The Harbinger

by Graham Leslie

  “Agent, have navigation to plot a solution to get us out of this roll,” I command. The agent processes for a moment.

  “Navigation has a solution to orient using airjets,” the agent replies. The navigation subsystem has decided the optimal solution would be to use compressed air onboard the ship to fire rotational airjet thrusters to stabilize the roll.

  “Execute.”

  “Navigation is beginning the maneuver now,” the agent replies. I hear airjets fire, and the roll slows until the Riyadh reaches a stable rotation. I feel my weight disappear.

  Finally. I release from the oh-shit bar and shake out my tired arms as I drift away from the bulkhead. My water bottle slowly glides towards me from across the room. Without thrust or rotation, we’re drifting in zero-g.

  “Agent, what’s our current course?” I ask.

  “Navigation reports airjet burn has oriented us toward Ganymede orbit. Current orientation is steady,” the agent dryly replies. This is good, navigation was smart enough to make sure we didn’t waste that air; we’re drifting in the right general direction. Good; the immediate crisis is averted. Now on to assessing the damage.

  I realize while thinking I’ve drifted into the center of Ops and am out of reach of any surface to maneuver myself. Stupid. What is this, my first time in zero-g? I wait for my water bottle to reach me, grab it, and throw it at the wall, the opposite reaction pushing me back towards the wall I drifted off from. I plant my feet and push off, gracefully gliding to the Ops chair. This time, I buckle in.

  “Agent, disable the navigation subsystem,” I say. The narrow artificial intelligence uses a non-trivial amount of power, which is typically not a problem when the fusion core is online. This isn’t, of course, a typical situation.

  “Agent, also get a report from powerplant.”

  After a moment, the agent responds, “Powerplant reports tokamak graphite shell has been breached by an agent collision during the high-g roll. Powerplant will not be operational.”

  Oh, wonderful. The graphite shell is what keeps the tokamak fusion core’s extreme heat contained. If the shell is punctured and the fusion core engages, we’ll be immediately slagged. We should have automatically failed over to the redundant solar array. Solar doesn’t generate near as much power, but it will at least keep life support operational.

  “Agent, is the solar array operational?”

  “Solar arrays are non-operational. The array began folding out automatically once the powerplant was preventatively shut down, but do not appear to have folded out successfully,” the agent replies, then, “The arrays are reporting a non-standard error code and will require human intervention.”

  “What is our remaining battery capacity?” Battery function is going to be critical for survival. Batteries are only meant to sustain life support long enough to make critical repairs.

  “Battery capacity is at ninety-six percent, but battery full capacity is at thirty-two percent of design.”

  I curse. If I recall correctly, batteries are mandated for replacement at fifty percent of original capacity, but are rarely inspected. Al Harbi, you cheap bastards!

  “Agent, what’s our estimate time until depletion?”

  “Sixteen hours.”

  “Shit!”

  Chapter 4

  I have less than sixteen hours to get the solar array online. That will get me dependable power so I can send a distress tight beam to corporate on Ganymede to get help. Oh yeah, and then figure out what to do about the thing in a space suit on the Harbinger that stared me down from a couple thousand kilometers away before my ship nearly killed me.

  Wonderful.

  I propel myself out of Ops in zero-g and drift down the corridor to the Spine. At the halfway point, I grab a hold of an oh-shit handle and gently bring myself to the center of the service elevator. I slip my fingers through some grease into a recessed area on the surface of the elevator, then lift, exposing a lever. I rotate it against some minor resistance from grime and rust until I feel something give. I pull up and the service panel opens out of the way, exposing a small channel running through the center elevator to be used in a zero-g emergency situation. There is, of course, also the agent maintenance path that runs the length of the spine that can be used in an emergency, but that claustrophobic tunnel is definitely not where I want to be.

  I propel myself through the channel and pass a few mostly-empty cargo decks until I reach my destination, the cargo deck in the middle of the ship. I grab a passing oh-shit handle and bring myself to a stop. I didn’t stop to look at the container I secured a deck above — I can’t imagine all of the come-alongs held. I don’t want to see what mess the high-g roll made of it.

