With Our Dying Breath Read online

  "Stay here." Prackz and Gaho were happy to oblige. Oswald pushed gently as possible between the bodies, but he felt something snap as he pressed against Cornin to get to the control stations. "Sorry," he whispered.

  The instruments requiring power were as cold and dead as the crew that once manned them. The juggler balls still worked beneath the icefrosted glass; the recording needles had run to the end of their plate long ago. Above it the master clock, atomic powered and designed to keep ticking should the very gates of Hades open beneath it, silently continued its count. Oswald reached out but stayed his hand for just a moment before quickly brushing the frost from the display.

  Fear welled up inside and kept him from looking. Oswald swallowed the bile in his throat and forced himself to look. He childishly looked away before he could read the simple analog display. Oswald was glad the crew couldn't see his ridiculous struggle through his helmet from where they floated. He looked again, this time unable to turn away.

  18DEC2618

  He brought up the display from Roland.

  02SEP2195

  He pressed the calibration switch and it blinked for a few seconds before turning green. It was calibrated, no errors. "No..." Bile returned to Oswald's throat. His breath would not come. The inside of his helmet was starting to get warm and spin.

  "Sir! Are you well!" McFarran sounded urgent. "Your vitals have set off an alarm. Sir? Sir!" The man's voice was fading to a distant buzz. "Prackz! Get the colonel..."

  Chapter 16 "Maybe the ancients came and opened a dimensional rift?" Danner objected sardonically, his voice rising. "Or alternate universe doppelgängers!? Space vampires!"

  "How about something useful, Danner."

  "Useful, Colonel!" Danner was screaming now. "We're already off in fantasy land! Time travel? Stasis fields? Why not propose we're all just computer simulations and someone reprogrammed us?"

  "Perhaps," Mathesse offered wide-eyed, "we can sling-shot ourselves around the sun and open a time warp."

  "Mathesse..." Oswald rubbed his temples.

  "No, no. I saw it work in a vid once." Mathesse nodded, smiling. "Really. Lots of pretty colors too."

  "I've had my fill of pretty colors." Breen shook his head.

  "Do you have another useful idea then, Danner?" Oswald thumped the table with the palm of his hand. "You know how the master clocks work! It calibrated! You saw it yourself."

  "Let's find another then. We can't go on pretending its 2618." Danner was sounding more reasonable, but still incredulous. "We can find Earth. Or Luna. Or any of the stations."

  "And what of the planetary alignment?" McFarran asked. "Even if that master clock was wrong for some strange reason, you have to account for that. That, we can see now."

  Danner looked away angrily, sulkily refusing to look back at the meeting.

  Oswald understood. It was crazy. He had no way to explain how it would have happened either, but he knew—or at least thought he knew—what he had seen.

  "Is everyone else agreed that at least it seems we've returned fourhundred and twenty-three years after mission start?" There were many shaking heads and masks of disbelief, but no one else denied the appearance. Even if they didn't believe it they had no better answer. "I agree it is ridiculous and impossible and I'm willing to entertain other ideas?"

  "Have we found Earth?" Danner suddenly asked. "If the planetary model holds true, where is it? It should have cleared Sol by now."

  "No Earth," Oswald agreed. "It is another mystery, but if all the other solar landmarks fit—"

  "Well maybe they figured out how to cloak the Earth and they all just retreated to our mystical hidden planet while we were away."

  "That is enough, Danner!" Oswald rubbed his chin. "It is a good point though. Another answer I don't have."

  "I'd like to throw something out there," Doctor Hines said. "Why everyone went crazy. It might fit with the four-hundred year thing."

  Oswald waved him on.

  "Remember how we discussed the symptoms being like severe spacer fever? Well I'm wondering if we were in some sort of stasis, or time warp, or whatever, perhaps there was something in our subconscious that felt that passage of time. And when we woke up, all part of our brains wanted to do was get out."

  "That's very interesting," Breen said.

  "Just a thought. Might be hogwash." Hines shrugged. "I do think it would be a good idea to find Earth though. We know at least where it should be, right? We could find a clock and some friends. Or at least someone who'll tell us what happened before executing us."

