The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One (5 page)

“Dinah, are you okay?” Templeton asked, the alarm in his voice quite clear.

After a few seconds, her voice came through the speakers. “Bit dizzy, sir. Otherwise okay.”

“That was a hell of a move. Christ. Nice throw.”

“Nice catch, sir.”

“Yeah, thank Bethany for that. You’d better-“

“Missile!” Charis shouted. “There’s a tac missile following the same trajectory as the first drone. It’s looking to pass us!” The desperation in Charis’ voice was infectious. Templeton turned to launch intercept chaff, even as he knew that it wouldn’t help if the missile wasn’t targeted on them. Bethany fought the urge to put the ship between the missile and the woman in the UteV.

“Open coms to the ‘
Day
!’” the captain said, her voice nearly a shout. “Now!”

Yegor tapped a few buttons and nodded quickly, indicating that he had opened a channel to the other vessel.

“Logan, what the hell do you think you’re doing? You lost. You don’t need to hurt my crew.”

There was an agonizing moment of silence while Vey took his time replying. When he did, his voice dripped with condescension. “You need to learn what happens when you keep me from my toys, Clea.”

Templeton’s communications ceased abruptly. As the small craft stabilized and her vision cleared, Dinah looked through the window towards the ship. She breathed deeply and sighed, smiling despite her pounding headache, content to wait for the first mate to reestablish contact. Her hands were trembling from the experience and she was sweating more than ever, but she was all right. She watched the two drones move off and back to their home vessel; there was no point in them troubling her now. Suddenly she spied the telltale glow of an incoming hostile projectile. She squinted at the missile, trying to identify its make and tonnage, another part of her mind calmly trying to tell her how irrelevant that information was.

It took her about two seconds to run through all of her options. There weren’t any.
Gringolet
couldn’t save her, not at this point, and the small craft she currently inhabited was incapable of outrunning or outmaneuvering a tac missile. She could eject; the EVA suit would sustain her for several hours in space, but the shrapnel from the explosion would undoubtedly kill her. She had no jetpack to gain distance she would need to have a chance of survival anyway.

“Huh,” she said. There was nothing to do but wait; she estimated perhaps four seconds. The missile flew straight and true, descending towards the aft dorsal section of the utility vehicle. With an audible thunk, it bounced off the back of her little metal can, sending it into a lazy spin. Realization of her survival dawned. She immediately dismissed the possibility of a malfunction as too remote to consider. After snorting laughter for a second or two, she breathed a sigh of deep relief and hit the coms button.

“It wasn’t armed, sir. Warning shot, I make it.” A mixture of cheers and sighs floated to her across the vacuum of space. She closed her eyes and let the craft drift for a few minutes more.

“Or what
can
happen,” Vey’s voice mocked the crew from the cockpit speakers. “Let’s not do this again.”

“Logan, you’re a son of a bitch,” Staples replied, and cut coms.

Chapter 4

Once the UteV was secured in the shuttle bay and the bay was safely repressurized, Dinah climbed out of the vehicle. She pushed her way across the back of the cavernous room, floating over to the elevator. The lift carried her up to the EVA prep room, and along the way she removed her helmet. As she exited, she found several members of the crew waiting for her, the captain in front. Behind her floated Donovan Templeton, navigator Charis MacDonnell, Charis’ husband and Dinah’s right-hand man, John Park, communications expert Yegor Durin, Doctor Jabir Iqbal, and even the cook, Piotr Kondratyev.

“Hey!” shouted Templeton. “The lady of the hour!” He clapped twice in excitement and appreciation.

“I would think that would buy me at least the day, sir,” Dinah responded, pulling off her thick-fingered gloves. Templeton pushed off a wall handle and came forward to help her disengage the back piece from the suit. She allowed him to render his assistance.

“Really fantastic work, Dinah,” Staples stated, pushing herself forward and offering her hand. The chief engineer shook it and nodded somewhat gravely at the compliment.

“Just doing my job, sir.”

“Nonsense,” Staples replied immediately. “You did outstanding work,” her tone turned somewhat scolding, “but you were less careful with your life than I like my crew to be, especially my one-of-a-kind, jack-of-all-trades engineer. We could have just let them have it.”

At this point the crew members had surrounded her in a rough half circle, floating somewhat awkwardly and touching each others’ shoulders to stay in place and upright. Dinah looked her captain in the eye as she released her hand and casually said, “I never judged myself to be in any real danger, sir. I hope this doesn’t mean you’re losing faith in my abilities.”

Staples broke into a wide and toothy grin, many of the surrounding people laughed, and even Dinah smiled briefly.

“She’d be a fool to!” Templeton declared loudly. The statement fell flat, and Staples shot him a sideways glance.  He shrugged awkwardly and apologetically, still laughing.

