Prologue
MARCH 5, 2038
Adedayo Adisa stared at a holographic model of Earth floating translucent before him. With a hand gesture he altered a red line that skimmed the virtual planet’s atmosphere, causing the line to plunge downward and terminate on the model’s surface. Another adjustment and the line once more rebounded back into space. Gesture after gesture resulted in more of the same—either burning up on reentry or skipping back off into space. No iteration resulted in a stable planetary orbit.
Footsteps sounded on the decking behind him and then the wheel of the habitat’s pressure door rotated, creaking open.
He turned to see Isabel Abarca step into the compartment and unclip her long black hair. She rubbed her scalp as she sighed in exhaustion. Her faded blue flight suit was patched with white Kapton tape in several places.
She resealed the pressure door behind her, then looked up. “The number two oxygen generator needs maintenance. We’ll have to cannibalize parts from Hab 2.” She noticed the holographic model. “How are they doing?”
Adisa’s Nigerian accent was thicker than usual, betraying his stress. “Their spacecraft is on course to encounter Earth in twenty-six days.”
She smiled. “Then you did it, Ade.” Abarca came up to look over his shoulder. “So they’ll make it back to Earth.”
“Yes—but only momentarily.” He tried another failed trajectory.
Abarca’s smile faded and she sank into a seat next to him at the galley table. She stared at the holographic model, too.
Adisa remained uneasy. “Because of their delayed departure, high velocity was necessary to encounter Earth—which means they will have difficulty slowing on arrival. On their current trajectory our crewmates will skim Earth’s atmosphere at over 100,000 kilometers per hour. At that speed orbital capture through aerobraking is difficult. They are likely to either plunge too deeply into the atmosphere—burn up and die—or sail straight through and back into deep space. Lost forever.”
“How likely?”
It was several moments before he answered. “Atmospheric variability makes it impossible to know for certain, but their autopilot software will not even calculate an aerobrake solution at that velocity. The required deceleration might kill them. Which means they will have to pilot the craft manually through unknowable variables—all while under 10 or more g’s. A feat that I have been unable to model.”
Abarca studied the hologram silently as the virtual ship burned up yet again.
“I fear that by guiding them onto this trajectory I have not saved our crewmates—but killed them.”
“There was no other choice, Ade.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “We were out of time, and that piecemeal propulsion system was imprecise. Without your course corrections they would have missed the Earth entirely.”
He gazed at the hologram. “That was only necessary because I took too long integrating systems. If I had finished on schedule, we would have made the transfer window to Earth and all returned home safely. The fault is mine.”
“It was no one’s fault. Rushing that work could have caused ten other failures. Again: missing the Earth entirely.”
“It hardly matters now.” He lowered his head. “Do I contact them? Do I let them know?”
“No. They’ll realize their situation soon enough. Allow them their hope.”
He sat for several moments in silence. “I compelled them to go.”
“We compelled them.” She leaned down into his view. “If they stayed, we’d all starve.”
He turned to her. “So we get to survive while our friends die?”
She gave him a woeful look. “Oh, Ade. The Konstantin is breaking down; even if we had the parts, two people can’t maintain this ship.” She turned to the hologram. “That was the last chance for any of us to get back.”
“I had to stay behind, but you did not.”
“We discussed this. A captain doesn’t leave people behind. And as it turns out, it made no difference.”
Adisa nodded.
“If anyone deserves blame, it’s me. I’m the one who recruited you all.”
“Then you should blame Nathan Joyce—he recruited you.”
She laughed grimly. “I guess there’s blame enough to go round.”
“We all knew the risks, but I had hoped I would at least get Priya, James, and Han back home safely. Instead, the entire expedition has failed.”
“I disagree.” Abarca gestured toward the curving aluminum wall of the habitat’s core, upon which scores of “firsts” were scrawled like graffiti in permanent marker ink. “Look at the history we’ve made out here. We’ve gone farther and longer in deep space than anyone. We perfected asteroid mining. We sent back thousands of tons of refined materials toward lunar orbit—enough to get humanity started in the cosmos. I’d say that’s a success.”
Adisa studied the achievements on the wall—many written by crewmates now deceased. “Do you really think it will make a difference, what we did out here?”
Abarca was about to respond when Klaxons sounded an alarm. A synthetic female voice said, “Critical alert: new radar contact. Repeat: new radar contact.” Strobe lights flashed on the ceiling.
