APRIL 8, 2074
NYS VEGA,
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND KILOMETERS BEYOND LUNAR ORBIT
Captain Ward rose like a ghost, evaporating into the steely tangle of conduit as he strolled to the bridge. Head first; then torso; legs; ankles; finally shoes. The circumference of Vega’s hamster wheel-like crew ring was about the same as her high school track, three hundred and seventy-five meters. A circuit which she could trot in three minutes. It was designed for efficiency, not size. Captain Ward was tall, at two-plus meters, so he needed only sixteen paces to vanish under the horizon.
Letting the Captain haunt the bridge while she searched Vega made her reptilian brain uneasy, and while she could trot the crew ring, or jog, she didn’t survive multiple deployments by scampering headlong into traps.
She tore a second Chameleon drone off her chest and tasked it to scout the corridor and access tubes ahead. “Jin, can you confirm the bridge consoles are locked out?”
“Leyna here. The controls on the bridge are locked and inactive.”
“Can the crew access Vega’s controls from anywhere else?”
“Negative. And I have upgraded intrusion detection.”
She didn’t want a crew mutiny, or worse, a melee in tight quarters that would make her the pilot of a space hearse. This crew had no qualms with violence. Maybe the conn gave the Captain a sense of control, but there was nothing he could do from the bridge except sit and watch the stars on a wall mounted display.
“The Captain will be on the bridge. Keep a close eye,” she said to Leyna over the comms. “Where did Jin go?”
“He left to investigate the mining accident. I tried to stop him.”
“Not your fault. When Jin makes his mind up, he is a freight train.” If Leyna was nervous, Kate couldn’t hear it over the comms. “And welcome aboard. You are doing great.”
“Thank you, Major.”
“Kate. Call me Kate.” A hell of a first assignment, but Leyna was capable.
Her footfalls clanked as she trod the crew ring. Sallow water leaked from the morass of ceiling pipes, dribbling onto her finger. It stunk of urine and yeast. She felt queasy. Vega was like one of those neglected State Fair amusement park rides that killed at least a few hapless riders every summer.
She put her gloves back on, deciding not to touch anything.
Her boots caught and squealed against the metal floor grate. Gasses hissed at her from wall pipes like serpents, permeating the corridor with a sweet but stale refrigerator scent. Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, which she’d first encountered in a Marine dentist’s chair, having a tooth replanted after a mess hall fight. Also rocket fuel. This elderly bucket of decay used it for attitude thrusters.
The forward Chameleon drone, Cham 2, doglegged through a threshold into a navy-gray access passage to the shipping containers. Its omnidirectional cameras captured infrared and ultraviolet video, too. So far, no traps lurked in the shadows.
Behind her—if ‘behind’ was a meaningful word on this hamster wheel—Chameleon 1’s camera showed Captain Ward marching through the bridge threshold and closing the hatch behind him.
Four clanky steps more, and another pipe hooted at her. This one steam.
A leak in the recycler system. A leak in the propellant system. Poor insulation. Worn gaskets. Hasty patches. A dozen safety problems in plain view.
She didn’t have time to stop for inspection. She wondered whether she was detaining three fugitives or saving eleven people from certain death. This chuck wagon was headed for Mars, at least according to its nav computer. A cover. No way this can was making it six months and a hundred and forty million kilometers on duct tape and spray sealant. There was a smuggler’s waypoint, another million kilometers from here, safely past the moon. Maybe the Captain planned to stop for repairs. If they made it that far.
But it didn’t matter. Where Vega was headed after this was not in doubt.
She’d neared the access tube to the supply containers, her boots clunking progress on the metal floor, when grinding and whining echoed around the crew ring and halted her.
“Major Devana, I am seeing power fluctuations,” Leyna said over the comms. “Engine one is offline.”
The lights flickered and dimmed.
