Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (8 page)

She ran a few simulations to see what an intercept with Pandora would look like. For them to catch up, it would take them more than three weeks of heavy burns and they’d be well-past Mars and out of fuel by the time they arrived. She included intercepts for both Calypso and Making Time. Calypso was almost reachable but fuel was still a problem. Making Time was definitely in range if she altered course now. Maybe even with some fuel left over to play with.

She started plotting the course.

“Whatcha doin’, Skip?” Reggie Talbot had an annoying habit of sneaking into the cockpit without making a noise. Francine had considered putting a bell around his neck.

“Plotting some intercept courses.” Their current flight-plan was overlaid on top of a new, emerging trajectory on the big screen in front of them.

Reggie whistled. “Those are some heavy gees, skip. What’s the hurry?” He picked out Making Time on the chart. “Got a date with Wheeler?”

Francine stopped what she was doing and replaced the plots on screen with the message she’d received from Control. She turned her chair and watched Reggie impassively while he read it. Sometimes his smart-assed attitude grated on her. Cocky pilots.

We have lost contact with Pandora. Advising all ships take caution…

He read. The smirk vanishing from his face. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. Why don’t you get the crew up. Meeting in five.”

“Aye, skip.” Reggie dropped through the hatch out of the cockpit. Francine resumed her calculations.

*

Five minutes later, the crew had assembled in the galley and gathered around the table. Captain Pohl climbed down the ladder and dropped into the room on her boots.

“Sorry to wake you, Vanessa. We just got a message from Control thirty minutes ago. It’s not easy news. No point in sugar-coating it. We’ve lost Pandora.”

Captain Pohl let that sit for a minute, watching the reactions on her crew. Reggie’d already heard the news. Vanessa Macgregor was still waking up.

Winston Avery was hearing this for the first time as well. He blinked, staring at his captain. “Aw, shit. Any survivors?”

“Unknown, Winston. Only data we have is text-only and some coordinates at the moment.” Francine looked around.

“Malfunction? Collision? …” Vanessa was processing out loud. Waking up quickly.

Francine wrung her hands. “We don’t know that either. This is the extent of the message. It’s on your tablets if you want to read but right now, that’s all the detail we have.”

She paused. “I wish we knew more. In the meantime, check your schedules. No free time. I want diagnostics on every system on the ship. Run the checklist. Then run it again. We may have some hard burns ahead and I want everything tip-top. Dismissed.”

Captain Pohl waited for her crew to get themselves together before she turned back to the ladder and climbed back up to the cockpit.

Vanessa turned to Winston and blinked, her hair forming a curly cloud around her head. “Is there any coffee?”
 

019

New Providence: Nicola Tesla University.

“Last class we talked about twenty first century Earth. It was the greatest period of technological advancement in human history and we achieved everything we needed in order to start this colony. Huge advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and fusion technology gave us the ability to leave our home planet and set foot on Mars. We’d cured most cancers and were on the verge of extending human life.”

Professor Victor Simenko was gathering his thoughts, pacing in front of the forty students in his twentieth century history class. “Of course, only those with money could afford those kinds of treatments. With all those advances, there was a massive shift in economics. The wealthiest people owned, well, most of the planet and everyone else didn’t have much to do. It was easy to find volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars.”

Sometimes he found it useful to ask questions to trigger a narrative. This was one of those times. “Who can tell me: what year did the Great Collapse take place?”

He looked around. “Mister Pohl? You’ve deigned to grace us with your presence today, when did it happen?”

Greg looked up from his tablet at the back of the room. “March 11, 2053.”

“Right on. Three, eleven, fifty-three. Historians have been trying to find meaning in those numbers for the past century, but honestly, they’re just numbers. I don’t think the progenitors had any intention of picking a date. It just happened.”

Greg hissed to Tamra beside him. “It’s a prime.”

Professor Simenko paused, turned on his heel and kept walking.

“We named them The Progenitors. We don’t really know who they were, but they were successful in creating the intelligence that ultimately destroyed the Earth. And it happened very quickly.”

“What we were able to learn from the final broadcasts from Earth was that the intelligence escalated rapidly. In a matter of hours it had taken control of every piece of electronics and computing machinery on the planet. Humanity was totally unprepared for it.”

A couple of hands went up in the room, Dr. Simenko pointed to Joe Price, “Yes, Mr. Price?”

Joe raised his voice tentatively. “How did it take control of the computers?”

Simenko nodded. “Ah. The computer scientists here on Mars theorized that the intelligence made use of known exploits in the computing platforms of the day. They were easy to find, of course. Lists of documented known exploits had been around for decades. Many machines were just never patched. The escalations were scriptable. Children were capable of exploiting a single computer with readily-available tools. Large botnets of infected computers were already running all over the planet unbeknownst to most of the machines’ owners. Weak AI had been available for twenty years and ran in everything from toasters to personal automobiles. A powerful artificial intelligence with the equivalent computing resources of all the super computers in the world was able to exploit everything. Nearly instantly.”

He paused again. Looked around the room. It was a dramatic lecture. Everybody knew the story but he still relished in its telling. “It was the great turning point in modern history. The end of the technological age. It signified the beginning of a new age of Martian history.”

Simenko was about to launch back into his narrative but saw a hand up in the middle of the room. He pointed to the student. “Yes, Derek?”

“But how was this possible? How could a computer program just take everything over? Other… computer programs?”

Simenko looked around. “Anybody want to answer Mister Branson?” A couple of students were sniffling. He walked around to his desk and opened a drawer, taking out a bottle of zinc tablets and popping one into his mouth. “Miss Wheeler? What do you think?”