Adisa gazed up and sighed. “More debris . . .” With a wave of his hand, he swept aside the hologram of Earth and brought up another virtual window, this one showing the ship’s radar console. A blip glowed a hundred kilometers out from their position alongside the asteroid Ryugu. “Wait . . . this is something else.”
Abarca pondered the screen. “Is it the Argo?”
She was referring to a robotic mothership sent to Ryugu three years earlier by a billionaire competitor of their boss, Nathan Joyce. Several such billionaire “Space Titans” were vying to mine off-world resources, and kilometer-wide Ryugu was the most promising asteroid in the inner solar system. However, unlike the Konstantin, the Argo was autonomous and had lain dormant ever since its dozen mining crafts broke down—defeated by the asteroid’s highly abrasive regolith.
Though not before killing a member of the Konstantin’s crew.
“No. The Argo has not moved.” Adisa pointed at a different blip well over a hundred kilometers out and off to the side. “This is something new.” He checked the telemetry. “And it is adjusting course to match Ryugu’s orbit.”
Abarca opened up another virtual window—this one a feed to an optics array. She aimed a camera at the incoming bogey, and in a moment they had a visual. The virtual screen revealed an ungainly spacecraft against a background of stars. “I’ll be damned . . .”
The mystery vessel consisted of a propulsion unit docked to a series of other modules—the lead one an old Soyuz capsule. The ship’s rocket engine was oriented away from them, burning silently to circularize its orbit.
Adisa zoomed in the image. “No visible markings. Perhaps a robotic resupply craft?”
She pointed. “Those look to be life support modules. A small centrifuge segment.”
“Perhaps it is a rescue vessel meant for us.”
“It’s too late for a return trajectory to Earth, and mission control would have told us.”
Adisa nodded glumly, then checked comms. “If someone is aboard, they are not hailing us.”
She stopped short. “Maybe because they believe the crew of the Konstantin is dead.”
Adisa looked at her. “So you think this was sent by the new owners?”
“Don’t grant them that much legitimacy. They’re Nathan’s creditors, nothing more.”
“But why would they send a ship?”
“This could be a replacement crew.”
Adisa was taken aback. “You think they would actually send people out here?”
“It’s starting to make sense. Their refusal to honor our contracts with Nathan, even though we mined all these resources—and then remotely shutting down our life support. If you hadn’t found a work-around we’d all be dead. The plan might always have been to get rid of us and recrew the ship with their own people during Ryugu’s next close approach to Earth.”
Adisa looked aghast. “If it is a replacement crew, what happens when they discover us still alive?”
She studied the screen. “I don’t know.”
The incoming vessel continued its circularization burn, edging closer by the minute.
Abarca spoke without taking her eyes off the screen. “How many mules are still operational?”
“Just one. At the upper airlock.”
“Move it into the supply yard.”
“Surely you are not thinking of ramming them?”
“No, but I’m keeping our options open.”
Adisa instantiated a virtual command console in his biphasic crystal work glasses. Suddenly an augmented-reality 3D model of the Konstantin rotated before him. The Konstantin looked more like a collection of construction cranes than a spaceship. Its spine was a 250-meter-long box truss of carbon fiber girders—only the bow of which protruded above the horizon of the asteroid and into sunlight. The mast there was studded with solar panels, communications antennas, and a laser transmitter.
The main body of the Konstantin sheltered in permanent shadow behind the asteroid—on station, 3 kilometers above Ryugu’s darkened surface. The ship’s upper airlock stood well aft of the solar mast with four docking ports arrayed at compass points—two of which were occupied by well-worn mule spacecraft. Only one of which was still operational.
Adisa remotely activated this mule, undocked it, and telepiloted the craft beyond the sweep of the Konstantin’s three rotating radial arms. These arms each extended a hundred meters from a central habitat at the ship’s waist and consisted of a box truss through which a narrow tunnel ran to inflated habitat modules at the end. The radial arms rotated three times a minute to simulate gravity; Isabel and Adisa sat in one of these: Hab 1.
He remotely piloted the mule down the length of the Konstantin, and the craft glided past empty construction scaffolding, past the Konstantin’s chemical refinery, lower airlock, and engine room—which was empty. The rocket engines had been unstepped to power robotic tugs returning refined resources toward an orbit around Earth’s moon.
The lack of main engines meant the Konstantin was now a permanent fixture at Ryugu.
