Giovanni held his hands out, palms down. “Be careful what you say to anyone.”
A knock at the door.
Giovanni looked to Jess, but she offered only a shrug.
“Hello?” he said, loud enough to be heard outside.
The rooms weren’t exactly soundproof. No answer. Giovanni frowned and went to the door and opened it.
Ballie Booker’s smiling face appeared halfway down the door. “Time for Hector’s soccer practice!” he gleefully exclaimed in his thick British accent, his eyes and grin wide in a goofy expression. “Can he come out to play?”
Hector jumped up from the corner of the room, tossing down his tablet and looking at Giovanni. His uncle nodded, and the six-year-old pranced to the door to be scooped up into Ballie’s arms.
“I’ll have him back in an hour,” Ballie proclaimed.
“Whenever you get tired of him,” said Giovanni.
“Then two.” Ballie held Hector up. “Off we go.”
The door closed by itself.
Ballie was dynamo of positive energy, and used much of it to entertain Hector. Jess guessed he must feel lucky. Scooped off a ship in the middle of dark seas to be deposited in this paradise. Him and his entire crew, and the people they’d rescued. The winners of the greatest lottery jackpot of all time. Something about it felt wrong. So many others were out there dying. Why were they saved and not the others?
Luck.
That was about all Jess could put it down to.
Giovanni was halfway back to the table when there was another knock. He turned and opened the door. “Did you forget the ball—”
The smile slid from Giovanni’s face as he tried to slam the door closed.
“I just want to talk. Just for a second,” said a familiar voice from behind the door.
Jess slumped a little.
Roger.
Despite Giovanni’s efforts, the man pushed his way in.
“You are not welcome here.” Giovanni stood firm and blocked Roger from entering the room. “I thought I made that clear.”
“I don’t blame you, but I’d like to speak to both of you. Please.”
“Let him in.” Jess rose and came to Giovanni’s side to pull him backward. “We’re all stuck in this cave, no getting out. We’re going to see each other. I’d rather we try to be civil.” Not just that, but Jess needed as many friends as she could get right now. She gestured to the small dining table and Roger sat down. Giovanni remained standing.
“How have you been?” she asked, taking a seat across from Roger.
“Better.” He looked down at where his thumb had once been, just a raw stump now. “I’ve been on a program. Going to meetings. Can you believe it? They have a substance abuse program here.” He halfheartedly laughed. “Shouldn’t be surprised with the number of bankers and CEOs down here.”
Jess reached over and laid her hand on his arm. “Good for you.” She paused, then asked: “Did you have another look at my father’s data? Since you got here?”
He kept his eyes downcast. “From what I saw, they had all the data they needed. Better than we had.”
“So then it was all a waste of time.”
“It got us in here. And your dad’s laptop is going to be used in the trial. That’s what everyone says.” He scratched the side of his neck. “I don’t want there to be bad blood between us, Jess. I loved you once, you know that, right?”
“Roger, please, don’t—”
“There’s only so many people left in the world. I’m sorry for what I did, but I’d like to try to be friends again, one day. Somehow. That’s really all I came to say.”
Jess’s face flushed at the feeling of sudden intimacy.
From behind Roger, Giovanni snorted. He went the kitchen counter at the side of the room and opened a cupboard. He took out the bottle of cognac that Ufuk had graciously gifted to them. He poured himself a generous dose of what had to be some of the last ounces of the spirit left on the planet. “So. We forget? Is that it?”
“We remember what he did in the end,” Jess said softly. “You weren’t there, remember?” She turned in her chair. “Roger let me cut off his goddamn thumb, voluntarily. He risked his life to save me and you, Hector and Raffa.”
Roger stood. “Perhaps it’s best I give you some time.”
“I don’t need any time,” Giovanni growled.
“I’ll see myself out,” Roger made his way to the door. “Good to see you, Jess.”