After the other crew had congratulated her and the back patting had subsided, the doctor addressed her in his rich voice. “I’d like to see you in Medical once you get changed, Ms. Hazra. You subjected your body to, what did they tell me, seven gravities? How do you feel?” His eyes moved over her face, assessing, looking for signs of stress, pain, or discomfort.

“It was barely six,” she responded, “and I feel fine.”

“Nonetheless. Doctor’s orders,” Iqbal replied with some flair. “Shall we say Medical, twenty minutes?”

The captain spoke up before Dinah could reply. “My orders too. I want you checked out and with a clean bill of health. You went through quite an ordeal out there, whether you admit it or not.”

“I’ll choose ‘not,’ sir,” she replied, “but I’ll be there.”

Staples nodded. “Good. I think we can have a family dinner after all that, once we get under way. I don’t know about you all, but I’d rather have gravity when I eat.”

There was a general chorus of agreements.

Nineteen minutes later, the ship was moving towards Mars again under a single G of thrust. John was manning the ReC. Dinah Hazra opened the door into the Medical bay. The bay was a high ceilinged rectangular room over fifteen meters in length. It was half again as wide, and one wall was layered with hinged, pull-down beds. Stretchers stood in storage, strapped into wall cradles next to the door, and magnetic medical trays sat at strategic positions along the wall opposite the beds. At the far end, Dinah could see the doctor’s private office, the windows currently transparent to the rest of the bay. While the majority of the ship was stark, gunmetal grey, the walls and ceiling of the Medical bay were tinged blue, adding to its general air of sterility. The floors were different from the usual deck grating. Medical was the only room in the ship that had been outfitted with the recently invented, cutting edge, and highly expensive artificial gravity floor panels.

As Dinah poked her head through the door, the doctor looked up from his surface and smiled at her in welcome. From her perspective, the man appeared to be standing on the wall. The effect was disconcerting to most of the crew members, but they all appreciated their captain’s extravagant expenditure on the artificial gravity. Altering the Medical bay whenever they entered atmosphere would be work intensive and problematic, and a shift from gravity to weightlessness or vice versa could be deadly if it came in the middle of a delicate medical procedure. Feeling for all the world like Fred Astaire, she climbed through the door, somewhat awkwardly altering her orientation to the doctor’s version of
up
.

“Dinah Hazra, reporting as ordered, sir,” she said, finding her footing.

“
Ahlan wa sahlan
, Lieutenant,” the doctor replied. Dinah blinked several times, taken aback. “If one is going to act like they are still in the military, one should not be surprised when they are addressed as such. I am not a
sir
,” he continued, not unkindly.

“I’m not
in
the military anymore. And I don’t particularly like being reminded that I was, Doctor.” She took several steps towards one of the hinged beds on the wall, her voice demonstrating slight irritation.

“That is fair,” he replied, “but I hope you don’t think you’re fooling anyone aboard this ship about how you spent your formative years.”

She sighed and cast her eyes downward. “No, I suppose not, but it’s also not something I like to advertise.” A thought occurred to her, and she looked up sharply at him.

As if reading her mind, he raised his hands, palms outward, in a gesture of peace. “As your doctor, I may have read your rather lengthy and impressive military record, Ms. Hazra, but as your doctor, I am also obliged to maintain confidentiality.” He gestured to the table she had approached, and the woman turned and hopped up on it, her legs dangling a few inches off the flooring. He was wearing pale blue scrubs and a white lab coat, and when he hung a stethoscope around his neck, the stereotypical image was complete. He came around in front of her and added, “And as your friend, Dinah, I am honor bound to keep your secrets.” She looked at him steadily and without comment, but he could detect gratitude in her eyes.

“So,” he said, a little too loudly and dramatically, signaling the transition from friend to physician. “How are you feeling?”

“Just fine,” she said for what she felt was the tenth time since she had tossed the satellite at the ship.

He proceeded with his check up, exploring the glands in her neck with his firm fingers, prodding her back, measuring her breath with the stethoscope, and testing her reflexes. He asked her to hold out her hands, and they exhibited a slight tremor despite her efforts to hold them still.

“That’s not unusual,” he commented somewhat dismissively after regarding them for several seconds. “Did you lose consciousness?”

“Almost,” she answered reluctantly.

He sat back against the lowered bed opposite her and nodded. “Other common side effects of exposure to high G acceleration include black motes, temporary loss of vision, tunnel hearing, temporary loss of hearing, changes in blood pressure, muscle cramping, damage to vision, even brain damage if the brain is robbed of blood, and consequently oxygen for long enough. Tell me, how long were you putting your body under the strain of ‘barely six’ gravities?”

“Less than thirty seconds,” she replied.

“Ah. I think we can rule out brain damage, then, though I’m going to have a careful look at your eyes.” He took up the ophthalmoscope next to him from one of the magnetic trays and then paused. “Cervical acceleration-deceleration, also known as whiplash, can also be common, depending on the direction which the body is accelerated. Tell me, which direction
were
you accelerating?”

