by M. D. Cooper
The ship was delivering the raw materials needed to construct the new fleet of military ships. It was a regular supply vessel—arriving at an irregular time.
“What the hell is it doing here now? Linch,” Erin barked. Another of her deputies turned toward her. “Hail the captain of the Holgate. Tell whoever it is to immediately alter course spinward. MacCarthy, what’s happening with those columns?”
“I’ve got the drones moving them as fast as they can. One’s in place, but it isn’t having much of an effect. That last detonation had a big kick. A second is nearly there, and the others are close behind, but I’m guessing it’ll be another thirty minutes before we begin to regain some control.”
Erin couldn’t physically sense the moon adopting its new orbit—the control room’s gravity compensated for external motion—but she could imagine Laconia swinging out into the black, tugging at the grip of its planet. The satellite was like a toddler broken free from its parent and racing into the woods, unaware of the bugs it squished on its way.
“I can’t raise the Holgate,” Linch said.
“What?” Erin exclaimed.
“The ship’s in a blind spot, Sparta’s magnetic bands are blocking us. We won’t be able to make contact for another four minutes.”
Four minutes.
said Erin, who had just finished the mental calculation.
Erin gripped the rail in front of her. All she could see under the dim glow of the excavation lighting were the remnants of Laconia’s interior, floating gently toward the exit portal, and the rough walls of the moon’s inner shell. Outside, the mining vessels were safe; Laconia was drifting away from them. The Resolution and its passengers and crew were also free from danger in Captain Penny’s capable hands, as she moved them out of the moon’s path. But the Holgate….
The dumpy cargo ship was one of several brought ready-built aboard the Intrepid, all the way from Sol. Its current captain was a Victorian, Erin recalled, one of the roughly hundred thousand who had elected to join the journey to the colonists’ final home, New Canaan.
A former miner, the man would have been retrained in order to become a ship’s captain, though she couldn’t remember his name.
What she did know was he had less than a minute and a half to alter his ship’s course if he wanted to avoid a short, brief meeting with a large, hard rock. But a minute and half was plenty of time, providing the Holgate answered the Resolution’s hail right away.
The Holgate’s trajectory remained unchanged. If the ship had picked up the Resolution’s transmission, it wasn’t acting on it.
Erin said,
“Linch,” Erin said, “tell every ship in the vicinity to try to contact the Holgate. You know the message.”
Seconds ticked by while Erin struggled to find a way to avoid the impending disaster. The a-grav columns were out of the equation; they would never be in place in time to prevent the moon from gliding into the cargo ship’s path.
Another solution crossed off the list. There was an answer, though, Erin was sure of it. She just needed to reframe the problem.
Walter said,
Erin groaned. She couldn’t allow this to happen. There had to be twenty to thirty people aboard the Holgate, all blissfully unaware that an entire moon was bearing down on them.
Why aren’t they picking up our orbital drift on scan? We’re a freaking moon!
The Holgate wouldn’t stand a chance in a collision. On her screen, the dot that represented the cargo ship edged closer and closer to the sphere that was Laconia.
Gah, they just keep moving toward us…
Suddenly, the solution sprang into Erin’s mind.
At the same time, Walter said,
“On it,” the deputy engineer replied.
Altering the trajectory of an entire moon to avoid a spaceship was no simple task, but they’d shifted the moon into the Holgate’s vector, so they could just shift it further and get out of the way.
“Ma’am,” said Linch, “we have a problem. The coordinates are in, but it requires a detonation at a location that’s already completely excavated—there’s a fault running through it that we were planning to repair. If we fire off explosions where they’re needed to push us out of the Holgate’s path, we risk breaking through the crust.”
“Worst-case?” Erin asked.
“We set off a chain reaction, and Laconia shatters.”
“Shit!” swore Erin. “OK. Let me see.”
She studied an image of the moon’s topography, mentally running projections of the planned explosion’s force and the vector shifts. They needed to brace the exterior surface.
“MacCarthy, put those columns back right where they were. With a little luck, they’ll keep us in one piece.”
Just.
Erin replied.
She could hardly believe it. Laconia’s new path after the revised detonations would shift the moon into the Resolution’s inbound vector.
In all the space surrounding them, either one spaceship or another would be in their way.
“Drones have secured the devices, ma’am,” Linch said.
Walter said,
Erin replied. “Set them off, Linch.”
The engineer replied, “But the drones aren’t—”
“Now!”
Losing a few drones was insignificant compared to the greater dangers.
Seconds later, a blast at the eightieth latitude tore rock free from the interior of the moon. The explosion was only ten kilometers away, and the force of it shook the control room’s deck.
Out in the hollowed core, debris spun out into the void, chunks of rock smashing into the viewing platform’s shields.
Erin gritted her teeth. The shields were designed to hold atmosphere and handle light impacts; if a large enough chunk hit them, it could disrupt the field.
They should have enough warning to get to EV suits.
A ninety-meter s
lab of granite flew by, just a few meters from the platform, and Erin sucked in a breath while keeping an eye on the structural readouts, begging the stars to do her a favor and keep the rock together.
Behind her, no one else spoke, either—though she heard MacCarthy or Linch gasp a few times as well. Erin’s gaze was glued to the real-time image of the moon and the nearby ships.
