Saving proxima, p.17
Saving Proxima, page 17
“Suit yourself, Gaines.”
“If there’s nothing else, Captain, then I need to go and get things lined up for our departure, then,” Gaines said.
“By all means. Nice meeting you, Gaines.”
“Likewise, Captain Jacobs. Likewise.” Ray shook the Space Force captain’s hand and began immediately cycling scenarios and egress path alternatives.
Once they were off the Space Force vessel and onto a private cruise ship, Pinkersly could assume Burbank’s life for the week or so it would take to get to Mars. Ray would work out identities for him before Mars. Mars and the Moon for the most part were the new frontiers. Many people actually had moved to Mars to escape the prying life of civilization on Earth. It would be easy to vanish Pinkersly there.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Chloe. I can’t wait to get home either.” Chloe listened and watched the video download from her husband, who was apparently on his way home via the Mars cruise docks. She was used to Roy traveling with his job and often he’d be gone for a couple of weeks or more at a time. That was the life of being married to a spacecraft design and test engineer. He did get paid really, really well on each of his off-world excursions.
“The Space Force ship Northcutt is dropping me off on the sightseeing cruiser Bolivar, and I’ll transfer from it when we get to Mars in about five days. I’m already looking at my flight options that get me home soonest,” Roy continued very matter-of-factly and all business. Chloe wondered if he had to make the video transmission recording while not in private. He’d done that before too.
“I miss you, darling, and will be home soonest. Love you.” Roy waved goodbye into the camera and half frowned.
“I love you too, Roy,” Chloe whispered and then gently touched the datapad touchscreen, shutting the image down. Then she mused over the message a bit. “Hmm, he’s never called me ‘darling’ before.”
* * *
“Very good, Thomas—or I guess for now, we’ll always say ‘Roy.’” Gaines watched the video a bit closer to make certain there were no tells. “We’ll have to do another couple of these. Be careful about pet names and words of endearment as we don’t really know how Burbank spoke to his wife.”
“What do ya mean? I did pretty good,” Pinkersly argued.
“You called her ‘darling’ in that one. Don’t do that again.” Gaines looked at him sternly and then let his expression relax a bit. “Look, I have my AI searching his emails, chats, and other media where his family is concerned. Soon, before we do the next one, the AI will write the script based on the most likely turns of phrase.”
“You think the video rendering will keep her fooled?” Pinkersly asked. “I mean, do we really understand his facial expressions?”
“Don’t worry about it. We have hours of video-conference data on Burbank. The imagery is good.” Ray Gaines—at least that was his current identity—considered his next move. Did he simply toss Dr. Pinkersly out an airlock at some point once he no longer needed a live body walking around acting as Burbank, or did he just give him a new ID and tell him to get lost or else? He could tell by the way the man squirmed that he was probably considering the same things and was likely planning some weak attempt at escaping.
“Then what? Er, I mean, what about me?” Pinkersly asked.
“Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,” Ray repeated. He diverted his gaze to the porthole in his quarters at the continually brightening light that was approaching them. The cruise ship was almost there. Another day or so and they’d be off the Northcutt and away from the Space Force. “What will we do with you indeed? You were going to die anyway on that ship.”
“You’re going to kill me?” Pinkersly began darting his eyes about the room and Ray could see the panic in his face. He looked to Ray as if he were going to hyperventilate.
“Settle down, Thomas. I’m not going to kill you, or even have you killed. I don’t think. That’s up to you.” He paused and thought briefly and turned his gaze back from the star field on the other side of the porthole in the distance.
Ray knew that Pinkersly was a scientist not a survivor. And he was stupid because he had managed to get himself in very deep debt with some pretty serious gambling bookies. Thomas Pinkersly had a gambling problem that was quickly about to reach a crux. The only outcome of his situation would most likely have been his death, but before that, the death of his estranged wife and two teenaged daughters. That was before Ray had found him.
