Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  “Appreciate that, guys.” He tapped their names on his tablet to bring up a list of tasks they’d been assigned. “You two are already done with your inventory?” It felt like micromanaging, but the XO was certain to ask at some point and it would not pay for the new guy to come up short. The best way to avoid uncomfortable questions was to already have the answers at hand.

  The other crewman, lanky and easygoing, folded an armature into the sidewall and locked it down. “Honestly, sir, it wasn’t hard. We probably have a better idea of what’s in the ship’s stores than our own personal lockers. Otherwise stuff gets lost up here in ways you wouldn’t dream of in gravity.”

  Marshall gave him a you got that right nod as he opened up the wardroom table. He tried not to think about what he’d lost himself just after a couple of weeks. “Has anybody figured out where everything ends up?” he asked, not hiding his frustration.

  “It’s space,” Powers shrugged. “A black hole.”

  “There you go again,” Jefferson said. “Gotta be black, don’t it?”

  Powers rolled his eyes. “Really, dude? Does everything have to go that way with you?”

  “Only if it gets you riled up.” He turned to Marshall. “My shipmate’s decidedly unscientific opinion notwithstanding, sir, it’s a dilemma as old as spaceflight. Stuff floating loose finds its way into every unreachable nook and cranny. You’d think everything would just gravitate toward the air returns, but I’ve found missing gear in places you wouldn’t believe.”

  That was the part that troubled him. How much mass was left aboard that they couldn’t account for? He’d just have to make doubly certain they had every single piece of gear on their manifest. On the ground it would’ve been straightforward, up here it felt like herding cats. Cats that could fly.

  The other two crewmen, Mikey Malone and Hector Navarro from Marshall’s own section, soon floated into the compartment and watched as the four traded the kinds of fist bumps, high fives, and trash talking of people who’d spent a lot of time working in close quarters together.

  “Ready to go downhill, Hector?”

  His already dark face turned dour. “Hell, no. Think I want to miss this?” He waved his thumb between himself and Malone. “How is it that Mikey and I hit our dosage limits when you two are the ones working in the reactor spaces all the time?”

  “There’s more shielding in those compartments than anywhere but the storm shelter,” Powers said. “You’re the ones hanging your asses overboard every chance you get.”

  “It’s what spacers do,” Malone said, patting Hector’s shoulder. “Being Earthside for a couple weeks won’t be that bad, brother. Maybe do us some good.”

  “That’s because you’ve got a wife and kids down there,” Hector said. “Don’t get all magnanimous on me. We’ve known each other too long.”

  “Then you can come over and grill some burgers with us. Maybe have a couple beers.”

  The four of them nodded approvingly. A little time on the beach wouldn’t be so bad. “Now that’s a plan,” Hector said, turning back to Marshall. “That is, if Mister Hunter doesn’t have our activities already planned full.”

  Marshall shook his head. “Not up to me,” he said, just as the XO glided into the compartment and stopped at the head of the table.

  “Gentlemen. You don’t have time to listen to me drone on and I don’t have time to listen to you bellyache,” Wicklund said. “But here we are nonetheless.”

  So had he intended to have Marshall here early to get a feel for the NCOs’ morale? Having to constantly think four-dimensionally was becoming exhausting.

  The XO continued. “Based on our mass budget and available delta-v, our departure window closes in less than twenty-four hours. The skipper wants to get underway yesterday. If you’re not feeling a sense of extreme urgency at this moment, you’re wrong.” He turned to Marshall. “Mister Hunter. What’s the detachment’s status?”

  Marshall swiped at his tablet, glad that he’d had the time to question the others. “Ahead of schedule, sir. First two blocks on the list have been cleared and the third is underway. Inventory shows us under mass budget by one hundred eighty-four kilos,” he said, remembering the XO liked precise numbers.

  “And personal gear?”

