Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  It was an aggressive plan, only three burns before they intercepted the stranded Stardust with one hard deceleration to rendezvous. That was still a full day and a half’s journey. A dashed curve appeared between the middle ellipse and the circle of their target’s orbit. Poole moved on without waiting for the obvious questions. “As I said, time is critical. So we’re going about this a little creatively.”

  Marshall tried not to gulp—was he looking at me?

  The chief caught his eye—yes, he’s looking at you.

  “Mister Hunter, you and your spacers are going to freelance this one,” Poole said, and zoomed in on the dashed line. “On our second phasing orbit, we’ll pass within six thousand kilometers of the Stardust. We can’t get the whole ship there soon enough, but we can get part of it there. Lieutenant Wylie will pilot the shuttle with you, Chief Riley, and two EVA specialists into a transfer orbit, rendezvous with Stardust and start rescue ops. Clear?”

  “Aye, sir,” Wylie answered. “That’ll take a lot of propellant, though.” Marshall thought he did an admirable job of hiding his trepidation.

  “Just about all of it,” Poole said. “It won’t be going anywhere until we meet you back there after we’ve matched orbits. We’ll top off the shuttle from the tanker stage meeting us down in LEO.”

  Marshall stole a glance over at Riley and the spacers. That was a full day they’d be on their own, separated from the mother ship but with no fuel left to maneuver. Rosie spoke up. “Question, sir.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Do we have any reason to believe there are survivors? Or is this strictly going to be a recovery op?”

  If Wylie had been good at hiding his concern, Poole was even better. “No way to know, Rosado. Its operator was getting a data stream up until the flare hit, but that’s all they were getting. For some reason there was no voice comm and no acknowledgment of their storm warnings. It’s like they weren’t listening.”

  The crew traded some exasperated looks and murmurs between them. A group of civilians had probably overextended themselves, become overconfident, and gotten themselves good and dead. Nobody on board had bothered talking to the ground—had they even been aware they were out of touch?

  “It gets better,” Poole said. “It looks like they cycled the airlock as the storm was starting to hit.”

  That sparked concern among them: There could have been spacewalkers out there, exposed in the middle of a flare and ignorant of their fate. “They went outside? Were they trying to commit suicide?”

  Poole responded firmly, squelching any speculation. “We’re not going to play that game, people. It’s a mayday call, and we’re answering it.” He paused for effect. “And I will remind you that it’ll take a few more days for this to dissipate in the Van Allen belts, so I expect everyone to observe strict exposure precautions and dosage limits. If you’re not on duty, stay in the core module.” He pointed at Marshall. “Shuttle crew, start taking your preventatives now. I don’t want anyone going back home with extra limbs growing out of their skulls.”

  He brought up a graphic of Stardust. It was a large, truncated cone with a cylindrical airlock portal mounted in its nose. “Their control center was able to see from telemetry that two passengers were prepped for an EVA while the other two remained inside.” He zoomed in on the cylinder. “The airlock in its nose doubles as their radiation shelter. It can hold four people in shirtsleeves or two in suits. It’s possible that we have survivors stuck in that airlock who are unable to communicate. I can promise you that is not a pleasant place to be.” He surveyed the room with a look that told of hard-earned experience. “Snap to it, I want the shuttle prepped for departure before our next phasing burn.”

  Nick took a sip from his suit’s hydration bladder and could barely swallow. His throat felt swollen and raw—was that a symptom of radiation sickness, or was he just growing paranoid? His mind exaggerated every itch, ache and twitch into looming disaster. Every creak was a seam about to rupture into vacuum, every pop was a dying crewmember trying to get into the airlock with him.

  After what he’d heard from their final hours, he could hardly be blamed. It was hard to know who’d had the worst of it—Giselle had been outside, completely exposed, and had received the full force of the flare. She’d succumbed quickly, or at least had been quiet about it. As a professional spacewalker, she must have known it was a unique occupational hazard—right? Her last word while still in control of her own body, trapped outside the closed airlock, had been a single accusation: “Bastard.”

  The others, having somewhat better protection inside the capsule’s pressure vessel, had taken considerably longer to succumb. He’d had to turn up his headset volume until the waves of static drowned out their bangs and shouts from the other side of the locked hatch. Billy literally hadn’t known what hit them, but Whitman had of course figured it out quickly. Perhaps Nick’s silence had fooled them into thinking he’d suffered the same fate as Giselle, perhaps not. Whitman was a seasoned pilot and had probably figured it out. Given the sketchy nature of their work, there was no way they could all be allowed to continue existing with such knowledge. It was going to happen up here or down there; you throw your dice and you take your chances.

  Lesko had never taken a human life, though he’d been surrounded by others who had. It was always “business” to them, and a side of it he’d preferred to avoid.

  What happened next? In his fatigue, he hadn’t thought that part through. He was safe from the flare now, in fact was probably safe to go back down into the cabin, but that was the thought which paralyzed him. His only ride back to Earth was going to be inside a cramped spacecraft full of dead people, and he’d be trusting the automation and ground support to fly him home.

