“Aye, shutting down,” Garver called out as Simon flew back down into the command module. The bucking and heaving soon came to a stop, though the ship’s tumble continued unabated.
“Nav platform may not be able to keep up with this, sir,” Garver warned him. “Tank two is a goner. We need to lose it before we can get the ship under control.”
“Roger that.” Simon reached for the jettison switch.
Whatever they’d expected to see after they emerged from the asteroid’s shadow, it wasn’t this. The ship they had left behind was shrouded in a cloud of vapor, lazily tumbling through space. For a moment Marshall had thought they were looking at the similarly damaged Prospector.
“Holy shit,” Rosie breathed.
“Borman,” Wylie called, “Borman, this is Specter. How copy, over?”
He was answered by the pop and hiss of an empty channel. He repeated his call, and the radio crackled. “Spec—”
The four stared at each other as if one of them might have been able to discern an answer. The frequency sparked to life again. “. . . maintain . . . position.”
“You’re broken, Borman. Understand you want us to maintain position?”
The channel hissed, then came an emphatic reply: “Negative! Do not—”
“They lost antenna control,” Marshall said, and pointed at the stricken ship. “Their signal cuts out as it rolls away.”
“You’re right,” Wylie said, hearing the static rise and fall with Borman’s rotation. “Then we drop the UHF.” He switched over his active channel to the rarely used high-frequency radio. “Never thought I’d need this out here. Hope they remembered to keep it on.” He flicked the mic switch. “Borman, this is Specter on HF, button one.”
They recoiled as the channel howled to life. It blessedly disappeared when someone spoke, though his voice was reedy from attenuation. The words came in a rush.
“Specter, Borman. Explosion in H2 tank two.”
“That sounds like Garver,” Marshall said. “Is Sim—Captain Poole—okay?”
If anyone noticed his stumbling into use of the familiar, they ignored it. Wylie keyed the mic. “How’s the CO?”
“Pissed,” Garver said. “His orders are for you to stay clear. Danger close, repeat danger close.”
Before he could ask anything else, they saw the damaged hydrogen tank separate from Borman and begin spiraling away.
Simon flinched, barely keeping his head from bouncing off a heaving bulkhead as he came down from the cupola. “Could be worse,” he muttered.
“How’s that, sir?” Garver asked coolly, trying to mask his tension.
Simon floated back down to strap into the pilot’s seat. “If this was a movie, we’d have panels falling out of the overhead and all the avionics would be on fire. So we’ve got that going for us.”
Garver laughed out loud. “Good thing they thought to put in circuit breakers.”
“Yeah, awesome.” One of the petty officers bit down on his lower lip as he continued fighting against their rolling and yawing. “How the hell are you laughing at anything right now?”
“Stress response,” Garver said as he studied the fuel system’s diagnostics, shooting a glance at Poole. “We’ve been in worse situations.”
The petty officer glared back at him over his shoulder. “Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that one, Master Chief.”
“He’s not kidding,” Poole said, pulsing thrusters against the roll. “Remind me to tell you about the Sea of Okhotsk some time.” The ship jerked hard as thrusters fought the escaping gas. “Let’s just say that riding your boat down to crush depth is even scarier than being in a depressurizing spacecraft.”
“I’ll take your word on that, sir.”
Poole tapped the controls again, more lightly and in the opposite direction. With another pulse to null that motion, the attitude indicator finally settled down. He blew out a long breath.
“Ship’s stable,” Garver reported. “Clear of the debris cloud.”
Poole wiped his forehead with his ball cap. “How much RCS did we blow doing that?”
Garver checked the propellant totals. “Twenty percent, sir. And we vented a whole propellant cell. That leaves three cells in tank one.”
Simon ground his jaw. “Tell me about our radio masts.” Their antenna complex was adjacent to the propellant tanks.
Garver pulled up an interactive diagram of the comm and sensor module, much of it now in red. “The explosion took out our directional antennas. We can pick up HF and VHF if we’re pointed at the source.”
“We can still talk to Specter, right?”
