Delta-v, page 42
“How? The owners have cameras everywhere.”
The red light illuminated, indicating the airlock was fully evacuated. He unlatched the exterior hatch door and pulled it inward. Agony from decompression sickness intensified.
Truss girders with a spinning star field beyond greeted him through the hatchway.
“Priya, whatever we do next, Earth won’t know about it for at least eighteen minutes. Which means they won’t be able to send commands to the Konstantin in response for another eighteen minutes after that.”
Chindarkar’s voice sounded more resolute. “Right. That’s right.”
“So who has control of this ship for the next thirty-six minutes?”
“We do.”
“Goddamn right. I’m taking the exterior maintenance plank up to the hub—then I’ll traverse directly to Radial Arm 1.”
“We’re spun up! You’ll get thrown clear of the ship.”
“Not if I catch hold of the arm first.” Tighe closed his eyes to settle his mind against the agony of nitrogen bubbling out of his blood. Sweat dripped into his eyes. He backed through the hatchway and poked with his booted foot for the upper rung of a ladder he knew must be there. “Secure your life support—pull out Hab 2’s data links if you have to. Do you understand? Save yourself.”
After a moment’s silence her voice returned, resolved. “I’m on it. J.T., I enjoyed us.”
“I did, too, Priya.” With that, Tighe stepped out into the vacuum of space, staggering across the flat roof of the hab, clinging to truss girders. The stars and the shadow of Ryugu whirled all around him as centrifugal force pressed him against Hab 2’s roof. Nausea assailed him—whether from motion or decompression sickness didn’t much matter.
Tighe focused on the sight of Hab 1, 160 meters away at the end of the neighboring radial arm. It followed Hab 2 in its circuit around Konstantin’s axis. Despite the whirling star field, Tighe knew where he was, and he knew where he was going. He willed himself to override the pain and his middle ear confusion as he grabbed the ladder rungs of Radial Arm 2’s spinward maintenance ladder.
There was no time to repeatedly clip in his tether as he climbed, so Tighe went without safeguards. He’d practiced this climb with Jin back on the ship’s mock-up in Antarctica. However, here in real life, if he got disoriented and fell, he’d be hurled off into space.
Tighe closed his eyes and focused on the increasing pain in his joints as he climbed, listening to his breathing. His nausea eased, and as he rose along the ship’s radial arm, the sensation of gravity began to lessen. He opened his eyes and could see the bulbous white wall of the Central Hab edge on, straight ahead. The flag of Luxembourg was printed there just beneath the word “Konstantin.”
When Tighe had climbed most of the way up the arm, he released the ladder and grabbed the truss girders surrounding the inflated transfer tunnel. Everything was still pockmarked from storm damage.
He pulled himself, hand over hand, through the girders to the trailing side of the radial arm. Tighe now had an unobstructed view of Radial Arm 1 in the distance—closer now, since he was nearer the core. Nonetheless, the gap was sobering.
“I’m about to make the jump, Priya.” He tried to ignore the blinding decompression pain.
“The arm will be coming fast. Try to use the tunnel to cushion the impact.”
With that Tighe let go of the girders and floated in space.
At first the box truss of Radial Arm 2 remained alongside him, but as it rotated around the Central Hab and Tighe’s trajectory remained straight, it began to curve away from him.
Soon Tighe was in the void between the radial arms. He floated, hands outstretched like a skydiver, and braced himself for impact.
Since his own trajectory continued straight, he was halfway down the length of Radial Arm 1 by the time it caught up to him—approaching at 50 kilometers per hour.
He ducked under a cross brace as the white polymer wall of the inflated transfer tunnel impacted him, collapsing and tearing several stringers that held it in place. Tighe clawed at anything he could as he started to slide down the length of the tunnel’s exterior, almost rolling between the girders before he managed to grab one of the Kevlar stringers.
Tighe braced his feet on the girders of the box truss and looked down at the hab 50 meters “below” him—a star field spinning beyond. He was now spinning along with Arm 1. “I made it! I’m on Arm 1!”
