The Icarus Void Page 5
″But I've done the calculations, and if we don't attempt to salvage it while on this dive we won't have a chance at all.″ From her jumpsuit pocket she retrieved a small datapad and punched in a set of numbers. The screen danced and lit, and a three-dee image of the artifact appeared in blue and yellow lines. The image spun slowly, and from it a dotted line emerged, arced towards the surface of the Sun in the diagram. ″According the calculations I've done, the object's orbit is decaying at a rate that will put it outside of our maximum safe diving range with in the next fourteen hours. We're five hours away from diving right now, and after that it takes another ten to fully prep for another dive, not accounting repairs. This is it. After this, it's out of our reach for good.″
″I'd like to sympathize, Doctor, but I really must stick to primary orders.″
″And my primary orders during this dive are to not only collect data on the chromosphere with my scientists, but to reflect data on the durability of Icarus's new shielding. This is a test run, after all. Any data pertaining to heat shield technology is a part of that, and I feel that the artifact may be extraordinarily pertinent to that data. Captain, the surface of the object is not just reflecting heat, it's absorbing it in a way that it somehow expels the collected radiation at the same time. It's absolutely incredible and, for all scientific information that we know of currently, absolutely impossible. The Icarus utilizes layers upon layers of heat shielding that allow us to solar dive, but this object is maybe half a meter thick. At the most. We could learn so much from it if we're able to retrieve it and bring it back to Earth for USDSE inspection.″
Markov crossed his arms. He was intrigued now. He didn't want to be, but this actually was pertinent to the mission. ″Do you have a retrieval plan?″
Tybalt held her fingers together over the artifact animation and opened them. The image zoomed out slightly and an animated version of the Icarus appeared. ″The artifact is still just within max safe dive, minus experimental shields.″ She guided the Icarus below the artifact and held it there. ″If we turn the ship so that the main cargo bay is facing away from the Sun, we can open the doors long enough for the artifact to drift into the bay without significant radiation flowing in. We can seal off the bay using internal force shields and scrub the area with a localized field sweep, modified throughout the bay. Energy cables from the bay itself can latch on to the artifact, give a brief tug, and then the lack of gravity will do the rest. We can worry about restoring local gravity to the cargo bay once we've risen from the Sun. We won't even have to risk any crew members to do it. And, if we perform the dive on schedule as scheduled then the artifact will still be within the Icarus’s normal heat shield levels. We won‘t even be putting the test shielding into effect until we complete the remainder of the dive.″
Markov absorbed all this. He didn't like it. He didn't like it one damned bit. But, the doctor had clearly done the research to prove the method was sound and would actually work with minimal safety risk to both the crew and the ship. It was the fact that they would be grabbing this thing during the dive that made him pause. He thought about that moment on the observation deck while talking to Straub, wondering aloud if they might have to abort the mission. He was having a moment like that now, thinking that despite the doctor's research this was just a bad idea in a line of bad ideas and that current situations on the ship would only complicate the whole works. He needed to shut this idea down now. Except he couldn't. ″How long would it take you to modify the radiation scrubbers in the cargo bay?″ he asked.
″A few hours at most,″ Tybalt said. ″I can make the modifications myself, with Straub and Kerrick working with me. I won't even have to pull any of the crew away from dive prep.″ She put the datapad back in her suit pocket and closed her hands behind her back. ″I'll be able to test them out before the dive and confirm that everything is in operational order.″
Markov hated it, but it sounded alright. ″If the radiation scrubbers aren't at 100% operational status, I won't do it,″ he warned. He meant it, too; he didn't care how goddamn important this fucking thing was, he wasn't going to risk flooding his entire ship with thermal radiation over some goddamn piece of rock.
″They will be,″ Tybalt said confidently.
