CHAPTER 26:
Express Delivery
USSF Office of Scientific Integration
@OSIGenBoatright
The Moon, Mars and Beyond division of OSI, announces that the C-21-MX cargo vessel, christened the Bat, will rendezvous with Percheron mid-flight on its return to Earth. Moreover, Bat is indeed a manned vessel, as a proof-of-concept demonstration of emergency resupply and rescue capabilities as humanity expands beyond Earth orbit. Colonel Glenn Shepard, our first bionically augmented astronaut, is aboard Bat and will return to Earth with Percheron and the Marsbase One crew in four months.
ChirpChat, September 2043
As acceleration continued to build, Glenn was pressed deeper into the cushioned lining of his MILES suit. He could start to feel some of the harder components of the suit underneath the cushions. Those could cause significant bruising, and he wondered if he needed to try to adjust his position. While he could slightly move his legs and left arm, moving his torso was impossible under acceleration. It felt as if all his internal organs were being pulled through his spine, but the support and position meant that the pressure was still tolerable. The vision grayed out in his right eye but his left eye continued to feed information to his brain. Not only the remote feeds and information that interfaced through his bionic system, but also visual information from the inside of his suit. He could still hear comm chatter, but it faded in importance and seemed to be coming from a long distance away.
There was a brief lessening of thrust, and then several sharp jolts as the solid fuel boosters burned out and the liquid-fueled boosters throttled up to full thrust. The gee-force indicator continued to climb through two gees. An intense low-frequency vibration signaled that plasma fusion from the Helicity2 drive had started up. The combined force of rockets and fusion drive would top out at six point five gees before the liquid-fueled engines cut out. The fusion drive would continue to thrust at two gees for another ten hours.
Fighter pilots experienced six gees and more in dives and dogfights; and roller coaster enthusiasts could experience as much as eight to nine gees, but those accelerations only lasted for one or two seconds. Glenn had experienced six gees in a centrifuge at Joint Aerospace Base Wright-Patterson in Ohio, but without bionics, LVAD, or high-gee training, he’d only managed thirty seconds before losing consciousness. The accelerometer indicated six point two six gees. Amazingly, Glenn was still conscious, but it hurt. Fortunately, the readout monitoring his LVAD stayed in the green, and the core conditioning exercises seemed to have helped, but his abdominal muscles would be awfully sore.
With a sudden sensation of relief, the acceleration cut off. The moment acceleration eased, he sent a command to loosen restraints so that he could move his arms and legs. He rocked his head left and right, and rotated his neck without fear of serious injury. He was functional and awake, having survived the worst of the acceleration. The two-gee constant acceleration of the Helicity2 drive still held him tight against the acceleration padding. Double his body weight for ten hours would wear him down, but it was tolerable since he really didn’t need to move around. It was difficult to move, but not impossible; the stress was worth it for the resulting velocity.
The Helicity2 combined a low-thrust ion drive which fed a higher-thrust plasma drive, which in turn incorporated a fusion “afterburner” to propel him to speeds one hundred times faster than even the New Horizons probe, which had achieved a speed of fifty thousand kilometers per hour—after months of constant acceleration. For him, it would only be ten hours and ten minutes of acceleration, then he would drift for nearly five days, then decelerate for a day. Fortunately, deceleration would only be at one gee of thrust. Then he would find out exactly what was wrong with the crew aboard Percheron.
Glenn slept when he could. He continued to monitor communication from Mission Control, particularly once his presence on Bat was revealed. Fortunately, the general had told everyone that Glenn would be staying quiescent to save air and resources. There wasn’t much extra room inside the MILES, but he was able to pull his arms and legs out of the suit’s appendages to work out the cramps and strains. He could also eat, drink and deal with waste elimination. For the rest of it, he slept . . . and dreamed.
Surprisingly, these were not the PTSD nightmares he still experienced on occasion. If they were, he would have had to sedate himself to avoid thrashing about and injuring himself in the confines of the MILES suit. After all, Nik wasn’t there to apply his “squirt-gun therapy.” On the other hand, Nik had supplied him with music and voice recordings to assist with meditation and to keep him in a relaxed state.
Much to Glenn’s amazement, it worked. Most of his onboard dreams were not anxiety inducing at all, rather, there was a surreal feeling to them. In one, he was flying through space, unencumbered by ship or suit. He spread his arms to reveal great, golden wings and flew from the Earth to Mars. In another, he felt himself riding one of the massive rockets of the Apollo program, or the historic moments of his namesakes John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and Alan Shepard. He dreamed that he was flying over Mars looking down on the Valles Marinaris and coming to rest at the summit of Olympus Mons. He looked out over plains of red with dust storms that billowed in the air, but with pressure so low, they barely fluttered pieces of paper.
He awoke with tears in his eyes after he dreamed of hearing a symphony from the stars. In it, heavy molecules born in the heart of a supernova accelerated to near light speed, then traveled for eons before encountering an object and dying in a shower of radiation. Every component of the dream—from dramatic stellar explosion to the sensation of light on his skin—was transformed into music, and it was glorious.
Not all of the dreams were so pleasant, but for those, he was much more of an onlooker—the Apollo One fire, Challenger explosion, Columbia breakup, and the Asimov Station disaster. He dreamed that he was an investigator trying to solve the problems and awoke feeling that a solution had been at his fingertips right up until the moment he emerged from the dream state. He supposed the meditation helped to reduce any risk of nightmare, since what he did not see in those dreams was the Dragonfly or himself.
