by Brian Smith
“So it goes, Mr. Ford, so it goes,” Keith said, his smile slipping. The memorial services for the fallen were hard, but well behind them now. “All right, enough yack,” Keith added. “I’ll let you get to work. Let’s meet tonight after the eight o’clock reports and review our progress. Medals or no medals, we still have a ship to run.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Ford replied.
He turned to, immersing himself in the ship’s business and the million small details he was responsible for daily. He was excited at the prospect of being awarded the Silver Star—any officer would be. At the same time, it bothered him to receive such an award when some of his shipmates hadn’t come back. He supposed the same was probably true of most incidents in history when decorations were awarded—pride mixed with remorse, and accomplishment versus loss. What struck him most was his desire to call up Diane Hutton and tell her about the honor before he told anyone else, including his parents—that meant something, but he wasn’t quite sure what yet. Their few days together had been like heaven, and she’d acknowledged that something was kindling between them before he’d left New Arizona. All the while as he worked, his mind kept straying back to the dark beauty that had captivated him so completely since the first time he’d seen her. He couldn’t wait to see her again.
August 2093 (Terran Calendar)
Titan
Torchship Thuvia sat in a comfortable orbit over Titan, almost finished with the process of loading and unloading. As Captain Ashburn had mentioned to Campbell a month before, the deliveries on this trip were being handled differently from those of his prior run in Dejah Thoris. This time the payloads were being dropped at Chusuk Station rather than directly at Janus Field. Janus employees would have to convoy overland in their big industrial rovers to load up the cargoes and drive them back. It didn’t make any difference to Barsoom Traders; the transfer costs from orbit to the surface were the same either way, and the added overhead of moving the cargo overland was paid for by Janus Industries. Not only that, Chusuk Station was a much nicer place to call, with actual amenities.
Jerry Sommers scratched his head and clucked over the inefficiency of it, but since it wasn’t money he had to account for, he didn’t spare any worry about it. He had enough work to do himself: as Thuvia’s cargo hold gradually emptied out, the ship began taking deliveries of large tanks of liquid methane to replace it.
Liquid methane occurred naturally on Titan and in large amounts, thereby making it dirt cheap. In fact, most of the cost of acquiring it was spent tanking it and transporting it to orbit—the methane itself was next to free by comparison. However, out in the Trojans in Jupiter’s Lagrange points, it could be traded at a profit for precious metals worth a fortune on Earth. That was how the triangle trade worked in the twenty-first century.
There would have been one advantage to making a delivery or two directly to Janus Station: it would have made Ashburn’s favor for Bill Campbell a lot easier to accomplish. He could still do the favor, but it was going to be a little less transparent to the overall operation and slightly more costly—something he objected to not only on general principle, but it meant he had to bring Jerry Sommers into his confidence. The purser was just too sharp a comptroller not to notice when the ship’s captain flew an irrational and fuel-expensive trajectory to and from Chusuk Station. Ashburn called Sommers to his cabin that morning and informed the purser that he would fly the final run to Titan’s surface and back, and that the fuel numbers were going to look funny when Sommers balanced his accounts.
Sommers pressed Ashburn on it as expected, probably more so than he’d have done if not for their friendship. Ashburn knew that from the purser’s perspective these concerns were valid, and he didn’t want to shut Sommers down by pulling rank—that was no way to lead or engender trust, in his book. He told the truth instead: that he had agreed to do Campbell a favor, that Boss Forester was in the information loop on it (Ashburn had seen to that, personally getting Forester’s approval for Campbell’s “favor” despite the latter’s assurances), and that Thuvia’s account would be reimbursed accordingly.
Sommers was intrigued by it all but worried about his record and reputation; the assurance that the extra expense wouldn’t count against Thuvia’s company numbers laid his fears to rest, though.