  The thought would not leave his mind: Inside a cramped spacecraft, full of dead people.

  That was his best option, which only worked if the spacecraft worked. And right now, it appeared that much of the spacecraft wasn’t working. He hadn’t counted on the electromagnetic surges overwhelming its avionics—weren’t they supposed to be designed to handle this stuff? The lights wouldn’t come on and the airlock’s environmental panel was dead. He had no idea how or if air was circulating, so he’d kept his suit plugged in to the spacecraft’s air supply. He would occasionally open his visor for a bite from a protein bar; when he did the air felt close. Stale. He took another sip of water, cringing at its chlorinated taste. After all this time, why was he only now noticing every little irritant?

  Perhaps because he knew that nearly every action from now on could be among his last. As he’d reached for the lever that would unlock the inner hatch, he’d found it wouldn’t budge. Whitman—it had to be—had somehow locked him out. He’d known, and he’d taken his revenge in the only way he had left.

  Lesko stared at the locked inner hatch, imagining his dead companions on the other side and wondering how long it would be before he joined them.

  9

  The shuttle’s cabin was roughly the size of a private jet’s, with seats for two pilots and eight passengers. Of those, the pilots’ seats were the only permanently mounted fixtures. Any passenger seat could be swapped out for an equipment rack or cargo container. Even when mated to a mobile airlock as it was now—which really served as an orbital ambulance bay—their bulky pressure suits made it feel cramped inside.

  Following along as Wylie prepped the shuttle for departure, Marshall looked for analogies with the Puma suborbital trainers he’d qualified on. Specter looked similar on the outside, if considerably larger: bulbous nose, thin rectangular windshield, its lifting-body fuselage tapered into a pair of stubby, upturned winglets. Its tail was a universal docking adapter mounted between two maneuvering engines, each canted outward so as not to damage the mobile airlock now mated to it.

  “Most of the preflight checks are automated,” the senior pilot explained. “I had it start the onboard diagnostics as soon as the skipper gave the order.” He traced a gloved finger from the over
head switch panel down to the cluster of engine controls on a pedestal between their seats. “Just follow the flow and it’ll tell you right away if it’s going to work. But this baby hardly ever has any squawks.”

  “So not as intense as prepping for a launch from the ground?”

  Wylie nodded inside of his helmet. “You don’t have all the booster interface and abort modes to worry about. That’s half of what can go wrong. Getting around up here is simple by comparison.” He tapped a small screen above the control pedestal to show their propellant load. “This is what we’ll have to keep an eye on. We haven’t been able to top off tanks since we got here last week and the OMS has just enough delta-v to reach Stardust after they throw us at it. All we have after that are maneuvering thrusters, and we’ll be using those a lot just for station-keeping until they come back for us tomorrow.”

  Marshall was about to ask about that when a radio call interrupted him. “Specter, this is home plate. Comm check, over.”

  “Specter reads you five by five, preflight complete,” Wylie said. He turned to Riley, who gave him a thumbs-up. “EVA team is secure. Pressure is equalized and we are on internal power.”

  “Copy that. We’re on pitch for release in thirty.” A countdown clock came to life atop the instrument panel. “You’re go for undock at zero.”

  Wylie reached up for his open visor. “Faceplates down, people,” he announced for everyone aboard. “Stand by for release.” He pointed to a lever above the throttle quadrant and motioned for Marshall to pull it as the timer reached zero.

  My first duty as an actual pilot, he thought. Retract the gear and don’t touch anything else. So flying the right seat in space wasn’t much different than on Earth. At zero, he pulled the release handle out and down and felt the spacecraft detach. A gentle kick from the spring-loaded docking collar pushed them away slowly.

  Another call came after several minutes of drifting apart. “Specter, you’re at Waypoint Zero, on vector to intercept Stardust. Clear to maneuver.”

  “That’s what I was waiting for.” Wylie tapped the sidestick controller and brought the nose around quickly. Attitude indicators in front of each pilot rolled and pitched in unison until he stopped them on the preprogrammed heading. “Specter is burning in three,” he said, and did a short count to ignition. There was a firm kick as the tail-mounted orbital maneuvering thrusters lit off.

  Just as Marshall was thinking this was all happening awfully fast, Wylie explained himself. “I’m normally a lot smoother than this, but we’re in kind of a hurry,” he said, again eyeing the propellant gauges. “We have to use all the free momentum we can get, so every second matters. Planned or not, I don’t want to get there with empty tanks.”

  “Got it.” It made sense—unlike atmospheric flying there would be no winds to take advantage of, no managing power to improve range. Once you were pointed in the right direction, reaching your destination in space was all about delta-v: changing velocity. There were ways to leverage a planet’s gravity in your favor but in the end you either had enough fuel, or you didn’t. Every launch, every change in orbit, required adding velocity—even “reducing” it was simply adding velocity in the opposite direction. Coming up short by even a few meters per second was the difference between making orbit or returning to Earth—or if already in orbit, not returning at all.

  The press of acceleration subsided quickly and they were back in zero g. It was a short burn, just enough to put them on a tangent from Borman’s trajectory that intercepted Stardust’s orbit. As they approached the stricken craft, they’d turn around and make a longer burn to slow down and meet it.

