Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (21 page)

Ortega stood up taking his tablet. He nodded and walked out without a word. Emma watched him leave through the door then looked back at Wilkins.

Dan smiled. “He’s a bit different, isn’t he?”

She looked around, still no Commander. She wasn’t sure what she should be doing today, so she just started pulling up the feeds from Watchtower and looked at the nav board.

MSS02H had become a dashed line sometime around 0400. Loss of telemetry.

She checked on Calypso and saw she was adrift. Getting some sleep, she hoped.

She opened up her messages. Nothing since Jerem yesterday. She typed out a good morning message to her dad, then one to Jerem. She looked around. Still only 6:30. She’d call her mom later.

Emma felt an uneasiness take hold in her stomach and she frowned at her panel, not sure what to do.

“Um, Dan?”

Dan’s head popped around the divider. “Yes?”

“You said you had some stuff I could help out with?”

“Oh do I.” Dan retreated behind the divider. “Computer, send all unidentified Points of Interest from before yesterday to Emma Franklin’s station.”

A stream of notifications started pouring across Emma’s screen.

“You’ll want to crosscheck those against the New Mars Near Space Catalog. When you’re done with those I’ve got some diagnostic reports from the imaging terminals for you to look at.”

Emma frowned. “Thanks.”
 

054

The Terror.

“We’ve lost our antenna!” Reggie had climbed up into the cockpit’s nose and was looking out over the top of the ship from the bubble.

“You mean it’s misaligned?” Captain Pohl was at her console, checking systems.

“No, I mean it’s gone. There is no antenna.” Reggie looked out at the stump that used to connect their antenna to the ship. A mass of wires were exposed. One of them tossed some sparks for a second as it flopped onto the hull.

Vanessa shook her head. “Not good.”

“Any other damage?” Francine was checking their navigation charts. There shouldn’t be anything out here.

“Nothin’ I can see from here.”

Vanessa sat down at her console beside the captain and reached into the bag for her FPV helmet. “Skip, I’m taking Spot outside.”

Francine nodded acknowledgement as Reggie climbed down.

Winston stuck his head up into the cockpit. “I can’t see anything else below. Cargo’s still leaking though.”

“Ok, buckle up.”

A hissing sound like sand on a sheet of paper filled the cockpit and the three of them looked up at the windows in the ship’s nose.

“Dust. I think we’re in an asteroid field.” Francine turned to Vanessa who hadn’t put her visor down yet. “Be careful with that thing. That might be our only usable radio.”

“Aye, mam.” Vanessa flipped her visor down and they felt a bump as the Pup detached.

Francine put the video on the screen and the view switched from ship forward to that of the drone Vanessa was piloting. The hull of The Terror filled the screen as the drone moved off of them. The view tilted and the ship slid away as Vanessa pitched the Pup up and fired its main thruster.

A brief boom inside The Terror as the Pup boosted away.

“Easy Vanessa.” Francine grimaced, not relishing the idea of a stream of high-speed ions from the Pup’s hall-effect motor popping a hole in her hull.

“Sorry, skip.”

The view tilted again and The Terror came back into view, much smaller this time. The entire ship visible. The view zoomed in and the ship filled the screen. They went over the outside, the antenna breakage clearly visible. A thin line scored into the skin of the ship behind the antenna mount where something had ricocheted off the surface.

“Like I said. Gone.” Reggie grimaced.

“How long to make us a new one?” Francine figured she could make one in a few hours, but liked to let the engineers do their own estimates.

Reggie rubbed his chin. Probably a couple of hours. If we can get the wiring right. He grabbed his tablet out of his chair and started pulling up schematics.

Reggie to Winston. “We have some aluminum sheeting down in the locker, don’t we?”

Avery nodded. “Think so.”

“Yeah, we can do this.”

Francine took the controls and started rotating the ship. The view on screen slid around until the belly of the ship was in view. Vanessa moved the view point around until they could see the hole that was causing their water leak.

The hole looked to be about the size of a soccer ball.

Reggie gaped. “Jesus. If that’d hit a fuel tank…”

“Or the cockpit.”

Captain Pohl gritted her teeth. “Everybody in suits! Vanessa, I want you to take one good look ahead and to port of us, narrow sweeps. I’ll coordinate with you on direction. Everybody else, get to work. We’ll do an EVA in 2 hours for repairs.”

Reggie and Winston slid out of the cockpit down to the equipment room. Vanessa stayed in her seat piloting the Pup.

Francine turned to Vanessa. “Vanessa, I want you to put Spot on station-keeping and get into your suit. On the double.”

Vanessa considered arguing, thought better of it and locked the drone in place. “Aye, mam.” She put the Pup on auto, took off her helmet and disconnected from the station. She dropped below.

“When you’re back I’ll get mine.”

Francine started looking for a way out. Not an easy task considering she had no idea how large this debris field was. Nobody had ever taken this route below the ecliptic.

She felt it had to be an asteroid group with a high eccentricity like the Hildas but without any large bodies their telescopes would spot. She couldn’t radio the station for additional details about the region so what they had on board was it. Maybe that was the whole field, just remnants of a small rock blasted apart in some ancient collision.

Francine hoped they were just on the edge of it and could head back into charted territory without any more danger. She raised the nose of the ship and vectored back up towards safer space.
 

055

New Providence.

Greg sat in the cramped metal office of Merl Granger at the New Providence Civil Services Bureau. He was sitting across the desk from a large man peering into a battered old tablet through a pair of scratched-up reading glasses.

“Mr. Pohl. Says here you’re ‘agoraphobic’?”