He didn’t even hear Chindarkar’s response as he looped the 100-meter tether coil to one of the box-truss girders and then tied a Munter hitch through one of his suit’s carabiners. Tighe imagined Oberhaus’s calm voice even now.
If you are careless and lose your belay device, you can use a Munter hitch to rappel in an emergency.
Tighe laughed, delirious with pain. “I know, I know . . .”
With a deep breath he pushed off from the spinward girder and paid out tether cord as he rappelled down the length of Arm 1. Ahead of him the universe turned in a nausea-inducing spin: the Milky Way, Ryugu, the Milky Way, Ryugu.
Tighe focused his gaze on the low curve of Hab 1 and ignored the 90 percent of his vision field above that. His joints pulsed in agony with each beat of his racing heart. His skin itched, and he felt numbness growing in his fingers and toes. He vaguely discerned a voice calling to him over the radio but did not dare break his concentration.
Soon Tighe’s boots landed on the inflated roof of Hab 1. He unclipped the tether line and staggered over to the airlock hatch. He slid the lever and fell inside as the hatch opened. The pain of hitting the deck barely registered against the excruciating torture in his joints and chest. He groaned as he crawled to push and lock the exterior hatch, then slammed the pressure lever closed.
He tugged at Hab 1’s airlock hatch until the pressure equalized enough for him to open it. Tighe leaned through the upper hatchway, kicking on his helmet lights to see Isabel Abarca sleeping alone in one of the upper crew compartment beds.
She looked peaceful.
Tighe dropped down into her quarters, collapsing against the cabinets. He ignored the pain as he rose and pulled an oxygen candle out of his utility belt. He struck the igniter and the candle erupted with an eerie pink light. Tighe pulled up the emergency hatch leading into the crew quarters below. There he could see Jin and Adisa, also unconscious in their beds. He dropped the oxygen candle into their compartment and then pulled a breathing apparatus out of an emergency locker.
Tighe stumbled over to Abarca. She looked lifeless, but he secured the oxygen mask over her face and turned on the O2. He began to compress her chest.
“C’mon, Isabel! Breathe! Breathe!” He glanced at her vitals in his AR display, but they were an absolute fiction of healthfulness. He kept compressing her chest as the O2 flowed.
In a moment, her eyes fluttered. He felt her chest rising and falling. “That’s it! That’s it! Keep breathing. C’mon!”
She started coughing, then clutched the oxygen mask to her face. Her eyes met Tighe’s and she read the urgent look in his eyes almost immediately—then gave a thumbs-up.
Tighe collapsed and crawled through the emergency hatch, dropping into the lower crew quarters. He broke open the lockers, pulling out emergency masks. He quickly secured these over Jin and Adisa’s faces, opening their oxygen valves. He spoke into the comm link. “Priya, I’m in Hab 1. I revived Isabel. I’ve got masks on Han and Ade.” He groaned in agony. “Stand by.” He leaned against the wall and gritted his teeth against the pain.
“J.T.! Are you all right?”
“No. Not really.” The edges of his vision blurred, and he hit the purge valve to depressurize his suit. His ears popped as the higher pressure of ambient air streamed in. Then he collapsed onto the deck.
* * *
—
Tighe awoke in the Hab 1 medical bay, his joints pounding with an ache like distant thunder. He guessed he was on serious pain meds. He lay beneath a blanket with an IV running into his left arm and an oxygen mask on his face. Tighe looked up to see Abarca and Chindarkar sitting at his bedside. Jin and Adisa stood at the foot of the bed.
Abarca said, “Don’t try to move. I have you on oxygen therapy.”
Tighe tried to focus on her face. “How long was I out?”
“You woke up briefly an hour ago, but you’ve been unconscious for almost a day.”
He looked around, his anxiety rising. He tried to sit up. “We can’t sit here. The ship has been taken over. They—”
“Hey!” Jin and Adisa held him back. “Easy.”
Chindarkar said, “Ade took care of it. The owners no longer have a remote link to the ship.”
