Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) Read online

  Carl looked up from his book. “What is it, Skip?” Feet resting on his console, seat reclined.

  “We’ve lost contact with Pandora. Three days ahead.” Edson rubbed his goatee. They’d seen the flash. He and Carl were sitting in the cockpit on watch when it happened. The light shining bright enough to light up the cockpit through the glass overhead.

  Edson turned in his seat and faced Carl, flicked on the intercom for Ben’s benefit, still down in his bunk. “I need everything on this ship secured and locked down in case we need maneuvers. We are on alert.”

  He returned to his screen, began checking through the ship’s systems, everything was running well. They were hauling twenty seven and a half tonnes of iron, nickel and trace metals from their asteroid claim and the ship was heavy. From below he could hear Ben cursing as he hauled himself out of his bunk and heaved around the cramped ship.

  Carl yelled down at him through the hatch, “Look lively down there, Trig!”

  Ben shouted back “Go to hell, man! This is not a good time for me.”

  Carl chuckled and put his book in the webbing beside his console. “I guess I better go help Grumpy Gus. Holler if you need us.” He hoisted himself up and down the hatch.

  Carl and Ben were both young. Early twenties. Tough. Built like miners. Edson had picked his crew for muscle, but space took its toll on that. It was hard to stay big in zero gravity and on these return flights, it was even harder to get used to gravity again. They were all sore. Edson wasn’t exactly a small man either.

  He tapped out a message.

  Julie,

  We just got word that we’ve lost link with Pandora. She’s three days ahead of us. No word yet on what happened to her. I’m hoping it’s just a problem with their antenna or something. You should check in on Bruno’s family. See how they’re doing. I hope they know already, if not, you might be delivering the bad news.

  How’s Emma? Make sure she does her math assignments. Last I heard she was slacking off and she’s too good to let slip. She’s going to make a great captain one day.

  I love you, Jules. Tell Em I love her too and give her a big hug for me.

  Be home soon,

  Edson

  He sent the message. Thirteen minutes. One hundred and thirty million kilometers. The ship was humming like a bass string in space.

  015

  Jerem slipped across Making Time’s outer skin to the supports connecting the habitat and cargo modules to the shield. Through the struts he could see the cargo module hanging below. Beside him the two huge fuel pods bulged blotting out the stars.

  Music droned in his headphones. A long-dead singer screeching about explosions in the sky as he traversed the surface of the shield. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “I’m crossing the lip of the shield. Radiation check.” He extended a rod with a radiation sensor on the end of it, his helmet display read: 0.02 mSv. “Engine’s reading clean enough from out here. Going over. Over.”

  Jerem retracted his sensor rod and stowed it on his hip. He boosted over the lip of the shield on his suit’s thrusters to the usually-unseen second half of the ship.

  The engine module was a large, bulging cylinder covered in a mass of exposed tubing and heat sinks. Hidden in the middle of the thick metal housing, the spherical reaction core was inactive. A number of protuberances along the surface of the engine hinted at some of the internal machinery and power sources needed to drive the fusion reaction. Large twisted metal piping ran across the surface carrying recycled coolant and large exhausts should they need to vent off into space. The cooling lines ran up and around the underside of the large shield dome covered in stacks of thin metal blades acting as radiators, shedding heat before the coolant made the return trip back to the engine. The end of the ship finished in a long spike sticking out of the main exhaust nozzle.

  Jerem attached the tether from his belt line to a ring on the lip of the shield, adjusted his thrust and floated inward, the gigantic shield blocking out the sunlight above him. He could feel the heat dissipating out of his suit while inside the shadow, and his suit’s heaters kicked in to compensate. He aimed towards the heavy twisted metal tubing of the fuel delivery systems ahead of the engine housing.

  He approached the near end of the cylinder and the two heavy lines that snaked in from the fuel pods above. He was recording the trip via his helmet camera. “Exterior looks good. Nothing visible on the surface. Approaching line two.”

