Anio

Flights to orbit had become old hat to Scott Jel­li­son. He’d been an astro­naut for over fif­teen years as a mem­ber of the space agency. Scott had been to the Moon half a dozen times, to Apophis, a near-Earth aster­oid once, and to orbit more times than he could count. He was fly­ing up to Glenn Sta­tion in the Luna­dyne Fly­er to meet his crew for anoth­er mis­sion up to anoth­er aster­oid called Anio. The fly­er would ride up to 10 km on the back of an air­plane, then fire rock­ets to orbit.

He smiled, notic­ing the woman seat­ed next to him wring­ing her hands and pulling tighter on the har­ness straps. Scott saw from her fur­rowed brows that the flight of the jet was not help­ing calm her.

“First time in space?” he asked.

“Well,” she started.

“Don’t wor­ry, it’s lousy until day two or three, then your body will stop rebelling.”

“Oh okay. I heard it might be nauseating.”

“Got your meds?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, they gave me about a week of the anti-nausea.”

“Vaca­tion?”

“Busi­ness,” she answered.

“Same here. I’m off to Anio over the next month.”

“Anio?”

“It’s an aster­oid, 1999 AN10 or Anio for short,” he said. “I’m Scott Jellison.”

“Gen Miller.”

“Nice to meet you,” he salut­ed with a slight smile.

“Very fun­ny.”

“Sor­ry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Yeah, you’re a real come­di­an,” she answered.

“So where?”

“Huh?”

“Where are you bound for?” Scott asked.

“Con­rad Station.”

“Excellent—the Moon. That’s a great place for your first trip out. It was my first trip out of orbit.”

“When was that?” Gen asked.

“About fif­teen years ago with the Space Agency.”

“Those were the ear­ly mis­sions. Weren’t they?”

“Yes,” said Scott. He kept up the ban­ter to dis­tract her. “I was on crew four. We recov­ered the Ice core at the south pole after crew two botched it.”

“How was it botched?”

“The idiot dropped the sam­ple can­is­ter, and it rolled to the bot­tom of the crater.”

“Oh, I seem to remem­ber that he res­cued his crew­mate,” said Gen.

“That’s the offi­cial sto­ry, but Nils Carmike was a waste as an astro­naut. I’m glad we forced him out of the Agency.”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“No,” con­tin­ued Scott. “You wouldn’t have. He left the Agency to pur­sue a com­mer­cial ven­ture with anoth­er astro­naut named Milt John­son. They bank­rupt­ed them­selves and left a lot of investors with mas­sive loss­es. Last I heard, both are on the Moon now–so they could avoid the lawsuits.”

“Sounds like quite the pair of criminals.”

“Yeah, I guessed they might be even back at the Agency when we planned that first flight back to the Moon. Both of them seemed to pres­sure Annie Mac­In­turn­er to choose Fra Mau­ro as the first land­ing site.”

“Why would they do that?” she asked.

“I think there was some­thing up there that they want­ed to get their hands on. Either they delib­er­ate­ly ignored the dan­gers of the mis­sion, or they were so focused on their hid­den agen­da they missed them.”

“Dan­gers?”

“Yeah,” said Scott, feel­ing the air­craft climb and turn. It will be a few more min­utes, he guessed. “An old exper­i­ment with unfired mor­tar shells.”

“Why would–”

“They used it with the seismometers.”

“Yeah,” Gen said. “You are work­ing for the Agency still?”

“Tech­ni­cal­ly, yes, but our own hard­ware isn’t being used to reach Anio.”

“So you’re going with Lunadyne?”

“Only as far as Glenn,” he said. “Then we’re fly­ing with Selene. They had the small­er bid to get us to Anio. How about you?”

“Me? What?”

“Sor­ry. I meant, who are you work­ing for?”

“I’m with Luna­dyne,” she said.

“Engi­neer?”

“Deputy Sher­iff.”

He felt the sud­den accel­er­a­tion hit his body, push­ing him back into his seat. He heard her grunt.

“What the—”

“I know it’s your first time, but it’s just a rocket.”

