Far Space

by Jason Kent

  “Is that a ‘yes’?” Pearl asked from behind Ian.

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. “That’s definitely yes.”

  There were a few cheers over the common net.

  “If you’re done, Lieutenant Langdon,” Yates said over the net, “Please get those people back onboard.”

  “You’d better get back to work, Mr. Langdon,” Jennifer said, switching back to her and Ian’s private net.

  “Would you have said yes if everyone else hadn’t been listening?” Ian asked.

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. “The answer is still yes. Now get to work, sailor.”

  Reagan Space Corps Base

  Surface of Europa, Jupiter Space

  Ian sat pondering the computer screen before him. The presentation he had been preparing for the last two days had just been cancelled. No back-up time was scheduled. Most likely it would be postponed indefinitely as the pressing issue which had called for the briefing in the first place would be surpassed by other matters. Another critical project O.B.E.; Overcome By Event. The carefully crafted slides would sit in his personal file, unused and gathering electronic dust.

  “I don’t think so,” Ian snorted. He selected the ‘Delete File’ icon and with one swipe of a key blasted his work into thousands of separate, irretrievable bytes. He muttered, “That’ll save some disk space.”

  Ian usually worked a ten hour day out here on Europa, twelve if he was on watch in the Ops Center. He checked his watch, only six and half hours had passed since he sat down at his desk.

  “Close enough,” Ian pronounced. He hit the power switch on the front of his computer. His disk drive ground to an abrupt stop announcing the hard shutdown was successful. Ian pushed away from his desk and almost sailed out of his seat. The lower gravity on Europa was enough to keep Ian’s body at least slightly toned but still played havoc with his inner balance. He tended to use a little too much oomph after he had been sitting awhile. It did not help he tended to forget he was half a solar system away from home after staring at a computer screen on a desk in an office, which for all intents and purposes, appeared to be just like every other cube he had ever inhabited.

  Ian stalked off down the long corridor back from the rim office he occupied to the living quarters buried under the central portion of the base. The corridor was made from shipping containers buried in a trench dug into the icy surface of the Jovian moon – one of eight spokes being built from the main base out to a rim made of still more containers. Someday, most of the base structure would be built with reinforced permacrete, a substance of quick setting polymers and cement which had all the strength and protection of concrete without having to add the rocks, just a little water. Water, locked up in its moon-spanning glacier, was something Europa possessed in spades.

  Reagan’s A-ring would eventually increase the size of the Reagan Space Corps Base by a factor of ten and allow the critical base functions to be spread out under Europa’s ice. This was hoped to give the base a better chance of surviving in the event of attack. The base was getting big enough there was talk of calling it a city. If so, it would be the first major settlement beyond the orbit of Mars, where Angel City had claimed the title of ‘First Human Deep Space City’ just a few years earlier. They had the signs posted to prove it.

  To Ian, all this progress meant a walk of nearly a kilometer from his work area to his room in Officer Country, as Level 3 was called. Reagan’s OC was part of the base core, constructed as a single structure, not prefab units. His room was located two floors under the main Combined Space Operations Center, or CSOC, command room. The CSOC had been built first just under the surface ice. Additional levels had been dug out by nano-machines and construction crews. Each meter down meant more protection and radiation shielding to the permanent residents. A new command center and associated offices was planned for level ten and would be offset from the main core to the area between the outer ring and the base center. The ribbon would not be cut on that new facility for awhile yet as the nannites were still busy chewing through ice to make room for Level 7.

  In the wake of the devastating alien attack nearly a year earlier, the Colorado Combined Aerospace Operations Center, the CCAOC, had gotten out of the deep space defense business, keeping only Operational Control of those assets dedicated to Near Earth defense. The deep space mission had moved to the newly created CSOC. CSOC personnel had moved to Europa aboard spacecraft special ordered from lunar nano-factories.

