The Contingency Read online

  “But, I’m always right...” said Satomi, smiling back at Casey.

  Taylor stepped over to his command chair in the center of the bridge and planted himself purposefully in the seat. “Okay, so I guess it’s ‘once more unto the breach, dear friends’ then...”

  “There he goes, quotin’ Dickens again…” said Blake. He knew full well it wasn’t a Dickens quote, but he also knew that Satomi would take the bait.

  “For the one hundredth time, Blake, it’s Shakespeare, not Dickens!” Satomi called over, sinking her teeth into the hook.

  Taylor smiled and shot Blake a knowing look. For all his complaining, Blake loved this part of the mission. And so did Taylor.

  “Okay, Casey, whenever you’re ready, make the jump.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain Taylor Ray...”

  THREE

  The rising energy of the jump engines started to penetrate the bridge. It saturated the air with a low, pulsating whine that could be felt through the deck plates and through the arms of Taylor’s chair, which he was gripping tightly, as if he was about to accelerate down a huge dip on a roller-coaster. He’d completed countless jumps before, including over thirty as Captain of his current Nimrod-class cruiser, but he had never become used to it, and never liked it. The best way he could describe it to his friends who had never experienced faster-than-light extra-solar travel was that it felt like being so drunk that the room spun around you, followed by the sensation of the world collapsing, as if your whole existence was a pop-up book that had just been slammed shut into darkness and nothingness. For an agonizing moment it was like being dead, but paradoxically aware that you were dead, until suddenly the book was opened again on a new page, popping you back into existence in a different part of the galaxy.

  Casey spun around in her chair to face him, wearing a childlike grin of excitement, as if it was Christmas Day morning. Unsurprisingly, Casey loved making blind jumps, just as she adored anything and everything to do with space flight.

  “Jumping in five...

  ...F o u r

  ...T h r e e

  . . . T w o

  . . . O n e

  Casey started spinning around in her chair again, but Taylor had already pressed his eyes shut; he found it helped, or at least that’s what he told himself. And then he too was spinning, but it was a swirling vortex in his mind, rather than the motion of his chair, which remained fixed to the spot. He gripped the arms of the chair more tightly as the feeling of being squashed out of existence pressed in on him, until he could feel absolutely nothing, and all that remained of Taylor Ray was disembodied, conscious thought. He was somehow still deeply aware of Satomi Rose, as if she was inside his mind with him. And he could still sense Casey Valera and Blake Meade too, in the same way that you can sense a person standing near you, despite not being able to see them. And then suddenly the universe exploded back into life and he could again feel the soft fabric on the arm of his command chair and taste the air filling his lungs. He opened his eyes to see Casey Valera still spinning around in the pilot’s chair, purple sneakers sparkling in the warm light that filtered through the viewport from the new red sun that burned at the heart of another unexplored system.

  Casey stopped spinning for just long enough to read the jump status report. “Jump complete, El Capitan. Engines standing down… All systems nominal.” She spun around a full three hundred sixty degrees, before stopping the chair to face Taylor again. “Shall we knock and see who’s home?”

  Taylor pushed himself out of his seat, which suddenly felt very claustrophobic, and glanced over to Satomi. “Let’s see if Satomi can find us a door to knock on first, shall we?”

  Satomi was already out of her chair and flitting between the various different consoles on the mission operations station. “I’m scanning the system now, though it may take a while.”

  Blake yawned and slumped down in his seat. “Does that mean I can go back to bed?”

  One of the mission ops consoles bleeped and Satomi checked it urgently. A few seconds later she turned to Blake and smiled. “Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to make do with a strong coffee.”

  Taylor hurried over to Satomi’s side, suddenly alert. “You managed to find something already?”

  “Yes, there’s a weak signal coming from the fourth planet in the system. The planet is inside the Goldilocks Zone, although judging by the surface temperatures, I doubt it’s still habitable now.”