  Marshall hadn’t expected that. He eyed the four NCOs, looking for any clues from them. A couple nodded their heads that they were okay. “Still being packed and catalogued for return, sir.” It was all he could offer, and he hoped it was right.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Wicklund said, eyeing Marshall, “if your inventory is correct. So let’s all applaud Mr. Hunter for preventing us from having to completely remove our presence. Bring any personal gear you want to have Earthside, but it won’t be necessary to bring everything.”

  Marshall sensed a wave of relief from the others, something he felt himself. It seemed like a small thing, but it would be a lot harder for HQ to reassign them back on the beach if their gear was still in orbit. Was that another angle the XO was working, by chance?

  “Good thing you’re ahead of schedule,” Wicklund continued, “because we’ve just had a task added and our little group will have to pick up the slack.”

  The NCOs traded unmistakable we’re about to get screwed looks.

  “Nobody’s about to get screwed,” the XO said. So he was a mind reader, too. “But the skipper wasn’t happy with some tests we ran on the outboard tank couplers. We’re going to have to send another team out there to inspect the links and fittings.”

  Mikey Malone spoke up. “Begging your pardon, sir, but Hector and I are already off the EVA roster until we finish our course of treatment.”

  “Exactly,” Wicklund said. “Which reminds me—don’t spend too much time outside, gents, and load up on sunblock.” His stony face gave no hint as to whether he might be joking. “Chief Riley and Rosado will go outside, Mr. Hunter here will back them up. So our detachment is down one man while Malone and Navarro do whatever Rosie and Riley were supposed to be doing.” He checked his watch. “Report to the command deck in thirty minutes.”

  Simon Poole hovered above a diagram of Borman’s tanks and plumbing, while Rosado and Riley floated on either side of the plotting table. Marshall tried to follow along as best he could, needing to see what Poole described but not wanting to get in the way of the two people who’d be doing the work.

  “We ran an end-to-end control simulation, jettisoning each outboard tank after running them dry,” Poole explained. “The engine cutoff sensors didn’t play along.”

  Chief Riley swiped at a spot on the diagram and zoomed in on it. “The sensors are upstream of the intake manifolds,” he said. “Aren’t they just feeding data to the flight computers?”

  “Yes, but they’re based on the same principle of the old space shuttle tanks,” Poole said. “So they also have direct input to the manifolds. They’ll command an engine shutdown if they think the tanks are dry.”

  “Which they will be,” Riley frowned. “And we can’t just rewrite the control logic, can we sir?”

  “It’ll take less time to send you and Rosie out there to disable them.” Poole moved the diagram downstream of the sensors. “The ECO umbilicals are here, alongside the propellant crossfeeds. They’re meant to keep us from over-speeding the engine turbopumps if the tanks run dry before we think they should. Each one can be disconnected separately.”

  Marshall raised his hand. “The flight data computers also use the cutoff sensors to update mass totals when we’re burning, sir. Won’t that create interference with the rest of the system?”

  “Not if we do it right,” Poole said. “If it’s a hard disconnect, the FDCs will see the sensors are offline and ask us if we want to continue. In which case the answer is yes. It’ll rely on the propellant quantity sensors and our ability to shut down the pumps once we reach dry tanks.”

  “Which we’re not really doing,” Marshall said, warming to the idea. “They’ll still be drawing hydrogen from the cent
er tank.”

  “Exactly,” Poole said. “The ECO sensors are just doing their job, but that creates a failure mode that the control logic doesn’t recognize.”

  Rosado understood now as well. “And we never simmed jettisoning the tanks before because they’re too expensive to replace. We always burn evenly from each tank, not one at a time, don’t we?”

  “Easier to keep the ship trimmed that way,” Poole acknowledged, “plus we’re too busy getting actual work done to putz around with the what ifs.” He turned to Riley. “Right, Chief?”

  Riley smiled. “Kind of staring us in the face now, isn’t it, sir?”

  “That it is, Chief.” Poole slapped him on the shoulder; it would’ve sent them both spinning away if they hadn’t braced themselves. Marshall noted how they’d both picked up on the signals from each other’s body language. Poole turned to him. “So how soon can you three get out there?”

