Magwave (The Rorschach Explorer Missions Book 2)

by K Patrick Donoghue

  After a long sigh, Dante said, “As I was saying, if we want Rorschach to listen to the BLUMOs, all the crew needs to do is switch on their VLF receiver. There’s a magnetic loop antenna already installed on the Rorschach’s instrument array. But if we want the crew to try communicating with the BLUMOs, we’ve got a problem. Deploying the transmitting antenna requires another EVA.” He explained that the coiled-wire antenna was two hundred fifty meters long. An EVA would be required to carry, unfurl and install the antenna in its pre-assigned slot on the instrument array. “It’s a bit higher grade than an amateur VLF setup, but not by much, and that means we may not get much out of it.”

  Brock understood Dante’s dilemma. The length of each VLF radio wave is very long. A professional-grade VLF broadcast requires a huge antenna to output even partial wavelengths. These “electrically short” antennas are kilometers long and are therefore not practical for spacecraft. So Rorschach had been outfitted with a lower-quality transmitting antenna. This seemed acceptable given Nick Reed had been able to attract UMOs to Cetus Prime with a VLF transmitting antenna he’d scrapped together from scavenged materials aboard the ship.

  “Between the watt output of the transmitter onboard Rorschach and the smaller antenna, any broadcast they send won’t have much of a transmission range,” Dante continued. “We knew that going in, so it’s not a surprise, but it does mean the BLUMOs will need to be close to Rorschach to detect the broadcast before the VLF waves diffuse and scatter into space.”

  “Yeah,” added Pritchard, “the short range didn’t seem like such a big deal when we thought Rorschach might use the setup for experiments communicating with Shilling’s UMO colony, but as we’ve seen, the BLUMOs are way more dangerous at close range.”

  There was a pause as everyone absorbed Dante’s and Pritchard’s comments.

  Amato broke the silence. “Dante, can we use Rorschach’s VLF engines to respond to signals from the BLUMOs? Just to ping them back and let them know we’re receiving their signals if they’re broadcasting any.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt we could generate much of a message,” Dante said. “The engines’ VLF transmitters are broadcasting waves into their plasma chambers. There’s some leakage of the waves in the engine output, but the BLUMOs would have to be bumping up against the engines to detect the signals, and I don’t think we want them that close.”

  Brock felt the group’s energy falter. There had to be something they could recommend, something Kiera could engineer to communicate with the BLUMOs. But what?

  She looked at the frozen image of lightning bolts arcing toward Carillo in the cargo bay. Dante was right: an extended EVA to install the VLF transmitting antenna was impossible. Carillo was out of commission, and even if Morgan made a miraculous recovery, his body couldn’t withstand another EVA without stabilizing his blood-oxygen levels for another twenty-four hours. That was too long to wait. While sending out one of the other crew members was an option, their lack of EVA experience was problematic. If they couldn’t come up with another solution, Brock might recommend that, but she considered it a last resort.

  Relying on the ship’s engines as an alternative was even more fraught with peril. She hadn’t wanted to raise it before, but she believed there was a strong possibility the BLUMOs would react with aggression to the expulsion of ions from the engines rather than pay attention to the VLF signals mixed into the output.

  The conversation switched to a discussion of the flight surgeon’s recommendations for Carillo’s and Morgan’s follow-up treatments, and Brock’s eyes drifted to Carillo’s tether and the CubeSat docking platform.

  “Holy shit, that’s it!” she exclaimed.

  The flight surgeon stopped in midsentence. “Excuse me?”

  “Dante, what about tethering the VLF transmitter antenna to one of the fleet probes?” Brock asked.

  “I thought of that. Not feasible.”

  “Why?”

  “Simple. Even if Kiera can salvage the one Carillo was working on, there’s no practical way of running cabling from the VLF transmitter in the comms center to the antenna unless we leave the Cube docked. But that means keeping the cargo bay doors open to allow the antenna to extend outside the ship, and that scares the shit out of me.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the CubeSat. I was thinking of Cargo-4. It’s still docked, right?”

  “It is,” Dante said.

  “And there’s a power conduit in the dock’s airlock, correct?”