  Across the deck to the belly of the ship is the docking port, where the Riyadh can connect to a space port or another vessel using universal docking. The docking port is at the mid-point of the ship so cargo can be conveniently loaded to the decks above and below in zero-g. Opposite the belly docking port is the back EVA port, where I’ll pass through the airlock to the exterior of the ship to investigate the solar array. I use this port on the rare occasion I need to make an EVA; the top EVA port near Ops and my quarters is for emergencies only. I’ve made an occasional EVA in my time so it’s nothing that makes me nervous.

  I glide across the nearly empty deck to the belly bulkhead wall and bring myself to a stop against the EVA storage cabinets. The emergency LED lights dimly light the dark grays and oranges of the rusty steel. I open a storage cabinet and retrieve one of my three redundant standard issue EVA suits. The suits are thick but form fitting to shield the occupant from background radiation, and use a small internal layer of water to heat and insulate against the cold of deep space. On the back of the suit is a built-in tank of oxygen, and a below is a magnetic plate that can be used to secure an extra tank or two, a multi-tool, or anything else that may needed for an EVA. Across the waist where the upper half connects to the lower half is a built-in harness with an auto-retracting tether. I strip off my jumpsuit and slip my feet through the suit legs into the boots, then slip those boots through rungs on the metal floor to keep me grounded while situating the upper half.

  “Agent!” I call. I wait a moment before trusty Chip whirrs in. I have Chip first secure my suit, then bring short-range communications online so I can interface with him from my EVA helmet communications equipment. With the top half of the suit on, I reach my bulky hands to grab the helmet I left floating in zero-g, and I slip it on and rotate it a few degrees so it latches into place. Then Chip gets to work. He takes some time; when preparing for an EVA, agents are programmed to secure each element of the suit, and then confirm every connection for redundancy. I feel the pressure change and the air tastes stale as my suit begins circulating air from the built in tank. I should hopefully only need the built in tank for this EVA. My skin heats as the suit insulates me in preparation for vacuum, but I don’t yet start sweating. Ordinarily an EVA is a very sweaty endeavor; evidently, one perk of my screwed up homeostasis is that I won’t be sweating too much.

  My helmet speaker crackles alive.

  “Suit secured.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement, Chip.”

  The EVA suit doesn’t have any kind of compressed airjets for navigation in space; rather, long metal bars run along the outside of the ship that I can hook on to using the built-in tether and shimmy across for traverse the Riyadh.

  I grab a multi-tool from its charging dock in the cabinet and magnetically attach it to my lower back plate, slip my boots out of the rungs keeping me grounded, and push off the rungs with the tips of my boots to push me to the nearby airlock.

  “Open the inner port.” The agent complies and I drift in and use my hands to stop myself against the outer port.

  “Cycle.”

  “Cycling...” Chip tells me. The inner port closes, and the air in the airlock slowly trickles out. My helmet beeps to inform me the atmospherics have become dangerous. The outer port opens, and I look out to sp
ace.

  It’s snowing.

  I blink.

  Son of a bitch. It’s snowing in space.

  I’m not really sure what to make of this. Snowflakes drift past me, a light flurry in the foreground, backed by cold, dark, space. I squint my eyes to look closer. Not just crystallized droplets from some leaking exterior tank, no, these are snowflakes, like the ones —

  Oh shit! I reach behind and slip the tips of my gloved fingers around the start of the metal rod me. I was drifting away from the ship in a daze. I pivot myself to face the rod and I grab the tether from my waist, pull to unspool it, and hook on. I give it a nice pull to make sure I’m secured. Ok, good. I slowly, anxiously turn back.

  Still snowing. As if this trip could get any weirder.

  One thing at a time. One thing at a time. I need to get the solar array back up and figure out what is going on this ship.

