by Jason Bourn
CHAPTER 31
Hayden had tried many delaying tactics.
They had worked reasonably well, but only up to a point – and this had not been good enough to stop the equipment and supplies to be successfully loaded onto the shuttles in time for the scheduled launch.
That being the case, Hayden knew he had to resort to more drastic measures. He was confident that the next part of his plan, destroying the shuttles, would be impossible to overcome for the renegades. He grinned every time he thought about it.
– – –
Calaes and the other candidates had worked so hard and for so long and were doing so well when it had finally caught up with them.
They had uncovered several issues that would have delayed or disabled the shuttles, which were loaded with critical material and equipment. There were no common threads to tie any issues to any one person, much less a group of people. To this point everything was going according to plan, with no major setbacks. This changed suddenly.
They had finally launched the first set of shuttles to the settlement. Calaes was working on last minute changes to the next set of soon-to-be-launched shuttles carrying sub-infrastructure equipment when his persa sent a very rare high priority message. It read, “A situation has occurred on the first set of shuttles, en route to Mars. We have lost all contact with one of the ships.”
Calaes’ persa provided all relevant information concerning the shuttle. Telescopic evidence was soon received that showed a debris field where the ship had been. All evidence showed that the ship had broken apart at the exact halfway part of the trip, which was extremely suspicious. This was where the shuttle switched from full forward acceleration to full deceleration to slow down enough to land on Mars. This maneuver had been performed successfully on many shuttle flights over the years – so what caused this flight to fail?
The ship had been carrying a huge amount of equipment that was critical to the operations of the settlement. Fortunately, the ship, like all shuttles, was fully automated – so there was no loss of life. Now it was essential that the other shuttle carrying the matching payload reach Mars. There was not enough time to get another set of equipment ready and launched for this launch cycle – if the second shuttle also was lost, the occupation date for the entire settlement would be set back by an entire launch window, at least twenty-six months. This would be a crippling blow to their plans – it was essential that the shuttle with matching payload land safely.
The main question was whether there was anything they could do to ensure the same fate did not befall the second ship. The second ship was six hours behind the first, due to their liftoff schedules at the different lift sites. So, if something was going to happen at the same time in their flights, it would happen in slightly less than six hours from now.
Telemetry and status information from the first ship showed everything was nominal prior to the incident. What they needed to do was to simulate the conditions and determine what was different from this flight versus all the previous flights.
It was highly unlikely that any of the payload had anything to do with the accident, since none of the payload equipment had any knowledge or was impacted by the acceleration/deceleration change. That left three major areas to explore. The first was some external or at least additional device that caused the accident. The second was a control error that caused the shuttle’s engine to operate outside normal parameters. The third was just a random chance event.
Assessing the probabilities of each area did not leave Calaes with a good feeling. In fact, after looking into each area, it made his head ache.
The first area, an additional device, was not likely. They had crosschecked the weights versus expected and everything matched to the gram. Also, they had three independent teams verifying what went on as payload. Calaes was fairly confident that they had good control in this area.
The second area, a control error, was unlikely as well. There had been more than fifty total shuttle flights over the years and there was no reason that they could find why this one should have been any different.
The third area, a random event, was always a possibility. However again there had been so many other shuttle flights – the chance of a random error cropping up got smaller and smaller with each flight. The probability of this being a random error was just so small that it strained credibility to think this was it.
So, absent any other information, none of the three areas were very likely to be the root cause. The team-leads were each requested to look into their areas of specialty to see if anything was different or suspicious with this flight. Time was a major factor, so everyone dropped everything else for this effort.
Everyone worked hard, but there were no meaningful results, with only one hour remaining until the other ship reached the halfway point.
Finally, some good news was received by Calaes in a message from Anya, the information technology lead. “You know boss, I just looked at the control code and it is not the same as for the other shuttles. They switched over to the manned control code in anticipation of the manned missions starting with the last shuttle group. I guess they wanted to get one test flight in before they used it for all of us humans coming on board. Anyway, the difference is really small. The only thing different is that us humans are kind of frail compared to the normal cargo. We don’t like being squished into our seats – tends to make us grumpy – and little things like losing our vision and blacking out. So, the G forces are reduced and the trip takes a little longer – but it is far safer for us. So maybe they messed something up with the new code.”
This was both good news and bad news. The good news was that they finally had something to go on. The bad news was there was less than one hour until the other ship would be at the critical halfway point, and just as importantly there was the possibility that this was an “accident” that might have been intended for the manned shuttle.
