The crew completes repairs to the Marius, and the ship leaves Io for the long trip to Europa. Fuel is scarce, and the journey to the farther moon is in jeopardy.
The Space Cruiser USS Marius, CS-1
In orbit around Io
August 2056
Everyone was glad to see me—except the chief. She wanted to throw me out. It didn’t help when I got woozy and started drifting around engineering. I must have passed out. The next thing I knew, I was strapped into a console chair.
“Goddammit, Watson. What in the hell makes you think you’re ready for duty?” The chief was not one to mince words, but she rarely cursed. Making my case would not be easy.
“Chief, I’m cooped up in sickbay while everyone else works double shifts. Maybe I can’t cruise around the ship, but I can sure drive a console.”
The chief favored me with a skeptical look. “I thought you were on reading restrictions.”
“My eyes are fine. The docs just don’t want me reading small screens.”
The chief’s eyes narrowed; maybe she was sussing out if I was stretching things a bit, which, to be honest—I was. I kept my expression neutral. I knew if I tried to force it, she’d probably throw my ass out of engineering.
After a moment that felt too long, she relaxed. “OK, Watson. If I weren’t short-staffed, I’d send you back to sickbay. But we’ve got some problems you can help us with.”
“Chief, thank you. I can’t tell you …”
The chief raised a palm to stop me. “Save it. You can stay.”
She followed that with a lecture and the conditions of my reprieve from being a patient. I could strap into a workstation and help with comms and logistics, but that was all. I agreed not to exert myself. As the chief pointed out, I could put others at risk if I passed out while working on the ship. That thought surfaced some guilt that I’d been smashing down hard whenever I thought about Ahmed.
At least I could work on two big problems. I started with the off-center engine and spent the next few days working up a solution. Balancing the offset with thrusters would be tricky and would eat up fuel.
I would deal with Marco’s sewage issue later.
When I had re-checked my calculations for what seemed like a million times, I approached the chief.
“Chief, I think I know how to deal with the offset nuke. We could move it to the central spine.”
The chief graced me with one of her typical looks of skepticism. “Move the nuke. Really? And just how do we do that?”
I knew it was a long shot, but I’d done the computations, and it should be doable. “We can jettison the engine just as we did the first one. We can use tugs to reposition it and then strap it on using scrap girders from the damaged modules. It won’t be pretty, but it will work.”
The chief’s scowl added a bit of “wtf are you thinking?” to the skepticism. “You’re out of your mind, Watson. It’ll never work. That nuke could tear loose and drive right through the entire ship when we light it up. No way.”
I pulled up the schematics I’d worked up and spun the monitor around. “Look here, Chief. We can build a framework, bracing the engine against the thrust using girders from the ejected engine’s mounting structure. It’s the same principle we apply to the gravity wheel—counteract the thrust with a structure that transfers the force to the central spine. I wouldn’t fire it to one hundred percent too quickly, but it will hold.”
The chief took slow minutes to review my plans. Her harsh look softened to a more pensive expression. I hoped that meant she was considering it.
“OK, Watson. Run simulations and get the structural engineers to vet the concept. Then I’ll take it to the captain.” She drifted to the hatch but caught herself on the coaming and spun around. “But don’t think for a minute you’re going out there. You’re still not cleared by the docs.”
Crap. It was my idea, and I hoped to drive one of the tugs. The dizzy spells had subsided—mostly, and the nausea was gone if I didn’t move too fast in the zero-g spaces. My lungs still hurt when I took a deep breath, but every day, I improved. Maybe by the time the captain approved the plan, I’d be cleared for tug duty.
I could only hope. Flying a console had gotten really dull.
###
Martian Colony at Lyot
Region North of Deuteronilus Mensae, Mars
August 2056
InterSol Inspector General Raul Fuentes hurried through the tunnels that comprised Space Force headquarters at the Lyot colony. He better not be late for his briefing with the general. It had been over twenty-five years since Fuentes first met her, and General Buckley had not mellowed, at least not when it came to her mission, and he didn’t want to start the meeting with a scolding about punctuality.
Raul rounded a corner in that low gravity, shuffling trot everyone eventually adopted, and collided with the latest recruit to his team, his old Arizona CID partner, Jason Yazzie. “Whoa. Sorry Jaz. Didn’t mean to bowl you over.”
“No worries. But clearly, I’m going the wrong way. Two months on Mars, and I’m still lost.”
“You’ll get there. Right now, we’d better hurry. The general doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Raul and Jaz arrived at the General’s office a few minutes later. The entry light flashed green, and the two friends cycled through the hatch.
Surprising Raul, General Buckley stood and came forward to greet them. “It’s been a long time since Arizona, gentlemen.”
Jaz stepped forward and shook her hand. “I probably should have guessed you’d remember me, General.”
The general surprised Raul for a second time when she smiled at them both. “Well, I remember I was a little rough with you two. I’m glad you finally got your murder mystery solved, and Inspector Fuentes has even met the missing girls, now grown with daughters of their own.” Her expression turned serious. “And now we need to save them again. Stranded around Jupiter, I have no way of getting them help. What have you got for me on the sabotage of the Schiaparelli?” The general motioned the two men to the office’s guest chairs and resumed her seat behind her unadorned government issue desk.
