He searched his memory for anything he might have left floating loose in his quarters. He’d find out in a couple of minutes. “Thanks. Good to know.”
“Wouldn’t worry too much, sir,” Riley said, reading his mind. “Unless you left a socket wrench or cutting tool loose somewhere. Which I’m sure you didn’t.”
So they’re checking up on me, he realized, not sure whether he should be reassured or irritated. Maybe they just wanted to make sure the new ensign was settled in, but he now realized he and his personal space were being sized up. He shook it off. They lived in close quarters and there were any number of ways for a stupid mistake to get lots of people killed.
Riley must have known he was processing that very thought. “Come on, sir,” he said, pointing him toward a seat embedded in the aft sidewall. “We need to get secured. That first burn’s going to be a long one.”
Molecular hydrogen flowed through twin solid-core fission reactors to be flashed into plasma and expelled through a pair of rocket nozzles. The reaction was immediate and intense—Marshall could feel the ship move beneath him, and a quick glance through a nearby porthole showed Earth falling away from them.
With less thrust than the chemical rockets which had brought Borman’s various pieces to orbit, nuclear-thermal’s advantage was its efficiency: they could get more impulse from of each gram of propellant than even the best chemical engine, almost twice as much. This meant they could burn for a long time and use a lot less propellant for the same work. It was what enabled the Borman to move freely between Earth orbit and cislunar space with only occasional refueling. Though after this episode, Fleet Ops would already be planning to send a tanker mission up to them.
The scuttlebutt among the crew was to expect a lot of postflare cleanup work. There were certain to be a lot of damaged satellites to clear out of their orbits, not to mention a possible rescue of that civilian Stardust vessel. That had really set the EVA team abuzz. His spacers—and Marshall was still learning to think of them as “his”—were chomping at the bit to get out and apply the skills they endlessly trained for. They wouldn’t admit to it, but everybody wanted that first Space Lifesaving medal.
Nick Lesko kept the radios off and the shades down, keeping the cabin quiet and dark as the Sun emerged from behind Earth. He’d stayed up well beyond the end of his watch, driven by urgency and adrenaline. It was a testament to how hard they’d worked that they’d all managed to sleep through it without stirring, but the time had come to wake them.
He turned the cabin lights up slowly, not wanting to unnecessarily startle them. They had only a few hours until the first waves of the CME would hit, and Nick had scrambled to engineer one last spacewalk while they slept.
“Wakey wakey,” he said as they stirred. “A lot has happened while you guys were sleeping.”
“Like what?” Whitman asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Necromancer was acting squirrely,” Nick said, a tad overconfident. “Some servo calibration errors came up in its daily diagnostic routine.”
Billy looked at his watch. “And you didn’t wake me up?”
Nick looked away sheepishly. “Didn’t want to bug you. It wasn’t control related, so I thought it could wait.”
“Servo problems are enough,” Billy said, annoyed as usual but now with good reason. “If the manipulator arms don’t work, then this whole trip was for nothing.” He snatched a tablet from his personal kit by his sleeping bag, opened up a window, and began scrolling.
Giselle peeked out of her sleeping bag. “You didn’t wake any of us. Your watch ended four hours ago.”
“You guys were all sleeping hard, and I was wide awake,” Nick said, mostly truthfully. “Too amped up, I guess. Figured I could sleep later.”
“You may have figured wrong, then,” she said. “If we have to work in another EVA, we’ll have to get cracking on it right now.”
He was counting on that. “I know, at least I do now.” He yawned. “Don’t worry, I’ll be good.”
Giselle regarded him. If he looked as tired as he truly felt, this might work as the others would have to pick up his slack. “No, you won’t. If it’s a simple matter of recalibrating a drive motor . . .” she said, looking expectantly at Billy.
The hacker swiped through the report. “Wrist roll joint alignment. It’s not off by much, just enough to make it harder to control if you’re not looking right at your target. The latching effectors won’t go precisely where the operator’s aiming.”
