“Maybe,” Katryna said, unconvinced.
“Of course, when hope is hard to find, it’s always good to have a plan,” the captain said.
Surface of L-4 Prime:
Orbital mechanics around L-4 Prime were mostly irrelevant. Chei and Danel had been trying to work out a way to get up and down from the surface against the gradient of the quantum quicksand. So far, their best idea had been a ladder, and if they hadn’t run out of options the joke would have been a lot funnier.
They were trying to figure out how to create a cable long enough to reach the surface when Rocky noticed the reactor heating issue had disappeared. Either there was a boundary layer to the effect or it had stopped. Either possibility gave Chei a brainache, but after several tests, they discovered a measurable ceiling to the effect at 405.5 klick. Under that altitude, they could do what they wanted, but above it, they were still stuck with only one possible direction.
The Jakob Waltz de-orbited 100 kilometers above the Hector’s crash site. The gravity of the iceberg was low enough that it took barely any thrust to hover stationary overhead at that altitude. It probably wasn’t necessary, but having continuous com and video with their first landing party was important.
Seva and Kiro piloted two workpods down to the surface while Danel and Cori rode tethered to the external jumpseat on the outside of each pod. Other than the idea that they’d be boarding the Hector, this wasn’t much different than a standard EVA party to any of their previous cargo targets. Except for the weapons they carried, and the fact that they had no idea what they might find waiting for them. It just felt dangerous.
“We’ve got several airlock options down here,” Danel said. Since the captain and Rocky had stayed aboard the ship to monitor things, he was technically in charge of the party despite being the least experienced in EVA operations.
“Can you tell if there’s power?” the captain asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “There are no windows in the lower decks so we can’t see any lights on.”
“I’m scanning an EM field near the reactor so it looks like there’s juice in the grid, but I don’t see anything outside,” Kiro said. Both pods were loaded with every portable piece of sensor recording gear they could mount in them. It was why there wasn’t room to squeeze an extra person inside either one.
“I recommend egress at airlock closest to reactor,” Rocky said. “Will be most likely to have power.”
“Copy that,” Danel said. “I want to look around the point of impact first. As we’re getting closer it looks like this thing didn’t crash at all.”
“What do you mean?” Jeph said.
“I’m not seeing any evidence of damage to the hull on this side,” he said. “How about over there?” The two pods were descending on opposite sides of the Hector.
“Nothing,” Cori said. “There’s some slick ice around the point where it disappears into the surface but it looks like it melted and refroze.”
“It’s possible the impact crater filled in and the damage is below the ice,” Danel said. “But the melt on this side doesn’t look wide enough to be a crater. It’s only a few meters wider than the ship itself.”
“Ja, same here,” Seva said.
“You two see if you can breach the airlock and I’ll meet you there after I deploy the GP radar,” Danel said. “No further than the airlock though. We don’t want to split the party.”
“Copy. Keep the wizard in the middle,” she said.
Swinging off the jumpseat and clinging to one of the actuator arms, Danel pointed down. Gravity was so light Kiro applied the thrusters to push them toward the surface, slowing them only centimeters before they touched down. “Careful, escape velocity is about jumping speed,” the pilot said. “Keep your tether on. I don’t want to have to chase you down.”
“I remember,” Danel said. Everyone knew he had the least experience outside the ship, so it was good to know that someone was watching his back. A slight vibration told him that the pod had settled onto the ice.
He looked down at the point where the bottom of the pod rested against the surface. A faint cloud of gas condensed along the contact line. The temperature of the pod’s skin was slightly above the temperature to sublimate the ice. It meant there was no way he could stand, since the soles of his boots would be radiating enough heat to keep him on a vapor barrier and not on a solid surface. The phase transition point of water ice was a lot higher, so it would have made it easier to move around.
“You’re going to have to deploy the gear after I go inside. It’s the wrong ice to walk out here,” he said.
“Yah,” Kiro said. “Want me to take you up to the lock?”
“Not yet,” Danel said. “Can you slide us closer to the ship? I want to check the parting line between the ship and the ice sheet.”
“Cando,” Kiro said, puffing the maneuvering thrusters, so they skidded to within a few feet of the hull.
The pod and an overhanging piece of the ship’s superstructure blocked almost all the sunlight so Danel flipped his lights on and bent down to look at the ice. Tiny fissures spider-webbed the surface and very faint clouds of gas danced in the beam. It was puffing out of the cracks in miniature geysers. He’d never have seen it if he hadn’t been using the lights.
“We’ve got heat coming through the skin of the ship,” he announced. “Something in there is generating enough energy to keep the ice active at the boundary.”
“Cori just popped the hatch. Lights are on,” Seva announced. “I’m locking the pod down to the handholds outside the airlock and we’ll wait for you to join us.”
“Copy. We’re on our way,” Danel said, flipping upright and giving Kiro a thumbs-up. The pod pulled back and then shot up the outside of the hull to the airlock. Seva was just pulling herself through the hatch. She pointed at a handhold on the opposite side of the open airlock.
“I’ll crosstether you to the anchor then you can jump over,” she offered.
