Chapter 24: Crisis!!

OUTPOST-Chapter 24
For Tom Luong Films-Development
By Julian Phillips
2010-04-22

To conduct an emergency situation or circumstance, from a command position, is difficult for anyone. Command, leadership, control, office or power, in emergency, or danger, is an urgency and trouble. Anyone who really enjoys it, or who seeks it, or thrives thereon, is probably un-reliable to begin with. With lives on-the-line, people who are depending on clear and successful decision-making, and with the dynamic and changing urgency of any dangerous emergency, a leader such as Guy Reisling is hard-pressed to win the day, even unto death. And yet his normal job was only to transport goods across the sky to Mars---easy and non-threatening, food, water, oxygen, supplies. If they all died, in a conflict now with the Russian-Islamic space-ships having approached un-seen, to a dangerously near place, as the ships were speeding along---that is, if Guy and his crew were all killed, for some reason, for it was a war, now---they would not even know, or realize, or understand, that Guy had failed them, and they had lost everything under his command, for the aspect of the ignorance of being dead. In a flash of fire and freeze, if the Russians for example fired missiles at the Penelope, destroying their ship, killing them all, a moment of intense pain and anguish---maybe, ten or 20 minutes of panic, in which all hands were to be lost---as they left the Universe of the living, for the Beyond, it might approach awareness, in a miniscule, tiny, group or individual nervous-system of human consciousness they shared as the crew of the Penelope, that the hour had been lost to failure and fate. Guy, as the commander, was driven in a passion of perfect decision, to save them, his men, and not let this happen. And deep inside, he knew, he would prevail, somehow.

Guy arrived on the flight-deck or command-control helm of his ship, within only 15-minutes of Rob’s alert. Their discovery of the very-near approach of the Russian lead-ships, was indeed quite alarming. A layman, or one who may know nothing at all of space-travel in the future year of 2077, might not understand. After 15 years or more of the establishment of the USMars base, called the Snikta Ridge Volcanic Basin Research Mars Facility, space-flight back and forth was almost entirely educational and research-oriented. Now, with the advent of an approaching meteor which may strike the Earth with overwhelming destruction, an act of God, if you will, Guy and his crew, and the teams of leadership and science-leaders managing the USMars program, now were suddenly at war. This alone was a shock. For Guy, Rob Cowan (with his anti-biotic issue concerning his testicular loss), and the eight other men working this particular flight aboard the beloved Penelope---a grand and noble ship they all loved more than life---now, they faced uncertainty, that was beyond doubt. The common procedure for Earth-Mars corridor travel, was well-established for any of the ships and launches, either USMars, Russian-Islamic, or even others, that ships never traveled the Abyss, so close or near, by miles or kilometers, as they presently knew and had confirmed, that these two Russian ships, were now ‘at their side’. So without a doubt, they were alarmed and in a trouble about it. Again, the reason was, that aside from docking procedures, because space-flight was dangerous and un-predictable, that distances of at least 10,000 or 20,000 kilometers—more than the distance on Earth from California to Australia, or the Horn of Africa---these safety zones of separation, were standard. It was only good practice. The ships flew at great speed, conditions were fatal if there were any failure, and also for purposes of navigation, variations might arise at any time. So with Rob’s call to Guy’s sleeping bunk, and the navigator’s confirmed data that the two lead ships for the Russian-Islamic voyagers, were now ten-miles off, or even three or four miles off, from their ship’s position, it was an urgent circumstance that Guy took very seriously. It could only mean they wanted something, or were ‘up-to-something’, and it was his problem. He wasn’t happy about it, to say the least.

The entire crew of the Penelope was now at all-hands alert. Guy and Rob, along with the flight-path navigator Tom McGee, and the Flight Specialist in charge of Vandenberg-to-ship communications, a thin, brown-skinned man from Indonesia named Raza Brahman, were on-deck. The goal, or orientation to the situation, was to gather accurate information, and respond, within the structure of the instructions and current-moment advise from Vandenberg. To over-react was an error. Each man took his work at his own level of performance-skill and duty, knowing it would effect the outcome, either way.
Brahman was on his radio-link to Vandenberg within half-an-hour. He needed to transmit their codes and connection, and establish the link, and also to contact the appropriate Vandenberg leadership, who might not be instantly available, or even asleep, or off-duty, rather than the 24/7 USMars Earth-base communication dispatch monitor underling, who would have no authority or information. This took time.

