A Deck was command and control center for the ship. Murasawa and Vogt followed Singh through the hatch and settled onto a landing just outside the main control station. They entered the space and found the compartment jammed with electricians, workbots and floating clumps of terminal boards and junction boxes.
A woman sat at the commander’s station, checking off switch positions against a tablet strapped to her knee. She had short jet black hair and high, angular cheeks, giving her a haughty, almost arrogant look to her vaguely central European face. Her uniform said UNISPACE and Hawley instantly recognized Lieutenant Commander Jana Polansky from the back.
“Attention on deck!” he snapped, partly in jest, just to see what would happen.
Polansky’s head snapped around and she was already springing out of the seat when she realized Murasawa’s joke. She stood up, clinging to a nearby stanchion and the tablet banged against the seat.
“Captain Murasawa…I heard the shuttle dock awhile ago…didn’t know you were aboard her. Er…welcome to Herschel…I was just checking settings on the main panel—“
“At ease, Commander…don’t stop what you’re doing. I just wanted to see things for myself. It’s been a few years since I served on a cycler. And I wanted to show Captain Vogt her how a real ship is run. Vogt’s skippering the Pegasus.”
“Yes, sir…she’s coming along nicely…all the controls are powered up…we’re just running continuity checks today, sir. You know how the schedule is, sir.”
“Insane as usual. Glad to have you on the crew. By the way, have you seen the crew manifest for our little jaunt into the void?”
“Briefly, sir. Lieutenant Kohl will be our navigation officer. He’s the only one I know personally.”
Murasawa pulled a commandpad from his pocket and called up the duty roster. “Check out our new Engineering Officer, Swan.”
Vogt studied the names, reading aloud as he went down the list. “UNISPACE’s latest fad. Now, we’re just like Quantum Corps. Aki, your engineering officer is a swarm angel. A cloud of bugs.”
Polansky stared back at both them, swallowing her irritation. Clearly, Murasawa knew what she was. She didn’t feel the need to hit people over the head with it, but really… who wasn’t nowadays?
“Oh, yes…we have swarm entities now serving as line officers…on actual ships…while they’re underway.”
Vogt just shook his head. “Get ready for it, Captain. Further adventures in outer space…that’s what I call it. I can’t wait till we muster our crew for the first time.”
Vikram Singh cleared his throat. “Perhaps, we should continue our tour of the ship, Captain…I can show you some of the new stuff we’ve installed on Big Herk.”
With that, Murasawa, Vogt and Singh headed aft through Herschel’s main gangway. Jana Polansky was left alone on the command deck, with her blueprints and wiring bundles, wondering.
She decided to get to work. There was a mission to perform and it had to be done before Herschel shoved off in two days.
Aboard the Herschel (UNS-230)
Earthshield Deployment Trajectory E-2
Post-Boost + 8 days
2245 hours (U.T.)
Dietrick Vogel finished off his beer in the ship’s galley and belched. He stared out the porthole nearby, not that there was anything to see millions of miles from nowhere. Black space. The Great Beyond. He might as well have been inside the closet of his bunk compartment on B Deck, for all there was to look at. He glared back at Roy Favors, who was nibbling up scraps of his sandwich and eyeing the clock on the bulkhead. They were both due at their duty stations in less than ten minutes.
“I’m telling you, Roy, that Commander Polansky’s different, somehow. I can’t put my finger on it, but she’s just plain weird. You spend time on A Deck…you telling me you ain’t seen that?”
“She’s an officer…what do you expect? They’re all different…like a different species.”
Vogel eyed the clock, decided he’d better get down to B deck, where his shift as a Systems Tech 1 was set to start in less than ten minutes. “I dunno…this whole mission’s messed up. Details all hush-hush…crew cobbled together from every vacuumhead who can lift a wrench…headed out to places nobody in his right mind would go…laying down some kind of glorified spider web in space…it’s nuts, if you ask me.”
Favors just stared morosely into his drink. “Nobody made you sign up…we’re all volunteers here. Why’d you come aboard?”