 

*****

 

Scott float­ed toward the Space Agency’s end of the Glenn sta­tion. He moved past tourist accom­mo­da­tion and sev­er­al com­pa­nies who had habi­tats devot­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing. At one point, the Space Agency had the bulk of the sta­tion. Over time, how­ev­er, they expand­ed it by adding more com­mer­cial habi­tats. Glenn sta­tion wasn’t the only sta­tion in orbit, but it had become one of the major hubs.

“Hi folks,” he said when enter­ing the Agency hab.

“Hey Jel­li­son,” said Kiku Fuka­mu­ra, the sta­tion com­man­der, while she tied back her unruly hair. “You’re late.”

“What do you mean, late?” He asked, try­ing to stay pleas­ant giv­en their dif­fi­cult his­to­ry. Their pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship had strayed into per­son­al ter­ri­to­ry, and it forced Scott to make some tough deci­sions that end­ed up dri­ving a wedge between them.

“Your ship and crew are already here, tak­ing up space and oxy­gen,” Kiku said.

“Of course,” he laughed, know­ing that they couldn’t just leave when he arrived.

Scott was nec­es­sary for a launch, but not suf­fi­cient. The mis­sion to Anio was pre­cise­ly timed, hav­ing only a nar­row launch win­dow. And that win­dow was in three days. As a result, both the prime crew and all the back­ups were present. They would swap out some­one, but the goal was to have the prime crew board the trans­fer vehicle

“Any thoughts to Selene’s request?” she asked.

“What, the crew change they wanted?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought the Agency had ruled on that,” said Scott.

“The last the Admin­is­tra­tor had said was that it was the astro­naut’s office call.”

“And I thought Car­la was going to say ‘no’.”

“She called me up an hour ago and said it was up to you,” said Kiku.

“Damn.”

“It’s bad enough that the civil­ians are tak­ing over the Moon flights. Now they want to go into deep space. Anio was sup­posed to be our mission.”

“Well, it still is.”

“No,” said Scott. “It isn’t. The agency is now answer­ing to the com­pa­ny that had been one of the worst cheaters in the industry.”

“Nobody has ever shown that.”

“Does it have to be?”

“I guess not.”

“At least I can make the call.”

“That’s true,” said Kiku. “Have you decid­ed yet?”

“I’m lean­ing against it. I real­ly don’t want a Selene employ­ee on the ship. They–”

“The replace­ment isn’t Selene. They are SRL.”

“What?”

“I would have thought they would have told you.”

“They didn’t,” said Scott. “When was that?”

“The per­son is to arrive tomor­row. Appar­ent­ly, Selene is a sub­con­trac­tor in this case. The prime SRL want­ed to send some­one on this journey.”

“This makes our train­ing for shit. Stone and Maina have worked hard on this.”

“They are a team.”

“Yes. I don’t know which one of them I’d cut for this civilian.”

“Well,” said Kiku. “You have about twelve hours to fig­ure that out.”

“I have the answer now.”

“What is it?”

“No.”

“I don’t think you can tell them no. The pro­gram depends too much upon Selene and SRL.”

“I expect­ed that,” said Scott. “So, I have an alter­na­tive answer.”

“Okay, who is it?”

“You.”

“Me? What do you mean?”

“I’m cut­ting both Stone and Maina while adding you and the civilian.”

“Wait,” said Kiku. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I am joking?”

“I guess you don’t, but I still don’t under­stand why.”

“The main rea­son is that Stone and Maina are a team,” said Scott. “No one can real­ly break up Stone and Maina. To be suc­cess­ful, I need them both. Since I can’t, my best bet is to find some­one that I know will work with me.”

“So that’s me?”

“Yes. You and I have flown togeth­er more times than I can count. You and I flew mis­sion sev­en to the Moon together.”

“I remem­ber.” She paused. “Espe­cial­ly since it was our first one.”

“There also isn’t any­one that has as many flight hours with me, and Anio is ten times fur­ther away—”

“What about Sophia?”

“You’re kid­ding, right?” he asked.

“Well, you dumped me on three dif­fer­ent mis­sions to take her.”

“Two of those were the agency telling me to take her.”

“What about the third?”