Ironically, the last run to Chusuk didn’t even involve any payload for Janus Industries. It was the last of the cargo for one of the other startup companies, and it was only materiel, with no passengers. Everyone transporting to the surface of Titan had gone down in the first few runs, so the only two people aboard Banth One right now were Ashburn and his loadmaster, who’d also been briefed that this run would be a little longer and would follow a different course. He’d thought about making a separate, empty run with no payload and nobody aboard but himself, a veritable “captain’s joyride,” but that would have raised too many red flags among his crew and started the tongues wagging. No company captain in his right mind would eat the overhead of a spaceplane flight “just for fun,” not when the expense had to be applied to the ship’s (and by extension the company’s) accounts. In the interest of maintaining the appearance of normalcy, this was the best way he could think to do it.
Sealed up in Banth One, Ashburn ran through his checklists and brought all the systems online. As he had many times before on this trip to Titan and the one prior, he undocked Banth One from Thuvia and began his planetfall. Banth One finished her reentry phase; once Thuvia had vanished below the moon’s horizon somewhere behind them, Ashburn loaded his new precomputed flight plan into the flight computer and activated it. He sat back and enjoyed the sensations as the spaceplane banked around in the high upper atmosphere, coming to a new course. The profile put her on a hypersonic glide, then a supersonic one, as she came down fast.
Next, he shut off the networking and transponders, divorcing Banth One from all contact with the outside world until he commanded otherwise. Minutes rolled by. Minutes during which he thought about his past life flying smaller, heavily armed endo/exo fighters designed to do what he was doing now in a comparatively fat commercial spaceplane—one with no electronic-warfare suite, stealth protocols, countermeasures, or weapons systems. It occurred to him, not for the first time since Campbell had asked this favor of him, that he was dipping his toe into the world of corporate espionage, a dangerous world where people doing this sort of thing could (and often did) vanish without a trace.
Using skills he’d sharpened in his former career, Ashburn chose the optimum altitude based on Titan’s curvature, atmospheric haze, and air density, and the capabilities of Banth One’s sensors. It was all a balancing act: make the approach too high and he’d be visible very early to anyone who might be keeping watch; a low, nap-of-the-earth approach would keep him masked below the horizon a lot longer, but he wouldn’t get the area coverage he needed for the sensor run. Also, Titan’s thicker air meant that a low-altitude run would speed-restrict him, and if he needed to light the torch and burn for their lives, Banth One could simply shred apart under the aerodynamic stress—she wasn’t built for combat flight profiles. Titan’s smoggy air would also affect the quality of the data he could obtain: too much murk between himself and the ground would degrade radar and lidar resolution due to attenuation and scatter, giving him another variable to factor in.
The inbound run was the easy one. He wasn’t overflying Janus Station on this run; instead, the flight plan was taking them right over the coordinates Campbell had asked him to memorize: the spot in the bare wilderness of Titan’s Buzzell Planitia where Ashburn had dropped some of the Tafuna Yaro people and their equipment last time. Since there was no reason to expect that anyone was there right now or even knew about the site, he could have flown a higher, much lazier profile and gotten the information he was after. Instead, he was treating it as a rehearsal run for the overflight of Janus Station planned for the return trip.
Banth One leveled off at the optimum altitude and her engines throatily roared to life, transf
orming the ship from glider to powered aircraft. Her wingbody shape morphed for supersonic flight, modulating itself to minimize the sonic boom that would be perceived on the ground below.
Ashburn switched over to virtual “clear cockpit”; he was a genie riding his magic carpet again, but this time his viewing perspective was that of the ship’s high-resolution terrain-mapping radar function. Mil-grade tactical sensors would have been ideal for what he was doing, but that was gear a ship like Banth One had no need for. His view of the outside world was somewhat monochromatic, a variation of black sky, with shades of gray and black on the surface, showing him terrain features in stark relief. He was looking at a raw data feed now and recording it. This data was what the spaceplane’s terrain radar was actually painting, not the pregenerated database commonly used for ground proximity and terrain avoidance.
