Chapter 12, Mission Accomplished

Peters was annoyed at the already inebriated Captain, but the computer was trying to communicate! Unfortunately, it was just going through a series of errors.

‘Subspace network error.’ ‘FTL communications, unable to authenticate.’ ‘Critical system security error.’ ‘Update required.’

‘Okay,’ he signaled with his eyes and initiated the update.

‘Using fallback system, update will complete in aprox: 14mins 22seconds’

He sighed and looked away. He had already entered the instructions for the insertion into Lunar Orbit, with further instructions to proceed to landing. As the Captain had instructed. The only destination that made any sense on the Moon was Artemis City. He glanced around to find the ship’s local files on local landing procedures.

Captain Rosenheimer’s voice came over the intercom. “Peters, what the hell are you waiting for? Execute the redirect engine burn!”

Peters twitched and moved his overlays to expose the launch commands. He quickly glanced through the overrides; destination confirmed, no countdown, confirming engine fire.

The ship gave a quick whir as the fuel pump kicked on, and then a jolt as thrust began. The fusion pellets erupted with a low thrum that quickly became a roar. Peters was pushed back into his cushioned seat. The engine display showed the burn had started, and just a few moments later, the ship stopped vibrating and the burn was over. Everything executed as expected.

“Sir, initial burn completed and on course.” Peters updated, his voice slightly strained.

“Thank you pilot,” the Captain rattled over the speakers, “How many hours until we retrograde to enter orbit?”

“Just a single hour, forty-two minutes and change, sir.”

“I’ll be in my cabin, alert me when we’re ten minutes out.”

“Aye, sir”

The feed cut with a short click, and Peters pulled an image of his family up on the display and started wondering how they were doing at the moment. Time passed, and he must have dozed off for a bit. Returning from deep sleep had that effect on people. Suddenly, from a dream state, something important pressed on his consciousness.

COMMS was lit up, gently chiming. Peters’ eyes went wide. There was an incoming request; someone was calling! The pilot quickly accepted the communication.

“Hello, Grey Dawn, this is interplanetary repair drone S’Tam. Updated communications protocols.” it intoned over the intercom.

“Interplanetary repair drone S’Tam, this is pilot Nefta Peters of Grey Dawn. Good to hear your voice!” Peters had a huge grin on his face as he leaned directly over the communications screen.

But no response came. It took Peters a moment to realize it wasn’t a live feed. He had trained for this, but never actually experienced it. There was a further recording attached to the message. Sheepishly, the pilot realized he had been responding to just the title message. He wondered if his response had been recorded as he played the attached files.

“Faster than light communication is currently down system-wide. Error triage is ongoing. Updates have reverted your ship to legacy time and communications. Please relay the condition of your ship and mission status.”

Peters gulped and sent an alert to the Captain. It should be sounding a tone in his quarters to wake him up. The message continued.

“You appear to be off course. Currently, we track you as headed to Luna.”

At least the secret wasn’t his to keep, Peters thought. Let the Captain make his own excuses.

Unexpectedly, a bright flash and crack went off in his periphery. Startled, he turned around to see Rosenheimer with red-tinged eyes, holding bare-handed the fuses for the communications computer, next to the swinging electrical panel he had just torn them from.

“What the Fuck did you tell them?”

“Nothing! It’s not a live feed!” Peters had balled his fists over his chair’s armrests.

“Good, good,” Rosenheimer cleared his throat, reinserted the fuses, and closed the panel. Calmly, he sat down in the chair next to Peters. He was still wearing his now wrinkled uniform. “We’re low on liquid oxygen, must have gotten a bad manifest, gauges are faulty. We need to stop by the moon to top off, no problem.” Rosenheimer took a couple of deep breaths. “Ok, you got that?”

“Sir, yes… we expect to find LOX on Luna?” Peters questioned, loosening up.

Rosenheimer took another deep breath as he fumbled around in his uniform. He pulled something from a back pocket and quickly threw it in his mouth. “Yes, Artemis Base will still have plenty of LOX in storage. We land, we top off, then we’ll have all we need to do our pass of Earth and finally head home.” He completed a half hiccup and let out a long, low-toned burp. Then he stood again, doing his best to open his droopy eyes, turned, and left the room.

Peters shook his head and turned back to the main screen, now covered in red text. Glancing backwards at the fuse box, he pushed against his armrests and floated up. At the box, he hit the button to reset the board power. Then, back in his seat, he corrected the numerous errors and ensured the subcomputer had booted back up. Now he had to return the message; he pondered what he should say.

“Ship in overall good health, lower than expected LOX supplies. Will attempt brief resupply at Luna and then drop lower for attempted rendezvous.”

Peters stared at the message, pondering whether he should add more. That was probably enough information at the moment. He glanced to send the message, noticing the estimated time of delivery was over seven minutes.

