Freefall: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 1)

by Felix R. Savage

  “Roger,” Jack said.

  Whoever NASA had sent up, they would have to be an improvement over Lance Garner, at any rate.

  *

  Skyler’s fear had gone away.

  It was pretty hard to be scared when you were concentrating every fiber of your being on not vomiting.

  He’d puked on his first trip to orbit. That had been bad enough. If he puked now, it would be a disaster. He was wearing his spacesuit. A glass bubble enclosed the front of his head, seamlessly joined to the rigid cowl of his Z-2. The puke would have nowhere to go.

  Weightless, he bobbled in his harness, staring at the tiny screen ahead of him in the capsule’s cockpit.

  The SoD grew from a pixel to a blot to the familiar shape of a child’s stacking toy stacked out of order, with the largest piece near the ‘top.’ And then it started to shrink again.

  “It’s pulling away!” Skyler shrieked.

  “Sit tight,” CapCom said.

  CapCom had a warm voice. Skyler trusted her. He sat tight, mouth-breathing. Do not puke. Do not puke.

  “The SoD is now approaching its apogee,” CapCom said. “It will slow down significantly. Watch.”

  No lie. The SoD grew again, and grew. The Falcon Heavy was gradually overhauling it.

  “On my word,” Capcom said.

  “Ready.” Skyler opened his lips as little as possible, lest the saliva collecting in his mouth escape.

  “Release your harness.”

  “Roger.”

  He floated into the middle of the cockpit.

  “Grab your broomstick.”

  It was riding next to him in one of the unoccupied couches. “Got it.”

  “Go up to the hatch.”

  He towed the broomstick up to the hatch overhead. “Roger.”

  “You remember how to get out, right? Knock on the hatch three times and say ‘Open sesame.’”

  Intent on following orders, Skyler had raised his gloved fist to knock before he got the joke. Quit trying to put me at my ease! he thought. Just get me safely to the SoD. “What next?”

  “Vent the cockpit to space and undog the hatch,” CapCom said. Dumbass, she didn’t say.

  The cockpit vented its air. The hatch swung open. Skyler fell ‘up’ into the vacuum. The broomstick, tethered to his wrist, followed him.

  Feeling tiny in the void, clumsy in his spacesuit, Skyler swung his leg over the broomstick’s cylindrical body. Like all the best inventions, the broomstick was absurdly simple: a LOX tube with a heater, a nozzle, and handlebars. A motorbike, basically, without wheels. Skyler had never ridden one of these babies when he was at the ISS. But how hard could it be?

  “I’m handing you over to the SoD now,” CapCom said. “Godspeed.”

  The Spirit of Destiny floated subjectively overhead. It was over 200 meters long, three times the length of the Falcon Heavy, but it looked about the size of a semi-trailer. That’s how Skyler knew it was some distance away.

  Two tiny figures floated outside the string of modules between the main hab and the bioshield.

  Skyler had to reach them. Straddling the broomstick, he twisted the throttle control in his right handlebar.

  The broomstick rocketed away from the Falcon Heavy at a shocking speed, and Skyler puked.

  Retching, eyes watering, he struggled to turn the broomstick towards the SoD. He was veering all over the place. “Help,” he yelled, and then realized he’d forgotten to chin-press the toggle to switch his comms to the SoD’s channel. He pressed it, as puke drooled out of his mouth.

  “—out! Straighten out!”

  The British voice yelling into his helmet could only be Jack Kildare. Skyler was in so much distress, he didn’t care. “I’m trying!”

  “You’re veering away from us! Turn to your right!”

  “I’m TRYING,” Skyler screamed, and retched again. His vomit splashed against his faceplate. A film of puke covered the glass. He couldn’t see.

  “Have you engaged the gyroscopes?” Kildare yelled.

  Oh God! He hadn’t! He felt for the control on the left handlebar. It was like trying to type in mittens—

  The gyroscopes locked. The broomstick stopped massively overreacting to every twitch.

