Wine Dark Deep: Book One Read online

  WINE DARK DEEP

  Book One

  R. Peter Keith

  Copyright © 2020 Uphill Downhill Press, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Edition

  Cover design by Lance Buckley

  And what if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep? Even so I will endure… For I have a heart that is inured to suffering. Much have I toiled in perils of waves and war, so let this new disaster come; it only makes one more.

  Homer, The Odyssey

  Chapter One

  Instantly, everything had gone to shit.

  Shock swept through the interplanetary spacecraft’s crew. Mission Commander Scott stared out into empty space. Empty space where refueling tankers should have been.

  He barely heard the end of the broadcast; the mother companies’ confirming with a certain amount of horror that the tankers had not been launched as scheduled and would, in fact, not be coming at all. He stared instead at the glassy sweep of touchscreen controls in front of him.

  This meant the end of the mission. Their fate was sealed the moment, whenever that may have been, that Ceres Control made the inexplicable decision to deny them the tankers. Without that fuel, there was no way to brake into orbit around Jupiter. Just a mad scramble to return home alive. He struggled against despair for a moment, his mind searching for a solution, but the physics would not be denied.

  Ulysses carried only as much fuel as was absolutely necessary. The ship and its missions were designed with resupply in mind. At strategic points, fuel, air, water, and food would be replenished by automated tankers. These skeletal drone ships were little more than assemblies of storage tanks and thrusters, but without them, the Ulysses was in trouble.

  Conjured up with quick jabs at the touchscreens, colorful windows burst open under his fingers: status indicators for his ship’s systems flanking an animated map of the solar system. There were only two places where the tankers could be fueled and launched: Whipple Crater, near the Moon’s north pole, and the giant asteroid Ceres. Lifting anything off of the Earth is incredibly expensive and because of this—and despite the Moon’s proximity to Earth—Ceres turned out to be the bigger prize. It was impossibly distant, but the miniscule gravity meant massive profit. In space travel, once free of a planet’s gravity, all points are equal. Equal in cost and resources, equal in every way but the time it takes to get there.

  Ceres was a gold mine, possessing more water than all Earth’s oceans, and yet its gravity was only a fraction as strong. So slight that structures had to be tethered to the ground to keep the movements of men and equipment from sending entire buildings skittering across the surface. The weak gravity meant it was easier to get equipment down to the planetoid and inexpensive to send its resources back up. With missions planned years in advance, tankers could be launched on orbits that put them wherever and whenever they needed to be. In terms of humanity’s expansion into the solar system, Ceres was the end-all, be-all. The Last Word.

  And the word from Ceres was “No.”

  Calvin Scott stared at the shimmering oval of his ship’s course projected onto the viewport. A white chevron rode the oval to represent Ulysses’s position along the curve. Far from the chevron, but getting closer every moment, the oval turned red, indicating the point at which their fuel supply would become inadequate.

  To make orbit, they had to perform a long duration burn of their engine to be captured by Jupiter’s gravity. A delicate balance of velocities was necessary: slow enough to forever be falling toward the giant world, yet speedy enough to endlessly miss its cloudy atmosphere. The problem in all of this was that Ulysses would deplete its fuel achieving orbit, leaving it stranded. Earth itself could not launch tankers and get them to Jupiter before they ran out of food, water, and air.

  Ceres’s refusal meant, as they themselves had suggested, that Ulysses needed to use their remaining fuel to make a different burn entirely: extending the ellipse of their orbit so that Jupiter’s gravity would slingshot them home. Without being able to refuel, this was their safest bet—although it was not without risk. Absent constant thrust from the engine, it would be a long, slow trip; it would tax their food and air supply and expose them to the constant radiation environment of deep space. This did not seem like a bargain to Cal: lose the mission and get cancer.

  In truth, he couldn’t bear the thought of the long voyage back with nothing to do but wait and hope. He twisted his scuffed wedding band, as he often did in moments of stress; he had to find a way out.

  “And there is one,” he absentmindedly said after a few long moments.

  “Are you asking a question?” Odysseus, the ship’s AI, responded. Cal ignored it.

  The mission wasn’t lost, at least not yet. There was something else that they could do. Ulysses could use its remaining fuel to flatten its orbit, changing course to intersect Ceres. The dwarf planet took four years to journey around the sun and was currently running close with Jupiter on its own twelve year turn around the star. This was no coincidence, the mission to Jupiter was scheduled so that Ceres would be in phase; that way any additional launches could be planned with the minimum of lead time. They could go and get their fuel and find out just what the hell was going on.

  Cal released his seatbelt and floated out of the command capsule and down the zero-G spine of the Ulysses, past the food storage lockers and into the rotating hub of the centrifuge spinning effortlessly on an airtight seal of magnetic lubricant. He pulled an electric tender from the wall and latched it onto the rope ladder. It began to tow him up through the 294-foot interior of one of the centrifuge’s collapsible arms. For the crew’s comfort, the arms spun the habitats at just under two rotations per minute. He shut his eyes, held his head still to prevent nausea, and let the machine haul him into the gravity at the far end. Inside the habitat, the gravitational force rose to something resembling Mars-normal, one third that of the Earth’s and sufficient to keep most of microgravity’s associated health problems at bay.

