Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) Read online

  Sunil opened a channel to the docks. “Docks. This is Control. Requesting the presence of a ship’s engineer to control deck, post haste.” He hoped it conveyed polite urgency.

  Emma wondered why the transmission from Calypso was so noisy. It’s a digital link, there shouldn’t be any interference unless it was recorded that way at the source. Maybe it was a faulty microphone? She’d ask Sunil if she could go over the file with him when things were quiet.

  Sunil looked up from his communications console and Emma Franklin was beside him. He startled.

  “Mr. Pradeep? Can I send a message to Calypso?” She looked distraught. “I want to know what happened to my father.”

  Sunil regarded her. “I’m sorry Miss… Franklin. Protocol doesn’t allow me to open a channel without express permission from the acting commander on deck.”

  Emma was the picture of hurt. She looked at the empty chair recently occupied by Nolan. “Isn’t that you?”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t really think…”

  And then Ortega walked onto the deck. Emma turned to him.

  “Nelson! We just heard from Calypso. My father’s unconscious and the engine’s locked-down. They need an unlock code.”

  Ortega processed this as best as he could on the three hours of sleep he’d had in the last two days. He walked to his station and sat down, rubbing his eyes.

  Wilkins got up and went to her. “Hey, why don’t we grab some food or something. We need to let these people do their work.”

  Emma looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not going anywhere while my father’s ship is in trouble.”

  Wilkins bristled. “People are trying to work and you’re distracting them.”

  A range of emotions lit up in Emma and nearly rushed out of her, but she kept a lid on them. She took a breath and went to her seat, reminding herself that she was being evaluated, probably by Wilkins. She sat there worrying about her father, her mind racing through the possibilities.

  How had he been injured? He wouldn’t have gone outside as Captain of his ship, his duty was overseeing the operations from the inside. Maybe something came loose during maneuvers? Maybe he fell under high gees? There were so many ways to get hurt on a ship. What was wrong with Carl’s voice?

  She looked up, saw Pradeep quietly acknowledge a communication on the station’s line. He seemed satisfied.

  Wilkins returned to the science station and bent over Ortega, speaking in a low voice. Emma could make out a few words, like increasing, rate, velocity. Ortega nodded and said, “Uh huh” a few times.

  A few more moments passed. The station’s habitat ring wheeling through space. The stars outside shining against the black.

  The door slid open and Mancuso entered trailing Nolan.

  “We have an engineer coming up to the deck.” Sunil informed them.

  Mancuso sat down in his chair, then turned and studied the board. No changes. Just lines drawing closer together.

  Two hours until they converged.

  “Commander. Incoming message from Calypso.” Sunil played the message for the room. Carl’s strained voice over the speakers.

  “Control, this is Calypso. How are those unlock codes coming? Also, can you send up the latest vector from the object? Thanks. Over.”

  “On it.” Emma began putting a data package together with their latest data. “Sending.” She reported and opened a message.

  Calypso,

  Find attached the latest data.

  PS, please tell me my father is ok.

  Emma Franklin

  She flagged it priority and hit send. “Message sent,” she reported.

  Mancuso turned back and forth slightly in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of his face. Sunil thought he looked very tired.

  065

  The Terror.

  Vanessa squinted into the screen inside her helmet. It looked like a brown wash coloring the dark background over her remote camera. At first she thought the remote’s camera sensor was malfunctioning, but then realized what it was. “Dust cloud!”

  The two space walkers grabbed hold and clung to the side of The Terror as the Pup turned away from the cloud, pointing back towards the ship.

  Francine turned to Vanessa, speaking through helmet comms. “Are you able to get any directionality on it?”

  Vanessa flipped a couple of switches and the Pup flared a high-powered light. “Maybe. I’m shooting a high-speed recording we can correlate with my orientation. Hoping it gives us something. Running it through analysis.” She made a slight orientation shift to add additional reference data, sliding the Pup sideways.

  The console in front of them showed a model of the Pup, blue-green tracers lighting up around it in three-dimensional space.

  Francine announced over the comms. “I need to make a slight rotation. Hang on out there. Maneuvers in three, two, …”

  “Just a sec!” Reggie.

  She nudged the ship just as Reggie’s voice broke through her helmet and she cursed. She balanced the ship out again, she’d only needed a couple of degrees to steer them away from the path of the incoming particles and give her crew coverage with the ship’s shield.

  “Reggie? Winston? You OK?”

  “Yeah. I’m good. But I lost the motor.” Reggie.

  Winston. “OK here.”

  Francine looked at Vanessa. “Come again, Reggie?”

  Crackle. “Motor. MO-TOR! The thing that was supposed to aim this antenna for us. It’s floating away at about 2 meters per second.”

  Shit. “Can you reach it?”

  Vanessa coasted the Pup closer in, trying to get a bead on it. “Cap’n, I can see it, it’s already outside the shield’s radius. He’d be out in the open.”

  A wave of passing dust caught the tiny motor and buffeted it further out and away. A spark lit it up for a split-second as a microscopic particle glanced off it.

  “No.” Reggie sounded disappointed. “Maybe?”