  “I’m going to defer to the chief on that one, sir. It’s his show right now.”

  Riley nodded. “We’ll need you as our safety spotter, sir. There’s a lot that can go sideways on an excursion like this. If we get hung up on a task, we may need you to help us muscle through it. Those crossfeeds have been out there a long time and they’re not going to give up too easily.”

  Marshall laughed to himself. “Got it. I’m your hired muscle. So how long to prep?”

  “Four hours,” Riley said. “We’ll target another four for the EVA but it could easily go to eight. We can start pre-breathing while we’re inspecting our suits. If you can do that with Rosie, I’ll put the tool kits together.”

  Poole tapped his watch and started a countdown timer. “That’s twelve hours from start to finish. That leaves you less than twelve to stow your gear and get ready for the ride home. Get cracking, people.”

  16

  Marshall noticed the difference in his suit as soon as he pulled on his cooling garment, a set of long johns covered with loops of tubing that circulated water around his body. Gone was the “new car” smell of synthetic fabric blends, half of them coated in urethane. It now carried a distinct odor of old perspiration that wet wipes couldn’t fully cleanse.

  The rest of the suit, officially known as an Extravehicular Mobility Unit because no government agency could bear using simple English that couldn’t also be distilled into an acronym, had fared better since it was mostly protected from direct contact with him by his cooling garment. Antimicrobial underwear notwithstanding, spacewalks were strenuous and all of that perspiration had to go somewhere.

  Watching Rosie and Riley inspecting each other, he marveled at how they managed their own gear and workload. If they weren’t out doing “hard hat” work on the spacecraft, they were running rescue drills. Did they like having something they relied on so completely to have that lived-in feeling? Was it reassuring? Did it create a sense of familiarity, and was that a good thing? It simultaneously made discrepancies easier to find while becoming complacent about them.

  He found the internal bellows of the elbow and shoulder joints had more play, though the gloves hadn’t improved. His fingertips were still raw from the other day’s jaunt, so he was content to remain a “safety observer” instead of doing any actual work.

  Just as well, he decided as he watched them climb hand over hand down the service railing. Officer or not, he was still a greenhorn and they were in a hurry.

  They stopped at the first tank, a bright white barrel with ellipsoid domes at each end. Its brilliance struck him as not being tactically sound—but then, what was there to camouflage against? With no atmosphere to blur light or absorb heat, everything in space stuck out like a sore thumb. A ship painted flat black might be harder to see but there’d be no avoiding the heat signature, not without absurdly large radiators. And everything gave off electromagnetic radiation as well, though EM signatures could be easier to mask.

  The Borman was not technically a warship, though classifying its weapons as “defensive” was an exercise in absurdity—that depended entirely on which end you were facing. Their loadout was meant as a last resort, either for clearing the space lanes of dangerous debris, or for deterring “bad actors” from controlling them. Either way meant directing fire on a target that would then be turned into more debris—exchanging fire with another ship threatened to create a cascade of shrapnel which could make whatever orbital plane it occurred in unusable for years.

  That all was of course still hypothetical. In the same configuration, Borman could’ve been commissioned as something akin to a naval frigate and other spacefaring nations would’ve lost their minds. Make it a “safety patrol” ship for Orbit Guard, up here in full view for everybody’s protection, and they mostly kept quiet. It seemed to him like a distinction without a difference.

  Riley’s voice crackled in his headset, interrupting Marshall’s wandering thoughts. “We’re on station at tank one’s interlink. Can you take up our slack?”

  “Roger that.” He followed their umbilical lines as they snaked out of the open airlock, into space and along the length of the ship to disappear amongst the hydrogen tanks. The two spacers would’ve been difficult to spot were it not for their high-visibility saffron-yellow suits. Marshall grabbed one line and methodically coiled up its excess before securing it with a Velcro strap. He repeated it for the second line. “How’s that?”