  “Roger that.” His headset crackled with his father’s voice over the ship’s local radio system. They used an analog band for local transmissions instead of the system-wide digital network. The Future Sound of London was replaced by The Sisters of Mercy on his headset.

  Jerem approached the line. Meter-thick silver shielding covered the cable he was following. He traced it into a connector above a panel labeled Injector 02 and surrounded by yellow and black hash marks on the sealed compartment of the reactor.

  “Opening the maintenance hatch.” Jerem reached out and grabbed the chunky handle inset above the panel and braced his feet on the hull. The handle was hard to turn, but he managed to get it into the open position and haul it up.

  The heavy hatch lid slid in and down revealing the machinery inside responsible for pulling the heavy liquid hydrogen from the fuel pod into the fusion reactor below.

  Jerem peered inside. Reached in with one bulky glove and moved one of the wiring bundles aside. There was a small black scorch mark on the top of one of the injector housings near the power coupling.

  “Uh, Dad, I think I’ve found the problem. Looks like one of the injectors had a bad link with the power system. I don’t think it’s fried, but we’ll probably want to replace the connector when we’re back in dock. I’m going to try seal it up in the meantime.”

  Jerem could sense his father looking at the video feed from his helmet cam. “Jer, can you get some more light in there? Disconnect that conduit completely and let me see it.”

  “Aye.” Jerem unscrewed the connector, struggling through his suit’s gloves to get a grip on the knurled plug. Only a turn and it came loose. He wriggled the connection apart and popped it out of the injector housing. He peered in, positioning his head lights and camera into the hatch. He didn’t see any other issues besides the scorch marks.

  “I don’t see anything else, do you?”

  “No sir. The connector wasn’t screwed in all the way. Or it came loose.”

  “Ok, reconnect it and use some resin glue to pin that down and get back inside. We need to get going.”

  “Yup.” Jerem had already begun trying to reattach the power line and get the screw ring to mesh with the base. He managed it, tightened it down and got out his glue gun. He warmed up the surface, careful not to get near the conduit and then carefully squeezed a blob of molten resin out of it around the ring.

  He kept heating the resin to begin the cure, shaping it around the joint, then switched the heat off and watched the white blob begin to solidify. “How’s that look, skip?”

  “Looks good. Come on in.”

  Jerem cleared the ejector and holstered his glue gun. He closed up the maintenance hatch and locked it down, pushing the lock into place. He took a moment to look around, spotting Jupiter glowing brightly off to the side. The milky way cutting a bright path overhead. Antares burning redder than Mars beside it.

  He kicked off and began boosting around the shield. The Sisters of Mercy still playing “First and Last and Always”.

  016

  Lighthouse.

  “I know, Mrs. Bruno. Right now, we’re just trying to make sense of the logs. We’re broadcasting and looking for signal. We’re looking into sending a ship…”

  Chloe Bruno was crying. This was one of the hardest pieces of news Mancuso had ever had to deliver in his long career. There had been accidents before on the station – even fatal ones – but they’d known what happened. Right now, he just didn’t know anything for sure.

  She wiped her
tear-streaked face. Her youngest daughter, Raven was sitting on her knee, almost ten years old. “Is daddy alright? Are you alright, mommy?”

  “You have to do something to … to see if there’s anybody out there. They could be in a shuttle or …”

  “I know Mrs. Bruno.” They didn’t have shuttles. Or escape pods. And it would take days to get a ship into position and worse, the vectors would be complicated to match up, if not impossible. He didn’t want to tell her that though. “We’re doing everything we can from here. I’ll be in touch as soon as we have anything new.” He wanted to give the woman a hug. He killed the channel and sat back in his chair, exhaling loudly. Fingers digging into his forehead.

  Two terrible calls to the surface out of the way. What’s next on the menu? He was in the small boardroom on Lighthouse off the command deck. The lights were dim and he sat there rubbing his chest absently.