After he left, Jess joined Giovanni in a glass of the cognac. She didn’t much care for the taste, too harsh and smoky and it burned her throat, but she welcomed the distraction. “He did risk his life for us,” she said in the awkward silence.
“After putting us all in danger,” Giovanni replied, taking another sip of his drink. “I don’t much care for Mr. Roger, nor should you.”
Jess woke early the next day. Hector was still fast asleep between her and Giovanni, so she slid out of the bed and unplugged her new robotic leg. Having to plug and unplug a part of her body was a new habit she wasn’t sure she’d get used to it, but it already feel like a part of her in a way she hadn’t expected. She got dressed quietly and left their quarters to take a walk. She needed as much practice as she could get. The new leg almost seemed to walk itself—almost seemed to want to walk itself.
Most of San EU had barely woken as the tentative light of a fabricated dawn bloomed above her, but she was not alone. Like her, those who appreciated the tranquility of a new morning also strolled through the gardens and walkways, taking advantage of the fleeting peaceful moments before the complex became busy.
Lost in thought, her face flushed ice cold.
At first, she thought she was mistaken. Some subtle quiver of her subconscious, playing a trick or a waking dream she was trying to suppress: that familiar tangle of gray hair above an oily face and thick-rimmed spectacles perched high over a piggish nose.
Dr. Müller stood on the gravel path directly in front of her.
“How lovely to see you,” he said. “I hoped I would run into you.”
“Get away from me.”
She had to suppress an urge to bull-charge the bastard.
“I intend to, Jessica. However, I thought it only right that I tell you myself I am no longer a prisoner to your malicious allegations.”
“I was there, Müller, and so were you. We both know what happened. No one will believe you.”
“On the contrary. They already do.” Müller turned on his heel. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” he said over his shoulder. “For as long you are able to, I mean.”
He started to walk away, his steps light. As free as the birds singing in the trees around them.
Her whole body felt drained of blood. Her hands shook. “You bastard.”
She jumped forward, ran at him. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do. She just wanted to grab him, make him stay—make him admit what he did, stuff her fist down his throat—but she didn’t get more than two steps before four black-clad men grabbed her.
“Stop!” she screamed, but not at the men holding her. She yelled at the disappearing silhouette of Müller.
Birds scattered from the treetops.
RESISTANCE
PART TWO
Mars First Mission
Deep Interplanetary Space
“The Earth is dead?” Commander Jason Rankin said to his second-in-command, communication specialist Elin Cuijpers. “Could you be more specific?”
The emergency siren still wailed, echoing painfully in the confines of the twenty-foot hibernation room. The siren keened up and down in frequency.
The Dutchwoman’s slender fingers played over the terminal display. “No radio chatter at all from any ground-based channels in the past four weeks. Nothing from the Tanzania command post, no communications from China, America…nothing at all. Not even personal messages. No media. Nothing.”
“Keep on it. There must be something. Try to raise a channel.” He grimaced at the
siren’s screech. “And could you turn off that damn thing off? I’m going to bring the others out of hibernation.”
Rankin circled the room, checking and rechecking the hibernation pods. They needed more information, and fast. He walked to mission specialist Pen Shouang’s hibernation pod and activated it, then to guidance specialist Gabi Siegel and punched the emergency unlock, but at mission doctor Anders Larsson, he stopped cold. The man’s hibernation pod was dark. The two other pods began the process of REAP’ing their inhabitants, sloppily regurgitating their occupants onto the aluminum floor. Rankin checked Larsson’s chamber again and tried the terminal beside it. It was as dark as Larsson’s pod.
“What’s...happening?” The gasping words came between bouts of coughing and retching from Mission Specialist Pen Shouang. She staggered to her feet, her face and hair sodden with hibernation fluid. Eyes wide and white as she fought through her own panic.
“There’s been some sort of radiation event,” Rankin said, making sure to speak slowly and enunciate each word clearly. “And the ship seems dead. Not responding to voice commands.”