  Ian shook his head at the thought. The first ships had been built, molecule by molecule and were lifting off from the factory floor before he and the Cheyenne had even reached Saturn. On the plus side, the alien attack had invigorated the push into space like nothing since the Chinese Maelstrom of 2018. It was only in the aftermath of this limited war with China, waged mostly in orbit with satellite killers and over the worldwide web with offensive network attacks, that the world finally woke up and realized you could not build a society and world economy dependant on space technology and simply not protect those assets.

  The thought of space weapons made Ian look up at the metal shell of the shipping container-turned-passageway he was walking through. He wondered how far down the weapons on one of those alien ships would penetrate. Superlumination of the ice from solid to gas thanks to the intense heat of a laser blast would cause enough of a pressure wave to cause severe damage to anything in the near vicinity of a hit. This section of the base was buried by at least three or four meters of ice and other rocky debris found on Europa’s crust.

  “Hopefully someone was thinking of all that when they figured out how deep to lay in these corridors,” Ian said. He shrugged and moved on. Nothing much to do about it now.

  Ice and location were the two essential elements which made Europa one of the most strategic spots in the Solar System. Europa’s ice, easily mined, was used to top off the mass drive tanks of ships using nuclear and anti-matter drive systems. It was the easiest place to set up what amounted to the last gas station before heading to the outer planets. Catching comets was not as easy as just rendezvousing over the Jovian moon and having the teams here fill you up.

  The ideal set-up on Europa for refueling was only one of its strategic attributes. The second was its proximity to what scientist had discovered to be a large collection of wormhole entry points. Analysis of the data recorded as the alien spacecraft exited and entered the wormholes had shown scientists what to look for. They were amazed by the proliferation of the wormholes around Jupiter and, indeed, around other planets as well.

  From Europa, the CSOC could easily coordinate the traffic going in and out of the wormholes. The CSOC was also the key node for managing the defensive preparations in Jupiter Space; guarding against the possible return of the alien aggressors through what was now called the Jovian Wormhole Cluster.

  Ian found himself routed out to the Reagan Space Corps Base as an assignment after he had returned to Earth on the Cheyenne. The personnel center promised him another ship assignment as soon as he had completed a one year remote tour.

  “The Cohou will be back before I see another ship,” Ian had told the Major from personnel who appeared all to happy to deliver the news.

  When the first Cohou ship had passed through the Solar System, they had made only radio contact. They did not stop; they were simply on their way to somewhere else. They said if humanity really wanted to talk, they should meet the next ship as it refueled on the icy moon of the largest planet in the system. Due to the inevitable bureaucratic wrangling and other development problems, humanity had missed meeting the next three ships. A small research station had finally been established on what was now the Space Corps landing field after the alien attack on Earth. Rotating teams had waited for nearly nine months until the next Cohou ship arrived in system.

  The Cohou were not excited about talking to humans face-to-face, but agreed to a short dialog. The seven foot reptilian Cohou told the human representatives to go home, turn off their transmitters, and be glad humanity
only had some of their space assets blown up. They had actually laughed when the United Nations team described the destruction of Explorer.

  ‘Next time you get advice from another space-faring race,’ the Cohou had said, ‘maybe you will listen. We have told you all this before.’

  “We should have listened,” Ian breathed. “We don’t know crud about what’s out there.”

  A long mournful moan brought Ian to a standstill and distracted him from his swirling thoughts. He cocked his head to one side, listening to the sorrowful lament.

  Ian’s breathing became shallow. He knew it was just the ice settling. In fact, it had been part of his initial in-brief to the base. Knowing the sounds were coming from glacial tectonics, did not prevent goose bumps from rising on Ian’s arm. No one had bothered to explain why the ice sounded like voices of the damned seeking their way out of the frozen hell in which they have found themselves encased.

