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21

Poole had assembled his skeleton command staff—Lieutenant Wylie and Master Chief Garver—in the multipurpose wardroom, each in a pantomime of sitting with their feet slipped into restraints under the table. “First order of business,” he said, pointing at Wylie. “How’s Hunter’s team doing?”

“They’re secured in the ’lock, sir. They were out there a long time and it’s going to take a while to rebalance their O2 levels. We shouldn’t plan on having them available for duty for another two hours.”

“Make it four,” he said, then, “scratch that. Eight. I want them fully rested and ready to go.”

“Aye, sir,” Wylie said warily, looking askance at Garver. They were in an all-hands situation and it wasn’t like Poole to ease up when the pressure was on. He had something else in mind.

Poole eyed them both. “Gentlemen, I don’t have to tell you we are in deep kimchee. We’ve lost most of our comms and half our remaining propellant. That severely limits our maneuvering space.” He paused. “We don’t have the delta-v to make our return schedule. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

“It’s going to be a long trip home,” Wylie said dourly. “We’re stuck with a simple Hohmann transfer that follows the Jiang’s original trajectory before it all went sideways. I’m guessing the chief isn’t going to paint a prettier picture.” He looked at Garver, who’d been taking stock of their logistics.

“The lieutenant’s right, sir,” Garver said, though he knew Poole was well aware of exactly how screwed they were. “Water supplies can be stretched through the reclamation cycler, but we only have enough food rations for thirty days. That’s assuming minimum caloric intake.”

“We’re on Prospector’s Mars flyby orbit,” Wylie reminded them. “We won’t make it half that far before we run out of food.”

“That’s why I’ve got Hunter’s team resting up—it’s going to get busy before it gets even busier. We’re going to have to go back and salvage whatever we can from Prospector, dock with their hab and empty it out.” He gave that a minute to sink in. “And that brings me around to my next topic: Gentlemen, why are we here?”

The lieutenant’s brow furrowed, caught off guard. “Sir?”

Wylie might have been caught short, but Garver knew right away. “Search and rescue.”

Poole snapped his fingers at Garver. “Bingo. We still have a mission, gents, which I intend to accomplish no matter what the consequences are for us. I don’t know if there are enough rations over there to get us all the way home, but I’m damned certain there’s enough to keep us going while we search for our spacefaring rock hounds.”

Garver shifted uncomfortably, pursing his lips.

“Something on your mind, Chief?”

Garver lifted his eyes. “Sir, whoever broadcast that idiotic ‘manifesto’ is claiming responsibility. What happened to us looks a lot like what happened to Prospector. I’m at a loss as to how they managed it, but we have to consider hostile action.”

“I’m not buying this Space Liberation Front or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves,” Poole said. “But I don’t believe in coincidences, either. You can’t tell me a bunch of space hippies were clever enough to pull off an op like this. They’d have to be clairvoyant.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“Lead times. They’d have had to launch it well ahead of Prospector, probably before they even announced their expedition. And I like to think we’d have noticed it.”

“The Jiangs have been planning this for over two years,” Wylie said. “Somebody with inside knowledge would’ve had to act long before they announced, then.”

“Seems likely. It also seems likely that whoever is trying to deny access to resources out here has been thinking about it for a long time. Any asteroid that’s a likely candidate for exploitable resources should be considered dangerous.”

“They didn’t come out and say so, did they?” Garver mused. “But they didn’t have to.”

Poole began ticking off points on his fingers. “They’ve declared asteroid and planetary resources off-limits for humans. And they’re claiming credit for damaging two US spacecraft.”

“One being a military vessel. They have to know that’s an act of war,” Wylie said, barely able to believe it himself.

Poole’s fingers drummed the table, ever so slightly pushing him up against his restraints. “Been thinking about that, too.” He stopped his drumming to wag a finger at both of them. “If I ever get the bright idea to go anywhere again without a full weapons loadout, feel free to mutiny my ass.”

“You were trying to accomplish the mission, sir,” Wylie said. “We had valid reasons to dump mass.”

Poole was unconvinced. “If this were the surface Navy, even the Coast Guard, we wouldn’t forget our first purpose.”

Garver scratched at his beard. “That gets a little fuzzy out here, sir. They can bring along whatever they can fit inside. We don’t have that luxury,” he reminded him. “Fleet Ops approved your operational plan.”

“That’ll be the only thing that keeps my ass out of a sling if we get back,” Poole said. “So here’s my orders going forward: One, use Specter’s directional antenna to communicate with Fleet and advise them of our situation. Two, dock with Prospector and get a full inventory of their consumables. Get back to me on how far we can stretch them.” He eyed them both. “Three—spin up the interceptors and charge the PDCs, even if you have to power down something else to do it. As of right now, we are at war. We just need to figure out with whom.”


The distance between Earth and RQ39 meant that what soon became known as the “Free Space Manifesto” was received several minutes after Poole’s crew first heard it, not long after Fleet Operations lost contact with the Borman.