“The habitation section is a self-contained system with its own power,” Cuijpers called out. She pointed at a terminal next to Rankin, indicating it was active. “The rest of the ship’s had a system failure. I don’t know what it is yet or what caused it, but not everything is down.”
“Check the status of Environmental Control and Life Support,” Rankin said to Shouang. “I need to know how we stand structurally. And Larsson’s chamber isn’t functioning.”
“At least we’re still spinning,” Gabi Siegel said as she dragged herself to her feet. She meant the simulated gravity of the rotating hab. She winced and put her hands over her ears. “Jesus, shut that noise off.”
Rankin’s mind circled around and around.
Whatever the emergency, they’d have to handle it themselves. Even if they could get in touch with someone Earth-side, at this distance, radio communications would have a five minute send-receive latency. Behind the noise of the siren, Rankin sensed an empty silence that loomed in the vast black beyond. The improbably thin walls of the spacecraft were all that separated him and his crew from the frigid vacuum of deep interplanetary space.
Forty million kilometers from Earth.
Or were they?
“Siegel, get over here and help me get guidance back up. I want to know if we’ve fired any engines since we’ve been out. And get some astrometrics; I want to know where the hell we are.” He strode five paces over to help his diminutive guidance officer get her bearings. Barely five feet tall, she packed brains that far outsized her height. “And Shouang, get me the goddamn status of the ECLS.”
“The airlock is sealed,” Shouang replied from the entrance to the hibernation suite. “Atmospherics are all over the place. Looks like there’s damage…a section lost pressure in aft, last before the solar panel array. Everything else is intact, or as intact as I can tell right now.”
“We need to know if the hull is pressurized beyond this airlock.” Rankin was stating the obvious, but better safe than sorry as their minds collectively swam awake. They needed to access the main quarters if they were going to do repairs.
“Were we hit by something?” Siegel asked as Rankin dragged her to another terminal Cuijpers had activated.
“Don’t know yet.”
Something had happened, but what? Why the depressurized hull? A massive radiation event at the same time as a meteoroid swarm? The odds of either were tiny by themselves, but both together? And why was Mars First offline?
A solar flare massive enough to induce thirty thousand nanoTeslas, they had to have a warning. There were half-a-dozen heliospheric monitoring satellites that Rankin knew of, but even then, a sudden solar storm might only give a few hours’ notice. They must have been REAP’ed from deep sleep right as it hit. The Commander cursed whatever dweeb-pencil-pusher had convinced the powers that be to put everyone into hibernation sleep. They should have kept at least one crewmember awake at all times. A trade off so they could pack less life support and more fuel. They said the AI—Mars First’s artificial intelligence—could more than cover for it. He’d argued against it until they threatened to replace him.
Now the AI was probably a fried wonton, but told-you-so was cold comfort in the depths of interplanetary space.
The siren cut off.
Sweet relief to Rankin’s grating eardrums.
One small victory.
“Shouang and Cuijpers will verify integrity and get Mars First back online,” Rankin said to Siegel. “But I need you tell me where we are. If we’re where we’re supposed to be.”
Rankin unsealed Larsson’s hibernation pod while Siegel cursed and struggled with the terminal, trying to get some positional telemetry or data from the automated astrometrics.
Shouang called out from across the chamber: “I’m restarting ECLS. We’ll scrub CO2, but it may be hard to breathe for a minute as backup oxygen comes in.”
“I’m bypassing telemetry and guidance over to you,” Cuijpers said. “Everything except comms is offline. I need to manually reboot, maybe replace motherboards.”
“How long will that take?” Rankin asked.
“Hours, maybe longer,” Cuijpers replied, and then muttered: “And goddammit, I’m starving.”
After REAP’ing, the nausea of waking was fast replaced by a ravenous hunger Rankin didn’t have time to fix. They hadn’t eaten in months, even if they had been in hibernation. They needed to get into the crew quarters, if just to eat some gel packs to stabilize their blood chemistry—otherwise they wouldn’t be thinking clearly.
