After a little over a week in space, the A2070 transporting Sophie and the 126 remaining players of the Electoral 2072 competition was finally in sight of the red planet. There was palpable fatigue around. Captain Judy spoke on the intercom, "This is Captain Arrigoni. We are about to begin our deceleration to Mars." Her voice was reassuring. "While our corporate representatives would like me to pretend this flight is nothing more than a long intercontinental flight, and just highlight the crew’s wonderful service, the truth is not quite so simple. We apologize for the incident with the Light Drive earlier today. I will not tire you with the details, but a short test from Earth sent us spinning around our axis. The news has that part covered. We are fine and soon will arrive at our destination.”
She refused to talk about the rumors of a terrorist attack. “At the moment, we are moving very fast, real fast." The finalists were all legitimately nervous except a groggy Sophie. "Let me address the elephant in the room. We lost one passenger to a strange condition. We have notified his family. Unfortunately, there is not much more to do at this time. The doctor feels it may be a strange space-induced stroke. Medical science acknowledges there are problems with long-distance travel and we are, want it or not, space pioneers. We do not take this matter lightly, and we do feel compassionate. The family has set up a donation page at the Red Cross; online donations are very generous. If anyone has any pain or discomfort, please contact an attendant immediately. Laurent, Sophie’s father appeared disturbed for a second or two but he is now stable and under close medical supervision. I wanted to quarantined the infirmary, but honestly that was illogical in such close quarters." Sophie had walked out of the infirmary against the Captain’s orders.
"We will need cooperation and full attention for what comes next. I think everyone has already been briefed ad nauseam on this procedure. Our expected time of arrival in orbit is in eleven hours and nine minutes. We have turned the ship around so our Light Drive, at the stern of the ship, now faces Mars. A large orbital laser in orbit at our arrival will light up, sending a blue beam our way. Once it touches the Light Drive, deceleration will begin.
"Pilots know the human body prefers accelerations to decelerations. This should feel like sleeping with a stack of books on your chest. Here is the real problem, deceleration will last several hours. Your feet are now aligned with the tip of the ship, you will stand on a metal plate and the deceleration should feel like gravity. In fact, we will be slowing down at fifteen percent more than gravity, that’s all you can take for so long. It may not seem like a lot, but if you are a 150 pound individual, after a week in weightlessness, you will weight 172 pounds. This is like hiking with a large back pack. The straps in your chairs should be on tight, enough to hold you in place, a bit like an amusement park ride. We must decelerate a lot. Great news is, a Guinness World Records certificate awaits everyone for such a fast trip.”
She paused under the weight of her own statements. She then resumed.
"Mars has two orbital lasers, one suffices to slow us down. Once decelerated and in higher orbit, we will have to rotate one last time pointing the nose front for atmosphere entry. We expect some turbulences but we really are in uncharted territory. About an hour to glide to the landing pad at the base of the hotel where everyone is ready for us with champagne." She had rehearsed what came next about a thousand times. "Mars is currently in its summer. The temperature is nice and warm. Summer lasts over 170 days since a Martian year is twice as long as a year on Earth. Mars has two seasons.
"The temperature on the ground can get as warm as zero degrees in the Sun, but at night drop to minus 79 degrees, cold enough for a banana to become brittle and break like glass. There is a faint atmosphere right now of about one kilopascal or three percent of a normal atmosphere on Earth's Mount Everest. The gas atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. Yesterday there were signs of a two-kilometer-per-hour wind on the ground. In a low gravity environment like Mars, that's enough to flap a flag. The lack of atmosphere prevents strong wind, real hurricanes as on Earth.
"Your clocks have been adjusted to a Martian day, which is only forty minutes longer than a day back on Earth. Having the same day length is the most useful feature of this new climate. That is why we have been using cabin lights to maintain this day cycle as we traveled here. We should land around eleven in the morning local time. As always, on Mars, it should be a cold, sunny day." Judy was not smiling in the cockpit. "Give us a couple of minutes, and we will begin deceleration. Buckle up."
