Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2)

by Felix R. Savage

  “Sometimes I think I don’t really know him, either,” Kate sighed. Then her expression changed to a naughty grin. “So fess up. Which of them are you screwing?”

  None of them, was the truth. Hannah did think about sex—difficult not to, when you’d been celibate for two years—but only one man appeared in her fantasies, and that was Skyler. Now, with moonshine-enhanced imagination, she pictured his quick, shy smile. His beautiful musician’s hands. He had a beautiful cock, too. She’d seen him naked a couple of times … difficult not to, given the laughable provisions for privacy on the SoD … and wished she hadn’t, because those glimpses made it even harder not to fantasize about him. He was awkward, like her, a nerd, like her, and smart as all get-out, like her. But the barriers between them were insurmountable.

  “Let me guess,” Kate said. She was not as unobservant as Hannah had always assumed, after all. “Our boy-Fed?”

  Hannah momentarily thought about confessing her unrequited lust for Skyler. But Kate’s tone of voice decided her against it. Our boy-Fed. As the SoD’s resident spook, Skyler ranked even lower in the pecking order than Giles. And there was the cradle-robbing thing. Hannah didn’t want Kate to lose all respect for her, just when they were getting along so well.

  “Nope,” she said, with a salacious leer. “Jack.”

  The spur-of-the-moment lie seemed like a safe one. If Jack had broken up with Meili, it was plausible that Hannah might have hooked up with him. And he was very straight-edge—maybe even in some sense an English gentleman … Hannah felt sure he would defend her honor, if unfounded rumors got back to him.

  “I don’t blame you! He is hot,” Kate conceded. “He makes the effort to stay in shape. His lean mass numbers are the best of anyone’s.”

  “And he’s got that sexy accent.”

  “No, there I have to disagree. The accent drives me batshit. I would actually do him, too, if he would keep his mouth shut before, during, and afterwards.” Kate waggled her eyebrows, and Hannah succumbed to a fit of the giggles.

  *

  Skyler flew silently back up the keel tube. He’d heard enough.

  CHAPTER 8

  From then on, ‘girls’ night in’ became a regular feature of life on the SoD. Kate invited Meili to join them, and although Hannah resented sharing her booze with yet another person, Meili turned out to be a cool chick once she let her hair down. She had a hidden sense of humor. And when she dished about Jack’s performance in bed, it made even Hannah’s eyes pop. Fortunately, it turned out that Hannah’s lie about sleeping with Jack was safe: Meili and Jack were barely on speaking terms these days.

  “He is all yours,” Meili said. “He was horrible to me when Peixun died. He doesn’t have a heart for others. And he farts in bed!”

  She chortled, pink in the face. Meili was not much of a drinker, mercifully for Hannah. A swallow or two of their new concoction, the Sourdough Loaf—cold tea, reconstituted fruit juice, and Ginsburg label moonshine—got her buzzed. She cried inconsolably sometimes, and blamed it on the moonshine, but always came back for another ‘tiny drink’.

  Kate never once mentioned the word ‘alcoholism.’ She seemed to accept that Hannah had built a still because she was a rule-breaker who liked a nightcap—Scotty in the engine room of the Enterprise, sneaking drams of whiskey!—rather than an addict who needed booze in order to function. And the more Hannah hung out with Kate, the more she came to like and believe in this version of herself. After all, it was true! She was a rule-breaker, a glass-ceiling-smasher, making it up as she went along. So was Kate, and so was Meili. They were historic achievers, laying down new markers for women in generations to come. And they were expected to be perfect as well?!? Can you say double standard?

  All the time the SoD hurtled closer to Jupiter. After two years of doing not much except farming, it was hard to grasp, but they were almost there.

  In six days they’d burn into Jupiter orbit.

  In five days.

  Four.

  Three.

  Right on cue, Mission Control started playing Gustav Holst’s ‘Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity’ at every shift change. It was the last thing anyone needed, as no one associated Jupiter with jollity anymore. The tune got on the crew’s nerves so much that Kate begged Mission Control to quit it. “Give us Rick Astley, the Bee Gees, or even Giles’s crap … anything but this!”

  Two.

