The Phobos Maneuver

by Felix R. Savage

  Jun nodded.

  Planet X was a gas giant a bit bigger than Jupiter, the only Sudarsky Class II planet in the solar system—for a very generous definition of in. Discovered in 2042 and visited several times since by unmanned probes, it orbited the sun at a distance of 17,000 AUs. Yes, seventeen thousand times as far away as Earth. Out there, the sun would be indistinguishable from any other star. Planet X had a rocky core, a gas envelope composed mostly of water clouds, and two iceball moons about the size of Ganymede and Io, as well as a host of tinier ones. It inhabited a numinous corner of the public imagination. Game designers enjoyed populating it with sapient extremophiles. Its very name magnetized those who did not believe humanity had yet discovered all there was to know about the solar system, let alone the universe. Including Mendoza.

  “That’s awesome!” he exclaimed. “Why’s it a secret?”

  Kiyoshi flicked his dry-wipe at Mendoza, catching him on the nose. “That’s why. Close your mouth. You look retarded.”

  “It’s just … Planet X! Whew. That’s huge.”

  “It’s huge all right,” Kiyoshi agreed. “A huge mistake. Jun’s modelled it. There is no combination of lucky breaks that gets us there alive. And even if we did get there alive, we’d be living on a frozen moon, mining He3 and D out of the atmosphere for power, totally reliant on scooper ships—which haven’t been a stunning technological success story, even here at home. No, thanks. I want no part of that insanity.”

  Mendoza was too diplomatic to say that Jun’s predictive modelling sucked. But it did. Jun was notoriously bad at forecasting anything that involved people, which was pretty much everything. So Mendoza didn’t put much stock in his naysaying.

  A thousand questions rushed into his mind. Most of them began with How. And one in particular stood out.

  How can I go without Elfrida?

  He couldn’t. That was the plain fact. He would have to sacrifice the adventure of a lifetime, if it meant leaving her behind.

  His elation palled.

  “Cheer up,” Kiyoshi said dryly. “It’ll never happen.”

  “It will,” Mendoza said. “The boss’ll make it happen. This is what he does: he makes things happen. And you can call me a sucker if you like, but I think it’s great. It’s about frigging time we got off our lazy asses and explored the limits of the solar system. If it takes an interplanetary war to get us moving—”

  “He was planning this long before the war,” Kiyoshi said.

  “Sure, I can see that now. All that stuff in the Queen of Persia. But no way it would’ve worked before. People wouldn’t have gone for it. They will now. Talk to the Mormons, the Amish, the Amazonians, anyone who still has connections back home … the feeling that we just might lose this war is palpable.” He hastened to add, “Of course, we won’t. It’ll just fizzle out, like every time before,” and did not see the look that Kiyoshi and Jun exchanged. “But in that worst-case scenario, the most distant colonies could be the salvation of humanity … ha, literally … Salvation.”

  “The boss should hire you as his PR honcho,” Kiyoshi said.

  “Nope. I’m just an ordinary guy.” Mendoza sighed. “But I can’t go.”

  “Elfrida?”

  “She’s all I’ve got left.”

  This time, he did see Kiyoshi and Jun exchange a look. He knew they were talking silently. Kiyoshi’s lips quivered. He was subvocalizing. It was rude to have silent conversations in front of people. But Mendoza didn’t care. All he could think about was Elfrida, far away on Earth.

  “We could always go pick her up,” Kiyoshi said.

  “What?” Mendoza said. “In the Monster?”

  Kiyoshi scrunched his chin into his neck. “Yeah, well, we’d need another ship.”

  “Well, I appreciate the thought.” Mendoza joked awkwardly, “I figured you would have had enough of chasing Elfrida around the solar system.”

  “Feels like my destiny sometimes,” Jun said, and Kiyoshi grinned.

  “It’s a plan. If we can get hold of another ship. And you never know. One might come along when we least expect it.”

  vii.

  “Thundering typhoons!” said Captain Haddock. “We’re being boarded!”

  “Oh, Dad,” Kelp said. “We are not.”

  “We’re going at warp speed,” Michael explained. “The Fuglies are chasing us, but as long as you’re in warp space, you’re pretty much safe from boarding maneuvers.”