Every pilot in the Solar System was tuned in jealous of Judy. She had been flawless in her delivery of a simple welcome set of instructions for the first flight to another planet.
The ship moved slowly as gyroscopic numbers slowly stabilized on her dials. The Captain in the privacy of her cockpit opened a line to destination, they were a light second away. "Ground base, we are aligned to 0.001 degree. Ready for the laser, please confirm." There was an unusually long delay in the response, about ten seconds.
"Confirmed," finally said the voice. It seemed hesitant.
"Anything wrong?” There was another four second delay. “Is the CNN journalist better informed than me? Any truth to her allegations of sabotage on your end?”
"Just proceed with final stages of alignment, we are looking into issues with some secondary systems." This was non-responsive. In space travel, communication was key. Each time there was a conscious decision not to inform, it generally was a bad sign.
Back in the main cabin, an attendant saw to the young girl. "Sophie, opening thrusters in space is like walking on ice. The pilots must feel this ship. It is not uncommon for the best pilots to overcompensate and get a ship tilting off balance in every direction." Sophie got it; they were nervous. "I have a cold tea for you. It will help you sleep." The hostess handed the girl a pouch. Sophie knew something was up, but frankly she liked the drinks.
The captain's voice continued, "I remind you that have aligned ourselves through what amounts to an open end of a straw to allow a spout of water sent from Mars to pass through the straw. We don't want to get wet, that's all."
The government had agreed to send Sophie to Mars with one caveat, that she remain in her seat for the entire landing and under the Captain's orders. The airline unable to force Sophie to do anything, it was decided a mild sedative would do the job.
"Captain,” spoke the attendant through the door, “the young girl is asleep, harnessed in.”
“Roger.” The Captain opened a line and spoke to Mars Command, “We are now in position and sending our vector right now."
"Vector received. Confirmed."
"Ready to begin deceleration."
This time the silence was almost fifteen seconds long. "We are not ready down here. We are having problems with the lasers. Please take this time to review the procedures relating to using the nuclear thrusters. You might have to use them." Only the Captain was able to assess the importance of what they had just said. Judy kept her composure.
"What type of problem?" she asked calmly. There was a silence, and a different voice spoke up.
"Captain, the satellite in orbit of Mars failed this morning. We are now working to get the redundant satellite online. We are experiencing,” the next word was chosen carefully, “ technical difficulties."
"Seems like the journalists were right. Terrorists, as they say?"
"We can only confirm that there are serious problems right now. Nothing confirmed."
"Can you please explain?" She remained calm. Good pilots were trained to react with calm to dangerous situations.
"The primary laser is out of the equation. The redundant one seems to be working with the exception of its modulator. That part is offline."
"What does that mean?" asked the Commander. These people were being careful with what they were saying. "We need the full breakdown to properly assess the situation from here," said Judy. For a Commander in a crisis situation, the words were not kind.
"Forget the primary laser, its orbit is too high. The second laser is still unfinished. It orbits lower and has orbital trajectories. It is coming in line in a matter of minutes, you should see it soon. The beam is two hundred kilojoules and was designed to slow down the Airbus A2073; the next model transport. It's much too bright for your ship. The targeting system works, so it can hit your drive. The modulator is what reduces the power to help gradually decelerate you. If this beam hits you for the moment, it will feel like an anti-riot water hose is hitting you. We need the power of the beam to be lowered to 20% of its current value. We're working on it, but changing hardware on a system in orbit is problematic."
"Thank you." Judy and her crew knew what this meant. The ship designer believed in redundancy. On each wing were ordinary rocket thrusters using a fusion core. The fuel was a bag of tritium-deuterium pellets, but in space, if one wing engine pushed with more force than the other, without air to correct, they would need to empty their small side thrusters to keep the ship aligned. Irrespective of what would come next, her options were limited.
Wang, her co-pilot, was surprised. He was an engineer with deep knowledge of the Light Drive. "There are at least a hundred ways to drop the efficiency of a light beam by that much. I don't get this."
"What do you mean?" asked Judy.
