Project Sail (8 page)

The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee spoke of breakfast time but if that had not been enough, the sight of Commander Hawthorne sleeping in a chair with his legs on the table did the trick. Hawthorne liked to drink in the evening--as defined by the clock--and he did not always return to his bunk. Finding him asleep in the canteen was as sure a sign of morning in space as a rooster crowing on Earth.

A crewman from engineering also sat at the table, eating a pile of powdered eggs. He was a plump, bearded man who wore a greasy ball cap and spoke in grunts. However, their looming arrival at Titan must have put the pudgy man in a good mood. He raised his mug and said, “Made coffee this morning. Not the instant shit; real beans.”

Wren wondered how the engineer had hid beans for the past week, but he nonetheless accepted the offer and filled his mug.

Yes, the aroma suggested a delicious blend, but not until he tasted it did Wren understand how good coffee could be. He did not even consider adding imitation cream or sweetener to the drink.

The engineer waited for a compliment on his brew, but Wren only nodded before continuing forward.

He passed cabin doors lining either side of the corridor before finding his path blocked. Reagan Fisk stood in the passage dressed in loose fitting clothes with his arms stretched out, his eyes closed, and one leg in the air.

Wren stopped, sipped coffee, and fought an urge to grin. The displaced Englishman hid his amusement when the young corporate executive opened his eyes and said, “You’re right, it works. I can feel it, right in this spot.”

Wren remained silent, fearing he might laugh and spill coffee.

Reagan Fisk once again raised his leg and at the same time said, “I never knew about this. Just like you said, the panels are pulling me down, but I can feel the current from the drive flowing over me, like it wants to carry me to the rear of the ship.”

“That’s…that’s
fucking
awesome.”

“Are you going to try?”

“Um, no, I was just doing it in my quarters. I’m on my way to the bridge.”

“Say, we should get a bunch of us and do it down in the canteen, side by side,” Fisk said.

“Maybe later. Hey, Hawthorne is in there giving it a try, but he is sitting down instead of standing up. You might want to show him the right way.”

“Hell yeah, thanks!”

Fisk took his bubbling enthusiasm to the canteen. Wren nearly spit coffee as his suppressed chuckle reached the surface. The idea of feeling a gravity flow during deceleration aboard a diametric drive ship was the spacefaring equivalent of a snipe hunt.

Behind him, from down the corridor in the canteen, he heard Hawthorne shout an obscenity.

When he arrived at the bridge, Wren found the pilot at his post, Horus working navigation, and a guy with an olive complexion at the station controlling communications and flight operations. However, he had come to the bridge to appreciate the view from the forward window, not visit with the crew.

The
Virgil
decelerated as their destination neared, but despite what he told Fisk, that did not create a gravity flow a person could sense by closing his eyes and balancing on one leg. It did mean they were now close enough to see Saturn from the bridge.

Saturn was not a colorful planet, but it inspired awe nonetheless. The massive sphere could swallow seven-hundred Earths and while the rings were the most distinguishing characteristic, they were only part of this king’s court. Sixty natural satellites orbited the monster, making it nearly a solar system unto itself.

From his vantage point aboard the
Virgil,
Wren saw the entire planet, although that was steadily changing as they moved into Saturn’s shadow on approach to Titan, the behemoth’s largest moon.

As a scientist, he knew facts about Saturn, such as wind speeds could reach eleven hundred miles per hour. He knew that a layer of metallic hydrogen twenty times the size of Earth surrounded a rocky core at the middle of the gas giant. He knew that Saturn’s magnetic field was a thousand times more powerful than the one protecting Wren’s home world.

But as he gazed out the window, that incredible planet did something few things did to Leo Wren: arouse his imagination. Saturn’s giant size and beautiful rings made it an icon of space travel, a symbol of the universe’s mysteries.

He fought back, however, forcing himself to question the value of deep space missions when his homeland on Earth remained a dead wasteland.

As they neared, that big sphere grew until it filled the window. At that point, the swirling gases of the ringed planet replaced the stars as the backdrop to his view and the moons of Saturn moved to the foreground with one in particular swelling as the
Virgil
drew close.

