Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (12 page)

Carl watched him handling the control box. “Careful ‘round that switch, Trig. We know what happens when you get excited around feeders.”

“Har, har.” He’d never live down his first mining operation. He’d insisted on manning the feeder, letting everybody know he was the most qualified as their mining engineer. When he’d grabbed hold of the tube he accidentally squeezed the trigger and punched a hole in the side of the ship’s cargo module. He spent the rest of the day patching the hole while Carl ran the feeder. The name had stuck, but he never had another accident.

Captain Franklin came back on the radio. “Can we use the Pup without disassembling it? We might be able to use its propulsion to help boost this thing away and then come back to the ship.” The Pups were valuable components on these ships. High-powered wide-band sensor packages, optics and control systems were hard to reproduce on Mars. Limited manufacturing capabilities on the station meant there was a long wait for parts.

Ben answered, clicking in on his radio. “We’ll see what we can do, Skip.”

“Alright. Just bring that stuff up to our airlock. Out.” Captain Franklin was sipping tea, Bob Marley and the Wailers playing “Don’t Worry About a Thing” low on the sound system in the cockpit. He was going over their trajectory again, thinking about the cargo hold full of iron he was hauling back. Thinking about his wife and daughter back on Mars. Julie and Emma. His girls.

Julie’d given him a hard time before he left. She’d been getting more uncomfortable with the distance. The month-long mining missions were taking a toll on their relationship. He hated leaving them, and he told her so. They’d argued about it and when they realized they’d been fighting over the same thing had started laughing. He missed that woman.

He was ready to be done with this mining ship business. Time to let someone else take over. Carl was a good enough pilot. Sure, he could be rough around the edges, but he could handle a ship and her crew – if he had the right people supporting him. Still, there was something about him that never seemed quite right. Always quick to react. He wished he’d think things through more carefully sometimes.

Edson sighed and sipped his tea. Carl was still young and he was probably too old and set in his ways. He’d make a fine captain.

Edson opened a new screen on his tablet and started typing a message. Might be worth learning a thing or two from the next generation. Some brashness might be just the thing.

Subject: Race

Hal, I know we’ve got a headstart, and it’s a bit late in the mission to start one of these, but I’ve got a powerful need to kick something’s ass. That something is your ship.

I’ll bet you a month’s ration of vodka, tea and coffee we can make the trip to Mars from this distance (0.6 AU) faster than you can.

Your ship’s called “Making Time”. Prove it.

Edson

It was childish, but he needed to motivate himself and the crew.

He called up his navigation display and altered a couple of parameters in his flight plan. If he shortened the distance outside the ecliptic, he could shave off a day of transit time. If he kept burning past the half-way mark in a few days, they could decelerate harder and save more time at the expense of fuel and a tougher orbital insertion.

It would also, hopefully, be less predictable than what he was doing now.

He filed his flight plans with Control.
 

028

Making Time.

Hal read the message from Edson with dismay. This isn’t a game, goddamnit. Earlier, he’d gone over the latest report from Control along with the updated telemetry from the object. He felt sick just looking at it.

He opened a reply message.

Subject: Re: Race

Captain Franklin,

I’m not taking this bet because I don’t want to jeopardize my ship or yours. This is serious, Edson. Please look at the recent updates from Control and reconsider your flight plans. You need to get outside this thing’s track by as much as you can.

Please be careful,

Hal

Edson’s a good captain. He’d gotten his crew through some pretty tough situations. He survived a major power failure on board Calypso one time a couple of years ago and managed to get the ship and her crew home. He hoped he wasn’t getting cocky.

Jerem floated up into the cockpit.

Hal turned his head to him. “How are those diagnostics looking?”

“All good. Everything’s locked down and ship-shape, sir.”

Hal grunted. “Good.”

“Any word from Lighthouse?” Jerem hadn’t seen the reports yet.

Hal took a deep breath. He’d been debating not sharing this with his son. He wasn’t sure how he’d react to this new information. It was proof of something inhuman as far as he was concerned. In the end, he needed his son to see it for himself. He’d see the reports anyway. He needed him to understand what they were up against. “Yes. Take a look.” He put the latest telemetry up on screen and let Jerem have a minute to digest.

“Is it… ?” Jerem frowned at the screen, took control from his console and started scrubbing the video. “That’s impossible.”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

Jerem continued studying the data. Puzzlement replacing incredulity. “It looks like this thing just altered course to intercept Calypso. Is that what I’m seeing?”

“Appears to be.” Hal was beginning to look tired. His voice had an extra rattle in it.

Jerem overlaid their own trajectory on the nav screen and tilted it so they could see their inclination against the solar system’s plane. “Well, it’s going to make our own course much harder to reach, at least.”

Hal nodded. “Maybe.” Anything that could move the way he’d just seen probably wouldn’t have much trouble catching them wherever they went.

Jerem watched the video from the Watchtower on loop. “Whatever that thing is, it doesn’t move like a ship. Not one of ours, anyway.”

“Belt up. We’re burning in five.” Hal had already programmed the new burn program into the autopilot. He was glad for that. Jerem wouldn’t see his hands shaking.
 

029

New Providence.

Emma had not enjoyed asking her mother for permission to travel to the station. She was upset. Helping Chloe deal with the loss of her husband wasn’t easy. Julie had just given in when she asked if she could go. Emma felt like she was abandoning her mom.

Still, this was an incredible opportunity for her. This is what she wanted to do with her life. Everything she was working towards. And the station was just a stepping stone out of the Martian gravity well.