The sensation of speed was thrilling as Banth One hurtled over the surface. The horizon was much closer than on Earth, its curvature more pronounced as the surface sped by beneath his feet. Ashburn’s hands were never far from the controls; he could take over in an instant, and the fusion reactor was already running hot and standing by if he needed to point her toward space and throttle up the torch. The plume would consume anything (like a missile) that was close in her wake; it was the only real means of defense available, should they need one.
Ashburn was aware of his pulse and respiration rates picking up as the coordinates drew closer. What the hell am I worried about? There shouldn’t be anything there except whatever Campbell’s people left last time! he told himself. It didn’t help.
Right on cue, the terrain radar suddenly picked up a brighter, more regular-shaped surface return, rolling over the horizon and sliding rapidly toward them. It would pass directly under them—Ashburn’s navigation was spot on. He sent a command to Banth One, edging her down slightly in altitude for a close pass and kicking their speed up to the computed redline for the current atmospheric conditions. The spaceplane overflew the coordinates like a rifle bullet, high overhead and invisible to the naked eye in the dark murk, leaving a crackling, rumbling thunder rolling along the surface in her wake.
If a sonic boom hits the surface of Titan and there’s nobody there to hear it, does that make this a stealth ship? he joked to himself. It didn’t help. His heart was still going like a triphammer and didn’t let up until the coordinates slid below the horizon behind him. He eased back on the speed and let the spaceplane climb, trading off more energy for altitude as he blew out a deep breath and went about turning the ship on course for Chusuk Station.
Ashburn copied the raw data to a hard data chip, removed it, and then erased the information from the ship’s memory; the only record would be the data chip itself. He didn’t turn on the transponder or reactivate the ship’s networking until after that was done and he was well clear. Campbell had been adamant about keeping the data off any sort of network or data feed—cybersecurity stuff, beyond Ashburn’s ken—but he understood the call for caution.
He thought about what he’d seen as Banth One went over. There hadn’t been much, but then again, he never really expected much, based on the cargo he’d dropped on his previous trip. Campbell had never confided in him as to what he’d built there, nor did Ashburn really care. It looked like a rectangular bunker of some sort, perhaps a half klick long and a quarter that in width.
It wasn’t deserted, though: the high-resolution radar picture depicted the presence of one of those industrial-size rovers, sitting at one end of the structure. The resolution wasn’t good enough to break out individuals or smaller equipment, but the rover itself was large enough to generate a recognizable return. He couldn’t help but wonder if that would come as a surprise to Campbell or not, but ultimately it wasn’t his concern. Thermal imaging indicated that the bunker was cold—no heat above ambient at all, and only the merest indications of thermal energy coming from the rover itself. The pass had been too fast to give the IR cameras much time to record anything; just as with the radar returns, there were no flecks of color to indicate the presence of individual people down there.
He thought about the data he could have gotten with real mil-grade equipment designed for recon flying, and mentally shrugged. Whatever the issue was, he hoped Campbell was satisfied. He’d complete a similar run over Janus Station on the way out. The big difference was that he knew that one wouldn’t be welcome, and that there was a corporate-security team there. The environment would be potentially less “docile,” to say the least.
Ashburn noticed that he hadn’t heard anything from the back in a long while.
“Hey, Jen,” he sent, using the mnemonic to open the crew circuit between them. “Hanging on back there?”
“Yes sir, captain,” the loadmaster replied. “That was . . . uh, interesting.”
“Were you following along in virtual?” He knew most loadmasters enjoyed doing that.
She hesitated a long moment before answering. “Are you going to space me if I say yes?”
Ashburn grinned under his helmet up front. “No, you’re a good worker. Give you a fat bonus to keep it on the down low, maybe.”
“Hell, yes, captain! I saw the whole thing!” she said enthusiastically.
“You’re going to see it again on the way back,” Ashburn told her. “It’s a bit of company business, but I can’t go into it any more than that, and it’s important that you don’t chat about it with your shipmates. You’ll get your bonus . . . say, a third of your base for this month, and Purser Sommers won’t even ask you what you did to earn it. How does that sound?”