The moon had picked up a wobble from the blast, just as she’d hoped. It wasn’t much, and the timing had to be just right, but so long as the Holgate held her course, the cargo freighter would slip a few hundred meters past the moon’s northern hemisphere.
So long as Laconia held together.
Erin held her breath, waiting for the crack of the moon’s fault line to spread wider.
As they spoke, the models on the vidscreens showed that the time for the explosions’ forces to dissipate had elapsed. The fault still held.
“We did it!” yelled Linch. “We’ve changed course. We’re going to miss the Holgate, and the Resolution’s moving out of our way.”
The updating scan readout echoed Linch’s words. They were no longer on a collision course. The massive sphere of Laconia was going to pass between the two tiny ships.
“Oohwee,” Erin exclaimed. “That was like a game of billiards.”
“A game that we won,” MacCarthy said. “I’ll move the a-gravs to ease us back into the right orbit.”
“Wait until after we repair the fault,” said Erin. “Those columns could be the only things keeping us in one piece.”
“Good point.”
“Ma’am,” said Linch. “The Holgate is hailing us.”
“She is? Better late than never.” Erin drew in a calming breath as the captain’s image appeared in her mind. She finally recalled his name: Dunworthy.
Silence.
“We’ve lost the Holgate, ma’am,” said Linch.
“I thought so.”
Erin pulled up a stool and sat down, resting her elbows on the railing. Laconia’s vast interior was nearly cleared of detritus once more. It hung, shadowy and empty in front of her. They would need to go very easy on the last few detonations. She made a mental note to quarter their size; it would take longer to finish the excavation, but they had time to spare.
Maybe I can convince Tanis to let me use an MDC for the final finesse work. Better that than cracking this thing in half.
“Are you hungry, ma’am?” Linch asked. “I thought I’d make us all some sandwiches. It’s going to take a while to repair that fault.”
“No, I’m OK. But could you bring me a cream soda?”
“Cream soda. OK.”
Erin supressed a groan and played dumb for her AI, hoping he’d see that her mind was too occupied with nearly dying and showing their hand to the Transcend.
As she rambled, Linch appeared at her side and handed her a cream soda.
His suspicious response wormed its way under her skin. Erin knew she should leave the conversation there, but his ‘hmm’ was too irritating to ignore.
Walter’s mention of Murry’s skills in matching personalities did not engender much trust. He’d paired her with Walter, after all.
“Commencing fault repair,” MacCarthy announced while Erin sipped her drink, trying to think of a response.
Which wouldn’t be for a long time.
She knew her AI meant well, but she had more important tasks on hand than finding a romantic partner.
“A data packet arrived for you a short while ago, ma’am,” Linch said. “Sorry, the emergency put it out of my mind.”
Linch’s timing made Erin wonder if her AI had just prompted the man to pass the packet along.
“Thanks. I’ll check it out.” She opened the packet and listened to the audio message.
Hi Erin. I got your latest report. Thanks for that. You’re doing a great job. Please pass on my commendations to your team.
Looks like you’re currently ahead of schedule, so I have a favor to ask. Tony’s having some trouble with the engineers here on Carthage… He’s gotten too mixed up in the local politics and personalities, and has lost sight of the fact that we don’t have long to get this colony built. I’ve shifted him to Athens, which is still important, but less critical.
What I need from you is to get essential transportation and public facilities in place on Carthage. You were instrumental in navigating that sort of thing back on Victoria and Tara. Folks have established some fiefdoms he
re already, so you’re going to have to navigate those while getting things back on-target.
I don’t want to put a hold on bringing the remainder of the Intrepid’s colonists out of stasis, but unless something is done, we’re going to have a real bottleneck on our hands. I’d get it in hand myself, but I’m running ragged, and have a tour of Gammas I and II coming up.
I need to leave the problem in the hands of someone I know I can trust. With Gamma III nearly complete, I believe you can have MacCarthy finish things up while you redirect your attentions. Please arrange for transport to Carthage within the week.
A chuckle came from Walter as the message ended.
Erin had a very strong suspicion she’d just been set up.
CARTHAGE
STELLAR DATE: 11.22.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Isa Chen took a deep breath before pressing her hand against the security panel outside her client’s door. As she waited for him to answer, three children burst out of a room down the corridor and raced past her, shrieking excitedly.
A man stuck his head out after them and called, “Anathea, Charlie, Keren. Come back here now.”
The two little boys and girl squealed and ran faster. Within a few seconds, they had disappeared around a corner and were gone. The man rolled his eyes and came out into the corridor.
As he reached Isa, he said, “A few thousand years in stasis gives you a lot of energy to burn off, apparently.”
She smiled in sympathy as he went after his mischievous children, then she pressed her client’s door panel again, growing somewhat irritated. Visiting clients for face-to-face consults was one of her least favorite parts of the job. It was rarely necessary—usually, the colonists were fine with searching the options on their own and finding themselves a niche in the fledgling Carthaginian economy. Most of the adults had experience and were very skilled in their chosen professions—they wouldn’t have been accepted onto the Intrepid project if they weren’t—and most knew exactly what they wanted to do. As soon as they were out of stasis, they quickly slotted into new jobs or started up businesses.
