Titan Cruel Moon

by Kate Rauner

  Yash wrapped his arms tight around his middle. "I need to come up to the Herschel right away and examine those pods."

  Liam nodded. "A shuttle's on its way down. Land in two hours with the four survivors. Now we must share the news with all Kin. I've set up messages to send to family in the Advance Team, soon as you say. Notify them before a general announcement."

  Tanaka rose. "Shun, call my Kin to the playing field. Assemble in fifteen minutes. You, Commander, send your messages at that time, when we are together to support one another. I will address the Kin."

  On the balcony, Yash hugged Greta and reached an arm to Fynn. "I want you to come with me to the Herschel."

  Greta stepped back. "I should stay here. Autopsies are easier to perform with some gravity, and I haven't done one since college. It's not my area of expertise or the other medics either, so we need whatever advantage we can get. We'll learn what we can and preserve tissue samples. I'll ask Liam to send down the bodies. Maybe I can tell if they died in stasis."

  Yash intertwined his fingers with Greta. "Always the brave warrior. Of course, do what makes sense." He glanced over his shoulder at the door to Tanaka's rooms. "Where's Maliah? Fynn, you'll come, won't you?"

  Down in the mess hall, Fynn dumped his abandoned bowl back into the freeze-dried meal bucket. Someone had left the cups that Maliah had heated next to the microwave. He retrieved one and swallowed some tepid water. The team drifted to the playing field and he followed. Maliah had disappeared, so he found Drew to stand beside. Someone down the row lifted their sleeve and let out a sob. Cries ran through the group as Liam's messages arrived.

  Tanaka stepped onto the balcony above them. "Today, it is my duty to inform you that eight of our brave Kin have died onboard the Herschel. They failed to awaken from stasis." Tanaka gave people time to react, time to trade bewildered hugs with their neighbors. "These brave martyrs gave us their full devotion. They made our historic destiny possible, just as all of you do.

  "I know you, my Kin. You are willing to give up everything to achieve our purpose. But today's deaths could have been avoided. Some among us deviated from the great plan that brought us to Titan."

  Chills ran down Fynn's back and he held his breath, wondering if Tanaka would name his father or Liam.

  The crowd was silent, holding in sobs to concentrate on Tanaka's words.

  "I will call us together more often, my Kin, because we are strong together. I tell you now - reject private conversations. There can be no secrets. Play all meetings over the comm system, and let no two people whisper. I understand some of you hide away in nightly solitude. That is not our way. Consolidate your barracks and support one another in this time of sorrow at deaths, and pride in achievements." Tanaka waved stiffly and retreated to his apartment.

  Fynn closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, quietly. Tanaka hadn't named his father.

  Drew leaned close to Fynn. Sobs and confusion rippled through the team, hiding his words from anyone else. "Tanaka can't mean conversations over the cybernet should be open to everyone."

  Fynn raised his sleeve, tapped out a message, and tried to send it to Drew. The only option was send to all. Maliah must be changing settings in her cybernet room. "I'm afraid he means it. I wonder if the Herschel can maintain control of ship systems. I'll ask Liam when I get there."

  "You're going to the Herschel?"

  "Yeah. Me and Dad."

  "You're not leaving me behind." Drew looked straight into Fynn's eyes. "I'm coming with you."

  Chapter 13

  Y ash floated through the shuttle's hatch into the dock and spun around. He'd spent months on the Herschel in Earth orbit. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  The round room was empty by design to allow for cargo and passenger movement. Four hatchways were set in the curved bulkheads like points on a compass. Consoles created a ledge between each pair of doors, covered in flat displays and switches. Number four was stenciled above the hatch he'd exited. The name Hera was written next to the number, the letters outlined in black marker and filled in with scribbling. That was a change.

  Liam's greeting filled his ears. The Herschel's commander lofted up through the opening in the center of the deck like a whale rising from ocean depths, huge and graceful. Yash reached toward the bulkhead and found a handgrip as Liam glided toward him.

  Liam anchored himself to support a firm handshake. "Yash. Glad you're here. You and Fynn, and..." The boys had trailed along behind Yash.

  "This is Drew Beck," Yash said. "From our maintenance crew."

