SATURNINE, part one

The early 24th century found humanity in strange waters. Moore’s Law had plateaued near the end of the 20th, placing human brains at the reins of the second wave of space exploration in lieu of once-imagined robots. The immense material wealth plucked from the skies radically transformed Earthbound society. Power concentrated, borders blurred, and the great famines and near-Armageddon of the Second Cold War distilled a deep restlessness out of the human spirit.

Space became a destination for two types: those bored with the new-age comforts of terrestrial life and those who have not yet been granted them. The former became the tourist; the latter, the laborer. Trillions of dollars in ice, metals, and chemicals are freighted across the solar system by those who will never taste the wealth they transport. Decades of government research built the steps to the stars now ascended by private aerospace firms and transport lines and mining companies, employers filling the vacant niche of tribes or nations.

Permanent human habitation began on Luna, now an independent state of several million. Asteroid alloys and Jovian hydrogen built and fuel fleets of ships raking across the system to keep the teeming network of stations afloat and alive — and more urgently, profitable.

Within forty years of the first permanent station on Titan, a new generation of spaceborn humans was maturing. Native respect for greedy Earth left a void filled by anger and radical ideology. Whispers spread on secret channels in the outer reaches, far from the seat of power. When violence ignites, the response is always swift; ideas, however, cannot be extinguished as easily.

For the moment, there is a cruel stability. But scale has not altered the rhythm of human history, and stability cannot last forever.

Black slowly became gray and then finally white as Caspar Reyes opened their eyes for the first time in nearly two Earth days. They ached, and something was pressing on the back of their head — no, not pressing. It was gravity, hugging their whole back, pulling. Their hands were cold. There was something on their face. Reyes tried to investigate with uncooperative nerves. Shaky arms lifted up, held position for a second, dropped back down. Their left elbow hurt. Caspar shut their eyes again, remembering a documentary they’d seen as a kid about wildlife on Earth. A baby deer, in its first minutes as an independent organism, could walk apace with its mother.

Reyes became aware of a door the moment it opened, revealing a square bearded head balanced on a bulky flight suit. Patches studded the front and sleeves, but a name didn’t jump out.

“Hey, buddy, are you alright?”, inquired a man now leaning over Reyes as if they were machinery on a workbench. Reyes managed a groan.

“It’s okay. Just rest up and I’ll get you some water.” He turned back to the door. “I don’t know how long you were out here. There wasn’t another flight plan through this keyhole for weeks. I’d love to find out, when you’re feeling alright. Well, nobody would be ‘alright’, but when…”

The voice blurred as the man ascended some stairs. A voice clearly used to talking to itself.

Reyes made another attempt to identify the object on their face and this time their hands met warm, soft plastic; obviously an oxygen mask. They were in a medical bay. Not dead, it would seem. Awake? Probably, based on the fatigue.

Reyes once again bargained with their arms for some support, this time managing to wedge themself up and get a look around. A medical tower to the right; access panels and a terminal on the left. Okay, they were on a ship. Going somewhere, if there was gravity. Where?

The man returned, offering a bottle of water like a beachcombing trophy. “Here, this should help. You’ve been stewing in carbon for a while. Feeling any better?”

Reyes gave a slow nod, accepting the bottle and knocking it back with surprising vigor. They were thirsty. Why were they so thirsty?

“So,” the mystery man perched on a metal stool. “Do you remember anything about how you got here?”

Reyes strained to think. Did they?

“Sorry, I mean if you can talk. I — sorry.”

Reyes didn’t say anything, but looked the man in the eyes for the first time. He froze.

“Listen. I can probably guess some of the things you want to ask. I’m Redmond Wade, I work in metal salvage. This ship is mine. I call it the Corvus. I caught wind of a UAA ship disappearing out here, the Pascagoula. Were you on it?

Reyes nodded. A word started to form but didn’t make it out.

“Well, I came out here looking for wreckage, to see if I could pick anything, but I didn’t find a wreck. I just found a corpse in a suit, or that’s what I thought. But — and congratulations on this — you’re alive. After who knows how long.”

