Aboard the ferry, Emmanuel Caspar, staring out at a sky full of chaos, of spreading debris, was trying to prioritise. He felt frozen, though every second that ticked by felt like a minute, a minute like an hour.
He was commander of the elevator hub station. And, today, right now, of this ferry.
And father to Fabio, who was sitting right beside him. Caspar looked down. Fabio’s eyes were wide open – his mother had always said he had beautiful eyes – open now and staring out at carnage, slowly scattering. But his mother had gone back to Earth.
And Fabio wasn’t in any kind of pressure garment, unlike Caspar himself, unlike most of the ferry’s passengers. He had come in late.
Act, asshole. Then think.
Caspar reached down under his own seat, pulled out a package, an emergency life-support bubble. A last resort. He handed the package to Fabio, who took it, looking bemused.
‘We’ve practised with these things, Fab. Open it. Climb inside. Zip it closed if there are problems with the air. OK?’
He had never seen Fabio look so scared, not in his presence anyway. But Fabio started to open the pack.
‘Dad? What’s going on?’
‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’ Caspar could hear mutterings behind him in the ferry, more chaos unfolding in the fragmented scene out the window, a dazzle of messages on the console before him—
‘Dad, I think it’s stuck.’
No time for this.
Make time for him anyhow, dummy.
‘Look, you just pull it out of its wrapper—’
‘I’ll help.’ A woman passenger, in the row of seats just behind Caspar’s position, leaned forward now, pushing at her own restraints which she started to unclip. A black pendant at her throat distracted him.
‘Don’t do that,’ Caspar said, reflexively. ‘Your own belt—’
But then he recognised her. Elizabeth Vasta, presidential science adviser. ‘Oh … I’m – sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Can you reach?’
‘Pretty well.’ She smiled at Fabio. ‘Just pass the package up, honey. That’s it. It’s going to get crowded in here …’
Fabio smiled back and lifted up the bubble pack.
Caspar risked a glance back. All the other passengers were adults, he knew; all seemed to be sitting calmly, though they were mostly either staring into screens, or were just gazing out at the chaos visible through the mostly transparent upper hull.
Some tour guide I am, Caspar thought. Keep your hands inside the car at all times …
He flicked on the inboard announcement system, although most of the passengers could probably have heard him anyway. ‘OK. Listen up, please. You can see there’s been an incident of some kind.’
A murmuring at that bland cliché.
‘There’s evidently a breach of the pressure hull of the Cronus, along with a lot of debris. Up ahead …’
Stuff was spreading out in a slow cloud, like droplets of blood spraying from a wound. He leaned forward, peering harder. Yes, there were people in there.
Vasta touched his shoulder. She murmured, ‘You can do this.’
He looked round, was brought back into the cabin. ‘OK,’ he said to her. ‘Thanks. Sorry, folks. I need to keep remembering I’m station commander. You might also be reassured that my background is piloting, some of it military, so I do know my way around the controls of this thing.’
And he’d pulled rank to take this tub for a joy ride, with his little son in tow, on this extraordinary day – just because he could. And so he wasn’t where he was supposed to be in this crisis – on the bridge, in charge. Asshole.
‘So anyhow I need to keep an ear open for the comms on what’s going on out there. But meantime let’s make sure we can stay safe in here.’
He glanced around again. His passengers looked grim, scared, determined, or a mixture. A couple nodded back at him. Nobody panicking yet, at least. Good.
‘Just close up your pressure suit if you’re wearing one – if you haven’t already – or else get hold of the survival bubble under your seat. Like the one my son is climbing into. Don’t seal it until you need it.’
Vasta held up the fabric of the bubble she was working. ‘Look for this,’ she called back. ‘Under your seat. It’s simple enough.’ She turned to Caspar with a rueful grin. ‘So what now?’
Caspar tried to focus. What now?
Save more lives.
Prioritise, man.
He quickly set a course towards that spreading cloud of debris, seeking survivors. The engines pulsed, a soft roar, a kick in the back, and the ferry started to drift cautiously forward.
He had the chance now to glance down at Fabio in his bubble, Vasta still aiding him.
‘Thank you for your help, Adviser. And I’m truly sorry you’re in this situation, given you’re about the most important personage ever to have visited the hub complex.’