“Fifty percent sounds even better . . . ?” she hinted hopefully.
“Or I could just space you.”
“A third works for me, cap.”
“Good girl,” Ashburn replied, feeling ashamed. When he’d agreed to this trip, he hadn’t thought much about the consequences. After this uneventful but adrenalin-charged first run, he was suddenly aware that he might be risking his loadmaster’s life without her knowledge or consent. He doubted that she’d agree to it for a measly one-third pay bump, that was for sure. Then again, the overflight of Janus was probably a low-risk affair to start with. They wouldn’t know he was coming, and he’d be gone before they could reasonably react, unless there was something really dark and dangerous going on there. He doubted that was the case, or Campbell wouldn’t have asked him the favor in the first place.
Ashburn decided that the risk was acceptable and that telling Hansen any more than she already knew was only going to add to his worries, not mitigate them. If they got killed, well, then, he’d be dead and not have to feel guilty about it. His conscience ate at him for the remainder of the flight, making him ask some hard questions about himself and his own morals and motivations. How much was he willing to do to get on with Project Daedalus? Lie to his own crew? Screw them over? Risk their lives? Whatever it took? How far down the low road was the next line he’d willingly step over?
The computer signaled him that Banth One was commencing the approach phase into Chusuk Field.
***
Here we go again, Ashburn thought to himself about an hour later.
Banth One had completed her payload dropoff and was headed home empty. Unfortunately, the spaceplane wasn’t properly configured to transport liquid methane—special tankers designed just for that had been shuttling those loads up to Thuvia. It was never optimal to fly a ship’s boat without some sort of payoff, but in this case he could live with it.
Once more the spaceplane was as “darkened” as Ashburn could make her: no transponder, no active networking, and he was flying low to the horizon again. Not terrain-skimming low, but lower than on the first run. Banth One had no threat-warning receiver or ESM gear of any kind; he’d never know if he were being painted with a fire-control beam, and his only indication of something coming after him would be if an aft-aiming thermal imager picked something up. By the time it did, it would probably be too late for them. He decided that maybe it was better t
hat way, since their chances of outrunning any sort of modern guided weapon were slim to start with.
Now that the topic of their unusual flight paths had been broached, his loadmaster was willing to be chattier about it. Silence had reigned supreme on the first run, but when Ashburn was setting them up on the run-in line over Janus Station, Hansen piped up from the back.
“Hey, Mike,” she sent, activating the comm circuit.
“Yo.”
“Cap, we’re lower than last time and we’re so fast I can hear her creaking back here. Are we going to get shot at?”
“It’s very unlikely . . . but not impossible,” he admitted, unwilling to flat-out lie to her. There, I said it. See what she says.
“So . . . that would be sort of, like, hazardous duty, right?”
He sighed. “Okay, you little capitalist. Deuce and a half for the month?”
“Now we’re burning with tritium!”
“Okay. I need to concentrate on what I’m doing up here. Zip it until we’re clear, got it?”
“Roger that, cap’n!”
Ashburn grinned, feeling his conscience ease a little. Okay, that wasn’t so bad, he told himself. The real question was how he would have handled it if she’d raised a stink and been unwilling to go along with him. That was a conundrum he didn’t really want to sort out, and he was thankful he didn’t have to. He wondered how he’d handle it if Hansen tried to extort more money out of him later, perhaps as a price for keeping quiet about all this. He didn’t think she’d do anything like that, but it wasn’t impossible. He mentally resolved to cross that bridge when he came to it, and not borrow trouble.
Like before, Janus Station came over the horizon and rapidly rolled toward them. The terrain-mapping radar was doing its thing, and this time there was a lot more thermal activity. Ashburn kept his eyes peeled. His heart raced and he tensed for any sign of trouble, but everything appeared quiet.