  He’d initiated Kelp into the joys of Existential Threat X. Kelp had taken only a few days to get the hang of it. Now they were teaching the grown-ups. But Captain Haddock, in particular, kept reverting to tried and true piratical form, ignoring the rules, and forgetting all about the Fuglies whenever he caught a whiff of in-game profit.

  “Come on, Haddy,” Michael said. “We aren’t being boarded.”

  “Will ye turn off that bloody game for a moment! If we’re not being boarded, what in the seven seas is that?”

  Michael came out of immersion. The cockpit of their FTL destroyer turned back into the cruddy old bridge of the Kharbage Collector. Captain Haddock stood at the captain’s workstation, stabbing at the consoles. Michael ripped his headset off and floundered over to him. Red concentric circles of alarm flashed from the point on the systems status screen corresponding to the quarterdeck.

  “The airlock’s breached!” Coral screeched.

  “No, it isn’t,” Michael said. “We’re not losing pressure. It’s a …” false alarm, he was going to say, but then Captain Haddock pulled up the external optical feed.

  An object resembling a steel toilet plunger lay alongside the Kharbage Collector. That meant it was travelling as fast as they were, and in precisely the same direction. Heat welled from its business end. Michael had never seen a ship like it.

  He could just hear Petruzzelli saying, That’s what you get for playing games on the bridge.

  The elevator pinged. They all whipped around. Out stepped a short, grumpy-looking man in a spacesuit. “Hello,” he said. “Which of you is the owner of this clunker?”

  “Me,” Michael squeaked, at the same time as Captain Haddock said, “At yer service, sir.” He trod on Michael’s foot, hard, as he spoke. “How can we assist you today?”

  “I would like to inspect your transponder,” said the man in the spacesuit. “It may be malfunctioning. Although there are fifty-seven spaceships in the solar system named Paladin, none of them is a recycling barge. Under the circumstances, we have to be aware of potential false-flags.”

  Michael closed his eyes for a moment in agony. Why, oh why had he thought he could get away with jarking the transponder, during a war?

  As the man stepped, somewhat jerkily, over to the comms workstation, Captain Haddock said, “Ware! Behind you!”

  Everyone nervously spun around—except their visitor.

  “As I thought,” muttered Captain Haddock. “It’s a bot, me hearties. There’s nothing inside that spacesuit save for servos.”

  Fifteen seconds later, their visitor looked over his shoulder. Now that Michael knew it was a phavatar, he could see the wear and tear on the square, grumpy face. The phavatar pointed at Captain Haddock. “Servos, actuators, and assorted non-lethal ordnance, for your information. Think you’re clever? You won’t feel very clever when you wake up with a splitting headache, halfway back to Ceres.”

  “Please,” Michael burst out. “Don’t make us go back! We’ve done nothing wrong!”

  Fifteen seconds later, the phavatar popped its head out from underneath the comms workstation to say, “It happens to be illegal to interfere with the transponder of a commercial spaceship.” It popped its head back under the workstation. A cutter laser sizzled. Michael smelt burning metal.

  It’s from Customs, he thought. His father was forever complaining about Customs & Excise, the UN-affiliated agency that regulated commerce on Ceres. They probably think we’re smugglers. But the Kharbage Collector, now flying as the Paladin, wasn’t a smuggler ship. Their e
mpty cargo bays would prove it. They’ll have to let us go! We might have to pay a fine for jarking the transponder ... That raised another dilemma, for Michael had no money of his own, and he didn’t suppose the pirates had, either.

  Kelp nudged him. The older boy had sat down at the captain’s workstation. He could never stand up on the bridge for long at one time. He pointed at the external optical feed, which he’d zoomed in on their visitor’s toilet-plunger ship. Where its name and registration code should have been painted on its fuselage, was—nothing.

  Kelp wrote with his finger on the top of the workstation: I, S, A.

  Michael’s skin broke out in gooseflesh as if he’d been plunged into cold water.

  The Intelligence Security Agency.

  If you asked most people in the Belt what terrified them the most, they wouldn’t say the PLAN. They would say the ISA. Michael was no exception. He had learned from an early age to dread the spooks, for they controlled information, which was right up there in terms of importance with air.