Garver nodded affirmative. “We can relay our comms through their directional antenna. Limits us to S-band but it’ll work. We’ll have direct control once they’re docked.”
“Good. Clear them to approach the forward node, and make sure they get us external visuals. Get our people back in the barn ASAP.”
“Copy that,” Wylie answered. “We’re heading to Waypoint One now. Tuning S-band radios to the common traffic freqs. Stand by.” He gestured for Marshall to begin relaying Borman’s radio traffic through their antenna.
As he switched over frequencies, there was a high-pitched squeal as if an electronic being was clearing its throat. A computer-generated voice began a recorded recitation:
ATTENTION ALL TRESPASSERS, INTERLOPERS,
AND ENVIRONMENTAL RAPISTS:
THIS PLANETOID AND ALL NATURAL RESOURCES WITHIN IT HAVE BEEN DESIGNATED AS PROTECTORATES OF THE PEOPLE’S SPACE LIBERATION FRONT. EARTH HAS SUFFERED ENOUGH UNDER CENTURIES OF NATIONALISTIC PROPERTY THEFT, AND WE WILL NOT PERMIT FURTHER RAPING OF THE ENVIRONMENT OF WORLDS THAT NO CORPORATION HAS A RIGHT TO. AS NO ONE HAS RIGHTFUL CLAIM TO PROPERTY PER THE OUTER SPACE TREATY OF 1969, WE THE PEOPLE OF EARTH ARE THEREFORE THE SOLE ARBITERS OF ANY SPACE PROPERTY DISPUTES. ANGLO-IMPERIALISM WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO EXPAND BEYOND EARTH. THIS FREE SPACE MANIFESTO APPLIES TO ALL NATURAL WORLDS OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.
Marshall and Wylie stared at each other, dumbfounded, as the eerie computer-voiced “manifesto” began repeating itself. Wylie’s eyes widened. “What in the actual hell was that?”
21
Poole had assembled his skeleton command staff—Lieutenant Wylie and Master Chief Garver—in the multipurpose wardroom, each in a pantomime of sitting with their feet slipped into restraints under the table. “First order of business,” he said, pointing at Wylie. “How’s Hunter’s team doing?”
“They’re secured in the ’lock, sir. They were out there a long time and it’s going to take a while to rebalance their O2 levels. We shouldn’t plan on having them available for duty for another two hours.”
“Make it four,” he said, then, “scratch that. Eight. I want them fully rested and ready to go.”
“Aye, sir,” Wylie said warily, looking askance at Garver. They were in an all-hands situation and it wasn’t like Poole to ease up when the pressure was on. He had something else in mind.
Poole eyed them both. “Gentlemen, I don’t have to tell you we are in deep kimchee. We’ve lost most of our comms and half our remaining propellant. That severely limits our maneuvering space.” He paused. “We don’t have the delta-v to make our return schedule. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”
“It’s going to be a long trip home,” Wylie said dourly. “We’re stuck with a simple Hohmann transfer that follows the Jiang’s original trajectory before it all went sideways. I’m guessing the chief isn’t going to paint a prettier picture.” He looked at Garver, who’d been taking stock of their logistics.
“The lieutenant’s right, sir,” Garver said, though he knew Poole was well aware of exactly how screwed they were. “Water supplies can be stretched through the reclamation cycler, but we only have enough food rations for thirty days. That’s assuming minimum caloric intake.”
“We’re on Prospector’s Mars flyby orbit,” Wylie reminded them. “We won’t make it half that far before we run out of food.”
&nb
sp; “That’s why I’ve got Hunter’s team resting up—it’s going to get busy before it gets even busier. We’re going to have to go back and salvage whatever we can from Prospector, dock with their hab and empty it out.” He gave that a minute to sink in. “And that brings me around to my next topic: Gentlemen, why are we here?”
The lieutenant’s brow furrowed, caught off guard. “Sir?”
Wylie might have been caught short, but Garver knew right away. “Search and rescue.”