  “Scratch that. Leave it. Make do with what you’ve got. Just get finished up so we can get out of here.”

  Winston reported in. “Almost done here, need any help on your end Reg?”

  “Negative.”

  Francine slumped inside her suit. With no directional control on the antenna, they’d have to point the thing manually. If it worked at all. That meant turning the whole ship every time they wanted to receive or broadcast.

  Vanessa looked at Francine. “Well, look on the bright side. At least we know there’s a debris field here.”

  “Yay.”

  Winston clicked on. “Ok, I’m heading back to the airlock.”

  Vanessa replied. “Roger that. I’ve got my eye on you.” She piloted the Pup in closer, taking advantage of the dome shield and watched him begin the climb up the ladder to the crew section. The Pup itself seemed to be handling alright, but she was worried about the optics and sensor packages getting chewed up by the debris. She adjusted the controls to keep it pointed on the crew.

  Reggie. “Gonna need another 15-20 minutes here. Not easy making these connections. Not even sure the receiver’s going to work. Might be fried.”

  Francine answered. “Just do what you can and get back inside.”

  066

  Calypso.

  Carl studied the navigational data they’d sent up from Control, still stewing over the message from the Captain’s daughter. Why were they letting her talk to him? Did she know what was going on? Were they trying to see if he’d crack up?

  He pushed it down and got back to business. If they had the vectors right, they could predict the time to contact with high precision.

  Would it be close enough though?

  At these distances and given the uncertain pieces in the data, there were a lot of variables.

  “Come on Control. Give me those codes.” If we had engines we could at least introduce some unpredictability into the track.

  He got up and maneuvered himself down the hatch to the crew section. Ben was still float
ing beside Edson, pain and concern written all over his face. An edge in Ben’s eyes told Carl not to get too close.

  “Ben, how long would it take to get our bomb hooked up to the Pup?”

  “Go fuck yourself.” No hesitation.

  “Seriously. It may be the only chance we’ve got against this thing.”

  Ben gave him a look that told him he wasn’t getting anywhere.

  Carl sighed. “Fine! I’ll go do it myself. Monitor comms while I’m out.”

  Ben looked at him. “The detonator switch stays inside.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna have my hands full out there.” He turned to leave, then paused and turned back. “Captain, your daughter asked how you’re doing. Seems like everytime she sends a message something goes to shit. She’s like a curse.”

  Ben growled at him as Carl floated down to the equipment section. He prepped to climb into his suit, stripping off his jacket, boots, and outer clothes down to his liner.

  He slipped into his suit’s legs then raised his arms and pulled the torso down over his head. The bulky backpack with his rebreather and air tanks shifting his center of balance in the microgravity of the equipment room. He grabbed the rails and pushed his feet into his boots, then bent over and locked the seals. Last, he pulled his helmet out of its bag and put it on. Stepping off the rack, he turned and pushed his hands into his gloves, locking them in.

  He double-checked his suit seals, checked the O2 levels, then clicked into the thrust harness. He made a couple of careful jumps in the equipment room, checking his range of motion in the suit by waving his arms around, crouching into a ball and flexing his waist.

  All good.

  “This really should be a two-man job.” He spoke into the radio, mostly to himself, but hoped Ben could hear him. He’d left their short-range radio turned on in the cockpit.

  Carl gathered his tools, his welder and some scraps of metal. He fired it all into a heavy duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder. He checked his glue gun and tether line on his belt. This was going to be a quick and dirty job.

  “Last chance to help.” He didn’t expect a response.

  Carl climbed into the airlock. The feeder bomb squatted on the floor, a block with a big tube running back into itself, held in place by a pair of carabiners and steel cabling. He unhooked the tethers and it floated free into the cramped space. Carl put a gloved hand on it, keeping it steady.

  “I’m going out, Ben.” Carl waited as the airlock cycled. No response came from above.

  The light turned red. Hard vacuum. He opened the outer door to the vast emptiness of space.

  He took a breath. The inside of his helmet smelled like plastic and sweat. He bent down and attached the feeder into his maneuvering harness. The usual bindings had to be augmented with thick nylon straps after their modifications and he tied these down, cinching them tight. The block was only about a meter on each side, but it was dense. He couldn’t fit his arms all the way around it, but it was secure. He checked that it wasn’t going to shift around too much on him while maneuvering.

  No way to climb out on the ladder with this thing on his chest. He’d have to boost. He checked his harness, verifying his controls all worked, then hit the throttle and boosted gently outside, away from the safety of the airlock. With the controls on his right hand, he fired his jets, rotating him about then firing his thrusters bringing himself to a stop two meters outside the door.

  The ship’s ventral camera showed Carl hanging in space, three meters away from the airlock. He was already breathing hard. Nervous. He felt like he was forgetting something. He adjusted the duffel on his shoulder, took a deep breath and pitched himself up towards the front of the ship, along the topside of the crew section where the Pup was docked.

  Carl boosted forward smoothly along the spine of the hull. Gentle motion, he reminded himself. Don’t make too many adjustments. He slid over the Pup docked in its moorings on the back of the ship below him. “I’m over the target,” he announced to Ben and nobody.

