Redemption of Sisyphus

by Eric Michael Craig

  Redemption

  of

  Sisyphus

  Shan Takhu Legacy: Book Three

  ERIC MICHAEL CRAIG

  Copyright © 2019 Eric Michael Craig

  All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author and publisher.

  Cover Design: Ducky Smith

  PUBLISHED BY

  Rivenstone Press

  Dramatis Personae

  Jephora Cochrane

  Commander Jakob Waltz

  Petra “Rocky” Rocovicz

  Chief Engineer Jakob Waltz

  Kiro Kamoto

  Pilot Jakob Waltz

  Shona McKeigh

  Navigator Jakob Waltz

  Alyx Donegal

  Sensor Technician Jakob Waltz

  Chei Lu

  Nuclear Specialist Jakob Waltz

  Dr. Danel Cross

  Geophysicist Jakob Waltz

  Dr. Anju Soresh

  Physician Jakob Waltz

  Corin Stone

  EVAOps Specialist Jakob Waltz

  Seva Johansen

  EVAOps Specialist Jakob Waltz

  Katryna Roja

  Chancellor FleetCartel

  Isao Nakamiru

  Admiral FleetCom Operations

  Jaxton Quintana

  Admiral L-2 Shipyard Ops FleetCom

  Ylva Visser

  First Officer L-2 Shipyard, FleetCom

  Gabriel Ducat

  OpsCom Officer L-2 Shipyard, FleetCom

  Hamid Roudini

  Executive Officer L-2 Shipyard, FleetCom

  Erin Sage

  Defense Coordinator L-2 Shipyard, FleetCom

  Graison Cartwright

  Chief of Staff for Chancellor Roja

  Carranza Pratte

  Commandant Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center

  Rachelle Pallassano

  Mayor New Hope City

  Elayne Jeffers

  Captain Armstrong, FleetCom

  Cassandra Mei

  Captain Challenger, FleetCom

  Carter Takata

  Captain Galen, FleetCom

  Nathaniel Evanston

  Captain Archer, FleetCom

  Tamir bin Ariqat

  Former Chancellor SourceCartel

  Derek Tomlinson

  Executive Director New Human Union

  Dr. Tana Drake

  Former Chancellor WellCartel

  Saffia Drake

  Wife of Dr. Tana Drake

  Kylla Torrance

  Former Proprietor Colorado Café

  Paulson Lassiter

  Former Advisor to Derek Tomlinson

  Edison Wentworth

  Former Investigator General

  Dr. Jahen Tanner

  Acting Director DevCartel Operations

  Dr. Ian Whitewind

  Science Officer, Hector

  Dr. Nisreen Sokat

  Director Robinson Biomedical Center

  Carlton Atwater

  Commodore Unaligned Fleet

  CHAPTER ONE

  Athabasca Valles: Elysium Planitia, Mars:

  Rocks and dust in an endless sea of red. Crashing over another stone wave, he would have screamed, except that he already had. So many times in fact, that his voice was nothing more than a rasping snarl. Instead, he gasped and hissed, biting back on a sob.

  He looked down at his hands covered in crimson, and beyond them to the floor where a spreading pool of blood crept from beneath his feet.

  Twenty kilometers, or fifty million. It didn’t matter. Betrayed and destined to die alone.

  Mars was a hollow-hearted mistress.

  Holding the tear in his stomach with one hand, he dragged himself up from the seat with the other, and using the edge of the instrument panel to stay steady, pulled himself back toward the medical gear locker.

  He needed another coat of skinseal.

  What he really needed was a doctor. And food. And water. But he had none of these things. So he made do with his own hands and the dwindling supply of everything in the rover.

  He could feel the layers of adhesive he’d already sprayed over the wound as he applied another coat and pressed his flesh back together. The thick glue wasn’t designed to hold a gash like this closed, but it was the best he could do.

  The pain was no longer on the surface of his skin, instead it radiated deep, feeling like steel fingers twisting his intestines with every bump or jostle. Sometimes it just grabbed and wrung the life out of him for no reason.

  Bouncing over another ridge sent him slamming into the edge of the table behind him. He clutched at his belly and howled as he collapsed to the floor in a pile of broken flesh.

  The darkness reached up to embrace him again.

  “Primary drive failure,” the autopilot repeated, hauling him slowly back to awareness. He had no idea how long he’d lain on the floor, but since there was no new puddle of red under him, either it hadn't been long, or the skinseal had held.

  Or I have no blood left to bleed out, he thought, almost laughing at the grim absurdity of the idea.

  “Primary drive failure,” it repeated, knifing into his awareness and punctuating the point with the realization that he wasn’t moving. “Power level critical,” it added offering an explanation to a question he had not yet assembled in his mind.

  “Where am I?” A map opened on the single screen that remained functioning. The rover had powered down all non-essential systems to keep life support and communications operational for as long as possible. Those two functions and the small AI that ran everything were all he had left.