“We’ll have Okman within 20-minutes,” Brahman said. “That’s the best I can do, he’s the transport-cargo commander for this ship.”
“Okamn won’t know anything,” Guy said. “He’s still hurting from my competency trail last year. All he knows about is our cargo and general orders. I need to speak with command. We have a general order forbidding any contact with the enemy. I have a feeling it won’t be long before that becomes inevitable. I need to know what Rogers-Smith wants from me. Maybe we can get out of this.”

“Working on it,” said Brahman. He continued to ply his skill with the ship’s communication set-up, mostly waiting for Vandenberg to realize they had a situation, from their previous message. So, he simply watched the in-coming monitors for Vandenberg’s response, across half a million miles. He also repeated their signal-code emission, a ‘cry for help’, that would not be mistaken, by the Vandenberg 24/7 monitor for their flight. All the flights were in perpetual contact with ‘mission-control’, but it was usually entirely routine, even dull, boring.

Guy confronted Tom McGee, again. “Give me the current details,” he said. “Show me on a piece-of-paper if you have to. Who are they, which ships, and what are the relative positions from us to them.”

Of course, McGee was tracking the Russians moment-to-moment. The Penelope had scanners, mostly for far-distant objects like Earth, star-positions for navigation, Mars, Molinari space-dock, and the every-now-and-then meteor shower or heat-flare from the Sun. And also the Mars moons, and other celestial features.

“Hasn’t changed much,” McGee said. “Our ship is traveling at 10,000-kilometers per minute. They’re matching us perfectly. I have to say, their pilots must be skilled. We’re in formation, like it or not. One ship is roughly 4-kilometers below us and back. The other is ten kilometers, or I guess about nine kilometers, to the other side, above, like two o-clock star-board, left. These fuckers know what they’re doing. They know we know. It’s bull-shit, Guy.”

There was a pause. Rob was looking at their forward motion, to plot a variety of control-commands, that might be useful if they wanted to change position. Guy was looking at life-support, and preparations they had already made for any confrontation. For instance, he urgently needed the ship’s four engines to be adjusted for a longer-term burn, without clean-and-trim cycle, in case they could not rest the engines for restoral, as they usually would. So, the rocket-engine team was working with him to make sure they would not fail to have full thruster-power for all engines, for example, to increase the ship’s speed and escape trouble. Rob’s momentary task, was to look at how they might track the Penelope---down, up, across, loop-the-loop---even within the hour, to avoid the Russian ship’s advances, should they attack. None of them had any idea what the Russians might do next.

Three hours passed in this way. Each team-member did what they could, and Transport-Cargo Commander Okman was on-the-line to the Penelope after the first hour. But he didn’t have much to offer.

“You have your orders,” Okman told guy, once Brahman had set up the connection. “No contact. No hostile action. No negotiation.”

“Eat my shorts, Okman,” Guy told him. “For all I know, they’ll fire a bomb at us without warning. I need to ship-to-ship their pilot, find out their terms. They’re right on top of us. It’s totally abnormal. It’s not like they’re sleeping over there. The bastards are just waiting. It’s been ten hours. They moved on us at high-speed, probably three or four times our speed. It was intentional. That alone is a hostile act.”

“Don’t interpret the situation, Guy,” Okman told him. The radio-link was compressed and jerky. “Not your job. Hold your position, fly silent. We’ll wait for command. Rogers and the others are being alerted. Just sit tight, it won’t be long. I think that Jew, Ibrahim, the science-guy, was bar-hopping in Santa Barbara late last night. It’s only going to get more and more complicated. Winton Berle’s squad of ships is a month or two behind you. That has to be considered, too.”

“Yeah, sure,“ Guy said. “And three other Russian ships between our position and Berle. Like he’s going to get me out of this. He’s too far back. 700,000-miles or something. They won’t help me.”

The link was silent for about five minutes. Guy and Rob, with Tom and Raza Brahman, chatted about it all.
“The signal to Earth is compressed,” Brahman said. “He’ll be back on-line in a few minutes.”

“Even Rogers-Smith or Earth-tracking can’t really give us anything,” Rob said dismally. “We’re on our own.”

“I say we run for it,” McGee offered. “Hit our maximum speed, maneuver away. Why not? The Penelope is probably superior to their ships for speed. We can hit 100,000 kilometers per minute. Why not? Run for it. Out-maneuver them, make it a race. All we have ahead is either Mars or Molinari. At least it would save us from a blind attack, like a missile.”