  His ascent turned into a descent as his subjective weight increased: the motion of the centrifuge created gravity that pushed away from the center of rotation, and so the hub he had just left became the “sky” of the habitat. He dropped “down” into the first/top floor of the hab’s work and living section and replaced the tender, snapping it onto a magnetic wall plate near the ladder’s anchor point. The top floors, exhibiting the mildest gravity of the habitat, contained the medical bay and the offices of the ship’s doctor. She swiveled in her chair, hair rising into a slow-motion copper swirl. Her observant green eyes fixed in on his deep browns.

  “What’s wrong?” the doctor asked.

  Chapter Two

  The crew stood assembled in a large room near the far end of one of the ship’s two centrifuge habitats. Apart from its size, the room’s most interesting feature was the furniture that could change from dining tables to bunks or fold flat against the floor. The room’s bright lights and pale blue color scheme was interrupted by four stark black inverted triangles: Blue Hab’s large windows. A nothingness swirled outside and the room’s illumination seemed to bleed out into it.

  Xu Zuoren was the mission’s chief scientist, a strange and thoughtful looking man. He listened to Cal explain the situation. As he did
, he slid a hand down the arm of his jumpsuit to watch the folds of fabric flatten and then rise again, a behavior indicating that he was deep in thought. When his commander had finished, his eyelids fluttered as if waking from sleep.

  “It does make perfect sense, if you think about it. The population of Ceres is approximately two hundred and forty people, including families of those staffing the mining facility and fuel depot as well as a handful of scientists. There has been considerable friction between this group and the consortium of twelve companies and agencies that own and fund the base. If they were to seize the facility and declare themselves a sovereign entity, those two hundred and forty people would instantly be among the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the solar system.”

  “They’d have a stranglehold on resources,” Paul Arthor, the ship’s slightly bulky engineering officer said, his voice blunted by a nasty cold that had mercifully not spread thanks to the competence of the doctor and a diffusion of medicinal particulates through the air system.

  “If anyone wants to do business with them, and I can’t believe that anyone would if this turns out to be true,” countered Sarah Samuels, the ship’s raven-haired pilot.

  “With the costs of anything lifted off the Moon, let alone Earth, being three or more times as expensive, and in much shorter supply, you can be guaranteed that Ceres would find plenty of willing customers,” Zuoren responded.

  Cal’s eyes flitted back and forth, watching and listening as his crew reacted to the situation.

  “The mother companies would stop resupplying them. Cut them off!” Samuels said.

  “Cut them off from what?” Zuoren asked. “They produce all the air, fuel, and drinkable water they need from indigenous ice, and the two hydroponics farms they operate provide nearly all the food they need.”

  The doctor shook her copper tresses, exasperated, and voiced her thought process. “I still can’t believe that anyone would deal with them after doing such a thing. It’s practically piracy—denying fellow astronauts needed fuel and supplies. Putting our lives at risk. It’s monstrous . . . It’s just posturing. It can’t be true. Push comes to shove, they will give us what we need.”

  Zuoren cocked his head. “Possibly, Doctor. But given the relations between the Ceres miners and the mother companies, I think they see this as a golden opportunity to send a message. They want to show Earth just how much leverage they have and how independent they have become.”

  “Send the biggest planetary exploration mission in a decade back home with its tail between its legs and you’ve sent quite a message.” Paul Arthor folded his arms over his chest and sniffled.

  “So, it’s a negotiating tactic,” Samuels said. “Give Ceres what they want or go home?”

  “It has to be,” the doctor said. “Think of how many people, besides us, who have devoted a considerable portion of their careers to this mission. And as I said, I don’t think they are cruel enough to put our lives at risk like that. For what? Money?”

  Samuels and Zuoren looked over at the doctor with wry expressions.

  Cal expected his resident scientist to complain about the loss of human knowledge that aborting the mission would bring, but surprisingly that was not Xu’s focus. He was shifting his talent for calm analysis to another arena.

  “Not just money, Doctor: extreme wealth. If they truly were to declare independence, and I don’t really see what is stopping them, they instantly lay claim to resources without which the solar system simply cannot be colonized. Nowhere else do such abundant resources exist free from an oppressive gravity well. Zuoren shifted his gaze to Cal. “They may or may not be initiating a revolt, but they are using our resupply needs as leverage. We are the ticking clock that gives specific urgency to whatever demands they are making.”

  Cal looked each of his crew in the eyes. “I don’t much like being leverage. I don’t like giving up on the scientific journey of a lifetime either. And I certainly don’t enjoy the prospect of using the fuel we have left to put us on a slow coast back home.”

  The crew straightened up, anticipating his words. It made him pause for a moment. He both envied and pitied their ability to put their faith in someone other than themselves—given that the someone was him.