Tighe unclenched. He turned to Adisa. “How?”
“I took physical control of a mule and placed the maintenance shroud over the laser transmitter/receiver. They can send no commands to the Konstantin from Earth.”
Tighe leaned back, sighing deeply. “They tried to kill us.”
Jin nodded. “And they would have, too.”
Abarca held Tighe’s hand. “Thank you, J.T.”
“You think I want to be out here alone?”
After a moment Chindarkar said, “We’re not in the clear. The owners still have us locked out of everything. The Honey Bees, the ship’s network. We can’t even use the clam suits or access the ship’s computers.”
“Or monitor station keeping.” There was a smoldering rage in Adisa’s eyes—something Tighe had never seen before. “This situation must be rectified.”
Over the next several days, the entire crew remained together in Hab 1, manually checking oxygen levels and temperatures. No one was certain what they’d do if the ship’s systems started to malfunction. Not even their crystals worked anymore.
On the fourth day Adisa, wearing an oxygen mask, leaned into Tighe and Jin’s crew quarters. “Please begin your prebreathe. I will need your assistance outside.”
Two hours later Tighe, Jin, and Adisa pressurized their lightweight blue flight suits, strapped on life support packs, and exited the upper airlock. The flight suits were meant only for short, emergency EVAs, but without access to the ship’s network, the clam suits’ high-tech helmets were inert.
The trio climbed the Konstantin’s solar mast, noticing again the thousands of dings and scars from the rock storm the ship had weathered. Adisa had loaded Tighe and Jin down with packs containing computer equipment, cabling, and tools. After a few minutes’ pulling along the length of the ship, they reached the sunlight and the top of the antenna mast, where the laser receiver/transmitter stood under a white polymer shroud.
Without speaking, Adisa took equipment out of the packs, securing a rad-hardened computer server and wireless router to nearby girders with zip ties.
Tighe opened his own pack. “So what is all this, Ade?”
“The Konstantin communicates with Earth via a DTN system—delay/disruption tolerant networking. NASA developed it as an open-source Internet protocol intended for use throughout the solar system.”
Jin also opened his pack to Adisa. “Then it is different from the Earth Internet.”
Adisa talked as he assembled equipment. “Yes. Traditional Internet protocols require that all nodes in the transmission path be available, but here in space—due to distance—that will not always be the case. DTN supports automatic ‘store and forward’ data transmission; it can store partial bundles of data along a communication path until those parts can be forwarded and reassembled into the complete message. This means we will be able to gather what the owners of this vessel send us, even if we are not the final destination.”
“You’re not allowing them to connect to the Konstantin, I hope.”
Adisa unbolted a port in the side of the laser comm tower, pulling out the bundle of wires inside. “I have no intention of letting them connect to the real Konstantin ever again.” He extended a gloved hand. “Please hand me a wire cutter.”
Tighe produced the cutter from his chest harness and handed it over.
Adisa severed the cables, then rewired the upstream lines to his own server. He followed by splicing the shipside wires to a separate router and then powering up a holographic projector. The first thing he instantiated was a virtual keyboard and a virtual terminal screen.
Jin said, “We should know what you are doing, Ade.”
Adisa didn’t look up as he talked while typing with his space-gloved fingers. “I am creating a virtual Konstantin from physical copies of the ship’s OS discs.”
Tighe exchanged looks with Jin. “Where’d you find those?”
“In the central core’s rad vault. They are intended for rebuilding the Konstantin’s OS from scratch in the event of emergency.”
Jin nodded to himself. “So you create a virtual Konstantin and make them think they are connecting to the real one.”
Adisa kept typing. “And I will monitor their connection as they transmit their log-on hash.”
Jin and Tighe exchanged looks. Tighe recalled their first conversation about Adisa back on Ascension. The kid seems smart.
“First deep space computer hacking—that should go on the wall, Ade.”
Adisa kept typing. “Only if it is successful.” He brought his gloved finger down onto a virtual “Enter” key, activating a script. Gold-colored holographic text scrolled through the virtual terminal to a blinking cursor. He handed the end of a cable to Jin. “There is a maintenance jack beneath the service panel on your side. Please connect this.”