‘Then I’m glad you’re at the controls, Commander Caspar.’
He felt like laughing, darkly. ‘I only took this late ferry myself for a bit of adventure. Spectacle. Before we settle down for five years of spaceflight to Nine.’
‘And I pulled a few strings to get aboard. All because I wanted one last ferry ride. We both lucked out.’
Caspar took another glance at his instrument panel and comms gear. All of which were blaring, messages on screen and in his ear.
He looked out of his window again.
The huge flank of the Cronus, around which the ferry had been crawling just before the incident, was now a wall to his right-hand side, close enough for proximity alarms to flash. The spilling-out of the ship’s contents seemed to have slowed. Evidently nothing remained to be sucked easily from those breached under-the-hull compartments, after the initial plume of lost air had pushed stuff out into space. Now the Cronus was rolling on its own axis, so that the great wound left by the sideswipe of that dumb Lunar Consortium ship was lifting up and out of his sight.
And the ferry was now slowly nudging its way into the denser debris field.
Whatever had already spilled out of the ship was still here, all around them, a gruesome cloud slowly scattering. Some of this seemed structural: hull panels, even fragments of supporting beams, and slabs of the dense rock-like material – supplied from the Moon – that provided shielding for the passengers from cosmic radiation. Then there were what looked like internal fittings: panels of faux wood, even a table. Smaller pieces – dinnerware? Cutlery? Pillows, blankets. A picture of some kind, once fixed to a wall.
By now Vasta was sitting in Fabio’s seat, with Fabio on her lap wrapped up in the survival bubble, open at the neck where his head and shoulders protruded.
‘I suppose this could have been worse,’ Vasta said. ‘Could it? A more severe impact, or some failure within – the power plant blowing up—’
‘Highly unlikely.’
Vasta smiled tiredly. ‘Don’t give me the PR line. I have got a science background. I can figure probabilities, and since the quasar I’ve more than once had to estimate existential risks on the spot in one presidential briefing or another. In short, you can’t kid a kidder. And I know you must have planned in a range of catastrophic scenarios. Not you – I mean the designers of the Cronus.’
‘To some extent. But you have to remember the Cronus has just been pretty hastily adapted, from an outer-planets-capable fission-engine cruiser to an Oort cloud explorer, running on fusion. There’s a long-term goal to build much more smartness into our spacegoing structures—’
‘So a strike like this would barely be noticeable.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Much more survivable, though. One day.’
Vasta ruffled Fabio’s hair. ‘Less room for heroes.’
‘I’ll settle for more live cowards … Here comes more of the debris cloud.’
Much of it was petty stuff, but there was a lot of it. It swam around the ferry, like scattered fragments of a vanished world, Caspar thought now. Bits of cutlery. Books – real, old-fashioned, paper books carried into space, tokens of vanity, of luxury. Towels, curtains even, stamped with the ship’s monogram, an elaborate ‘C’.
‘Hubris,’ Elizabeth Vasta murmured, looking out. ‘That’s what a lot of people will say about this incident. Especially the religious, I suspect. All this luxury, almost decadence, crammed into what in the end was a pretty fragile vessel. We have only been a few centuries in space. We dared go too far, and here’s the result. It reminds me of the wreck of the Titanic. If you know about that.’
Caspar grunted. ‘There were a lot of military sea crew in my family. One reason I got this job; that kind of family tradition can still impress. And this reminds me more of the Lusitania incident.’
Swathed in his unsealed survival bag, Fabio tried out that word. ‘Lucy – Tony?’
Caspar ruffled his son’s hair. ‘She was a passenger liner, son – probably far more luxurious than anything the Cronus will ever aspire to. American ship. Crossed the Atlantic during the First World War, or tried to. Sunk by German torpedoes. I read about it. Before it went down it left a “dead wake”, some called it, of bodies, life rafts, internal fittings – and bits of luxury, clothes, and menus for fancy meals …’
‘I know about the Lusitania.’
A new voice breaking into Caspar’s comms feed. There was no accompanying ID flag. A woman’s voice.
He glanced at Vasta. She shrugged.
Caspar leaned forward. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘Well, I think you know who I am. Who we must be.’
‘The crew of the Aquila?’