  Captain Haddock had also seen what Kelp saw. He said, “Sure we’ll be delighted to cooperate with your requirements, whatever they may be, sir,” and from the look of fear on his face, Michael knew Haddock was about to give him up.

  He went from feeling cold, to feeling hot and prickly all over. He had trusted Haddock.

  “This lad here, you’ll be interested to know, is the son of an influential member of the Ceres business community.” Haddock gurned.

  “No!” Michael screamed. “I’m dead!”

  The phavatar backed out from underneath the comms workstation. Retracting its cutter laser and soldering attachments, it said brightly, “Congratulations! Your transponder checks out. You’re free to continue on your present trajectory.”

  “Whuhhh?” said Captain Haddock.

  “I apologize for the inconvenience. In the present circumstances, we have to be very careful, as I mentioned. If you have any questions or feedback concerning this visit, please contact the Customer Service section at Ceres Customs and Excise!”

  “It’s not from C&E,” Coral said.

  “Of course it isn’t,” Captain Haddock said. “It’s not even from bloody Ceres, although its operator is probably there, sitting in comfort on an orbital, scoffing snacks and checking his email while he persecutes us.”

  The phavatar plodded back to the elevator. “Have a nice voyage!” it said.

  The pirates all crowded into the elevator with it. Michael stayed on the bridge. He crawled under the comms workstation and shone his flashlight on the transponder. It was still the one he’d bought on the black market in the Belows. A little metal box the length of his thumb, it looked the same as ever. Undamaged. Could the ISA phavatar genuinely just have been checking it out?

  “SHIP QUERY!” He addressed the Kharbage Collector’s hub. “Is our transponder working?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is everything else OK?”

  “No issues noted.”

  Michael gnawed his fingernails. He went to the captain’s workstation and looked for the others on the security cameras. Captain Haddock and Codfish were jostling the phavatar down the keel tube, shouting at it. Their namsadang tempers had got the better of them. The phavatar somersaulted and showed them the back of its wrist. It was clearly threatening to gas them or tase them or something else equally horrible.

  During their voyage so far, Michael had started to like Captain Haddock. How stupid could you get? Haddock had squealed on him the first chance he got, had given him up in less time than it took a fart to dissipate in the wind.

  As these bitter thoughts crowded his mind, Haddock himself came on the intercom. “It’s leaving,” he panted.

  Michael glanced at the external feed. The phavatar dived through space to its ship. It vanished into a hatch in the fuselage—a remote control toy, putting itself away after having completed its menial task.

  “Yon cunny wouldn’t breathe a word, but I know why they’re interested in us,” Haddock said darkly.

  The ISA ship flipped over and darted out of sight like a silver fish diving into a lake.

  “Look, it’s gone!” Michael said. “It probably was just checking us out! You heard it say they have to be more careful—”

  “They’ve heard the same rumors we did, no doubt, probably more. They’re watching 99984 Ravilious. And they don’t want us mucking up their stake-out.” Haddock and his family reappeared on the keel tube feed, swimming up the tube towards the camera.

  “You gave me up!” Michael shouted. “You told it who I am!”

  “I did not,” Haddock said with aplomb. “I was going to use your dad’s name as a get out o’ jail free card if the bot turned nasty. It never gave me reason to.”

  “I don’t think it really had any weapons at all,” said Kelp, gliding up the tube behind his father. “They’re not allowed. Not with that long of a delay. It was just trying to scare us.”

  “And though it pains me to admit it, sprog o’ mine, it succeeded. I was right to begin with. Should have trusted my gut instinct. We’re going to Titan. May have to stop at Callisto to refuel.”

  “We are NOT going to Titan!” Michael shouted.

  He dashed over to the storage lockers and threw them open. Random merchandise cascaded out on top of him. He grabbed a sack of splart, broke off the nozzle tip, and lugged it back to the elevator. He squeezed splart all over the crack between the doors. He had to stand on an ergoform to get the top. The biting smell of the powerful epoxy filled his nostrils.. When he was done, he dragged the sack over to the hatch which led to the crew quarters, and splarted that shut, too.

  The pirates banged on the other side of the elevator doors.