She flipped her visor closed. Suit oxygen supply was ninety-six percent, her seals were good, and the spare tanks were full. Good pressure. Good volts. Good hydraulics. All her suit diagnostics were green. Instinct and training compelled her to run through her suit checklist. After power, the next thing to go was air. There could never be enough oxygen in space. Her suit was the only thing between her and suffocating to death on this leaky death trap.
“Now engine two is offline. Main bus is switching over to backup power.”
The lights flickered again, and then the tunnel plunged into blackness.
She ordered Chameleon 2 to halt. People radiated heat. Drones, even stealth drones, radiated both heat and electromagnetic radiation. Cham 2’s scans showed nothing but empty passages.
Cham 1 circled the ring. On infrared, its blue-on-red heat map displayed cracked pipes and insulation gaps, but no people, and no traps in the darkness. Vega’s crew remained in their quarters.
“Power is out,” Kate said as she turned, as if watching Captain Ward’s ghost retreat through the blackness.
“Batteries are forty-one percent,” Leyna said. “The oxygen scrubbers and fuel pumps have power. I am trying to restart the engines.”
“Could this be engineered from the bridge?”
“Why would someone shut down the engines?”
“To keep us from impounding the ship and returning it to the colony.”
“It’s suicide, Major Devana. These engines are old and not easy to restart. The battery backup will last only another three hours.”
The lights flickered, and ceiling vents knocked, as if a goblin was scraping and dragging itself through the ductwork.
Leyna said, “The status log says a power surge knocked out engine one, which destabilized engine two.”
She didn’t believe in coincidences. It was a mistake to let the Captain go. She swiveled and marched for the bridge.
Passive night vision cast the corridor as green on black shadows to her HUD. Her breath heaved, fogging her helmet’s glass, and her footfalls clinked and jingled. Darkness seemed to amplify and distort sounds. The new pressure suit smell had been replaced with sweat.
“Any bridge activity?” she asked Leyna.
“None. The power is out there.”
“Any luck on the registry?”
“Negative. If they re-papered this ship, they hid it well. I am still working on it.”
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“What was their last port?”
“Kuipers.”
Kuipers was an EU Commission supply station in high Earth orbit.
She clattered under whistling from a leak. Ceiling pipes were deeper green than the walls in her night vision. The hissing sounded like steam, but she couldn’t be sure.
As soon as the whistling receded, something plink-plinked on her helmet. Maybe that foul drip from the recycler.
“Engine one is restarting,” Leyna said.
The lights flickered. The corridor came alive with humming and whirring from the ducts, and then the lights turned on. She paused. Oyster-colored liquid drooled down her helmet. Ten steps ahead, the ceiling pipes bent and entered the bulkhead. The paint was a fresher, cleaner shade of navy gray. Beyond, bulky, squircle-shaped hatches, the first with C-2 Second Officer stenciled in light blue to the right.
“Engine one has restarted,” Leyna said. “Engine two is restarting. The electrical log shows more faults than a San Andreas earthquake map. Last month, maintenance replaced a bad transformer. A power surge took both engines offline then, too.”
Maybe the power outage was a maintenance problem. It certainly seemed likely, given Vega’s state of disrepair. But the hairs on her neck stood at attention, demanding she check on the Captain and crew.
“Is there any missing time in the nav computer?”
“Negative. If anything, they raced out of Kuipers. They were scheduled to be there a week, but left after four days.”
This ship would barely make it back to the colony, let alone to a smuggler’s waystation. Or Mars. They were running. “Check Kuipers’ records.”
“Roger. I’ve already started a query.”
Leyna had anticipated the request. Kate liked her initiative.
She clanked to the first hatch, the Second Officer’s cabin. There was no reply when she rapped on it. “Everything all right in there?” she asked as she banged a second time.
The hatch drifted open.
Peeking in, the cabin had two twin murphy bunks, narrowly separated, and the same navy gray paint. Someone’s computer tablet rested on the right bunk. It was on, unlocked, and paused in the middle of the movie Terror of Titan. From the left bunk, music pulsated from an oversize set of blue headphones laying on the pillow.