That in itself had sent the Fleet Ops controllers into a scramble, something Roberta couldn’t help but notice from her vantage point at the opposite end of the control room. She was easily distracted in “coast mode,” passively watching as their newest X-37 was making its way up to geosynch.

WHAT’S UP? She’d texted a junior lieutenant she knew on the Borman control team. It was taking a huge chance with as busy as they’d all of sudden become, but he was a logistics guy which made her comfortably sure he wasn’t getting his ass handed to him at that moment.

NOBODY KNOWS, he’d answered. E AND E SAID THERE WAS A TEMP AND PRESSURE SPIKE IN ONE OF THE H2 TANKS. THEN IT WENT DARK. THEY’RE NORDO.

She’d rolled back from her console to stare at the big status board on the far wall. It showed the position of every satellite, drone, and crewed spacecraft in the force, while Borman was so far out it was wasn’t even on screen. “No radio,” she exhaled. “Jeebus.”

After the initial burst of activity, she watched the control team go dark in their own way. The lead controller and a couple of specialists were up and about, either answering questions from the brass or being pulled into one of the meeting rooms surrounding the control floor. She recognized a couple of new faces that had been hovering around the Borman team’s consoles—the crewmembers sent back to save consumables so it could go on its grand interplanetary adventure. The rest of the team remained at their posts, hunched over their consoles, headsets pressed to their ears, each hoping to tease some data or a voice snippet out of the Great Big Nothing.

She couldn’t imagine what that felt like, and didn’t want to. She had her own drone now, with the occasional datalink glitch for sure, but they had always resolved quickly. Military pilots had spent decades refining the art of remotely controlling drones from opposite ends of the world, and adapting their techniques to space had been a natural leap.

It helped that the X-37s were smart enough to finish executing whatever their last commands had been if she momentarily lost contact with them. More importantly, there weren’t humans aboard. No matter how much she might have loved her drones, she wasn’t going out for drinks with them at the O club or popping in at their kid’s birthday parties. It had become all too easy to forget how deadly serious their jobs were because she was having too much fun playing with some really expensive toys.

She hadn’t been the only person in Fleet Ops feeling that way. Losing their flagship had immediately changed the mood in the Ops center. Calling it happy-go-lucky before was perhaps unfair, but it was the closest description she could think of. Spaceflight, even just pushing satellites around, was horrendously unforgiving of the slightest hint of incompetence. No one had the luxury of slacking off.

But this was different. Especially among the senior officers and NCOs, many of them Air Force and Navy transfers who’d seen actual combat, there was a quiet determination she’d not noticed before: not grim, not angry, though a little of both. She and the other junior officers found themselves unwittingly mimicking their senior’s behavior. They were ready to stomp somebody’s ass but had no idea who. Even without the Borman, they had ample resources. They just didn’t have the first clue of where to aim them.

The intel analysts had their own ideas about this Space Liberation Front, though they’d quickly been sidelined by the DIA and CIA. Big Intel was on it, they’d been assured. That hadn’t stopped them from their own sleuthing. She also knew nobody with half a brain seriously thought some kind of Greenpeace in Space had just showed up out of nowhere—which meant that was exactly what the suits in Washington were thinking.

Roberta drummed her fingers impatiently on her console, staring at the big red button on the control stick and wishing there was somebody she could just shoot, damn it. Caught up in her own thoughts and frustrations, she was surprised by a sudden commotion erupting from across the room. Shouting, hooting, some guys standing excitedly, others running for the outer office ring to alert the brass . . . had the balloon gone up? Do we finally have a targeting order?

She felt a strange commingling of disappointment, relief, and excitement when that didn’t happen. It was the Borman, she’d learned, wounded but not dead yet. Unable to communicate on its own but still able to relay traffic through its shuttle. All hands accounted for, so at least she could rest easy that Marshall was okay.

Finally, she learned of their grim task ahead of raiding the Jiang’s spacecraft for consumables on the outside chance there’d be enough to sustain them during what had just turned into a long trip home.

Her relief and excitement ebbed, replaced with a tension and dread that was becoming all too familiar. Alternating waves of adrenaline and serotonin coursed through her, competing for dominance and leaving her worn out and helpless to do anything about it.

Focus, she told herself. Her drone was coming up on its next burn to place it in geosynch, and she couldn’t afford to become distracted. The day’s space tasking order, or just “STO,” had been simple: park the drone in orbit and await further orders. The equipment loadout in its cargo bay promised follow-on missions that were anything but simple: Hall thrusters, imagery packages, manipulator arms . . . they were planning a real party for somebody up there.

She tightened her grip on the ROV’s controls, took a deep breath, and relaxed her grip. Take care of your own bird, she told herself.


Mating two disabled vehicles was difficult enough; maneuvering the larger of the two out of its own debris cloud and around that of the smaller ship had taken considerable skill and even more nerves. Marshall found himself flinching at every ting of something bouncing off the hull. Now that it was crucial for them to access all of Prospector’s logistics, the collision risk had moved well down Poole’s priority list. What he didn’t say—and of this Marshall was convinced—was that no matter their condition upon returning home, alive or dead they were bringing back evidence of hostile actions beyond Earth orbit.

