Far Space

by Jason Kent

  It took a moment for Wu to react. “Deng! The radio might still work!”

  Wasting no time, Wu keyed in the emergency distress channel and started broadcasting. In his best English, Wu said, “Chinese Research Station One has been…destroyed. I repeat Chinese Research Station One has been destroyed.” He choked on the words as he caught a look at Ling’s bulging eyes. He swallowed hard so as not to vomit in his suit. Wu pressed on, “I’m sending data recorded as the attackers emerged from a gravitational distortion.” He pulled the memory stick from the breast pocket and inserted into the data port. Wu was familiar enough with the equipment to download and send the data. He set the message to repeat, adding, “Please help us. There are two survivors.” He tried to think if there was anything else to say. Nothing helpful came to mind.

  Wu listened to the message twice before being convinced it would continue repeating until the shuttle batteries went dead. He went to the exit and did not bother cycling the air lock.

  Wu took the long route around the edge of the landing pad. The fuel bladders were half full. Not much good if there was nowhere to go and no long range ship to take you. He looked off in the distance. The bulge marking the burial mound of the self-contained nuclear reactor plant was just visible five kilometers away. Without access to the data grid in the Station, Wu was not sure if the plant had initiated a self-shutdown or not. It probably shut down, Wu thought, as it was designed to do with no feedback from the Station. So, if he and Deng could somehow tap into the power system they would have all the power they wanted. At this point Wu was not sure how that helped them.

  Back in the hopper, Wu went over everything he had seen with Deng. He stopped when he realized Deng was not paying attention.

  “What’s wrong?” Wu asked.

  Deng looked at Wu, his eyes sunken. “Why’d you save me?”

  Wu was taken aback for a moment. “Would you rather be dead?” He shouted, his anger flaring.

  “It would be better than this slow death you have brought upon us,” Deng shouted back. He turned and stared out the window.

  Wu felt as if he had been struck. He was shocked into silence and suddenly felt very weary. He turned from Deng and stripped out of his suit in silence. Wu flipped the lights off to conserve power then slumped down in the co-pilot’s chair. He sat in the quiet and contemplated the desolate scene outside lit by the glow of Jupiter hanging huge on the horizon.

  “I’m sorry.” Deng’s voice drifted through the darkness. “It was…I don’t know, hearing about Ling and all. I mean what’s the point?” He paused then spoke again, his words rushed. “That is not what I mean. Thank you, Wu. Thank you for saving my sorry butt.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “After all, while we breathe there’s still hope, right?” Deng said.

  Now, four days later, Wu wondered if it would have been better to die right away. Wu shut his eyes and tried not to think such thoughts. While they had breath there was hope.

  Orion-2 Orbital Transfer Vehicle

  Earth Space

  With twelve hours left until they were scheduled to dock at the L5 station, Ian and Jennifer found themselves slated for rack time. They pulled themselves from the Orion capsule through the hatch to the habitation module.

  The module had been docked at the nose of the Orion vehicle after launch. The Ares II Launch vehicle had enough power to loft both the Orion-2 with its service equipment and the hab module. The heat shield on the backside of the capsule prevented creating a ‘stretch’ version of the Orion. Designers had opted instead to design modules which could be attached to the top of the Orion service module stack. For lunar missions, this had been where the lander attached. After launch, the upper stage of the Ares II had split, revealing the module. The pilot had separated the Orion stack, including the service module and the Orion capsule and the lunar insertion booster behind the service module, from the Ares launch vehicle upper stage and rotated one hundred eighty degrees. He then nudged the Orion’s nose into the docking ring of the hab module. With delicate thruster action, the pilot pulled the hab module from the Ares upper stage. Assembled and freed from its booster, the lunar stack was ready to go.

  The pilot oriented the vehicle and waited for the programmed orbital point. Here, the massive lunar insertion motor ignited, hurtling the orbital transfer vehicle away from Earth’s gravitation pull and toward its destination, the L5 Station. L5 leads the moon in its orbit around the Earth. The lunar insertion motor had not been discarded as it usually would. With all the damage to the Earth’s space infrastructure, it would be reused.