The tablet on the right bunk timed out and locked. The Second Officer’s face scowled at her from the lockscreen.
They hadn’t been gone long. Seconds. But where?
The bridge was three doors up, a slate gray hatch, indistinguishable from the others, except for BRIDGE stenciled in navy blue on the door. Beyond the bridge, four more similar hatches.
She unholstered her pistol and listened to the fans hum from the ducts. This ship was a hundred thousand kilometers from the colony’s shelter and breathable air. Neither Cham 1 nor Cham 2 detected movement. Not even a mechanic drone scrabbling to fix the leaky pipes. The ship’s passages were empty.
Why did the Captain insist on waiting on the bridge?
“Leyna, are you sure all the control stations are locked and inactive?”
“Affirmative.”
“Could there be a secondary circuit? Not documented?”
“What kind of circuit?”
“A kill switch. To stop us from taking Vega back to the colony.” She tested the handle on the next hatch. Unlocked. She let the muzzle of her gun lead the way as she nudged the hatch open. The lights were on. Two bunks, with neat, pale blue, hospital-cornered bedsheets. An empty cabin.
“I don’t think there’s a secondary circuit. I’d detect a power drain or short.”
“Vega has eight crew, right?” She stalked the next door, cat-like, careful to keep her boots from clacking against the metal floors.
“Confirmed and re-confirmed. Why?”
The next hatch was ajar. The inside lights were off. She gently swept the door wide, using her pistol sight’s red dot to probe the shadows. A knife of light expanded inside the cabin until it lit two empty beds.
“Did Jin forget to lock the cabins?”
“No. When the power goes out—”
“The doors unlock. Shit.”
“It’s a safety feature.”
The safety features and emergency protocols activated when the power was out. The crew was running. But not to hide in the shipping containers. The answer felt like a drill sergeant’s backhand.
The next door was BRIDGE, followed by four more hatches.
“Kate, I’ve accessed Kuipers’ security records. Interior security scans confirms the crew was aboard Kuiper for four days. That agrees with the nav computer.”
“But they left in a hurry. Kuipers’ security have any open investigations?”
“As a matter of fact. Crap. Two death investigations. An electrical Cadet and Third Engineer got trapped in an airlock. They were spaced.”
The crew was running and hiding like the cowardly rodents they were. Now it was every rat for themselves. But what they were planning was suicide.
She commanded Chameleon drone 1 to reposition itself outside the bridge door.
“Good work, Leyna. Keep Tesseract close. I need you to take gravity offline.”
“Copy. Thruster propellant is low. Once gravity is off, it’s off for good.”
Zero-g gave her the advantage. She put her pistol sights on the bridge door and clutched a knob on the wall. The corridor was lined with them, like an infinity ladder, so the crew could crawl around in zero-g. “Off we go.”
Thrusters rumbled, and she lurched forward. The knob wobbled. Every joint in the crew ring squealed and screeched, protesting as Vega’s spin slowed. Her legs floated forward as gravity declined, but she kept one hand clenching the knob and the other aiming the pistol between her legs at the bridge door.
As the metallic wailing subsided, she let go, allowing herself to drift along the corridor, towards the bridge door.
“Leyna, program the nav computer to return to the colony—gently. I don’t know how much this rust bucket can handle—but don’t execute until I give the command.”
“Copy. Reprogramming.” After a pause, she said. “I haven’t heard from Jin.”
She kept the red dot on the bridge hatch as she drifted towards it. “He’ll be ok. Did you agree on a protocol?”
“What do you mean, a protocol?”
“To check in.”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“Sixty minutes. That’s our usual protocol.” She lied, hoping to make Leyna feel better. She needed her focused. He’d be speeding seven to seven hundred fifty kilometers an hour. Wireless service was spotty on the surface. Some zones were so small, he’d pass through with barely a second to relay a message.
“We’ve never gone an hour without talking.”
“He’ll check in when he can.” She grabbed a handle next to the bridge door and then braced her foot on the opposite side, positioning herself so she straddled the door. “Entering the bridge. Stand by.”