Jin did as instructed.
Adisa motioned to Tighe. “Float clear of the laser, please.”
Tighe did so.
Adisa pulled the shroud off the optic array. He then powered up the laser transmitter/receiver. The meter-wide pearlescent optics glowed with a reddish light—although no beam was visible.
Tighe, Jin, and Adisa watched the holographic terminal display—its cursor blinking against a background of deep space.
Within moments text started scrolling across the screen.
“They’ve been broadcasting a connection request this whole time.”
The screen halted with a long alphanumeric sequence.
Adisa’s calm eyes remained focused. He pointed. “This is the hash that they wish to pass to the Konstantin in order to log on.” He opened another holographic UI, this one linked to the real-world Konstantin. Adisa swept his glove to move the alphanumeric sequence from one holographic screen to another. Almost immediately the real Konstantin’s admin console appeared.
Adisa spoke without emotion. “We now have control of our ship.”
Tighe and Jin shouted and high-fived, gripping Adisa’s shoulders.
“Well done, Ade!”
Adisa remained focused. He changed the master administrator password and the other user passwords as well.
Jin watched over Adisa’s shoulder. “You are now the sysadmin of the Konstantin.”
Adisa nodded. After a few more moments of typing, Tighe’s crystal display came back to life.
Judging by Jin’s facial expression, his had as well.
Tighe laughed. “Outstanding.”
Adisa did not smile.
“What’s wrong, Ade?”
“We have admin rights to the Konstantin, but we still have not solved the problem of communicating directly with Earth. The ship owners still control the laser relay back at L5.”
Jin contemplated the radio dishes on the mast above them. “What about NASA’s Deep Space Network? They can detect very faint radio signals.”
Adisa started packing up his equipment. “With admin rights, I may now be able to repurpose a transmitter.”
Tighe asked, “And if it works, what do we transmit? Mayday? SOS?”
“That is something I am still working out.”
CHAPTER 44
Back Channel
MARCH 5, 2037
For nearly a month Adedayo Adisa’s jury-rigged radio transmitter beamed a low-powered distress call back toward Earth—transmitting under the ship’s Maritime Supervisory Authority call sign. But there was no reply.
Adisa did manage to tune in Earth radio stations, and occasionally he would play music or news throughout the habs. The news was strangely the same—war, political crisis, and celebrity. There was no word about the existence of the Konstantin, and it didn’t sound like much progress had been made in deep space since their departure either.
Listening to radio commercials in the wee hours, Tighe was strangely comforted. But the normalcy also made him miss Earth more.
Celestial Robotics’ mother ship, the Argo, still orbited Ryugu at a distance of 50 kilometers, and though emptied of mining craft, it was apparently functional.
Tighe sometimes watched the rival ship via a CCTV camera mounted on the Konstantin’s solar mast. The many digital eyes of the Argo seemed to be trained on the Konstantin.
A few days later Tighe was remotely piloting a mule, transporting a 14-ton bag of water ice back to the Konstantin from a Honey Bee, when Adisa’s voice came through on the ship’s comm link.
“I have received a message from Earth—a message sent to the virtual Konstantin. It is a message that we all need to see.”
Half an hour later, the surviving crew of the Konstantin floated in the Central Hab, watching a holographic screen that Adisa cast from his virtual server. Since it wasn’t linked in to the ship’s OS, they had no choice but to be physically present to watch it.
The video message opened to a face Tighe had not seen in over a year—Sevastian Yakovlev. Stunned gasps came from the assembled crew.
Yak’s bushy beard and broad shoulders filled most of the frame as he smiled and laughed into the camera. “Crew of Konstantin! Greetings from Earth.” His smile faded. “Too late it seems, for Konstantin reports that you are all dead.” He brightened. “Good that CRC engineers tell us you are alive. They have been watching you. Perhaps you create wirtual machine to fool your new masters?” He laughed again. “Ade! Clever boy!”