  His pad said he had two missed calls from Dr. Powell. Both marked urgent. He activated a connection and put it on the screen in front of him. Doctor Tadeuz Powell replaced the dialling screen almost immediately, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Hello David. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Hi Tad. What have you got for me?” He waited for a count of three for the reply to make it back up. They were on the other side of the planet and bouncing their signal out to a comms satellite in high orbit and back. Communications from orbit sometimes required patience and touch of protocol. The lag would drop in a few minutes.

  “I heard the news about Pandora. Funny timing. Some of my students spotted something on an intercept trajectory with your ships.” Powell was fidgeting with something on his desk off camera, a light tapping sound came over the speakers.

  This is not the conversation Mancuso was expecting. “Go on…” three second pause. He felt a dizziness completely separate from the slow turning of the station’s ring section.

  Powell took a sip of coffee and put his cup down. “The students, Emma Franklin actually, found this thing while reviewing logs from Olympus as part of her course work. She and her friends plotted it. She figured out it was going too fast to be an asteroid in any regular orbit.” He waved his tablet’s stylus in the air in front of him. “I think it was Pohl that figured out the intercept part.” More tapping.

  Mancuso recognized the names immediately. His stomach rolled not for the first time that day and he fought down some heart burn and a feeling of nausea. “An object?” Pause. “What are you talking about? A rock? Comet?”

  The pauses were getting shorter. “We don’t know what it is. I reviewed their data and it looks solid. The object is moving across the near belt in an almost straight line. Very fast. It’s either coming in from out-system or is accelerating from further out in the belt. If it is accelerating, well…” he swallowed, his moustache obscuring his lips. “It’s under power, David. A probe or something.”

  Mancuso absorbed this, blinking. He opened a drawer and took out a roll of antacid tablets. He popped a couple into his mouth and started chewing. He realized he hadn’t eaten in fifteen hours. The pain in his chest reminded him why.

  “You’re kidding. It can’t be one of ours…” He trailed off. Incredulous.

  Powell leaned closer to the camera. “Grayson’s putting together a committee meeting to discuss Pandora. He doesn’t know about this thing. Yet.” He cleared his throat. “I … my students think the object… It’s heading straight for our ships. If it’s still out there after the collision or whatever happened… At this speed it’ll reach Calypso in less than fifty hours.”

  Mancuso couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was this a joke? “Good Christ. What do you mean if it’s still out there? Send me everything you’ve got. Can you keep this from Grayson until we know for sure what we’re up against?”

  Pause. “I don’t know what to say to the Council. If they ask me, I’ll have to tell them what I know.” More tapping.

  “I know. I just.” Mancuso felt like chewing through something. “Why didn’t we see this sooner? Tell the kids… just thank them for me, will you?” Mancuso stood up.

  Powell frowned at the screen, his lips bunching up under his moustache. “What a time for this to happen, hey David? How are you doing anyway? Any results yet?”

  Mancuso was already leaving the boardroom. He didn’t see the concerned look on his friend’s face as the screen switched off leaving the old professor frowning at the blank screen in his office.

  He walked through the red-lit command room and sat down in his chair. “Someone give me a status update.” He ignored the inbox messages growing on his dashboard. Wilkins was coming onto his shift. Ortega was getting ready to bug out for some necessary rack time. They all needed some sleep. Jill Sanchez had already relieved Pradeep an hour ago.

  “Come on, people, give me some good news! Anything to report?”

  Bryce shook his head. “No sir. No change.”

  Mancuso looked around the room from his seat. People had stopped what they were doing and were looking at him. Wilkins had stopped on his way to his seat to stare, having just come onto his shift. Ortega went to him and whispered something in his ear.

  Powell had informed him that there was something out there. Something tracking directly for his ships that he hadn’t known about. There had to be something wrong with Watchtower’s processing. No way it could have missed this.