  “That’s better,” Kildare said. “Now turn to your right. I’ll talk you in …”

  *

  Whoever was on the broomstick, Jack knew he’d puked in his helmet, because his voice sounded underwatery—vomit clogging the mic. Another tyro, Jack thought bleakly. The FNG was, at least, good at following orders. Obeying Jack’s careful instructions, he chugged towards the SoD.

  The two spacecraft had achieved a stable separation distance. But this couldn’t last long. Soon, the Falcon Heavy would fall behind again, as the SoD plunged back towards Earth.

  No time to spare.

  As soon as the replacement got within reach, Jack unceremoniously yanked him off the broomstick. Vomit covered the inside of his faceplate, hiding his face. “Go in and get cleaned up,” Jack said, stuffing him into the airlock.

  He released his tether, flung his leg over the broomstick, and wrangled Lance’s frozen corpse in front of him.

  Hold on tight, buddy.

  That ride across the void to the Falcon Heavy taxed Jack’s mental resilience. Face-down across the cylinder, Lance rocked back and forth, his stiff legs bumping against Jack’s arms. The dead man wore his satchel, duct-taped to the back of his spacesuit. They’d cleared out Lance’s coffin, packed up his belongings.

  They’d found no evidence that he was a spy and saboteur.

  But then, there wouldn’t be, would there?

  A smart Fed doesn’t leave his secret diary lying around.

  Jack clung to the belief that he’d done the right thing. There had been no more missiles, no more insider sabotage attempts. What more proof did he need? No more bad guy, no more problems. It was going to be smooth sailing from here on out.

  He turned the broomstick, nosed it alongside the Dragon 2 capsule, and killed the thrust. The hatch hung open. Cramming Lance and his pathetic belongings inside, Jack thought of Hansel and Gretel cramming the wicked witch into her own oven. But he felt more like the witch.

  The oven comparison wasn’t inapt. After separating from the SoD, the Falcon Heavy would fire its second stage once more. It would curve back towards Earth, dumping the second stage along the way, and fire its retros at perigee for a hot landing. Lance was going to get a bit singed.

  Jack slammed the hatch shut. There was an emergency access port on the outside of the capsule. Juggling the broomstick, he redogged the hatch and felt it latch securrly.

  As he straddled the broomstick once more, a slow-moving torpedo glided over his head. The Falcon Heavy had released the fuel tank it carried instead of a third stage. The computer-controlled release looked to be well-timed, but just in case, Jack rode the broomstick up to the tank and nudged it with his knee, guiding it towards the waiting Xiang.

  This maneuver hadn’t been in the original mission plan, but the whole idea was that they’d come prepared for anything. Xiang carried the SoD’s magnetic harpoon gun. He fired it, and the grapple locked onto the tank. Easy as falling off a log.

  “Well done,” Menelaou said over the radio. “Now we need to transfer the fuel into our booster.”

  “Someone else can do that,” Jack said, before she could order him to do it. Not only was he tired, he wanted to be on the bridge during the fuel transfer maneuver. It could result in a loss of trim, and as confident as Menelaou might be in her own piloting skills, Jack didn’t quite share her confidence.

  Besides, he had one more thing he wanted to do before he went inside.

  He pushed the broomstick into the airlock.

  His tether trailed from the fitting on the hull adjacent to the airlock, ready to be clipped onto his belt.

  About to grab it, he paused.

  Then he let his hand fall.

  Always wanted to spacewalk without a tether.

&nbs
p; With the tiniest fingertip push against the hull, he turned his back on the SoD. Although he floated within arm’s reach of the airlock, the sensation of peril thrilled through his brain like a siren. He was deliberately ignoring the single most important rule of spacewalking, the one drilled into him over years of training and experience … and it felt like a cocaine high.

  Earth turned below him.

  Sunrise painted a silver arc over the Pacific.

  Tears pricked the corners of Jack’s eyes.

  “You should’ve been here, Ollie,” he whispered under his breath. “Goddammit.”

  He could imagine it so clearly, it felt almost like Meeks was with him. Spacesuited, helmeted, chattering zealously about the adventure ahead of them.

  The imaginary vision, like a mirror, reflected Jack’s loneliness.