  “You can’t come in!” Michael shouted. His heartbeat felt like a piston in his chest.

  “We’re stuck in the fucking elevator,” Haddock shouted. His voice came from the elevator, and also from the intercom.

  “You are not stuck!” Michael shouted. “You can go down to the crew quarters!” His eyes filled with tears. “I don’t care WHERE you go, as long as you leave me alone!”

  Kelp’s and Codfish’s voices came from the elevator, too quiet to distinguish any words.

  “Right,” Haddock said. “I should have known better than to trust a son of Adnan Kharbage. Clearly it’s all the same to you if we starve. I ask only that you bury us in space, wrapped in our auld thermal blankets, to commemorate our lifelong commitment to the frontiers of human endeavor.”

  “You won’t starve,” Michael said. “You’ve got all the food and water. I don’t have anything.” This was not strictly true. He had a zillion pouches of minestrone soup left behind by Petruzzelli, as well as a crate of protein bars that were so disgusting, not even asteroid squatters would buy them.

  Coral muttered something about ungrateful brats, and predicted that Michael would come out when he got hungry.

  Michael shut off the intercom.

  He reconfirmed their trajectory.

  Destination: 99984 Ravilious.

  Then he laid his head down on the captain’s workstation and cried.

  viii.

  Elfrida’s teeth chattered as she opened her new email from Mendoza.

  “Oh no. His mother’s died.”

  “Whose mother?” Colden said.

  “John’s.”

  Colden pulled a third thermal shirt over her head. “Yowchies.”

  “You could at least try to sound sympathetic.”

  “I am sympathetic, but I don’t even know the guy.”

  “And he says … whoa.”

  “What?”

  “He might come and pick me up. He says they’re working on it.”

  “Good luck with that. What’s he going to do, land his illegally tooled-up pirate ship at Erebus Spaceport?”

  They both snickered. “He is not a pirate!” Elfrida said with mock offense. “He just hangs out with them.”

  She and Mendoza had been talking about her going to 99984 Ravi
lious ever since they last parted. But the outbreak of war had put their plans on hold. She’d been trying not to think about what could have been, and almost resented him now for giving her spurious hope. Colden was right, of course: he could not possibly come and pick her up here.

  The Space Corps chartered jet had landed at Erebus Spaceport in Antarctica. But instead of heading into orbit, the agents had left the spaceport aboard a convoy of buses. They had driven in the dark across the causeway linking the spaceport to the mainland. When they woke up they were bucketing along the potholed two-lane highway that followed the Victoria Land coastline, within sight of a wrinkled gray sea.

  Thirty-six hours after Elfrida had said goodbye to her parents in Rome, they had stepped off the bus on the Scott Coast, in pitch darkness.

  There was no one around to tell them what to do, except an annoying PA system that did not take questions.

  Also, it was freaking cold.

  Climate change may have melted most of the Ross Ice Shelf, but that didn’t make Western Antarctica a place where anyone sane would choose to live.

  Like Colden, Elfrida had already put on every fleece and thermal shirt she’d brought. The two women now struggled into their coats and snowpants. Good thing they’d obeyed the advice in their briefing to pack cold-weather gear. Joining others who’d passed a shivering and jetlagged night wishing they’d brought warmer gear, they filed out of the big Nissen hut that accommodated them on the slope above the coast road.

  The Nissen hut had obviously been put up yesterday, as had the other buildings in the encampment. The snow still bore the tracks of construction vehicles. On the roof of a paintless steel mess hall, a Space Corps pennant flew alongside a UN flag, snapping briskly in the icy wind.

  A high rocky bluff loomed behind the camp, capped with snow. Downhill, on the other side of the coast road, stood a haphazard assortment of vehicles—all-terrain buses, snowcats, and a large trailer up on blocks. Their garish colors reminded Elfrida of a fly-by-night surfer village, except that nobody would go surfing in these sub temperate waters.

  Waves curled onto the pebbly beach beyond the vehicles. The sun squatted on the horizon out to sea, a sullen blob scarved in gray cloud. The low-angled light tinted the snow pink. It made Elfrida think of sunset, even though it was morning. This was winter at the south pole. The wuthering of the wind emphasized the silence.