Delta-v, page 38
Lacroix spoke softly. “Crew of the Konstantin, you should be aware that . . . Nathan Joyce is dead.”
Abarca sat up and paid close attention.
Tighe said, “Bullshit.”
Chindarkar silenced him with a hand on his arm.
Lacroix continued. “Nathan committed suicide on his Colorado ranch. Authorities in several countries have seized his personal assets and are investigating allegations of stock fraud. Most of his companies have filed for bankruptcy. There will be a period of reorganization, and it is likely that Catalyst Corporation’s assets will be acquired by another organization.” Lacroix sat in silence for several moments. “We will keep you abreast of new developments. However, I must stress that in the meantime it is more important than ever that you continue to maximize production. This will help secure the best terms for the company’s continued operation—and for your benefits package.”
With that, Lacroix clicked off.
Immediately afterward, the newsfeed from Earth resumed. In the feed, there was no mention of Ryugu, or of Goff’s mining robots failing, or about the existence of the Konstantin. However, there were dozens of news stories about Nathan Joyce—about his suicide by plane crash and his lavish lifestyle, financed by fraud. Lurid exposés with clickbait titles. Even in death, Joyce was generating publicity.
Despite Lacroix’s message to keep working, the crew moved about listlessly. The physical deterioration of the ship and its equipment added to the general gloom. A second mule had been badly damaged in the struggle with the mining rig that killed Morra. Portions of the Konstantin were leaking atmosphere from worn seals. There were micrometeor punctures in two transfer tunnels and another in the wall of the Central Hab. Temporary patches were keeping up with the leaks, but more permanent repairs were needed.
However, the up-armored ARS and Honey Bee robots continued their work, harvesting and processing asteroid regolith, moving through the queue of selected boulders.
Crew morale, on the other hand, was nonexistent.
Sitting in his workstation, Tighe stared at the empty desk across from him—where Morra would normally have been sitting this rotation. He still could not believe his friend was gone. A friend whose last instinct, even as he was suffocating, was to protect his crewmates.
Tighe felt another convulsion of grief, but he knew that the only way Morra’s death would mean anything was if the expedition succeeded. For this reason, Tighe eventually sat up and started taking tasks off the work queue. Losing himself in work was the only thing likely to make things better.
The rest of the crew slowly started performing their duties again as well, often sharing meals in silence. They watched movies and TV shows from the ship’s library, and read or listened to books to remember that there really was an Earth—even if, for now, it was just a distant white dot.
And then the laser comm link to Earth went dead.
* * *
—
After prebreathing, Tighe and Adisa suited up. They undocked their clam suits at the upper airlock and moved, hand over hand, up the 100-meter solar mast toward the peak of the Konstantin—the aluminum ladder rungs serving as handholds for pulling forward in microgravity.
Soon they emerged from Ryugu’s shadow and floated into the sunlight between hundreds of square meters of blue gallium arsenide solar panels.
Farther on, at the apex of the ship, they reached the radio tower and the laser comm array. It was here that Adisa got busy opening panels, checking voltages, and inspecting cable connections while Tighe clipped in nearby.
“That laser can really reach all the way back to Earth?”
Adisa focused on his diagnostic tests. “It beams to one of two transmitter/receivers—one at the Sun-Earth L5 Lagrange point, another near the Moon. Depending on whether the Sun blocks the line of sight.”
“And it’s our only outside communications link?”
Adisa glanced up. “A laser requires the receiver on the other end to be in just the right position. So, yes.”
“Meaning no one but Catalyst Corporation can hear us broadcasting.”
Adisa nodded.
“What about all these radio antennas and dishes?”
“They are meant for local communication—our telepresence systems and the mining robots. Star and Sun tracking. They were not designed for long-range communication.”
“So Joyce isolated us intentionally.”
Adisa continued his diagnostics for another fifteen minutes. He finally put away his tools and stared silently into the starless, sun-faded space around them.
Tighe cleared his throat.
Adisa looked up. “The laser is functioning correctly, and we still have a connection to the receiver on the other end.”
“Then why aren’t they answering?”
Adisa hesitated but finally said, “Because I do not think anyone is listening.”
* * *
—
The crew floated in the Central Hab—all six of them physically present. They held on to storage racks as Abarca floated near the core. The room rotated around them.
She studied their faces. “Here’s the situation: we’ve lost contact with Earth. It’s not an equipment problem but more likely a result of the insolvency of Catalyst Corporation and the seizure of most of Nathan Joyce’s assets. There’s probably some corporate chaos going on down there right now, but there’s no reason to think this situation will persist.”
The entire crew looked shell-shocked. It was difficult to absorb the reality of their situation.
Tsukada said, “What if Nathan died with the comm codes?”
“Let’s not panic ourselves. This expedition is Nathan’s best legacy, and I don’t think he’d purposely sabotage it.”
Jin said, “Even if that meant his creditors would become rich on the mission he planned and designed—but which bankrupted him?”
Tsukada added, “Over which he committed suicide?”
