Chapter Five - Lew
The first tap-tap of reaction control jets woke Lew, but she didn’t question Remnant immediately. Slight adjustments were common, especially as new debris came into range and was scanned and catalogued. The tapping on the left side would spin Remnant on its yaw axis, moving the nose to the right, a negative x translation. That didn’t make sense, unless an unidentified piece of debris had crossed the bow before the radar could catalog it. Through the porthole above her bed, Lew saw the curve of the distant Earth in her window at the same time a tap-tap on the right side of the ship occurred.
Sonuvabitch!
She sat up as Remnant’s main thrusters fired. Remnant was changing the course again. She counted in her head, doing the math. The count stopped at twelve. Based on Remnant’s specific impulse, or how hard the engines burned, and the time which they did, the burn had been to gain speed.
Tyler Harris sat in the captain’s chair. He spun on an axis and smiled at her, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Everything all right?”
Lew nodded and checked her chronometer. Her shift started in an hour, so there was no point in going back to bed. She moved to her console. “Course change?”
“I want to get there faster,” Tyler said.
“Did you do a conjunction analysis?”
“Why?” Tyler laughed. “There’s nothing out here but us, Lew.”
“You don’t know that, Tyler.”
Lew moved to her console and sat down, activated the multiple screens, and sat to review the data. A full catalog run was going to take at least seventeen minutes, and that was only if she could get the full gain of the downlink antenna. On cue, Remnant came to life. As usual, the damned thing was making her life miserable.
“Sorry, Miss Holmes, I’m downloading a life support systems upgrade. When complete, we will reach ninety-nine percent efficiency.”
Lew shook her head. “Up from ninety-eight. That’s wonderful. Stop the download and let me get the current conjunction analysis.”
“There is only a half percentage point possibility that the data from the last orbital analysis has changed significantly enough to merit a new download.”
“You changed course!”
Tyler cleared his throat. “That was me. Remnant’s download continues. Use the old data.”
“But—”
“That’s an order.” He stared at her with eyes she realized were bloodshot and furious. All of this, the last two years, had been a mistake. “Is that clear, Miss Holmes?”
Lew nodded and looked away. She cursed the tears that threatened to start. “Yes, Captain.”
“Good. Get that analysis done before we burn again.”
“Again?” Lew said, her eyes on the conjunction data. She’d assumed a slowdown burn, but now she wasn’t sure. Looking at their trajectory, Tyler’s intent to burn again meant two things: first, they’d be coming in fast at the target satellite, and second, if Cardiff came in on a similar trajectory, they were both going to reach the same place at the same time. That kind of thing was catastrophic.
Tyler laughed. “Come on, you’re the navigator!”
Lew nodded but still didn’t turn around. The loaded data wasn’t promising. “Remnant, scan for anomalous contacts.”
“There are sixteen anomalous contacts within thirty degrees of our direction of travel. Twelve are at a similar vector to us,” Remnant said. “Would you care for a track analysis on a specific target?”
“All of them.”
“You’re aware, Miss Holmes, I can only track three at a time.”
Lew raised her chin to the ceiling, trying to stretch the growing tension out of her spine. “Yes, goddammit! Scan the targets!”
Remnant clicked away audibly in the speakers as Tyler laughed. “Pissing off the protocol is a fine way to start your shift, you know?”
Lew didn’t say anything as the first scans began. The progress indicator began to move and she turned to Tyler. “Remnant should have done this analysis automatically.”
“I told her not to. Why bother?” Tyler laughed. There was something in it that froze Lew to the core. “I mean, you’re sitting there worried as hell about sixteen anomalies. Look outside, Lew! Space is really damned big. The chances of a conjunction are infinitesimal.” He shook his head and sipped from a beverage container. For the longest moment, Lew wondered what he was drinking.
“I’d prefer to live, thank you,” she replied. “And we have a duty to help other ships around us by corroborating data feeds. That’s how we all stay alive out here.”
“You’re the only person I know that shares that data.” Tyler snorted. “Nobody else gives a damn. So cut Remnant some slack.”