Dinah leaned forward, putting her head nearly between her knees for a moment. “Like this.”

“Ah, counted on your headrest to save your neck, did you? Very clever, especially considering the stresses of your situation.” He smiled in approval.

She shrugged. “If I remember my training correctly, ‘eyes-in’ is also the least likely to be damaging to the retinas.”

“Yes, well, let’s see if those drill instructors had it right, shall we?” He leaned forward and brought the ophthalmoscope to bear on her right eye.

Once her eyes were checked, her blood pressure taken, and even her blood sugar measured, Iqbal leaned back against the opposing bed again. “It seems you came through, as you said, ‘just fine.’  You may experience some light-headedness and trembling for the next few days, but that should pass. Your eyes are fine. Seven gravities of acceleration is rarely permanently damaging to people in short doses, especially those with prior exposure to its effects, but there is no harm in being cautious. An ounce of prevention, as they say.” He paused a moment and took a breath. “Tell me, how is the prosthesis treating you? Would you mind if I examined it?”

After a few seconds, Dinah nodded and replied, “Yes, that’s fine.”

“It’s the left, correct?” She was tempted to be annoyed with him. She didn’t quite walk with a limp, but her slightly irregular gait betrayed the existence of the prosthetic to anyone looking. She decided to let it pass; he was just trying to be polite, even if she felt as if he were coddling her. She nodded again.

The doctor knelt down in front of her and gently rolled up her left pant leg. The combat boot ended where her mid-calf would have been, and from out of the boot the artificial leg rose up to cup her flesh and blood knee. Two small black cords, one emerging from either side of the prosthesis, connected to nodes imbedded in the flesh on the sides of her knee. He unlaced her boot and pulled it off. The haptic sensors in the artificial foot and calf sent signals to the nodes which sent signals to the nerves in her knee which sent signals to her brain telling her that someone was taking off her shoe. The sensation was oddly distant, however, not unlike people’s descriptions of their limbs when under the effects of morphine or hallucinogens.

With the boot off and placed on the gravity flooring, the doctor regarded the prosthetic, a mechanical device encased in plastic that mimicked the shape of her other leg almost precisely. “Can you arch your foot for me?” She did so, suppressing her objection to the possessive. It was only as much her foot as her boot was. “Rotate your ankle.” She complied. He produced his reflex hammer and ran it under the arch of the foot, and she shivered. “How does that feel?” The sensation her brain received told her that it should be ticklish, but she had not been ticklish since childhood, and so the conflicting information left her feeling confused and uneasy.

“Unpleasant,” she stated flatly.

“Sorry,” he said, as a matter of reflex, continuing his evaluation. Finally he stood and handed her the boot. “How is running with it?”

“Hurts a little bit.”

He took this to mean that it hurt a fair amount. “If you want, I can disable the limb’s haptic feedback.”

“No thanks. It’s worse wearing it when I can’t feel anything.” She set about lacing up her boot.

“As you wish. Tell me, do you sleep with it on?” He leaned back on his table again.

“No,” she admitted.

“It’s okay,” he assured her, “it’s only recommended, not required. The idea is that constant feedback will trick the brain into forgetting that the limb is artificial.”

Dinah looked at him and said, “That is not something I want to happen, sir.”

Later that afternoon, Charis sat down at the multi-function table across from her eight-year-old daughter, Gwen. They were in their room, one of the larger cabins on the ship usually reserved for passengers. It was about as wide as it was tall, three meters in each direction, though it was more than twice that deep. Its depth ran perpendicular to the long axis of the ship, allowing for the maximum use of space. Whether the vessel was in atmosphere or in space under thrust, whether the current floor was a floor or a wall, the room retained the same dimensions. As with the majority of the other rooms on the ship, its furniture was clamped to the floor but could be easily moved to correspond to
up
during atmospheric transition. There was an access door to a restroom on the back wall, and Gwen’s room lay beyond that.  Her small bedroom had the benefit of a window.

“Mom, what happened before?” Gwen asked. She was short for her age, and her chin-length brown hair was held back from her face in two pigtails on either side of her head. Her eyes carried some of her father’s sharpness, and were a deep, inquisitive chocolate color, though they sometimes showed a hint of hazel. Her nose and chin were angled and her cheeks rounded, still carrying some baby fat, though she was fairly thin overall. Despite her father’s Korean heritage, her skin was very fair, nearly translucent, and delicate blue veins showed lightly at her temples. She wore simple drab olive cargo pants, but her tee shirt was bright pink and slightly worn, a much loved recent purchase from a second hand clothing shop in Portland, their last port of call. At the moment, her hands rested on top of one another on the cool metal of the table, and her face hovered a few inches above them as she leaned forward, all of her concentration on her mother.