This was Titan, the second largest moon in the entire solar system and an important human outpost.

Titan offered a feast for the eyes, starting with an orange tint produced by its dense atmosphere, but that was just the beginning.

He intruded on the pilot’s work and accessed the ship’s visual scanners to see through the nitrogen-rich organic smog and scan Titan’s surface. With the equipment, Wren could make out the vast plain named Shangri-la, a black void cutting across the moon’s surface. He also saw the tall peaks of Sotra Patera, a cryo-volcano spewing ammonium and water.

Annoyed at the interruption, the pilot grunted and then switched off the scanner.

Wren shrugged and swallowed another mouthful of drink. The coffee was rich and silky smooth, reminding him of a fine chocolate. He wondered how an engineer on a dirty cargo ship brewed the best coffee he ever tasted.

However, as Titan grew in the window, Wren found something even more curious than the origin of great coffee. He pointed over the pilot’s shoulder and asked, “What are those?”

Of course, the annoyed old man piloting the
Virgil
felt no duty to respond, but Captain Horus joined Wren at the window and provided the answer.

“The one on the left is an American
Montana
class
battleship.”

Wren nodded toward another large dot hovering above Titan but on the other side of the moon, nearly over the horizon.

Horus told him, “That, I know, is the Russian battleship
Fyodor Ushakov.
It has been there a long time. At least the Americans rotate in a new ship once in a while.”

To Wren’s eyes, the massive machines resembled gunfighters facing off in a frontier town, ready to draw.

A flash from the surface bounced across the atmosphere like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the orange clouds from beneath. Seconds later, something with a contrail nearly reached orbit before plummeting back into the colorful soup enveloping the moon.

“Was that a fucking missile? They fighting a war down there? Wait, no they aren’t, or those battleships would be shooting, too.”

“You would think so but they just hang there, watching each other.”

The
Virgil
steered toward the American share of the sky and the battleship came into focus. The ship was gigantic because Americans always think bigger equals better. Wren thought the shape resembled a thick broadsword. Ridges—probably gun ports--lined what he saw as the blade and spheres belonging to the diametric drive bulged from the undercarriage. The rear third resembled a hilt and while a structure on the top suggested a bridge, he knew military vessels built their control centers deep inside, surrounded by bulkheads.

Another flash in the sky, then a second missile flew in the opposite direction.

“Something is fucked up down there.”

Horus told him, “You’ll find that fucked up is just another day on Titan.” He noticed his passenger’s mug. “My engineer knows how to make coffee, doesn’t he?”

Wren considered for a moment and then answered, “I’ve had better.”

11. Titan

The
Virgil
hovered above Titan in the shadow of the USNA Battleship. It remained there for hours waiting for clearance.

When permission finally came, two bulkheads in the freighter’s belly swung open and down lowered the
Virgil’s
heavy drop ship. The craft resembled one-part 1990s American space shuttle and another part cargo helicopter with an open space between the nose cone and the engine baffles filled only by a pair of guide rails.

Next, the cargo bays circling the
Virgil’s
aft rotated until the desired one aligned with the heavy lifter. The boxcar-like container then slid onto the lifter’s guide rails locking into position, ready for transport to the surface.

Below on Titan, flashes, fireballs, and missiles crisscrossed the murky atmosphere. While the entire moon did not appear affected, there was enough happening to give the place the feel of a war zone.

After their flight plan received permission from ground control, the heavy lifter dropped free of its berth, falling to Titan in a nose up position and disappearing into the nitrogen-rich orange soup encompassing the moon. The ship then performed a series of s-turns to dissipate speed, an easier task in gravity only one-third that of Earth.

While the thick atmosphere limited visibility, the passengers managed to glimpse a variety of topography, including windswept dunes and pools filled with various frozen liquids all illuminated by sunlight that, at its strongest, barely rivaled twilight on Earth.

But unlike most of the moons in the solar system, Titan had suffered few impacts; craters were rare. The moon’s surface was, geologically speaking, young and full of variety, both placid and dangerous, from plains of black pitch to volcanos spewing ammonia and methane.