  He crawled over to the control panel and climbed into the pilot’s seat to stare at the display. It took all his will to focus enough to understand the map. His route showed as a line from where he started, straight west to the edge of the crater in front of him. 318 klick from where he started.

  He could call for help, but he didn’t know if there was anyone to hear him. Mars was abandoned and there was no guarantee that anyone was still living in Robinson. Yet, he knew there might still be survivors in the base behind him. He couldn’t risk letting them know where he was.

  Leaning forward with a groan, he looked out through the windows and surveyed the landscape. To the right, a huge mountain rose a half kilometer above him and he could see the rim of the crater sweeping around and disappearing into the distance behind that. A smaller mountain angled away to the left in front of him, and a wide pass between the two ridges slanted downhill to the floor of the crater. The down-slope showed the direction to his destination.

  The sun was low in the sky behind him and still not visible except as a fiery glow reflecting off the far side of the valley floor. The air was a hazy pink-blue, and he searched for any sign of the colony dome.

  It had to be there.

  The steely fingers twisted at his guts again and he made his decision.

  It was his only choice. He had ten hours of daylight, and one good EVA suit in the airlock.

  It was only another sixteen kilometers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  RMC 040: en route to Lunar L-5

  The Goliath Class Raw Materials Carrier was on a run to pick up a load of bulk aluminum from the L-5 transfer. It had been two weeks since all hell broke loose, but the silence of routine had reasserted itself, and the two men that piloted this ship spent most of their time watching tri-vids or sleeping. They were still
almost twelve hours from reaching the station, so the navigator snored in his seat while the pilot fiddled with the video selection menu on his thinpad.

  The local com crackled, and both men jumped in their seats. “Source RMC zero-four-zero this is the Coronado, we’re requesting an emergency tow.”

  “Coronado, say again? Where are you?” the pilot asked, leaning forward and peering out the view port.

  “We’re drifting about 2000 klick in front of you and we need immediate help,” the voice said.

  “Copy, Coronado. What’s your situation?” he asked.

  “We’ve blown primary power and are on back up. With no engine, and only minimal life support, we need a tow to L-5 Transfer so we can make repairs. Cando?”

  Muting the com the pilot said, “Swing the scope around and let’s get a look at this.”

  After a minute of scanning with the long range optic they spotted the ship hanging in the darkness. “You look like a science vessel, why aren’t you calling DevControl for assistance?”

  “We’re not Dev. We’re a special. Copy?”

  “A special, as in Unaligned Fleet?” the copilot whispered, shaking his head. “No way.” Most SourceCartel ship operators knew there were a few unofficial ships operating in the system, but nobody ever saw them.

  After a long pause while they both stared at each other, the Coronado came on again. “Zero-four-zero, do you copy? I have codes.”

  “Roger, send them over,” the pilot said, watching as his AI matched the ID to the ship and produced an authentic unaligned confirmation. Muting the com again, he shrugged. “Scans clean.”

  “But sure stinks funny to me,” his copilot said, shaking his head.

  “Who am I speaking to?” the pilot asked as the display gave him the name of the commander of the Coronado.

  “Lee Brubaker, Commander,” the voice said.

  Right answer. “Last update shows you and your ship as missing.”

  “Well you found us, so we’re not missing anymore,” he said.

  “Yah. I can tell that, Brubaker. Don’t be a smart ass. What’s your story?”

  “I’m sure you heard about the stink storm at L-2? That was our party,” Brubaker said. “We took some hits, but we managed to get clear. We’ve been running dark and slow boating our way back to the platform. One of the love bites fragged an absorber plate in our primary reactor and the core chunked four days ago. The engineer says we need beryllium to refab, and we know there’s some at L-5. We just need to get a tow and then we’ll leave the zone. Come on man, throw us a tether and get us home. Cando?”

  “Stand by on that Coronado I need to run this up the stack and see who salutes,” the pilot said.

  “I’m not asking for cake and beer. Just needing you to drag us in to L-5.”

  “Roger. But you don’t get a blowjob without me asking momma. Give me a minute and I’ll get right back to making you happy.”

  “Just be quick about it, our batteries are flatlining,” Brubaker said.

  “I don’t like it,” his copilot said.

  “Yah, me too,” he said. “Crank the dish back around and let’s poke the hive to see if this swings in spec.”

  A warning claxon went off. “Proximity alert! Proximity alert! Incoming unidentified vessel.”

  “What the frak?” the copilot squawked as he jerked his hand away from the dish control.

  Their proximity radar screen lit up like someone had just dropped a wall behind them and an instant later a bright flash scattered their com dish in a spray of molten fragments.

  A new voice came over the local com. “Zero-four-zero, stand down and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Who the hell is this?” the pilot said.

  “This is the Kitty Hawk. I repeat, stand down. Failure to comply, will result in you having a long walk home. Do you copy?”

  “Roger Kitty Hawk,” he said. “We’re rolling out the welcome mat.” He looked over at his copilot and shrugged.