He slept deeply for much of the first two days, restoring his body from the stress of acceleration. Once he felt rested, he read transcripts of communications between Percheron and Earth, logged his medical data for Marty, recorded his thoughts for Nik, and slept lightly, with more frequent dreams. He saw his mother, and the father he barely knew. He dreamed of his aunt and uncle who showed him the love that his life had been missing. He had dream-conversations with Rosemarie, his mother, about the love she tried to express, and couldn’t, about her cancer, and her fears that he would grow up to be just like his father. He tried to reassure her that he was not—but deep in his heart, he knew it to be a lie. He was exactly the same type of person as his father.
He relived arguments with Marty, Nik, the other patients in the rehabilitation unit. There were both good and bad memories, but they didn’t seem to bother him. It was more like reliving an incident, coming to terms with it, and then moving on. He recalled several incidents with Yvette, the passion of arguing, and the heat of lovemaking. He saw other friends and lovers, but every time he tried to concentrate on a face, each and every one of them transformed into Jen. Despite the memory of his mother’s cancer, the estrangement from his step-father, and the memory of his own pain, he could feel Jen’s love, and that filled him with peace.
Glenn awoke from a therapy he never knew he needed. Nik probably had something to do with it, after all, he’d provided the soundtrack, but Glenn realized he didn’t mind. He was refreshed and focused. An alert showed in his vision informing him that he’d awakened in time for the deceleration maneuver and burn. Bat rotated automatically without incident. The Helicity2 drive started back up with a slight hitch, but that smoothed out once the magnetic containment strengthened and the plasma began to fuse, slowing the headlong rush toward Mars.
After five days of floating, the sensation of gravity was a bit of a shock, but at one gee, it felt as normal as lying down on Earth. He tightened his core muscles and resumed the breathing exercises he’d used during acceleration. This time it would last for a full day but at the end he would be matching course with Percheron.
It took twenty-one hours to bring Bat to rest with respect to its original course, then another four hours to accelerate back toward Earth, at an angle to their original course. Bat had come on a straight trajectory, but Percheron was not aimed at Earth, but rather, the point where Earth would be in another four months. Thus, it was necessary to speed up to catch Percheron, then slow slightly so as to not overshoot. As the clock ticked down, Bat’s instruments started to scan for the other ship. There didn’t appear to be anything out there, suggesting that Percheron had deviated from its course yet again.
It was time to open up the comm link to Earth and see if he could get updated tracking information from them. He sent a standard inquiry ping to notify Mission Control that he was online.
After fifteen minutes he heard, “Space Force Office of Scientific Integration. Lieutenant Colonel Richardson, speaking.” The voice on comm sounded familiar, but he didn’t know of an LTC Richardson in NASA, MarsX, or Space Force Mission Control. On the other hand, OSI was General Boatright’s division, so it seemed they’d been waiting for his comm.
“This is Glenn Shepard in Bat, requesting updated trajectory and course corrections for Percheron.”
Again, the fifteen-minute wait.
“Acknowledged, Colonel Shepard. This is Andrew Richardson from MoMaB section, and I’m your liaison. You are right on time. The general has updated information for you and has been expecting your call. Stand by.”
As I figured, thought Glenn. He seems to have taken over this mission. Here I thought I risked going rogue, pirating this cargo ship, and flying off on a mission Space Force wouldn’t allow, but General Boatright has been in the middle of it all along. Still, he was unsure of the reception he would receive—cool distance or warm welcome.
It was less than two additional minutes before Boatright came online. There were no pleasantries, but also nothing about his actions—just business. The general started in with a list of contingencies and instructions to get Bat moving immediately to match Percheron’s new course. Once again Mission Control had recorded erratic firing of thrusters, and once even the main engines, as if someone on board was fighting to gain or regain control of the ship. The course correction was slight, but he’d need another ten minutes of two-gee acceleration, a couple hours to coast, and several minutes of deceleration to come up alongside Percheron.
Then Boatright surprised him.
“How are you doing, Shep?”
He called me Shep? Glenn didn’t expect that.
“I’m sore, sir. I came through the acceleration okay, and five days of rest helped the recovery, but I’m looking forward to getting out of Bat and moving around.”
“I’m sure you are, but don’t be too eager to get out of your MILES. We still don’t know what’s causing the crew sickness on Percheron, so you’ll have to stay isolated for a while yet.”
“Yes, sir; agreed, sir.”
“It’s gotten worse, Shep. They lost Captain LeBlanc—multiple organ failure.”
“So, who’s in charge?”
“It should be Major Dvorak, the executive officer, but it seems as if Doctor Barbier is in command.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“Her reports state that all Percheron crew are in unstable health. As senior medical authority, she’s best qualified.”
“Everyone went along with it? Even Gavin? He’s still her boss in MarsX.”
“Yes, but she’s got rank, too. After all, the Force put her back in as Selected Reserve before she went to Mars. She went to active status when Bialik got sick. She’s a Major, and they’re going back to her commissioning for term of service. She’s senior to Dvorak.”
“Oh, joy.”
“There’s a bright spot. You’re back in the Space Force, too—Selected Reserve, IMA—with your old rank, Colonel, full bird. The CSO called Resources Command directly.”
“I’m an Individual Mobilization Augmentee? Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re under a microscope and on the clock, but I have confidence in you. Your Ms. Butler and I are working the public angle to get you all the support we can. Now, get to work Shep, and good luck.”
“Again, thank you, sir. I will.”
Boatright put Richardson back on the comm to wait for Glenn’s acknowledgement and to transmit the course changes. They were also being uploaded to Bat’s navigational system, but Glenn would provide immediate fine corrections as needed without the comm delay Earth-based remote control. Even with the additional thrust, it was necessary to slowly approach the ship to avoid drive exhaust damage, so he had a few more hours of waiting.
So, he waited.
After the latest cycle of acceleration, coast, and deceleration, Percheron was still not evident on instruments. He was about to call Richardson again when he expanded his tracking search to a broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation . . .
. . . and there it was.