“I’m not that much of a baby,” Danel said, as Kiro stopped the pod a meter outside the hatch. Cutting his safety-line loose he stepped across the gap and anchored his mag boots to the deck inside. “See? I do know how to work in a space suit.”
“Just following orders,” she said. “The boss is such a daddy.”
Danel laughed, squeezing in as she pushed in behind him. It was a two man airlock and her Valkyrie physique would have crowded him alone. Cori stood inside the lock, upside down anchored by his feet to what had been the deck before the ship went in nose down. The gravity was not enough to overcome the strength of his magnetic boots.
“Have you ever tried to read the lock controls wrong way up?” he asked, punching in the command to seal and pressurize.
“Kiro,” Danel said. “After you get the radar set, can you do a couple low level sweeps around the crash site? I want you to watch for any major fissures and check for thermal variances. It’s possible there’s a cryofluid source under the ship and we need to scope it out.”
“Roger,” the pilot said. “Beats staring at the door while you guys get to play.”
“Uplink your results to Dutch and we’ll create a composite map from the data,” he said.
The airlock was slower than the ones on the Waltz and it took a full five minutes before the panel turned green and the inner door opened. “We’ve got good pressure, Cori said.
“Do not unseal your suits even if the air is good,” the captain said. “Anju’d have a seizure if you didn’t follow biohazard protocols.”
“Nojo?” Seva asked disappointment in her voice. Wearing a spacesuit was uncomfortable enough when it was pressurized and inflated, but when there was an atmosphere outside, it pinched and bit in places where it made it hard to concentrate.
“Copy,” Danel said, wagging a finger in her face. She knew better.
The lights in the room immediately inside the lock were off, but several control screens glowed enough to make out that it was some kind of engineering workshop. Co
ri stepped through the hatch, still walking on the upside down deck. He flipped on his headbeams and looked around, casting deep shadows that danced across the room. “All clear,” he said, “but watch your step, it’s a long drop to the deck in here.” He’d stepped through at floor height, but the airlock was almost two meters above the inner ceiling height.
Danel stepped onto the door sill and leapt down. It took what felt like forever for gravity to haul him down to the ceiling. He landed next to a pile of containers and arrested his forward velocity by bracing against them.
What a mess,” Seva said, using the doorframe to flip herself upside down and click her boots against the deck to join Cori in what she obviously thought was a more practical orientation.
“Not really. Check that,” Cori said, shining his light into one of the corners where a solid-materials-printer sat. Danel spun to look. The unit was upright with a chair in front of it. Spools of raw fab-filament stood nearby in a neat stack. “What are the odds of that?”
“Zero,” Danel said. Glancing down at his chestplate to make sure his video was feeding up to the ship, he asked, “Are you seeing this?”
“Copy,” the captain said. “Looks like cables extending from the original mount position doesn’t it?”
“That’s a bit unnerving,” Seva said.
“And what about this,” Kiro said, cutting in from outside. Danel tapped his wrist panel to open his heads-up display. An image from the optics on the pod showed a row of frost covered mounds.
Graves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Challenger ConDeck: Ceres Alpha Shipyard:
“We need to make way immediately,” Cassandra Mei said, appearing on the ConDeck of the Challenger, well before her shift. She wasn’t on duty for another two hours, so her blasting in like a one-woman raiding party startled her first officer out of the chair.
“Sir?” he asked, spinning to face her. “We’ve still got crew on shore leave all over Ceres.”
“Get them back,” she said. “They’ve got thirty minutes.”
“That might not be possible,” he said. “Several of them are involved in recruiting new personnel.”
“Thirty minutes,” she said. “We’re retracting the tubes and if they aren’t here by then, they‘ll be riding with the Galen.”
“Yes sir,” he said, jumping over to the com station to start issuing orders.
“Helm, contact traffic control and tell them we’re outbound in twenty-nine minutes,” she said.
“Heading sir?”
“Best possible to Mimas Research Station. We’ll be tanking up again there.”
She pushed off toward her office, but stopped at the door and twisted to face him. “Also get me encrypted to Captain Takata and pump that through to my ready room, when you have him online.”
“He’s already waiting for you,” the com officer said as she pulled herself through the door and closed it behind her.
She settled into her seat and looked up at Carter Takata. His eyes reflected the gravity she felt.
“So what do you make of Nakamiru’s orders?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Things have been melting down-system for a while, especially with two of the council, uhm … disappearing.”
“It’s way past ugly,” she said. “Feels a bit like a power grab to me.”
“Nojo,” he agreed. “You’d think that if that were true, they’d be consolidating the fleet to protect it, not sending us deeper.”
“Don’t you think the timing of our special power project was convenient?”
“Obviously somebody higher up the food chain knows which way the water flows,” He nodded then added, “Or is controlling the plumbing.”
“Either case it doesn’t matter to me, I trust Nakamiru,” she said.
“Me too,” he said, “but it would be a plus to know who’s looking sidewise at us.”
She chuckled. “Nature of life out in the black.” Her thinpad beeped and she glanced down at the screen. Message from com.