She sighed. “Yeah, that’s a problem. We’ll have to get out there.” She looked at Whitman. “When’s our first deorbit burn?”
The pilot checked the master display on his control panel. “Twenty-six hours to leave GEO, then another day before entry interface. We’re already using our consumable reserves.”
“So we have to get on this fast.” She cursed, rubbing her temples. “Here’s what we’ll do. Nick and I will do a hasty suit checkout and start pre-breathing now.”
“Wait a minute,” Whitman protested. “He’s not rested, and you can’t go solo.”
“We don’t have time to keep this by the book,” Giselle said. “I’ll do the outside work. I won’t be solo. All Nick has to do is hang out in the ’lock and send me tools if I need them.” She looked to Nick. “Think you can handle that?”
“Absolutely,” he said, stifling a yawn that wasn’t entirely for show. He stole a glance at the comm access panel and secured an equipment box in front of it as he helped them stow their sleeping bags.
Whitman’s voice sounded surprisingly remote for just being on the other side of the hatch. Static hissed and popped in the background. “I’m having trouble with the ground,” he said. “Looks like telemetry’s being transmitted but voice comms are crap. It’s like I’m talking into thin air.”
“We’ll have to work on that later,” Giselle said, already secured to their pirated satellite. “Radios sound lousy out here too.”
“Do you need to wave off?”
“Negative,” she said tersely. “Negative. So long as Nick can hear me when I need something. You still awake back there?”
“Affirm,” he called back helpfully, though he was starting to feel the fatigue wash over him. “I’m—”
He winced as a flash of light in the corner of his eye snapped him awake, a pinprick from the Sun passing through his skull. “What was that?” Despite knowing what to expect, it was still a shock.
“What was what?” she asked, then, “Oh. Cosmic ray; just zapped me too. It happens occasionally . . . oh shit.”
“What’s happen—?” but Giselle was already barking commands over their frequency before he could finish.
“Whitman, you seeing this too?” she snapped.
“We are,” he said through a crashing wave of static. “Like a damned fireworks show in here. I can’t raise the ground. Stand by . . . no space weather alerts . . . what the hell?”
“Report.”
“It hasn’t just been quiet—we lost data uplink six hours ago. Nothing since.” Staying professional, Whitman flicked off his mic just as he was unleashing a torrent of curses.
Giselle finished his thought. “If we’ve missed a flare warning . . .” He watched her suddenly double over, gloved hands cradling her helmet. “Nick!” she shouted. “Get me—”
Her voice disappeared beneath a crescendo of static, accompanied by another explosion of light like flashbulbs going off in his head. And he was in a shielded compartment—what was it like being exposed?
“I don’t feel very good . . .” Billy said weakly. Nick thought he could hear retching through the rising fuzz before he dropped off the frequency. He reached for the outer door and pulled it shut, sealing himself inside their storm shelter. He turned off his radio so as not to hear them shouting his name.
8
From the Global News Network
“Yesterday’s solar flare proved to be an almost unprecedented astronomical event. The closest analogy occurred back in 1859 in
a geomagnetic storm known as the Carrington Event, named for the astronomer who first observed the solar eruption that sparked it. It caused worldwide disruption of the telegraph system and caused auroras to be visible as far south as Mexico.
“Today, we are seeing widespread failures of electrical grids from the northern US deep into Central America. Besides our society being so dependent on electricity, another feature of life today markedly different from 1859 is the advent of space travel, where human beings now risk being in the direct path of these deadly solar flares.
“Most notable of this group are the explorers Max and Jasmine Jiang, who are well beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field. We were able to speak with them after the flare had safely passed and they could emerge from their spacecraft’s radiation-hardened shelter. The interview has been edited to remove the light delay due to their extreme distance.”
The picture transitioned to the interviewer posed in front of a stylized starfield. “Mr. and Mrs. Jiang, it’s good to see you both again. Let me begin by saying it was difficult for us to appreciate how much danger you were in until the solar flare hit Earth. I believe now we understand.”
