by C. Gockel
“In less than one solar day, our new orbit should have us on track to intercept one of the bursts. We don't anticipate any danger to the probe. The emanating waves appear to be relatively weak in magnitude. All of the asteroids and debris struck by the wave appear to maintain their original trajectory. We will be pointing all of our array toward the source of this pulse, and will make a new log entry to report findings. Metchikoff out.”
The screen flickered before the technician reappeared. The time stamp read 2171:323.
“This is a follow up post. We aren’t in impact-range of the burst yet, but we are getting new readings. The wave possesses unusual characteristics. We can’t help but wonder if some of them are artificial patterns. In the same way frequencies are encoded into lasers, these waves appear to have properties of both light and—I’m guessing—ultra-high frequency radio waves. We've pinpointed the origin of the burst, but we should study the wave phenomenon more carefully before approaching its source. Metchikoff out.”
The screen flickered again. The time stamp remained at 2171:323.
“Novos, something’s off. These numbers don't make sense.” His speech was hurried, and his Russian accent was more pronounced.
“When you get this, please confirm the data is rational. We're checking the sensor calibrations to be sure these readings are correct. Also, new developments with the energy pulse. The wave appears to have mass, somehow. It's so slight that it was undetectable until the pulse impacted the probe directly. The way we noticed it was from the AG system. After the pulse hit, the gravity felt off-kilter. Diagnostics showed that the probe’s mass had increased by several hundred grams.
We don't think we need to tell you guys what the significance of this might be, but we'll say it anyway; if this burst is carrying matter near the speed of light...well, this isn't supposed to happen without a hyperspace window being opened. And certainly not with the regularity that is happening here.
We're going to collect a sample from the outer hull. We can't get a visual through observation windows or cameras, but there has to be something out there. We will dust the hull and see what we find. Metchikoff out.”
The men around the board-room table shifted in their seats. Even Brennen who had seen all of this before seemed riveted. The screen flickered again and with the same time stamp.
“We finished the spacewalk and have followed all of the decontamination protocols. We collected a dust-like film from the hull. We're still in the re-pressurization bay as an extra precaution. Vials will enter the main quarters after the patho-scans are complete. Five vials were obtained from various parts of the probe's exterior. I'm waiting to restore artificial gravity until after they have been processed.”
There was a beeping sound. The technician looked down at his console. “Whatever's in these vials appears to be uncatalogued. It's not a pathogen, or any substance for that matter, that we've seen before.”
He reached over to the handle on the wall and opened the scanner door. Carefully, he grabbed individual vials and placed them on his workstation. Despite his care, he unwittingly brushed against one of the vials on the table as he reached into the scanner. After all the vials were removed from the scanner, he fastened them in place on his workstation. Both Parker and Alvarez winced as they saw the undetected vial float out of view. The tech looked into the camera and said, “Attempting to restore artificial gravity.”
The probe’s lights flickered as AG came back online. Then Alvarez heard the sound of shattering glass. The technician looked over his shoulder at the floor. “Nyet!” he said. He looked back at the camera with bulging eyes. He made little gasps, like a wheezing hiccup.
“It looks like,” he gasped, “one of the vials broke. We're (gasp) going to restart the decontamination (gasp) protocol to kill off pathogens. I'm going to up the radiation intensity. Our suit (gasp) should protect us.”
He looked away from the camera. His cheeks were drawn tight and his lips were pursed together as if he was unsuccessfully trying to open his mouth.
“Afterwards, we (gasp) will start the analysis of the undamaged vials and send the data with this transmission.” Another pause. “Metchikoff out.”
The screen flickered again. Beads of sweat pooled up on the technician’s brow now partially covered by his spacesuit’s helmet. Alvarez noticed he wasn't gasping, but he was still breathing hard.
“We finished decontamination procedures,” he said. The timbre of his voice transmitted through his suit’s comm system sounded metallic.
“We were only able to do some preliminary tests on the samples. Before we could finish, the probe's navigation controls went off-line. We can't seem to access them. There’s no immediate danger, and the probe is still in a stable orbit. But we don't know why we lost navigation.”
The technician had a defeated demeanor. He looked down as if he forgot he was still recording. A warning bell sounded, and his eyes refocused on the console. “Novos, (gasp) life support appears to be faltering. We don't know if the instruments are reading correctly or…” He trailed off. “Something isn't right. We need an immediate extraction. Bozhe moi. We will (gasp) continue to work the problems, but send rescue. Don’t know how much time we have.”
Then the screen went black. Parker said, “What happened? Is that the end of the feed?”
“No,” Brennen said. “Listen carefully.”
Alvarez cocked his head to one side. The probe tech was still breathing. The faint sound grew louder, turning into wheezing.
Barely audible, the probe tech spoke. “Gospod' Iisus Khristos Syn Bozhiy, pomiluy menya greshnogo.”
A pause. Then louder, “Gospod' Iisus Khristos Syn Bozhiy, pomiluy menya greshnogo.”
“Gospod' Iisus Khristos Syn Bozhiy, pomiluy menya greshnogo.”
“Gospod' Iisus Khristos Syn Bozhiy, pomiluy menya greshnogo.”