  He clumsily extracted the aluminum capsule from his thigh pocket. A twist opened it. He shook it. The contents misted out. A fine grey haze, and then nothing.

  Jack bit his lip, refusing to say goodbye.

  “What the hell are you doing out there, Kildare?” Menelaou said. “You’re tying up the airlock. Need you to get in here and look after the new guy.” She added in a lower voice, “Wait till you see what they’ve landed us with this time. Total mess, and I mean that literally.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Menelaou wasn’t kidding.

  Crawling out of the airlock, the first thing Jack saw was the skinny figure of the replacement. Half in and half out of his spacesuit. Puke in his hair. Face in a barf bag.

  Globules of vomit, large and small, floated around the storage module.

  Boisselot was chasing the mess with the handheld vacuum cleaner, whose roaring redoubled the usual noise of fans. He shot Jack a Gallic eye-roll—conveniently forgetting that he’d had more than one puking episode himself.

  Jack stripped off his spacesuit and the sweat-saturated liner he wore under it. He wanted to towel down, but the replacement obviously had the greater need. He grabbed a towel and floated over to the guy. “I know how much it sucks right now, but I promise …”

  I promise it’ll wear off.

  That’s what he had been going to say, before he saw the peace sign floating on a cord around the replacement’s neck.

  Oh, no.

  No goddamn way.

  They did not send us …

  “Skyler Taft?”

  Skyler lowered the barf bag. He blinked bloodshot eyes. His hair was so sticky with sweat and puke that it lay flat to his head, instead of rising into a zero-gee halo. “One of my ancestors was a president,” he croaked. “We’ve got senators, generals, ambassadors in there too. I had to find some way to rise higher than them all.”

  *

  Alexei Ivanov flew into the storage module. He tossed a neutrally pitched greeting to Skyler, and began to suit up for a spacewalk. Kildare said something about the fuel transfer maneuver. Ivanov replied. Boisselot threw in a comment. They were speaking English but it might as well have been Chinese.

  Skyler methodically scrubbed his face with a towel. Why had he let himself be shanghaied into this?

  Director Flaherty’s last words to him echoed in his mind.

  “The mission of the SoD is to investigate the MOAD and determine whether it is, or is not, a threat to humanity.

  “Your mission is to secure as much alien shit as you can get your hands on, and return it to the United States.”

  Yeah.

  That’s why.

  He guessed Flaherty would never know that the first guy he charged with this mission had been a Chinese spy. The NXC had dodged a bullet there.

  And Skyler felt like he’d taken that bullet, right in the gut.

  But the nausea would fade. Whether the amazing impression of competence he’d made here would fade … that seemed questionable.

  Real impressive, wobbling all over the sky with a helmet full of vomit.

  He hung up his spacesuit, and detached his satchel of personal belongings from the limp garment. It was a little bit bulkier than anyone else had been allowed to bring. That’s because it held a Glock subcompact with a modified trigger grip, to permit a gloved finger to fit in.

  Suddenly, Hannah flew into the module. Skyler barely had time to grip one of the grab handles on the wall before she cannoned into him, hugging him. “Skyler! This is so freaking awesome! They didn’t tell us who was coming.”

  Her enthusiastic embrace astonished him—especially given the state he was in. “Watch out, I stink,” he said weakly.

  “My nose is so stuffed up, I can’t smell it anyway.” She squeezed him once more, to prove it. It was a hell of a wasted opportunity. Her breasts pressed against his chest. In freefall, she was seriously pneumatic. And he didn’t even dare give her an innocent, brotherly kiss on the cheek, with Kildare and Boisselot and Ivanov looking on, no doubt wondering why this nice woman was letting Skyler get his noob cooties all over her.

  She pushed off, drifting away from him. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. That tipped him off that this was a performance.

  “Come down and see me in Engineering when you get cleaned up,” she said.

  *

  It had taken Hannah ten minutes to work herself up to that. In an ideal world, she’d have helped Skyler out of his suit and held his hair while he puked. But her spontaneity seemed to have vanished along with her access to alcohol. Instead, she’d lurked in her lair, listening to the men’s voices ‘above,’ gradually psyching herself up to go and hug him.