"Modulation is nothing more than filtering, sunglasses. Put a tissue or an opaque glass between our nose and the source."
Mars somehow was listening and answered, "Wang, we have a hundred experts on this down on Earth. None of these solutions work for the moment. Two-hundred kilojoules is not a small light. It will melt anything you put in the middle. Trust us, this is priority one.”
Wang said in Judy's ear privately, “Something else is going on.” Wang continued on the intercom. "Dropping something's efficiency, what about a software change? Why don't we modulate the intensity of the beam on our end?" said the co-pilot.
"When you say 'modulate' on our end, what do you have in mind?" Judy asked her co-pilot.
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There was a flood of communications between Mars and the ship. Earth seconds behind tried to keep up, and finally a voice replied.
"Mr. Wang, this is not the Apollo 13 mission. Your Captain has full authority but we advise you against reckless efforts. We are working with Pr. Sandberg, and he confirms that onboard modulation cannot function, it cannot be centered." Wang and Judy knew Sandberg was the father of the drive. “They are more than ten minutes lagging, that complicates matters.”
The captain took back the line. She spoke softly.
"Ground, I must ask if the possibility of sabotage has been taken into consideration."
"It was. This is one of our leading hypotheses. We will know better once we get a closer look at the satellites. We have a crew flying up there right now from the ground."
"Mars," said Judy. "If we assume this is sabotage, these people went to a lot of effort to have us start our thrusters. I am reluctant to fire them. No reason to assume anyone would damage satellites and not bother with us."
"As you must. Captain, time is short. Thruster deceleration is slower, and ignition must begin within twenty three minutes in order to give you a chance of decelerating enough for a landing. What are you proposing?"
"Why is the second laser even partly functional??"
"Given that it’s construction is ahead of schedule, technically it should not be operational at all. It’s a feat of engineering we have it up, seems like President Sanchez is involved."
Judy’s hand went to her left, she opened a small box, in it was a small manuscript travel book. "Sanchez?” Judy was upset but worked hard to contain herself. "We took off with a single laser operational, that wasn’t the plan, right?"
"It wasn’t."
Half of the Captain’s mind was furious while the other was impressed by the man most ignored. "Ground, we have twenty minutes. We will inspect those thrusters but I will try my two other options, stand by."
"Captain, the law is clear. This is your vessel. The call is yours."
Judy turned to Wang. "You go see that Drive and try coming up with a solution, your best. Do not touch anything yet.” The more he thought about it, the less obvious a solution was becoming. In ten to twenty minutes Earth will be on the line blaring commands.” Want clipped out of his seat, open the door and pushed out onwards the back of the plane. As he flew like a bird, he saw Sophie on the right, asleep. The journalists filmed him.
Captain Arrigoni tried to open a communication channel with Mars, she needed to inform Electoral, these were her players and she was very protective of them. Judy's watch vibrated. She looked down at the screen and saw the Electoral logo. It blinked replaced by a message. “So proud of my President! Love, M." The message blinked out as fast as it had appeared. Judy was Marilyn's biggest fan. She trusted the digital creature with her life. She smiled internally and knew what Marilyn meant.
Her ship was moving at around 400,000 miles per hour or 200 times the speed of a bullet. Since speed was stored energy, they needed a solid eight hours of deceleration to shave most of that power down and hope to land. The ship also needed time to flip before atmospheric entry, nose first. One of the lasers was sabotaged, the other was only partially operational, and Marilyn didn't seem to think there was a problem.
Judy knew the artificial creature was wise beyond her years. Given these circumstances, she now was relatively confident. The hint was Emilio Wamarez Sanchez, the twice winner of this competition and decade-long President of the United Nations. The famous man, known for his capacity to read the future insisted on meeting her in person at the time of the launch. Pretexting a sendoff ceremony, he handed her a hand written book with strange pages. “Wrote this three months ago watching the fumes going up. Something is coming, better be ready,” he told her before hugging for the cameras. “Don’t open time until shit hits the fan.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“I took care of fixing the top fifty-two things most likely to go wrong. Morons will try to mess with this.”