  “Can you confirm that the signal is definitely Hedalt in origin?” added Taylor. He wasn’t concerned with whether the planet was or ever had been habitable; confirming the signal was all that mattered.

  Satomi didn’t answer and instead continued to study the information that was flooding onto the many different screens on her console, each of which was casting chaotic dark green patterns across her face.

  “Satomi, is it an active Hedalt signal or another ghost?” Taylor asked again, this time more impatiently and, although his voice was controlled, he could feel his heart starting to race.

  Several more tense seconds passed without a response, and then Satomi stepped back from the console and pressed her hands to her hips, “I can’t be certain from this range, Captain. It could just be an old outpost that’s still putting out a ghost signal into the CoreNet, or it could be a live colony. The readings are inconclusive; we need to get closer.”

  Taylor nodded, took a long breath to calm his nerves, and then he marched briskly back to his command chair in the center of the bridge, filled with vigor and purpose.

  “Casey, take us into orbit around the fourth planet in the system, sharply,” he ordered, resting his arms on the back of his chair. He was still too wired to sit down again.

  Casey smiled and threw up a salute, before spinning back to face the controls, “Aye, aye, Captain Taylor Ray.”

  Blake groaned, loudly and obviously, intending everyone to hear, “Did ya have to say, ‘sharply’, Cap?” complained Blake, burying himself securely into the recesses of his chair, more for show than out of necessity.

  Casey glanced at him and winked, “Buckle up, Blakey.”

  Blake scowled, “Yeah, that’d be great. Problem is these damn chairs don’t have seat buckles…”

  FOUR

  Out of the hundreds of thousands of people enrolled in Earth Fleet, only a tiny proportion were suited to DSR missions, and an even tinier proportion still were Captain material. To be suited for DSR, you had to be able to live in near-solitude, moving from system to system, spending weeks on mundane duties with no prospect of returning, and then immediately be able to ‘switch on’ when the mission demanded it. Paradoxically, DSR Captains had to be contented loners, but also naturally gregarious and easy to get along with. And they needed the patience and diligence of a monk, but also to be able and willing to fight in an instant. Taylor Ray was all these things, and it was moments like this that reminded him of why he loved the job so much.

  What he didn’t love quite so much was the prospect of a head-on collision with a planet at two hundred thousand kilometers per hour, and he was glad when his frequently over-zealous pilot finally began to decelerate and veer the ship away from the globe’s center of mass. Casey had kept the controls on manual, as she preferred to do as much as possible, but as they got closer to the murky brown sphere, it became apparent to all of them that it was no longer capable of supporting life, whether Hedalt, human or anything in between.

  “Looks like another dead rock to me, Cap,” said Blake, and were it not for the, ‘I told you so’ swagger to the way he delivered the words, Taylor might have believed he sounded almost disappointed.

  “Thank you for your astute observations, Blake,” Taylor replied, though the heavy sarcasm was not appreciated by his gruff TacSpec crew member, and he scowled back moodily.

  Casey swept into orbit and Taylor switched the viewport to a magnified view of the planet’s surface, revealing scorched desert plains, rocky mountains and evidence of rivers and seas that looked t
o have dried up countless thousands of years earlier.

  “There’s still a thin atmosphere and the surface gravity is similar to the Hedalt home world, but this would be a harsh environment, even for them,” said Satomi, studying the new data. “Both the planet and its moons show evidence of significant volcanic activity in the past, but the planet’s core has cooled and there’s only a weak magnetosphere.”

  “So, what you’re sayin’ is that there’s no-one home, right?” said Blake, still smarting from Taylor’s sarcastic remark, and retorting with one of his own.

  “Oh, there’s still some microbial life; I’d say it’s probably on a par with your level of intelligence...”

  “Oh, burn!” Casey called out, joyfully, while Satomi was still mid-sentence.

  “...but, no, I think the chances of finding any Hedalt alive down there are pretty much nil.”