Pivoting the mule, Adisa could see a series of small robotic spacecraft orbiting along the asteroid’s terminator line. These used parabolic mirrors to concentrate the Sun’s light for “optical mining” of bagged boulders, which had been teased away from the asteroid’s surface in its minuscule gravity. The delicate flight control dance of the mining robots was managed by systems the crew had perfected over the past four years, and operations were now largely automated. The system was producing thousands of tons of refined resources per month and would continue to do so into the foreseeable future. Still, with a total mass of 450 million tons, it would take centuries to consume Ryugu at this rate.
Abarca clicked through virtual UIs. “We need to notify mission control. Would that alert this new ship to our presence?”
“No. The long-range laser comms are secure.”
Abarca opened the laser comm channel and checked her HUD display. “We’re at just over three light-minutes from Earth—which means more than six minutes before we get a reply.” She keyed the transmit button. “Konstantin to mission control. Konstantin to mission control. Mayday. Mayday. We have an unidentified, potentially hostile spacecraft inbound and maneuvering to match our trajectory for possible docking. This is an emergency. Please advise. Out.”
Adisa, meanwhile, nestled the remotely piloted mule among bladder tanks of refined ammonia, water ice, and cylinders of silica in the nearby supply yard. By then the interloper’s spacecraft had arrived. Its rocket engine cut out a few hundred meters away. Silent puffs of thruster gas issued from various nozzles as it maneuvered precisely toward the upper airlock of the Konstantin.
Abarca watched the monitor. “That thing must mass at least 30 tons.”
This was a small percentage of the Konstantin’s mass, but in a collision it could still destroy the radial arms of the Konstantin’s hab units as they swept past in rotation. Fortunately, the mystery spacecraft seemed to be expertly piloted.
Abarca switched to an exterior camera focused on the docking ports. “That’s not being remotely controlled. Not at this distance from Earth.”
“It could be autonomous.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
She brought up additional holographic user interfaces. “The Konstantin won’t respond to their remote commands, correct?”
“Correct, my bypass will prevent it, but anyone on that vessel will soon become suspicious.”
“They could think it’s a malfunction. Our exterior is scarred with micrometeor damage.”
He tapped virtual controls. “Yes, but that will not stop them from manually docking and working the airlock.”
“Can you disable the docking port or the hatches?”
“No. The Konstantin was not designed to keep people out.”
She grimaced. “And they’ll outnumber us.”
“Eight people, if it is a standard crew. I see no way to prevent their taking physical control of the Konstantin.” He turned to her. “Should we also message James, Priya, and Han—to tell them we might be boarded?”
Abarca considered this. “Would that reveal our presence?”
“Quite possibly. The radio transmitter is not secure.”
“Then no. Besides, all it would do is worry them.”
Abarca and Adisa watched the monitor as the unknown vessel docked. It was distant enough that they felt no shudder or clunk of metal.
“Whoever it is, they have skill.”
Abarca switched to a camera inside the Konstantin’s upper airlock, a hundred meters away along the ship’s lightweight box truss superstructure. After several moments, she pointed. “There . . .”
The surveillance camera showed the hatch open, and then four individuals in ungainly, light gray space suits floated in one by one through the docking port in microgravity. They were soon followed by four more. What should have been a joyous sight—the arrival of a crew from Earth after four long years—was instead disquieting.
“Obsolete EVA suits. Orlan-Ms.” Adisa poked at the communications console.
“Cutting costs. That sounds like Joyce’s creditors all right.”
“I cannot intercept their comms. They appear to be using encrypted radio. Might they be military?”
The intruders were clearly communicating with one another, but their faces were concealed behind reflective visors; their radio chatter blasts of static. The new arrivals were visibly agitated by their inability to control anything on the Konstantin. They repeatedly tried to tap virtual controls that were linked to a ship that did not exist. After a few frustrated moments, most of them continued deeper into the Konstantin, entering the 2-meter-diameter microgravity tunnel that ran its length.
Meanwhile, two of the intruders opened one of the unoccupied docking hatches and emerged from the Konstantin to begin a space walk. They clipped tethers onto an exterior rail and moved forward, hand over hand, along the Konstantin’s solar mast—clearly knowing where they were going.
Adisa switched to an exterior view from the mule’s distant cameras—zooming in on the two space walkers. “They are headed to the comm array—to restore their long-range communications. They will find my bypass.”