Greg sighed. “It was a temporary condition. My first time on the surface.”

Merl looked at him over the rims of his glasses. “How do you know? Seeing more of that, you know. People living underground can’t handle a sky over them anymore.” He looked back at his tablet and continued reading aloud. “Astrodynamics, engineering, math, geology, some arts crap. You were an ace student until earlier this year. What happened?”

“I failed the suit test. Stopped going to classes.”

“Yeah, but there’s still plenty you could do down here with that science background.”

Greg shrugged. “I wanted to crew on my mom’s ship. Eventually get a ship of my own.”

“Always have a backup plan, kid.” Merl sat back in his chair and flipped his glasses onto the desk. He studied Greg for a second, Greg shifted uncomfortably in the hard metal chair.

Eventually, Merl broke the silence. “Here’s the thing. I wish you had more biology or agriculture on your CV. The flu’s got a bunch of the farm crews down. But this agoraphobia thing would probably not be helpful there. In the domes.” He pointed a finger up.

Greg shifted in his chair. He had no interest in farming. He’d always been sure he’d go to space.

“But I can use an engineer, kid. We’re down one tunnel crew and have a few more off sick with this flu. You wanted to work a mining ship. This is the next best thing.” Merl did his best to make it sound like it would be a good time.

Greg nodded. It figured. Nobody in the colony wanted to work in the mines. It was scary, dangerous work. There’d just been a collapse this week and it wasn’t the first in recent memory.

“Hey, there’s some good people on this crew. They’ll take care o’ you.” Merl made some entries in his tablet. “Go see Cary Jensen over in Tunnel Engineering. She’ll get you set up.”

Great.

“Could you send in the next person in line? Thanks, Greg. Nice meeting you.” Merl waved at him and then turned back to his tablet, fishing his glasses up off the desk. He was already forgetting about Greg.

Greg got up and left the office. “Yer up.” He jerked a thumb towards the door at the next person in the line. A scrawny kid with boots too big for him squinted up. He clomped into the office, and closed the door like he owned the place.

Greg scanned the wall map and found Cary Jensen’s office on the first floor. He made his way down there on the metal stairs of the Civil Services building.

He passed people climbing the stairs on their way back to work for the day. Most of the people in Civil Services worked in their cramped metal offices all day, assigning work to people where it was needed or connecting citizens with other services. Most requests for materials and people came through these offices and they’d become an essential hub for the humans living in New Providence.

Greg couldn’t imagine working here.

First floor. Greg stomped through the hall in what he hoped was the right direction to the office he was looking for. A group of large men in coveralls were clustered outside the office giving him the eye as he approached. He checked the door. Number 121 - Cary Jensen.

One of the men nodded at Greg. “Hey. You new meat?”

Greg wasn’t sure where this was going. “Looking for Jensen’s office. This is it.”

The guy grinned and elbowed one of his buddies. “Yeah. He’s new meat. Go on in.” He made a grand gesture of making way for the door.

Greg squeezed between them. “Thanks. Excuse me.”

The men laughed. One of them tittered in a high pitched girly voice that put Greg on edge.

Greg opened the door and squeezed into another cramped metal office. A woman sat behind the desk and looked up at him.

“Hi. You must be Greg. You ready to go?”

Greg barely nodded before she continued.

“Train’s leaving in fifteen. You already met your work crew outside. They were waiting for you. Let’s go.”

“How long are we leaving for? I didn’t pack anything or anything.” Greg stammered.

“A week or two. Don’t worry about it, we’ll provide you with whatever you need.”

She got up and Greg felt his heart flutter in his chest as the blood drained from his head.
 

056

Making Time.

Jerem had been up watching the nav displays and videos of the object for most of the night. The Calypso still wasn’t powered up. He started to wonder if they were having a problem.

The dash-dotted line of the bogey was approaching their position. Ten hours until they intersect. Had the frequency of the flashes changed? They looked closer together.

Making Time was still receiving telemetry from Lighthouse, but no additional data packages since last night. No messages from Emma.

He’d written a note to his sister. He told her he missed her and Dad was asking about her. This last thing wasn’t true, but he figured she’d appreciate hearing it. He hoped she was ok, but he was also bored and just wanted somebody to talk to. Tamra was usually more chatty on these trips and he missed hearing from her.

The worst part of these transits was the boredom and not knowing what was going on back home. The news reports about the flu virus were worrisome. The colony was always preoccupied with the threat of an epidemic, or a shortage of materials, water or food. It felt like the colony was always on the verge of disaster. It was unsettling if you spent any time thinking about it.

Jerem yawned as his father climbed up into the cockpit.

“Mornin’ Jer. You been up all night?”

Jerem rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Anything new?”

“Not really. Still nothing from Calypso. They’ve just been drifting, but no messages. Nothing from Control other than telemetry pings.”

Hal checked the nav screens and rubbed his beard. “Wonder what they’re up to.”

Calypso’s last-filed flight plans continued on as a dim line ahead of them on the board. Right into the event bubble. Their current drift didn’t change that outcome much, it didn’t put them in as deep and shrunk their destination volume as they got closer to it. Less variability and a shorter time-frame meant it was easier to predict their exact location in space.

Hal scratched the back of his head. “You should grab some rack time. I’m going to make some coffee and grab a breakfast bar.”

“Yeah, will do. Hey, I sent Tam a message. You should send her one too if you get bored.”

“Ok. I will.”

Hal dropped below to fix his sparse breakfast. Jerem thought about the last eggs he’d been saving for a special treat. They were down to ration packs and dry bars and he was getting pretty sick of beans.