Poole snapped his fingers at Garver. “Bingo. We still have a mission, gents, which I intend to accomplish no matter what the consequences are for us. I don’t know if there are enough rations over there to get us all the way home, but I’m damned certain there’s enough to keep us going while we search for our spacefaring rock hounds.”
Garver shifted uncomfortably, pursing his lips.
“Something on your mind, Chief?”
Garver lifted his eyes. “Sir, whoever broadcast that idiotic ‘manifesto’ is claiming responsibility. What happened to us looks a lot like what happened to Prospector. I’m at a loss as to how they managed it, but we have to consider hostile action.”
“I’m not buying this Space Liberation Front or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves,” Poole said. “But I don’t believe in coincidences, either. You can’t tell me a bunch of space hippies were clever enough to pull off an op like this. They’d have to be clairvoyant.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“Lead times. They’d have had to launch it well ahead of Prospector, probably before they even announced their expedition. And I like to think we’d have noticed it.”
“The Jiangs have been planning this for over two years,” Wylie said. “Somebody with inside knowledge would’ve had to act long before they announced, then.”
“Seems likely. It also seems likely that whoever is trying to deny access to resources out here has been thinking about it for a long time. Any asteroid that’s a likely candidate for exploitable resources should be considered dangerous.”
“They didn’t come out and say so, did they?” Garver mused. “But they didn’t have to.”
Poole began ticking off points on his fingers. “They’ve declared asteroid and planetary resources off-limits for humans. And they’re claiming credit for damaging two US spacecraft.”
“One being a military vessel. They have to know that’s an act of war,” Wylie said, barely able to believe it himself.
Poole’s fingers drummed the table, ever so slightly pushing him up against his restraints. “Been thinking about that, too.” He stopped his drumming to wag a finger at both of them. “If I ever get the bright idea to go anywhere again without a full weapons loadout, feel free to mutiny my ass.”
“You were trying to accomplish the mission, sir,” Wylie said. “We had valid reasons to dump mass.”
Poole was unconvinced. “If this were the surface Navy, even the Coast Guard, we wouldn’t forget our first purpose.”
Garver scratched at his beard. “That gets a little fuzzy out here, sir. They can bring along whatever they can fit inside. We don’t have that luxury,” he reminded him. “Fleet Ops approved your operational plan.”
“That’ll be the only thing that keeps my ass out of a sling if we get back,” Poole said. “So here’s my orders going forward: One, use Specter’s directional antenna to communicate with Fleet and advise them of our situation. Two, dock with Prospector and get a full inventory of their consumables. Get back to me on how far we can stretch them.” He eyed them both. “Three—spin up the interceptors and charge the PDCs, even if you have to power down something else to do it. As of right now, we are at war. We just need to figure out with whom.”
The distance between Earth and RQ39 meant that what soon became known as the “Free Space Manifesto” was received several minutes after Poole’s crew first heard it, not long after Fleet Operations lost contact with the Borman.
That in itself had sent the Fleet Ops controllers into a scramble, something Roberta couldn’t help but notice from her vantage point at the opposite end of the control room. She was easily distracted in “coast mode,” passively watching as their newest X-37 was making its way up to geosynch.
WHAT’S UP? She’d texted a junior lieutenant she knew on the Borman control team. It was taking a huge chance with as busy as they’d all of sudden become, but he was a logistics guy which made her comfortably sure he wasn’t getting his ass handed to him at that moment.
NOBODY KNOWS, he’d answered. E AND E SAID THERE WAS A TEMP AND PRESSURE SPIKE IN ONE OF THE H2 TANKS. THEN IT WENT DARK. THEY’RE NORDO.
She’d rolled back from her console to stare at the big status board on the far wall. It showed the position of every satellite, drone, and crewed spacecraft in the force, while Borman was so far out it was wasn’t even on screen. “No radio,” she exhaled. “Jeebus.”
