Riddled Space Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Preface

  RIDDLED SPACE

  Angus Turley

  Jeng Wo Lee

  Lisa Daniels

  John Hodges

  Eddie Zanger

  Celine Greenfield

  McCrary

  The Director-General

  CAPCOM

  Commander Daniels

  Cargo Switch

  Graft to Host

  The Ride Upstairs

  To The Moon, Zanger!

  Final Flight

  Assumptions

  Wages of Sin

  Eddie on Final

  Lee's New Chief

  CE McCrary Digs In

  Speaker to Bolts

  New Commander, Same Problems

  The Chondrite

  Daisy-Clipper

  Tar and Steel

  Budget Battles

  Lack of Coolant

  ZG Promenade

  Commanders' Call

  Never Be Alone

  Invasion of the Ankle Biters

  Roque

  Reach Out and Touch Someone

  VIP Tour

  MBFA

  Impact

  Meanwhile, at UNSOC Control

  Evac

  Game Plan

  Controlled Chaos

  One Last Rodeo

  Loading the Sleds

  Decision Point

  Sub Analysis

  Public Affairs

  Orbital Decay

  Entry Interface

  Splashdown

  Roque and Lynn

  Old Ties, New Strands

  Fidelity

  Credits

  Want more?

  Excerpt: COME IN, COLLINS

  Dedications

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  RIDDLED SPACE:

  A Riddled Space Novel

  by Bill Patterson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  RIDDLED SPACE

  Copyright © 2017 by Bill Patterson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Model © 2017 Greg Bulmer

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design © 2017 Chirstian Bentulan

  All rights reserved.

  Portions of this novel have been previously published in

  2011 Warped Words: 90 Minutes To Live

  © JournalStone, 2011

  Preface

  BLURB.

  Angus Turley

  UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, December 14, 2079, 1543 hrs

  Angus Turley looked out at the barren surface of the Moon to The Works and smiled. Years of arguing, cajoling, and design changes resulted in ten precious cargo flights. Months of dangerous structural assembly in the hostile vacuum of space. No deaths, but two medical evacuations back to Earth for limb reconstruction. Angus watched the robotic haulers dump another load of regolith into the intake hoppers. Two years in operation and The Works was still running like a top.

  He raised a hand to acknowledge one of the Moondogs on a buggy. Single red stripe on the suit, yellow helmet—that would be Devore, the head of instrumentation.

  “Hey, Chief,” called Devore. “Whatcha doing out here? Need something?”

  “Just wanted to eyeball The Works,” Angus said, his Scottish burr unmistakable on the radio. “Been two years now, I thought I'd come out and see the old girl again.”

  Devore chuckled. “You're out here at least twice a month!”

  “I know. Still, I thought I'd mark the occasion. What brings you out here?”

  “Had to change out an oxygen sensor. Enough cosmic ray bombardment and these babies go south. Gotta bring them inside, take them apart, anneal the platinum grids, then put them back together, good as new.”

  Turley raised both hands, palms out, to his shoulders, the suited Moondog equivalent of a shrug. “This job takes the Head of Instrumentation?”

  “I like to keep my hand in, sir. Besides, the men need to know their boss can do the same jobs they can.” Devore pointed towards the buggy garage. “Need a lift back in?”

  Turley waved his hands in front of him like a football referee ruling a pass incomplete. “No need, Devore. I just got out here. I was going to look at those rollers in the rock crushers. They've been running a little warm and I'm worried about GUHhhhhh.”

  Turley took a half-step sideways, as if he had taken a punch in the shoulder. As Devore looked on in horror, the shards of Turley's helmet glittered in the sunlight as they emerged from the sudden cloud of pink condensation where his head used to be. Another blink in the sunlight and the Chief was suddenly standing on one leg, the other bounding away behind him, arterial blood jetting into the soil of the Moon he had loved so much.

  Devore keyed the radio for Turley when a sudden spray of regolith one meter to his left changed his mind. He hammered at the buggy controls, racing for the relative safety of the base garage and the airlock beyond.

  He changed channels for the Lunar Operations Center without thinking.

  “LOC, LOC, LOC, this is Devore, leaving The Works for the garage. We've got trouble. Turley is down and out, I've got meteors blasting all around me. Get everyone under cover.”

  “Devore, this is LOC. You out at The Works? There's alarms going off all over the place. Say again about the Chief.”

  “Sudden meteor swarm, LOC. We've lost the Chief. Maybe even The Works, too.”

  Jeng Wo Lee

  UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, December 28, 2079, 1010 hrs

  Jeng Wo Lee, Commander of United Nations Lunar Colony Michael Collins, gazed at the smoothed stone that sat to the left of the camera pickup. To the right, a jagged piece of olivine seemed to glow with an inner light-green opalescence. The smooth stone came from the riverbank near his home in Japan. The jagged green stone was rescued from the first load of lunar rock sent through The Works. The differences in the rocks and the emotions they evoke—the smooth easy life of Earth and the stark, rough, fractured life of space used to soothe him. There was no soothing Lee today. UNSOC brass was determined to pin the death of Chief Turley on him.

