The shuttles carrying the colonists destined for Renaissance and Philadelphia had already departed; only Freedom’s remained. Foley was the last one aboard. In a waiting room somewhere nearby, Pranit Mehta waited for a call that would never come. As they sat on the launch pad awaiting takeoff, she pretended to sleep rather than face questions from the other colonists about how she had ended up on the shuttle. She’d more than half-expected security forces to halt the launch, but either Gabor had never thought to check the shuttle passenger manifest or the government was already in such disarray that he couldn’t have stopped the launch if he wanted to.
Once aboard, she learned that the captain had cut off all communications between civilians and the planet. She’d never even had a chance to say goodbye to her husband and their three daughters. She wondered if they would ever find out what she had done. She didn’t think so. Even if the government were fully functional, nobody would tell her husband anything; the passenger manifests were classified. One day, Mommy just wouldn’t come home. Still, it was better than calling them from prison, wasn’t it?
What the hell is wrong with you? said an accusatory voice in her head. You left your family to die alone, without even telling them why!
I left because the mission has a better chance of success with me on board, she said to the voice.
The voice laughed at her.
By the time the shuttle reached Freedom, she’d come up with a plausible explanation for how she’d ended up on board in place of Pranit Mehta: A secondary screening of Dr. Mehta indicated that he had a physical defect that made him unsuited for the mission, and Foley was the only other candidate with the appropriate genetics background. She hadn’t wanted to go, but President Adams had personally insisted. She was making a tremendous sacrifice, you see, leaving her family behind to ensure the survival of humanity.
Except for the part about Dr. Mehta having a physical defect (he lacked a uterus), it was all a bald-faced lie, but thanks to the communications blackout, there was no way any of the civilians on board could check her story. The captain, Jason Huiskamp, could probably have figured out she was lying if he’d looked into it, but he seemed to have little interest in the colonists. Other than a few brief ship-wide broadcasts, they’d heard nothing from him. They occasionally saw other IDL crew members, but they seemed similarly aloof. She got the impression that the captain resented the last-minute change in their mission.
“Why are we meeting like this?” Bree asked, growing impatient.
Why indeed? Foley asked herself. Is it because I need something to occupy my mind so the guilt doesn’t eat me alive?
“Because,” she said, “I get the impression you prefer the truth over comforting lies.”
“You think there is something they’re not telling us.”
“Don’t you?”
Bree regarded her, considered the question. At twenty-eight, she was less jaded than Foley, but she possessed the cold detachment common to people who excelled at troubleshooting technical problems. She had worked as a technician at one of Geneva City’s leading fertility clinics before starting a company that developed software for monitoring the equipment used by such clinics. “I think… Sometimes I think they’ve been lying to us from the start. Like, the seedships were never more than a pipe dream. Somehow wires got crossed and they actually got built, but I don’t think anybody ever expected them to succeed. They were just something to pin our hopes on, to keep people docile while they waited for the end. When I heard the news that the seedships were actually on their way to Geneva… I suppose I allowed myself some hope. But then they changed the boarding plans and lied to those girls about it…. I mean, I went along with it, so in a way I guess I’m as guilty as they are, but…”
“You don’t trust the IDL. Neither do I. We’re like caged animals on this ship. We only know what they tell us.”
“You know more than the rest of us,” Bree reminded her. It was true: not only had Foley organized the evacuation; she had managed to get a brief meeting with the captain.
“Which is exactly why I think we’re being lied to.”
“The captain said the other two seedships have been destroyed and we’ve got eleven Cho-ta’an ships on our tail. If those are lies, they’re not very comforting ones.”
“That part is true. But the escape plan he outlined made no sense. And there’s something else. I spent two years studying the specs of these ships. I know how much mass they have unladen, how much cargo we have on board, and what the engines are capable of. To make a long story short, there’s no way we can significantly increase our acceleration by dumping a little excess cargo.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that to get the acceleration increase we’ve seen, we must have dumped just about everything. Food, equipment, medicine, the lander… maybe even the TGP.”