  "Maybe we're still in the hallucination. We could just be in one big three-ring circus of crazy!" Mathesse had meant to get a rise from the good doctor, but Hines only nodded as if he'd already considered that possibility.

  "Fortunately we got that hydrogen from the station," Breen said. "Gave us back some deltaV. And the landing booster."

  They sat in silence, individually trying to puzzle out the answer to the whole thing where the brainstorm had failed. It was too hard to accept. But most astronauts had the ability to at least consider ideas from the realm of science fiction. Space travel once exclusively lived there, replaced by interstellar travel when it moved to reality. Time was as mysterious as jump theory when one dug into its foundations. It was a subtle and slippery subject for study and it was a terrible master, as most of mankind knew.

  "We should just send a call out there," Gresh said. "If we're going to light off the LANTRn again anyway, why not? Maybe something will answer."

  "We just might do that," Oswald agreed. "But we'll keep radio silence for now. Just nav-radar when needed and minimal burn times. Kirsk, plot me a transfer orbit to Mars if possible. It might be a while before we can top off."

  +++ The big-eye was tasked with looking for Earth, occasionally swinging back to verify the position of the other planets. But the big blue marble was still nowhere to be seen. No EM had been detected, no beacon, no radio station, no warnings, no distress calls.

  There had been no transfer orbit window from Saturn to Mars in a timeframe acceptable to Oswald. It would have saved Roland deltaV, but there were other concerns Oswald had to worry about, not the least of which was the crew's anxiety over the mystery. In the two weeks since leaving Saturn station they had added a body to the cargo bay. A young lady from life support, Corporal Odenski, had vacc'd herself in the main airlock. At least she hadn't spaced herself; leaving behind one of Roland's children would only have added to the woe that filled her like a cloying fog. Oswald would not have ordered the recovery.

  Two more weeks in they were still unable to find Earth and still had no better working theories. Oswald risked a tight beam IFF signal to Mars but there was no reply. Big-eye had found the bases on Mars and Ceres, or actually the craters where they had been.

  Oswald was sitting in the staff room considering the impossible situation again, chewing it over like mental cud. He started at the knock on the open hatch.

  "Sir," Flight Sergeant Norris stuck her head in. "Do you have a moment?"

  Oswald shut down his tablet and set it in the clips on the table. "Sure, Norris. What'cha got?"

  She pulled herself in and opened her mouth twice to start. "I wanted to apologize sir."

  "Whatever for, Sergeant?"

  "For blubbering like a jump-cherry."

  Oswald knitted his brows together. "Excuse me?"

  "When I told you about the time thing. I started crying like a baby. I've always hated people, especially women, who cry like that."

  "You first figured out the only theory that seems to put almost everything together, as much as I don't understand the how of it." Oswald smiled. "Now just find Earth for me and we'll wrap it all up with a nice bow."

  She shook her head, not interested in praise or humor. "I just lost control and couldn’t stop. I felt like some sort of weepy housewife."

  Oswald narrowed his eyes. "I love my housewife very much and she is not weepy."

  "I'm sorry, Colonel." Norris
held out her hands. "I wasn't trying to insult your wife, Sir. I... sorry, sir."

  "Don't worry about it, Lisa. Burn me but it's been a rough mission. We've lost good people, not mention our planet." Oswald offered a gentle smile. "And know that if you insist on worrying about your cry, you'll be doing it alone."

  Norris looked at Oswald for a minute and headed towards the hatch. "Thank you, Colonel."

  Oswald gave her a small wave. "Norris."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "You might want to go easy on all those crying people you hate." Oswald chuckled. "I'm not for useless blubbering, don't get me wrong. I only cry when others can't see me."

  Another two weeks and Oswald was still looking at the maps. Earth should be right there. Right, there. Every other planet matched the location plot for 2618, and now 2619. He thumped his finger in frustration on the map. Right there.

  In fact, Earth should have been visible by now for a wide range of years.

