve seen it get bad, and you know there is always a war somewhere, but that’s it,” Charles reassured.
Ben shook his head. “I’m not so sure.”
Charles slid a bowl of ice cream over to his friend. “Listen, the talks are taking place in two weeks. I have access to the vids and I’ll ask them to beam them up to us. I’ll let you watch them, OK? You’ll see. For now, let’s deal with the issue here. Has Connie got the extra O2 up and running yet?”
Connie DeVicio was one of the base engineers. She joked she was the base plumber and janitor, as she dealt primarily with those issues. She helped Geoff on most things around the base. She was anything but just a janitor as she was an accomplished engineer by her own accord. Every single person on Europa was a master or expert in his or her field.
Everyone except Glorin Ignacius the Third. He was the mission’s xeno expert. Charles laughed at the thought. That someone could be an expert on aliens was of course, impossible, seeing as humans had yet to meet aliens. Still, the exceedingly wealthy man had managed to get his way on to the mission. Everyone knew he was just a tourist here. Everyone also knew and understood that his money, his vast billions, had helped fund the mission. They wanted him to be a kook or a weirdo, but he was really just a different kind of person.
“Yeah, she’s down there now,” Ben replied. He rolled his chair over to one of the myriad of panels. Touching the panel brought it to life.
“Extra O2 is pumping in now into the secondary ballasts. CO2 scrubbers are online but we probably won’t need them. The green dome really does its job well.”
“Well, then I guess it is time to wake the boys up.” Charles stood up and walked next to Ben. He tapped on the same panel and brought up a secondary screen. Twenty entries on the screen were blinking yellow. Charles tapped on each one individually, and each entry turned from yellow to blinking green. Next to each entry, a forty eight hour countdown began.
“Everyone is prepped right?” Charles asked.
“Yeah, everyone is ready. Still…” Ben stopped.
“Me too, my friend.” Charles sat back down on his chair. Ben rolled his chair back over.
“Don’t they disturb you at all? Not even a little?” Ben asked.
“They disturb me a lot. But, I don’t get paid to care. Drone soldiers are part of the military now.”
“Well, I guess it’s better than androids.”
Charles quickly turned away.
“Wait, I know that look. Or rather, I know that lack of a look,” Ben was ever suspicious. “What do you know?”
“Between you and me, right?” Charles looked around. The rest of the crew, those that were there, were too busy wit
h ice cream and laughter to hear them. Ben nodded in agreement.
“I received a briefing about six months ago. I’d have to look it up again. Anyways, in the report was a section that detailed the construction of a fully android army based on updated drone soldier schematics.”
Ben let out a stifled shout as he pushed his chair away. “Still run by human handlers right?”
Charles hesitated.
“Oh no,” Ben’s shoulders slumped.
“Hubbed AI.”
“I told you…” Ben began.
“Just relax. It was just a matter of time. Even drones are lives. With androids we don’t have to waste any more lives.”
“Yeah, up until the point that they waste all of our lives,” Ben spat.
Charles nodded. He agreed with his friend, but it was his job. He just hated keeping secrets from his friend. He hated keeping secrets from everyone, but morale was of the utmost importance. These secrets made him nervous, but for now, he would have to deal with them. Besides, they were 365 million miles away.
He was 365 million miles away from his wife.
- Roberto -
“Ok, start pumping it now.”
“All right, coming through now, Bobby. Check the readings down there.”
Roberto Palmeira, or Bobby, was a research analyst for NASA. He had come on the mission to study the frozen moon, look for life, and run hundreds of experiments on the surface of the moon. He had also been hastily trained to be an AI handler for the drone soldiers. It had been a grueling three day course and he felt overwhelmingly unprepared for it. And now, the day had come.
Drone soldiers. Cyborgs, mechies, and wires were just some of their common names. Bobby had very nearly signed up to be one, fifteen years ago. Fresh out of high school, the Brazilian emigrant didn’t see a future ahead of him. There were always wars and conflicts around the globe though. Thankfully, a scholarship had come through at the very last moment and his life had taken a completely different course. He wasn’t locked up in one of those cybernetic suits.
Drone soldiers. Healthy men and women who gave up twenty years of their life for a huge payout at the end. They essentially donated their bodies to the military. That wasn’t anything new, but under the drone soldier program, they gave up their free will and mind as well. The volunteer was encased in a mech suit. The mind was essentially put into a coma. Every motor aspect of the mind was taken over for control by software and AI. It was a seemingly horrific arrangement, but one that had worked well. Drone soldiers had no fear or trepidation, and in the battlefield, that translated into far better results than those from emotionally riddled men and women. Despite the mindless nature of the soldiers, the survival rate of the men and women was exceptionally high.
In twenty years, or if they were significantly injured, the person inside was woken up and given a really good stipend to live the rest of their life. It had only been in the past five or six years that the first of the drone volunteers had ended their contract. They came out with no memories, and therefore zero cases of PTSD. The suicide rate was of course non-existent among drones, both during and after service.
