Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (15 page)

She was made for this. Literally. The Mars Colonists had all been picked from countless volunteers. Only one in a thousand made the cut, they were told when they were kids. Those selected had chunks of their DNA rewritten to give them a better chance with the limited food supplies they’d have. Stronger lungs for surviving in low-oxygen environments. More resilient against radiation in space. All technology available on Earth in the ‘40s.

Of course, without the ability to modify their DNA now, a lot of that work had been undone through the generations. Some of the modifications they’d made turned out to be a bad idea down the line. Once you started DNA modification, you needed to keep tuning it or you’d end up with propagation errors. Nobody got it right the first time. You learned that part in university.

“Launch in T-minus-thirty seconds.”

Jerem had a head start on her. His dad had picked him for crew duty early on. Jerem’s size meant he could wear a suit at the age of sixteen. He was lucky. Well, in a way. When his mom died, his dad didn’t want him to be left alone for months at a time while he was out in the Belt. Not that Emma’d have minded. She would have kept him company. She and her mom could have had him and his sister over for supper and movies. They could have done their homework together. Joined the space program together.

Instead he’d gone into early recruitment. He’d passed his flight training tests with ease and been given the chance to finish his degrees in physics and engineering remotely. He said he had plenty of time to keep up while they were in transit. Maybe now she’d get the chance to do the same. Get her physics degree while on the job.

“T-minus-ten, nine, …”

The countdown ran on. Emma squeezed her eyes shut. “Five.” The engines wound up and the ship howled like a banshee. “Four.” The shuttle was shaking now, the vibrations rattling the cabin. Her teeth. “Three.” Emma opened her eyes, looked around her, the other faces in the suits shaking inside their helmets. The nearest passenger beside her gripped the arm-rest, glove tightening around it. Squeezing his eyes shut. “Two.” Is this thing falling apart? Was it exploding? “One.” Are we moving? I think we’re moving. “Takeoff.”

The transition from still to acceleration was shockingly abrupt, pinning her in place. She was unable to move in her suit, the various air bladders squeezing her as it adjusted to the load. Her eyes pressed back into her skull. Teeth clenched. The vibrations inside the cabin increased and invaded her suit via the connections to her seat as the shuttle rumbled across the rails of the launch track.

She felt the shuttle tilt slightly as the track began to lift, inclining them upwards. They were reaching the ramp built into the side of the caldera that would angle their shuttle up into the sky. The angle steadily increased until nearly vertical and then they were flung from the rails. The shuttle rang like a sword pulled from its scabbard and the vibrations subsided to a dull roar as the cylindrical rocket rose up into the upper atmosphere.

Emma looked over at Harding and grinned. Feeling exhilarated, euphoric with adrenaline.

Harding’s eyes were closed, she was asleep.
 

038

The Terror.

Winston Avery was checking the contents of the cargo hold. The equipment locker had a console for monitoring their cargo remotely. They were hauling two hundred tonnes of dirty ice courtesy of comet 2123 MacEachern before it left their neighbourhood on this side of the Sun. It would take a few more months to fall past Mars orbit, looping through the inner system in a wispy veil of water vapor before being flung far out on its twenty five year orbit through the outer system.

This comet was giving them a gift on this visit. Water the station desperately needed for the crew and food production. The supply they had from Mars was variable, each shuttle carrying however many litres they could manage. The station always had to give up supply to the domes if they were short, and they used an incredible amount. Frozen water ice locked on the surface was hard to extract without it sublimating into the air. It was also difficult to transport across the surface so they relied on underground sources. Underground springs were occasionally discovered by the mining teams, locked into the rock millions of years ago by strong volcanic processes, and required careful withdrawal so it didn’t weaken any of the surrounding support structure. The recent tunnel collapse north of Ascraeus Mons had destroyed an important source for the domes.

Winston’s brother worked in the farms and he’d been getting dire reports about the water situation in his weekly mail. It sounded pretty bad. And they had a storm coming.

He definitely wasn’t sure taking an extra week or two to go after Making Time was worthwhile when people were waiting on this.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Winston’s shoulder and neck muscles tensed up under his tank top and he gritted his teeth.

“Talbot, you keep doing this sneaky shit, one day I am just going to hit you and it won’t even be my fault.”

Winston turned around to see Reggie’s grinning face. The snake tattoo’s face on the top of his head providing a sinister counter-point to the smile.

“Everybody’s always so tense. I don’t know why that is.” Reggie sauntered over to his suit and casually inspected a glove.

“They tense because of your sneaky ass bullshit.”

Reggie shook his head in disappointment. “I’m sorry. Buy you a coffee?”

Winston nodded. “Yes. Yes you can.”

They climbed up into the galley, Reggie first. Winston was so on edge he didn’t trust Reggie to follow him. He’d probably try to goose him and then it would be murder.

Reggie pulled some water into the induction kettle and turned it on.

“So what do you make of this little detour?” Reggie was getting a couple of bulbs ready, adding a packet of micro-grounds to each. He opened up one of the empty packets and held it to his nose, taking a deep sniff.

Winston sat down on a chair. “I dunno, man.” He rubbed his chin with a knuckle. “These ships are important. Hate to lose another one. Not to mention the crew.”

Reggie turned away from the kettle and the bulbs to look at Winston. “Yeah, but what about us? We’ve already been out here a month. Adding more time onto this thing is stretching our supplies pretty thin. Y’know?”

“Yeah, I know. If you didn’t want to do the time, you shouldn’t have signed up for Belt duty.” Winston shrugged. “Still, Skip’s taken all of that into consideration. Another week won’t kill us.”

Reggie turned back to his kettle. “Unless it does.”

The kettle beeped.
 

039

Making Time.