Abarca held up her hands. “Look, I’m not a member of the Nathan Joyce fan club. If I’d known he was going to pull this shit on us, I wouldn’t have recruited you all. But as for choosing each of you—I wouldn’t want to be out here with anyone else. My mistake was in trusting Joyce, but that’s a mistake we all made. And it doesn’t mean this expedition was a mistake.”
Chindarkar said, “What about our return to Earth?”
Abarca instantiated a virtual model of the solar system and zoomed in to show Ryugu and Earth orbiting the Sun, playing leapfrog. A calendar date incremented at the bottom of the model as the planets moved.
“Our next close approach to Earth is in February 2038—a little under three years from now. A Catalyst Corporation spacecraft is supposed to arrive then, deliver a new crew, refuel, and then fly us back to Earth.”
Tsukada stared at the hologram. “How do we even know they’re sending a ship for us in 2038?”
The crew exchanged somber looks.
Jin said, “I cannot imagine they would abandon this investment. Even if Catalyst went bankrupt, the Konstantin and its cargo represent a twenty-billion-dollar asset. The resources we are now producing are incredibly valuable. Not to mention geostrategically important.”
Abarca gestured. “Jin’s right. So let’s proceed on the assumption that we are too valuable to abandon. Someone will come for us.”
Tighe stared. “Or for the ship at least.”
“Either way.”
Chindarkar said, “So we just continue mining Ryugu—business as usual?”
“For the next two years, the Earth will be too far away to contemplate an abort—even if we could pilot the ship, which is doubtful given our lack of admin rights. So I say we continue working until we find out what’s going on.”
“And if we don’t hear anything?”
“Well, that’s finding out, too. Isn’t it?”
* * *
—
Three days later Tighe, Abarca, and Jin were performing maintenance on the aquaponic systems in Hab 2’s lower level when Adisa slid down the gangway. He’d come all the way across two transfer tunnels—unannounced. His expression was grim.
“Everything okay in Hab 1, Ade?”
Abarca and Jin stood up, concerned.
Adisa spoke softly. “There is something you need to know, Isabel. . . .”
Abarca approached. “What?”
“I was just consolidating storage in the refinery . . . transferring fuel to the main tanks—the ones we used to reach Ryugu. They should have had a quarter million liters in them—the fuel we would have used to return to Earth on a mission abort.”
Tighe confirmed, “After the go, no-go.”
Adisa nodded. “Yes. But I was still able to transfer the full amount into them. I looked closer. It appears the refinery software has a hard-coded offset for Fuel Tanks 1 through 4. The system reports more fuel than the tanks contain.”
The other three looked to one another.
Tighe cursed under his breath.
Jin moved close. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying that—from the very beginning—Nathan Joyce did not provide us enough fuel to get back. If we had been unable to mine Ryugu, we would never have been able to return to Earth.”
Abarca stared at the wall for a moment. Her eyes fluttered, and then she lashed out, kicking the aquaponic line, scattering plastic pipe sections. “Goddamn asshole!”
Abarca marched off and up the gangway to the second floor of the hab.
Tighe and Jin exchanged looks.
Adisa looked after Abarca. “I hope I am not the cause of—”
Tighe grabbed Adisa’s shoulder. “Not you. It definitely isn’t you.”
Jin put his tools down. “Joyce was going to erase us if we failed. . . .”
In a moment, they heard Abarca’s footsteps on the panels above, and then she slid down the gangway onto the first floor. In her hand she held a tool that Tighe had never seen. It looked like a metallic mountain-climbing ice ax. Where it came from, he had no idea.
He stepped toward her. “Isabel, talk to me.”
“Not now, J.T.”
“Where’re you going with the ice ax?”
Jin: “Where did you get an ice ax?”
“Give me some space.”
“You need to tell us what you’re going to do.”
She pushed into the storage room and walked up to the gift lockers—the bank of sealed containers meant to boost crew morale as the mission continued.
The others followed her.
“Stand back.” She reared the ice ax back.
“Isabel, what—”
And she drove the spike end of the ax through the aluminum plating. Abarca then started prying outward, wrenching the door out of shape with a metallic shriek and finally popping the lock.
Alarm codes appeared in their crystal displays, indicating—of all things—a break-in. Abarca silenced the alarms with a gesture.
She looked inside the locker.
Tighe and the others came alongside and peered in as well.
The locker was empty.
She spoke without emotion. “Step back. . . .”
The others cleared away.
Abarca broke open locker after locker. They were all empty.
Jin leaned against the storage room wall, holding his temples. “Why?”
“The disease of short-term thinking.” Tighe nodded to himself as he looked at the empty gift lockers. “The source of most of humanity’s problems.”
Eventually Abarca tore open a locker that contained a lone bottle of Suntory Hibiki thirty-year-old whiskey. She let the ax clatter to the deck, then tore the seal on the bottle’s glass stopper. Abarca raised the whiskey. “I wish hell existed—because then Nathan Joyce would be in it.” She took a deep swig and then passed it to Adisa.
“I do not drink, Isabel.”
“This could be the last bottle of anything that we will ever see. So take a drink.”