This was the right thing to do. Her mom would understand.

Outside of the school compound for the first time in nearly a year, Administrator Brennan and she were in a half-full train car speeding through New Providence at 140kph.

She looked out at the city. A mass of blocky metal buildings stuck into the igneous rock of the Ascreaus Mons lava tube they called home. Daylight filtered in from the agriculture domes on the surface, casting rays of light on the city via large glass pipes run through the rock.

The city was bustling with people going about their business below the elevated train tracks, most of which was all about keeping the remaining fifty thousand humans alive. Streams of people flowed in and out of the Fab on the left, a kilometer square brutalist block of concrete. It loomed over the construction equipment and machinery arrayed in the lots along Industrial Avenue, shining a kilometer away in fresh paint like miniature toys.

Brennan was going on about something but Emma wasn’t really listening. She was drifting while gazing out the window, thinking about the object, her father, her mother. Poor Greg. He wanted to go and she felt badly for stomping on him, but it was the only sensible option. He’d be no good to anyone if he had a panic attack up there. She’d miss his skills though.

“Are you paying attention?”

She snapped out of her brain and looked at Brennan who was staring intently at her from the opposite seat.

“Er, not really. Was just thinking about… stuff.”

“Look, there are lives at stake here, Ms. Franklin. If you can’t focus while you’re on this assignment, you might as well just stay planet-side.” Brennan could command some authority when he needed to as the chief of the university, a station ambassador and a frequent consultant to the Council.

“Sorry, sir. This is a big deal for me. I am on this one hundred percent.” Emma unclenched her hands and put them palms down on her lap. She wondered if she was forgetting anything. She tilted her head and looked at her pack beside her, opening it and taking a quick inventory.

“You’ve got a long trip ahead of you. When we get to the shuttle port, they’ll have instructions and a data packet from the station. First time in space, right?”

Emma hadn’t had a lot of time to think about the enormity of what was happening to her yet. “Yes sir. First time up.” First time leaving Mars. First time on a shuttle. First time in zero gravity. This was a lot of firsts.

Brennan nodded. “Well, it’s no big deal. Like going for a ride in a tram. A very fast tram.” He tapped a foot and checked his watch – an antique passed down through his family for three generations.

They spent the rest of the trip in relative silence, Brennan catching up on some work mail on his tablet while Emma reread the operating instructions for her suit. She was nervous about skipping the last training sessions that simulated low gravity by immersion in deep water.

Leaving the city, the train entered a dark tunnel and raced away up into the long dead volcano. They picked up speed as they transferred through a series of locks, leaving the pressurized atmosphere of New Providence.
 

030

Calypso.

Burn and drift. Repeat. Calypso was on a burn phase powering towards Mars, 0.6AU out. She was pushing nearly two gees. The alarm sounded and the countdown to shutoff began beeping. Five, four, three, two, one… The ship shuddered and rocked as the engine switched off its stream of plasma leaving the inhabitants weightless. Calypso, rolling gently, trailing a line of smoke in space from its engine, the metal on the thruster spike glowing white hot in the infrared.

Edson breathed and drifted up against his restraints, his head, suddenly weightless, felt like a balloon attached to his body. His hands wanted to float up from the residual effort of keeping his body relaxed under heavy gravity. He felt puffed-up like he’d been lifting weights.

He stretched his neck muscles and checked the ship’s telemetry. He hadn’t filed this part of his plan yet, but he intended to keep burning hard past the halfway mark. They’d decelerate on their way into Mars orbit. Risky, but they’d be a harder target to hit.

Mars would be a harder target to hit.

Carl groaned in his seat. “You tryin’ to kill us, Captain?” His voice sounded like he had marbles in his throat.

Edson ignored him. “Why don’t you go for a float. Grab some tea for us. Next burn’s in thirty minutes.”

Some light cursing under his breath. “Alright.” As much as anyone could storm out of a cabin in zero gravity, Carl managed it.

“Can do with less lip from a first mate!” Edson hollered after him. Sometimes he wished he’d picked his crew for manners instead of mining ability.

Another few hours then they could drift for the night shift and get some rack time – they needed it, the ship needed it. Everybody was getting punchy.

Ben floated up into the cabin. “Yo, skip.”

Edson turned around so he could see him. He looked tired too. “Hey Trig. How you finding the load? Everything holding up down there?”

“It’s cool. Everything secure.”

Not that he’d admit it. The heavy gravity was harder on men of Ben’s size.

Ben floated there, freckled arms doing a swimmer’s backstroke to stretch out his muscles. “How many more hours of burns like that one?”

“Three more, forty five minutes each. Then we’re done for the day. Sound good?”

“Sounds sweet, Skip.”

“Then we can get some rack time.” And hopefully get a propulsion system fitted to the feeder bomb they’d built. It was currently sitting in the airlock in the equipment locker aft of the hab module. They’d had a tough time maneuvering it up into the lock from the cargo module this morning.

Edson glanced at the clock and Carl floated back up into the room with a thermos and two bulbs. “Hey, who brought the asteroid in here? Oh, it’s you, Trig. You take up the whole damned cabin.”

Ben was about to reply, half a laugh on his face when Carl shoved him up towards the windows, cutting off his retort. Ben floated away, arms flailing without anything to grab onto, reaching for a nearby piece of webbing and missing. He bumped into the windows and hung there.

“Here ya go.” Carl handed Edson a bulb, filling it with tea from the thermos through the retractable nozzle. He filled his own then stowed the thermos in the webbing on the side of his seat. “Sorry, I didn’t bring you one, Trig.”