Reyes stared. The Pascagoula. Gaps were filling. A supply trip to Europa… a pressure alarm… another mystery man…

This time a word survived all the way up. “The… the ship… gone?” Reyes felt like their throat had been buffed smooth.

“The Pascagoula? Yeah. STSA says it was supposed to be at Europa yesterday, but it didn’t, and nobody can seem to find it. Lot of folks just guessed a wreck, which is why I’m here, but it seems like that’s not the case.” He paused. “Or maybe someone else just got here first and netted all the bits, but then why wouldn’t they have picked you up?” He pointed a finger at Reyes, now sitting upright. “Hmm… Oh, yeah, I am a sole operator. Hence the, um, the talking all the time.”

“Mm.” Reyes tried to sound like they meant “I gathered that, and it’s fine” instead of “Oh, great, one of these weirdos”, but it was a nuance their aching lungs couldn’t handle. Everyone knew that sole operators had a reputation for being kind of strange, even if this guy had just done them a huge favor.

“Hey, weren’t you? I mean — were there other — if there were other people on…”

There had been. And now they were missing. Reyes thought about this for a minute, their brain warming up by the second. Tucker, the pilot, and Jimenez, the navigator. Gone, along with the Pascagoula and its cargo.

“Can you tell me who you are? Who the other people were?” The man seemed to understand that this was a big ask.

Reyes’ arm managed to tug the mask off, more by weight than by muscle. “Caspar Reyes, that’s me. I’m… I was the engineer. There’s… there were two other people on the Pascagoula.” Reyes’ voice was finding new strength now. “Dallas Tucker, he was the pilot, and Eva Jimenez, she was the navigator. We were delivering some stuff to Europa, most of it was medicine, some water filters… huhh…”

Reyes went back to focusing on breathing. They’d exhausted all their words for a while. Redmond understood.

“Okay, I’m gonna make a call, but I’m glad you’re remembering. Just stay down here for now. You were out a while… Your suit was backfilling CO2, Christ. Okay, just holler updeck if you need anything, but stay put.” Redmond hurdled up the steps to the command deck. Reyes strained to hear the call but only got a low rumble, the churn of ear blood. Pieces kept filing in.

They’d left Luna on an ahead-of-schedule supply run to Europa. The water filters were important; the ice shelf they were melting for drinking water had been getting dirtier lately. The Pascagoula was an older ship, from the ’40s. Still human-navigated. Things were running fine until flip…

They’d been attacked — ambushed. Someone was waiting in a cube skiff with the lights out, latched onto the hull during the turn. He’d pried open the airlock, came in with a bolt spitter. A face wasn’t resolving. White hair, and… a beard? Suit collar?

He’d left them for dead, out here in this long stretch of nothing. Jiminez and Tucker presumably were dead, wherever they’d ended up — apparently too far away for this salvage guy to spot them. There was no debris because there was no wreck. And the Pascagoula was still running, somewhere.

Redmond came bounding down the steps again. “So — okay, I just talked to the STSA guys on Deimos. They’re alerting everyone down the chain to look out for the Pascagoula, since it’s not here. It’ll probably be a while before we hear back. Are — do you need anything?”

“Deimos?” some grit was returning to Reyes’ voice. “Where are we right now?”

“We’re in the Mars ring. If you were headed to Europa from Earth, about — about, uh, half of the way — ”

“We were hijacked.” Saying it shook more pieces down. “During the flip, a cube skiff caught us. It was too small to spot until it was close. One guy came in through the airlock. We had, uh, Tucker almost got him… Jesus Christ, Tucker…” The momentum was headed downward now. “And Jimenez, fuck, she’s — are they out here too? Did you see anything else?”

Redmond pondered the question for a second. “I didn’t catch any other suit signals, no. They could be out here, but if they got tossed during the flip there’s no saying where. Or if — well — you know. I just found you.”