“Sheesh,” he mumbled to himself. Where had the captain gone now? He also couldn’t help but wonder who they might be rescuing. Were there really still people alive on Earth?

Peters pulled back up a picture of his family. He and his younger sister were standing in front of their parents, or at least the best reconstructions available. They had been born of true biological humans, their combined gametes, long frozen and in deep storage, finally thawed and brought to life. All other aspects of their parents were reconstructed from the retained records. Same voices and cadences, same faces and general life story, but in between the computers were just making the best guesses they could. Their real parents had never left Earth. They had never even met each other, but it was difficult to hold onto that idea and the idea that they were a family.

Without distractions, time actually passed relatively quickly. As they approached Luna, Peters pulled up the outside view and zoomed in. The dusty surface resolved itself, a nexus of domes and shiny solar panels surrounded by planes of strip-mined regolith. No humans resided here any longer, but the infrastructure remained largely functional. It served as an automated resource-gathering facility for Helium three, the resource that powered their fusion drives.

He pinged the captain again and then went through the checklist for landing. Rosenheimer reappeared, this time in a cleanly pressed uniform. He seemed completely sober, which was fine by Peters. The captain took his seat and began scanning inputs, switching his retinal displays to show an invisible ship. From his viewpoint, he only saw various heads-up displays on the ship’s health, but otherwise was floating amongst the stars.

As he scanned space, he first oriented towards the Sun, his displays optimally reducing the light to levels his human optics could tolerate. Then he scanned back to where the ship was headed. He spotted the Earth first, more motled brown these days and half in shadow. Then he saw the moon, faint and, as usual, surprisingly far from the Earth. He used his heads-up displays to highlight the destination and then to zoom in.

They closed the distance in only a few minutes, the two humans watching as the ship’s computer automatically executed all the maneuvers. Luna seemed to get large in their views all at once, and with it, the ship slowly reoriented to face backwards. The fusion drive hummed to life again, only long enough to bring their momentum to nearly zero. Allowing gravity to do most of the work, the ship was pulled downward.

A slow, silent fall later, and the fusion drive re-lit, but at its minimum possible thrust. Little farts of power providing just enough brake to gently land the ship. It settled onto the long-unused landing pad without error or incident. The station lit up at its arrival and automated embilicles extending to connect to the ship. Finally, a tunnel the width of four people inflated its way towards the ship, connecting to form a suitable atmosphere between the ship and the station.

The Captain beamed a smile at Peters and unbuckled himself. Then he lowered himself off the side of his chair to what was the floor, but now was a wall. Handholds conveniently untucked themselves for this situation, and he used them like a ladder, letting the gentle gravity do most of the work. Finally, at the aft of the ship, he whistled back to Peters that he was going to check and ‘See what is up!’

“What an ass,” Nefta muttered to himself. What did they even need LOX for? Liquid oxygen, the pilot tried to remember his training, but quickly reverted to looking it up.

The computer was happy to oblige, the Grey Dawn speaking in a female voice, ‘Liquid oxygen is used on board for multiple systems, from Plasma field generation, Bio-Recovery systems to Industrial Fabrication. Also the liquid oxygen is stored within fuel cells, allowing for emergency power generation if main systems are down.’

“What are current and recommended levels?” asked the pilot.

“Currently, LOX supplies are at seventy-three percent, the recommended level given the mission timeline, and our current state with a ten percent safety margin is seventy-four percent.”

“So we only needed a few drops to be back within margin?”

“Correct.”

“Would we be low if we hadn’t woken up early and diverted to Luna?”

“Given the hypothetical that the mission had continued as planned, we would not be low; no additional LOX would have been required.”

Sounded about right, thought Nefta. He absent-mindedly scanned to connect to the Net. He wanted to say hi to his sister, share in the absurdity. Suddenly, he felt bad that he hadn’t even touched base with her yet; what a bad brother. But the connection immediately failed, as expected; faster-than-light comms were still down.

He recorded a short message, “Hi Sis! Guess we’re stuck chatting like ancient explorers! Once you get this message, just wanted to let you know I love you, we slept just fine, and are getting our mission started here around Earth. I’ll touch base with you again soon, miss your face!”

He sent the message and saw the same slow delivery time. Then the boredom hit; it sucked being disconnected and out in the middle of nowhere.

“Damn, what the fuck is the Captain up to in there?” he grumbled as he swung to look around. He could make the ship invisible, but that wouldn’t allow him to see inside the station. He decided that he hadn’t been told to stay put, so he might as well go venture. He glanced around at his station. Resupplying had already concluded, and the ship showed full health and readiness. He clambered over the side of his own seat and let himself slowly fall all the way to the back of the ship. He landed gently and set off after Rosenheimer.