Assuming they were now.
Around them, the CO2 scrubbers began to hum. The pressure shifted palpably as systems pumped in oxygen in to replace it. Rankin felt it press against his eyes and temples.
He brought his hand away from Larsson’s ice-cold skin. He swore softly under his breath. He’d opened the pod door and had his finger on the man’s neck for a full thirty seconds. “Larsson’s dead.”
A sudden silence descended. Just the gentle hum of the fans.
“We’re all dead,” Gabi Siegel said quietly.
Rankin took two measured breaths before asking: “What does that mean?”
“Look at this.” She pointed at her screen, then dragged the image onto a large display in the middle of the suite. “Telemetry from one of the Mars orbiters.”
Rankin had been so focused on Earth, he hadn’t even thought of the communications with the Mars orbiters. No humans were up there, not yet. Mars First was the vanguard of an effort to colonize the Red Planet. An advance mission had been sent eighteen months before, an automated supply run to make sure there were supplies and a working habitat before they arrived. There were two Mars orbiters as well, one from the ESA and one from NASA. Both well shielded.
“Look at the signal latency,” Siegel pointed out. “We’re nowhere near where we’re supposed to be with respect to Mars. We’re way off course.” She frowned as she brought up another graphic, this one from the automated astrometric systems that checked star positions against the planets. “Jesus Christ…Mars isn’t even where it’s supposed to be.”
“Bring up Earth’s orbit,” Rankin instructed.
A graphic detailing the orbital trajectories of the inner planets appeared on the main screen, with dotted lines plotting their future paths, and a bright red line for the trajectory of Mars First. “See what I mean, Mars isn’t on the right orbital—”
“Look at Venus,” Cuijpers said in a hushed voice.
Rankin pulled his attention from the deviation in Mars’s orbit to try to find Venus—but nothing was there, or rather, where Venus used to be, a sharp angled line led out of the solar system at almost ninety degrees to the plane. “What…how…”
“That wasn’t a solar storm,” Siegel whispered. “It was some kind of massive gravitational event. Venus and Mercury were slingshot straight out of the inner system.”
&
nbsp; “What do you mean, a gravitational event?”
“What about Mars?” asked Cuijpers. “Can we still make it?”
“Siegel,” Rankin demanded again. “What do you mean by gravitational event?”
She held her hands up. “Just give me a second.” Her hands flew over the terminal, and on the main screen, data sheets and images dropped one on top of the other. “We can’t make it. Even with a full main engine burn, we’d miss Mars by more than a hundred million kilometers.” She snorted. “And even if we could get there, it’s wandering off into deep space.”
“Are you sure?”
“Check for yourself.”
Rankin moved in front of the terminal. He wasn’t an expert like Siegel, but they all doubled in their capacities. He’d studied astrophysics and was the backup pilot. He checked and rechecked, then slumped to sit on Larsson’s dark pod.
This had always been something of a suicide mission. Five people on a one-way mission to Mars, to try to establish a vanguard. A colony. But that wasn’t the whole plan. The idea was that re-supply missions would follow from Earth, that more people would come if they succeeded, and—just maybe—one day a triumphant return. Unlikely, but possible.
Now it wasn’t.
Now they were doomed to drift into the infinite reaches of interplanetary space. There was no solution to arrive at Mars. He keyed in a desperate idea. Maybe a long return trajectory to Earth? The closest solution the system came back with was an intercept of forty-six years. The hibernation units were only designed to work for a year or two.
“Maybe Earth doesn’t even exist anymore,” Siegel said from over his shoulder.
She could see what he was doing. They could all see the trajectories he tried plotting on the main screen.
“Boss,” Cuijpers said from the other side of the room. “I have a message in the system. Mars First logged it for us to watch before it went offline.”
“From Earth?”
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 5