First things first. They placed the new control code on the simulator to assess the performance. Everything was good for the entire acceleration time. Similarly, everything was good for the entire deceleration time. The problem was that at the exact halfway point, where the acceleration was supposed to stop and the deceleration was supposed to start – both of them were on. This caused the fusion drive to attempt to both accelerate and decelerate simultaneously. The ship was never designed to handle the engine at maximum thrust going both directions. It was no wonder that it broke apart.
Now the question was what to do about the second shuttle. It wasn’t so simple as to tell the shuttle to not accelerate and decelerate at the same time. If the acceleration was stopped too soon, the shuttle’s trip would take longer and Mars would have moved by the time the shuttle arrived. If the deceleration was started later, the shuttle would be coming in too fast and would overshoot Mars. Either way the payload would not make it to Mars. They needed to carefully control the acceleration and deceleration as well as the trajectory to ensure that the shuttle hit the moving three-dimensional target in space.
If they had unlimited time, they could run through various simulations and ensure they got it just right. As it was, they had one shot in the time allowed. They had to do something – doing nothing had proven a recipe for disaster. The AI recommended the best approach – truncating both acceleration and deceleration for a small amount of time prior to the switchover as well as altering the trajectory of the remainder of the flight. Calaes hated putting all his faith in the AI without having the time to verify the results, but in this case, he had no choice.
With less than ten minutes to spare the changes were uploaded to the shuttle. There were multiple layers of encryption to go through as well as cyber protections in depth. This ensured that the shuttle could not easily be spoofed into accepting an unauthorized change to its programming.
After all the checks were accomplished, the changes were incorporated with less than a minute to spare. It had been close, but they had successfully enabled the updated code. Now they just
had to see if it worked. Fortunately, since they had cut it so close, they did not have long to wait.
Ten seconds, nine, eight… The seconds ticked away – and nothing happened. This was very good news. They had successfully kept the shuttle from breaking apart. Also, preliminary data coming from both telemetry and status messages from the shuttle indicated that the new flight path was going to be successful. This was about as good news as anyone could hope for.
Given a minute to relax after several hours of such high stress, only then did Calaes think about the significance of the shuttle tragedy. If this were the manned shuttle, fully half of the candidates would have been aboard the shuttle and killed – and the remainder would have been killed in the second ship. This was a very suspicious “accident.” If this were an intentional act, it would have effectively doomed the settlement. As this thought sunk in, he wondered at what lengths the government and its sympathizers would go to stop the settlement from being successful?
CHAPTER 32
Hayden was getting frustrated.
His plan to destroy the supply shuttles had partially worked, but only on one of the two supply shuttles. The other had made it to Mars, complete with all the redundant gear.
Fortunately, he had a multi-tiered plan in place to stop the renegades.
The next layer would halt the launch of the manned shuttles – and if that failed, the following phase would destroy the manned shuttles.
Smiling grimly, he acknowledged it was nice that he could relieve his frustration, knowing that superior planning was in place.
– – –
Everyone’s nerves were on edge, including Calaes’.
The final set of shuttles had been retrofitted to accommodate humans, instead of cargo, over the last several months. Now it was time for all the candidates to board. This was what they had all been waiting for – to finally go to the settlement. However, following the incident with the exploding shuttle, everyone was apprehensive.
The retrofitted shuttles had been checked and rechecked. Countless simulations had been run. But there was only one way to know for sure if there were any problems, and that was to get in and go. Calaes had instituted several precautions to ensure their safety.
First, they had added another layer of independent cross checking for all shuttle checks and inspections. Whereas this didn’t guarantee that problems would be avoided, it didn’t really cost that much in time and effort, but it significantly helped raise moral and soothed everyone’s nerves.
Second, they had split the candidates into two groups, each group flying on a different shuttle. Of course, the second shuttle was lifting off from a port far away to ensure independence. Calaes wasn’t totally sure that this was necessary – if only half of the candidates made it to the settlement there wouldn’t be enough critical mass to support long term viability – but again he felt better doing something than doing nothing.
Third, they had a hot standby shuttle available at each of the two ports. This would allow them to quickly go to an alternative vehicle if the primary shuttle became disabled. Since all of the equipment and supplies had already been sent on previous shuttles, there were only people to contend with for the last two shuttle flights.
Calaes strode along the concourse leading to the shuttle entrance. It was hard to believe that these would be his last impressions of Earth. Countless people had been in the same situation as him, but the majority of them were trapped in VR, having taken their last real view of Earth before entering their virtual rooms. The main difference of course was that they didn’t really grasp the fact that they were trapped. If they did, none of this would have been necessary. But it was, and there was no way to change it.
The way it was, thought Calaes wryly, was he had several difficult problems to grapple with.
