Episode Four: A Change in Plans, Part I
The meeting with General Buckley puts everyone’s plans in flux. Captain Bullard takes command of a new ship, and Celina reconciles herself to joining the crew headed for Jupiter. The race is on.
Martian Colony at Lyot
Region North of Deuteronilus Mensae, Mars
October 2055
Colonel Bullard stood for a moment, looking deep in thought. With a little shake of his head, he roused himself. “Understood. But the Marius isn’t ready, and the Schiaparelli isn’t equipped for a trip to Jupiter; she doesn’t have the size or the speed to get there first. Not to mention, she doesn’t have any weapons.”
Aunt Mavis returned to her chair and motioned Colonel Bullard to a third guest chair. “You’re not going in the Schiaparelli. We have two months to get the Marius ready to launch. A continuous, low-thrust transfer orbit will get us there first. Two months to finish the cruiser and a four-month transit gets you there a month before SS&T.”
Celeste raised her hand to speak, a habit she’d picked up from our mother, Kate. “There is no way we can be ready in two months. And as I’m sure Colonel Bullard will confirm, the Marius doesn’t have the fuel to get to Jupiter thrusting the entire way, not to mention enough to get back. The new nuke rockets pump out the thrust, but they consume fuel—well—like it’s water, literally. The current schedule for fueling—”
Our aunt waved Celeste to be quiet and looked right at the colonel. “Colonel, I know you won’t like this, but we’re transferring the Schiaparelli’s nuclear power plant, fuel tanks, and continuous thrust engines to the Marius.”
Colonel Bullard jumped up from his chair and slapped his clear glass handheld on Aunt Mavis’s desk with a loud snap. I’m surprised he didn’t break the thing. “Are you out of your ever-loving mind? You’re going to cannibalize my ship? Over my dead body.”
Aunt Mavis stayed as cool as ever. “Colonel, I’ll excuse your outburst since you’re still adjusting to our new working relationship. But don’t let it happen again. And yes, I’m cannibalizing your ship. You’ll leave orbit using Marius’s nuclear thermal rockets and use the ion engines from the Schiaparelli to drive continuously to Jupiter. It’s the only way to get the job done.”
The colonel took a deep breath, favored our aunt with one more withering glare, and stood at attention. “Yes, Ma’am. But that still doesn’t address the fuel issue. We’ll have no way to get back to Mars.”
“Leave that to me. We have new engines for the Schiaparelli on the way from Earth and new components that will accommodate extra fuel tanks. We’ll rebuild the Schiaparelli and send it your way. But yes, until then, you’ll be stuck in orbit around Jupiter. There’s no other way.”
Great. That’s just great. I was almost getting used to Mars, and now I’m going back into space for God knows how long. At least my moms and Celeste are going, too. I’ll have company, maybe spend some quality time with my sister, and with the Marius being a much larger ship, perhaps I won’t feel so confined.
Celeste shifted in her chair. “Since I’m here, do I have time to say goodbye to Marco?”
Aunt Mavis smiled. “In your case, Celeste, you won’t need to. We don’t need a hydroponics expert, but we need a recycling and reclamation technician. Marco has experience, so Marco’s going too. This mission is wiping out the technical team on Mars. Like I said—all-hands-on-deck.”
This just keeps getting better. Celest will spend all her time with Marco, and I’ll never see her. It’ll be back to me and Lexi.
###
The Space Cruiser Marius
In orbit around Mars
November 2055
I hadn’t realized how massive the Marius was until I took the shuttle up. They’d steered the Schiaparelli into a parallel orbit to facilitate the hardware transfer, and the cruiser dwarfed the transport, almost toy-like by comparison. At close to a kilometer long, you couldn’t see both ends of the ship from the docking ports.
The command module, located forward of the shuttle ports, housed the science and operations functions, just like the transport, but the bulk of the module, the weapons turrets and antennae arrays left little doubt this was a warship.
Aft was the gravity ring, easily twice the size of the one we lived in coming from Earth. Maybe someday the ship would have a larger complement, but for this mission, we would use the space not occupied by our skeleton crew for the extra supplies we’d need for the extended stay at Jupiter.
And behind the gravity ring, the ship’s spine stretched aft to the nuclear thermal rockets. I guess the designers didn’t want them too close to where the crew had to live. Fuel tanks, thruster pods, storage compartments, docked construction tugs, shuttles—and weapons blisters—filled the intervening space. I don’t know what we expected to find out there, but the military wasn’t taking any chances and had loaded the Marius for a fight.
We’d been on the ship for over a month, but after many long days and an enormous effort by the computer techs, Lexi was up and running. She’d asked if she could change her name to Matilda, now that she would be a warrior. I quashed that idea, but she appeared in ancient Norse goddess garb at one point, horned helmet and all. I was not amused, and I told her as much.
Besides my AI duties with Lexi, they drafted me for the extravehicular excursion team. We were short of ‘astronauts,’ so they trained anyone not needed on the engineering teams to monitor the spacewalks. While I was on spacewalk duty, my mother, Kate, looked after Lexi and kept the communications with Jupiter going.
The engineering and technical teams worked around the clock, and I operated the control console during the third shift. The hull boasted four console blisters aft of the gravity ring, two facing forward and two to the rear. My assignment was in the aft dorsal console, a clear bubble on the ship’s spine facing back towards the engines. The nuclear engines were over a half kilometer away from where I sat, and now that the teams had installed the engines, power plant, and fuel tanks they’d harvested from the Schiaparelli, I couldn’t see the engines and most of the rear of the ship. I could barely see my charges off in the distance, working on a fuel tank docking ring. Mostly, I watched on the monitors lining the bubble.
Celeste and another engineer had been out there for a good seven hours and were approaching their limit. So, I toggled the mic. “Thirty minutes, Celeste. You guys need to finish up and be back in the airlock in thirty minutes.”
Celeste flashed a ‘thumbs up’ to the surveillance camera. “Confirmed control. Thirty minutes.”
Without warning, a bank of attitude thrusters fired to my left. The massive ship shifted to my right. The ship shuddered. On the monitor, the undocked fuel tank broke loose and rotated. I screamed a warning into the comms. Celeste tried to find a grip to move. I watched helplessly as the fuel tank crushed her hand against the docking ring. Her partner tried to move the tank, but that was futile. I hit the master alarm button, hearing the klaxon peal around the ship.
She should have at least thirty minutes of air. I checked the monitor. Her oxygen pressure was dropping; the flashing alarm showed a leak. She must have torn her suit. She had ten, maybe fifteen minutes of air. I’d never felt so helpless.
I made a quick check of the monitors. The leak was getting worse.
Where was the backup crew?
Why weren’t they already out there?
I swear, Celeste, you will not die out there.
Hot tears poured down my cheeks. I wanted to run to her and drag her in, but I protocol required me to stay on the console, update the rescue teams, and direct the effort if needed, but all I could think of was losing my sister.
Where in the hell were the goddamned rescue crews?