Still, it was an arrangement that was labeled as indentured servitude in the nicest terms, or Frankenstein slavery at its worst. The general population was uneasy with drone soldiers. In other nations, their use was usually found to be heresy, or an abomination. American drone soldiers captured overseas were usually submitted to horrible treatment. Thankfully, none of them suffered or remembered.
Bobby wiped away the frost from the window over one of the chambers that held their twenty drone soldiers. The face was covered in armor; eyes, nose and mouth were unnecessary. They had no face. But under all that carbon plating was a human being. Maybe eighteen years old, maybe thirty eight.
In two days’ time, they would be awake, and he would have to give them commands, to run diagnostics on their human and machine bodies. He was not prepared for this.
Day 2 AE
- Joyce -
Joyce Hunter typed furiously on her keyboard. The clacking of keys echoed in the disturbingly quiet room. Bothered by the silence, she stopped for a moment, rolled backwards on her chair, and reached down to open up one of the vents. She usually closed them. She liked the communications hub. The computers and servers in the room heated it up, and she detested the cold stale air from the vents. Today though, many of the servers were off for maintenance, and she hated the silence more than she hated the cold.
She finished up typing the message and began to review it.
“Central. Entry 798. Subcommand 17.
The drones are fully awake and are having their biological components resupplied. Roberto Palmeira is running diagnostics alongside Drone AI. Zero issues have been reported. Captain Hoarry is running internal simulations on the AI software.
Awaiting confirmation from Indianapolis regarding go ahead on artifact entry.
Also requesting confirmation about supply pod 89. Please send shipping information. We have not received any shipping information in two weeks.”
She sat back and rested for a moment. She was the communications officer for the research station. She hated Europa. She hated being stuck in the tiny frozen tin bucket. Joyce was a beach girl from South Carolina. She hated ice.
So many years ago, she had applied for the Europa mission, just like thousands of others had. She was sitting on the beach surfing on her phone when the images started flooding social media. A tiny spec of green, millions of miles away, coming towards earth. She was interested in just that aspect of the story. And then NASA had turned the Hawkings Telescope towards the object. It was the first time the ultra-modern telescope had been used to take pictures of something so close, relatively speaking. The pictures that came in blew everyone away.
It was not a comet. It was something from another solar system, or galaxy. The sleek green object had the appearance of an exploded diamond. Several smaller objects ‘flew’ around it like Remora fish on a shark. It could have been something created by nature deep in space, except that it had entered the solar system at light speed, and was now slowing down. Objects in space only slowed down if it was intentional.
Joyce remembered the excitement, the fear, the jubilation, the anger.
She had tried out for the mission never expecting to make it. She just wanted to say that she had. She was a burst laser communications expert and had given many of her years in service to the US army. She joked she was one of the few Americans left that fought in the army. Most were Mexican or Canadian. Or the drones.
She shuddered thinking about the wires.
She passed the first round of interviews and worked her way up the ladder, leaving behind far more experienced candidates, never really expecting to get chosen. When it was down to the last six candidates, she was relieved when she wasn’t chosen. The job offers that came in just because she had made it that far had been her true desire. Then, the main guy that was chosen got cancer and she found out she was number two on the list. She had already made such a big deal about not getting chosen on social media, in order to beef up her reputation, that she couldn’t turn the offer down.
So here she was, on the frozen moon of Jupiter. It turned out she was vastly over-qualified. Her one and only job was to communicate with mission control in Indianapolis and to parse over any data sent to the station. She ran an internet hub, although nearly all of that was done automatically now. She had automated their entire antiquated system in six days.
That was two years ago. She had been bored ever since.
That is, up until two weeks ago.
She had told Ben first, of course. He said to not tell anyone else.
Every six weeks, starting six weeks after they had left from Earth’s orbit, NASA had sent a supply pod. It contained food, medicine, organic material for the plants, new experiments, clothing and many other essentials they needed to survive on frozen moon. Like clockwork, every six weeks, give or take a day, the pods would arrive in orbit.
Connie DeVicio, one of the base’s lab engineers, was also trained to use the only SEV, the Small Entry Vehicle. DeVicio called it a tin can with a rocket, and so the name had stuck. She used hydrogen harvested from the moon ice to fire off into orbit, dock with the pods and deorbit them onto the surface.
She would have to tell her soon. The next pod was due to arrive in two weeks. Thing is, Mission Control always sent a detailed launch log each time they sent the supplies up. Two weeks ago, when she expected the next one, nothing had come through. In fact, nothing came through. No emails, no IMs, no videos. The only data coming from earth on the laser were Captain Hoarry’s encrypted messages. She saw the data, just couldn’t see their content. She had really thought about cracking them.
Not yet. Probably just a glitch in Indianapolis.
Maybe.
- Susan -
Susan loved Europa. She stood up and wiped some of the dirt off on her pants, nearly instinctively, then stopped. She thought about her tightly braided blonde hair. Surely, there would be dirt in her hair that would need to be extracted as well. Every spec of dirt was needed here. She would have to wash her pants in a separate machine to extract the dirt from the water. At least the system worked well.
She looked around in her brightly lit dome. Green was everywhere.
Europa (Deadverse Book 1) Page 2