  Ian glanced around the cramped confines of the Orion hab section.

  One of the sleep modules was already occupied by Samantha Black, the State Department rep. She had demonstrated a distinct susceptibility to zero-gee sickness earlier in the mission. The other passengers had gladly ceded some of their own time in the sleep racks to allow her to stretch out and sleep for much of the day under light sedation. Losing their bed was a small price to pay for avoiding the unpleasant spewing of Samantha’s stomach contents in the capsule every time she tried to eat.

  Ian slid back the partition to an empty sleep compartment. Jennifer moved between him and the bed.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Mr. Langdon,” Jennifer whispered so her voice would not carry back into the capsule. She thumped him on the chest to emphasize her words.

  “Yeah, why’s that?” Ian answered. He grabbed a handhold and pulled himself so his face was close to Jennifer’s. He could not help but notice her hair smelled great.

  “I’ve noticed you eyeing me for the past few days.”

  “It’s hard not to look,” Ian said. He let his eyes run down over her jumpsuit to her hips.

  “I’m up here,” Jennifer said, using a finger to pull his chin back up until he was looking into her sparkling eyes again.

  “You’re also down there,” Ian noted, raising his eyebrows and motioning toward the rest of her body with his chin.

  “Don’t think that just because you rescued me from a doomed elevator car and certain death that you can just have your way with me,” Jennifer said.

  “I would never presume such a thing,” Ian stammered, noticing he was blinking way too much, a sure sign he was nervous.

  “Good, now there’s just one more thing,” Jennifer said, closing the gap between her and Ian.

  Ian stared into her green eyes and asked, “What’s that?” Thank God his voice did not crack.

  “You never got your kiss after we got back to Earth,” Jennifer said. “I believe it is tradition for the maiden to bestow a kiss upon the fair knight who delivers her from the dragon’s clutches.”

  “I believe that is indeed the civilized way things are done,” Ian said. There had been no time for a kiss since they had not seen each other until two days after the attack. Ian had landed in a field in northern Brazil. Jennifer had landed somewhere in Venezuela. They had been whisked home from separate embassies to different destinations only to find each other again on the same launch pad heading back out into space, this time by old fashioned rocket rather than space elevator.

  Jennifer stared at Ian and raised her eyebrows. “Indeed.”

  “So what’s a man to do about this injustice?”

  “What do you think?” Jennifer looked back down the short tunnel to the entryway of the Orion 2 capsule. No one was in sight in the few seats with a view into their module. She slipped backward into the small sleeping platform Ian had opened up and stretched out along the back of the bed where the wall curved along the outer hull.

  Ian drifted in the central aisle, taking in her slim body. Jennifer’s curvy hips, slim waist, and perfect, well, everything about her was wonderfully accented by the form-fitting jumpsuit she wore.

  Leaning into the bed, Ian whispered, “You realize this is mine, right?”

  “Not anymore.” Jennifer raised her eyebrows and patted the sleeping bag strapped to the platform. “You coming in,
sailor?”

  Ian grinned and pulled himself into the sleep box. Jennifer reached around him and pulled the partition shut. Luckily, Ian mused, the partition, despite its flimsiness was quite soundproof.

  Ian leaned close to kiss Jennifer, who lay on the pillow, her dark hair in a pony tail creeping over the white sheets. He stopped with his lips close. “You realize I’m not a sailor, right?”

  “Marine?” Jennifer breathed, her lips brushing Ian’s

  “Close enough,” Ian said, and kissed Jennifer long and hard.

  USS Cheyenne

  Vehicle Assembly Station, Earth-Moon L5

  “Thank God for Standardization,” Ian noted wryly, leaning back in his seat and stretching. He had just completed yet another check ride at Cheyenne’s pilot station.

  USS Cheyenne benefited from the updated control system developed for the Block 40 Century Class Orbital Patrol Craft. The USS LeMay had been the first to receive an operational version of the controls. Luckily the system was fairly similar to those Ian had just checked out on during his training back on Earth.