The most far reaching problem of course was the government and what they might do to stop the manning and future development of the settlement. This problem was an ongoing problem and did not look to be solvable in the near future.
The most mysterious problem was the motivation and purpose of Randy and the rebels. He had no idea how far he could trust them. They might be in it to completely support the settlement. Or they might be in it for themselves, having some completely unknown agenda. They were not forthcoming and they had the power and knowledge and the time to have used them. This was a potentially scary combination.
The most personal problem was his involvement with Hope. He had come to grips with how he felt about her, but he still didn’t have a good idea how she felt about him. To make matters more complex, she was a leader with the rebels and the daughter of their top leader. Things had been so hectic over the last several months preparing for this event that Calaes had not seen Hope at all – and both she and her father were on the other shuttle. He missed her smile, her laugh – all of her. Calaes made a resolution that when they arrived on Mars, he would set things up so that he was able to see her, in person, much more often. He hoped that her feelings for him were reciprocated – he would hate it to be a one-sided relationship. But he knew that there was at least one doomed one-sided relationship for every successful two-way relationship – if not more. He sighed melodramatically to himself. Just what he needed, something else to worry about.
He realized that none of these problems were independent. They were all linked with each other. This made it all the more difficult to decide how to proceed on any one, much less with all three combined.
Luckily before his head could fabricate too many exotic solutions to these problems, with no basis in facts, he looked ahead and he could see the sleek metallic lines of the shuttle.
Trying to focus on what he had to do next, he realized that as soon as he boarded the shuttle he would no longer be in charge. The pilot was responsible for everyone’s safety. That was both a good and bad feeling for Calaes. On the one hand, he could relax because he didn’t have to make any decisions. On the other hand, he felt somewhat helpless since he had no control over anything. Luckily there wasn’t going to be too much time to worry about anything. Once each person was on board, they would each get into their own chamber for the long sleep during transit.
VR might be the technology that doomed mankind, but it did enable a vast array of new technologies to be created. Instant collaboration of the best minds on the planet produced technology in just a few years that would have taken tens or even hundreds of years without it. And with everyone working in one virtual space, there was the ability to interact without the physical limitations that would otherwise be in effect. So literally hundreds or thousands of people could look over your shoulder when you were doing something and you could get real-time comments and feedback to produce previously-unfathomable products. And suspended animation was just one of them.
Suspended animation was ideal for space travel, even for the relatively short shuttle trip to Mars. This simplified any number of problems and made the logistics of a manned flight so much simpler than if anyone was not in suspended animation:
- Each chamber was lined to provide additional protection from cosmic rays. This would have been a major problem if people were wandering around the shuttle during the flight and would have required a much more extensive reconfiguration of the shuttle.
- The amount of supplies required during the flight was also drastically reduced, from food and water to oxygen.
- Other ancillary benefits: no boredom, no stewards required, and all sickness is frozen in place as well so no in-flight doctors were needed.
Just as everyone was getting ready to board the shuttle, Calaes’ persa put through an urgent message from Randy. Randy came on, looking even more tired than the last time Calaes had seen him. “Calaes, we have been working on decrypting some anomalous messages that we intercepted coming from the training campus over the last several weeks. The security on the messages is very good so it has taken us awhile, but we have just decrypted the first of them. It indicates that both of your shuttles have been tampered wi
th.”
Calaes was incredulous. Just when he thought they had surmounted all of their challenges, now they had found that they would not be able to travel in the shuttles to Mars. Grasping for any good news, he asked, “What is the problem? Is it something that can be fixed in the short time we have left?”
Randy responded, “The message is not specific on the primary shuttle – it sounds like there are multiple problems that have been inflicted but they are not very specific. The only area that we are sure they sabotaged of for the primary shuttle is the CO2 recycling system. The news is only nominally better for the backup shuttle.
“The backup shuttle only has a single issue, they were very clear on that in the message, but the problem is critical. The oxygen tank is faulty and they have forced the status indication to show that the status is good. We can override the status so it displays the correct status, but the underlying faulty tank cannot be fixed. We then looked at the primary shuttle, and it has the same oxygen tank is fault. We looked for any spare tanks that can be made available in time to meet the launch window and there are none – this must be why they chose that part to sabotage – it is system critical and there are no spares.”
Calaes couldn’t believe it. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Is there some chance that this is just propaganda – a false attempt to get us to postpone the launch?” Calaes was grasping at straws, he knew. But the alternative was not palatable. All their hard work would be for naught. And their launch window was closing rapidly, only two hours until they had to leave. “Let me see if I have this straight, our primary shuttle has multiple issues of which you have confirmed at least two and our backup shuttle has an unfixable problem. Do I have that right? And what about your shuttle?”