  They had even discussed the possibility that the entire planet had been destroyed. No one, as with all the presented theories, could come up with any reasonable mechanism that might accomplish this without leaving a large asteroid field. Mathesse suggested the mysterious planet X had finally made its way back while they were away. Any objections to his suggestions, even the very ridiculous ones, were met with hurt feelings and a challenge for a better answer. He enjoyed those exchanges far more than did Oswald. It was easy to shoot holes in almost every suggestion. Coming up with a better idea was getting harder and harder. A destroyed Earth was better than Breen's idea of an alternate universe where Earth never formed. Oswald wondered if Breen's mind had been poisoned by too much bad science fiction.

  But Mathesse had a point. None of it made sense. Where were they? When were they? Oswald didn't know. Any pleads for more serious ideas rang hollow; they all knew there weren't any—yet.

  Oswald was beginning to regret the expenditure of deltaV he'd ordered to sling Roland around Sol in Earth's supposed orbit. Day by day, minute by minute, degree by degree, the missing planet clutched its secrets tightly. And he was only interested in one of them.

  Whatever the answer was, Oswald was tired of flying blind. "All acting department heads join operations net forty-three." Oswald waited patiently for those on duty for the watch to join.

  The time the staff had been trying to play interstellar detective the rest of the crew had been slowly putting Roland back together. There was scorching and peeling that simply couldn't be repaired or cleaned on mission, but much of it had been. The burnt smell had mostly abated at the cost of extra filters from Life Support. Several of the bunks in the beehive were damaged, the cushions stiffened, the restraining curtains ruined. Roland was not in her best form, but she was a mission capable war rocket again.

  "We're going to send out a high power transponder ping," Oswald said when the Danner finally joined the net. "We are still getting telemetry from the nav-sat we dropped last week and we have velocity. So we should be able to get a signal around the sun. And if anyone mean answers back we can at least hit the ground running. Thoughts?"

  "Colonel, I say shout loud and proud!" Mathesse replied in a loud Southern American drawl. "Yee-haw!"

  "I agree, Sir." Kirsk replied more circumspectly. Or perhaps it was just weariness. "I'm tired of beating my head over and over. We just aren't figuring this out ourselves. We just don't have enough info."

  "I normally like mysteries, Sir," Norris replied. "But I'm pretty tired of this one."

  "Just think how tired you guys will be if no one answers." Mathesse answered gleefully.

  "I will be the most tired," Oswald admitted. "Tactical, make sure everything is ready for company."

  "Done and done, sir."

  "C'n D, let's transmit full power on this one. Nothing but an ID, don't send anything else." Oswald looked over solar system map. "Be sure to get a good bounce of the nav-sat. If we get anything back, let's get the big-eye on it before we reply."

  "How long shall we wait for a reply?" Mathesse sounded earnest.

  "Signal wise it should only take a few hours to cover just about everywhere. If someone is listening they may have some reservations." Oswald considered the duty roster. "We'll try again tomorrow at the same time. We'll keep the net up for the rest of the shift just in case."

  It didn't take long. Oswald saw the reply acknowledgment just before C'n D reported it on the net. It was a general nav-beacon reply, no station ID included. A few minutes later the reply was also bounced back from the nav-sat, giving them triangulation on the source. Oswald watched the big-eye display pan across the empty star scape until it came to rest on a small dark sphere slightly above the planetary elliptic.

  "What is that?" Oswald searched for a known planetoid that would match the position given the assumed date. Nothing came back. The planetoid shifted colors as Gresh applied the standard filters and spectrometer. The shifting colors chased away the cloak of blackness from the image and from their mystery, revealing a very familiar face.

  "Is that... Luna?" Oswald asked, already knowing the answer.

  Chapter 17 Oswald wanted to immediately burn every bit of deltaV to investigate Luna as soon as possible. But what hope had that single, unintelligent signal given? More than likely it was simply some automated signal from a long abandoned lunar weather radio.

  Given how far Luna was out of her expected orbit, it was not surprising that Earth was still nowhere to be found. It was very disappointing and gave rise to several more theories. All hope that Earth was alive and well vanished—hopeless people did desperate things.