  “Guess the wonks back at Corps Headquarters figured your training was close enough,” Captain Maytree said. She had occupied the co-pilot seat throughout the entire exercise, running Ian through a simulated docking maneuver.

  “It’s not too different,” Ian began. “There does seem to be this delay…”

  “HQ figured wrong,” Maytree interrupted.

  “Huh?” Ian managed.

  Maytree held up her data pad with the results of his simulated docking exercise. “What the heck are they teaching now-a-days in pilot training?”

  Ian reached over and took the pad from Maytree. “I know. The school house docking course was a bit short.” Ian thought back to his conversation with the briefer before he embarked on the Orion. The man had actually said, ‘Century-class, Horizon-class, what’s the difference?’ Ian’s reply of, ‘Only about twenty times the mass and being as responsive as a rock when maneuvering in close quarters,’ had been ignored.

  “Short or non-existent? Let’s say we try this one again from the top.”

  Ian stretched his arms and rolled his shoulders. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “We’ll see,” Maytree said.

  The maneuverability or rather the lack of it, really bothered Langdon. The Century-class ships he was trained to pilot, like the Schriever, were designed to patrol near-Earth space and were engineered to be able to survive and fight in an era of hyper-velocity projectiles and laser weapons. As such, the class had the beefiest, most responsive attitude control system of any spacecraft ever built. Horizon-class ships, based upon the older Millennium transports, were designed for long-haul runs. As such, they were built for cargo capacity, not maneuverability. Cheyenne’s flight control system, while having as much power as the Century-series craft, had a lot more mass with which to deal.

  Ian was being forced to learn to fly the equivalent of a B7037 wide-body jetliner when had had been trained as a fighter pilot.

  If it comes to a firefight, Ian thought, we’re out of luck. It wouldn’t matter if the laser modules or missile systems being bolted onto the outside of the hull got a chance to lock onto a target, they would not be able to evade incoming fire long enough for it to do any good.

  “Let’s see what this pig can do,” Ian said.

  Two hours later, Ian caught himself at the entrance to Cheyenne’s lab – really just one of the staterooms which had been refitted for the recovery mission. Ian was not afraid of intruding on any one of the scientists he might find there. In fact, since the Orion flight to L5, Walt Imuro, Mohammad Hussein, Jennifer and Ian had formed quite the little click. Ian felt a little out of place with the other two academics, but Imuro, a dark haired Asian-American specializing in Biology and Hussein, the teams spacecraft weapon specialist, helped him feel right at home in the lab. Jennifer was of course at home in a lab environment already. Granted, a lot of her time was spent working virtually, but still, she had experience working with academics.

  The scene before Ian was anything but academic.

  Jennifer and Nick O’Brian were hunched, shoulder-to-shoulder over one of the large display monitors. Nick had served as the Orion-2 pilot from Earth. He would be coming along on Cheyenne since he could pilot the shuttles and had worked on the design phase of the Horizon-class ships. Plus, he was as close to a space-certified expert they were going to get from NASA at this late hour.

  Ian was surprised to feel color rising in his cheeks as he watched Jennifer enthusiastically explain something displayed on the screen.

  O’Brian, his thick red hair bobbing back and forth was nodding with equal aplomb, did not take his eyes from Jennifer’s face.

  Oh please, Ian thought, rolling his eyes. Can this guy get any more obvious?

  Jennifer was the youngest and most attractive woman assigned to Cheyenne. This was the first time Ian had found someone coming on to her though. He cleared his throat.

  O’Brian used the interruption to put his hand at Jennifer’s lower back, supposedly to steady himself as the NASA pilot turned to face the door.

  Jennifer continued speaking, unaware anyone else was there and to Ian’s chagrin, seemingly unaware of O’Brian’s act of familiarity.

  “Lieutenant Langdon,” O’Brian said. “What can we do for you?”

  Why are you interrupting me, Ian thought the man really wanted to ask. Ian felt his cheeks grow even redder as he realized he had no good reason for stopping by. Telling O’Brian he was here looking for Jennifer would make Ian feel like an idiot.