  “I say we use our remaining fuel to make Ceres’s orbit. I say we show up in their sky and make a scene.”

  “Yes!” the doctor shouted. “They’ll be forced to give us the tankers. What are they going to do? Let us sit up there and suffocate? It will turn into an international incident.”

  “Interplanetary incident,” Samuels said.

  “What does mission control say?” Arthor asked, looking toward Inez, the mission’s silent IT and comms officer.

  Xu replied instead. “You mean, what’s in the best interest of the mother companies for us to do?”

  Cal looked at him. “And by that, you mean?”

  “I mean that one way or another, we are going to be leverage.”

  Cal smiled. “Well, then the question is, what kind of leverage do we prefer to be?

  Chapter Three

  Cal made the decision to flip the ship and initiate the burn to Ceres before informing the asteroid miners that they were coming. It was a decision typical of him and so, typically he hoped, it would turn out to be the right one.

  The burn could have been performed via tablet, voice control, or wall interface from almost anywhere in the ship, but Samuels, as ship’s pilot, preferred the actual pilot’s seat in the ship’s command module. Her eyes jumped from the rubber-banding video ellipse denoting their course to the colorful vehicle status icons and back again. Cal, however, watched on a tablet from a couch beneath one of the triangular viewports in Red Hab. Xu stood nearby as the ship performed its ballet.

  “And that’s that,” Samuels said, sending the touchscreen controls sliding back up against the module’s inner skin. “We’ll have just enough fuel left to insert us into orbit when we get there.” She released her harness and drifted out of the skeletal pilot’s seat to face the camera. “After that . . .” She made a squirting sound with her lips.

  The thunderstorm of vibration accompanying the burn had abated, and the normal, comforting background sounds of the air handling system and burble of the reactor cooling plant returned.

  “I’m coming back to the habitats now, Cal.” She propelled herself through the open connector that joined the module to the spine. “Are you in Red Hab?”

  “Yes, Red.” Cal replied. “In my office.” He turned to Inez and nodded.

  Inez slid a control screen from her thigh pocket, it lit up as it unrolled. A few taps and she navigated to the communications interface for Ceres Control. Cal was aware of a faint vibration as a sliver of the ship’s AI capacity worked to angle the antenna. Inez tapped a few more luminescent squares and nodded back to the captain.

  “Ceres Control, this is Ulysses.” Cal paused for a few seconds, not in expectation of a reply; it would be a good forty-five seconds before his words would reach them. Instead he paused to allow the listener a moment of thought. “Ceres Control, this is Ulysses. We have altered course and are on our way to you. We expect to attain orbit in four days. We will need resupply at that time. Over.” He looked over at Inez, who just stared back at him. Samuels had arrived, descending into the habitat and stepping into the small office.

  “That’s all you are going to say?” she asked.

  “What else would a commanding officer in this situation say?” Xu asked.

  Cal smiled. “Fuse is lit, now we see if there’s any dynamite at their end.”

  The forty-five seconds ticked away. They would have received the transmission. Cal felt the concern in his gut, but knowing his people needed confidence and calm kept him from voicing his nerves. The doctor appeared behind Samuels, in the doorframe, her own concern painfully evident on her face. Understandable. If Arthor hadn’t been occupied in the spindle, checking the accuracy of the fuel readings, Cal was sure that his large frame would be crowdi
ng the doorway as well.

  Another forty-five seconds passed. Anytime now, a quick and friendly response would arrive. The longer the delay, Cal feared, the more measured and less friendly the reply would be.

  A minute and forty-five seconds brought nothing. Cal looked at the faces of his crew. Zuoren began to play with the folds on the arm of his jumpsuit.

  Three minutes.

  Five.

  “How about some music while we wait?” Cal asked, half joking.

  A Quindar tone sounded. “Roger Ulysses, this is Ceres Control. We repeat the recommendation made to mission control. Ulysses should perform a burn to put it on a free-return trajectory around Jupiter. Ceres will not be resupplying you at this time, and we know that you have enough supplies for free-return. Do not come here. We will not resupply you at this time.” There was a moment of silence and then, “Sorry, Ulysses.” And then the end-transmission tone sounded.

  Cal’s nose twitched. The faces of his crew, with the exception of Zuoren’s, betrayed shock. Zuoren looked as if he expected it.

  “Are you kidding me.” the doctor finally said.

  Cal motioned for Inez to transmit.

  “Ulysses to Ceres Control, a free-return is no longer an option. We have already made our burn. We are on our way. Please be prepared to resupply us when we arrive. Ulysses out.” Inez pressed the square, initiating the tone and stopping transmission. She smiled worriedly.

  “They won’t deny us what we need to survive,” the doctor said, looking around. “Right?”

  “I would hope not,” Zuoren said.

  “But we’ll find out,” Cal replied, lifting his hand to his cheek and dragging it down to pull on his chin as if he had a beard.

  He knew they were in for an anxious transit. Waiting, without the ability for action, was bad news for a crew. Doubts and fears were contagious, and only strict quarantine worked against them.