  Ian reminded himself; for all intents and purposes, the crust of Europa was solid. Changes to the surface features happened but at a very slow rate. He had even walked on one of the freshest, pink-colored ice ridges. It had been created when the crust had opened, allowing a slurry of water from deep below the surface to rise from the dark, ice-capped sea sixty kilometers below. This slurry, rich in sulfur-compounds, had frozen solid when its boiling mass had encountered the near-vacuum on the moon’s surface. Still, even this ‘new’ feature was centuries old.

  The groaning fell a notch and morphed into a crunching noise. Ian imagined the ice all around him conspiring to crush the fragile walls of the tunnel he occupied like an eighteenth century wooden sailing ship caught in pack ice off Antarctica. It was not as bad as his first experience with an ice-quake. He had experienced it during his first night on Europa. The event had been mentioned in passing at breakfast but no one else seemed bothered it. At least no one who was talking. Ian had not wanted to stand out on his second day as the guy who weirded out because of ‘The Martini’, as the locals referred to the ice quakes. He had already decided there was no way he was going to visit the base psychologist about this, or any other topic. He would take whatever the little moon had to throw at him and then some before he admitted to a shrink he had a little phobia brewing. Ian would just have to suck it up.

  After each quake, there would be some minor seal damage between the sections of the connector tunnels or out on the rim. Ian looked around at the thin walls keeping his atmosphere in and the ice out. The image of lost souls from their icy grave attempting to pry their way into the flimsy structures the living had dared place above their final resting ground, sprang unbidden into Ian’s mind. The voices were merely their way to search for any vulnerability, whether they were physical, mental, or structural. All the damned needed was a way in and they would be able to claim new members to their immortal club.

  Ian shuddered. He knew there were chinks.

  Response crews had always dealt with any leaks and breaches without any reported injuries.

  Ian put a hand against the wall and felt the vibrations of the ice shuddering on the other side.

  But there was always a first time.

  The groaning dropped a notch. The souls seeking the living seemed strained to their limit with the effort of searching from the inky, frozen depths far below.

  Ian shook his head to keep his imagination from spinning any further off-course. He wondered who would be the next to snap. And if someone at the base would finally admit it was the lost souls, torturing them day after day, which had driven them insane.

  He prayed it would not be him.

  The ice-quake ended with a low muttering. The silence which enveloped Ian was in some ways more disturbing than the sounds it replaced. Ian took a deep breath, looked up and down the causeway and started off again on wobbly legs, intent on reaching his destination now more than ever.

  There was talk of setting the nano-machines to drill a subway in the icy substrata. Ian would believe that when he saw it. Maybe if there was ever a second ring further out, then there might be a need for a faster way to get from one end of the base to the other. As it was, he needed the exercise.

  Ian had chosen passage C-4 to get back to the base core. It was not the closest passage to his office on the rim, but there were good reasons to take this longer route back to his room.

  Connector Four, ‘C-4’ to the permanent party folks, was one of two opposing passageways which had a series of sublevels containing the mechanical equipment needed to keep the people throughout the base supplied with fresh air and clean water. It also served as a great place to blow off some steam.

  If anyone is missing four large shipping containers, they need look no further than in the warren of pipes, air handlers, and storage tanks underneath C-4. A twisting and quite well-worn path leads the initiated to a low-ceilinged, not-so-well-lit cavern formed when the ‘excess’ containers had been fitted together. The result was not pretty, but no one seemed to care.

  Ian opened a hatch marked, ‘Maintenance Personnel Only’ and entered the stairwell leading down to the support areas. The metal stairs were constructed of steel gratings around an open well. This allowed a stomach-churning view straight down for almost seventy meters. Luckily he only needed to go down two flights of steps.