Marshall watched as Poole, again working from the cupola, expertly deployed their manipulator arm to grab the smaller ship and maneuver it onto their open berthing port. They were rewarded with the familiar, satisfying thud of docking rings locking together.

“Capture,” Garver called up from the deck below. “All contact points are green.”

“Very good.” Poole left the arm in place. “Mr. Wylie, get us clear of this mess. I’ll watch from here.”

“Aye sir,” he said from below. Thrusters fired along the length of the ship, gently moving the stack sideways and safely away from Prospector’s floating detritus.

“Watch this.” Poole pointed forward. “Just because there’s no atmosphere or gravity—okay, not really but you know what I mean—that doesn’t get us off the hook. Not everything is going to move at the same rate. That’s a lot of mass we just plugged onto our nose. It’s got its own inertia and I want to see how much flexion there is under lateral thrust.”

“Even though it’s less mass than the node’s certified for?”

“Not until I’ve seen it in person,” Poole said, intently focused on their new addition. He glanced down at the arm’s control board for any signs of excess mechanical feedback through its joints. “Little bit of load on the first joint. Nothing to get too excited about.” He kept watching as thrusters fired along the opposite side, cancelling their motion. There was some slight twisting—Marshall wasn’t savvy enough yet to know if it was a problem, but Poole didn’t seem overly concerned. “We’re clear to maneuver,” he announced tiredly to the crew below. “Whenever that might be.”

“I’ll get to work, sir,” Marshall said, and pushed away to float down through the command module and into the forward node.


Prospector’s logistics module felt a good bit more crowded now that he was entering through its opposite end—opening the outer hatch, he was greeted by a wall of tightly-wrapped packages. Each was marked with a barcoded inventory number and labeled with its contents, though in no more detail than “Meals-Day 121,” as was the first package he encountered.

Marshall recalled his knowledge of the expedition. They’d planned on another six months for the return to Earth—one hundred eighty days’ worth of food for two people. Splitting it up amongst the Borman’s crew would make it sixty days’ worth, maybe ninety if they really stretched it. And there had to be some reserve, though he had no idea how much. He made a mental note to dig into their mission plans to find that out, and tried not to think about the fact that it still might not be enough.

Being back inside what he had to properly call a derelict, now just in shirtsleeves, he felt alarmingly exposed. Before, behind layers of latex-impregnated fabric and polycarbonate glass, he’d been literally insulated from the reality of it. Now it felt close. Vulnerable and real. The little ship had a different smell than what he’d become used to, and it made him feel like an intruder.

He couldn’t place the scent, it being so far removed from his sole spacefaring experience so far. The air was pregnant with a sweet aroma that reminded him of his parents’ backyard.

Lilacs. They’d installed filters that made their spaceborne home smell like a garden in springtime. When money was no object, why not do it if it was just going to be the two of them stuck in here for months?

He winced at the subtle reminder of the fact that they should have still been in here. It was like finding an abandoned cabin in the deep woods, filled with signs of life as if its owners should return any minute. He was Goldilocks, raiding the bear’s porridge stash. He felt guilty picking through their belongings, even if they were only packages of freeze-dried food.

Accounting for each was going to take a while, too. He couldn’t escape having to verify each item himself, but he could still give Captain Poole a first-look idea of what they had aboard.

He found a touchscreen control pad on the partition between the logistics and habitation sides of the module. If there were barcodes, then there ought to be an inventory list somewhere that would show what they had left in stores.

No luck. As he scrolled through its menu, he was rewarded with empty screens. It must have been dependent on the command module, which was mostly powered down. He moved into the CM and found the master cabin switch. It was on, but no lights or panel displays. He searched for the circuit breaker, and sure enough it had been popped open.

When he cycled the power back on, displays came to life. One in particular caught his eye: two blinking green lights on the biomonitor screen. It was looking for a signal, like a faithful dog waiting by the window for a glimpse of its owner returning home.

The persistence of this unfeeling technological sentinel shone a harsh light on his own dedication. Its silent devotion accused him: I’m not giving up, why should you?

It was too much. Because we know they’re dead and you’re a stupid machine not sophisticated enough to figure that out, he thought. Unable to avoid its accusatory glare, he angrily stabbed at the screen to turn it off. It blinked and went dark.

And then stubbornly came back to life with cursed persistence. Would he have to disconnect the damned thing to avoid its presence? Each of the Jiang’s biomonitor feeds displayed the well-known semicircular graphic signifying weak reception. Curious, he warily pressed one of the telemetry traces. STANDBY—SIGNAL PAUSED, it now read.

That couldn’t be possible. Somehow, from somewhere, their suit monitors were still trying to transmit data.

He frantically pulled their ship’s quick-reference handbook from a pocket in one of the folded-up seats and flipped to the “communications” tab. If the omnidirectional antennas couldn’t find them, maybe the high-gain could.


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