Adisa hesitated and then took a tentative swig—and instantly doubled over in a coughing fit.
Tighe grabbed the bottle and took a deep pull, then passed the bottle to Jin—who also took a good swig.
Tighe shook his head and laughed.
Abarca glared at him. “What the hell’s so funny, J.T.?”
He gestured to the room and the torn-open lockers. “The situation. You have to admit, it’s kind of absurd.”
After a beat the others broke out in deranged laughter, too.
Jin passed Abarca the whiskey bottle. “Good stuff. Back in Beijing, Hibiki is forty thousand yuan a bottle.”
She took another swig. “A lot cheaper than sending tons of rocket fuel.” Abarca passed the bottle to Adisa.
Adisa took another sip and coughed less this time.
Half an hour later, Tighe, Abarca, Jin, and Adisa sat on the floor, inebriated, their backs against the wall.
Tighe gestured to Abarca’s ax. “Your father’s?”
She hefted the scuffed and weathered ax, examining it. “I didn’t plan to take it. I just wanted to find him. When I did, it was like he was offering it to me.”
Tighe imagined what it must have been like, high up on K2.
She lowered the ax and looked at the ceiling. “Joyce actually got me to believe his bullshit.”
Tighe leaned his head back against the wall. “Bullshit is how he got this ship built.”
Jin pointed a finger at Tighe. “Do not even think of defending him.”
“I’m not defending him. If Joyce was here right now, I’d put that ice ax through his forehead.”
Abarca shook her head. “Not before I did.”
Tighe continued. “Besides, Joyce already beat us to it.”
Jin ground his teeth. “Coward. He escaped punishment.”
Tighe nodded. “But I don’t think Joyce planned on dying. I think he was hoping this would all work out. That he would be a hero.”
The others laughed bitterly.
“I know, I know. The guy stole tens of billions of dollars to build this ship and send us out here. He lied to us and to the entire world—didn’t even give us enough fuel to get back—and yet, he wasn’t wrong. We are mining this asteroid. If CRC hadn’t shown up, Dave would still be alive.”
Jin said, “Nicole would not be.”
Abarca stared. “Let’s just say that Nathan’s a complicated figure and leave it at that.” She swigged the last of the whiskey.
Adisa snickered. “This is the difference between Africans and you Westerners—”
They all turned to him. Adisa looked seriously intoxicated.
Jin said, “I am not a Westerner, Ade.”
Adisa waved Jin away. “In Lagos we all know the e-lites are corrupt. They have always been. We expect no less from them, and so we are never disappointed.”
Abarca tossed the bottle into a corner. “Well, that’s just depressing, Ade.”
CHAPTER 39
Goldstone
JUNE 24, 2035
Lukas Rochat moved through his days in a near trance. It was difficult to believe Nathan Joyce was actually gone, even though he’d witnessed the plane impact the tarmac. He kept expecting Joyce to phone him from some tropical locale. Then Rochat remembered he was present when they pulled Joyce’s charred remains from the wreckage.
Not long after the county police, ambulances, and coroner left, US Internal Revenue Service and FBI agents arrived at Lodgepole Ranch with search warrants and began taking away computers and files.
To Rochat’s surprise, the communication equipment for uplinking to the Konstantin was gone when he let the authorities into Joyce’s study. In that corner there was now a glass case containing architectural models of a proposed condominium development in Dubai—one Rochat had never seen before.
The IRS then seized the entire ranch.
During his police interview, Rochat said only that one of Joyce’s companies was his client, and that he’d come to the ranch to discuss invoices that were months overdue—which was true enough. He claimed attorney-client privilege for the rest.
The IRS agents said they’d seek a court order for access to Rochat’s files, but days later he found himself alone, in a generic chain hotel outside Colorado Springs. Rochat vaguely recalled driving there in a rental car.
Government authorities in eight countries had locked everyone out of Joyce company offices. They’d confiscated encrypted computer systems. The corporate bank accounts were frozen. No one was answering phones or emails.
Lukas Rochat was on his own.
It took him a day or two to wrap his head around the enormity of the crisis, but when he did, it hit him all at once: the Konstantin was still out in deep space. Almost no one knew about the asteroid miners, and unless he did something, there was no guarantee the crew would receive the help they needed to survive. But how could he contact them, much less help them? He had no idea where Lacroix and the mission control team were, nor how the encrypted communications with the Konstantin worked.
And yet, there was a return payload from the Konstantin en route to cislunar space—the orbital parameters for which were probably somewhere in an encrypted message from Joyce. Was that actually true?
Rochat sat at his business suite’s kitchen table and studied the crumpled piece of paper that Joyce had given him just before he climbed into the biplane. Joyce had written a phone number with the penmanship of a five-year-old. It actually made Rochat laugh.
Joyce had educated Rochat on burner phones—and how important it was to never use one’s own phone on Konstantin business. Today definitely qualified.
Rochat held a cheap burner phone in his hand. He installed the battery and called the number on Joyce’s note. The line rang three or four times until it finally picked up. His pulse raced as he listened.