“Money, same as you. Cripes, I got debts…got that big wagon back on Earth. Plus a neat little sailer for the ocean…somebody’s got to pay for all that crap. And my oldest…Rico…you know he’s headed off to college. All that Ed-Net stuff and nobody can afford those stimplants anymore. So he’s got to get his fat butt into class and on-line.”
Vogel left for B Deck and Favors just sat there wondering. Big Herk was only a week plus out of Gateway Station, on a speed run to L1, and already the gripes and the whining had started. Maybe Dietrick was right. The whole mission was cursed. You didn’t have to prowl Big Herk’s gangways, corridors and decks for long to get a strong whiff of foreboding, a sense of unease among the crew. Some said the whole thing was a hunt for ghosts, a fool’s errand, cobbled together at the last minute, doomed to fail. Having a weird bird like Commander Polansky onboard didn’t make matters any better.
Captain Murasawa’s EO was a known hardass, even allowing for the great legs, the high cheekbones and exotic eyes. She was a looker but like Vogel said, she was serious bad news and she didn’t belong on an old cycler heading off to the Great Beyond. She was greener than fresh puke and meaner than a snake. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but most of the crew had taken an instant dislike to her. Crews were like that. They could sniff out phonies and ass-kissers in no time and Jana Polansky gave everybody the creeps.
Favors had to admit he was one of them. There was an aloofness, a kind of regal distance to the way she comported herself, like she didn’t belong and she knew it but she wasn’t going to lower her guard to acknowledge the obvious. Frontier Corps officers were strange beings from another dimension…everybody already knew that.
Jana Polansky was the strangest being he’d ever seen in twenty-four years with the Corps.
One deck forward of Herschel’s wardroom, Lieutenant Commander Jana Polansky and Captain Akiro Murasawa were up in the command center on A deck, methodically going over mission orders. Command was empty except for the two officers. A phasing burn was coming up in a few minutes, a burn which would put Herschel on a gravity-assist course toward her initial deployment position at L1. Once the burn was made, Big Herk was committed to deep space. She wouldn’t be able to turn about and come home for weeks once her trajectory was shifted. The physics of orbital mechanics would make sure of that.
Murasawa wasn’t too sure he liked Frontier Corps cramming a new and untested officer down his throat as engineering officer, even though he knew perfectly well that she came with the highest ratings and fitness reports.
He’d spent the last night before shove-off at the Mariner Bar, at Gateway Station, knocking back a few cold ones with other officers. The question of using angels, para-human nanobotic swarm entities, as serving line officers surfaced some strong opinions. Murasawa was one of them.
“Look, guys, I’m an old cycler captain. I’m used to spinning around the Sun in a nice easy stable orbit…not too much excitement, nothing to see, nothing to do. I’m for anything that makes my life easier. The Corps started integrating swarm para-human ‘crewmen’ into our normal rotations about fifteen years ago. Call it efficiency. Cost savings. Latest technology upgrade. Politics. Call it whatever you want. Just don’t give me something that makes my life harder. Cycler captains like routine. We don’t like surprises. And so far—“ Murasawa shrugged, worked his beer for a moment, “—it’s worked like a charm. Commander Polansky has been a most able crewm
an and engineering officer. Does everything I ask. Doesn’t get the rest of the crew riled up…anymore. We had some issues in the beginning…I’m sure you know the scuttlebutt. You know…dinosaurs, troglodytes who can’t accept change. Everybody has those types. But Polansky’s worked out pretty well.”
The bar discussion had gone on for awhile and Murasawa remembered there never had been a consensus on whether the angels made good officers or not. Pretty much true for Frontier Corps as well, he thought. Angels had been serving as crewmen for decades, although none had ever captained a ship, even a bus like this old cycler ship, which most considered pretty boring duty. He’d never had any reason to doubt Polansky’s fitness, but all the same…you couldn’t help but wonder.
“Commander, all systems ready for the phasing burn?”
Jana Polansky scanned a tablet from her right-hand seat, double-checked something from the main console and nodded in the affirmative.
