Chapter Two
2
Hamilton Steeth, second scion of the Wherren IV Steeths, Academic Director of Barchenko Station, woke instantly as his room light snapped on. “Damnation, Cooper, what is it?” he growled.
“I know you left orders not to be disturbed, sir, but the Buckley-“
Steeth rubbed crumbs of sleep from his eyes. “It’s due tomorrow, so what? It-“
“It’s been destroyed, sir,” Cooper said, gripping the door frame, ready to duck. Steen had a habit of throwing things at him from the bed when surprised. He was surprisingly fast for a man of his considerable bulk.
Steeth worked his mouth as he tried to process that. “Huh?” he managed to gape as he tried to roll onto his back, his pasty face and chins growing red from the effort.
“It’s gone, sir. The number eight telescope was monitoring its usual entry point. It hit an asteroid on re-entry to normal space. Predictions are for no survivors, but the Worthington is going through pre-flight check right now.”
“I, good lord, I see, ah…” The Director scraped the corners of his eyes, trying to keep a reign on his growing panic. This was bad. “I, um, wait. What the hell can I do?“
“The Worthington, sir. I need your authorization so they can send it. Your own orders: you have to personally authorize all in-system travel by station personnel.”
Steeth mopped a sudden sweat from his brow and took a deep breath. It had been a very unpopular edict, but made for just this occasion. He slowly let out his held breath through his nose.
“Are you well, Director?”
“I, well, yes… bother,” Steeth mumbled as he adjusted his pillows. “No help for it now, I suppose. No transmissions, no survivors. No reason to roust the crews in the middle of station night, now is there?”
Cooper’s eyes widened. “I’m not certain I understand, sir,” he said carefully.
Steeth ground his teeth as he fought not to slap Cooper to the floor. “Was I unclear? There’s no reason to send the shuttle until station morning at the earliest. If there are no survivors, there’s no reason to do it. The only reason we’ll be bothering is to recover the black box, anyway.”
“Director, ‘no survivors’ is just the AI prediction-“
“That will be all, Mister Cooper,” Steeth said with a dismissive wave, and inclined his head towards the door.
Cooper swallowed and took the hint. “Understood, sir. You’ll want your usual breakfast?”
Steeth hesitated. “No, no, must think of the current situation. Just a couple of courses, um, breakfast steak and yams. And juices. ”
“Very good, sir,” Cooper said as he turned out the lights and retreated.
Steeth lay there in the dark, eyes wide open. He’d been able to buy some time, at least. Sleep was impossible, now, his mind racing as he tried to think of a means to avert disaster. He couldn’t trust that Tarvel had been completely discrete. There would be an investigation, data would be recovered because there was no-one left alive to purge the records, and at some point questions would start coming his way. He could hear them now: thin wheezing bean counters with complaints of ‘financial irregularities’ and ‘gross malfeasance’.
[Move following exposition to dialog at some later point]
Captain Tarvel and he had a little side business with a third party. The Merchant Marines in this sector were particularly corrupt, and Tarvel certainly was no exception. Tarvel turned part of the quarterly supply run over to their mutual friend in exchange for certain goods, which then went to enrich the lives of those here on Barchenko Station.
The quartermaster had been Steeth’s creature for many years, now, and so the shortages went undisclosed. Steeth used the cache of luxuries to maintain order amongst the high-strung academics he lorded over. The complex dance of academic politics meant that someone was always rising in favor and someone falling, and it fell to him to make sure the dancers knew their roles.
For years he had lived with the niggling fear that Tarvel might betray him somehow. The man had a colossal gambling problem. Steeth had quietly bought up most of his debt, a sword held in its sheath until needed.
The next freighter assigned to deliver supplies might not be captained by one so malleable. Steeth rubbed his temples. Their mutual friend would no doubt be contacting him soon. Perhaps some other arrangement could be worked out.
***
Andric Tan clipped and tested his guideline, then slowly moved out along the Number Six sensor arm towards his goal: the new atmospheric analyzer he’d helped install last month. He took things slow and easy, and concentrated on keeping his breathing rate down. He kept checking his O2 content in the helmet’s HUD.
“Tan to Shack Control. How do I get myself into these things? Over.”
“This is Shack Control. Because you insist on doing things yourself. We have a work crew for a reason, you know? Over.”
Andric eased himself around behind the massive dish of the main soil moisture sensor. “That would be the same work crew that pointed my cloud profiler towards Orion last year? Over.”
“The very one. It’s still sending you some lovely images, by the way.”
“Urgh,” Tan grunted as he stopped to untangle his tool kit from a supporting strut before continuing on down the bright white sensor arm.
“Did not copy that. Over.”
“Commenting on the nature of the universe, Shack Control. Over.”
“For a guy that hates z-g work, you spend a lot of time doing it. Over.”
“If not me, then who? Over.”
“True. Over.”