The screen flickered and an automated voice said, “End of transmission.”
Chapter Nine
THE SCREEN DIMMED, and the lights in McKinley’s office came back on. There was an awkward silence. Alvarez didn’t know what to make of it all. His mind was still processing, spitting out random inconclusive thoughts. He looked around the table. Parker had a faraway look in his eyes. Even McKinley and Brennen, who must have seen the video before, were reverently quiet.
McKinley broke the silence. “Any questions?”
“Only a million,” Parker whispered.
“What was that nonsense at the end?” Alvarez asked.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” Brennen said.
Alvarez said, “That’s very nice, Michael, but…”
“He's interpreting the Jesus prayer,” McKinley said. “It's the Russian Orthodox version of the Catholic last rite.” Again, everyone was silent.
Finally, McKinley said, “We've got to go to the probe.”
“Sir, that's over a week away by interstellar travel,” Alvarez said. “There's no way that man would still be alive when we got there.”
“We don't know that,” McKinley said. “He may have life support back online.”
“He would have contacted us,” Parker said.
“Not necessarily,” Brennen retorted. “He may have life support but be unable to get comms back.”
“Regardless,” McKinley continued, “we have to go. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to a Novos probe. This could be really damaging to our recruitment program, not to mention the loss of assets in space.”
“I feel bad for this tech, but I’m not concerned about Novos recruitment” Alvarez said.
“You better care, John,” McKinley said. “Unless you've divested all of your wealth, your investments, your certs into non-Novos denominated assets…If the markets get a whiff of this, it could bring us all down.”
“You assume he has investments,” Brennen added.
McKinley ignored him. “I don't think I need to remind you of the non-disclosure agreement you’ve s
igned.”
“I didn't sign anything,” Alvarez said.
“It’s in your reactivation rider,” McKinley said. “Moving on—we need to recover the probe, figure out what happened, and try to vanquish the political damage this will cause back home. The probe should still be in orbit. Right, Dr. Brennen?”
“I’m just a biologist.”
Parker spoke up, “It should be there for months if nothing was altered.”
“How do we know what happened to him won't happen to us?” Alvarez said.
“Do you plan on breaking any vials?” Brennen asked. “We’ll bring enough radiation to kill anything known to man.”
“What about something unknown to man?” mouthed Parker.
“What was that Parker?” Brennen said.
Alvarez interjected, “We don't know what we're dealing with. What about the rest of the data? You obviously were able to recover more of the vid-feed than I could.”
“The feed was all we could salvage,” Brennen said. “The rest was either missing or so corrupted we couldn't reconstitute it.”
“What about the technician. How many hours did he have in his space suit?” Alvarez asked.
Brennen shrugged. Parker said, “If it was a standard, fully-charged Novos tank, he had over six hours of air left. He could and should have other tanks on board to extend the time.”
“And he probably has life support back online,” McKinley added optimistically. Everyone seemed to have a hard time swallowing this notion.
“But if he didn't,” Alvarez continued, “what are his chances?”
“No chance,” Parker said. “He would need two dozen tanks to wait out a week-long rescue journey.”
“Twenty-eight tanks,” Brennen corrected.
“So, we're flying in blind. We have no clue what this stuff is the tech found?” Alvarez said.
“You fly your little ship,” Brennen said, “and leave the science to me.”
McKinley interrupted, “That’s enough, men. We are to assume the probe tech has everything but communications back online and is waiting for us to come get him. Alvarez, I've reactivated your contract. You're getting paid at the agreed upon rate. You said you wanted enough certs for you and Nadia to start over. Well, here you are. Brennen, you asked to be here. You know what to do.”
Brennen said, “Of course.”
Everyone's eyes slowly turned to David Parker. He spoke up sheepishly, “So why exactly am I here?”
“We need the Constance,” McKinley said.
“She's not ready,” he blurted out. “I just took her out for her first run, and she's got a lot of bugs left.”
“You can keep her flying,” McKinley said confidently.
“Why don't you just take an Atlas-class ship or another Falcon-class ship?”
“None of the Atlas-class ships are fast enough, and none of the other Falcon-class ships have the versatility of the Constance. She’s the fastest ship we have that can carry enough crew, equipment, and research capabilities to deal with this problem. Like John mentioned, we don’t know what we’re facing here. We can’t afford to send anything less than our best craft and crew. The board of directors—and I agree with them—says sending the Constance is our best bet.”
“It won't do us any good,” Parker said, “if there's a breakdown along the way. What if we have an electrical fire or we burn out the core? You're placing far too much confidence in an untested design.”
“That's why you should go. Look, you’ve got the material support of the entire corporate settlement. Make a list of all the parts you are afraid will fail, and we'll store them onboard. Easy as that. And you can request any crew you'd like. Look, Parker, the board has decided; the Constance is going. Your decision is whether you want to increase her chances of success by going too.”
“I want Terra York.” Parker said impatiently. He blushed. “She's the best—actually the only—chief mechanic I know of that will make my job any easier.”