“Why fifty-two?”
“The idea came to me while I was playing cards.”
The President had a gift for anticipation, he was a strange fortune teller. The man had not been elected, then re-elected because of his charms.
"Jeff,” she told her co-pilot, “go warn the crew of what is going on. We are implementing the emergency protocol. I want no exceptions. Whatever happens, the lawyers are going to have a field day here. Any Electoral contestant who gets kicked out of the next round will sue us. Everything must be by the book." Jeff agreed and left. One remained. "Paul, we may need to warm the nuclear thrusters. I fear sabotage. I want you to go inspect for a sign of anything. Be careful, let’s not exclude the chance of a bomb or a passenger is involved. See if you can spot anything that could have been tampered with."
"I can't leave you alone in here, protocol.”
"Correct." She pulled out a necklace from under her shirt. A key dangled from it. "Unless a person outside has the key to open that door." She took the chain off her neck and handed it to Jeff. He pushed off and left closing the door behind him. Watching the crew jet out did not calm the passengers.
The book had many pages, each with a playing card stapled. "Earth, code red, get me Sanchez on the line." She said over the intercom.
“This is Mars Command, Sanchez and Earth are minutes away. Strangely we received a message sent a while ago, it is from the President to you.”
“What is it?”
"Seven of spades, I repeat seven of spades. I hope you know what that means.” She looked at her watch.
"Confirmed, I do." She flipping through the pages. Each had a card stapled to it, notes, the entire book was the work of a madman. Numerous pens had been used over weeks. Some scribbles were in color. She stopped at one, it read simply self-destruct. Luckily that was not her page. There was no order in the cards.
She took a deep breath and continued. Three of hearts, king of diamond.
Her instructions at the moment were on the page, it just began, “Install modulator.” Then in red the words, overwritten was “hide the panel.” Staples was a small drawing, it showed the base of the large drive, someone installed a little door. This was hard to read. It then “Change specs.”
She jumped on the intercom, "Wang, are you there?”
“Yes, I fear Sanberg is right. This is not possible.”
“Look at the camera,” she put the page in front.
“The fuck?” he just said. “Let me see.”
The room was cramped with equipment of all types. The lack of gravity helped move around. Wang climbed, rotated slid his hand in between metal pieces. “Got it,” he yelled. It was a sound of relief.
“What is it?” asked Judy. She could only see one leg wiggle between the dark metal pieces. The room felt like a formula one engine.
Without asking, he pushed a button. There was a loud click.
- Modulator Engaged -
There was another sound as something slid open in view of the camera.
“Wang, I see something.”
He pulled out and saw the small panel revealed next to the anchor of the mirror.
“What level of modulation do we need?” He said out of breath from the excitement.
The Captain was precise with what she said next, “Mars, I have orders.”
The two at Mars Command were puzzled. “You must assume some people out there are trying real hard to derail our arrival. So you guys are prohibited to communicate with anyone but me and the working satellite, Regulation Section 2.034. Understood?”
“Yes ma’am.” They were puzzled.
“We have modulation on board, a gift from our President. What level of modulation do you need?”
“19.85%, to be clear, you need to receive only 19.85% of the light we send, 80.15% of it must not push.”
“You hear this Wang?”
He added, “This thing is not that precise,” he pushed buttons. “Do they prefer nineteen or twenty?” Judy relayed. A moment later she returned, “Nineteen, that will delay us by only twelve minutes it seems. The entry will be a tad more difficult, we can miss an orbit or push faster with our rotation.”
“Nineteen it is.” He pushed the buttons.
“Wang, the boys on Mars are in lockdown. No communication, the same here on our end. I can’t let anyone in the plane know about this. If we have a terrorist on board, that person might react. Lock yourself in, brace for the next twelve hours and good luck with the gravity.”
“Amen to that, good luck.”