  "Burn it, Hashi." Oswald pressed his eyes until he could see flashes beneath his lids. "I should have posted a guard after the first one. I knew better. Or at least locked the freakin' thing."

  "Sir." McFarran looked as if he wanted to reach out and touch his friend. "There has been so much going on. And besides, if a crewman really wants to vacc themselves, they don't need to use the airlock."

  Oswald knew McFarran was right. He watched the life support techs zip up the two suicides to haul them off to the good doctor. It was not the first mission he'd had people under his command kill themselves. The terror of war in the deep black had a way of breaking people. No matter how much he knew it not to be true, Oswald always felt he should have done something. But nothing in his Earth Fleet suicide awareness training covered the actual end of the world. There were no other replies to Roland's signal, friend or foe, and obviously the crew was losing it—their flight commander was not far behind. It was time to get some answers.

  "Let's get a two man watch set on the airlock and an hourly check by the duty officer on the small arms, warheads, chemical compartment, and pharmacy."

  "Sir, it will certainly strain our watches. We are considerably reduced." "I know it." Oswald stared absently at the airlock, imagining two crew on watch. "Get one from engineering and one from life support. They can bring their tablets if need be. We'll be lighting the LANTRn soon to Luna, so it won't be long."

  "Sir, shall we restrict the crew's access to logs?" McFarran watched closely for Oswald's reaction.

  "I've been thinking about that." Oswald sighed and pushed off towards flight control. "But I think that if I were to make that change, it might make folks more concerned. Everyone already knows both Earth and Luna are not where they're supposed to be. Even if we find Earth out of orbit, what will she look like?"

  "Sir, it would not be in good shape at all. Hardly livable barring some miracle of science or deity," McFarran admitted.

  "Everyone knows the worst already—or thinks they do. Myself included. For better or worse, we'll try to keep to our established routine as best as possible."

  "Very well, sir."

  "I'd like the rotation on my tablet by end of this watch if possible." Oswald nodded to his auxiliary flight officer and slipped through the hatch to his couch.

  "Colonel?" Norris turned in her seat looking awkwardly up over her left shoulder at Oswald. "Is it
true, sir? Both of them, dead?"

  Oswald peeled a small piece of skin from his lip with his teeth. "Yeah. Two more."

  She turned away without a word.

  Oswald ignored his display, trusting his officers to manage Roland while he chewed his lip and his thoughts. There were always threats to a rocket even when not in combat. The Centauri were quite adept at poking holes in rockets and so was space itself. The hurried sorties and uncooperative enemies of Earth Force didn't allow flight commanders to always take the safest vector. And rockets were themselves complex creations, prone to the occasional catastrophic failure.

  The threat Oswald had the least success dealing with came from within—people. The only thing he could calculate about people was their mass and velocity. Everything else was tricky. Fuzzy rules. He didn't dislike people, but they sure had a way of complicating things for their commanders.

  Oswald also didn't dislike the military structure—if taken in moderation. But he had to admit there some very good reasons that military men had done things the way they had for the last few millennia. Meme-grinders were good at influencing people who were in the warm comfort of their homes, vacant eyes absorbing the poison from the endless vids. Propaganda was great for getting soldiers to the front lines but once there it was a whole new challenge to get people to do what needed to be done while someone was trying to kill them.

  Bribery and esprit de corps and the lash if needed. But the people of the space service were very smart. And smart people were often cynical. They were not easily taken in by cheap pep talks and reports that dripped with excess and unwarranted optimism. Policy releases that included any bureaucratic double-speak or HR buzz words were immediately flagged and mercilessly mocked. Oswald often relegated such duties to Hashi—especially if Mathesse was going to be there.

  In the heat of battle it was quite reasonable to obey the person who had the training and big picture and to obey quickly. It was not a reasonable expectation to have every decision reconsidered, analyzed, and discussed before carrying it out. Many people like Oswald put up with the needed military structure for the simple fact that they lived in a world where one could actually grow up to be an astronaut like they always dreamed of as a child. It was the price they were to pay for that dream.