  The odor of rotten eggs rose up from the deep bowels of the base. Europa’s icy crust contained many sulfur compounds, thanks to upwelling from the murky ocean below the frozen surface. Test drillings had confirmed the composition of the moon’s sub-surface oceans but had yet to find any sign of life. Although there were metal and permacrete walls, floors and ceilings, the sulfur smell invaded everywhere. Ian had nearly gagged when he first entered the base and was surprised by how quickly he had gotten used to it. The smell was not nearly as bad in the living and work areas where the air was constantly circulated. Down here though, where water was purified again and again in an attempt to remove impurities, the air always reeked.

  Finding his way through the smell and between the familiar maze of sweating pipes, Ian crossed a walkway over a massive, but slowly spinning fan and found himself at the entrance to the bar. He smiled to himself at the sight of the picture of the broken stick of dynamite with the block letters “C-4” overlaid on the blossoming explosion. Evidently, the artist had never seen a block of C-4 blasting material or simply thought the dynamite made a better visual.

  The sublevels he had passed through were not well lit but were like daylight compared to the interior of Europa’s finest drinking establishment. Ian took a moment after pushing through the thick curtains sealing the inner sanctum from the rest of the base. He had to squeeze up against the pressure door to let a staggering couple pass. Ian patted the door as his eyes adjusted to the new gloom. At least the builders of this secret get-away had thought to include basic safety features. If there were a pressure drop outside of C-4, at least those inside would be able to seal themselves in properly until the leak was repaired or help arrived. Ian just hoped this was where he was if anything catastrophic every occurred on the base. He was sure those inside would use the occasion to throw an impromptu disaster party of mega-proportions.

  With the couple out of the way, Ian made his way inside and over to the long bar occupying the entire far wall from the door. A mismatch of chairs and tables made from crates, other odd materials or simply ‘borrowed’ from elsewhere in the base were jammed into the space. A small dance floor was the only exception over by the jukebox.

  The jukebox still puzzled Ian. As far as he could tell, the origin of the CD-playing box was as mysterious as the very existence of C-4 itself. How someone managed to ship the three hundred pound machine with all the weight restraints placed on interplanetary travel was beyond him. But, he was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and enjoyed music and the lights playing around the jewel-like case as much as the next patron.

  Ian leaned against the bar and ordered the house dark ale. The bartender, a moon-lighting, off-duty technician, nodded and filled a l
arge plastic mug. Ian was sure real glassware would someday arrive to replace the plastic imitations. For now he was stuck drinking the finest brew in Jupiter Space out of a cup bearing the Space Corps symbol, obviously liberated from the base dining hall.

  Swiping his access card across a scarred and battered reader, Ian added this drink to his tab. Some industrious, and certainly off-duty, computer specialists had managed to wire in ‘excess’ card readers around the bar to better track the cash flow and tips. Since no one on Europa was supposed to need cash, this was the only way to compensate the hardworking volunteers who brewed the drinks, served, cooked, and waited tables. Once a month, the tab bill was deducted from his account as a valid transaction labeled ‘Discretionary Allotment.’ Ian did not know how the C-4 management team coordinated this trick through the finance system either. It certainly had been a more productive use of somebody’s time than the official day he just put in. With the talent at work out here at Reagan, Ian tended to keep a closer eye on his pay stubs than he had in the past. Perhaps C-4 was not the only enterprise able to tap the system.

  Ian took a swig and turned his head, taking in the other visitors to the underworld. Seeing no one he knew well enough to socialize with, he downed the first drink and took possession of a full pitcher. He made his way to a table off to the side where he could flip through entertainment channels on the displays mounted on the walls above the booth.

  Ian was perusing the latest vids from Earth when he was surprised by someone bumping him over in the bench seat.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Ian feigned disinterest. He selected a title at random. It was a historical documentary explaining the social impacts of the Panama Canal. The newcomer pressed in close to see the screen.

  “Looks like I don’t have much of a choice,” Ian finally said.

  “Come on, buy a girl a drink!” The new arrival jabbed Ian in the ribs.

  “Ow! I was going to share the pitcher with you. But since you are abusing me, you can get your own,” Ian said, turning to face the interloper.