“So we’ll be pipes in and boosting, in about thirty minutes. Our upgrades are all complete except for one turret and we can finish it en route,” Captain Mei said. “We’re tanked and ready at this point, if I can get all my wayward children home.”
“Our work was heavier than yours. We’re about twelve hours from loaded and I’ll have to check with my engineer to see, but I think they’ve delivered all the hardware for the guns. We should be able to do our own installations as soon as we’re clear.”
“Well, you’ll have any of my orphans that don’t make it back before we close the gates. Be sure to bust their asses hard for being late.”
“Cando,” he said.
Another alert chirped. Urgent. “Stand by, Carter. Com is jerking my chain.” She thumbed the link open and saw her first officer on the screen. He looked angry.
“Go,” she said.
“Captain, Ceres Alpha Traffic Control is refusing clearance to boost. They’re ordering us to stand down on all disconnects.”
“What?” She glanced up and saw her own confusion playing out on Captain Takata’s face as well. He was talking to someone offscreen, but had the sound muted.
“They are saying that no FleetCom orders are valid after the arrest of Chancellor Roja—”
“The chancellor’s been arrested?” the air in her lungs congealed into glue.
“Affirmative,” he said. “They’re keeping it down low, but there’s something big going on and until it gets sorted, DoCartel has ordered a full stop on all shipyard departures.”
“Stand by,” she said.
“You got the news?” she asked Carter.
He nodded. “They just shut off the pumps loading reaction mass. We’ve got less than 50% in the tanks. We could make Mimas on a full burn run, but we’ll be running vapors by the time we make orbit.”
“We’re fully loaded and can cross pump reserve stock to you in flight. It does mean you’ve got to be ready to pull out when we boost. Cando?”
“You think we still need to get out of here?”
“More than before. This shit stinks. If you look at it, the strongman standing is Tomlinson and this is his facility. If we let them hold us here, we’re looking at changing parties before they let us loose.”
“Da, but they’ve got us chained to the stanchion,” he said.
“How long to get the Galen road-ready?”
“Ninety minutes, give or take,” he said. “But it won’t matter, if they don’t cut us loose.”
“Interesting that you’d put it that way,” she said, glancing down at the grinning face of her first officer on her comscreen. He knew what she was thinking. “Carter, you focus on getting your crew back from the station, but don’t run up any flags if you can avoid it. When the time comes and you’re ready to smoke it, you give the word and I’ll take care of cutting the chains.”
Galileo Security Shuttle-027: Armstrong Security Cordon:
Security Lieutenant Commander Anderson Zha was bored with life. He sat in the middle seat in the tiny control deck of his security shuttle and stared out the window at the stern of what had to be the biggest ship in the universe. It was like looking up the ass end of an elephant from close range.
His pilot and navigator both dozed in their seats, while behind him in the passenger hold, six guards pretending to be station security were probably also snoring. He didn’t want to be here. He was a head buster. A riot cop. Not a space commander. He liked it that way, because gravity was his friend. Somehow, he’d ended up on the rotation as the ranking officer, and he had to be on duty even if nobody else was. He had no clue why they were watching the Armstrong, nor did he have any idea what they could do if trouble were to start.
He’d given up trying to watch a vid and was mindlessly gazing into the distance when a com alert jerked him back to reality. He kicked the back of his pilot’s seat to wake him as he thumbed in his access code to activate the radio.
“SS-027, standing
by for orders,” he said.
“027, you are to proceed to Armstrong hangar deck alpha immediately,” the security dispatch officer said. Her voice sounded strangely confused. “You are to coordinate with Armstrong security to take custody of Katryna Roja.”
“As in Chancellor Roja?” he asked.
“Affirmative,” she said. “Roja’s been detained and is to be transported back to Galileo Station Security to await trial. You’re to contact Captain Elayne Jeffers or officer-of-the-watch aboard the Armstrong to arrange approach clearance and transfer of the prisoner.”
“This is a joke, right?”
Hector: Surface of L-4 Prime:
“How many graves do you count?” Danel asked.
“It looks like seven,” Kiro said.
“There were only seven members on the crew,” Jeph said.
“So who buried the last one?” Danel asked. “Unless someone else has been here.”
“That’s unsettling,” Cori said, pulling his sidearm.
“Rocky, can we patch into the shipwide com from here?” Danel asked.
“Only from ConDeck or Main Engineering. Is also where you can access sensor control and computer,” she said. “Is one deck above your position.”
“Above?” Seva asked. “Up or down?”
“Apologies. Toward bow of ship,” the engineer said.
“Let’s move then,” Danel said. “If we can get the internal com working, we might hear someone moving around in here.”
“Be careful,” the captain said.
“Always,” Danel said. “Nothing heroic in me.”
“Sagan Class ship is not designed with chute,” Rocky said. “Shortest route is through Power Distribution Node and then to your right. You will see a hatch in deck toward the bow. That takes you directly to Main Engineering.”
“Thanks,” Cori said. “You sound like you’ve been on one of these before.”
“Da,” she said. “First crew posting was on NDG Tyson.”
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