La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 13
25: Engagement: impasse
We are at an impasse. We loiter on station, always with Mars between ourselves and that little crater on Phobos. Our alert status is low. We continue with our duties. We eat and sleep and do more simulations. We exercise, and in the gaps we talk.
‘We’ means Tania, myself and Flaminia. Sylvia remains, as instructed, in her cabinet. It’s been four days now.
I’m addressing Flaminia. Tania tends to listen to our conversations except when she has a point of professional expertise to bring up.
“This is almost the worst outcome,” I say, “We’re here to seek a resolution to this crisis but the Adversary is completely passive. It doesn’t communicate, just swats our probes - which is annoying but not an invitation to interstellar war. Yet we can’t just go home. And we can’t loiter here forever either.”
I shrug my shoulders; Tania smiles sardonically.
Flaminia, however, takes my point seriously.
“It’s like the start of a chess game,” she says, “where your opponent is playing ultra-defensively. Every time you cross an invisible line you get hit. You withdraw, nothing happens. I would expect to hear from Mission Control soon. Probably they’ll up the stakes gradually.”
She smiles, “Let’s hope that doesn’t involve some provocation which puts us in harm’s way.”
She suddenly jolts, like someone’s put a shock through her, and her hand goes to her mouth. Room lights begin to throb and a synthetic voice speaks urgently: “Combat stations - combat stations!”
Tania and I move by long-trained reflexes through the door, into the office and to our couches. Within five seconds restraining pads hold us down, our visors and controls are in place and we’re good to go. I spot Flaminia sliding smoothly into one of the office cabinets.
The locus of alarm is the mother-ship, at this point unmanned and waiting to return us to Earth (it’s two hundred thousand kilometres behind us, trailing Mars in its solar orbit). We’re slaved to the view from the mother-ship's surveillance systems.
There are two approaching threats, two red dots against the background of stars (Mars is an additional tiny dot in the background). This is real-time synthesised imagery received via downlink. The dots have been detected by the ship’s radar/collision avoidance system and are still accelerating, homing in on our ride home.
I hear Tania on the intercom, vocalising the numbers.
“Incoming at three thousand five hundred kilometres, at 80 km per sec. Predicted impact in 43 seconds. Ship is preparing evasive action.”
Not a chance, I think. The main engines are off; a cold start can’t be achieved in time. And these will be homing missiles. We need a miracle.
“Update,” says Tania, “Incoming accelerating at … 35 gees.”
New numbers scroll down the screen as the mother-ship reruns the calculations. The ship is completely immobile, could not be more of a sitting duck.
“Impact in twenty one seconds.”
The dots - AR overlays - never become any larger; never deviate against the stellar background as the clock runs down into single digits. In the last fraction of a second, perhaps their spatial separation widens a smidgen but I couldn’t swear to it.
The view instantly shifts to our own module’s cameras, telescopically enhanced and skipped back a second or two. Here, the mother-ship hangs in space, a tiny distant toy in the centre of our view. With no sign, no warning, there is an intolerable flash as if the ship had been nuked. A roiling, incandescent cloud expands spherically, violent colours dimming as it grows.
“Probably a kinetic kill,” says Tania, with no inflection in her voice, “No anomalous spectral indicators.”
We stay in the couches, waiting for the update to crawl its laggardly way to Earth, waiting for the counter-strike orders which must, surely, finally, be due.
We appear to be stuck out here. Easy meat! My growing despair is only counteracted by a deep belief that even this must have been anticipated. The mission planners must have some backup hidden away. Something they didn’t tell us about.
I’m convinced of it.
26: Engagement: messages
Flaminia joins us on the net, “The module has received a message from the Adversary,” she says, “It’s a diagram showing the Mars-Earth-Venus orbital space in the solar system with icons showing the many spacecraft occupying this space.
All those missions which have left this space, either inward towards Mercury and the sun, or outward, towards Jupiter and the outer planets, those missions - which have in any case long ceased functioning - well, they’re all greyed out.”
Tania is first with an interpretation.
“Looks like we’ve been put under house arrest.”
Flaminia agrees. It seems the obvious interpretation - but there is no context or motive. Nothing you can start to negotiate with.
“Where did the message come from?” I ask urgently, “Some kind of transmission from the crater? How did they get it here?”
There is no line of sight from Phobos to our module: Mars is in the way.
“Well that’s the interesting thing,” says Flaminia, “the ship systems don’t know. The message simply appeared in the AI’s cache-memory as something already perceived. Put it down to the mystique of the Adversary.”
She’s interrupted by clanking sounds which we can hear even inside the swaddling of our couches. My display shifts to a ship-schematic. A hatch has opened in the outer skin through which five dark shapes are ejected, one after the other.
“The ship has moved to a higher alert-level,” says Flaminia tensely, interpreting telemetry only she has access to, “This is a preset, autonomous response to the loss of the mother-ship.”
“There hasn’t been time for any consultation with Mission Control,” she adds, “but plainly this contingency was war-gamed. The metadata indicates these multi-megaton warheads will be placed in highly-dispersed loiter-orbits. Any one of them is quite capable of obliterating the crater base. Together they’d blast Phobos into a new ring system. For the time being though, they’re just in dispersal mode.”
And indeed, the schematic expands to show near-Mars space. Black dots are visibly moving along predicted elliptical orbits around the planet.
There is no response from the Adversary. The ship’s alert level falls back to nominal as we await further developments.
Protocol requires we leave the couches and schedule early gym sessions to de-stress. Tania and I meet with Flaminia in the dining area first, just to mull things over. Flaminia takes me to one side and whispers in my ear.
“By the way, I’ve just been told your wife has taken possession of a model version of yourself. It’s been a couple of days now and I can tell you she’s very content.”
“Has she noticed that Sylvia up here has gone quiet? Can you …?”
“Get into the head of your model back on Earth? Tap the data-feed between the module here and your wife’s André-doppelgänger?”
She smiles.
“Of course not, but this is something the ESA wanted to communicate to you, a kind of official notification; I’m in the loop for that.”
I still feel nervous: “Well, I’m glad she’s happy,” I say.
The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.
