Energized

 

 

For Katie, May your future always be bright.

 

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Dramatis Personae

Earth and Vicinity, 2023 (Map)

PROLOGUE

CONVICTION

CONVERGENCE

CONFLAGRATION

CONQUEST

EPILOGUE

Afterword and Acknowledgments

Books by Edward M. Lerner

About the Author

Copyright

 

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

NASA (including contract employees), Earth-based

MARCUS JUDSON
   Support contractor; assistant to government program manager, Powersat One (PS-1) program

PHILIP MAJESKI
   Kendricks Aerospace engineer; PS-1 program manager

ELLEN TANAKA
   Government program manager, PS-1 program

BETHANY TAYLOR
   Kendricks Aerospace engineer; PS-1 chief engineer

NASA (including contract employees), Phoebe-based

DINO AGNELLI
   Kendricks Aerospace engineer, PS-1 program

THADDEUS STANKIEWICZ
   Kendricks Aerospace engineer, PS-1 program; deputy station chief

IRV WEINGART
   NASA manager; station chief

National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Green Bank

PATRICK BURKHALTER
   Onetime principal investigator,
Verne
space probe; radio astronomer

SIMON CLAYBURN
   Valerie's son

VALERIE CLAYBURN
   Radio astronomer

AARON FRIEDMAN
   Radio astronomer

IAN WAKEFIELD
   System administrator

PS-1 Independent Inspection Team

OLIVIA FINCH
   Professor, Caltech; quality assurance engineer

SAVANNAH MORGAN
   U.S. Air Force civilian employee; computer security engineer

REUBEN SWENSON
   Department of Energy employee; power systems engineer

U.S. government, non-NASA

DEVIN GIBSON
   President of the United States

GERALD HENDERSON
   Director, Central Intelligence Agency

CARLOS ORTIZ
   Colonel, U.S. Air Force; computer security engineer

TYLER POPE
   CIA analyst

CHARMAINE POWELL
   CIA analyst

VONDA RODGERS
   General, U.S. Air Force

Russo Venture Capital Partners (RVCP)

KAYLA JORGENSON
   President, Jorgenson Power Systems (an RVCP-backed company)

LINCOLN ROBERTS
   Technical adviser; electrical engineer

DILLON RUSSO
   Principal partner, Russo Venture Capital Partners

FELIPE TORRES
   Technical adviser; communications engineer

JONAS WALKER
   Technical adviser; software engineer

Other Americans

ROBIN BRILL
   Socialite; sister of Thaddeus Stankiewicz

GABRIEL CAMPBELL
   First geologist to explore Phoebe; deceased

Russians

YAKOV NIKOLAYEVICH BRODSKY
   Deputy trade representative, posted to the Washington embassy; undercover agent of the Federal Security Service (in its Russian acronym, the FSB)

IRINA IVANOVNA CHESNOKOVA
   Yakov's longtime assistant

DMITRII FEDEROVICH AMINOV
   FSB station chief, posted to the Washington embassy

ANATOLY VLADIMIROVICH SOKOLOV
   Ambassador to the United States

PAVEL BORISOVICH KHRISTENKO
   President, Russian Federation

 

PROLOGUE | 2020

 

Saturday, February 22

Earth hovered, almost at full phase, breathtakingly magnificent. Distance concealed the works—and blights—of man, and the globe seemed pristine. Its oceans sparkled. Its cloud tops and ice caps glistened. And it was
huge
: the natural moon, had it been visible, would have appeared only about one-hundredth as wide.

Earth seemed close enough to touch through the exercise room's tinted dome, but Gabriel Campbell held firmly to the handles of the stationary bicycle. Not that he relied on the strength of his grip: he wore a seat belt, too, and straps bound his feet to the pedals.
This
world had too little gravity to notice.

His eyes alternated between the vista overhead and the image of Jillian, his fiancée, which he had taped to the bike's digital readout. Strawberry blond hair cascaded down her neck and shoulders. Freckles lay scattered across that most adorable, pert little nose. Her clear green eyes—and more so, her smile—all but outshone the Earth.

He was here, on Phoebe, to make a future for both: the Earth and the love of his life. In just one more month, he would go home. Then he and Jillian would marry and they would never be apart again.

Basking in earthlight, his legs pumping furiously on the bike, Gabe was pleasantly tired, professionally fulfilled, emotionally satisfied—

Unaware that before two hours had passed, he would be dead.

