Saturn Run

51.

Zhang Ming-Hoa was having a terrible day and it wasn’t going to get better anytime soon. Communications with Beijing had been running nonstop since the accident, on an excruciatingly slow cycle. Beijing would ask a question or make a suggestion. He’d get it more than an hour after they transmitted it. He’d reply. They’d come back with a response two and a half hours later, unless they decided to think it over, in which case later still. And on and on and on.

The explosion had occurred while the alien constellation was on the far side of Saturn from Earth, so the first Beijing had known of the disaster was a short message Zhang had sent back after the ship had come off of emergency status. Their reply was terse: Is the Celestial Odyssey operational? No recriminations, no expressions of concern, no queries about the crew. Just, are you operational?

He didn’t know if he should take that as a good sign or a bad one. It didn’t much matter. The mission was in shambles. It had fallen apart, failed to achieve every one of its objectives.

No, that was wrong. This wasn’t some anonymous “mistakes were made” scenario, not even some third-party “the captain is responsible for a ship” rhetoric.

He had done this. He had caused this. The failures, the losses, they were due to his mistakes. His plans, his strategies, his errors in judgment had cost them. Half the crew vaporized in an antimatter-driven fireball. The shuttle, vaporized. All but nine of their space suits, vaporized.

Were they operational?

Technically, yes. Was this survivable? That was a whole different question, and the one foremost in his mind. His primary obligation was to get the remainder of his crew home alive. He wasn’t sure that was possible; they might already be dead men walking.

He felt most guilty over the death of Duan Me. He’d disliked the political officer, not as a human being, but for what she did. He’d idly wished her ill.

Now a completely illogical part of his mind felt culpable in her death. He knew it was ridiculous; the universe did not bend to his will to determine who lived and died. She would have been no less dead if he had loved her like his mother. He knew that. He still couldn’t throw off that extra load of unreasonable guilt piled on top of the immense load of entirely justifiable guilt he carried.

Somehow he had to push all that aside and manage the welfare of the rest of his crew. The explosion hadn’t killed them, not directly, anyway. The ship’s surge protectors and electromagnetic pulse firewalls were there to protect it from a major solar event. No one had tested it as a defense against a nearby nuclear detonation, but it had worked well enough. All the major circuits and power subsystems were intact. Some lesser stuff had been fried. The ship was functional—what was left of it after the aerobraking maneuvers, the only catastrophe that wasn’t entirely his fault.

But they’d been counting on what was left of the ship to operate at a hundred percent of capability. That was no longer possible. Some of the damaged subsystems were certainly not repairable. How many, they didn’t know yet. They might not have an exact count of how many they’d lost until after the repair attempts failed, but there was no doubt that the number was considerably larger than zero.

Those repairs would be slowed for weeks or months, by the deaths of so many people. The loss of all the scientists, tragic as it was in human terms, did not directly affect the running of the ship. The loss of pilots, maintenance technicians, and engineers did.

Zhang had been prudent enough not to send over anyone absolutely vital to ship’s operations, but even so they were now operating with barely better than a skeleton crew. They’d hoped that they might repair one of the badly damaged external tanks with the carbon fiber and printer donated by the Americans. Now they no longer had the personnel to do that. The ship’s status would not be clear for some time, but it was somewhere between “bad” and “disastrous.”

That wasn’t even considering what the aliens might do. Hundreds of the autonomous spacecraft, the worker ants, had positioned themselves between the Celestial Odyssey and the alien constellation. The ship’s instruments had picked up very faint positron signatures. Regardless of whatever the aliens used them for, each of those ants was a flying nuclear weapon.

Zhang ordered the Celestial Odyssey to back off, very slowly, very cautiously. The maneuvering engines drove the slightest of orbital changes, increasing the gap between them and the aliens by less than a meter a second. It was nothing that should alarm them or trigger an attack, but it had been enough to substantially increase the distance between the ship and the ants since the explosion.

The flying bombs hadn’t moved forward. They’d stayed where they were, letting the Celestial Odyssey pull away. That was good news… unless the aliens were waiting for the ship to be safely far from the facilities before they vaporized it with a score of antimatter detonations. Who knew?

Meanwhile, the military and political gamers in Beijing were trying to work through the various scenarios confronting the ship.