Reyes felt numb, this time inside. They slid back down to laying.

Heavy hands replaced the oxygen mask. “I’m… I’m sorry. I can look. I’ll look.”

As Redmond scaled the stairs a third time, sleep returned.

Keystone Station was a real piece of shit.

For one, the place was obsolete. A halfway stop for fuel and supplies between Jupiter and Saturn made sense when ships were slower and that distance took a couple weeks to cover. But drives had improved, fuel lasted longer, and now almost nobody needed to stop at grimy old Keystone — especially not on company flights where sparing a few hours to top off your tanks would mean kissing an on-time bonus goodbye.

Keystone Station was still in commission because the rules said Algonquin Metals & Ores LLC needed to have a nonzero number of full-time employees in this sector to maintain exclusive mining rights, and there were some nickel-iron trojans out this way that still hadn’t been towed.

An alert light flickered to life on the relay console, its accompanying buzzer jolting Rook out of his job-loathing reverie. There was a fault somewhere in the radio system, probably caused by another voltage spike downstairs.

Defunct as it was logistically, nothing completely went to waste out here; not even the tiniest, leakiest little bucket of oxygen. In addition to maintaining the legal requirement, Keystone had been refitted into a travel stop for information. One of its two habitat rings was now living space for a mess of radio equipment, chirping away at all hours bouncing transponder calls back and forth.

Rook walked up the infinite hallway of Ring A, clutching a cup of water. He was a pin on a map, a placeholder to fulfill the letter of the law. He was a human loophole. He could almost see the water’s surface bending, drawn away from the station’s axis instead of toward a planet. Suddenly no longer thirsty, he dumped the water into a trough of filter plants. They could use it.

Rook climbed a narrow ladder through the ceiling into the main shaft, where Keystone’s false gravity no longer applied, and started maneuvering feet-first through the narrow passage to the B ring. Algonquin kept solo contracts to six months, most likely so whoever got stuck out here didn’t totally lose it and blow the reactor, or just hop an airlock. Rook was on month four, day seventeen. More than halfway done. The previous tenant had opted to scratch some tally marks into the ceiling over the bunk, which Rook thought was too grim a tradition to uphold. He’d taped a poster his mother had sent of the Grand Canyon up there instead; a little piece of a real horizon to keep him sane.

There were certainly worse jobs out here, and nobody got put on a six-month solo post without a psych exam showing they could handle it. Rook had a cousin working on an ice barge who would probably envy him, if she remembered he existed.

The inert-gas mix the computers breathed had to be replaced by regular air before anyone could enter the computer ring. The whir of the circulator pumps kicking in finally cut off the music Rook had been listening to upstairs and trying to hang onto on his way down. He peered through the door into the dim room, and when the door hissed open he climbed inside, feeling the pull of the outer wall as he descended. More false gravity.

Racks of little boxes with little lights lined both walls. This machinery apparently was designed to clean up incoming transmissions, an elaborate computational system for scrubbing background noise and amplifying the useful parts of the message before passing it along. Rook didn’t get to see the messages, and would probably be fired for trying. Which might not be a bad exit plan, come to think of it.

The first thing to do was find the fiber to trace. Rook popped the latches on a panel labelled “DATA TO OUTSIDE ANTENNA” and started rifling through the polymer-optic cables for one that lacked their usual glow.

Halfway through re-tying the first bundle, the station’s intercom bleeped, indicating a message intended for Keystone and not just passing through. Rook scrambled to a wall terminal to read it.

KEYSTONE: UAA PASCAGOULA 2681B DIVERTING COURSE TO DOCK. PLEASE CLEAR AND PREPARE DOCKING BAY. ETA 35 MINUTES. FLIGHT REGISTER 681380U. OVER.

Reaching deep to remember the right syntax, Rook sent back:

PASCAGOULA: DOCKING BAY WILL BE READY. PLEASED TO HAVE THE COMPANY. OVER.