″Alright.″ Markov thought that he was out of his mind. ″Your plan looks sound. But I have to be clear, Doctor: if at any time there looks to be any sort of risk to the ship in retrieving this thing, I'm calling it off. Whether we lose it for good or not, I'm not risking the lives onboard my ship.″
″Absolutely,″ Tybalt said. ″I wouldn't ask otherwise.″
″Well, then. Carry on.″
Tybalt quickly spun on her heel and sprinted down the corridor, off to get to work. Maybe she wasn't all bad; no one on the bounce like that could be. She might have even made fine military material if she hadn't gone for the sciences. Markov smiled to himself. Fleur had been right after all, goddammit. And here he'd told Udeh to not let Tybalt after any sort of retrieval scheme.
He snapped his fingers. Damn. He'd have to go talk to Udeh. And he didn't have Udeh's personal communicator frequency. Yet.
Markov sighed as he began walking back towards the shuttle bay. He'd get some damn sleep at some fucking point.
***
CHAPTER IV.
Staff Sergeant Gabrielle Laguardia strode through the decks of the Icarus with her sidearm clipped to her magbelt, plainly for each member of the crew to see.
It was one hour and forty-five minutes to dive. Laguardia had had plenty of experience with solar dives to understand that tensions came to a boil pretty fucking fast on a dive; on her previous stationing, the diver Hyperion, there had been a near-riot at three minutes into the dive itself as one particularity intense engineer had decided it was a good time to confer with a comm officer about a woman that the two of them were both engaging in relations with. Words led to blows led to more men joining in and the whole damn ship might have gone into orbital arrest and fallen into the heart of the star if Laguardia hadn't gone in with her pistol ready, her head cool and her voice loud. The mob had parted quickly, and the two boys with fists flailing had gone down with a few well-aimed jabs from her own fists. The dive went otherwise smoothly and Laguardia had gotten a promotion and a new stationing. Ever since, she'd taken to strapping her standard issue handgun to her magbelt in the few hours before dive, making sure everyone understood that no matter how high the tensions got there was at least one person on board who wouldn't crack under that pressure, and she was willing to do what was necessary to maintain operations.
Laguardia was an imposing sight even at her slight stature: five foot three, deeply tanned muscular arms, her hair cropped short and tight into a crewcut in a day and age when it was no longer required for military women to do so. She did it because she wanted the men to look at her and understand that she could stop any of them in their tracks. Men responded to masculine features. Once upon a time she'd been fairly girly by her own standards, but running security onboard a solar diver meant a few concessions for the sake of running a tight ship. One of those was a saltier lexicon than she had while back on Earth; unless one punctuated commands with fuck, fucking, or fucked, most of the male crewmembers didn't really pay much attention to what was being said to them. Captain Markov approved of her measures, and that was all the approval she needed. One day she might acquiesce to some of her more feminine leanings – jewelry, that was her vice, damned earrings – but she had three more missions left to her tour of duty with the USDSE before she could retire and retire well.
She liked the captain, but she thought he was crazy for going forward with the dive. Crazy, but at the same time logical. The ship was in a dry fuck at the moment. There was no two ways about it: tensions were absurdly high, even for a dive, and this fucking little girl scientist wanted to spacewalk in the middle of a fucking dive just to grab a piece of rock. Yes, there was significant reason to do so; Captain Udeh had impressed that upon her but it wasn't Captain Udeh'
s fucking job to do so, all pardons requested. It was Captain Markov's. And he was taking his leave in his quarters while the crew simmered to a boiling point from which there might not be a return flight. Everyone was tired, everyone was on edge. Laguardia admitted only to herself that she felt as tense as a tightly wound violin string. The handgun, resting on her hip, was as much for her own peace of mind as it was for the crew to remember who was in charge. As she walked, she felt the holster move, rising and falling with the motions of her hips. Knowing it was there was half the battle. The other half was when to use it. Hopefully she wouldn't have to. But with the captain already ducked out due to sleep deprivation and mounting tension, she had a feeling it might become far too necessary to unclip the holster and keep one hand on the grip.
***
Sarah.
Doctor Sydney Kerrick stopped modulating the radiation scrubber she was working on in the cargo bay, took a deep breath, and went back to what she was doing.
Sarah.