After the initial burst of activity, she watched the control team go dark in their own way. The lead controller and a couple of specialists were up and about, either answering questions from the brass or being pulled into one of the meeting rooms surrounding the control floor. She recognized a couple of new faces that had been hovering around the Borman team’s consoles—the crewmembers sent back to save consumables so it could go on its grand interplanetary adventure. The rest of the team remained at their posts, hunched over their consoles, headsets pressed to their ears, each hoping to tease some data or a voice snippet out of the Great Big Nothing.
She couldn’t imagine what that felt like, and didn’t want to. She had her own drone now, with the occasional datalink glitch for sure, but they had always resolved quickly. Military pilots had spent decades refining the art of remotely controlling drones from opposite ends of the world, and adapting their techniques to space had been a natural leap.
It helped that the X-37s were smart enough to finish executing whatever their last commands had been if she momentarily lost contact with them. More importantly, there weren’t humans aboard. No matter how much she might have loved her drones, she wasn’t going out for drinks with them at the O club or popping in at their kid’s birthday parties. It had become all too easy to forget how deadly serious their jobs were because she was having too much fun playing with some really expensive toys.
She hadn’t been the only person in Fleet Ops feeling that way. Losing their flagship had immediately changed the mood in the Ops center. Calling it happy-go-lucky before was perhaps unfair, but it was the closest description she could think of. Spaceflight, even just pushing satellites around, was horrendously unforgiving of the slightest hint of incompetence. No one had the luxury of slacking off.
But this was different. Especially among the senior officers and NCOs, many of them Air Force and Navy transfers who’d seen actual combat, there was a quiet determination she’d not noticed before: not grim, not angry, though a little of both. She and the other junior officers found themselves unwittingly mimicking their senior’s behavior. They were ready to stomp somebody’s ass but had no idea who. Even without the Borman, they had ample resources. They just didn’t have the first clue of where to aim them.
The intel analysts had their own ideas about this Space Liberation Front, though they’d quickly been sidelined by the DIA and CIA. Big Intel was on it, they’d been assured. That hadn’t stopped them from their own sleuthing. She also knew nobody with half a brain seriously thought some kind of Greenpeace in Space had just showed up out of nowhere—which meant that was exactly what the suits in Washington were thinking.
Roberta drummed her fingers impatiently on her console, staring at the big red button on the control stick and wishing there was somebody she could just shoot, damn it. Caught up in her own thoughts and frustrations, she was surprised by a sudden commotion erupting from across the room. Shouting, hooting, some guys standing excitedly, others running for the outer office ring to alert the brass . . . had the balloon gone up? Do we finally have a targeting order?
She felt a
strange commingling of disappointment, relief, and excitement when that didn’t happen. It was the Borman, she’d learned, wounded but not dead yet. Unable to communicate on its own but still able to relay traffic through its shuttle. All hands accounted for, so at least she could rest easy that Marshall was okay.
Finally, she learned of their grim task ahead of raiding the Jiang’s spacecraft for consumables on the outside chance there’d be enough to sustain them during what had just turned into a long trip home.
Her relief and excitement ebbed, replaced with a tension and dread that was becoming all too familiar. Alternating waves of adrenaline and serotonin coursed through her, competing for dominance and leaving her worn out and helpless to do anything about it.
Focus, she told herself. Her drone was coming up on its next burn to place it in geosynch, and she couldn’t afford to become distracted. The day’s space tasking order, or just “STO,” had been simple: park the drone in orbit and await further orders. The equipment loadout in its cargo bay promised follow-on missions that were anything but simple: Hall thrusters, imagery packages, manipulator arms . . . they were planning a real party for somebody up there.
She tightened her grip on the ROV’s controls, took a deep breath, and relaxed her grip. Take care of your own bird, she told herself.
Mating two disabled vehicles was difficult enough; maneuvering the larger of the two out of its own debris cloud and around that of the smaller ship had taken considerable skill and even more nerves. Marshall found himself flinching at every ting of something bouncing off the hull. Now that it was crucial for them to access all of Prospector’s logistics, the collision risk had moved well down Poole’s priority list. What he didn’t say—and of this Marshall was convinced—was that no matter their condition upon returning home, alive or dead they were bringing back evidence of hostile actions beyond Earth orbit.
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