  I pull myself along the bar, hand-over-hand, and the tethered hook follows behind me diligently. As I go, I observe the damage to the outside of the ship. From here I can see that one of the two tight beam emitters for long-range communications was sheared off the side of the ship during the high-g roll. I’ll need to check the status of the other high beam mounted on the far side of the ship once I get solar power restored. I can see dangling wires where scopes sheared off as well. This old cargo vessel was not made for surviving any kind of strenuous roll.

  The exterior of the Riyadh is drab shades of gray and remnants of some blue. Repairs and alterations from many dry docks over its long life of service have left it nearly paintless. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen a marking for Al Harbi or Riyadh; I don’t think they bothered when they bought this old heap and put it into service. I’m sure the all the fresh paint went to the family pleasure yachts on the surface of Ganymede. I’m distracted again by the snow falling around me but try to focus on the task at hand. Focus!

  As I move, the augmented reality display in my EVA helmet annotates the hull of the ship with information. I see a rightward arrow labeled Solar Array Pivot Assembly hovering over a bar perpendicular to the one I’m shimmying across. With a firm grip, I unhook from the vertical bar and hook myself onto the horizontal bar. I give myself a push to slide along it. As I move across the contour of the hull, I begin to see the solar array below me and to my right. The array, ordinarily flush against the hull when stowed, is bent at an unusual angle. It looks like the single structural beam connecting the array to the hull is bent, and that’s what’s keeping the array from fully pivoting off the ship and rotating to take in sunlight. I find a vertical hull bar and take it down to the pivot assembly to get a closer look at the damage.

  Looks like I saw it right. The array beam has bent and pressed into the metal to its side. When the solar array tries to rotate, it just presses further into the assembly. I’m thinking my best course of action here will be to cut the beam and re-weld it at the correct the angle. Luckily, the wiring from the solar array runs freely parallel to the beam, not inside it, so I can cut without disconnecting any wires. Once on a proper angle, the array should rotate perpendicular with the hull, and then along itself to align with the sun and begin generating power.

  First, I pull the wire bundle away from the beam. It’s got plenty of slack so that I can move it a safe distance from the beam while I do my cutting. Thank you, whoever designed that. I pull the multi-tool off my lower back, and give it a shake. It interfaces with my suit through a wireless protocol, and an augmented reality display comes to life over the side of the tool. While hooked on, I steady myself parallel to the hull of the ship and use one hand to hold the tool and the other to first tap through the same safety warning that I always ignore, and then select the plasma torch option. After a few seconds the tool has charged its capacitors, and I pull the trigger once. A jet of plasma is visible, and my helmet auto-darkens to protect my eyes. I put one hand on the upper part of the beam, and begin to cut. I slowly work the tool through the high-strength steel. This will take some time.

  While the plasma torch slowly turns the metal to liquid, I can’t help look up at the snow. It eerily glides past me in space. No, not quite glides. It almost looks like its drifting under some light wind. A flake drifts into my mask. I can see it just a few centimeters from my eyes, and sure enough, it’s a snowflake. You know, it looks reminds me of the snowflakes I saw in Baltimore —

  I don’t notice the multi-tool cut clean through the beam and separate it, and I drift forward with my hand on the upper part. It starts to slip out of my hand. Shit! I quickly swing the multi-tool around and stick it to my lower back, then I grab the beam with my right hand too.

  Stupid — it’s hot and burns. Damn it! I grabbed too close to the cut. The suit can handle evenly distributed high heat, but my hand sure can’t handle molten metal a few millimeters away. I situate my hands better to make sure I’ve got a secure grip on the drifting beam holding the solar array and I brace myself —

  Snap! The line stops reeling out and pulls taught, keeping me from drifting any further from the hull. I nearly let the solar array slip out of my hands, but manage to hold on tight, and drag it back against its inertia. The wheel on my suit groans as it slowly works to reel the mass and inertia of myself and the entire solar array back in. It’s holding. The slack in the wire bundle has kept the wires from ripping out of the bulkhead of the solar array.

  For a moment, I peacefully watch the snow pass by. For a split second, I recall the Harbinger is out there somewhere, too far away for my human eyes to see. No, I don’t want to think about that right now. Back to the task at hand.