Ray’s employers had very deep pockets. He basically bought and paid for Thomas Pinkersly’s life with the deal that his family would be safe and taken care of well. The few hundred thousand Thomas owed his bookies was rounding error money to Ray’s employers. They’d already paid billions to implement the plans they had put in motion. Paying off his debt and putting his family up with enough money to support them for years was miniscule in comparison.
But Thomas . . . well, he was now a problem. He was a loose end. Ray didn’t like loose ends. He would have to find a place he could get lost in forever and become somebody else. Or that loose end would have to be tied up.
CHAPTER 24
August 31, 2089
“May I have your attention. This is the captain. As you are aware, today is the day we’re supposed to engage the Samara Drive at full power and begin accelerating toward Proxima Centauri b. According to the chief engineer, our tech crews, and the ship’s AI, the Samaritan is in perfect shape with all systems functioning as they should. As we planned, we’ll start putting the crew in the cryobeds two weeks into the trip and awaken everyone when we’re about two weeks from disengaging the drive at Proxima. This is it, folks. Once we enable the Samara Drive at full power, the acoustic resonator will stimulate the metamaterial matrix into the exotic-matter phase, which will in turn blue-shift the radio frequency electromagnetic radiation from the fusion plasma source to the ultraviolet in a super-radiant cavity of amplified stimulated emission. This process has a decay time of, as the CHENG and Dr. Vulpetti both tell me, over eight hundred days. Once we fire this thing up, there’s no turning back. I’m starting a countdown clock now of thirty minutes. This is your absolute last chance to jump ship. In thirty minutes, barring any safety issues, we will press the go button and say goodbye to the Sol System forever. Also, as a final note, there’s been a last-minute fifteen-minute hold placed on our departure by the UN—fallout from the recent destruction of the Matador by the Interstellarerforscher’s UV exhaust. We’ve been asked to use our shipboard collision avoidance radar to make sure there aren’t any unregistered ships in the straight-line exhaust-cone angle from our Samara Drive. We are also awaiting word from the US Space Force that they have cleared the engagement zone. We don’t want a repeat of what happened as we engage our drive. I will keep you posted.”
“That’s not unexpected,” said Enrico.
“Unexpected? Which one?” Rain asked.
“Um, the thirty-minute hold is on the schedule,” Yoko added. “What would happen if one of us actually said, ‘Wait let me off!’?”
“Like that’s going to happen.” Enrico laughed. “I mean the radar check hold. Too many folks probably got chewed out, maybe worse, for the Matador incident.”
Enrico, Rain, and Yoko had become fast friends since lunar space dock departure and were in the rec room chatting when the captain’s announcement was broadcast throughout the ship. As they waited on the approval to engage the Samara Drive, the ship’s onboard fusion reactor was powering the Samara Drive propulsion system at a moderate rate and was continuing to accelerate them outward at an acceleration of two tenths of a gravity—the same as they would experience during the long-term cruise phase once the Samara Drive took over. It made shipboard life much easier to have just a little simulated gravity instead of no gravity. No one liked being nauseous, using zero-gee toilets, or encountering various body fluids floating around after a sneeze that went uncontained. Zero gravity was still a messy condition, despite all the technological advances. For the first two and a half years, Earth relative, the Samara Drive would accelerate at about eighty-five percent of Earth gravity. Then, the ship would drop back to twenty percent that of Earth for about five years. The reason had to do with the metamaterials inside the Weak Energy Condition Acoustic Violator—called the WECAV or “wee-cav”—that couldn’t hold up to the stress of nearly a full-gee acceleration for much longer than that without serious degradation. The drive would be throttled back and repaired and then they would reverse thrust direction and throttle up again to start slowing down. The WECAV was never brought fully down because the phenomenon acted like a ringing bell and took months to ring down all the way to where it was safe to actually turn it off without damaging it. At least that was how Rain understood it. She was a radio astronomer not a breakthrough physics propulsion expert.