“I didn’t think we should be con­fined in a small space togeth­er. Giv­en what we were feel­ing about each oth­er, I don’t think it would have end­ed well for us or the agency, regard­less of which direc­tion it took.”

“Well,” she said. “We went our sep­a­rate ways.”

“Yes. Any regrets?”

“No.”

“So, are you going to Anio with me?” He asked.

“I should say no, but that would lead you back to Stone and Maina being insep­a­ra­ble, and we’ve been through that—I’ll go.”

“Great,” he said. “Besides, hav­ing the civil­ian with us should put a damper on any exces­sive feelings.”

“Oh, if I have any exces­sive feel­ings, I will let you know before launch.”

Her scowl betrayed her feel­ings. Scott imag­ined she was not hap­py with the sit­u­a­tion. But he need­ed her astro­naut skills. Even though Anio was a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple mis­sion because they had done Apophis some ten years pri­or. It was still a cou­ple mil­lion miles fur­ther than the Moon or L5 station.

*****

The day passed with­out inci­dent. Car­la had agreed to make Kiku the third of the crew. Kiku was still resis­tant, but Scott felt con­fi­dent she saw the rea­son he want­ed her. Above all, Kiku could han­dle the sit­u­a­tion if things got dif­fi­cult. All astro­nauts could, but Kiku was one of the best.

“When is the third going to get here?” asked Scott.

“I expect her to be here lat­er today,” said Kiku.

“Who is she?”

“Nic­hole Valintine.”

“Nic­hole!”

“Who did you think it was?”

“I was expect­ing Sam Mel­man,” said Scott. “He’d been with Selene for years. I thought he’d be their guy for going to Anio.”

“As we talked about yes­ter­day, the prime is going to send the person—not Selene.”

“This cor­po­rate shit has got my head spinning.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It happens.”

“I met some­one yes­ter­day that was going to be a Deputy Sher­iff for Luna­dyne up at Con­rad Sta­tion. Can you believe it? A Deputy Sher­iff hired by a cor­po­ra­tion to police the Moon.”

“You didn’t hear about the Sher­iff and the strike from a few years back?”

“I heard about it,” he said. “But I real­ly didn’t pay attention.”

“You nev­er do.”

“What is that sup­posed to mean?”

“It means you get blind­ed by any­thing that isn’t Agency.”

“Well, it doesn’t mat­ter to me.”

“You’d be a lead by now if you did,” Kiku said.

“I’ve got the mis­sions. That matters.”

“It won’t after this one.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“It’s over.”

“What’s over?” Scott asked, then real­ized what Kiku said. “Not the Agency?”

“You know what I am talk­ing about, then.”

“No, not exactly.”

“The Agency declared us unnecessary.”

“The astro­nauts?”

“Yes,” she said. “Peo­ple like Nic­hole are going to be the vanguard.”

“Dammit, we are enabling it.”

“I real­ly thought you knew.”

“Kiku, why are we involved, then? I mean, they should have released us before this flight.”

“There is sup­posed to be an announce­ment once we’ve ren­dezvous with Anio.”

“And we’d be out of a job.”

“Tech­ni­cal­ly no,” she said. “But we wouldn’t be astro­nauts. We’d be man­ag­ing mis­sions by oth­er ven­dors to meet our needs.”

“We wouldn’t be fly­ing them?”

“No. Except for remote loca­tions such as this sta­tion and the Moon. The agency decid­ed it was far less expen­sive to put the mis­sions up for bid instead of putting out a con­tract for the hard­ware and fly­ing it ourselves.”

“Damn,” said Scott. “I would have nev­er thought that they would replace me.”

“I sup­pose you could put those skills to use in com­mer­cial yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You don’t sound con­vinced,” said Kiku.

“I’m con­vinced it’s a good way of get­ting killed.”

“If it is, we all must die some­time. For me, it will be bet­ter on a mis­sion than watch­ing on the sidelines.”

Scott con­sid­ered for a moment.

Could she be right? Is this the way to go?

“If you look at it,” she con­tin­ued. “An astro­naut is more of a pro­fes­sion than a gov­ern­ment title. I think it’s already proven.”

“Yeah. And we have this mis­sion to prove that.”