“Without the TGP, our mission will fail.”
“Exactly. We can’t preserve the species with thirty-six people. But if we’re doomed anyway, why dump the cargo?”
“I suppose there isn’t much they can do besides delay the inevitable.”
“Maybe, but I get the sense there’s more to it than that. The captain is up to something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Admiral Cole Huiskamp sat alone in the center of the command deck, watching an empty whisky bottle drift slowly away from him, a trail of shimmering globules following it across the dimly lit chamber. Huiskamp would have killed for a drink at that moment. He had allowed himself only a sip, in honor of his crew, before saying goodbye to the others and donning his spacesuit. Then he had strapped himself into his chair and instructed the computer to override the airlock safety mechanisms. With another command, all the doors on Arc Zero slid open at once. A torrent of air momentarily tore through the cabin and then was silent. The whisky bottle, carelessly discarded after their final toast, was the only sign three other human beings had been with him moments ago.
He checked the time display on his comm. Several minutes had passed. By now, Aguilar, Lee and Haas were dead, their bodies drifting in the cold vacuum of space. Had Lee remembered not to hold his breath? What difference did it make? Asphyxiation, decompression, freezing… dead was dead. The rest of GODCOM’s crew had already been killed days before, thanks to Huiskamp. And on Geneva, tens of thousands were dying in civil war or Cho-ta’an missile attacks. What were three more?
The cabin began to rumble as Arc Zero once again slipped into the stratosphere. Four more passes to the alignment window, Huiskamp thought. Let’s hope she holds together. The rumbling got worse, but the sound was oddly muted now that Arc Zero had no atmosphere. He had sufficient air in the tank strapped to the side of his chair for six hours—enough to last two more orbits, which was four more passes through the atmosphere. Oxygen was unlikely to be the limiting factor. Propellant for the thrusters would probably give out first—if Arc Zero didn’t break apart before that.
The biggest concern, though, was the effect of atmospheric heat on the antenna array. The array was unshielded, and as Arc Zero dropped into the thicker part of the stratosphere, billions of gas particles would collide with the leading edge of the array, imparting some of their heat to it. Although the density of the atmosphere at this altitude was less than one percent of that at sea level, at a velocity of several kilometers per second the effect was significant. Heat would stop accumulating each time Arc Zero left the atmosphere, but it had nowhere to go except across the rest of the array and eventually to the hull. Heat couldn’t travel across a vacuum except as infrared radiation—and if the array was glowing red, it was already way too hot. The array panel couldn’t be seen from anywhere inside Arc Zero, but Huiskamp imagined the insulation on the wires to the transmitter nodes had already melted. The wires would be next.
For now, though, the transmitter remained online, although it was not actively transmitting.
To conserve power, it was programmed not to transmit until Arc Zero was near the alignment window. As turbulence worsened, the stabilization program kicked in, causing the thrusters to fire. Huiskamp could do nothing but watch as the propellant level dropped from ten percent to nine, and then from nine to eight. The rumbling began to ease up, and the thrusters cut out. Arc Zero once again shot into the vacuum.
Three passes to go. On the final pass, Arc Zero would be as close as it was going to get to the alignment window. Without another extended burn, though, she wasn’t going to make it. When Arc Zero was well clear of the atmosphere, Huiskamp tapped a key sequence, executing the burn Aguilar had pre-programmed. He felt the faint sense of acceleration as the thrusters fired. Propellant dropped to seven… six… five… four. The thrusters cut out. Examining the nav display, Huiskamp saw that the computer was now projecting that Arc Zero would just reach the alignment window: for an estimated twenty seconds, she would pass just south of Lucerne Crater while it was pointed toward Freedom.
The problem was that the stabilizing algorithm was using too much propellant. Arc Zero had burned two percent on her last pass, and the atmosphere was getting thicker. If she burned two percent on the next two passes, she’d have nothing left for the final pass. Just when the array needed to be precisely aimed, she’d be spinning wildly out of control.