Rain was beginning to suspect that Enrico and Yoko were becoming very close friends. At first this caused her to feel . . . jealous . . . and then, as she thought again about the age difference between her and the aerospace engineer from Georgia, she realized that what she really felt was her denial of growing older. She was old enough to be his mother and, of course, he saw her that way. He wasn’t blind. Yoko, on the other hand, was a knockout beauty with brains—how could he not be attracted to her? She thought of her good friend, Hannah, who once relayed a story about when she realized that the hot young guys on the U-Bahn were no longer checking her out. It was just before her thirty-sixth birthday and she was so upset. Rain had been sympathetic and, at the time, sure she would not have the same reaction. Yet, here she was, twenty years older than Hannah, feeling exactly the same way. Shit—growing older is not fun. And I’ve been alone too long . . .
In true form, the whole feeling-sorry-for-herself train of thought lasted no more than a few seconds and she was quickly able to tune back in to the conversation around her. Enrico, having been part of the Samaritan’s mission since before there was either a ship or a mission and had had time to think about the capabilities of the Samara Drive and its implications, was speaking.
“Think about it. The Samara Drive efficiently converts gigawatts of power generated by the fusion reaction into a stream of ultraviolet light containing nearly all that energy. It’s the ultimate death ray,” he said.
“That’s why we don’t engage it until we’re at the one and a half AU mark, near Mars orbit,” Rain added, eager to cover her momentary “tune out” by jumping right into the conversation.
“Correct. But we’re following the rules. In a war or terrorist attack, the bad guys don’t follow the rules,” Enrico replied. “As, I guess, was made clear by whoever our saboteur was.”
“Or if they are smugglers running silent,” Yoko agreed, referring to the Matador and her crew.
“The good thing is that the range is limited. The UV exhaust isn’t like a laser. It’s not collimated. The beam will spread out, diverge, with distance until the energy is so diffuse that it isn’t a threat. But up close, it’s deadly. It may not always be that way.”
“Do we know if anyone is actually weaponizing it?” asked Yoko. “How likely is that? I’m a biologist, remember. Not sure I even understand how the Samara Drive works.”
“You can bet they are,” Rain said quickly. She was cynical when it came to governments, technology, and secrets. Governments you couldn’t trust, technology always advanced and someone would always find a way to turn it into a weapon, and she had always believed that secrets lasted only about as long as it took to classify them—at least when speaking about government secrets. There was always some government official’s staffer who leaked information when it was politically advantageous to do so.
“I know they are,” said Enrico, staring straight at Yoko. Rain got the impression that Enrico was showing off as if he knew about such classified things. On the other hand, he was the engineer who had led the team to develop the engine’s design for interstellar travel. And, to top it off, the original development was all privately funded before the governments of the world got involved. Somebody most likely was developing a Samara Drive beam weapon—probably Enrico’s employers. The implication of Enrico’s statement remained unsaid, but certainly triggered unease in Rain.
Two hours later, the Samaritan began its journey to Proxima Centauri b.
CHAPTER 25
September 3, 2089
“ . . . back on Mars finally. I’ll catch a transport tomorrow evening that is headed for the lunar shipyard on the far side.” Roy’s face looked drained of expressions, Chloe thought. He’s tired. I hope he’s not overworking himself. She’d sent several messages to him while he was on the Bolivar cruise ship but now she had no idea how she’d contact him. She wasn’t even sure he knew exactly which ship he would be taking to get home. He continued with an almost deadpan expression.
“ . . . I have booked a flight from the far-side spaceport to get me back to Earth. I’m taking an extra few days off just to be home after all this. See you soon, Chloe. Love you.”
Chloe tapped the datapad communication icon window closed and then tapped the light blue icon of a caduceus—two snakes intertwined around a staff with wings—and opened her personal medical app. The inbox had a red number one raised above it to alert her she had an unread message. She tapped it reluctantly and then opened the message.