Jasmine Jiang smiled in the gentle manner that had endeared her to millions. “We have been perfectly fine,” she said. “Our home up here is well prepared for emergencies like this. All we had to do was stay in the designated safe zone.”
Max Jiang spoke up. “Yes, we managed quite well. We’re just relieved that it didn’t happen a week from now.”
“You mean during your rendezvous with the asteroid?” the announcer asked rhetorically, as he already knew the answer. “That would have been unfortunate indeed. Several commercial satellites in Earth orbit have been damaged, and apparently even the military has suffered some losses. Did you notice anything unusual aboard your spacecraft during the flare?”
“Nothing of importance, thank goodness. Our ground control had us shut off everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. We’ve had to reset a few circuit breakers but that’s it.”
“It was to our advantage to be so far beyond Earth’s magnetic field,” Jasmine explained. “It channeled and amplified the stream of charged particles. We were more concerned with everyone back home.”
The camera cut to the interviewer, now wearing a grim expression. “I’m afraid you were right to be concerned. Much of Central and South America is still without power and a large number of communications satellites are out of commission.” The camera cut away to an illustration of a Stardust spacecraft. “Perhaps most concerning is the report of a manned capsule on some sort of maintenance mission in geosynchronous orbit; they have not been heard from since the flare hit.”
The Jiangs traded looks of surprise and genuine concern. “That is . . . that’s quite disturbing. We will be praying for them.”
“Skipper says the ship’s in good condition, but we’re going to have our work cut out for us,” Chief Garver said when he visited the rescuer’s workspaces. “There’s a lot of fried satellites on the other side of GEO, and it looks like their operators want to cut their losses and just move them to the graveyard with service drones. But there’s a couple in LEO we might get tasked to deorbit.”
Marshall noticed his crewmen looking fidgety, if such a thing were possible in zero g. It wasn’t like they could shuffle their feet.
“Anything else, Chief?” Rosie asked hopefully.
“There is,” he said, with a dire look that suggested he’d wished for better news. “We received a mayday call from Stardust’s ops center. That civilian expedition was still in GEO at 83 West when the flare hit, and they’ve been out of contact with it ever since. They lost telemetry and voice comm.”
Rosie and the other spacers exchanged pessimistic looks. That position put it almost dead center in the CME’s impact zone.
“So it’s a recovery op, then.”
Garver looked at Marshall, deferring to his position as their officer in charge and thus throwing his weight with the enlisted crew behind him. “Sir, I know the captain said to have your people be prepared for rescue ops.” He paused for effect. “But no voice comm suggests otherwise.”
It was a breach in protocol Marshall couldn’t help but notice—if the boss needed to relay orders to a junior officer, he’d have the XO or another officer do it, not the senior NCO. That told him they were getting swamped back on the control deck. “How’s it going forward, Chief?”
Garver lifted an eyebrow, the most expression he typically allowed. “It was already asses to bellybuttons, sir, when they got the mayday call. Now it’s all hands on deck,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “We suddenly went from moving dead satellites out of the way, to, well . . .”
“Dead people?”
They were startled by the buzz of the maneuver alarm, quickly followed by a distant rumble as the engines lit and built up to full thrust. The floor moved up to meet them. With barely a warning, they were burning for a new orbit already.
“Like I said, sir. Asses to bellybuttons.”
“New frag order,” Ivey announced as he breezed past Roberta at the watch officer’s console, just returning from group command’s morning meeting. He swiped at his tablet and a tasking order appeared on the main screen. Dozens of lines of text in coded shorthand he was only beginning to understand scrolled past.
“That’s a lot of dead birds to move around,” Roberta said as she studied the growing list of problem satellites. Between their lone X-37 in orbit and the half-dozen maintenance sats they controlled, it was going to take a lot of time and propellant to deorbit or reposition crippled satellites. “Wasn’t the Borman supposed to clear some of these lanes?”