  “Peachy,” Rosie said. “Thanks.”

  Standing in the hatch atop the spacecraft’s dorsal spine gave him an unobstructed view of their work area and the two pale yellow figures, over fifty meters away, bouncing and hovering over the gaps between three enormous tanks. They would be passing into darkness soon and their helmet lamps switched on, dazzling against the tank’s already brilliant white skin. “How’s your access?” he asked them.

  He could hear the grunts behind Riley’s voice. “It’s a tight fit, that’s for sure. I don’t think they planned on anyone working around these things in orbit.”

  “We can see the crossfeed lines and bellows, but it limits our reach to the sensor conduits. Might be doing some of this by feel,” Rosie said, which he assumed was a joke. They wouldn’t be “feeling” much of anything.

  Simon Poole’s attention was spread thin between monitoring the EVA, coordinating with fleet control, keeping up with their departure prep, and running the ship in general. He didn’t notice the chime of an incoming message packet from the flight station behind him.

  “New software uplink from Ops, skipper,” Flynn reported from the pilot’s station. “It’s the navigation plan we were waiting for.”

  “About time,” Poole said. “How long to QC it?”

  “Ran a checksum as it was loading, sir. Bits and bytes are all accounted for.” Which was one, but not the only, indication that the new guidance package was ready to run.

  Poole eyed the chronometer as it counted down the hours and minutes to their departure. “Program the primary FDC, but keep the others out of the loop until it’s validated.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Riley waved at Marshall as he emerged from between the tanks. “First inspection complete,” he said. “Moving across to outboard two now.”

  “Rosie handling this next one?”

  “You’d better believe it, sir. This was a little too claustrophobic for me.”

  “Can you unsnap my line, sir?” Rosie called. “I’m about to head over.”

  He pulled her coiled umbilical free. “You’re all set. Go for it.”

  Marshall watched her deftly move along the handholds to the outer edge of the tank, then push off to fly across the spine of the ship and come to a stop at the opposite tank. Looking back down to where she’d started, Riley was fussing with his own line. “Need a minute on mine, sir. It’s tangled up near this thruster quad.”

  “Uplink complete,” Flynn said.

  Poole pulled up behind him. “That was quick. Sure you got the whole package?”

  The engineer tapped the screen, as if coaxing it to offer more in
formation. “About the normal upload time, skipper. Maybe the nav solutions aren’t as complicated as we thought.”

  “You’re forgetting the first rule of spaceflight,” Poole cautioned. “Everything is more complicated than we thought.”

  The skipper had lots of “first rules,” Flynn thought, every single one of them being the most important at that moment. There were too many ways to get seriously dead out here. “The initial state vectors agree with ours.”

  Poole looked over his shoulder. “The big question is what happens next. That’s going to be a long burn. Blow a trim angle, and we end up half a million miles off target.”

  “I still need to let the FMC run the program and plot it.”

  “Agreed,” Poole said. “See where it takes us.”

  “Aye, sir.” Flynn’s fingers danced around the menu buttons embedded in the screen bezel, selected the PREFLIGHT-SIMULATE menu, then punched EXECUTE. There was a rattle of thrusters and the deck pitched up abruptly.

  Marshall bounced hard off the lip of the airlock as the ship moved beneath him, knocking the wind out of him. A fountain of gas erupted from a thruster quad off to his left.

  “What the hell?” Rosie exclaimed. “Why are we maneuvering?” she shouted into the intercom. A major safety precaution to protect spacers during an EVA was to limit controls to the reaction wheels so as not to have thrusters firing off around vulnerable spacewalkers.

  Marshall caught his breath and reflexively patted down his suit, checking for any tears. “No idea!” he said, and felt a stabbing pain in his ribs. That would have to wait. The ship pitched again, this time falling away from him. He grabbed a handhold.

  “Control, EVA One!” Riley called. “Cease maneuvering! We are still outside. Repeat, team is still on structure!”

  Flynn’s voice shot back. “We know! Overriding—”