  There was an extended silence before Dante spoke again. “Ahhh, I see what you’re thinking. It might be doable…”

  “What might be doable?” Amato asked.

  “But it’ll be awfully tight quarters with an EMU on,” Dante continued. “And they’ll have to find a way to anchor the antenna.”

  “And reinforce the hole,” Brock added.

  “Reinforce what hole? What are you two talking about?” Amato asked.

  Brock and Dante took turns explaining the idea. There was a conduit in the Cargo dock airlock that fed the ship’s power to the probe once it was docked. The crew could snake a spliced cable from the VLF transmitter in Rorschach’s comm center through the conduit and into the Cargo. Once the cable was in place, one of the crew could perform an EVA inside the depressurized Cargo to drill a hole in the probe fuselage, connect the antenna to the transmitter cable and feed the long antenna through the hole.

  “The antenna will have to be anchored inside Cargo-4, but we’ll have our engineers provide them with options,” Dante said. “Once that’s done, whoever performs the EVA retreats inside Rorschach and seals the dock airlock, and they’ll have a working VLF transmitting antenna.”

  “There is a downside, though,” Brock said. “If more supplies are needed, there’s no place to dock another Cargo. They’ll have to use the cargo bay.”

  “Hey, if this works and the BLUMOs back off, that’s a tradeoff I’d make any day,” Pritchard said.

  “Agreed,” said Amato. “Dante, looks like you’ve got a lot to sort out and uplink to Rorschach. I suggest we ring off and let you get to it.”

  Mission Control

  A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center

  Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas

  Dante marched into Mission Control and announced he wanted the abort preparations put on hold. With the team gathered around him, he relayed what was discussed during the call and divvied up new tasks. It felt exhilarating to finally have some meaningful data to share with the crew and concrete recommendations to offer.

  He was in the midst of discussing the proposed VLF antenna solution when alert chimes began to ping from consoles all around.

  CHAPTER 10: KILL ZONE

  Dr. Kiera Walsh’s cabin — the Rorschach Explorer

  Drifting at all-stop above the ecliptic in the asteroid belt

  September 4, 2019

  Kiera lay on her bunk, trying to block visions of Carillo’s burns from her mind — along with the astronaut’s accompanying screams. In the heat of their attempts to save Carillo and Morgan, Kiera had suppressed as much of the unpleasantness as her psyche would allow, and afterward, she’d managed to keep the memories from bubbling up while she prepared updates for Mayaguana.

  But now, in the quiet of her cabin, they demanded her full attention.

  Battered by shock, exhaustion and fear, Kiera draped a forearm across her eyes and negotiated with her subconscious. I just want to sleep a little, can we do this later? Please? But the visions would not yield. Nor would her aching muscles or growling stomach. Together they schemed to prevent her from drifting off.

  “Why did I come?” she whispered. “What was I thinking?”

  No answers formed, but the questions drove a wedge through the competing sleep inhibitors, and a new vision filled her mind. She was on her paddleboard looking west toward Cocoa Beach. A mix of gold, purple and orange colored the sky as the last of the sun dipped below the horizon. She could hear the sounds of the surf and her friends gabbing a
t their encampment on the beach. Sinking her paddle in the ocean, she rotated the board to face east where the rising Moon hung above the darkening waters. Any minute now a sparkle of light would appear low in the sky, just ahead of the Moon. Kiera kept her eyes focused on this spot as waves bobbed her board up and down.

  And then Jupiter flickered into view, and Kiera heard a voice to her right. “Can you believe it? You’re going there.”

  She smiled. “Crazy, right?”

  The voice said, “It’s so far away.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Kiera answered, her smile fading.

  “I’m gonna miss you.”

  “Gonna miss you, too.” Kiera turned toward the voice as the vision faded.

  Asleep at last. A dreamless sleep at the outset, dark as a bottomless pit. But then a new vision rose in the emptiness. First came the sound of crashing waves, then the sensation of being pitched to and fro. A shiver of fear, a prick of panic. Another voice. This one urgent.

  “Kiera! Wake up! Wake up!”

  Her eyes snapped open. Ajay hovered above her. “They’re back! Hurry!” He turned and dashed out the cabin door, his boots clanking against the magnetic floor.