  Yash caught Fynn's smile, and his own lips curved in response. Identifying Drew as maintenance gave him status on this mission, something Yash was happy to do for his son's friend. In truth, he didn't need either boy, but Yash wanted someone he loved close by during this tragic mission. The colony had started well on Titan's surface, but once Tanaka arrived, a knot of worry had grown in Yash's stomach, stealing pleasure from his meals and keeping him awake at night.

  In front of the mongrels, Tanaka had been the mission's financier, and in front of the Kin, their inspiration. Yash expected him to offer encouragement and continue his genetics studies on Titan, but something was changing. Loss of the Cohorts took away the rational check on Tanaka's vision that Yash had always relied on.

  Yash pivoted around the handhold, giving himself an instant of privacy facing the bulkhead. It wasn't like him to lose focus, and he had a job to do. Without the Medical Cohort, whom he'd relied on to manage the pod technology, analyzing system faults wouldn't be easy.

  "Welcome aboard," Liam said. "Anyone need nausea treatment? Barf bag? No puking on my ship, you hear? Medics waiting below."

  They shot through the crew quarters aft of the dock and followed Liam through the tank farm, air-swimming among pipes and flanges that offered handholds. Below the last tank, Liam stopped between two open pods. "Here's the only level where the pods were individually controlled. The rest are programmed in groups. This was yours, Yash, and this was mine."

  Liam nodded to three Kin dressed in white who floated nearby. "You remember the medical crew." Greetings were brief.

  The big commander pointed to each pod in turn. "First level of twelve all successful. Three medics awakened by auto-controls. Then you, me, and three pilots, all fine. Tanaka - his pod's there - and his adjuncts were also on manual-wake. Three levels below, the Advance Team, awakened by our medics. Also fine."

  With one finger from each hand, Liam pushed off and dropped feet-first to the last level of open pods. "This is the Cohort level. We've marked the bad pods with a strip of tape, placed the bodies in an airlock with heat turned off. Nothing else was changed."

  "The four survivors are in good condition?" Yash had passed them disembarking from the shuttle when he and the boys boarded for the trip up to the Herschel. They'd been groggy, as expected, and Greta had taken them to the clinic immediately so there'd been no chance for conversation.

  The closest medic answered. "Their vital signs were strong."

  "View the stasis records here, if you want," Liam said. "Better screens in the crew quarters."

  Yash frowned at the small display. "I'll need to open the operating specifications next to the logs. Yes, a full sized screen will help."

  They popped up through the deck of the crew's quarters. Sleeping cocoons hung strapped against the bulkhead, and a galley curved on one side including chairs ringed with footholds around a table. A walled cube contained the head, and exercise equipment bolted to the deck took up the rest of the space.

  Liam settled on a chair. "Erik, make us some coffee, will you?"

  Erik, one of the medics, drifted to a steel box about the size of a microwave on the countertop. "This is my favorite chore. I can offer you coffee and tea. With sugar or milk, or just a cup of warm milk if you prefer. Doctor Rupar?"

  "Call me Yash. Coffee please, double sugar."

  Erik slid a drawer open and pulled out a sack of thumb-sized cubes. He lifted a narrow lid on the steel box
and pushed three cubes inside, plugged a hand-sized silver sack onto a thin nozzle on the box's front, and flipped a switch.

  "Plenty of sugar here," Liam said. "That's something else we might talk about. Safe to talk here. All the secrets we want."

  The brewer hissed and gurgled as the pouch thickened. Erik pulled it loose and floated it across the aisle.

  Yash caught it easily, lifted a wide, clear straw along the pouch's side, and dark liquid crept to the tip. "You listened to Tanaka's speech, I assume." He sipped his coffee.

  "Indeed I did. Kin have never forbidden privacy. What's wrong with you people down there?"

  "I don't know. The Advance Team was adjusting well, but Tanaka's isolated himself. We've had a few equipment problems, but nothing we can't handle. Until these pod malfunctions."

  "Didn't see much of Tanaka while we built the Herschel. He was always traveling, lying to raise money. Keeping secrets, him and his adjuncts, even from Kin. Too many secrets ruined him, maybe."