  Jennifer turned, causing O’Brian’s hand to fall free.

  O’Brian had no choice then but to keep his hands to himself.

  “Ian,” Jennifer nearly squealed. “You have got to see this!” She motioned excitedly at the display. She drifted aside to make room for him. “Look at this!”

  Ian pushed off from the hatch and took up the space between Jennifer and O’Brian. His gaze followed to where Jennifer was pointing.

  The display showed a computer generated false-color representation of a planet-moon system. It took Ian a moment to realize he was looking at Jupiter. It took a few seconds longer to recognize the lines on the display for what they were. “We’re not going near Jupiter. What’s up with the gravity map?” Ian was happy he could at least display some measure of chart reading capability.

  Jennifer tapped the screen. “That is the regular distribution of gravity interferences and sources you would expect to find in Jupiter Space.”

  “Right,” Ian said and nodded. “The navigation system has the standard model and includes a database with all the significant bodies in the solar system.”

  “Computer do the calculations for you?” O’Brian asked.

  Ian did not take his eyes from Jennifer. “Manual plot with confirmation from the ships systems,” he said half over his shoulder. “You plot that Orion trip yourself?”

  Unaware of the patter between to the two pilots, Jennifer went on, bringing up a second screen. “This was created using data received from the Chinese Research Station survivors on Ganymede. They were able to capture the data when those alien ships showed up and then started for Earth.”

  “I thought the base was destroyed,” Ian said. He regretted the admission when O’Brian sniffed behind him.

  “The HMS Stratford picked up two survivors yesterday after homing in on a weak signal,” O’Brian said. “It was all over the news.”

  Jennifer lightly punched O’Brian on the shoulder. “You know Ian’s been spending all his time learning to fly this thing,” she said while making a gesture that took in the whole of Cheyenne.

  “Of course,” O’Brian said.

  Trying to bring the discussion back to Jennifer’s topic, Ian concentrated on the new display and asked, “So where did they come from?”

  “Here.” Jennifer leaned in close to Ian and pointed at a gathering of distortions in the gravity lines swirling around Jupiter and her moons.<
br />
  Ian stared at the map for a moment.

  “Amazing,” O’Brian said. “Right out of thin air.”

  “I can’t imagine what technology they must possess to do that,” Jennifer breathed.

  Ian studied the distortion patterns. He’d seen something like this before.

  “Did anybody get a good reading of the gravity displacement of the alien ships while they were en route or in Earth orbit?” Ian looked into Jennifer’s green eyes. God they were beautiful.

  “Nothing that small would have much of a signature,” O’Brian said.

  “SunSat should have caught something,” Jennifer said. She turned to another computer display and accessed the orbital information net.

  O’Brian sniffed again. “SunSat is a NASA mission flying above the ecliptic plane. It’s supposed to measure gravitational fields on a planetary scale. It probably…”

  “Here it is,” Jennifer said, getting excited. She was scrolling down a list of the last few weeks of readings. She clicked on the report from the day of the alien attack. “Marsha, can you make sense of this and tell me if SunSat detected ships in Earth orbit?”

  Marsha, Cheyenne’s Automated Core Equipment, ACE for short, was designed to help run and keep tabs on the myriad onboard systems. She was also a pretty good personal assistant to the crew and scientists.

  Marsha’s feminine voice came back a few seconds later. “I’m displaying the results of my data analysis on monitors six and seven. I took the liberty of creating a visual model along with a list of the objects SunSat detected in this timeframe.”

  Jennifer looked at the screen on the wall in front her. “Run 24 hour period at 20x, please Marsha.”

  Marsh complied. The objects in earth orbit whizzed around the planet.

  “As you can see, SunSat detected and tracked more than one thousand and sixty objects in Earth orbit,” Marsha narrated.

  Ian noticed O’Brian did not retract his statement concerning the sensitivity of SunSat’s sensors.

  “There!” Jennifer jabbed the screen. Six objects zoomed into Earth orbit then zoomed away again. “Marsha, stop. Rewind last twenty minute interval and replay.”