  Kiera stumbled out of the bunk and gave chase. She ran as fast as GEFF would allow her legs to lift and plant.

  Up ahead, Ajay yelled, “She’s up! She’s coming!”

  Was Morgan awake already? Had she been asleep that long?

  As she neared the flight deck, alarms met her ears. Entering through the cockpit door, she spotted Shilling in the commander’s chair.

  “What’s happening?” she yelled above the claxons.

  “Get strapped in,” Shilling shouted back.

  Ajay, in the co-pilot’s seat, fumbling the buckle of the safety harness, stared at the computer screen full of flashing icons. “They’re all around us. They’re taking out the rest of the fleet.”

  “What are you doing?” Kiera yelled.

  “Getting the hell out of here,” Shilling said.

  “No!” she screamed. “Don’t!”

  The ship lurched forward hard enough to dislodge Kiera’s boots from the floor. She flew backward and crashed into the wall by the door.

  “How do I turn this damn thing?” Shilling said to Ajay.

  Ajay pointed at the panel separating the two stations. “Thruster control.”

  Though Kiera was unable to push her whole body off the wall, she did manage to tug her hands free long enough to reach her smart watch. As she deactivated her GEFF sensors, she cursed. The artificial gravity forcefield was just not effective during sudden accelerations. Free of GEFF’s influence, she fought against the remaining g-force produced by the engine’s thrust. Finally, she pushed off the wall and grabbed hold of the nearest seat at the comms station. She pleaded with Shilling. “Stop! Turn off the engines!”

  “No way. We’ve got one chance to get away, and this is it!”

  In his attempt to alter course, Shilling sent Rorschach into a spin.

  Kiera gripped the seat as the ship twirled around. “Damn it, Shilling, you have no idea what you’re doing! Stop before you kill us all!” The man had lost his mind.

  Ajay tried to tug Shilling’s hand off the thruster control joystick. “Let me do it, Doctor.”

  “Let go, I’ve got it,” Shilling said.

  Kiera watched Shilling and Ajay fight for control of the thrusters. For a second, she thought of joining the struggle, but she realized it would only make matters worse. There was only one way to stop this.

  She pushed off the seat toward the flight deck door. Another push sent her flying down the spinning corridor.

  As she passed the medical bay, Carillo and Morgan flashed into her mind. Oh, no. The spin! What’s it doing to them? Though both were sedated and strapped down, Morgan in his cabin and Carillo in the medical bay, they were hooked to IVs and oxygen masks that might dislodge. But there was nothing Kiera could do for them until she stopped the ship.

  The centrifugal force created by the spin was not yet intense enough to pin her to the wall, so Kiera was able to grab a handhold and shoot herself toward the engine control room. The doorway was a moving target, but she managed to hook the top of the door frame with a foot and curl her body into the cabin. Her first attempt to grab hold of the flight control station failed as the force of the spin increased its pull on her body.

  Finally she snagged the side of the station seat with the crook of her arm. Steadied by the seat, she lunged forward, flicked open the cover of the emergency shutdown and smashed a closed fist on the button beneath.

  The hum of the VLF engines silenced, but the spin continued. It would not stop until someone competent at working the thrusters intervened, and Kiera couldn’t override Shilling’s manual command of the thrusters from here. What she could do was activate the reaction control system’s autopilot function. If Shilling noticed, he could disable it immediately, but in his frenzied state Kiera hoped he wouldn’t detect it until the RCS eliminated the spin.

  The RCS would also reorient the ship to its original heading prior to Shilling’s escape attempt, but until Kiera could get back to the flight deck there would be no telling how far they’d traveled or in which direction Shilling’s panic had led them.

  Kiera activated the system. An instant later she heard the telltale sounds of the thrusters firing in rapid succession to right the ship. Quickly the spin began to slow.

  As the g-forces also subsided, other sounds followed: the clank of rapid footsteps, a roar of expletives from Shilling, a stream of entreaties from Ajay for Shilling to calm down. As the volume of the competing noises rose, Kiera muttered, “Uh-oh. Coming my way!”

  Kiera saw only two choices. Confront Shilling in the corridor, or barricade herself in the engine room and try to reason with him. She chose the latter.