  “Coronado, we’ll take it from here,” the voice of the Kitty Hawk said.

  “Didn’t I tell you it’d be easy as shooting pork chops in a cloning vat?” Brubaker said.

  “Da. You’re good to go.”

  As they watched, the Coronado lit up and the main engines fired as it shot away.

  Clicking off the com, the pilot shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I just shit myself thinking about FleetCom going pirate.”

  “Yah, war’s an ugly business.”

  Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:

  Sitting empty, the landing platform they’d cobbled together from parts stolen from the Hector looked plenty big, but when the first wave of shuttlepods settled onto the mesh deck, it was tight. Not impossible for a good pilot, but if any of them had been sloppy, it might have been ugly.

  Fortunately, the current weather was calm. The gas cloud outside had almost reached the density of the Martian atmosphere, and although that wasn’t enough to be damaging to a ship, it could play hell on an approaching pod. It had also made the construction tougher than expected. With every passing day, the surface of L-4 Prime became more like the unpredictable and violent environment of a comet.

  As a result, what had been expected to be a weeklong effort to upgrade the docking facilities, had stretched to twenty days and required hundreds of EVA to get the work done. Outside, in the snow and wind.

  This brought another problem. Every time someone came in from the construction, a thin film of ammonia and methane snow covered their EVA suit. Pressurizing the airlock vaporized the crystals, but the added burden to the atmospheric filters left the ship smelling a lot like a urinal.

  “Are your recyclers malfunctioning?” Dr. Jameson said as he opened the inner door of the docking snorkel and wrinkled his face in a caricature of disgust.

  He caught the full brunt of Rocky’s glare and stepped back into the tube before Jeph laughed. “That’s the air outside,” he said. “Pretty ripe isn’t it.”

  “Somebody’s obviously not doing their job,” one of the other scientists said. She was standing behind Jameson with her face almost as contorted as his. “If you have that much air transfer you need to check for a hull breach.”

  “Is no breach. Not currently,” the engineer said, ratcheting her intensity up at least one order of magnitude and making it clear that if she had to put up with one more comment, she might seek to determine if a human body could penetrate the hull. The woman withered back behind Jameson, clearly realizing she’d pissed off the bear.

  Rocky turned away from the door. “All pods are safely anchored to landing deck. Unless is other task for me, I will be in my quarters. I have not slept in five shifts. This will undoubtedly affect survival prospects for some of our guests.”

  Jeph nodded, and she launched herself over the railing and down the chute in a perfect slow motion swan dive.

  Once she had fallen beyond sight, Jameson stepped back through the inner door and held out a package. “A gift from Chancellor Roja. I believe it is a bottle of her favorite scotch. She told me to tell you that despite the challenges, you’ve done well. And that she wishes you luck.”

  “With what?”

  He leaned forward and lowering his voice said, “These are all my department heads. They aren’t an easy bunch to manage.”

  “Ah, got it,” he said, winking. Clearing his throat, Jeph raised his voice enough to carry all the way to end of the docking tube. “Welcome to Gateway. Let’s get you all down to the CrewDeck and started on your orientation. It will take about two days to get you up to speed and then we’ll get you into the language matrix and let you get to work.”

  “We don’t need an orientation,” The same woman said, snorting. “I’m sure you’re not used to dealing with academics, but it’s not the same as dealing with a bunch of ice jockeys. We’ve all read the background brief you provided, so no offense but it would be a waste of time for us to go back over what you’ve already done.”

  Jeph shot Dr. Jameson a sh
arp eye and he nodded. Spank her if you need to.

  “So tell me, what’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Doctor Arianna Ash,” she said, emphasizing her title with a hint of pomp.

  “She just got that fancy degree didn’t she?” he asked, swinging his attention from Jameson back to her. “I can tell you’ve never worked in the field have you, Arianna?”

  The woman bristled at his casual familiarity, but shook her head.

  “Electrodynamic systems?” he said. “Vesta Institute with honors. Class of 2238.”

  She blinked in surprise. “You’ve heard of me?”

  “No, not at all,” he said. “But I have been in the field, out here specifically, since just after you got out of school. And I have twenty years of FleetCom command experience before that. Do you know what that means?”

  She shook her head again.

  “It means I know how to read your personnel file,” he said, rubbing his nose to hide his smile. “It also means I know you’ve been assigned to team four.”

  “I’d prefer to lead my own team. I’m sure I can cover more—”

  “You will be on team four,” Jeph said. “When you complete your orientation, you will be working with Petra Rocovicz.”

  “Who?” she asked, looking around at the other scientists around her.

  “Thank you Arianna, you just made my point,” he said, raising his voice so all the scientists could hear him. “The first rule in field work is to know the topography of the environment. In that, you’ve already failed.”

  She looked confused and more than a little insulted.

  “You don’t know who Rocky is, but she does know you. You’ve already insulted her, and she loves to hold a grudge. Sometimes for decades.”