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Conditions aboard the Interplanetary Transport Vessel Highland were relaxed, the crew lounging in the zero-g environment between stops. Pilot-Captain George Werner let the bridge crew rest during these long trips, knowing that they needed to be alert during their transition back to normal speed. Navigation Officer Paula Jennings sat strapped into her seat, glancing occasionally at the nav-Board to make sure they were on course and their path was clear. Of course, the flight computer took care of most course-corrections, but computers malfunctioned and people were still better at communicating information, so Nav. Officers around the system got to keep their jobs.
“We’ll be approaching Sentinel 1013-B2 in thirty seconds,” Jennings said to no one in particular, as the Captain and the rest of the crew were occupied with their own conversations. She yawned as she looked at the screen, eyes scrunching. Then she sat bolt upright – had that been a warning flash on the proximity sensors? They read all green now… must have been her imagination. Nonetheless, ship protocol required every possibility to be reported.
“P.C. Werner! I think the proximity sensors might have found something.”
Werner turned to the Nav. Station, “Proximity warning?”
“No sir… I don’t think so. I think it was just a glitch,” She wished she hadn’t said anything now, as the entire bridge crew was staring at her station, waiting for a signal.
Werner scratched his chin, “Well, bring up the camera.” She did so, and a warped view of the space around the Highland opened on her screen. The Harrison-Walker Field that let them travel at near light-speed twisted the space around them, as if they were looking through a giant fishbowl. It was impossible to see anything through their internal cameras.
“I’m going to tap into the sentinel to get a better view sir.” Jennings tapped out commands on her Board. A new view came onto her screen. Her eyes widened as two tiny silver blurs streaked towards each other.
~
Mr. Traverson, assignment manager of the Interplanetary Investigation Bureau’s Io moon station, was having a rotten day. There was a problem with the atmosphere vents on the ‘east’ side of the ring segment, then some idiot got himself killed when he didn’t fasten his pressure suit correctly trying to repair the hull, and now a report from Europa about a missing Transport due in from Mars.
Presently he was riding down the lift from the rotating ring segment of the station into the stationary cylinder that extended two hundred yards perpendicular to the ring. He braced himself for zero-g as the lift neared the end of its line.
He grasped the nearest handhold as the door opened and pushed off down the narrow hallway. Per protocol, he was supposed to meet with the P.C. of the ship they were sending out to find it before they set off to go over undocking procedures personally. It was a stupid rule in Traverson’s opinion. If only he could assign the duty to someone else…
“Pilot-Captain Holland, is this ship ready to go?” he called out as he neared the loading room. A young, nervous looking man floated towards him.
“Sorry sir, P.C. Holland is already on board. He said he would transmit procedures via radio.”
Traverson grumbled and ran a hand over his balding head, “I could have stayed in my office for this.” He drifted over to the nearest com-Board and sent a signal to the ship docked outside. A view port was open beside the Board, granting him a look at the vessel. It was a smaller version of a commercial transport, a big central cylinder, with a smaller, two-leveled one inside that rotated to produce centrifugal ‘gravity’. On either end were conical structures that contained engines and the H.W. generators that stuck out on the tips. Instead of the metallic color of a commercial craft, it was dull black with the name ‘Midsummer Night’ printed in gray along its hull.
Holland’s voice came over the speakers, “P.C. Holland, that you Mister T?”
“Yes, and you’d better have a good reason for breaking protocol.”
“Well, with a missing ship out there, I thought we should get under way as soon as possible. I’ve got everything ready over here.” They both knew that docking procedures were just a pain in the a**.
Traverson sighed, “Alright, I’m going to let this one pass ‘cause I’m in no mood to deal with it. I’m sending you Specialist Kaen in case there’s trouble with the Highwind, or whatever the thing’s name is.”
“Roger that Mister T, I met him as he came onboard.”
“Get out of here already.”
“Over and out.”
~
“Kaen, this has got to be the biggest mess of the decade.”
Jeffrey Kaen sighed and walked up to the central Board, brushing a bit of dandruff off the shoulder of his gray and blue uniform. “Yeah, I bet it is. Is that decaf?” Barry grunted. “Damn.”
Kaen was a slim man, sharp features, short black hair and no sign of facial hair. Barry Holland was the opposite to a comical degree. Six foot one and thick armed. Holland had a bushy brown beard and thinning hair.
“We got a collision, intersecting Fields, full on inter-planet speed,” Holland touched the Board and a starscape appeared on the screen. “Fortunately the sentinel caught the whole thing, ‘bout twelve hundred kilometers out.”
He touched the board again and the starscape shifted, the zoom counter in the corner counting up. Kaen shifted on his feet, scratching his head. Finally, a silvery blur shot across the screen and the camera turned to track it. A few moments later, a second blur streaked in from the other direction. Mid-screen, the two blurs collided. Kaen cleared his throat and watched more intently. Really, the ships could have been up to seven kilometers apart – all it took was for the Harrison-Walker Fields to cross. The camera zoomed another several times, enough to see the two ships be ripped apart by their own H.W. Fields, debris spiraling counter-clockwise until the generator pods were torn apart.
Kaen’s brows knit into a troubled look, “What the hell…”
“You’re supposed to be the tech’ expert, you tell me ‘what the hell,’” Holland shut off the display and brought up the sentinel’s time counter and sensor database. “That was just over a month ago. It took Europa colony three days to confirm the Highland was missing, another day for them to contact the nearest IIB station, who sent us out. Took us about a month to get here, and I suspect that the other ship, the uh…,” he checked the screen, “Yamoto, is being reported missing as we speak.”
Kaen was staring into space, hand on his chin. “Every commercial interplanetary vessel is equipped with three separate proximity sensors, designed with quadruple redundancy. For this to happen, all three sensors on both ships would have to fail. Do you realize the statistical impossibility that represents? A single proximity sensor fails every five years.”
“Sabotage?”
Kaen looked over at his peer, “Who would want to sabotage two commercial spacecraft somewhere between Jupiter and Mars? And not claim credit for it?”
“Maybe they have claimed credit, we just haven’t heard about it yet,” Holland took a sip from his coffee.
Kaen thought for a long while this time. “The Anti-Expansionists you think?”
“Them?” Holland snorted, “You think they could pull this off? They’ve hardly got the resources to bomb a coffee shop right now; the boys over at the Mars division have been cracking down so hard on ‘em.”
“I was thinking that they’re getting desperate. Desperate extremists do desperate things.”
Holland grunted, “Well, we’ve seen all we need to. Let’s get back to the Io station, see what they’ve heard.” He paused with his hand over the board, “Ugh, you don’t even want to know the death toll for this mess.” He blanked the screen.