  That night they had a bit too much. Well, Kate and Meili had a bit too much. For Hannah, there was no such thing as too much, but she was careful not to let the other women suspect that. Meili went yawning to her coffin, saying she had to get some sleep in preparation for tying down the plants on the morrow.

  Left alone, Hannah and Kate floated in the turbine room. Their foreheads touched, and their hands rested on each other’s shoulders. Kate’s forehead was hot. She said in a hoarse whisper, “This thing. This MOAD … thing.”

  She trailed off. That was all she seemed able to say. But Hannah understood. She squeezed Kate’s shoulders, silently letting her know: You don’t have to bear the burden by yourself. You’re the commander, but I’m right here, supporting you. You’re not alone.

  During their two-year journey, the SoD had ceased to be news. Out of sight was out of mind, and the internet news aggregators had reverted to covering the Earth Party’s doings in breathless detail. But now, as the SoD neared Jupiter, the eyes of the world were once again trained on the ship. The entire human race was watching Kate, judging her, counting on her.

  No wonder she was nervous.

  “We’re gonna have to get so lucky to make it through this,” she muttered.

  Hannah put on an Obi Wan Kenobi voice. “There is no such thing as luck, in my experience.”

  Kate laughed, but Hannah could see she didn’t get the reference. Skyler would have.

  Oh, Skyler. With a bit of booze in her, Hannah saw very clearly why it would never work between them. She’d known it as far back as Johnson Space Center, actually. Skyler didn’t drink.

  *

  Skyler used the encrypted comms setup installed on the bridge by the NXC to file his reports. Kate normally allowed him to have the bridge to himself at these times. It only took a few minutes, as he just had to type up the paragraphs he’d already composed in his head.

  But the Ka communications system also enabled video transmissions, and there was a webcam over the left seat.

  Skyler floated in the seat, gazing into the camera. He wasn’t wearing the harness, but he had his bare toes hooked into the foot tethers. In his right hand he held a clunky object resembling a pen with a metal nib.

  “So, we’re at burn minus twenty-three,” he said. In 23 hours, the SoD would perform its Jupiter orbit injection burn. “Hannah has cranked the reactor's power level up to 95%.”

  It hurt to say her name, but none of that pain came out in his sardonic, even tone.

  “The main turbine is spun up, giving us 1.1 gigawatts of electrical output. We’ve topped off all the power systems. The batteries are fully charged, and we’ve electrolyzed water stores to fill the reactant tanks for the fuel cells with liquefied H2 and O2.”

  They had to do something with all the power generated by cranking up the reactor. Might as well use it to make LOX and LH2 for the fuel cells.

  Anyway, the SoD carried so much reaction mass that the ETs still held about 6 million gallons of water, out of their original 8 million. The orbit injection burns would drain the tanks. Then they’d have to recover Thing One and Thing Two’s water from the surface of Europa if they wanted to fly anywhere again.

  “One hour ago, Jack flipped the ship so that our engine bells are facing Jupiter …”

  And Skyler, on the bridge, was now facing home. The ridiculous little portholes on the bridge had turned into yellow gems, glowing with the distant sun’s light. The unaccustomed brightness showed up just how grubby the bridge had gotten in two years. The paint had worn off the instruments most often used. Leaf fragments, crumbs, and fl
ies wandered in the rays from the portholes.

  48 minutes ago, this very same sunlight would have bathed Director Flaherty of the NXC as he got out of his car at Langley. The most powerful man in the United States, by some reports, still drove a second-hand Crown Vic. In another 48 minutes, Skyler’s transmission would light up Flaherty’s own encrypted comms system.

  “But you know all this stuff anyway.”

  Everything Skyler just said had already been reported by Kate to Mission Control, which meant Flaherty would have it by the time he got Skyler’s message.

  “So let’s skip to the good part.”

  Skyler lifted the object in his right hand, inserted the ‘nib’ between his lips, and inhaled. He blew a cloud of vapor away from the camera.

  “Kate’s getting up to her old tricks again. What do I mean? Divide and conquer, boss. Divide and conquer. She’s started this new thing of women-only meetings in Engineering. Jack calls them hen parties. British slang is awesome, isn’t it? Hen parties. What do they talk about back there? Boys, clothes, and make-up, apparently.”