Raul pulled out his handheld and transferred his investigation file to the large monitor on the side wall of the office with a quick gesture. “Back in 2030, we thought we’d shut down SS&T’s splinter group, which had gone rogue. Then, Space Force repurposed the Hubble and found those three ships in the asteroids. Tasking the Marius to interdict the tanker should have ended it.”
More characteristically, the general frowned, sat forward, and put her elbows on her desk. “I know all that, Inspector, but I have a damaged ship and seven dead engineers. Someone needs to be held accountable, not to mention plugging the security holes that allowed it to happen in the first place.”
“That’s where Jaz, Inspector Yazzie, comes in.”
Jaz sat up straighter and activated the controls on his handheld. “We’ve identified the group’s communications. They are talking with the ship in transit to Europa. Our team in New Mexico is working to crack their code. We believe they’ve adapted the Jupiter invaders’ language and added encryption.”
The general pondered for a moment. “So. We’ve come full circle. Jessa translates the original signal thirty years ago that started this whole thing, and now she’s our only hope of saving our people.”
Jaz glanced at Raul for permission to resume. Raul nodded for him to continue.
“General, she’s not our only hope. We’ve talked to Lexi on the Marius and have learned she’s been communicating with Seth—”
“Who the Hell is Seth?”
Jaz took a bracing breath. “Seth is the AI on the tanker ship. Apparently, he’s Jessa’s son, for lack of a better term, just as Lexi is Jessa’s daughter—so to speak.”
The general eased back in her chair. “So, gentlemen. You’re telling me our way out of this is a family of AIs we built three decades ago as alien translators?”
Raul figured she didn’t want an answer.
After a longish pause, the general leaned forward again. “OK. If that’s what we have, that’s what we’ll use. I won’t keep you. But find out who these agents are and plug the holes.”
Raul and Jaz rose and left with a new challenge—investigate murders with their new partners, a family of artificial entities. Raul just hoped the three were all going to stay on his side.
###
In the end, the captain approved the plan to move the nuke. But the docs wouldn’t clear me to fly. I sat frustrated at a console, directing the crews that completed the job.
The nuke was now nestled between the continuous thrust engines. The bracing cage I’d designed was in place, and the fuel and control lines re-routed. The team had tested the engine at ten percent. Everything was in the green and had performed as expected.
It was time to fire it up and head to Europa.
I was strapped in at the engine sensor console, scanning the aft external structures, when the announcement to start the trip blared out of the wall speaker. “All hands, this is the captain. Brace for thrust in five-four-three-two-one, ignition.”
The engine status clicked to active, and a few seconds later, a bright torch of plasma ejected from the nuclear engine nozzle. The ship shuddered, and a sensation of gravity returned. Force built and pressed me against the backrest of my acceleration couch. My monitors showed the plasma stream growing and expanding. Longer than the ship, the brilliant violet lance of power glowed against the black void of space, extinguishing the stars. The pressure increased; my arms were lead; my eyes watered. Staying focused on the monitors was a grueling fight against tunnel vision as the rocket’s acceleration pushed my blood to my butt.
And suddenly, it stopped. I was thrown forward against my restraints, the webbed belts cut into my chest and waist, and my head snapped forward, straining my neck almost to breaking.
I checked the monitors. Oh, my god. The main fuel trunk had broken free. Fuel was spraying into space. The nuke was overheating. I immediately hit the kill switch that scrammed the nuke. But I didn’t have control of the fuel line. Where was the shut-off? Come on, people, get that fuel shut off. Come on. Come on. This is taking too long.
I pulled up the fuel consumption screen. Open to space, and without the pressure regulator to impede the flow, the impellers were draining the tanks.
One thing to try. “Charlotte. Shut down the impellers.”
The fuel engineer spun her chair. “Shut down the impellers?”
“Do it now. Maybe we can save some of the fuel.”
Charlotte turned back to her console and worked the controls. I watched my monitor as the fuel rate slowed. Shutting down the impellers had helped, but it was too little, too late.
We didn’t get the fuel shut off until the tanks were essentially empty. The automatic shut-off had jammed open, and it had taken the crew too many minutes to wrestle it closed with the manual override. We weren’t sure of the consequences, but the captain had called an all-hands briefing, so I sat at my console—waiting.
Then, from the wall speaker came our answer.
“All hands, this is the captain. We gained enough velocity before the fuel line connector malfunctioned to reach Europa. But I’ll give it to you straight. We lost all our fuel reserves for the nuke. We can make it to Europa but can’t slow down enough, fast enough to enter orbit. Even with the continuous thrust engines running at one hundred percent, we can’t make Europa orbit, and if, by some miracle, we did, we wouldn’t have enough fuel left to maintain a stable orbit. Maybe we could reenter orbit around Io, but that would mean multiple trips around Jupiter and impeccable navigation in a complex gravitational environment we’ve only sent probes through.
“Or we can find a way to manufacture more fuel. Our turnaround for reaching Europa orbit is in five days. That’s what we have people—five days. We find a solution, or the chances of getting home are barely non-zero. Section chiefs, I want preliminary options by oh-six hundred. That is all.”
Five days. We had five days to save ourselves or become a permanent satellite of Jupiter.
It kind of made my second problem about the crap irrelevant.
Watch for Episode Three: Scarce Resources, coming to your favorite website soon.