Getting his gate just right took a moment; you had to be really careful not to impart too much upward momentum with each footfall. Because of this, the first few steps were invariably too bouncy, and it always helped when he could get some extra purchase with an arm to help move his upper body along. The tunnel between Grey Dawn and Artemis City was softly lit with semi-transparent walls, the atmosphere hinting of volatile plastics and fresh ozone. To accommodate travelers, the floor on the right side had handholds and stair-like wedges for more purchase. At low G, it was easier to lead with your head and treat the tunnel as a short climb rather than trying to build momentum by standing upright.

It was still a bit disorienting, but Peters found he adjusted quickly. By the time he got to the top of the stairs, he was getting used to the light touch he needed. Certainly more than floating around in no gravity, but not too much. He had only ever experienced heavy Earth gravity during engine burns when he was safely strapped to his gravity cushions. Must have been a hellish planet to live on, your knees always being crushed, he thought.

As he exited the tunnel, he entered a main transport area, although it was currently deserted. It was perfectly clean, excellently maintained. Nefta wondered whether the bots had just cleaned before they arrived, or whether it was always like this, without people mucking it up. Did the machines create any dust? Luna had had a decent population pre-collapse, but nobody lived here anymore. A part of him started wondering about those people. Why did everybody leave?

“Why was Luna abandoned by people?” he asked out loud. He expected the ship to respond, but instead he drew the station’s attention.

It responded in an intentionally synthetic voice, “Humans left Luna for a variety of reasons, key among them: Gravity Degradation Syndrome for newborns, isolation post Earth Collapse, and difficulty maintaining sufficient solar storm resiliency. The Moon’s value is purely ext-”

The voice was cut off by Rosenheimer barreling towards him, he had multiple old glass bottles hugged at his side, clanking as he grasped hold of them, “Get back on the ship! We have some, emergency, message from Titan.” He was moving way too fast for the low G.

Peters cringed downwards to avoid the Captain. The Captain managed to twist himself sideways at the last minute and stop himself with his feet at the corner of the tunnel wall. Unfortunately, he then came back to the ground awkwardly, unable to land gracefully and hold his bottles. Two of them broke, spilling their contents. The smell of sweet ethanol made Peters shrink away as Rosenheimer cursed.

Three bottles had survived, and the Captain still seemed more interested in getting back on the ship; still, it took an extra minute now. The back of his right hand was slick with blood and alcohol as he stood up, quietly continuing to curse and observe the damage. Peters didn’t help, but managed to stand back up as well. The Captain retrieved the remaining bottles, and they made their way carefully back along the tunnel, a trickle of blood marking the pristine floor.

As they reboarded the ship, behind them, cleaning bots were already picking up individual pieces of glass and vacuuming the periphery, returning the environment to pristine. Onboard, the captain approached one of the multiple med units and grabbed an easy-to-use handheld device. With one swipe, it cleaned the wound, and then it required a couple more passes to seal things up. Technically, the cut was probably a bit big for these little disposable units, but the Captain used the full regen charge and threw the unit away. The cut was mostly healed, pale new flesh that would probably scar, good enough.

When he finished, Peters was staring at him, “Seven objects on an intercept course with Earth, going wicked fast. Report is hours old, they are projected to hit pretty soon.”

Rosenheimer looked up from his hand, a confused glance, “What?”

“Report from Titan,” Peters said as he pulled up the emergency broadcast on his display, “The Defense Net, it was broadcast to everyone in the system, three alarm emergency, direct Earth Intercept and going really fast. 80% the speed of light,” he paused thinking, “How is that even possible?”

“Are they really small? Seven of them?” the Captain asked.

“Says: extinction-level event, per impact, trajectory linear, its, minimal EM signature, objects moving too fast for intercept.” Peters read off.

“Too fast for intercept, what…” Rosenheimer trailed off as he started pulling up displays. “The. fuck… Maybe, technically, too fast for the locals to intercept. But, why not just blast ‘em? Let’s get back to the bridge; we might need to high-tail it. What did you say the ETA was?”

Peters glanced again at the active countdown, “Forty-eight minutes twelve seconds.”

Back on the bridge, both men strapped themselves into their flight seats. Grey Dawn was topped off on all her resources and ready for whatever may come. The display blinked with another incoming message, pilot Peters pulled it up on the main display.

It was a video of Nuwe’s chief engineer, Matt Bo’zel, his tired face close to the camera as he was recorded, “Hey Grey Dawn, you’ve already received the bad news. Do what you can to observe. We’re still analyzing the situation, trying to understand what’s happening. Mission is probably off, but you should be at a safe enough distance on Luna. Stay safe, we’ll be watching from Mars.”

“Mkaaaaay,” the Captain mumbled as he deleted the message, “Want a drink while we wait? Maybe we’ll get a real show. At least we get to go home sooner than expected.” The clock showed forty-five more minutes until impact.