  "There are other things, too," Yash said. "You mentioned the sugar. His adjuncts also took our beverage powders and meal packages into the tower. That's simply weird."

  Liam shook his head. "I grumbled about barracks discipline on Earth, but the mess hall was always well stocked."

  "I don't know what to do," Yash said.

  "Do your job. What else?"

  "I hope I can."

  Erik continued to pump out coffee and tea, first for Fynn and Drew, and then for the other medics. Shuttle pilots drifted in too. Erik knew his crewmate's preferences and continued barista duties.

  "Perhaps we can do something about comms," Yash said. "The Herschel has impressive defenses against hackers, intended to defend us automatically from any earthly effort to retake the ship. Those defenses can shield the ship from Titan as well."

  Liam turned to his crew, who'd quietly lined up along the galley, sipping their drinks. "We have a task, ladies and gentlemen. To preserve our freedom of communications and our control of this ship from interference, whether from Earth or Titan. Does anyone argue against Yash's proposal? Would any of you volunteer to evaluate our computer systems?"

  One of the pilots raised her hand. Yash remembered her, Tyra Karsten, who'd done a lot of programming on the shuttles. She was a slender woman, pale and delicate, with a fiercely logical mind. About Fynn's age.

  "Fynn," Yash said. "Why don't you and Drew go with her? I'll be working for hours here with the medics."

  ***

  Fynn was glad to leave his father pouring over operating specifications. He and Drew followed Tyra forward through the overhead. "We could access the ship's computers from almost anywhere since it's a distributed system," she said. "But consoles in the dock are convenient."

  Tyra faced the console next to door two. "Shuttle two is the Demeter. She's my baby, so I like to work here. Feels like home." She tilted her head up. "Orpheus, let's use your verbal interface."

  Fynn heard the ship's acknowledgment through his ear gel.

  "I'm turning on the console speaker." Tyra pivoted from a handhold. "You guys don't mind, do you? I like to pretend the AI exists in one place. Makes it easier for me to concentrate. Now, what, specifically, do we want to accomplish?"

  Fynn's stomach sank, and not from microgravity. He rubbed a hand across his chest. Isolating the Herschel from the colony's cybernet meant locking Maliah out. That felt disloyal. She'd disabled half their messaging and that was wrong, but she'd been upset. The Cohorts' deaths upset everyone. Maybe she just wasn't thinking. Once he had a chance to talk to her, she'd realize and re-enable private messaging.

  But for now, protecting the Herschel made sense.

  "Protect the shuttles first," Fynn said. "Prevent anyone on the surface from hijacking one."

  "I can specify a set of inter-operability frequencies, so there's a passcode-protected channel for each shuttle right away. A channel from the Herschel to the shuttles that rotates on a crypto-key will take longer, but that's doable. What else?"

  "Messages," Drew said. "Restore privacy setting on the message accounts."

  Fynn frowned. "Restoring messaging to the entire Advance Team would require accessing the cybernet. Changes would be noticed." Noticed by Maliah, and that should be avoided. He didn't want his sister working to disrupt whatever they accomplished onboard because she'd probably succeed. "Who needs access most? Yash and Greta might need to talk to Liam or the Herschel's' crew in confidence, or to each other. And me." Drew hovered at Fynn's elbow. He had to be included. "And Drew. Can we talk to the ship directly from the surface with our pads?"

  Tyra chewed her lip before answering. "I don't know. Your pads can receive signals from the Herschel, but they don't have a lot of transmission power." She pulled a C-shaped band off her wrist. "We use these for onboard comms. We've got lots of them. I can pull the chips out to install in your pads. Why don't I start by loading some tutorials directly into your sleeves? Then you guys can help me test each modification."

  "Aren't we going to use Orpheus?"

  "For some things. Orpheus, determine the best frequency for penetrating Titan's atmosphere using the signal strength of a flat pad."

  The AI's voice was neutral and sexless. "In process."

  "The ship's intelligence is mostly set up for navigation problems," Tyra said.

  Drew had been idly looking around, but turned bright eyes on Tyra. "Navigation? You mean, for the flight to Titan?"

