Allen Steele - Kronos

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Kronos

by Allen Steele

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Science Fiction

3.10.2070 2316Z--PARN Intrepid

Consciousness returns to Kinnard like an aerated bubble rising from the bottom of an aquarium. He

stirs within the zombie tank as the last dregs of the biostasis drugs that kept him under are flushed from

his bloodstream.

When he finally opens his eyes, it is to the dimness of the hibernation deck. The lights have been

turned down low, but the dull blue glow of the status panel above his tank's open lid nonetheless causes

him to squint and blink. He takes a deep breath; his lungs are assaulted by antiseptic cold air, making him

cough. There is an urge to vomit, even though there is nothing in his stomach to bring up.

"Easy, Captain ... easy." A voice from the darkness, softly accented, warm and familiar, the last voice

he heard before his eyes closed nine months ago. "Keep shut your eyes, take shallow breaths."

He shuts his eyes. A plastic mask is placed over his nose and mouth. Pure oxygen forces the nausea

down, diminishes the pounding in his temples. The voice murmurs something unintelligible to another

person, then the mask is lifted away. "Try again," the voice says. "Don't rush so this time. Everything's

copa."

Kinnard carefully opens his eyes again. The status panel blurs, then gradually focuses, resolving into

an electronic quilt of lines and graphs. Thin plastic tubes filled with blood and phlegm-colored liquid

dangle from sacs suspended above his body, leading into major veins in the crooks of his elbows. No

strength in his arms, legs, or back; the soles of his feet tingle painfully, his bladder feels ready to explode.

A face comes into the light. Narrow and fine-boned, with albino-pale skin tattooed with intricate

swirls and whorls resembling a magnified fingerprint. Above dark blue eyes twice the size of his own is a

Gaelic cross, its spiked bars running across a hairless forehead and down the bridge of an aquiline nose.

"Peter..." he gasps, his lips and mouth parched and dry.

"A second, then be done." Intrepid's doctor nods to his assistant. She steps into the weak light: Anna

Christ-Webster, the ship's cargo master, Peter's first-wife. Anna's face is also marked with the Gaelic

cross of Christ clan; unlike her husband, whose skull is shaved bald, Anna's blond hair is tied into a long

braid that tumbles over her narrow shoulders like a loose rope.

A plastic waste-disposal bag is in her tattooed left hand. Before Kinnard can object, Anna reaches

beneath the sheets, her long finsers sliding across his groin in search of the catheter. She carefully secures

the bag around his penis. Anna's intent is anything but sexual, but his member involuntarily stiffens at her

touch; her pale skin blushes beneath the tattoos, her large blue eyes making brief contact with his. It's an

embarrassing moment for both of them.

"Sorry, Marion," she whispers. "Take just a moment."

"Deep breath, hold it," Peter says.

Kinnard obliges, then Anna releases the catheter and his bladder lets go for the first time in nine

months. He gasps in agony, almost wishing that they had left him under.

When it is over, Anna takes the bag to the recycling chute. Peter gently pulls the tubes from Kinnard's

arms and gives him a soaked sponge to suck on; then, without being asked, he reaches up to a ceiling

monitor and switches it to a real-rime image from outside the ship.

There, on the screen, is his destination. Kinnard stares for a long time at the immense ringed planet.

"Ship?" he finally asks.

"She's fine, Captain." Peter favors him with a rare smile. "A-okay, everything is. All conditions green."

Kinnard nods. He raises his head a little. Eight men and women still sleep in tanks arranged along the

walls of the hibernation deck. The captain wonders what strange dreams float through their slow-time

minds; he cannot recall his own.

"Good," he says, his vocal cords rasping from disuse. "Thanks for ... taking care of me." He pauses

and swallows. "Now get ... me out this thing."

* * * *

3.11.2070 0610Z

The Pax Astra Royal Navy frigate Intrepid falls toward Saturn, inexorably drawn into the planet's

gravity well as the vessel continues its long deceleration burn.