  “Lunar surface operations are inherently dangerous, Director. There have been incidents up here before,” Lee carefully explained. “Chief Turley's been assigned up here twice before this—he knew the risks. He personally rescued those two previous casualties when The Works were under construction.”

  The speaker was silent for three seconds as the radio waves carrying the discussion crawled from the Moon to the Earth and back. Lee used these seconds to think about his responses.

  “Why didn't you pick up these meteors on radar?” demanded the man at the center of the monitor. The Director-General of the United Nations Space Operations Command (UNSOC) Subramanyan Venderchanergee was a lighter skinned Indian. Despite decades of social pressure from the rest of the world, India was slow to abandon the caste system that had served its ruling classes for centuries. Subramanyan was raised in a high-caste household, thus even in America, far from his homeland, he still reacted preemptively to perceived slights.

  “Sir, the resolution on our radar is good enough to pick up large rocks, meter sized or larger. The meteors that killed Angus Turley were less than ten centimeters in diameter. You have the data records from the LOC.”

  “Maybe your radar is out of tune or something,” said Subramanyan. “There have been a lot of maintenance failures in the Collins, Commander. Perhaps we need to take a closer look your whole operation.”

  Only someone who knew J
eng Wo Lee well would know how angry he was at the insinuation. Lee was a third-degree black belt in at least three fighting arts, one of which counseled attack instead of disengagement when affronted. His hands tightened as they gripped each other, the tendons rising from the effort. His eyes narrowed minutely, and he felt his breathing trying to speed up.

  Lee used the three second signal delay to gaze at the rocks, cooling his anger. Subramanyan was famous for his ability to avoid scandal. Lee knew exactly what his boss was trying to do—avoid blame for the death of a senior astronaut by pinning it on the colony commander—in other words, him. But what should be his response to Subramanyan? Which did he love more, himself, smooth and unruffled like the stone from Japan? Or his men, full of sharp corners and hard edges, like the chunk of Lunar olivine. Hard action or a smooth retirement? He stared directly at the camera and very carefully, quite precisely, lost his cool at his boss.

  “This is space, Subramanyan. It's an unforgiving environment. Right now, The Works are out of commission, the supplies of liquid oxygen the Chaffee needs are threatened, and we've got a crew that's not happy with UNSOC. Christmas passed with no care packages from home.

  “Those maintenance issues you cited? They are the direct result of UNSOC penny-pinching. We've had a request for millimeter-resolution radar on the books for the past five years. Hell, we can manufacture most of the components here on the Moon, we just need a few motherboards from Earth for the computational sections. But I guess UNSOC needs the money for another confab in Geneva.

  “Meanwhile, I have a body bag here with one of the finest men I've ever served with awaiting transport home when the next OTV shows up. I understand that's not scheduled for another three months. So, Turley sits in the freezer while you've probably got some kind of expensive, taxpayer-paid dinner scheduled for tonight.

  “If OTV Betsy shows up with my replacement on board, then it better have all the things we've been requesting or the infonet channels will have a nice juicy story about graft at UNSOC. We're rattled up here, sir. Chief is dead, The Works is a wreck. Another wholesale change like a new Commander is not what the Collins needs right now.” Lee fixed his gaze on the rough olivine rock and felt a warmth spread throughout his core. Hard action was so much more satisfying.

  “Ah, Commander Jeng?” a new voice came over the radio. “Mr. Venderchanergee has left.”

  “That you, Gus? But it's 'A' shift time, where's Fred?” asked Lee. “Say hello to the Control Room gang for me, especially Tom.”

  “I'm pulling a double for Fred—he's still on Christmas break. Tom's in, let me look up his extension. Ah. 8807.” Gus Blukofski, head of the CAPCOM 'C' shift, typed the code into his sideband chat client.

  Lee carefully typed the code into his keyboard and looked at the window that suddenly blossomed beside the video.

  What did you say? Subby almost popped a vein. Never saw him so angry. Gus.

  Lee quickly typed as he rambled on. All communications were recorded, so he vamped for the benefit of the camera and recorder while the real discussion was taking place on the encrypted sideband. “Gus, could you see if you can round up all the technical details for the major components of The Works? We're going to need the latest tech manuals, and soon I think.”

  Reminded him that he's lining his pockets. Try to pin the blame for a meteor swarm on me when he's banking the bux we need for the radar? Maybe I shouldn't have lost my cool like that. Lee.

  “How soon do you need them?”

  Nice to see someone kick the bully. Still, I think you're screwed.

  “Real soon. The Works' major components never got touched, it's all the auxiliary piping and valves that got wrecked. We're going to need the specs to recertify things for operation.”

  Nope. If he replaces me, I come back and sing like a bird to the media. He's stuck—he wants to fire me, but he can't because I'll expose him. Bet he wants me to get hit by a meteor too.