‘Commander Caspar, I’m Doria Bohm of the Lunar Consortium.’
Vasta murmured to Caspar. ‘Bohm. I know her, her rank. Can you mute your conversation? So she’s talking to us alone? On my authority, if you need it.’
He frowned, but tapped a button. ‘Not even the ferry’s passengers can hear us now.’ Irritated, he scanned his data feeds. ‘Consortium ship. I have your position but I can’t see you.’
‘I’ll fire up the docking lights.’
And, casting around the sky, he saw a cluster of new stars shimmer into existence. Dimmer floods with wider beams revealed the ugly, blocky shape of the Aquila, familiar to Caspar from many briefings.
‘You see us now?’
Vasta leaned into view and introduced herself. ‘I am a special science adviser to the world presidency. I’m also witness to what amounts to a crime scene, here. As far as I’m concerned, everything we say here is on the record.’
A pause. ‘Very well, Adviser Vasta. As I said, my name is Doria Bohm. I have a senior position in the Lunar Consortium. And my co-pilot—’
A man’s voice. ‘My name is Jeorg North. I’m actually, according to my passport and ID, an Earth resident, by law. Just to speed things up when they start issuing the arrest warrants.’
Vasta frowned. ‘You? So what are you doing out here, Jeorg North?’
‘Following my husband, if you must know, Professor Vasta. He got a gig on the Cronus – his name is Bheki Molewa – unfairly. Long story—’
‘And all of this damage, because of that?’
‘I don’t care what your motive is,’ Caspar snapped. ‘Your presence here is illegal, without the proper permissions, the licensing. You know that. And through your crass manoeuvrings you have caused physical damage to the Cronus, possibly to our installation here. Lives were lost. One of them could have been my son’s. Or mine. Let alone Adviser Vasta’s.’
Doria said, ‘We only intended a gesture. The collision was a regrettable accident—’
‘So you tell us.’ Caspar’s anger deepened. He looked down at Fabio, who, astonishingly, seemed to be falling asleep.
Vasta touched his arm. ‘Commander Caspar. May I …’
He didn’t want to yield the mic. He wanted to berate this reasonable-sounding woman, this Doria from the Moon. But knew he mustn’t.
‘Go ahead.’
Vasta leaned closer to the control deck. She said earnestly, ‘You’re conflicted, Pilot North. The incident is done, committed. The question is how we are all going to get past this, isn’t it? If the Cronus mission is to survive. And so— No, wait. Let’s do this all at once. Emmanuel, is there any way you could open up a channel to a particular passenger on the Cronus? There’s a man called John Smith …’
Caspar checked screens. ‘It depends. Things are going to be pretty screwed up in there. The emergency comms channel is most likely to be up, but it depends on whether the passenger you’re looking for is still alive, bluntly.’ He tapped a console pad. ‘It’s more than likely that he is, though. If not in his cabin, then at his emergency muster point—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Vasta said, a tad impatiently. ‘We can review lifeboat drills when we have time. Because for now, time is running out.’
He frowned at that. ‘What do you mean by that? The rescue operation will take as long as it takes – and then the salvage and repair job will have to start, of course. It’s going to take weeks now before the Cronus is ready to fly—’
‘No. Not weeks. We have hours, at most.’
‘Hours? Until what?’
‘Until the news of this incident reaches Earth, and Earth starts reacting. Eighty minutes out at lightspeed, eighty minutes for any reply, right? Well, I want us to have stabilised this situation before any formal control can be imposed from Earth. We still have to get this ship, the Cronus, to Nine, as soon as possible. Because the Cronus and its expertise represent our best shot at responding to the crisis that seems to be pivoting out there. We can’t let the mission be cancelled. The quasar alone is turning into an overwhelming, existential threat, and we have to deal with that. We have to control this situation – and that means we have to control perceptions.’
Caspar nodded cautiously. ‘OK. But let’s be clear. You are a senior adviser to the World President’s cabinet.’
‘I am.’
‘But you are not actually the President,’ Caspar said. ‘You don’t have her authority. You can’t speak for her.’
‘Noted. But she does listen to me, very closely. And I have you here, a senior figure at Saturn itself.’