Her pistol’s muzzle scoured the corners as she pressed the hatch open. The far wall was one large monitor displaying the stars. A red blip, a beige blip, and a blue-green blip formed a straight line down the middle of the display. Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune. The Milky Way cut across the bottom left corner.
Two seats faced the observation display, behind a long control console, whose displays were off.
The seats were empty. One twirled, as if someone had recently jumped out of it.
Chameleon drone 1 puffed in ahead of her. She heard the clangor before she saw it on the drone feed.
She swam across the bridge and stabilized herself on the console. In the far left corner, the Captain and his pistol glowered at her from a small round hatch. Over his shoulders, two other faces ogled her. The Second Officer and the Engineer.
Her pressure suit was bulletproof up to rifle rounds. She floated in zero-g, one hand supporting herself against the console, and her other hand keeping her pistol’s red dot on his right eye. He wore no armor, not even a pressure suit. Five pounds of pressure. Nothing with her suit’s hydraulic finger augments. Five pounds and his head would explode, filling the bridge with droplets of gore.
But his sunken brown eyes were more resigned than defiant. She lowered her pistol, slowly, holstering it, and then waved her hand in surrender. “That is suicide.”
“We aren’t going back.”
“We are a hundred thousand kilometers from the moon.” She shifted to count faces. Three, plus a fourth mop of blond hair. She ordered Cham 1 closer.
The Captain waved his pistol at the drone. “Get back.”
“I need to know who is in there.“
“You know nothing.”
Cham 1 darted inside the hatch. Eight heads. No Lebofield. “I know that escape capsule is designed for three people. It won’t make it.”
“Is me and my crew. We go we have chance.”
“Where is Lebofield?”
“Container three-ninety-three. I told you. I lock them. They cannot leave.”
“Whatever happened on Kuipers, I am sure it was an accident. If you explain it—”
The Captain scoffed and slammed the hatch. Cham 1 was still inside the escape pod. Its video became white noise. The hatch groaned and then clunked.
“Leyna. The Captain and crew just ditched. Can you track them?”
“Their transponder is off. But I can track them on radar.”
The oxygen math baffled her. The escape capsule had ten hours of air for four average sized people. But there were eight giant cormorants in there, and that escape capsule might be as leaky as Vega.
She reached for the restraints on one of the bridge chairs and reeled herself to the seat. “Leyna, can you pull up Lebofield’s podcast from where you are?
“I can, why?”
“Is he still livestreaming?”
“Yup. Doesn’t look like he went offline when the power went out.”
Not even the power disruption could stop Lebofield’s arrogant broadcast. “Still talking shit about me?”
“Right now he’s ranting about some government conspiracy over mining claims. Want me to broadcast it to the bridge?”
“No. Don’t need to hear his horseshit.”
“I don’t think he’s aware you’ve taken Vega.”
She tasked Cham 2 to find shipping container three-ninety-three. “Good. It’ll be a surprise. I love surprises. Let’s get this pooped porta-john back to the colony. We’ll clean it out then.”
The captain’s chair was too small for her and her gear. She tried twisting herself and sitting on the edge, but she didn’t fit. The floor was aluminum, not magnetic, so she couldn’t maglock herself to the floor, either.
She removed her rifle and gear and floated it to the second seat, belting it all into place. It looked like a one-armed soldier strapped in as Second Officer. After, she pulled herself into the captain’s chair, clicked her straps locked, and then called up a military satellite in her HUD. One she knew was in orbit over Jin’s path.
“What about Vega’s crew?” Leyna asked.
“We’ll pick them up later. When they are more receptive to our five-star services.”
“When will that be?”
“About three and a half hours from now, when their oxygen runs out.”
Jin’s LTV was moving at eight hundred kilometers an hour across her map. She pinged him.
Vega’s bridge trembled as its engines rumbled to life. No response from Jin. Maybe he had his notifications on mute.