“Yes, sir, Captain. All departments report ready. Plasma engines on line, voltages steady, reactors at full mil power. Central mast rigidizing complete. Tanks at flight pressure. The ship is ready for the phasing burn, sir.”
“Very well, Commander. Give me the count.”
Polansky checked the ship’s clock. “Five minutes on the mark, sir. Maneuver Two is enabled and ISAAC flags no anomalies or contingencies at this time. Waiting to proceed.”
Murasawa checked the board himself. The whole thing was fully automated but Frontier Corps captains like to feel the wind on their faces, so he checked anyway. ISAAC was the ship’s master computer and ISAAC was never wrong.
“Proceed.”
Polansky punched a few buttons and ISAAC counted down the last few minutes to the burn.
It was a gentle acceleration, less than five meters per second, but the result of the burn would be to put Big Herk on an tangential approach trajectory to L1. The entire burn lasted less than a minute and when the ship’s engines cut off, Herschel was on course, right in the center of the corridor, essentially zero rates in all axes, for L1 approach two weeks from now.
“Well done, Commander. I’m heading aft to grab a bite. You have the bridge.” He hoisted himself out of his seat and turned toward the hatch to the central gangway.
“Thank you, sir. It is always a pleasure to see all systems perform so well. Scanning no anomalies at this time, sir. Systems functioning at ninety-seven point six percent design capacity.”
Something in the way she said it caught Murasawa’s attention. He sat back down. “You say that a lot, Commander. All ship systems functioning at capacity. How do you figure that?”
Polansky turned slightly in her seat. She was attractive in an exotic way, with her high cheek bones and oval eyes, partially hidden behind dataspecs. The specs glowed and winked red and green as she accessed data from ISAAC and studied parameters from ship systems.
“It’s an algorithm, Captain. You are aware of this, I’m sure. All ship systems report status regularly to ISAAC, which formats the data and reports to me. I have a real time picture of how well all systems are performing. A good engineering officer always has this data at their command, for decisions by the captain.”
Quoted right out of the Frontier Corps manual of command, Murasawa knew. Verbatim. “Do you ever sleep, Polansky? I mean, we all have duty shifts. I know Command is never really off duty, but you must take some downtime eventually. Even angels need some kind of maintenance, don’t they?”
Polansky smiled faintly and Murasawa thought he detected just the slightest flaw in her expression…very subtle, but it was like her lips weren’t attached to her face just right. What the hell was that? Then he remembered something from her personnel file…Jana Polansky was enhanced, loaded with bots and whizbang configs to rev up her respiration, her mind, her muscles, everything. She could swap files with ISAAC like kids swapped lies on the playground.
Probably some kind of weird closet Assimilationist, he decided.
“Sir, as you know, I…” she seemed at a loss for words. “…I require less rest than most of the crew. Maintenance periods are a part of my routine. I don’t rest the same way you do, sir. Or the rest of the crew.”
Murasawa sniffed. “So I noticed. And that neuro-boost you went through several years ago…what does that tell you about our crew? How are they performing, five weeks into the mission?”
Polansky gave that some thought. Murasawa saw her specs winking on and off furiously. No doubt checking with ISAAC, dredging up all kinds of files. Angels could eat bits and bytes like kids ate candy.
“The crew is performing at a composite rate of greater than ninety-five percent efficiency, according to the percentage of tasks completed on time. Department ratings range from ninety-one percent to ninety nine percent in Engineering. The median value is—“
Murasawa held up a hand. “Okay, okay, I give up. You’ve got all the data. But I’m hearing talk, scuttlebutt really, about this mission. Some of the crew is uneasy. Some of the crew thinks the mission is cobbled together, that it’s not well thought out, that it’s all politics to show people back home we’re doing something. What does your data say about that, Commander?”
Polansky seemed to be checking some kind of reading on her specs. Her eyes narrowed. “I have no such data, Captain. As engineering officer, you know I have the highest enthusiasm for our mission. Operation Earthshield is an important mission, critical to preventing the approach of unauthorized swarm formations into Earth-Moon space. Any concerns and discontents among the crew have not been reflected in the departmental ratings or performance data.”