“They were,” he said, “but things just got worse up in GEO and they’re the only game in town.” He pushed another file onto her screen. “They just got underway on a rescue op.”
She read through it quickly and let out a low whistle. “Civilians are stuck up there?” Nobody ever went to geosynch orbit, there was just no need to take the risk. It in fact took more propellant to park a human-rated vehicle into an orbit that far uphill than it would to send it on a loop around the Moon.
Ivey shook his head. “Some kind of satellite recovery proving flight.” He sighed. “Everybody thinks they’ve got a better idea to save money. Those big comm birds aren’t cheap, but geez . . . people aren’t cheap, either, y’know?”
“Says here the spacecraft operator declared the emergency, not the crew. So nobody’s heard from them?”
“They’re all civilian contractors. I think only a couple of them had any time in the seat. Ship’s still sending telemetry but they haven’t heard squat from the passengers. Maybe they’re stuck in its storm shelter. Maybe not.”
Roberta nodded grimly. The “maybe not” part wasn’t something she wanted to think about.
He could see it in her face, and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t do that to yourself.” He pointed to a prominent listing in the Ops order—tasking to put another X-37 in orbit. “They’re prepping the alert bird for launch right now. This time tomorrow we’ll each be flying our own drones up there.”
“Attention on deck!”
It was a command that in space was more about getting everyone quiet and focused than it was for them to snap to and stand straight. Nevertheless they each drew themselves upright and stiff, heels together with hands clenched and thumbs along the seams of their trousers. Those who could first slipped their feet into restraints along the deck. That some crewmembers floated at odd angles to each other in zero g was a reality of spaceflight that military courtesies still had to adjust for.
The multipurpose module that served as the Borman’s rec room/galley was crowded with the dozen crewmembers. The sharp odor of antiseptic cleaning wipes, mixed with the normal background scent of recycled air, signaled that someone had made sure the space was squared away before the skipper showed up. No doubt it was some of the NCO’s who were already crammed with work. Marshall made a mental note to do
a better job of cleaning up after himself.
Poole descended into the module feet first, grabbed an overhead handhold, and somersaulted into place at the head of the table. “As you were,” he said, adjusting his ball cap. “And can everyone please try to get oriented heads up? You’re giving me vertigo.”
A few snickered quietly while others pulled themselves upright, or rather had their feet and heads oriented in the same general direction.
“That’s better,” Poole said, and noticed a few smirks. “Do I look like I’m joking?” The smirks disappeared. “Captain’s privilege. Consider it a professional courtesy to have all your sorry asses pointed in the same direction.”
He continued. “About that short notice burn earlier, it couldn’t be helped. Time was not on our side. You’re all pros so I’m taking it on faith that nobody had any unstowed gear to worry about,” he said with a caustic tone and knowing look.
Marshall noticed a few crewmembers stealing glances at each other: Who’d been guilty of leaving something out that had made an embarrassing mess? It hadn’t been in the EVA section, of that he was certain, while Rosie and the other spacers weren’t showing him any reasons to worry. Maybe it was just his way of keeping them on their toes?
Poole tapped a remote control and flicked on the widescreen monitor behind him. Earth was at the center of a polar graph, surrounded by looping ellipses illustrating their maneuver plan. “We got the warning order for this op without a flight plan, so this was all on us. Soon as Garver figured out the burn sequence, we were already coming up on the first maneuver window.”
There were some understanding nods from the crew and he pressed on. He highlighted a series of cotangent ellipses. A blinking dot representing the Borman slowly moved along the innermost loop. “We’ve lowered our orbit to rephase and will begin raising it back to GEO when we cross opposite their latitude. These are going to be hard burns—this is time-critical and we can top off propellant later. Vandenberg’s prepping two rapid-reaction launches right now; the alert X-37 and a tanker stage to replenish our H2 after we’re done here.” He eyed the crew gravely. “We’re going to need it.”
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