  "Yes. Our course was plotted before we left Earth, but the ship had to make corrections on its own. There's a complete model of the solar system in here. Way more complex than we'll need to navigate the Saturn system. That'll be my job once the Herschel's reconfigured." Her eyes glowed. "Scouting Saturn's rings and moons."

  "There's nothing out there but ice," Drew said. "And maybe rocky cores inside the moons, buried under kilometers of more ice."

  Tyra smiled, clearly looking forward to a challenge. "Saturn's gravity must have captured asteroids that we can utilize and maybe tow into one of Titan's Lagrange Points so it's close by for mining. We need metals to grow the colony. Fynn, are you okay? Need a barf bag?"

  "A little dizzy." Growing the colony. Fynn's stomach fluttered at the thought. "You're talking about raising children on Titan, and there's still so much to do, just to survive. It's overwhelming."

  "When I feel the stress," Tyra said, "I find something relaxing to focus on. Sometimes, I come up here and run diagnostics. Sometimes, Orpheus and I plot journeys through the solar system, just for fun."

  Drew's eyes narrowed. "Shuttles can't travel very far, can they?"

  "Fuel's limited, so you have to use gravity-assists, but it's just a matter of time. For a simulated trip, years don't count."

  "Why are you so interested?" Fynn asked Drew.

  "About shuttles? Well, a growing colony's going to need more gardens, so more minerals for fertilizer from those asteroids Tyra's talking about." He smiled at the slender pilot. "You'll have to show me how to use Orpheus. Sounds like more fun than video games."

  She smiled back before turning to Fynn. "What else do we need to guard the Herschel against?"

  "What systems were you worried about Earth hacking into?"

  Tyra dragged her fingers across the display, opening different directories. "The main engines, of course, but those are dead now. Navigational thrusters, and we'll need to use them forever to keep the Herschel positioned in this Lagrange Point."

  They spent the rest of the day working. They added passcode protections to three shuttles - the fourth was transporting bodies down to Greta for autopsy and hadn't returned yet. Since every course of university studies required some programming skills, Fynn discovered that he and Drew were helpful. Finally, Tyra did a somersault into the center of the dock and unrolled into a stretch. "Suppertime, I think. How long are you guys staying?"

  "Until Yash and Liam are done, I suppose," Fynn said.

  Drew wrinkled his nose with his cute smile. "We better stay through supper
. My stomach's been growling for an hour."

  Fynn didn't know which food pouches Liam stocked onboard, but it had been a long time since breakfast. He could eat anything.

  ***

  They spent six days on the Hershel. Hardening the ship's computers went well, and they revised a lot of files on shuttle and ship operations because, while Fynn couldn't believe it was necessary, Tyra added protections to the Herschel's life support systems too.

  One evening at supper, Yash plucked a dried apricot from his dessert pouch and announced he was ready to return to Titan.

  Fynn squirted some salt water into his stew and pressed the packet onto the velcro table cover. Drew showed off with a zero-g trick for making a sandwich by smearing mashed peas on a tortilla so chicken salad would stick, then rolling it up. He left the roll hanging in midair while he slid into a chair, and then snatched it before ventilation currents carried his meal away.

  "But you don't have an answer yet," Fynn said.

  Yash gazed off blankly as he chewed. "I've compared the logs from every pod we opened, those that awakened successfully, those that failed, and those that produced lingering aftereffects. I studied the pods that are still in active stasis too. They all had transient anomalies at some point during the flight, with no pattern in frequencies or intensities, and Greta's autopsy results are inconclusive. But the awakening cycles should be identical, so I suspect the flaw occurred during stasis."

  Erik sighed. "We were hoping you'd discover more about the metabolic modifications. I was taught how to hook people up for stasis and how to treat them when they wake, but nothing about the pods themselves. It was all very hush-hush. The research was performed on some island nation, and the lab stopped publishing when Tanaka contracted with them."

  Liam perched with his feet tucked under a loop in the overhead. He politely left the chairs for the visitors, but the choice left him hanging over Fynn's head like an alarmingly huge bat. "If Yash is right, we need to awaken the rest as soon as possible. Every day could be a day too long for survival."