  Mancuso stood, walked forward a few steps and turned back to face the room. “OK, everyone, listen up.” The room turned to watch him. “I’ve just received word that Pandora’s accident may have been the result of a collision with something. Some students on the ground picked up an object in some images taken by the array on Olympus Mons. They plotted that thing and predicted it was on an intercept course.” He looked around the room, looking at each of the faces watching him. He looked pointedly at Wilkins and Ortega of the science team. “Could someone explain to me why the fuck we didn’t spot this sooner?”

  The room collectively exhaled. Looked away. “Do we have any more information from that video?”

  Wilkins’ mouth opened and closed. He got it under control and blurted. “We’re still running through the analytics, sir.”

  A couple hours earlier, Chairperson Grayson had demanded answers from him that he didn’t have. It was an accident. An anomaly. A collision with some kind of debris. An engine mishap. He didn’t have a lot to offer. He realized he just did the same thing to his crew and felt bad for it.

  He remembered the conversation with Grayson. Yes, he was aware what a loss of one, let alone potentially three more ships would cost this colony.

  It was a death sentence.

  Nolan came over. “Sir, why don’t you get some rack time. We can manage this. We’ll figure it out.”

  Mancuso stared at Nolan for a moment, then checked the clock. They had about forty eight hours until the object reached Calypso and not one bit of new information. If it was still out there, they didn’t have any data since Pandora.

  He nodded suddenly feeling very old. “Ok, Mister Nolan. You talked me into it. Message me if I’m not back in four hours.”

  “You got it.” Nolan turned back to the room and clapped his hands. “Alright people, we want some solid answers. Get on those instruments, please.”

  Mancuso made the walk to his cabin on automatic. When he got to his door he barely remembered walking there. He had a sense he was forgetting something. He needed more eyes on this thing.

  He leaned into his tablet and sent a recorded message to Powell: “You said it was your students who decoded that thing’s orbit? I need to speak with them.”

  017

  New Providence.

  The three students sat in Emma’s cramped living room listening to music. Occasionally talking. They’d already exhausted what they could do with the limited set of data they had from Olympus so they wrote messages to their families in space.

  It had been a few hours since delivering the report to Doc Powell. Since then, the news feeds had
erupted with stories about the lost ship. Most of it sensational, very little factual information since they didn’t know anything.

  “Do you think they know?” Tamra asked no one in particular of the people on the newsfeed. She was writing a message to her father. … It looks like it’s heading towards you and probably has a few days before it gets there. Please be careful.

  She copied Jerem and hit send just as the door to the living room slid open and Emma’s mother entered. She looked tired.

  Emma’s mom, Julie walked through the room, dropping her bag on the floor. “Hi Emma. Kids. I have to make a casserole.” She hung up her jacket on the hook beside the door and walked into the kitchen.

  Emma got up. “I’d better go help. Wait here.” She walked into the kitchen. Sounds of pots, bowls and casserole dishes could be heard over the music.

  Tamra looked at Greg who was still head down on his tablet, doing his best to ignore everything around him. “Hey.”

  Greg looked up. “I was just sending my mom some new graphs. You send your dad a copy yet?”

  “I sent a message, yeah. I need a text copy of the data when you’re done.”

  “Yeah, it’s in our folder.” Greg put his tablet down.

  “Thanks.” Tamra felt her forehead and slid closer to Greg. “I don’t feel so good. Do I have a fever?”

  They could hear some low voices coming out of the kitchen. A bang of dishes. Some crying. Emma’s voice drifted out through the door trying to console her mother.

  Greg looked uncomfortable, but gave Tamra a squeeze. “Do you think we should go?”

  Tamra smiled weakly. “Nope.”

  Emma and her mother Julie came out of the kitchen. “I’m sorry. I was just over at the Bruno’s apartment. They’re pretty upset. I’m going back over there in the morning.”

  Tamra looked up, feeling increasingly tired. “How are they doing, Mrs. Franklin? What about the kids?”

  “Oh, you know. I don’t think they really understand yet. They have a lot of questions.” Julie had a far-off look in her eyes, her brain elsewhere. “We all have a lot of questions.”