Goddammit. She let go of the frequency driver she'd been using a moment before, and as it hung in the zero gravity of the bay, she rubbed her temples. There was a headache mounting behind her eyes and she was damned if she was going to let it take over her focus. But despite her determination, all she could hear as she worked was Straub's voice, whispering unconsciously in the dark of her quarters while they had sex, speaking another woman's name instead of her own.
It had been earlier, just after Straub had told her that Captain Markov was thinking of aborting the mission. Stephen was a horndog, had been since she'd finally admitted to him (and herself) that she found him attractive, and once they'd started having sex it was difficult to do anything else. It didn't help that was easily the best lover she'd known; he knew a few tricks with his tongue and his hands, not to mention his hips, that had caught her off guard and spiraling into sensual bliss. But earlier, she'd been thrown off guard when in the midst of thrusting he'd said the name ″Sarah″ and had come a moment later. Harder than she’d ever felt him come before.
She didn't think anything of it at first – ″Sarah″ was close to ″Sydney,″ she thought – and he'd gone down on her once his own climax had been reached, so it passed out of her mind almost instantaneously right then. But later she'd remembered it. And it had buried into her subconscious. She was not the jealous type, not now, not in academy, not even back in high school. She knew she was pretty, she knew she was smart, and she knew that Straub was a lucky sonuvabitch to be with her. She was also understanding: after this mission, they might not see each other again. That was fine. That was something she'd accepted. She wasn't the clingy type either. Science was her passion, not the trials and tribulations of the heart. She’d learned to walk away when men’s attentions turned toward other things.
Sarah.
And there it was again, as if he were whispering the name into her ear as a taunt, smiling, thrusting and coming not for her but for someone named Sarah. She hated it. She hated it more because she couldn't stop thinking about it, and that fact alone made her worry. Had she gotten soft? Was she crushing on Stephen Straub a little harder than she'd anticipated? He was a good lover, very intelligent, and a bit of a goofball, but he was still a man. Men had needs, and in outer space, away from the pleasures of Earth and space stations, those needs had a tendency to stand up and shout themselves to attention. So maybe –
A sharp pinch caught her left buttcheek and she yelped involuntarily. She turned to see Straub floating past, already moving away towards the far end of the cargo bay, smiling as he gazed back at her and winked. There was unutterable sweetness to his puppy dog eyes and blatant ″I like you″ vibes coming from his grin, and she smiled and shook her head at the mischievous boy-smile of victory he wore.
Sarah.
The smile faded.
She turned back to the radiation scrubber, one of four that Doctor Tybalt had called upon them to help set up in the cargo hold to use on the artifact once they captured it. It was a horrible plan, and Tybalt knew it. But despite the risk, it was one worth chancing. Kerrick had gone over the numbers herself, and if everything was on the money, the artifact's composition could change everything on the boards about solar diving. Hell, it even brought Dyson bubble technology into realistic equations much sooner than anyone currently in the field of celestial research could imagine. But Kerrick remembered that there was an angry ball of hydrogen exploding and reexploding mere miles beneath them, and that they were diving close to the heart of it to grab this object floating out in its orbit. The Sun was a large, bastardly thing that would not do well to be taken lightly. Kerrick returned to modulating the scrubber to make sure that they were not doing just that.
The cargo bay was a large two-level expanse that was fifteen meters wide and ten high. Along the floor of the cargo bay were the bay doors leading to the exterior, usually for loading/unloading of supplies for the Icarus. Sometimes the ship carried extra supplies for transport between outposts, but right now it was completely devoid of anything other than what was already tucked away into the wall compartments. Perfectly opportune to accept a large alien artifact without having to move things to accommodate. At the moment, Kerrick was in the upper left hand corner of the bay, suspended in the air, ensuring that the scrubber was at the proper wavelength and scope for dispersing radiation of the magnitude that they had calculated. Well, that Doctor Tybalt had calculated anyway; it was her plan all the way, and while it made Kerrick nervous it felt inspired at the same time. The cargo bay had variable gravity, meaning that they could float about in the bay now and get work done as quickly as possible, and once they were in position turn gravity back on and walk about normally. Doctor Tybalt was currently modulating the gravity tethers, two large cannon-shaped particle dispersers, one of which clung to the ceiling and the other planted firmly on the bay floor. Tybalt was ensuring that they didn't absorb any radiation from exposure to the chromosphere, something the tethers weren‘t designed for. The scrubbers would be able to do the job on the artifact and the rest of the cargo bay and make it so they could approach it without fear of poisoning. Hopefully. Kerrick finished fixing the frequency on this scrubber, then flipped, kicked the wall and floated towards the lower right hand corner diagonally across from where she was.