  I gently bump against the hull and bend and brace my arms to receive the mass of the solar array without letting it crash in to me. I hold tight and wrangle it to a stop. Then, I slowly, very slowly, guide the array back to the pivot assembly. I align the beam straight up above its lower half. I carefully pull my hands away and the array stays in place. With the array good to go, I reach back and retrieve the multi-tool. With another shake the menu comes alive, and I again tap through the warning and select the welder option. With my left hand, hold the beam in place at the ideal angle, leaving a triangular gap between it and its lower half. My hand still burns, but I fight through it and ignore the pain. With my right hand, I point the tool at the gap and pull the trigger. My auto-darkening helmet engages, and I weld a connection in the gap to tack-weld the solar array into place. This isn’t going to win me any welding awards, but I’m just trying to stay alive here. Once tacked into place, I spray weld the perimeter of the gap, reattaching the beam securely in place. It looks solid. I return the multi-tool to the magnetic plate on my back and give the beam a good kick with my boot while holding in place with my gloved hands. It’s not pretty, but it will hold.

  “Chip, re-enable the solar array,” I command over short-range communications through my EVA helmet. The agent acknowledges and I watch the solar array, usable once again, rotate until it is fully perpendicular with the hull. The panels then rotate along the axis of the beam until facing the distant sun. A glare reflects off the panels, and some LEDs on the array come to life to indicate it is generating power. Finally, some good news.

  “Solar panels engaged,” the agent informs me. Satisfied, I breath a sigh of relief. Time to get back.

  I navigate back along the bars until I reach the cargo belly port, and step inside the airlock. I slip my boots inside some rungs in the airlock, ready to cycle, but then reconsider. I turn around and slip my boots back into the rungs again so I’m facing out the airlock. The snow drifts past in a light flurry. But, it’s no peaceful association for me.

  I remember Baltimore. The snow under my feet as we stood at the edge of the marina, how you would just sink down in to it. How it crunched under your feet, rather than the softness I was expecting. I haven’t seen snow since.

  It doesn’t snow in space.

  Screw this. I turn back around and peer through the airlock porthole, feeling like I’ll have some sense of sec
urity back inside the ship.

  “Chip, bring up the docking scopes. Is there any —” I pause to think, “— material at close range outside the ship?” The docking scopes, unlike the long-range scopes, have a higher resolution at a close range and are used for precise navigation in docking situations.

  “The scopes detect nothing,” the agent replies. I pivot and peer back around my shoulder. The snow is gone. I pause for a minute, then another wave of discomfort comes over me.

  “Ok. Chip, cycle the airlock and bring me in.”

  Chapter 5

  These stupid cybernetic components are failing me and causing me to hallucinate while alone on a drifting, damaged spacecraft. I need to make sure I don’t get myself killed. Space is unforgiving.

  I’m pulled away from my thoughts when I reach Ops. I open the port, propel myself to the chair, and get buckled in. Chip is off downstairs repairing something else that needs attention, but the backup agent is still here in Ops.

  “Agent, let’s bring Ops back online,” I say. The agent acknowledges, and lets me know the Operations suite is booting up. The suite is not a single artificial intelligence but a stack of narrow artificial intelligences for each of the core functions of the ship: Navigation, Communications, Life Support, et cetera. An additional artificial intelligence sits atop the stack, responsible for communicating with humans like me, routing commands to each of the correct sub-systems, and translating raw data outputted by the sub-systems into something more meaningful. The whole suite generally uses a lot of power, but the suite will be smart enough in our current predicament to keep subsystems on standby until they are needed to conserve our precious solar energy.

  Now that solar power has been restored, my plan is to use the other tight beam to blast out a call for help to corporate on Ganymede, and wait out rescue.

  “Ops, what’s our tight beam status?”

  “Both tight beam systems are failing to interface across I/O,” the artificial intelligence replies. Great. The other tight beam emitter must have sheared off as well. If it was damaged, we’d at least be getting some error codes across input / output. Nothing at all means there is nothing there. Time for Plan B.