The docking bay had not been used since Rook got here, but it was already cleared and presumably all the locks worked fine. He had half an hour to at least pull up the busted radio module.

After a few more minutes of squinting at individual optic lines, he finally found the dead one. An even closer squint revealed its routing code, which pointed to somewhere in the computer’s protected core; an area Rook didn’t have the key to, which was bullshit.

“What if a fire starts in there?”, he remembered asking the higher-ups. They’d told him not to worry about it. Back to ring A to put in a work order, then. And maybe check the tanks for whatever the Pascagoula needed. Was there any fuel left up there?

To see if the ETA had changed, Rook punched the flight register into the computer, which asked the nearest ships to ask the nearest Space Transport Standards Authority relay to confirm and return the flight plan someone logged before leaving. A decentralized network for maintaining accountability, or so it was designed. In practice? A little clunky.

The nearest ships besides the Pascagoula were a couple of asteroid tugs a few degrees west, and the nearest STSA center was on Callisto. All this signal delay put together took a couple of minutes, after which the Pascagoula’s original flight vector appeared on the main monitor.

It didn’t come near Keystone at all.

Rook stared, a little confused, at the vector STSA had sent — the familiar nine-shape of a least-energy orbit from Luna to Europa. But Keystone was well beyond the end of this path. Coming here would be a major delay, and altering course that far without alerting STSA was risking a significant fine. Something must have gone wrong.

Anxiety mounting, Rook decided to send another message:

PASCAGOULA: IS UPCOMING DOCKING FOR EMERGENCY REASONS? CAN HAVE MEDICAL SUPPLIES UNPACKED ON ARRIVAL. OVER.

By now they were close enough that it should’ve taken less than a second to transmit. Rook waited ten. Nothing came back.

PASCAGOULA: PLEASE COPY IF ABLE. SUSPECTING COMMS ISSUES. OVER.

Again no reply.

Two scenarios unfolded in Rook’s mind. If the Pascagoula’s communications were offline, it would be hard to dock, but not impossible if the pilot knew what they were doing. If they were having power issues, they could still coast to a stop and ferry everyone over in suits, cycling the airlock manually.

But if everyone on board was dead, then the Pascagoula was fifteen minutes away from impact.

Keystone Station wasn’t designed to move. It didn’t have propellants. It had a single escape shuttle that may or may not have been up to code, and even if it survived the launch would put Rook directly in the debris spray. He could try that and probably die of a puncture or he could stay here and eat it in the collision.

The Pascagoula was now close enough to talk to. Rook, shaking, pulled down the switch for continuous transmission.

“This is Keystone Station. UAA Pascagoula, please respond. You are on a collision course. I repeat, please alter your vector or engage retros immediately to avoid a collision. Over.”

The hiss of radio silence was bitter. Rook peered through the dusty window, where the approaching ship was now a visible light to the right of Jupiter’s distant disc. He could make out the green cross of its algae cells, his panic suddenly doubled by how fast they were becoming clearer.

“UAA Pascagoula, please respond.” Fear distorted his voice as much as the static would. “You need to either alter course or flip immediately. Over.”

Nothing. Shit. Rook leaned his forehead against the window, dabbing it with sweat. He stared at his incoming doom. Probably only five minutes now.

Then the speck of doom lit up with the flare of an engine kicking on, and kicking on hard. To fully stop in the distance left the Pascagoula would be pulling six or seven g’s — not unheard of, but typically avoided if possible.

Rook gripped the voice reciever. “Pascagoula, this is Keystone. Please copy.”

Well, docking without comms was a lot better than getting vaporized by a ghost ship. The speck continued to blast its drive; still growing brighter but slowing down now. Two minutes to contact.

Despite his relief Rook continued to expect the worst. He grabbed a medical kit and, grunting at the exertion, carried it up into the spine and started the climb to the docking ring. Struggling to reorient himself in the narrow shaft, he gave the kit a both-legs kick toward the top end. It sailed cleanly up the tube and stopped against the airlock door with a thump. Rook followed, initializing the airlock’s autocycle when he arrived. The light in the antechamber flickered on yellow, indicating a vacuum, but no leaks. Relief.