  Through the overhead window Marshall could see their mother ship falling behind, a graphic reminder of how quickly things could happen up here. Ahead of them was nothing but black space with a string of distant lights, like a diamond necklace in a velvet case—geostationary satellites, their target somewhere among those false jewels.

  Bastard.

  The accusation would not leave his mind. It was as if he’d been stung in his soul and couldn’t remove the barb, still alive and pumping its venom into him.

  He’d done a lot in his life to have deserved such a slur but no one who knew him had ever dared utter it, no one who knew what kind of retribution he could bring. Even as one of the low-level hangers-on around the New Jersey mob, he could inspire fear in those even farther down the ladder. After he’d gone to Nevada and embedded himself in the casino business, his reputation had garnered an invitation into an even more secretive—and lucrative—foreign concern. Not only had his “family” not objected, they’d encouraged it, which told him he was just valuable enough for them to let go so as to garner some kind of favor from whoever it was that had brought him into this new organization—and after five years with them, he still wasn’t sure who that was.

  There were all kinds of “fixers” in this world, each with their own specialty. In the old days, that had meant someone who could manipulate others into doing the bosses’ bidding without looking like it. Nick, however, had become skilled in manipulating electronics into doing his bidding without it looking as if they were. A valuable skill set in Vegas, apparently it was even more valuable in other parts of the world—east Asia, in particular. He’d spent a great deal of time shuttling between casinos all around the Pacific Rim and collecting increasingly handsome payouts.

  When the call had come for this job, he’d had to hide his surprise: Sure, boss, it’s just another job, only the scenery is different. A lot different. Plus he’d had to spend six weeks of intense training just to qualify for the ride, with another six weeks learning how to be a spacewalker. That part had mostly consisted of showing him how not to get himself killed.

  Truth be told, Nick had taken a liking to this astronaut stuff. If his life had gone differently, maybe it was something he could’ve done legitimately. Math had always come naturally to him—one doesn’t run numbers in Jersey without it being second nature—from which his affinity for electronics and control systems had sprung. That he’d applied those skills in the manner he’d chosen had as much to do with his environment than any conscious decision. He’d just never conceived of it being very lucrative in the “legit” world. Every successful person he’d met had been playing some kind of angle; it was just how stuff got done. You did what was necessary to get ahead. You didn’t wait for fortune to arrive—that was a sucker’s game. You made it happen. If that involved cutting corners—or worse—then it was only business. Growing up, the nuns had tried to teach him it was because we were all sinful creatures in a fallen world. Whatever. Business was business.

  This had been the first time he’d experienced anyone committed to a job because they wanted to do it. From the Stardust interns fitting them for suits, to the eggheads back in ground support, to the experienced spacers like Giselle and Whitman, he’d never seen devotion to a cause just for the thrill of it.

  He wished he could look outside. The tiny porthole centered in the outer door was just big enough to let in sunlight; not enough to see outside as long as he had his helmet on. He could take it off and rely on the compartment air, but staying in his suit and plugged directly into its supply kept the voices at bay.

  He needed to move, to get out of this suit. His throat was parched, and soon there would be no more water. He’d hidden plenty of water and rations inside the ’lock for just this reason—he knew he couldn’t stay encased in this suit for two or three days. He had to be able to get out, move around, eat and breathe normally. Not living in a cocoon and surviving off distilled water and protein shakes.

  But that meant taking off his helmet, and that was when the voices came.

  Inside its protective cocoon, the only sounds came from circulation fans and his own breathing. Without it, his mind was pummeled by a barrage of accusations: Psycho. Lunatic. Murderer.

  At this point Nick wasn’t sure and no longer cared if he’d truly heard—was hearing—any of them. Yesterday, the voices behind the inn
er door had become muffled and indistinct before trailing off to nothing. He thought he’d heard an occasional retching sound. Nothing like Giselle’s last, clear as crystal, breaking through the roaring static from the solar flare that had killed her: Bastard.

  “Stand by for retro fire in three . . . two . . .”

  Marshall waited by the second flight station in back of the cabin, bracing himself against the bulkhead as the engines came to life once more. This was going to be a long burn, cancelling their excess velocity to match Stardust’s orbit. The little craft shuddered as the twin rockets pushed hard against them. He watched their target grow in the crosshairs of the docking monitor, figuring he must have been doing something right for Wylie to have trusted him to be near any set of controls.

  The pilot had been obsessive about their approach vector and propellant load, with good reason—if he missed, they’d zip by the stranded spacecraft and would need to be rescued themselves the next time Borman’s orbit brought them in proximity. That would mean another day in a spaceplane that was feeling increasingly confined.

  Rosie and the other spacers had been jovial, almost boisterous, during the transit here. Now that they were close, they’d grown quiet and serious. They were professionals who trained constantly for exceedingly rare “live” missions—it was common to pull a six-month tour in orbit without a single mayday call. They were eager to get outside on a real spaceborne rescue and not just do a dock-and-extract, the preferred and safest method.