With the total loss of the external tanks, the Celestial Odyssey’s delta-vee capabilities were much reduced. With some effort, they could whip up enough to get them a Hohmann transfer to Earth, with a small safety margin for the unexpected. Of which, so far, there’d been no shortage. Just one problem. It would take six years to get back. That wasn’t survivable.

Beijing thought differently, perhaps? Zhang didn’t know for sure.

With more than half the crew gone, the survivors might be able to stretch supplies out considerably longer than otherwise. The Beijing experts politely requested Zhang confirm the situation. Sighing, he set his quartermaster about taking inventory, following orders but knowing that Beijing was thinking about it the wrong way.

The limits weren’t food, air, and water. It was about turning what was to have been a three-year mission into a much longer one. The ship’s designers had considered an extended mission of five or more years, but they hadn’t considered a ship so badly damaged and incapacitated.

Engineering and Environmental thought they could keep them all alive for two and a half more years. Sufficient repairs to the life-support and engineering systems might let the engineers nurse them along for three.

Zhang wasn’t taking any bets on that. So far, the gods he didn’t believe in had not looked favorably upon this mission. So, a four-year mission? Probably. Five? Probably not. Six? Forget it. The vessel that passed by Earth six years from now, seven and a half years after it departed, would be crewed by corpses.

They considered throwing additional velocity at the problem. If the Celestial Odyssey used up all its reaction-mass reserves, they could trim a year off the transit time. Meaning that they’d die two years out from Earth instead of three. Zhang asked Navigation and Beijing to consider more desperate scenarios.

There was one. It almost worked. If they topped off the remaining tanks and burned all their reaction mass leaving Saturn, they could pile on enough extra velocity to drop the transit time to Earth orbit to under two and a half years. That was survivable. The catch was that once they got there they’d have no delta-vee left for matching Earth’s orbit and another ship would have to rescue the crew.

There were a couple of problems with that. First, they’d pass Earth’s orbit moving twelve km/s faster than the earth. Second, the timing was imperfect. Earth would be tens of millions of kilometers away. The only ships that existed that were capable of those kind of delta-vees and long-distance travel were the Celestial Odyssey and the Nixon.

Could the engineers build a rescue ship fast enough to do that? Perhaps: desperation was an excellent motivator.

Zhang had the unpleasant feeling that Beijing wouldn’t mind at all if the Celestial Odyssey and its remaining crew simply disappeared. They’d achieved nothing of value, which made them a political and scientific embarrassment. He did not, of course, voice that opinion to his superiors. He was considerably more candid with his first officer.

“Mr. Cui, what’s your take on Beijing’s plan for getting us home?”

“Well, sir, I think it could work.” Cui Zhuo didn’t say more. She looked acutely uncomfortable under the placid gaze of her commander.

“Acknowledged. Do you think it will work?”

“Sir, may I speak freely? And will this go no further than between the two of us?”

Zhang nodded.

“I don’t believe them. Uh… I’m not saying they’re lying,” she nervously backtracked, “it’s just that it would take some effort to get a rescue ship out to us, and, well, I don’t think we’re Beijing’s most favorite people right now. You in particular. I mean no offense, sir, but many of the crew consider this to be your failure, and they’re people who have worked with you and like you and respect you. I can’t imagine our superiors in Beijing have a higher opinion of you. I think this could start off with the best intentions and if the wrong people decided not to push the project, well, schedules slip. And then where are we?”

Cui looked about the room nervously. It was apparent she was worried that perhaps she had spoken a bit too freely.

“Relax, Zhuo, I share your concerns. I don’t think we can count on Beijing to get us out of this predicament. Amend that: I’m almost certain of it. I think we must turn to the Americans for assistance.”

“Sir? Is that a good idea? Beijing—”

“Zhuo, my time has evidently passed. Your time may or may not arrive, depending on what happens next. Let me suggest something to you. Again, to you only. One of the last things you elicited from Narcy was that the Americans had taken away some memory capsules, with technical specifications for entire alien industries, and, through the I/O port, they’d taken away scientific information that would give a boost of decades in hard science, and who knows how much in soft. Have I expressed this accurately?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So if this ship dies, then Beijing will be left with two options: let the Americans have those industries, or shoot down the Nixon. If they shoot down the Nixon, and I think they might do that, then there might very well be a war. I don’t know what would happen in a war—”

“Sir, I’m sure there are options other than a nuclear war.”