“It's settled then,” said McKinley. He stood up from the table, and the three men instinctively did the same. “Pack your bags. The Constance leaves at 08:00.”
II
Constance
Chapter Ten
ALVAREZ WALKED FROM the officer’s quarters into the main corridor, the inner vein leading to all of the Constance’s inner compartments. The corridor was a hallway of alternating doors on right and left, and on one end was the door to the helm.
It was time to relieve Parker, but Alvarez needed a cup of coffee. Now that he was on a mission, he realized how much he relied on caffeine. The starlight hitting his windows back home on the orbiter helped him wake up. Out here, there was no night or day. The only signal to Alvarez’s circadian clock was the regular, timely caffeine dump he consumed at the beginning of his work day.
He turned left and walked down the corridor to the so-called cafeteria. It was just his luck. What was left in the coffee maker was old, burnt brew. He threw the worthless sludge into the garbage vent and initiated a new brew cycle on the machine, selecting the most caffeinated variety.
Startled, Alvarez turned around. “I didn’t see you there,” he said. Sitting in the corner of the tiny room was Sergeant Robert Fields, a man with salt-and-pepper hair that was cut short and a cavalier mustache that was still black.
“I thought ship’s captains were supposed to be brave and fearless.”
“If you saw an old mangy dog first thing in the morning, you be startled too,” Alvarez said. “Sarge, how have you been? It’s been…how long?”
“Same as always, I guess. Still working for the same certs these young punks get. You’d think I’d learn my lesson.”
“You and me both,” Alvarez said pretending to be in the same boat. There was a huge gap between grunt-pay and a mission colonel’s salary. “Just when I thought I was out of Novos, they reactivated my contract.”
“Son, I know you’re good at your job—so don’t take offense—but I’m surprised that cheapskate McKinley would cough up the certs to reactivate an officer. Did you check your hold-comp?”
“Yeah, the certs are in escrow already. I guess they figure it’s worth it somehow.”
“Either that or…” Sarge trailed off.
“What?”
“Nothing, just forget I said anything. I’m sure they’re making certs hand over fist on this mission.”
“Doubtful. Didn’t you read the dossier?”
“As many missions as I’ve been on, you learn how to ignore unimportant details. I just deal with things as they come. Besides, when was the last time that Novos’s stated objective was what was really at stake? They always have an ulterior motive. Their published minutes read like an alter boy’s diary. They have to maintain a positive spin with stockholders. You remember that time we dropped burn-out cores on one of Trinity’s newly terra-formed worlds? The mission record said we were traveling in a totally different vector transporting a shipment of algae protein concentrates.” Sarge roared with laughter.
“We had to clean up behind Novos on that one,” Alvarez said. “They forgot to remove corporate logos embossed on those reactors. If I didn’t have certs at stake, I would have just let Trinity find it with Novos’s name written all over it.”
“Should have,” Sarge said in a more somber tone.
“Well, this is a rescue mission at best, damage control at worst.”
“Oh,” Sarge said softly. “I see.” The lines in his face seemed to grow more pronounced as he tried to cover up a scowl.
“What is it? Don’t make me pull rank on you, old man.”
Sarge chuckled. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but there’s always the chance Novos doesn’t expect you to collect.”
Alvarez took a second to compute Sarge’s meaning. “Novos doesn’t think I’m coming back?”
Sarge shrugged.
“You old codger. How’d you get so pessimistic?”
“Surviving will do that to you, John. That’s how you get as old as me. In
this line of work, you’ve got to see the transport backin’ up before it runs you over. You’ll be like this too one day…” he added, “if you’re lucky.”
The coffee maker beeped at Alvarez. He grabbed his cup, gave Sarge a nod, and headed toward the helm.
He wondered if Sarge was on to something. Is that what Novos did with people who were leaving? Throw them onto the frontlines and hope they don’t have to pay out? Regardless, he was here now. If he was walking into a fight, then he would fight. He knew how to do that, and worrying would change nothing.
One of the grunts bumped into Alvarez. “Excuse me, sir,” said the grunt. Alvarez looked down at his uniform and his new coffee stain. That’s what I get for not being in the moment, Alvarez thought. Before he could respond, the grunt disappeared down the corridor.
Crew were coming out of the woodwork. It was time for the shift-change. The loudest noises came from the cargo bay at the posterior end of the corridor. He hoped this was temporary. If not, he’d have to seal the helm door just to keep his sanity.
Alvarez entered the helm and came to the command post. Unlike how people in previous centuries envisioned a captain’s chair at the helm, Novos and most other corporate settlements allowed for no such luxuries. Instead, there was an array of screens, consoles, and communication devices allowing the mission colonel to control the ship.
For Alvarez, commanding the first few shifts was like putting on a favorite, worn-out sweater. Everything was as he remembered, and he was good at it. It felt right.
But it wasn’t easy. For the last couple of shifts, he had experienced the painful side of the job. His leg was already throbbing despite just starting his shift. Mission colonels were required to stand at their post, and the rubber-like floor only helped a little. There wasn’t a chair to tempt them. The idea was that their work demanded the highest level of diligent focus. The risk of zoning out and missing something was too great to allow for a comfortable chair.