Guy was cold, thinking, structuring his options sub-consciously. A missile attack was maybe un-likely, but from a strategic point-of-view, it might be possible, or it might even be their goal. Ten hours had passed, at-speed, and the Russians had been silent. No attack, which they certainly could have accomplished at such close range, if that had been their idea. On the other hand, Guy didn’t really have any confirmation that the Russian ships were equipped with such ship-to-ship destructive armaments. After all, it had never happened before, in the history of space-travel or space-exploration. But this was---different.

Okman came back on-line with the link. He had nothing else to say of any value. What Guy really wanted, was permission or authority, from Vandenberg command. He was hand-cuffed by the standing orders. Okman couldn’t change that. Also, command-authority would have other information he could apply to their crisis. Or, even, as Guy might wish, some kind of plan, or back-up. The radio-hookup with Okman finally went dead, until Rogers-Smith and her people were advised and could respond intelligently. Estimated time for that was an hour or so. Meanwhile, the crew of the Penelope started to sweat. The prospect of death and disaster, floating away into the Abyss like corpses of stone, was not welcome to their minds. The Russians were laughing at them, behind the silence. The Penelope thrust forward on her course, and they along, with the other ships at-pace, only to vary their relative positions by a few hundred feet. Thousands of miles of nothingness went by, and yet, was like a stillness, or even seeming motionless.

Guy was seated in his command-chair, looking at ship’s systems. Oddly enough, he had on the normal foot-ware they all used, the magnetic slippers that held them down in the null-gravity, on his feet, instead of bare-footed. Raza, the tele-radio expert, floated upside down above, working on a hand-held computer that kept track of his radio-link, to assure the connection from Earth when ready. Rob Cowan worked on the engine status and other tasks, by inter-ship link to the engine crew. McGee, the path-plotter and star-guide, seemed to have fallen asleep, his head slumped over into his hands at his post. Then without warning, a radio-link monitor started to bleep loudly with an alarm. Raza lurched to his desk-top kiosk, part of the helm-deck work-area, to respond. They all knew what that alarm meant, from the sound and desk-of-origin, there on the helm-command: an in-coming signature-coded radio-communication signal, indicating and outside message or link to a responder. It could be Earth, Molinari, Mars, Winton Berle’s armada---or ‘them’.

“Go ahead with it,” Guy told Raza. “Proceed. I’ll take responsibility.”
Raza activated the link, with the standard salute. “This is US-Mars transport vessel Penelope, under command of Captain Guy Reisling and US Space Authority, in Vandenberg, California,” he said. “We have your signal. Go ahead, please.”

He pumped the volume onto the helm-command deck, so they could all hear. There was static for a tense moment.

“This is Colonel Robat Zolotny, of the Krenika, originating from Ukrainian space-port KK-F/Region Six, on Earth, commanded by Russian authority under General Rudolph Terchenko. Do you have my radio? Please respond?”

Static, dead-sir. “Handle it,” Guy told Raza Brahman tersely, who was at the radio-monitor.

“We have your signal, Krenika. Go ahead,” he said. The flight-deck on the Penelope was now all-ears. A moment.

We are apparently at war, Penelope. Who is your commander?” , came the voice on the other end of the radio-link. Tom McGee, the plotter-navigator, quickly attempted to track the radio-signal to figure out which of the two Russian ships was the Krenika, which was not clear.

Guy was steaming. “All right, dammit,” he told Brahman. “I’ll talk to him. Give me the phone.”

He moved over to Raza’s station, floating and pulling himself by chairs and hand-holds, then settling down. Another moment, static.

“This is Captain Reisling of the Penelope,” Guy said, using the radio-microphone. “The Krenika is too close to our ship. We are in danger of a potential collision at flight-speed, as per protocol. I’m aware of your position. I’m requesting the immediate withdrawal of your vessel to a safe distance of at least 5,000-kilometers. What the fuck are you idiots doing? This is non-standard, and you know it. Get the hell off my ass, Krenika.”

Now, from the other side, on-board the Krenika, they could hear laughter, over the radio. The crew on the Krenika flight deck found Guy’s request very humorous.

“We are at war now, Penelope,” came the reply, apparently the pilot, Zolotny. His voice had an Eastern-European accent and dialect. “Surely you realize this?”

“Please withdraw the Krenika to a safe distance,” Guy responded. “Surely you realize standard practices. I am requesting your vessel to comply for the safety of all concerned. Withdraw the Krenika to 10,000-kilometers immediately.”

A long pause. Static. “We shall see, Penelope. We shall see.” There was now more laughter and rude remarks from the other side on the radio.

2,515-words
Julian Phillips