  He pitched himself in towards the ship and away from his direction of travel, lowering himself towards the Pup and the ship, his momentum carrying him forward still at one and a half meters per second. Too fast.

  The unfamiliar mass of the feeder bomb touched the Pup first before he could get a hand on it and he bounced off the curved fuselage. Carl tried to grab hold, frantically reaching for one of the struts with his gloved hand.

  He slipped. Unable to get a grip on it through the cumbersome glove, his forward momentum dragging him away.

  Carl rolled around the outside of the Pup, breathing heavily, his face mask fogging up, still attached to the feeder bomb via the harness. He wasn’t used to maneuvering with the feeder block. It shifted his center of gravity forward and was messing up his balance. The duffel flopping on his shoulder made it worse.

  “Trig!”

  Silence.

  Carl was tumbling, the ship rotating around on his right, slipping away from his grasp. It came back into view on his left and he applied some thrust, attempting to slow his rotation, desperately trying to get close enough to the ship to grab hold of something. He applied some of the make-shift thrust on the feeder they’d built from the spare suit but didn’t get anything. He hit it again. Nothing. Was it connected?

  Why hadn’t he tethered?

  He was breathing harder. Nearing hyperventilation. His mask fogged up more blurring his vision outside. His suit’s compressor wasn’t working? No time to check it.

  The ship continued to rotate past him as he fell through space. He hit the thrust on his pack again hoping to push him towards the ship. Too much. He struck the curved surface of the starboard fuel pod with his shoulder and helmet at nearly 2 meters per second, a loud crack inside his helmet from the collision shook his head, splitting his lip on the chin guard. He bounced away adding a new rotational component to his tumble, unable to grab anything on the surface.

  Panic. Vertigo. Got to get loose. He fumbled for the straps on his harness to detach the feeder bomb that was causing his imbalance. He struggled with the clips but they weren’t a quick release anymore. The manual belts he’d cinched and tied onto the thruster pack himself held it to him securely.

  Still in a tumble, he reached down to his belt and brought his knife out. Carl started sawing at one of the ballistic nylon straps attaching the feeder to his harness. “Come on you piece of shit.” His helmet still fogged as he breathed, his mouth felt wet and swollen where he’d split his lip. He sliced through the first of the straps and the feeder let go on his right side.

  He saw the ship flash by, getting smaller as he fell away from it and dabbed his thruster control, slowing his tumble. The feeder still attached around his waist continued to roll and pulled him forward slipping off his left shoulder and into his legs.

  Carl watched his knife float away, flipping out of his gloved hand as he struggled to maintain his balance with the blocky machine. He juiced his thrusters again, his center of gravity now below his waist and spun backwards around the feeder like a pinwheel.

  Carl screamed.

  067

  Making Time.

  Jerem was eating a ration packet, sitting in the cockpit beside his father. They watched the telemetry from Calypso zoomed in on the nav board approaching the edge of the event bubble. Pixels on a screen representing 40 million kilometers ahead and above their position, the gap between them increasing every second with Calypso’s greater velocity.

  Making Time was still adrift, still hoping to be of some use. Her crew waiting and watching.

  An hour ago he’d heard the request for the unlock codes come in from Carl. The station hadn’t responded, at least not openly to them. Something was not right.

  Jerem put away his empty ration packet in the bag beside his seat making crinkling sounds in the quiet cockpit. “Dad, what do you think’s going on?”

  “Don’t know, son.” Hal stared ahead at the screen, his arms folded across his chest, legs crosse
d in front of him. He had some thoughts about what might be happening on board Calypso but he didn’t want to voice them. None of them were good.

  The comm link crackled. “MSS18 Calypso, this is Control. Chief Engineer Greta Patrick here. Sending unlock codes on secure side-channel. Please prep for reception. Over.”

  Hal nodded. “Good.” Patrick was a capable engineer. Oversaw most of the refit operations on the station. She knew these ships about as well as any captain. Better still, she knew the quirks of each of the ships. Maybe not all of Making Time’s secrets – Hal kept a few of them for himself – but most.

  They waited. Another blip from the object appeared on screen.

  “There it is!” Jerem pointed at the screen even though they were both looking at it.

  It was closing in. Less than a million kilometers now. The two ships converging at a combined velocity of nearly five hundred thousand kilometers per hour. Calypso’s heavy burns had accelerated her to close to ten times the speed of Mars’ orbit and she was falling fast into the system. The object was on a line right for them.

  “Do you think they’ll be able to get their engines online?”

  “Don’t know, Son.”

  Jerem realized he was holding his breath. He forced himself to breathe normally, and now that he was aware of it, realized he was thinking about his breathing. He hated that.

  068

  The Terror.

  Reggie climbed down the last rung and reached out for the railing inside the airlock. Winston grabbed his arm and pulled him in the rest of the way. Once inside he punched the button closing the outer door. The interior began pressurizing.

  They watched the red light above the door in silence.

  Green light.

  Safe pressure.

  They turned and opened the door to the equipment room and floated in, unlocking their helmet seals and glove rings.