Caspar felt deeply uncomfortable with this sudden turn. ‘I don’t feel I represent anybody except the agencies I report to—’
She ignored that. ‘Meanwhile, we have two representatives of the Lunar Consortium on the line. Of which one, I happen to know, Doria Bohm, is pretty high ranking. I was briefed on this months ago. And – Emmanuel, have you found that passenger on the Cronus? That’s why I asked. John Smith. If you can. You met him—’
Caspar tapped a comms pad. ‘Of course.’
‘Yes, we did meet,’ came a cultured voice. ‘This is what’s left of John Smith, stuck in my cabin aboard what’s left of the Cronus.’
Caspar nodded, smiled for the link. The smile was tight. He was aware that all this could well go public, and soon. ‘This is Commander Caspar, John. We’ll have you out of there, and the ship ready to resume its mission – well, whenever we can.’
‘I’m sure you will. But for now … Ah, Professor Vasta. You have sent us some of your conversation, a few sentences. It sounds as if you have a proposition to make.’
‘I think I do,’ Vasta said. She glanced around, at Caspar, at his son apparently nodding off on her lap – at the ferry passengers behind them in their emergency gear, working their way through this strange, unwelcome adventure with apparent patience.
She said, ‘John, you hear me? And Emmanuel, can you bring the lunar folk back in? Aquila?’
‘We’re here,’ said Jeorg North.
‘Me too,’ Doria called.
Vasta sighed. ‘Well, then. We’re here. I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you all here today.’
Leaden silence.
‘OK,’ Vasta said. ‘Old Earth joke that doesn’t translate so well any more.
‘Let’s look at the situation.
‘In fact we are all here today because of Planet Nine, and the situation out there. Correct? You know we have a crew out there—’
‘A crew of Conservers,’ Doria said.
‘It was a Conserver project from the start,’ John Smith said mildly. ‘A Conserver conception, Conserver funding, resources.’
‘Very well, Doria, John. But whatever priority the Conservers may claim – whatever the creature they call Feathers really is, whatever the strange object Planet Nine has turned out to be – Earth is most concerned about the quasar-like eruption at the heart of the Galaxy. And, it seems, the only place we’re going to get answers to questions about all that is out at Planet Nine. And, starting from this crash site, the only way we’ll get there—’
‘Is aboard the Cronus,’ Caspar said. ‘So what’s your plan, Senior Adviser?’
She seemed to have to force a smile. ‘Look. Here we are, representing the various branches into which humanity seems to be diverging. Ripping each other apart. Look at us in this battered ferry. Yet we have to work together, so that we can be saved together, if that’s possible at all. Starting here and now.’
Doria said, boldly, Caspar thought, ‘Well, then, that has to include the Consortium.’
But Caspar, with his son beside him, blazed at that. ‘You come into a space I command and leave it littered with corpses. This was a criminal act. And now you demand representation. What political argument have you got to justify that? You, you personally—’
Vasta raised a hand, a calming gesture. ‘Despite that we’re going to give you, the Consortium, a presence on the Cronus. On my personal authority. As ratified, hopefully, by President Mason when she hears about this.’
Caspar had to protest again. ‘There has been injury, death, material damage—’
‘But we have to move forward together even so,’ Vasta said. ‘You can only make peace with your enemies.’ She waved a hand. ‘And whatever lies out there, at Nine and beyond, is bigger than all of us.’
John Smith said, ‘And you’re the genius who’s going to handle all this, are you, Elizabeth?’
She smiled. ‘Well, I’m on the spot. Anyhow that’s the plan. All we have to do is to sign up to all this, and present Earth with – well, a fait accompli. I can hear you, Doria, John. Just giving you one last chance to object.’
John Smith was first to respond. ‘That’s a useful summary, Elizabeth. But I can’t imagine the authorities on Earth or Moon condoning what you did, Jeorg North. And it’s clear that the responsibility is yours. You won’t be going any further – save back to Earth, probably.’
‘Very well.’ Doria sounded strained. ‘I’ll go with you. If you’ll allow it, Commander Caspar. That’s a wise judgement.’
And then Caspar sighed. ‘I hope so. But all this after we have rescued the lost, tended the injured, and mourned the dead.’
Vasta nodded gravely. ‘Of course.’
Fabio wriggled and stretched in his survival bubble, and looked up at his father. ‘Are we there yet, Dad?’