Lew stood. “Cut her some slack? It’s a computer! You want her so much, then she can have you.”
Tyler laughed at her. “Remnant doesn’t make mistakes.”
Lew clenched her fists in fury. “I obviously made a big damned mistake.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tyler looked up at her like a kicked dog. His face reviled her.
“I think you know—”
Suddenly the master alarm klaxon went off, followed by a different voice than Remnant’s bombshell diva. Lew had never heard it before, and it scared the hell out of her.
“CONJUNCTION WARNING. CONJUNCTION WARNING. OBJECT APPROACHING AT HIGH SPEED, CONFIDENCE OF IMPACT IS HIGH. REPEAT OBJECT APPROACHING AT HIGH SPEED, CONFIDENCE OF IMPACT IS HIGH. EMERGENCY MANEUVER ALPHA SIX IN THREE...TWO...ONE.”
Lew sat down and grabbed the harness straps.
“FIRE!”
Every thruster along Remnant’s fuselage seemed to fire at once, spinning them violently to the right, raising the nose, and seemingly twisting the vehicle in every direction at once.
“What the hell is emergency maneuver alpha six?” Tyler called out. The maneuver had thrown him to the floor, and he hung onto the base of his chair with one hand as the ship listed wildly to starboard. “Lew!”
“No idea!” She scanned and found the object—sixteen centimeters, mass unknown—moving at a positive closure rate of sixteen hundred miles an hour. Distance to target... “We’re clear. Object will miss by about one hundred meters.”
“Confirmed,” Remnant chimed. “Override of emergency system protocol engaged. Standby for recovery maneuver.”
Lew watched and waited, but Remnant was unable to right herself. She looked at Tyler and saw concern on his face. “Remnant, report.”
“Running diagnostics,” Remnant said in her usual voice, before a high-pitched voice began speaking quickly in Chinese.
“What is it saying?” Lew asked.
“It’s gone into full diagnostics. We’re stuck until it reboots.” Tyler climbed toward his chair and sat. “Let’s get manual RCS online.”
Lew turned to her panel and initiated the commands. “Manual RCS active.”
Pulsing the jets, Tyler brought Remnant back to a level orientation. “Can you determine how far off we are?”
Lew shook her head. “Not yet. How long does the reboot take?”
Tyler shrugged. “Last time it was a few hours. Why?”
“Our original capture burn needs to happen in four hours. Until I can get a solid TDRSS fix, we’re blind and out of control.” The aging navigation constellation still provided the highest precision navigational support in cislunar space. “Any ideas?”
Tyler leaned forward against his harness straps. “None. Wait, I have a sextant in the main storage area.”
Lew bit her tongue. The main storage area was three meters cubed and stacked to the brim with old tools, scrap metal, and other ancillary things Tyler couldn’t bear to part with. It would take him hours to find anything. “Do you know where it is in there?”
“I think so,” he said. “If I find it, can you figure out where we are?”
Lew nodded. “Yeah.”
Tyler looked at her for a moment. “Sorry about that back there.”
Lew shook her head and said, “Later, okay? We’re blind and disoriented, with another million-ton spacecraft barreling toward us. I need that sextant, and you need to get Remnant online.”
Tyler was out of his seat and heading toward the main passageway. “I’ll be in the core. Let me know if you have any luck.”
“You, too,” she said, and watched him disappear around the corner. Turning back to her console, she removed a panel by her right knee and carefully removed a small, red-lit component. It was no larger than a cough drop, but it played hell with Remnant.
Lew didn’t really hate the computer. As far as a protocol went, Remnant wasn’t that bad. What Tyler Harris had done to her was criminal—that sexy voice and personality thing. The false radar data had been necessary. Remnant was now adrift and unguided; Lew sat at her console and ran a cursory scan for anomalies in their immediate area and found nothing. Subterfuge wasn’t her strong point, but she’d known that the protocol needed to be shut down prior to arrival at the target bird. She’d wanted to do it sooner, and the anticipation had grown with every conflicting opinion between them. If Cardiff was where it was supposed to be in four hours, she’d feel a lot better about the mission. And with luck, they might just make it home alive.
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