“Of course. Like a trade war. If the Americans put an embargo on Chinese goods, and threatened anyone who traded with us with further sanctions, well, they’d fall into a Depression. But we would fall into something much worse. With a billion people sloshing around the country without food or work… who knows what might happen? I’m sure Beijing has worked through these scenarios. What I’m suggesting is, we request a rescue: actually, we leave them no choice in rescuing us. And we suggest to Beijing that once we are aboard the Nixon, we may have some… mmm… influence on the distribution of the alien information.”

“Sir… you would try to seize their ship? The Americans must have countermeasures.”

“Let’s not look that far ahead, Zhuo. Let’s just say our presence might have some effect on how things work out.” Zhang looked at the time panel on his slate. “Beijing will be waking up. I’m going to go talk to them. About this possibility.”

“Sir, do you want me with you?”

“No. I have other things for you to do. How’s our reaction mass?”

“We’re only about ten percent, on the remaining tanks, sir.”

“Hmm, we’ll need more like fifty percent and we’ll need it soon. Assign everyone we can possibly spare to ice collection and hydrogen refining. Round-the-clock shifts. Also, I need some orbital calculations done that Beijing won’t find out about, depending on how they receive my suggestion. Our navigator, Lieutenant Sun, how does she feel about me?”

“Oh, she almost idolizes you. She’d follow you to the end of the universe. She’s very young.” Cui touched her lips. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“That’s all right, I get your point. In this situation, it will perhaps be a plus. Her service record shows that she’s ambitious. Few yuhanguan rack up so much flight experience so quickly. Landing on the crew of this mission at the age of twenty-eight shows that she’s bright and good at what she does.”

“Sir…”

“A bright, young yuhanguan with ambitions will take risks an older one would not, and what I’m planning will be risky. Send her up, would you? I’ll talk to her as soon as I finish my argument to Beijing.”

“Sir…”

“Zhuo, you need to get busy. One way or another, we’re going after the Nixon. With Beijing on board, or without them.”

Zhang’s proposal made the hour-plus-long trip to Earth. Beijing considered it for four hours. The reply made its hour-plus-long trip back to the Celestial Odyssey.

When the reply came in, Zhang was alone in his private quarters; had Duan been alive, she would have been with him, but Duan was now an ever-expanding cloud of atoms. The message came in a highly encrypted block of vid from the defense minister himself, who smiled tightly as he said hello; the smile disappeared as he continued.

“Admiral Zhang, your suggestion had already been considered here in some detail. Your analysis is correct: we really cannot afford to let the Americans get all of this technology to themselves. They are pushing us into a corner and they must be aware of that and the dangers that creates. I’m quite sure they don’t want us cornered. They had hoped to get away with this banditry, of course, but we cannot let them. We understand that much of the damage to your ship was done by what, in retrospect, was the inadvisable midcourse burn and then the necessity of the aerobraking maneuver.

“We accept responsibility for those errors: they were ours, not yours. We believe that two things could be done to rescue you: you could return via the two-year transit plan, and we could build a ship to pluck you from that orbit, or you could simply wait there, in a safe orbit, and we could send a rescue ship. We could, in fact, build that ship and get it there in time to rescue you. But that would not solve the problem of the Americans getting the alien science and technology. Therefore, we are going to announce, with great loss of what the West thinks of as our face, that our ship is so damaged that no feasible rescue is possible, unless done in cooperation with the Americans. We will announce that you will attempt a rendezvous. What happens then… we shall see. Now, you have on board, as a survivor, your first officer Cui. I have seen photographs of her and she is quite attractive. She also speaks English. We will have her interviewed by a reputable Xinhua reporter, in which she expresses the desperation of your condition. That script is being written now. We have created an attractive husband for her here, and two children, and they will add to the plea. Our… experts… tell us it will go viral, worldwide.”

When they were done, Zhang had to laugh. Not a happy laugh: the cynicism of international politics had always astonished him, and he’d not been disappointed in this latest example.

He floated out to the bridge, where Cui was waiting nervously. She said, “Yes?”

“Congratulations, Cui.”

“Sir?”

“On your marriage. And the babies. You have such pretty babies.”

“Sir?” She thought he’d lost his mind.

“Did I mention that you’re about to become a movie star?”