  “Damn it,” said Taylor, clenching a fist. Despite knowing the chances of a contact were slim, he had still let the anticipation build inside him. It was like gambling; the thrill of placing the bet followed by an unbearable suspense and excitement as he waited to see if his numbers turned up, despite knowing the odds were miniscule. After more than thirty jumps, he knew he should have learned to manage his disappointment better, but he couldn’t help it; each ghost contact was just as crushingly disappointing as the last.

  “So where is the signal coming from then?” asked Taylor, a little testily.

  “That’s the really interesting part,” Satomi continued, recognizing the dark cloud that was growing above Taylor’s head and moving fast to blow it away, before it built to a storm. “The signal isn’t actually coming from the planet, but from the second of the three moons.” Satomi punched in a sequence of commands and an image of the second moon appeared on the viewport.

  The moon was just as dusty-brown and barren-looking as the planet, which didn’t fill Taylor with confidence. He pushed himself out of his chair and took a couple of paces towards the screen to get a clearer view, but the moon looked distinctly unremarkable.

  “The signal is undeniably Hedalt in origin; if anything, I’d say it was an old comms relay.”

  “Bah, it’s just another damn ghost...” Blake chimed in, sounding as depressed as Taylor looked.

  “Perhaps, but let’s check it out and confirm,” said Taylor, who despite feeling dejected still wanted to present an air of optimism to the crew. Also, the discovery of the signal’s origin as coming from the moon did at least mean he got a second throw of the dice. “We could still get lucky. Besides, I’m sure our ace pilot would enjoy an opportunity to skim the surface of that moon, am I right, Casey?”

  Casey beamed back at him. “Yes sir, Captain!”

  Taylor smiled back; Casey’s enthusiasm was infectious, and much-needed. “Okay, take us in and then let’s wrap this up so we can all go home.”

  Casey swung back around, switched the main viewport to the ahead view, and then pulled out of orbit, powering up the ship’s massive ion drive engines to maximum as she leveled the nose of the cruiser at the planet’s second moon.

  Satomi finished her latest piece of analysis and then joined Taylor, standing close by his side, hands pressed behind her back.

  “Do you think ‘skim the surface’ was really the most sensible choice of words?”

  Taylor snorted. “It’s just a figure of speech, she knows I don’t mean for her to literally skim the surface of the moon.”

  Satomi shook her head. “Really? Like that time when you said, ‘Find us a nice spot to land’ on the planet four jumps back. The one where she literally landed us on top of a mountain, with about two meters of rock either side of the landing struts stopping us from sliding nine kilometers to our deaths?”

  Taylor chewed the inside of his mouth while recalling the landing in question, and then glanced at Satomi, lips curled into a smirk, “But it was one hell of a nice spot to land.”

  Satomi rolled her eyes, but returned the smile, and then stared out through the viewport. “At the rate she’s going, we’ll not so much skim the surface as become a permanent fixture on it.”

  Taylor scowled at the image of the moon on the viewport, which was growing larger by the second, and Casey was showing no signs of slowing down. “I think I’ll take a seat.”

  Satomi stroked his arm and smiled again. “I don’t think taking a seat will help when we hit the moon at zero point two C, but whatever makes you feel better, Captain.” Then she turned and was headed back to her station before Taylor had a chance to counter her acerbic remark with a witty and clever one of his own.

  Taylor scooted back to his chair, where he remained firmly planted for the remainder of the journey to the moon, nervously tapping on the chair arm as the mass of rock began to dominate the viewport. The speed with which Casey was making the approach had not gone unnoticed by Blake either, who frequently glanced back at Taylor with anxious eyes, looking for his Captain’s reassurances that all was well.

  “Dontcha think we’re coming in a little hot?” queried Blake, finally unable to hold his silence.

  “It makes a nice change to have to something to aim for, other than empty space, don’t you think?” replied Casey, coolly, though her attention remained sharply focused on the ship’s controls.

  “I’d be a lot happier if you were aimin’ a little off to the side...” added Blake.

  Casey laughed. “Just relax, Blakey, and enjoy the ride... Starting deceleration in three... two... one...”