Abarca keyed the laser comm channel. “Konstantin to mission control, we have been boarded by eight unidentified individuals—possibly a hostile replacement crew. They are moving now to cut our communications. I will keep this channel open as long as possible. Repeat . . .”
As Abarca continued to transmit, the two space walkers reached the comm tower and discovered Adisa’s modifications, including the cables running to his bypass enclosure. In a few moments they yanked its cables.
“That is it.” He turned to her. “We have lost our connection with mission control.”
They both stared in horror as the space walkers worked to restore the original wiring to the laser transmitter—relinking to hostile management back on Earth.
Adisa’s mind raced, and he brought up a virtual shell console. “I can cripple their transmitter—at the ship’s OS level. They would be unlikely to find the cause.”
She nodded. “Do it. Buy us some time.”
Adisa swiftly wrote a shell script that locked out all the transmitter ports. He then inserted the script into several core services that launched during the ship’s OS startup. In a few minutes he was finished. “I have disabled their transmitter.”
“Good.” She was focused on the surveillance monitors. The intruders inside the ship were now moving into the Central Hab—the junction to all three radial arms and the habs at their ends.
Abarca switched cameras to monitor their progress. “We could physically bar the hatch to this hab. It’ll take them at least five minutes to winch down the hab tunnel, and we still have sysadmin control of the Konstantin.”
“But they now have physical control of the ship’s computer core, Isabel. They could reinstall the entire ship’s OS and then detect us on surveillance cameras.”
She nodded. “And purge our atmosphere. Like last time. We are in a tight spot here, Ade.”
“Do you think they will kill us?”
“Their employers already tried to, and that’s who sent these people.”
Adisa pointed at a surveillance monitor. “Look. They found the Far Star . . .”
On-screen, one of the intruders lifted a glittering kiwi-fruit-sized diamond from its perch on the wall of the Central Hab. They held it up for the others to see and appeared to celebrate. The stone was a 250-carat diamond James Tighe had discovered during mining operations. Nicole Clarke, the Konstantin’s original captain and resident geologist, had cut it into a flawless, brilliant pear diamond they named the Far Star—before she died of cancer. The stone was worth several hundred million back on Earth and no doubt was on a manifest of objects for the new crew to secure.
“They knew right where to look for it.” She turned to him. “And next they’ll probably start searching for our bodies. Here in the habs.”
Two of the intruders opened the pressure door to access the Konstantin’s computer core, while the other two pairs went “down” into the spin-gravity wells of the habitat modules, leaving the third module—the Fab Hab workshop—for last.
Intruders were headed their way.
“What do we do, Isabel?”
“I’m thinking.” She studied the surveillance cameras as two of the intruders clipped in to the winch and slowly descended the hundred-meter airless tunnel toward their hab unit.
“There are only two of them coming toward us. We have the element of surprise.” Adisa got up and rushed into the living quarters. After a few moments he emerged with an ice ax.
“What do you plan to do with that?”
“We must be prepared to defend ourselves.”
She grabbed it from him. “You’re not killing anyone with my climbing ax.”
“Then what are we doing? Are we accepting our fate?”
They stood staring at each other. Adisa’s thoughts raced as the moments ticked by, but no solution to their predicament came to mind.
All too soon the clunk of boots sounded on the ceiling of the hab unit directly above them. They both looked upward.
He whispered, “They are here.”
Abarca entered the hab core and stared up at the airlock hatch in the ceiling. Adisa moved alongside her. The airlock was already cycling.
She placed the ice ax out of sight, leaning it against the wall next to her. “No matter what happens, it has been an honor crewing with you, Adedayo Adisa.”
He nodded. “And with you, Isabel Abarca.”
They hugged and looked back up at the ceiling as the rattling air pump stopped.
The hatch lever slid aside, then the lid lurched open with a loud squeak, demonstrating the wear of years. In a few moments, a gray booted foot appeared, probing for the top ladder rung. Then another boot followed, and the intruder started descending shakily into the full spin-gravity of the living quarters. A bulky space suit with a life support pack became visible. A second set of boots followed close behind.
Abarca and Adisa silently stood their ground.
Reaching the base of the ladder, the first intruder planted their feet on the deck, and unsteadily turned around in the bulky space suit. In a moment the reflective visor finally came into view.
The intruder suddenly snapped alert—startled at the first sight of Abarca and Adisa.
And now they could clearly see the flag of North Korea sewn onto the suit’s chest plate.
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