*   *   *

Phoebe completed an orbit around the Earth in just less than six hours, and as Gabe pedaled darkness crept across the face of the world. The changing phase of the Earth told him he had been working out for almost two hours.

Sweat soaked his Minnesota Twins T-shirt, and still ahead of him was a stint on the not-quite weight machine: the resistive exercise device. Without exercise, muscles atrophied and bones lost mass in Phoebe's miniscule gravity. Four hours of daily workout were mandated, but he would have worked out anyway. He patted Jillian's picture. “I'll be plenty fit for you when I come home.” Fit, and horny as the devil.

And with no way up here to spend a dime, he would have banked six months' salary with which to build their future. The pay was damned good, too, much higher than anything he could get on the ground. He tried not to think of the premium as hazardous-duty pay.

The bike whirred. A damper rattled in the ventilation system. Voices, indistinct, blended with dueling music players. And then, from the comm unit clipped to his sleeve, soft chimes. Gabe tapped the unit. “Campbell.”

“We've got a bot in trouble,” Tina Lundgren said, her voice throaty. She was deputy station chief of Phoebe base and in command on the night shift. Not that day or night had any meaning here. The station followed Eastern time for the convenience of folks on the ground. “In sector twelve.”

“And it's my turn to go outside.” Hell, Gabe was happy to go out. Only a handful of geologists had ever left Earth, and
he
was one of them. Had there been any way to get Jillian up here, he would want to stay forever. “What's the problem?”

“Stupid bot tangled itself up in a rock jumble. Otherwise, it's healthy.”

Likely a thirty-second task, after an hour or so to suit up and trek halfway across the moonlet. Good deal.

Tina contacting him meant that he was in charge of the excursion. But no one went outside alone—too many things could go wrong. Gabe asked, “Who else is on call tonight?”

“Thaddeus and Bryce. Shall I give one of them a holler for you?”

“I'll take Thad. Newbie could use the practice.” Gabe eased off his pedaling. “And no, don't call. I'm in the gym. I need to cool off first.” Outside was not the place to get stiff and inflexible.

After winding down for a few minutes, Gabe unstrapped his slippers from the pedals, unbelted, and, carefully dismounting, firmly planted a slipper on one of the deck's Velcro strips. Trailing damp footprints he crossed the exercise room, the Velcro pads on the soles of his slippers
zip-zipping
with each step.

At the hatchway he took hold of the handrail that ran along the corridor ceiling. The Tarzan swing was the quickest way through the station. Many of his crewmates would be asleep, and he kept a Tarzan yell to himself.

Thaddeus Stankiewicz was not in his quarters, the tiny common room, or the even tinier sanitary facilities. When Gabe tried the machine shop, the hatch squeaked on its hinges.

Thad was new to Phoebe and micro gee; his surprised twitch launched him from his stool and scattered whatever he was working on. Gabe saw cordless soldering pistols, metal tubes, metal rods, wire coils—and, writhing free at the end of its oxygen and acetylene hoses, a cutting torch tipped with blue flame.

Gabe leapt, catching the torch by a hose and with his other hand giving Thad a firm shove clear. The push—equal and opposite reactions—brought Gabe to a near halt at mid-room, above the deck. About a foot: call it thirty seconds hang time. That was plenty long to give Thad a tongue-lashing for his carelessness.

Newbie looked so flustered that Gabe relented. He killed the torch and merely glared as Thad, who by then had grabbed a bench edge, began gathering parts (of what?) and cramming them into his pockets. Stankiewicz was short, broad shouldered, and intense. His thick black eyebrows and deep-set eyes made him seem perpetually brooding. He wore a standard station jumpsuit, the royal-blue version, with its integral Velcro slippers.

Finally touching down, Gabe slid his foot until it engaged a Velcro strip. “What are you working on?”

Thad shrugged, looking uneasy. Embarrassed? “Personal project.”

The station offered precious little privacy, so Gabe let it go. “A surface rover got stuck. You and I are up to extract it.”

“Okay.” Thad kept grabbing and stowing the scattered pieces of his project. “Almost done.”

“Leave that, Newbie. We have a job to do.”

They made their way to the main air lock. The closer they got, the more dark streaks and splotches marked the gray metal panels that lined the corridor. You couldn't help but track Phoebe's dust and grime into the station, and once inside the stuff found its way everywhere. The crew vacuumed endlessly, but it was a losing battle.

Their spacesuits were filthier than the interior halls and no longer permitted in most of the station. Once you couldn't change in a closet-sized cabin, bracing yourself between opposing walls, the best place to suit up was inside the air lock.