Huiskamp weighed his options as Arc Zero hit the vertex of her orbit and headed back toward the stratosphere again. They were few: there was no way to modify the stabilization algorithm to use less propellant, because there was no such thing as “partly stable.” Either Arc Zero was stable or she was completely out of control.
In one way, letting Arc Zero spin would be advantageous: the heat buildup on any single part of her would be minimized, and some of the accumulated heat would dissipate in the atmosphere. The risks, however, were extreme: vibration might shake the delicate antenna array apart, and possible even tear Arc Zero herself to pieces. In the end, Huiskamp decided to let the stabilization program run. Depending on air flow patterns, Arc Zero might more-or-less stabilize on her own, requiring minimal help from the thrusters. It was unlikely, but if she used less propellant than she had on the last two passes, she might still have enough for the final pass.
Arc Zero began to rattle again as she pierced the stratosphere. The thrusters kicked in almost immediately. By this time, Huiskamp was sweating in his suit. He could feel the heat through his chair, and he imagined the walls toward Arc Zero’s leading edge were hot enough to sear flesh. It was fortunate that the sensitive electronics aboard were sealed and liquid-cooled, or they’d probably have burned out already. The transmitter was still reporting that it was online, but it couldn’t take much more of this.
The fuel and oxidizer gauges read three percent… two percent… one percent. The thrusters cut out, and Arc Zero drifted into the void. Sweat poured down Huiskamp’s face. His back side was already drenched. He gulped water from the tube in his helmet.
Two passes left. He was still on track to hit the alignment window, midway through the final pass. The computer was now estimating that he would have ten seconds to send his message. Cutting it too close. And that was assuming the array antenna didn’t melt or rattle apart beforehand.
The stabilization issue had been settled for him: he simply didn’t have enough propellant for two more passes. Arc Zero was going to have to make one pass through the stratosphere with no stabilization. Huiskamp doubted she’d hold together, but there was no way to know for certain without doing it. The atmosphere was still very thin at the altitude Arc Zero would be entering it, but Arc Zero was about as aerodynamic as a damp cardboard box. Huiskamp disabled the auto-stabilization and waited for her to dive back into the atmosphere.
Arc Zero began to rumble around him, and the rumble turned into a rattle. Wall panels vibrated until they began to blur. Then suddenly he was pitched forward as Arc Zero went into a spin. A red warning flashed as the transmitter went offline, and then the display went dark. There was the faint sound of metal shearing as Arc Zero jerked to the left, and then back to the right. Around this time, Huiskamp lost any sense of orientation. He was aware of spinning and intense pressure in his head. Then everything went black.
When Huiskamp regained consciousness, all was calm. His head pounded, but he was in one piece—as was Arc Zero, as far as he could tell. Whatever had sheared away, the command deck had held together. Life support was down, but he wasn’t using it anyway. Thrusters were online and both fuel and oxidizer remained at one percent. His seat was warm underneath him, but not uncomfortably so; some of the heat Arc Zero had accumulated must have dissipated in its wild tumble through the atmosphere. He had been out for some time: Arc Zero had already passed the aphelion of its orbit and was coming back in for its final pass. He re-engaged the stabilizing program; if he was going to have any chance of sending his message, Arc Zero would have to be rock steady.
Huiskamp’s heart dropped as he saw the warning at the bottom of the screen: the transmitter was still down. The monitoring software said that a breaker had tripped, indicating a short. He attempted to reset the breaker, but it immediately tripped again. There was no way to know from here what was wrong—a cable might have gotten disconnected or the whole panel might have been torn off. Fortunately he was already suited up and there was no need to bother with airlocks. He could just open a hatch and go outside. Whether he could do anything about the transmitter when he got there was another story.