If the Pascagoula’s comms were totally shot, there was nothing to do but wait for them to dock and hope they knew what they were doing. Rook tried contact again, this time from the terminal by the airlock.

“Pascagoula, you are cleared for approach and docking. If you can hear me, please proceed.”

No response came, but a nervous peek through the airlock window confirmed that the ship was maneuvering into place. The barely-audible rumble of thruster vapor sliding off the hull revealed that the Pascagoula’s pilot did seem to know how to dock.

Then, finally, the low clunk of the clamps engaging. The Pascagoula’s docking bridge extended and found the groove surrounding Keystone’s outer airlock door. There was a chorus of mechanical hissing as both vessels contributed some atmosphere to pressurize the bridge. The light turned green.

And then, nothing. The Pascagoula’s door stayed shut, and Rook couldn’t see any movement through the four layers of glass. But surely there was somebody on board making their way down from the control deck. A lone survivor of a life-support malfunction, possibly. Rook unzipped the medkit and checked its contents: standard stuff.

What could’ve happened over there? They would’ve had lots of fuel and backup air. A ship that size would probably have eight or nine crew on board, and at least as many suits if there was a breach. But they’d made an unreported course change, refused to answer hails, and —

The realization hit Rook at the same instant it came true. He sprang up off the floor and pressed his back against the wall a second before the airlock door burst open and a figure stepped out.

In an instant Rook was back on the floor, still against the wall, staring at a demuzzled rivet gun. Holding it was a tall, bony man with stiff white hair and a rough beard bracketing a blistered, scowling face.

“Hello”, he said. “Where’s the computer?” His accent was halfway Scottish and halfway… Lunar?

Rook sputtered. “Wh- what happened to the c-”

“I killed ’em. I would’a killed you already, too, but I need to know where the computer core is, and seeing as I already did so much killin’ on that ship I figure if you show me and let me take what I need, you can live.”

Definitely Lunar. His words tumbled out with the strange cockney rhythm of the shipyards’ chatter.

Rook stayed seated. “The computer i-i-is in the second ring down, but I can’t get into the core. I-It’s sealed off.”

The man cocked his head slightly. “Ah, I’ll take care of that. You — well, actually, you come with me. Is it just you out here?”

“Wh — I- yeah. Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go. Up the tube, then. You first.”

Rook reoriented himself to face down the spine toward Ring B and started climbing along. He could hear the man follow suit, almost certainly still holding the gun. His mind churned. Okay. He was being pirated. Experiencing a piracy? This guy had killed an entire crew, commandeered a UAA ship…to come to an obsolete relay station in the backwaters of the system? Why?

They reached the end of the shaft. Catching a handrail, Rook swung into the still-open hatch and planted his feet on the floor, stepping out of the way just in time to avoid catching his visitor on the shoulders. The man immediately strode to the fiber panel and started picking through bundles, barely looking at Rook as he dug a flashlight out of his leg pocket.

“Y’got a name, still? Solos forget ’em, sometimes.”

Rook rescued a grain of confidence in the absence of a weapon pointed at his head. “Uh, yeah. My name’s Felix Rook. Who are you?”

The man suppressed a laugh but then changed his mind, letting out a rusty chuckle. “How long’ve you been out here, son? I’m Roger Thomas.”

Flashes from news packets spilled from the back of Rook’s brain. Roger Thomas was presumed responsible for the attack on Enceladus. The sinking of the Colfax, on Saturn. He was wanted by just about all the major Earth nations for untold billions in theft and destruction. He was touted by freighters and miners as the most dangerous man in the system. And now he was sitting on the floor of Rook’s station shuffling through cables. Rook was frozen in shock, able only to stare dead ahead.

“Ah, shit”, grunted Thomas, turning to face Rook. “D’you have a cutter charge?”