  Casey’s normally buoyant expression, with cheeks raised high and lips pressed into a near persistent smile, become suddenly more taught and sober as the Nimrod-class cruiser decelerated and veered away from the central axis of the moon. Her hands and feet worked furiously to adjust settings and controls, but never at any point did she look flustered, and as the horizon of the moon filled the viewport and the ship reached a more manageable velocity, she grasped the manual control column and the smile suddenly returned to her eyes.

  “We’re flying in the atmosphere, what little of it there is; altitude 15,000 and falling...”

  Taylor checked the console screen that was built into the arm of his chair. It indicated that the source of the signal was just over four hundred kilometers ahead, but Casey was still moving rapidly. He glanced over to Satomi, who appeared wholly unperturbed by their rapid rate of descent, but Taylor could not maintain his composure any longer and buckled. “Skim the surface was a turn of phrase, Casey, let’s cool off a little, please.”

  “Aw, Captain...”

  “That’s an order, Casey,” said Taylor firmly, “before I lose my lunch.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain Taylor Ray,” Casey replied, though she spoke the words more in the manner of a stroppy teenager who had just been grounded than an officer obeying her Captain.

  Casey dialed back the controls and the ship decelerated rapidly and began cruising towards the source of the signal at a leisurely (for Casey) one thousand kilometers per hour at an altitude of five hundred meters. For a ship the size of the Nimrod-class this would have scared the living daylights out of most other crews, but after four years with Casey Valera at the helm, they had all readjusted their definition of ‘fast’.

  “The source is just ahead, in that enormous region of volcanic rock,” said Satomi, pointing unhelpfully at the viewport.

  “Got it... swinging around now,” said Casey, banking the ship hard left and dropping to two hundred meters. “There it is, dead ahead.”

  Taylor stood up and stepped closer to the viewport, joined a few moments later by Satomi. Casey slowed the hulking ship to a crawl and began to circle around the object, keeping the nose pointed towards it, more for something to do than out of necessity, since the viewport could focus on the object irrespective of the angle or orientation of the ship.

  “Where? All I see is a bunch of rocks…” said Blake, squinting at the viewport as if that would help his 20-20 eyes to see better.

  “It’s hidden inside that ‘bunch
of rocks’, as you call it” said Satomi, and then she tapped a few commands into her console and the outline of a tall object became visible. From the straight lines and perfect angles, it was clearly artificial in nature.

  “I don’t get it; why the hell hide a random comms tower in the middle of nowhere?” said Blake, scratching the back of his head and scowling at the screen. “How’d it get there?”

  “Unknown, but I’m not detecting any other structures nearby, just the tower,” said Satomi.

  “Maybe the rest of whatever was here got gobbled up by the lava?” suggested Casey, “This lone tower could be all that’s left; sort of like a headstone.”

  Blake scowled at Casey, “That’s a bit dark.”

  Casey took her hands off the controls and waggled her fingers at Blake, while making a ‘wooo’ sound like a ghost.

  Satomi rolled her eyes, and then moved across to Taylor’s command chair. Without asking permission, she punched a sequence of commands into the console in the arm of his chair, and then stood back and looked up at the viewport. A second later, an enhanced image of the comms tower appeared on the viewport.

  “If you look closely, the tower has clearly been built on the surface of the pre-existing igneous rock,” said Satomi, again pointing at the screen. “If the lava had flowed after the tower’s installation, the base of the tower would have been enveloped and covered over.”

  Taylor rubbed his face, feeling the stubble that he hadn’t had a chance to shave off after his rude awaking earlier that morning. He tried to rationalize what he was seeing, but it made no sense. What was a Hedalt comms tower doing on a moon with no other signs of Hedalt military bases or colonies? And a comms tower on its own was useless without at least some supporting structures, and there was also no evidence of a covert listening station. There was just a tower, hidden inside – as Blake had crudely but accurately described – ‘a bunch of rocks’.