  Skyler wouldn’t have believed it, himself, before he eavesdropped on one of these chats. Hannah was a rocket scientist. She didn’t do girly stuff. Skyler knew her … or, he had thought he knew her. That was before he found out she was sleeping with Jack Kildare. So anything was possible, really.

  But to assume that the hen parties were innocent gab-fests would be to underestimate Katharine Menelaou, a mistake Skyler was far too canny to make.

  “Here’s how I read it,” he said to the camera. “We weren’t impressed with Kate’s response to the HERF incident. By we I mean Jack, Alexei, and myself. I’m leaving out Giles, mostly because he was shocked by the HERF and remained unconscious throughout the episode, but also because I’m not actually sure he’s male.”

  Skyler snickered. He dragged on the e-cigarette again and blew more vapor off-screen.

  “So Kate’s on the back foot. She’s lost the trust of her pilot and her co-pilot, and she knows it. What can she do about that? Nothing … oh, but wait for it! Hen parties. Now she’s got her claws into Hannah. And I don’t need to remind you, sir, that in theory all crew members are equal, but the reactor and propulsion systems specialist is more equal than others. That’s the genius of it. If Kate’s got Hannah on her side, she can tell the rest of us to take a flying leap.”

  A ray of sunlight was getting into Skyler’s eyes. He leaned back in the air and said to the camera, “So where is Meili in all this? I’ll be honest, sir, I’m not sure. But I’m watching her very closely.”

  In his peripheral vision, he caught a movement. Wrap it up.

  “That’s about all I’ve got today, sir. I’ll await your response, but I may not be able to transmit again until after the big burn.”

  He exhaled a last cloud of vapor, straight into the camera.

  “Damn, this thing is a monster,” he said. “Later, sir.” He reached through the fog and hit the button to end his transmission.

  Alexei Ivanov descended from the ceiling of the bridge, where he had been floating outside of the camera’s field of vision. His shaved head and shredded bare shoulders gave him a dangerous aspect, like a shark slicing down through the water. “That was OK,” he said, grudgingly.

  “I thought it was damn good,” Skyler said. “This is good.” He held up the e-cigarette Alexei had let him borrow. “Can I keep it?”

  “No,” Alexei said. He took it back.

  “I used to smoke,” Skyler said. “I never made the transition to vaping. It’s not the same, but it’s good.”

  “You can go now,” Alexei invited him, pointing to the keel tube.

  “I’m waiting for them to get back to me,” Skyler complained.

  “How long will that take?” Alexei answered his own question. “Almost two hours.” Skyler’s message would take 48 minutes to reach Earth. Then there was turnaround time and the 48-minute trip back. “They’ll send you an encrypted email, as usual. I will tell you when it gets here. Then you’ll decrypt it in front of me or Jack. We want to know what he says. No more of this secret squirrel bullshit.”

  Skyler sighed. “Only if you let me borrow your e-cig again,” he said.

  “Fuck, you make tough bargain.” Alexei grinned suddenly, and slapped Skyler on the shoulder. “Now go away. We need to prepare for the burn.”

  Skyler floated down the keel tube. He was cross with himself for going along with Alexei and Jack’s plan to get the NXC on their side. Everything had been so much simpler when he was just an astrophysicist. God, how he missed quietly looking through telescopes at stars.

  He emerged from the keel tube head first, which was not recommended, but he always forgot. The main hab wheeled around him as if he’d stuck his head into a vast spin dryer. At 3 RPMs, the outer wall, a.k.a. the floor, moved so fast that the plants blurred. However, the hub of this vast drum hardly moved at all. The tops of Staircases 1, 2, and 3, which spiraled up the forward wall, rotated slowly around the outside of the keel tube.

  On the top step of Staircase 1 stood Jack.

  On the top step of Staircase 3 stood Kate.

  They rotated past Skyler, staring at him.

  Skyler felt a sudden jolt of dread. Then he produced a cheerful smile. He got himself turned around, dropped his feet through the hexagonal lattice, and waited for Staircase 2—the only vacant one—to reach him. He slid down onto the top step, grabbing for the handrail.