Tamra looked up from the back of the class, wiped her nose on a handkerchief. “Earth computers were all connected all day, all the time to the internet. Phones, tablets, everything. Even people’s kitchens were full of computerized appliances.”

Professor Simenko nodded, “Thank you, Miss Wheeler.”

Derek still looked confused. “But what could a program do even if it took control of the computers? They’re just machines.”

“Thank you for the excellent segue, Mister Branson.” Simenko resumed pacing again. “By the 2050s, everything on the planet was connected. Even without wires, the ubiquity of wireless connectivity meant that everything was on all the time. Most of these devices were even broadcasting their presence, looking for their neighbors and setting up adhoc wireless networks that covered the planet. Grid networking was fully in place by then.”

“When the Intelligence took over – we think – every vehicle – cars, aircraft, sea-going vessels – were all under its control. All of the communications infrastructure. Every manufacturing plant on the planet had already been built up to be automated, requiring very little human supervision.”

Joe Price put up his hand and Professor Simenko pointed at him and nodded. “How come the … Intelligence didn’t get off the planet? Why wasn’t Mars affected?”

“Yes! Good question. We don’t really know what happened. Not exactly. Communications stopped altogether. All at once. We think something happened to the satellites in Earth orbit. The only signal that got out was the Last Transmission and I think it’s salient that it was transmitted in analog. I’ll finish with the footage from the International Space Station.”

Simenko killed the lights in the room and played the video. The class went quiet.

The video faded into the harrowed face and torso of Commander Frank Czerny in his blue ISS jumpsuit aboard the station. His voice frantic. “We have just received a broadcast from Earth on emergency radio frequency. Can we play it back?”

Off-camera, some controls can be heard as the view drifts down from Czerny through the clear glass cupola in the floor pointing down at Earth. A voice begins playing back as the Earth wheels below, blue oceans, white clouds, greens and browns of southern Europe and northern Africa. The light brown sea of the Sahara rolls into view.

“ISS, this is Houston. John Perry, mission specialist. Something’s… Something is happening down here. Our computers are all locked up. Won’t let us log in. Power is fluctuating. Nothing’s working. Are you getting this?” Sound of panic in his voice. “Our displays are showing…” Another voice, shouting, “Another launch!” Perry continued, “missile launch sites. I think whatever’s doing this is launching… everything. We’ve lost communications. Even radio is being jammed. If you can hear this…” Something loud and abrupt ended the transmission from the surface. A quick crack over the low-quality signal that ended in static.

Streaking through the stratosphere, white trails were tracing lines high above the surface of the planet. Off-screen a voice in Russian, “yobany vrot!”

Orange flashes began blooming all over the planet, turning into white clouds obscuring everything underneath. The voice of Commander Czerny, shaky, “Oh my God. Everything…” More flashes from the surface. Orange flowers lit up all over northern Asia, southern Asia. The Americas rolled into view under bright white plumes, lightning flashing from deep within. Orange bubbles fading to magma red circles glowing through the cloud cover. The camera drifted sideways and turned, bringing some of the station interior back into view, out of focus. Someone grabbed the camera and pointed it back at Czerny, focusing but unsteadily.

“Mars Colony, this is Commander Frank Czerny aboard the International Space Station, Earth orbit. We have just witnessed… Nuclear strikes covering the surface of the planet. Everything.” He looked down through the inverted dome of the station’s window. Back at the camera. “We will continue to broadcast for as long as we are able. Be safe… You are all of us.”

He reached for the camera, pointed it back at Andrey Demidov, the Russian mission specialist who’d been operating the video. His face streaked with tears. Video faded out.

Simenko brought the lights up, looked around the room of quiet students. “You are all of us.” He repeated solemnly.

He was about to continue when a knock on the classroom door interrupted him. The door swung open and administrator Brennan stuck his head in. “Sorry Victor. Excuse me. Would Pohl, Wheeler and Franklin come with me, please?”

Greg, Tamra and Emma looked at one another, got up and walked out. Greg nodded at Professor Simenko on his way out.
 

020

Calypso.

“Killing power in five…” Captain Edson Franklin pulled the throttle back dropping the ship out of acceleration, the engine instantly shutting down. The interior of the ship rang like a bell as the gravity disappeared. Carl Lambert groaned and stretched in the co-pilot’s seat beside him, suddenly weightless.

The carrier signal indicator lit up and Edson opened a comm channel. “Mars Control, this is MSS18 Calypso. We have terminated burn. Requesting any and all data on the Pandora event. Send me all you’ve got. Over.”

Ben Jordan floated up into the cockpit, squeezed past the Captain into his jump seat and buckled in.

Edson released the locks on his chair and swivelled around, light in the zero gravity. “Any suggestions while we wait?”

Ben shrugged. “Keep burning. Whatever happened to Pandora was probably a fluke. Maybe they had an engine problem?” They still hadn’t seen the footage from the station.

Carl nodded. “Agreed, but we might as well see what Control has for us in the meantime.”

Something about this worried Edson and he pulled on his goatee. Their ships were getting old, but they’d never had an event like this happen before. “What could make one of our ships explode like that? Any ideas?”

Carl and Ben looked at each other. Ben shrugged. “It’d be hard, right? These engines don’t just turn into fusion bombs because they’re running on hydrogen.” Slight hesitation. “Ship fuel needs a big pile of energy to go nova. Needs power to sustain a reaction.”

Carl thought for a second, frowned. “If it wasn’t the engine, but a chemical reaction you’d need a container of some sort. And some way to start it. And the right temperatures and pressures to keep them where you needed them as either gas or liquid.” Edson could tell he was still thinking. “Could an explosion in the hab section do that? Or one of their fuel pods?”