The command deck of the Corvus was, like many ships, intended for a sole operator. While the dangers of space travel were plentiful, the two major potentialities (collisions with debris and reactor malfunction) were better solved by smaller vessels than larger crews. A ship with only enough supplies on board to sustain one person for a few months is less worth a pirate’s trouble, and while the algae cell had eliminated the need to pack one’s own air, the weight of food and water was still significant. As a result, single-person ships were fairly common, and sole operators were a breed of spacefarer both revered and ridiculed; often found coalescing in startlingly-quiet bars on the outer moons.

Long weeks alone had unpredictable psychological effects, even on pilots examined thoroughly when hired. The last murmur of an SO cracking was never more than a few months ago — to Reyes’ memory, the most recent story was of an ice hauler found drifting in the rings, its pilot overdosed on painkillers and allegedly a series of inscrutable symbols scratched on the walls. Whether or not the more colorful details were true, there was a mass understanding that solo spacefaring resulted in some real weirdos.

Redmond stood anxiously by the terminal, eyes grazing the screen for any useful information. “We’re gonna need to make a supply grab now that there’s two people aboard”, he announced, eyes still affixed. “We’ll be swinging by Callisto in a couple of days, so if there’s anything you think of, let me know.”

Reyes, gazing out the window at the yellow speck of Jupiter in the distance, simply nodded.

“I haven’t seen anything about the Pascagoula. But I’d bet they’re looking the same way we’re headed, right? Probably. Have you been to Callisto?”

Reyes took a long blink to shake their tunnel vision. “No. I’ve been to Ganymede once.”

Redmond turned his body, but his head didn’t follow, eyes still on the terminal. “Ganymede? Are you PCA?” Nationality mattered less out here than it did on Earth, but the question was valid — Subarashii was basically the only reason anyone lived on or visited Ganymede.

“No, I’m, um — I was born on Luna. I used to work for Loadstar. We ran cargo there a couple times.”

“Oh, a real Loony, huh?”

Reyes winced at the phrase. They hadn’t been home in years, but the stereotypes followed. Luna was known to attract some of Earth’s more vocally intolerant emigrants.

“Ah, I’m sorry. I take plenty of shit for being an SO. I guess people think both of us are nuts.”

Reyes shrugged. “It’s fine. When I was working for Loadstar I told them I was from Ceres, just so I didn’t have to hear it, but then we actually made a drop at Ceres, and everyone was looking at me for directions around the docks, like I was — like I knew. So I had to come clean.”

Redmond laughed cautiously, as if he hadn’t in a while. “What did they say?”

“Oh, man, most of those guys already guessed I was lying, but they, uh —they thought I was a criminal or something so they didn’t ask me about it. But I remember, what was… Charlotte, our navigator, she was so mad. Like it was a big deal!”

This time Redmond laughed with confidence. “It’s a lot harder to lie about having a crew!”

Behind him, the terminal flashed to life. He spun around to read the screen.

STSA PRIORITY ALERT: RELAY NETWORK EXPERIENCING PARTIAL OUTAGE. KEY JUPITER-SATURN RELAY LOST; CAUSE UNDER INVESTIGATION.

Reyes was too far from the screen to read it. “What’s it say?”

“There’s a comms outage, apparently…they’re saying the key Jupiter-Saturn relay is gone? Wouldn’t that be, uh… Stonewall? St- uh, Keystone?”

“Are we close enough to scope it?”

“Yeah, we might be.” Redmond moved to the navigation console and started punching keys. “Let me look it up, see if we can get a, um…”

He stopped, distracted by the feed from the forward camera.

“What?” Reyes joined him behind the console. “I don’t see it.”

“No, we’re too far out for good optics. But look at this.” Redmond pulled up the last chunk of recording.

A scattering of stars beyond the now-thumbnail-sized disc of Jupiter. For a second, one of the specks flared brighter. When the flare subsided, the speck was gone.

“If that was Keystone Station…” Redmond trailed off.

“…then it’s gone.”

Chapter 2