  She quickly closed the hatch-like door, but before she could engage the lock, Shilling wrenched the hatch’s corridor-side handle and pushed open the door. “You stupid bitch! Turn the engines back on!”

  Kiera began to feel her body drifting up. She toggled on her GEFF sensors and braced her body against the hatch as she fought against Shilling’s effort to break into the cabin. Through the three-inch gap in the doorway, she called out, “Ajay, try and wake Skywalker!”

  “Roger that,” Ajay said.

  “Fuck Skywalker!” Shilling bellowed. The door shuddered as he kicked it. “Turn on the goddamn engines!”

  “I’m not doing shit until you calm down!”

  “Listen to me! We don’t have time for this! We must get away!”

  Kiera closed her eyes as Shilling’s blows turned more ferocious. Come on, Ajay! Come on, Skywalker! As the gap in the door widened, she tried again to reason with him.

  “We can’t outrun them. You know that.”

  The door flew open and the wild-eyed Shilling stormed into the room and used both hands to pin Kiera to the wall by her neck. “You skanky little fuck.”

  Kiera dug her fingernails into his hands and kicked at him, but her counters were ineffective. As he crushed his grip on her throat, she pleaded with him to stop.

  A blur of motion behind Shilling caught Kiera’s eye. She looked over his shoulder and saw Ajay floating into the room, a syringe in his hand and a snarl on his face. Before Shilling knew what was happening, Ajay plunged the syringe into the back of the man’s neck.

  Shilling cried out and let go of Kiera. He turned to Ajay, saw the syringe, and charged. But within two steps he faltered and slumped to the floor.

  Ajay floated to Kiera. “You okay?”

  Kiera wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace.

  Flight deck — the Rorschach Explorer

  Flying through the asteroid belt

  With the unconscious Shilling restrained and locked in the cargo bay, Kiera and Ajay checked on Carillo and Morgan. By some miracle, neither of the sedated astronauts had been further harmed during the ship’s spin. Kiera and Ajay tended to both, ensuring their IVs and oxyg
en masks were functioning properly, then returned to the flight deck to assess their situation.

  Kiera tried to make sense of what had transpired. Before she went to sleep, the three able crewmembers had agreed to one-hour rotations between short rests, so at all times someone could be keeping tabs on Carillo and Morgan and another could be manning the flight deck. Kiera had drawn the first rest period, while Ajay monitored the two astronauts and Shilling manned the flight deck.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  “About twenty minutes after you went to your cabin, Dr. Shilling called me to the flight deck,” Ajay said. “He said the BLUMOs had surrounded us.”

  “And?”

  “He showed me the cam feeds from our probes. There were BLUMOs around all of them. Thousands of BLUMOs around each.”

  “And that caused him to freak out?”

  “Not at first.” Ajay buckled in at the co-pilot’s station.

  Kiera looked out the flight deck windows as she strapped into the commander’s seat. Pulsing blue lights filled the entire vista. “So when did things go ape?”

  “First, the BLUMOs attacked the second Recon we’d hoped to repair. Then alarms on the Shields went crazy. Dr. Shilling said something about them leading us into a kill zone. He tried drawing them off like we did the first time, sending Cargo-2 away, but it went LOS almost immediately. That’s when I came to get you.”

  Kiera accessed the station’s computer and checked the fleet probe monitoring system. All of them showed as LOS. She pulled up Rorschach’s camera feeds and cycled from camera to camera. There was a thick layer of pulsing blue lights everywhere. A sudden pang of regret churned in her stomach. Had Shilling been right to make a run for it?

  “What do you think we should do?” Ajay asked, his gaze on the BLUMOs outside the flight deck windows.

  Kiera checked to make sure the ship’s radiation shield was still active. It was. She toggled the computer to check comms. No new uplinks from Mayaguana. Then she checked the navigation console on the commander’s dashboard. Rorschach was traveling at sixty thousand kilometers per hour. The ship was still above the ecliptic, but closer to the asteroid belt than they had been when Morgan had ordered all-stop to retrieve and repair the damaged probes. The RCS autopilot had reoriented Rorschach toward Callisto, and it appeared the system’s thrusters were guiding the ship back down into the heart of the asteroid belt to assume their original course.