  “All yours,” he called to Kate and Jack.

  With the Coriolis force seeming to pull his head away from his feet, he waited to see which of them would go first.

  CHAPTER 9

  Here we go.

  Here we fucking go.

  Burn parameters received from Mission Control. They match the ones Alexei and I generated. More importantly, they match each other. Houston and Star City don’t always agree, especially now the NXC is running the show in Houston, but today they’re in lockstep down to five decimal places. The whole human race is singing the same song today.

  Here we go.

  Everything—everything, from the tomato plants to the kit in the labs—is tied down. At least I hope it all is. That was Meili’s job. I told her to get Giles to help her. She always tries to do too much on her own.

  “Here we go,” Jack muttered, aloud this time.

  Burn minus zero.

  Tense as a runner in the blocks, he instinctively hesitated, waiting for Mission Control to greenlight the burn. The training went so deep. Without that faraway voice saying “You’re cleared,” he felt paralyzed.

  But Mission Control was 48 minutes away.

  There’d be no real-time guidance for the SoD on this burn. They were on their own.

  He glanced left at Kate, in the center seat, and cocked one side of his mouth quizzically. He meant it as an acknowledgement of her authority. After all, she was the mission commander.

  She just shrugged. “Go for it,” she said.

  With an inward sigh, Jack keyed in the throttle command.

  Two hundred meters aft, Oliver Meeks’s engine woke like a sleeping volcano. Electrical impulses belched plasma, battling the SoD’s 40,000 kph velocity. Thrust gravity settled like an intangible blanket over Jack, feather-light. He watched the position, rate and fuel indicators with total absorption, blind to the breathtaking view of Jupiter that now edged onto the optic screen.

  They were going to nip in front of the gas giant, using its gravitational field as a gigantic brake, so the SoD would plop into a nice round orbit intersecting Europa.

  *

  Skyler was at his station. The joke was, he didn’t have a station. As Lance’s replacement, he should have been on the bridge, but even Skyler admitted that the idea of him co-piloting on a crucial burn was ludicrous. So Alexei had taken the left seat, and Skyler had taken Alexei’s station in the storage module.

  Five empty spacesuits hung on the curved wall of the module. (Jack, Alexei, and Kate kept theirs on the bridge.) Ins
tead of wiggling in the breeze from the fans, like Skyler was accustomed to seeing, the arms and legs of the suits hung down. Gravity, of a sort, had returned to the regions of the SoD that were formerly in freefall. The burn was generating 0.1 G of thrust gravity.

  Skyler stood at the workbench they used for spacesuit maintenance and repair. Singing to himself—“I wrote me a letter to Syracuse; it was a letter full of lies”—he plugged his laptop into the power outlet above the workbench.

  The steam turbines whined loudly. Skyler thought about Hannah, back in Engineering, watching her displays with the absorbed expression he adored on her. Then he put her out of his mind.

  That was personal.

  This was important.

  He opened the laptop and booted it.

  He’d received a reply from Director Flaherty. Jack and Alexei had forced him to decrypt it in front of them. But all it had contained was a terse acknowledgement of his report.

  Flaherty had correctly deduced that Skyler could no longer guarantee the privacy of his own transmissions. After all, he’d blown smoke straight into the camera. Although not a prearranged signal, it had successfully conveyed to Flaherty that Skyler was transmitting under duress.

  So the director had sent his real reply in the form of an attachment—an innocent-seeming video of his dog, Peaches, catching a stick.

  Jack and Alexei had made Skyler open this, too, and had viewed it with incredulous amusement.

  “This is a how-to video for us to catch the MOAD, maybe?” Alexei had said, and Jack had added: “I’ve got a dog—a spaniel; he can catch better than that.”

  Did those two really think the NXC couldn’t communicate covertly with their field agent? Skyler knew exactly what to do when he saw the video. Flaherty had used steganography, hiding a file within a file, to let any prying eyes see Peaches play catch, while slipping the real message right past them.

  Now, Skyler ran the video through his NSA-developed steganography decoding second-level decryption program.

  It turned into another attachment, and a .txt file containing a wall of text.