  “I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, we're going to be holding a memorial service for Angus here in the auditorium tomorrow at 1700 UTC. Would you like to say a few words?”

  Subby gonna be there?

  “Absolutely. I'll synchronize it with ours up here.”

  Nope. Bastard.

  “I'll coordinate with Holt on the Chaffee, Lee.”

  Figures. Still, be careful with what you say. He'll be watching the recordings.

  “Thanks, Gus. We've got work to do up here.”

  Same to you.

  Watch your ass.

  “Take care, Lee. UNSOC out.” The video and sidebar chat client both closed on Lee's computer, leaving him to gaze at the rocks in silence.

  Lisa Daniels

  Enroute to Columbus, Ohio, January 5, 2080, 1510 CDT

  Report to Operations as soon as you land, read the text message. “Tin cans and string.” Lisa Daniels sat back in her seat on the aircraft and turned to watch the ground pass slowly below her. Tin cans and string. They want a secure circuit. Something's in the wind.

  She shrugged. Whatever it was, they thought it could wait until she landed, so there was no use worrying about it. She turned back to her briefing manual, plunging into the dense technical verbiage, happy to read something straightforward for a change.

  She landed in Columbus, Ohio just as the sun was setting, so she didn't waste any time getting to a secure telephone. “UNSOC,” said the terse voice in her ear. “Execute code Niner-Seven-Tree, cipher Eight One Seven Six.” Lisa punched the numbers into the scrambler panel next to the phone. A series of tones sounded in her ear and the line took on the slightly echoed ambiance of an encrypted line.

  “Lisa Daniels,” she announced. “How do you read?”

  “Five by five,” replied the voice in her ear. “Please stand by for Subramanyan Venderchanergee.”

  Lisa sighed as she looked at the wall clock. Seventeen-thirty and the boss was still at the office. That was not a good sign—he was usually gone before sixteen hundred, most afternoons.

  The Director-General of United Nations Space Operations Command was a politician, not someone who loved space. The previous D.G. was a genuine explorer type trapped in a body that could never leave Earth. Natalya Koshevsky had brought order to the faction-riven UNSOC, and during the eighteen years of her rule, she had united the entire staff, including the astronaut corps, into a single cohesive unit. But Koshevsky retired over twenty years ago, and the current D.G. was too busy lining his pockets to notice how UNSOC's space assets were falling into wrack and ruin.

  “Daniels?” barked Venderchanergee. “Where have you been?”

  Lisa breathed out slowly. She knew he had her itinerary for the just-concluded California trip, and she had asked for leave to stop off in Ohio to spend a night with her family.

  “Flying back from California, sir,” she said. “I'm in Ohio now, and will be in New York tomorrow, as we agreed.”

  “Ohio? Why didn't you fly straight back to New York? What's in Ohio?”

  “My family, sir. I haven't seen them in six months. You signed off on my travel plans last week.”

  “I haven't seen my family in six years, Daniels. The phone seems perfectly adequate for keeping in touch for any personal issues you might have.”

  Lisa kept silent. His family was probably glad to be halfway around the world from this strutting martinet.

  “Nothing? Well. I want you in New York tonight.”

  “That's not possible, sir. There are no more planes headed east until morning. Why do you need me there tonight?”

  “Have you been paying no attention to events at all? It's a good thing I’m diligent in my duties. There is a meeting of the UN Space Budget Panel tomorrow morning about the Collins disaster and its effect on Chaffee's operations. I want you to attend in my stead; I have a conflict. I need to brief you tonight. Get here however you can. Send me your revised travel plans when you've got them.”

  An electronic squeal announced Subby had hung up.

  At forty-five an
d the top of her profession, Lisa Daniels was the consummate spacecraft commander. She exuded competence and confidence with her very presence. Many a spacehand seeing her from afar would subconsciously straighten up and act busy, even before they knew who she was. Lisa was aware of the effect she had on others, but was careful never to take personal advantage of it.

  She gazed at her favorite family photo, the screen image on her personal commpad, while she punched in a call to her husband. Having Mommy gone eleven months out of twelve for the typical three-year tour in space was not well received by Susan, twelve, and Edward, eight. Eddie put up a brave front, of course. He said he was too old to be running to Mommy, but deep down, she knew he needed her. And Susan acted all grown up already, but Lisa knew better and so did Susan.

  Shep, her husband of twenty-three years, answered on the first ring.

  “Change of plans, dear,” said Lisa. “I've been ordered to get to New York tonight.”

  “The kids will be disappointed,” said Shep, his voice full and warm in her ear.

  “Not you?”

  “Most definitely me, and especially my Lil’ Guy,” Shep said.

  Lisa shook her head. Why did men name their genitals? She had dated three other men before she met Shep, and they all had nicknames for their penises. She had carefully asked some of her sorority friends from college about their men. Those were some hilarious conversations.