The Shack was technically Barchenko Remote Sensor Station One, preceding the greater bulk of the Barchenko Anthropological Station in its orbit. The main facility was a long-term research station, so it used artificial gravity. Artificial gravity tended to throw off the readings of certain types of sensors, though, so most of the critical monitoring equipment had to be located on different satellites. Nine arms of various lengths and widths supporting a forest of sensors, telescopes, dishes and antenna made it resemble a spiny deep-sea creature. Slightly off from center was the main body of the Shack, consisting of a control deck and minimalist living quarters for up to four, though budgetary cutbacks meant that typically only one person was rotated out for Shack duty every week. The University’s Safety and Services Board would have complained bitterly about the practice had they known of it.
Floating in Shack Control was this week’s lucky winner, Riza McRae. Ordinarily, she would have been working in Bio Services analyzing the most recent biota samples from the surface, but because she’d cross trained in sensor operations during her time in the Confed Navy HR had flagged her as a potential Shack inmate and placed her in the rotation.
She glanced up at the relevant screens, checking Tan’s vitals. “Looking good out there, EVA-1. Over.”
“Are you checking out my ass again, Shack Control? Over.”
“Hey, it’s a good ass. Over.”
Satisfied that Andric wasn’t about to drift off and burn up on re-entry, she glanced at the raw data from the surface and enhanced the lifesigns stream. Her personal data assistant returned an initial analysis, and she paused.
“Oh, dammit,” she said.
“Did not copy that, Shack Control . Over.”
“Sorry, Andric. Not your area, but lifesigns threw me a prediction: a 10% clicker population increase over the next six standard months. Over.”
“Sanroyo Uplands? Over.”
“Yes, how did you know? Um, over.”
“Hah. The uplands have had a heavier than average rainfall over the past two years. A tiny uptick, but if you sneeze hard on Calistra it throws everything out of whack. Over.”
Calistra was unusual in that its axial tilt was probably as close to zero as you’d ever seen in nature, plus its orbit was an ellipse a hairsbreadth from being a perfect circle. There were not a lot of other bodies in the system to disturb it. Thus, the climate was as stable as any world ever catalogued. The lack of heat variations meant few atmospheric disturbances and almost no violent weather. The place ran like clockwork, more or less, so small variations that would be insignificant on other worlds caused ripple effects here especially among the higher order fauna. The clickers were the dominate predator on Sanhala, the largest continent; they were a nasty combination of lion, termite and spider and served as the chief opponent to the native sentients, the Askali.
“That would do it. Over.”
“I should be heading back in ten minutes once I get calibration confirmation from Sensor Control. I can show you an interesting correlation between micro-droughts and the clicker nest size. Over.”
“Sound suspiciously like a date, Mister Tan. Over.”
“Can’t have a date without pie. Over.”
“Are all meteorologists freaky? Over.”
“Hey, that is an ancient family tradition. Helps establish some boundaries. Over.”
“I’m more of a cobbler person, myself. Over.”
“Well, see there? Never would have worked between us. Just about got this last module calibrated… there. Coming in. Over.”
“My dreams are as ashes. Shack Control.”
Andric smiled as he slid the newly-calibrated module back into place, locked it down, and sealed the coverings once more. He checked the data feed via his suit linkup, and at last pronounced it Good. He sighed, looking back along the arm of Sensor Station One, then he turned as he often did to look at the surface of Calistra.
They were over that area of the titanic main continent they called The Great Dry. Brick red, sand, tan, ochre, grays and blacks were pebbled together in a massive mosaic, exposed minerals and hardy scrub growth throwing in tints of color and variations on the beige theme. A storm system churned off to the south over the Sea of Sighs, but the rainshadow of the Forlorn Mountains meant precious little of that moisture would ever see the continental interior. He smiled as he watched the outline of a tiny dark grey-red patch near the eastern mountains slowly change: a massive herd of megafauna was continuing its endless migration around the edge of the Great Dry, stripping bare the hillside trees while stamping their seeds down into the soil to insure another generation.
“Shack Control to EVA-1, are you in trouble? Over.”
Andric blinked hard inside his helmet. “Negative on that, Shack Control. Just daydreaming. Over.”
Back at the Shack Andric waved to Riza via one of the outside cameras, then fired up the small orbital scooter so he could head back to Barchenko Station. The scooter was one of a handful of unpressurized runabouts used to service the various satellites: mostly an open framework with a tiny command module that could hold up to four people if they were on good terms with each other. Thankfully it was also automated, so Andric had little to do until he docked except route the new meteorological data to his HUD and try to get in some work.
After he docked and ran through the after-flight checklist, he trotted around to the meteorological wing, taking considerable joy in the fact that he could trot. His assistant Jaila Miller passed him as entered the Supplemental Sciences section, housing Meteorology, Astrophysics, Geology, and such - aboard Barchenko you were consigned to an intellectual ghetto if you were not dealing mainly with the native sophonts. The Stellar Anthropology Department ruled the roost, and knew it.
“Don’t be looking for the replacement modules for the wind LIDAR,” she said.
Andric turned to follow her. “They should be on this quarterly shipment! Lydecker put them in the cargo hold himself, he said.”
Jaila shook her head. “One of the optical telescope boys was just in here. Asteroid hit the ship as it came out of its slide, went down with all hands. Hell of thing.”
Andric blinked in shock. At least fifteen people dead, just like that!
“Hell of thing,” he repeated quietly and followed her to the break room.