Jerem eased up on the throttle. His ship drifting, he rotated it forty-five degrees and applied more thrust. The craft narrowly missed the spinning asteroid and flung itself further off-line. Spin about hard another one hundred degrees, full throttle for a split-second then off, the little ship skidded into nearly a right angle from its original direction at nearly half-speed towards the incoming comet.

Jerem hit the lasers and blew it into vapor, flying through the crystals, his tablet ringing as his score went up.

“Hey, check this out.” Hal had the nav displays up on screen.

Jerem let his virtual ship drift and looked up. “What about it?”

“Latest data from Lighthouse shows Calypso making a bee-line for Mars. They’ve shallowed out their trajectory and are burning hard.”

Jerem nodded. He knew Edson. Emma’s dad. He had sat around their dinner table listening to his old stories. He was a helluva pilot and had flown through some crazy stuff. Once he and his crew had flown into a solar wind-storm that fried their electronics. No radios and no electronics forward of the engine, they’d had to manually trim their orientation while decelerating into Mars. No small feat.

Jerem noted the burn pattern they’d been running. Two gees in thirty to forty-five minute bursts, drift for fifteen to thirty minutes. It was aggressive and unpredictable.

Hal steepled his fingers on his chin. “I bet he keeps burning past the half-way mark.”

“He’s gotta slow down eventually.” Jerem wondered what the old pilot was up to. It was showy, but for whose benefit? “That’s gotta be hard on the ship.” Hard on the crew.

Hal nodded. “Not if everything’s locked down tight, but yeah. It’ll definitely add some wear and tear.” He thought about it some more. “Hope their reactor’s clean.”

Some of the earlier ships that ran without the dome shields aft of the crew cabins became radioactive over time. Residue inside the reactors built up, stuck inside the chamber and sometimes got fused to create even heavier metals. As more and more exotic materials built up, the machines became hotter and hotter. They lost a few ships because of it. Later, they lost some of the crew who flew them due to radiation poisoning.

Since then, they’d all had dome shields retrofitted onto the ships and kept their burns strictly below the yellow line. The shields provided additional cooling to the reactor components acting as a heat sink with a larger surface area to radiate the excess heat off into space. Regular engine disassembly and maintenance kept half of the ships in dock at any given time. But there was always a risk with these old machines.

Edson was riding his ship right on the edge.

“Edson’s a big boy. He knows what he’s doing.” Jerem put his headphones on and turned up the volume. Time to beat his high score.
 

040

Lighthouse.

Doctor Nelson Ortega was looking forward to having another member in his group. The science team had been running flat-out since this thing started and they were burning out. The support they were getting from the university wasn’t exactly sensitive to the time constraints.

Ortega adjusted his jacket. For the second time this week, he was wearing his formal attire. He wanted to make a good impression.

Yes, she’s only a student, but maybe, when this thing was over she’d consider joining the team full time. They needed more people. There were a lot of asteroids and comets out there to catalog and analyze.

He checked his breath, wishing he had a mint leaf or something. No time to brush his teeth again.

17:37. The ship had docked already. Two minutes late. They were carrying a week’s supply of rations. Medical supplies – many pharmaceuticals couldn’t be created on-station, though a good number of them needed to be made in zero gravity. A number of replacement parts and fittings for the station, assembled in the Fabrication Block. Eight passengers: One visitor, two doctors, two crew support, three relief station crew. The shuttle itself had three flight crew who’d be spending the night. Eleven people total.

Ortega adjusted his jacket again.

He’d started thinking about the latest telemetry data they’d just received from Watchtower when the light on the airlock turned to red. He looked on the monitor and saw four people enter. The airlock cycled and the light turned green. The door swung open.

The four stumbled out of the lock in their bulky suits. Ortega quickly scanned their name badges and found three had them, one did not.

“Ms. Franklin, welcome aboard the Lighthouse.” He extended a hand, then quickly pulled it back when he realized she was still wearing her full suit. She was leaning against another for support, HARDING, G. Crew services.

Harding flipped up her visor and reached over and did the same for Emma standing awkwardly beside her and breathing hard. “She’s still disoriented from docking maneuvers and coriolis effects. The Hub is never an easy thing for first-timers.”

“Hi.” Emma managed a smile.

Ortega did his best at a smile. “Welcome aboard the Lighthouse,” he tried again. “Once you’re out of that suit I’ll help you get situated.” He nodded at Harding who gave him a funny look. He wasn’t sure what it meant but was wondering if he’d said something inappropriate already.

They had a lot of work to do and he was eager to get started on it.

Emma stumbled around in her suit as Harding helped her to the lockers. “Try to keep your head steady, no sudden movements or it could make you throw up. Welcome to the station.”

*

Mancuso sat back in his chair, wincing at the ceiling of the control room. The pain in his chest felt like it was spreading. Tendrils burrowing across his torso spreading from his armpit like needles. His arm was numb.

He was going to have to see Doctor Lau today. It couldn’t wait any longer. He popped an ibuprofen into his mouth and swallowed it, taking a sip of water from the bottle in the arm of his chair.

“Sir?” Bryce Nolan was standing in front of him. A young woman he recognized as Emma Franklin standing awkwardly beside him. Nelson Ortega stood behind them a short distance. “We have a new addition to our science team.”

Mancuso smiled and stood up. “Ms. Franklin. Welcome to the Lighthouse. So glad you could make it.” He extended his hand.

“Thank you, sir.” She smiled at him and shook his hand. The motion almost tipped her over and it took her a second to recover her balance.

“Flight was ok?”

She nodded. “Yes sir. Uneventful.”

“No need for all the ‘sirs’, Ms. Franklin. David or Mancuso or ‘hey you’ will do.”