***
For most of the passengers of the Airbus A2070, the trauma created by the Mars approach, deceleration, and orbital entry would haunt them for decades - or until their collective addiction for the game returned. Milly Wong, the CNN journalist was pivotal in creating and maintaining the ship-wide hysteria. Passengers passed out from the return of gravity, one began sobbing uncontrollably after nine hours. The turn, in upper atmosphere was very bumpy. To put it mildly, changes would have to be made for the next atmospheric reentry, every bold in this bird would need tightening.
Sophie slept through all of it like a baby, the full sixteen hours.
The attendant who had given her the sedative worried in silence. Once in a while, the woman would pretend to adjust her straps or pillow but in fact, she checked her pulse. Sophie was no ordinary person, everyone cared deeply for her. The attendant kept her worries from the Captain, the poor woman was earning her pay.
Pushed by the laser, the Airbus slowed for hours until it reached the mere velocity of four thousand kilometers per hour. It was then rotated on its x-axis, relative to the planet to face the weak atmosphere. The Light Drive reflector was folded back into the stern of the ship and Wang knew he should have not been there. Slowly some weightlessness returned inside the ship for a moment a stand up beds folded.
Wang wanted to make his way back to the cockpit from the engine room, he had hurt his eye during the deceleration. The place was filled with sharp edges. Minutes before the atmospheric entry, as the room was being open to space, she let him see the doctor as both converged to the cockpit under the probing look of dozens of cameras. The sight of passengers applauding the wounded hero, walking out of the back made for great television. He stumbled as if on cue. Judy would make fun of him for the rest of his life. No one knew the President had anticipated. The Media selling a narrative of space terrorists already portrayed Wang as some genius engineer who saved the ship by a feat of engineering miracle. As the images slowly crawl to Earth, the generals and national security experts let the die land where they must.
The long wings on the Airbus bent up slightly as the ship entered the low-density Martian atmosphere, plunging toward Olympus Mons. On the side in orbit floated a large laser and the whitish shaped of a deformed moon. The other rock was not visible. The sight was simply breathtaking but few bothered. The wireless connection with the Electoral reconnected mid flight and the players lost no time.
With all the commotion and precaution, the A2070 was five hours late at reentry, Judy had let one orbit pass and dropped the modulation mid-course. The speed at which the ship dropped in the day sky was surprising. In less than thirty minutes, the Airbus rolled in on the landing strip at the base of Olympus Mons on a strange runway made of gravel. Behind the ship once it hit the runway, a plume of rocks lifted and took minutes to gently return to the ground. This wasn’t a light glide down, instead the trajectory felt more like a rock falling from the sky. There was no fire or smoke trailing the craft as on Earth, missing water molecules and oxygen let the dioxide gas slide undisturbed.
The landing reception, initially scheduled around noon was postponed. Normally the priority would have been the dead passenger or the wounded engineer, but instead the true priority of the trip returned: Electoral 2072. There was something much more important going on, a game set up by the Electoral game system called the Presidential Challenge.
Ordinarily, there were scheduled interviews before the game. The passengers gladly gave up their televised arrivals for some peaceful time in their luxurious rooms. There would be time to climb to the hotel lobby once the Presidential Challenge was over. Each person had family members playing the Challenge, all others were watching tens of simulations of loved ones. Yes, a game played over the Internet was the number one importance. The national obsession had returned even with a body being rolled on a stretcher, arrival on Mars, and the hundreds of other things which should have been a healthy focus.
Electoral's broadcast, even in the wake of a life and death situation remained so compelling that the world paused to watch. The Presidential Challenge, played and organized by the Electoral 2072 software, would be epic. President Emilio Sanchez, a two-time winner, was preparing himself in his Berlin office for his performance. This was by far the largest fund-raising simulation ever held. The passengers and remaining competitors were not allowed to participate.
Two security guards walked into the ship and took the sleeping girl from seat 1A. Judy wanted to object, but her authority had stopped with the Airbus land. The men ignored the Captain and took the girl from with the kindness of a parent. Judy hoped the young princess would be alright.
“Where are you taking her?” she asked.
“Confinement,” shamefully replied the large man. He was unable to even look the Captain in the eyes. They were not joking and were upset by it.