Mrs. Burbank, your recent test activity is now complete. The test resulted in a 99.45% positive. We recommend you begin by setting up consultation with your personal health care professional for further follow-ups in order to maintain a healthy and complication-free pregnancy. Congratulations! For free pregnancy information please click the link below . . .
“Hurry back, Roy. I’ve got something to tell you.” Chloe smiled warmly as tears formed in the corners of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
CHAPTER 26
December 5, 2089 (Earth timeline)
November 20, 2089 (Ship timeline)
Captain Crosby checked the AI and personally inspected the health and status displays of the crew members already in cryosleep. The ship had plenty of supplies and it was up to individual crew members as to when they would check themselves into cryosleep for the remainder of the nine year and eight month (ship time) voyage. The flight rules said that everyone, besides the three flight deck crew members on the three-month-awake rotation, had to be asleep by the end of December, but until then, sleep check-in was purely optional. Everyone held out for the first month or so. The novelty of being in deep space hadn’t worn off, people were excited, and relationships were still forming. Crosby actually hoped that the crew was practicing the birth control protocols required or they would need pediatric care soon at the rate the relationships were progressing.
Finally, one by one, people came forward and put in their requests for entering cryosleep. Once a few people were asleep, the rest grew increasingly restless and bored, subsequently putting in their requests. There were now only six awake and the ship was extremely quiet. Even the requests for data bursts home were coming in fewer and farther between. Besides, they’d been accelerating at about eight tenths of a gee for a couple of months and were pushing the boundaries of the outer solar system. The ship was currently traveling far faster than anything mankind had ever done—that is, besides the Interstellarerforscher, which was following the same propulsion profile. But the Samaritan had people on and these people were traveling faster and farther away from their homes than any had ever before in the history of mankind.
Unlike the classic science fiction stories and movies, the body continued to age while in cryosleep. There were some scientific studies showing that cryosleep slowed the aging process down slightly, but there were few studies that had been conducted on extremely long-term cryosleep. For the most part, you were just spared the tedium and boredom of nearly a decade in a tin can zipping through black nothingness. For that, Crosby was grateful. He’d spent at least four of his forty-eight years in space as a military resupply pilot before being selected for the Samaritan. Most of those four years were extremely boring and tedious. He couldn’t imagine being awake and occupying his time aboard ship for seven subjective years.
Crosby had about a month to go before he was to take his first rotation in cryosleep. As it worked out, the sleep cycle required two bridge crew trained in most ship’s systems and one volunteer from the ship’s compliment to be awake at all times in case of repair needs, navigation checks, and any other minor, or God forbid, major emergencies. There were enough bridge crew that they would get nine months out of the year in cryosleep while the other members only would do one rotation each for the entirety of the flight. There was also a scheduled all-hands one-week medical check and systems maintenance requirement at the midpoint.
CHAPTER 27
April 15, 2090 (Earth timeline)
February 23, 2090 (Ship timeline)
“XO, we have a message on the boards from the Space Force Command HQ. It says, ‘Captain’s Eyes Only.’ You want to wake him up early?” Bob Roca stuck his head in the captain’s mess where Artur, the current acting captain, was looking for the artificial sweetener that he’d squirreled away months back. He had his head almost all the way inside the dull gray metal cabinet and one arm reaching in all the way to the back, contorting him like an acrobat.
“Aha, there it is. Now who would have moved that damned package?” Artur Clemons retracted himself from within the cabinet and pulled out the container. At eighty-five percent of Earth’s gravity, it poured almost as expected. After pouring the syrupy-looking clear liquid into his coffee cup he stirred it gently with a straw, only half listening to Roca. “From the damned Space Force? What’s it say?”
“Uh, it says, ‘Captain’s Eyes Only.’” Roca repeated.
“Hell, I guess I’m the acting captain of this here ship and I ain’t about to go wake up Crosby six months early on his rotation for just a message.” Artur sipped the coffee and screwed up his face. “I hope they have better coffee on Proxima or I’m just going to give this shit up.”