This was not the only bad news: thanks to the atmospheric drag on its last pass, the computer was predicting that Arc Zero would now be within the alignment window for eight seconds—and depending on turbulence, that number might well drop. Haas had told them that given the weak signal strength, they shouldn’t expect to be able to transmit more than four hundred bits per second. A single character in standard encoding required eight bits. The message he had written out for Jason was succinct, but even so it was nearly five hundred characters. That was four thousand bits, which would require ten seconds to transmit at four hundred bits per second. Even if he could get the transmitter working, he couldn’t count on having a connection for that long. He might have only a second—or less.
One second. If he was lucky. What do you say in your final message to your son if you only have a single second? What do you say if the fate of humanity depends on him reading that message, understanding it, and doing exactly as he is told?
The clock was ticking. In ten minutes, Arc Zero would re-enter the atmosphere. In twenty minutes, the alignment window would begin. He needed to use that time getting the transmitter working. He couldn’t sit here dithering about the content of the message.
Nineteen minutes.
Okay, boil the message down to the basic information. What was the absolute minimum Jason needed to know? He tapped out a sentence. Too long. Jason didn’t need an explanation—just instructions. Revise. Shorten. Abbreviate.
Eighteen minutes.
Huiskamp pounded his fist against the visor of his helmet. Something was missing. Think.
Jason had always been a rebellious kid. Could never get him to do what he was told. Why would he listen now? He’d done well in the IDL. Huiskamp remembered being surprised that Jason had even made it through the academy, given his rebellious streak. It wasn’t authority in general that Jason resented. It was me.
Seventeen minutes.
So: appeal to him as an IDL officer rather than as his father. But how? Sign the message “Adm. Huiskamp”? It seemed an absurd way to close his final message to his only son. Not only that, but Jason would likely suspect the message was a fake, sent by the Cho-ta’an to sabotage his mission. At four hundred bits per second, encryption was not an option. He needed to include some piece of information that the Cho-ta’an could not possibly know.
Sixteen minutes.
Forget pulling rank on Jason. Even if Jason believed the message came from his father, he would see it as a transparent ploy. It was exactly the sort of th
ing Jason would rebel against. Condescension. That’s what Jason hated. Jason didn’t mind following orders from his superiors in the IDL because for all its faults, the IDL was largely a meritocracy. He could get ahead in the IDL by working hard, following the rules, and using his wits. With his father, no matter what he did, he couldn’t win.
My God, thought Huiskamp. How clear things become when you have less than an hour to live. He realized now that in pushing his son to excel, he had inadvertently communicated to him that he would never be good enough. The key to getting Jason to listen was to acknowledge him as an equal. The past couldn’t be undone, but they didn’t have to let it control them.
Fifteen minutes.
Huiskamp tapped out the rest of the message. Forty-eight characters. That was three hundred eighty-four bits. With a second of transmission time, he could get that message through to Jason. He had no illusions that two brief sentences could communicate all he’d failed to say in forty years, but maybe just this once Jason would give him the benefit of the doubt. He sent the message to the transmitter interface. Once he fixed the antenna and reset the breaker, it would start transmitting the message on a loop.
He unstrapped from his chair, got the bulky air tank strapped to his back, and made his way toward the hatch. Along the way, he grabbed a portable tool kit. By the time he exited Arc Zero, the heads-up display in his helmet was telling him he had twelve minutes until the alignment window. Things were going to get bumpy very quickly. The surface of Geneva loomed huge beneath him. The sun was currently hidden behind Geneva, but there was a fair amount of light from Geneva’s three moons.
He made his way carefully along the hull toward the antenna array. The suit’s propulsion system wasn’t working, so he made use of what handholds he could find. Even through the thick gloves of the spacesuit, the hull was hot to the touch. He allowed himself a modicum of relief when he saw that the antenna array was still in place. There was at least a chance he could repair it. He pulled himself along the hull toward the antenna array. When he reached it, he pulled a tether from the suit and latched himself to one of the solar panel’s supports.
The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic Page 18