  He hadn’t bought it. She knew that the instant he appeared in the keel tube entrance to her kingdom. His eyes were wary.

  “So this is where the magic happens?” he said.

  The tragic thing was, she had meant that hug. As much as she didn’t know about Skyler’s involvement with the Firebird Systems mess, he had still been one of her best friends at JSC. They’d had a real connection, charged with potential. She had often regretted pushing him away. This was a heaven-sent second chance.

  But they could never mend their relationship if she wasn’t up-front with him right now.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  The hexagonal array pulsed. Skyler glanced uneasily at it.

  “We’re cranking the output up again,” Hannah explained. “Commander Menelaou wants to be ready to boost when we get the green light from Mission Control.”

  “Yeah, she said in about two hours.” Skyler looked a bit stunned, as if everything was happening too fast for him. Hannah sympathized. She’d felt that way ever since that day on a California clifftop when she took the job.

  Skyler had cleaned himself up as well as you could with wet wipes and dry shampoo. His hair had recovered its natural exuberance.

  Hannah pushed her own hair back self-consciously. In zero-gee, it had an infuriating tendency to escape a scrunchie. “I have something to show you.”

  She dived aft, through the short section of keel tube that led to the turbine room. Skyler followed. “Wow. What are those?” He stared at the massive machine housings riveted to opposing walls of the rectangular room. One was the size of a jet engine, the other was much larger.

  “They’re the most important things on board, short of the reactor,” Hannah said, over the roar. “That’s the housekeeping turbine, and that’s the one that generates power for the MPD engine. That stuff back there is the generator. We use that when we’re running the ship’s systems off the reactor, although right now, because all the reactor power is going to the engine, we’re running on the fuel cells.”

  She dived down to the housekeeping turbine cabinet and opened it up. She reached under the turbine itself, into the warm dark space between the turbine and the wall, where she had stashed some personal stuff. She took out a single sheet of airmail paper.

  “I helped clean out Lance’s coffin,” she said. “I found this in his stuff. No one else has seen it. I thought … I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. Maybe you do.”

  Skyler snatched the sheet of pa
per. Elegant handwriting covered the fine blue sheet on both sides.

  He read out: “‘Please believe that I forgive you. When we met in Beijing, I saw how this has tortured you. I’m a Christian, Lance! I believe in the possibility of repentance. And although you kept saying you could not understand how I could forgive you, I do. Our Lord taught us to forgive seven and seven times seven times, no matter how serious the sin—’”

  Skyler stopped reading. Hannah knew why. She had read the letter herself, and knew what came next.

  …Even if it’s murder.

  Skyler flipped the sheet over and kept reading. When he got to the end, he read out: “’Sincerely yours in Christ, Xue Hua Colbert.”

  “Do you know who she is, Skyler? Do you know why he kept it?”

  Skyler looked up. “She forgave him for murdering her husband. How is that even possible?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m Jewish,” Hannah said. “We believe in an eye for an eye.”

  She regretted her flippancy a moment later. Skyler knuckled his eyes. His cheeks flushed. “I was wrong.” His voice was a subterranean croak. “I was wrong.”

  “Huh? I don’t get it.”

  “The woman he met in Beijing. It was her. The widow of Senator Colbert.”

  Now the name rang a bell. “Oh my God! I remember that! He was murdered right around the time we discovered the MOAD. You mean Lance … killed him?”

  “Yup,” Skyler said. “I always suspected it. Now we have proof. Lance did that … but he didn’t do anything else.” He shook his head wildly. “Take that away, and everything else can be explained. It all falls to pieces.” He dropped the letter. Hannah caught it. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

  “Skyler,” Hannah said cautiously. Fearfully. “Have you done something?”

  She braced for his confession. But then a shutter came down. The man was gone. The Fed was back. “Can I have that?” he said, reaching for the letter.

  Hannah pushed off with one toe and floated out of range. “Nope,” she said. “No one’s getting it.”