Murasawa figured he ought to be glad for that. “Polansky, you sound like a marketing brochure. Give me the residuals for the burn and let’s go over the rest of the mission time line. We’ve got L1 Encounter in less than two weeks. I want daily drills in every department. On a mission like this, we’ve got to do everything we can to stay sharp.”
“Captain, the next waypoint is E-6, less than five days away. May I recommend—“But Jana Polansky never finished her sentence. At that exact moment, an event timer in her central processor had reached zero. The little surprise she had been ordered to plant in Herschel’s Supplies and Stores deck commenced its programmed sequence. It was time to start.
Barely an hour before the master alarm sounded, Detrick Vogel had decided that he just couldn’t stay in his cramped bunk compartment a second longer. It was hot, stuffy, noisy and what the hell was that smell, anyway? Better to slip out and head for the galley. A sandwich and a beer…or what passed for beer aboard Big Herk…that ought to do the trick.
But before he could exit the crews’ berth on B deck into the gangway tunnel, a shadow had drifted by the hatch opening. Instinctively, he held back to let whoever it was pass by.
It turned out to be Commander Polansky, the swarm angel EO, moving quickly aft.
If he had been asked about the incident later, Systems Tech Vogel could have never given a convincing reason for why he decided to follow the angel to wherever it was going. Instinct, maybe. Suspicion, for sure. Curiosity. All these could have been suggested as motives for what he had done.
Regardless, Vogel waited for a full five-second count, then slipped out into the gangway. Down at the end of the tunnel that ran through the center of Herschel, giving access to all decks and compartments, he saw the back of Polansky’s head. She turned and slipped into the hatch for C deck.
Why’s she going that way, Vogel wondered? C deck was for Service and Support. It contained the lockout chamber for crewmen to enter and leave the ship while she was underway. Vogel instinctively headed down the gangway in the same direction. C deck also provided access to Big Herk’s tail mast, and a narrow tunnel aft where equipment and controls were housed for propellant tanks, her reactors and the plasma torch engines.
Vogel crept down the gangway with a growing sense of unease. He could feel the ship settlin
g in for cruise after the phasing burn. Vibration was steady and she was settling on to her trajectory for the run out to L1. Vogel didn’t want to think too much about that. The truth was there were already a million things that could go wrong before they ever got there.
And he had a feeling the first one might be about to happen—
At C deck hatch, Vogel peered cautiously into the deck compartment. At first, he didn’t see anything, didn’t see Commander Polansky, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t even sure Systems personnel were allowed down here. He certainly wasn’t familiar with any of the gear or systems on C deck.
Vogel slipped through the hatch.
That’s when Systems Tech Vogel spotted Commander Jana Polansky. Behind some starboard rack-mounted shelving, Polansky…or whatever the hell she was…had lost a bit of structure, so that the swarm was no longer quite so human-like, more like a slightly misshapen funhouse mirror distortion of a human. The swarm had gathered around some gear mounted on the hull itself.
With a start, Vogel soon realized the gear which had attracted Polansky’s attention and efforts was a hull valve, part of the logistics airlock system. The valve assembly allowed air in and out of Big Herk’s pressure equalizing tanks. The hull valves helped Herschel ship supplies and gear from space without having to de-pressurize the whole deck.
From his memory of a distant briefing before they had left Gateway Station, Vogel recalled that the hull valves were fully exposed to the vacuum of space. It was a critical system. The hull valves had to work. If they failed closed, Herschel couldn’t expel air from the airlock and the outer hatch couldn’t be opened. If they failed open, the entire interior pressure hull, all spaces, could be exposed to vacuum. A catastrophic de-pressurization casualty could result…Captain Murasawa had been quite clear about that.
What the hell is she doing? Vogel wondered. He eased into the deck compartment and then it hit him.
Jana Polansky was letting some of her swarm bots infest the hull valve.