As discovered years before, that diversity had given birth to microscopic life. This fueled a frenzied rush to the moon by every spacefaring power, and as man had done so often throughout history, with his colonies came war.

Despite a smog-like haze hovering over the surface, everyone onboard the descending cargo carrier saw the telltale signs of battle to the north. Somewhere near the pole, armies fought as brilliant balls of fire and speeding rocket contrails flew back and forth amid explosive flashes.

Fortunately, the airspace surrounding their destination appeared clear of danger. The shuttle aimed for a landing pad near a series of squat rectangular buildings that resembled an old style shopping mall but one built of concrete and without windows.

The ship fired retrorockets and slowed as landing struts extended, leading to a vertical touchdown.

---

The visitors from the
Virgil
—Hawthorne, Wren, and Fisk—dressed in casual clothes that fit with the crowds inside Camp Conrad, an American outpost. They left Captain Horus to unload his cargo and went searching for the two recruits scheduled to join their ranks.

Low ceilings, spotty lighting, and a musty smell filled the outpost’s wide halls. A constant drone of chatter, shouts, laughs, and barked orders carried through the corridors.

The trio passed long lines at food counters, window shoppers longing for the latest hostile atmosphere gear, a crowd of soldiers spilling out from a pub, and entrepreneurs selling bottled Earth air, nano-tattoos, and direct-feed pornography.

“Is this your first time on Titan?” Fisk asked his companions as they walked.

Wren said, “Yes, so what?”

Hawthorne answered, “I’ve visited some of the other colonies, but not in years and never Conrad. Last I heard there were a hundred thousand Americans living here and at least that many Russians, as well as smaller colonies from the European Alliance.”

They pushed through a crowd that gathered around a transport schedule board and then nearly collided with a technician directing a robotic cart loaded with luggage.

Hawthorne saw a sign blocking off a dark hallway that cautioned low gravity and green atmospheric integrity warning lights marked every fifty feet, paired with open bulkheads. If one of those lights turned red, the bulkheads would close fast, splitting the slow-of-foot in two.

Fisk’s head moved side to side as if on a swivel, either fascinated or worried by the bustling crowd.

“I guess a lot of people live on this planet,” he said.

Wren corrected, “It’s a moon, dumb ass.”

Hawthorne started, “So, we’re here to pick up two crewmates?” but his eyes fell on an attractive woman outside a shop that promised duty-free booze and cigars, drawing his attention in three different directions.

Fisk unfolded two pieces of e-paper, each resembled a computer screen although physically they were the size and thickness of a page from an old paperback book. He handed one to Hawthorne saying, “Round up Lieutenant Thomas, me and Leo will hunt down Dr. King.”

If he had not been so distracted by the store and the woman, Commander Hawthorne might have been suspicious. Instead, he accepted the dossier after giving it only a quick glimpse.

Fisk went on, “The garrison duty officer is expecting us and the transfer has been processed already.”

“Sure.”

“Meet back at the shuttle in, say, three hours?” Fisk said.

“Make it four,” Hawthorne replied with his eyes still on the store and the woman. “I might do some shopping. Horus said our window doesn’t open for another ten hours anyway.”

“Okay. Um, good luck, Commander.”

That did get his attention but Fisk and Wren were already walking off at a pace that resembled a getaway.

Hawthorne finally read the e-paper. While it contained little information about this Lieutenant Thomas, it did explain where to collect his charge.

“Oh shit.”

---

“That was a dick move,” Wren said to Fisk as they rounded a corner after having left Hawthorne. “He wasn’t even paying attention.”

“He’s the first officer,” Fisk justified although Wren did not seem too upset.

The two came to a narrower passageway lined with hotel fronts. At the center of the hall gathered a circle of worn and battered people, some dressed in gray military BDUs, others in civilian garb.

Fisk stopped and remarked, “This is not what I expected.”

Wren said, “If it surprises to you, think how these people feel. The fucking brochures promised them opportunity and easy living, but what they got were rocks to crack and gas pockets to tap. Shit man, it’s the same story on every colony: the domes are always breaking down and overcrowded. That is why these fucking outposts are stupid.”