Sarah.
She looked up instinctively in Straub's direction; he was out of earshot, on the opposite side of the bay. He couldn't have actually said anything. But she heard his voice as loud as if he were hovering next to her now, and she frowned at herself for being such a stupid fucking girl.
Doctor Tybalt put her hands on her hips as she stood on the ceiling and admired her work on the tethers. ″That's it,″ she called out. ″How're the scrubbers looking?″
″Modulation is looking good, Doctor,″ Straub called out. ″I'm double-checking the last of mine right now. I've set them for wide-burst photon spread to get maximum range throughout the bay.″
″Wide-burst? I said field-stream, Straub. If you set it at wide-burst you'll spread the detoxification beams too thin and it'll be completely useless.″
″I'm taking into account the positioning of the four scrubbers in each corner by the ratio of projected thermal radiation to oversaturation,″ Straub explained. ″I ran the numbers twice. Utilizing wide-burst with each scrubber will maximize detox area covered by an extra fifty percent.″
″Goddammit,″ Tybalt said quietly. She was close enough that Kerrick heard. The Doctor turned toward Kerrick and said, ″Please tell me you at least set yours at the correct trajectory.″
Kerrick made a mock salute. ″Aye-aye, skipper. Field-stream settings all initialized. I'm just made the final calibrations to the last scrubber now.″
″Thank god someone listens,″ Tybalt said, and the two women shared a brief smile of relief – and understanding – at Straub's headstrong compulsions. Then Tybalt kicked herself across the bay in Straub's direction. ″Doctor Straub, I need a word.″
Kerrick watched Tybalt float over t
o Straub's position and the two scientists began arguing. She returned to modulating the last scrubber, knowing that Stephen would have to begrudgingly give in and reset his scrubbers. He was smart, yes – but sometimes he thought he was smarter than he actually was. Straub was the kind of guy who produced brilliant results when he took his time, but wanted to move quickly through them because he felt he knew what he was doing. She kind of liked that confidence – or was it arrogance? – and maybe that was a part of what had attracted her to him in the first place. He'd been full of swagger and assuredness that night, coming over to speak with her on the pretense of helioscopic collection feeds, and had ended up in an argument over who had the better team, the Braves or the Giants. It was rare to find a fellow baseball fan in the solar division. The only orbs most of them considered where the ones that produced light and heat, but the topic of conversation that night had wavered from Babe Ruth vs. Hank Aaron over to the significance of ERA in consideration of the Cy Young Award. She smiled; that had been a good night. He was so full of himself, and full of passion and charm, he'd won her over almost immediately.
Sarah.
She stopped smiling.
She needed to get over this.
***
Laguardia made the medical bay her first stop.
Chief Medical Doctor Anthony Gaines (whose title was something of a joke on this ship since he was the only medical doctor onboard; the remainder of the medical staff consisted of six nurses) was at his rounds, fetching supplies and counting them, prepping medbeds and calibrating instruments. He did not look up from his datapad as Laguardia entered, merely adjusted his glasses to acknowledge that there had been a physical change in the room. Gaines was the contradictory type: he advocated health and physical fitness amongst the crew, yet his own body was heavy and wide. The doctor always moved with a heave-ho quality to his step, as if it took quite a bit of effort to pick up one fat foot after another. Laguardia didn’t like the man. Always felt like he would perform his job because he had to, never because doctoring was his passion. Laziness was Gaines. Maybe she felt that way because she felt she could never afford to be lazy. Captain Markov had said as much, but Laguardia always felt that Gaines just didn‘t give a shit and did his job only because he was paid to. As she strode towards him said, ″Sergeant. A pleasure as always.″