Sixty meters in length, Intrepid is relatively small for a ship with a maximum range of nine a.u.'s.

Designed for military missions rather than exploration or trade, few accommodations have been made for

passengers and none for freight, other than the two missile pods slung on either side of its forward hull

and the manta-like shuttle moored beneath its wasp-waisted midsection. Imagine a half-liter bottle--the

payload module--with its spout glued to that of a three-quarter liter bottle--the engine module--and you

essentially have the warship's architecture.

Mounted beneath the forward module is a large round aerobrake shield. Its ceramic tiles, each a

different color, have been carefully arranged so that they form the warship's figurehead: an angel with a

sword, her wings spread wide as if flying through space.

Intrepid's nuclear-pulse main engine has fired continually ever since the ship left the Moon two

hundred and seventy-five standard days ago, its lasers fissioning the deuterium pellets constantly fed into

the reactor chamber, causing the uninterrupted string of tiny nuclear explosions which gradually

accelerated the ship, at the end of its boost phase, to nearly one-tenth light speed. As Intrepid passed

through Jupiter's orbit one hundred and sixty eight days ago, its crew flipped the ship around until its

bell-shaped engine nozzle was pointed in the direction of flight. Ever since then, the ship has been

applying the brakes as a long prelude to entering Saturnine space.

"Begin MECO at ten, on my mark..."

"Copy that, sir. Ready for MECO."

"Mark. Ten ... nine ... eight ..."

A tattooed hand lingers on a throttle yoke as its companion hovers over a set of toggle switches.

"Seven ... six ..."

A pair of wide blue eyes framed by a Gaelic cross watches the readouts on a comp screen.

"Guidance positive. On course for transorbital insertion."

"Five ... four..."

Another pair of hands flits across a keyboard. Lights flash from red to green. "Main feed valves

closed, central rank offline. Dumping residual core reacrants."

"Three ... two..."

"Heat regulators on, radiation buffers engaged, main tank pressure nominal. All systems copasetic..."

"One ... now, please."

As if choreographed by a stern dance master, hands and AI systems execute a complex fandango that

charms the nuclear beast to bay. A disgruntled tremor runs through the ship as, for the first time in nine

months, the white-hot glow in the exhaust bell quickly diminishes to orange, then red, then fades out

altogether.

"MECO complete."

"Reactor shut down and safe, Captain."

"All systems on standby, sir."

Kinnard floats upward against the straps confining him to his seat. Little more than six hours has

passed since he was brought out of biostasis, just enough time for his body to readjust to even

low-gravity. Now that Intrepid is in free fall, his arms and legs don't ache quite as much. He wants to

sigh with relief, but that would be an inappropriate response. His crew might interpret it as a sign of

weakness.

He glances at the men and women seated at consoles arranged around the circular command deck. In

the company of bio-engineered Superiors, a baseline human is a freak, and not vice-versa. His rib cage

isn't anorexically compact. His arms aren't long and sinewy, the fingers of his hands don't resemble

articulated pencils. His legs aren't double-jointed at the knees and ankles, his toes haven't been expanded

to become a second pair of hands. He has no cerebral implants which allow him to interface with

computers, and his eyes don't look like dark blue chicken eggs with a second set of translucent lids.

When the Navy assigned him command of the Intrepid, Kinnard was informally warned that

Superiors--or "googles," as Admiral Coonts referred to them, when they were alone in his office at River

House--harbored a certain disdain for unmodified Primaries--or "apes," as Superiors often refer to

baseline humans, under equally private circumstances. Superiors are born and bred for space; the first

gene-tailored embryos raised in a secret lab in Mare Tranquilitatis just before the Moon War had come

of age. For them, the cosmos is not a frontier, but a birthright; their origins as egg and sperm donated by

lunar colonists is an embarrassment, not a heritage. Even the Christ clan, which has embraced

neo-Mormonism instead of the extropic philosophies of the Superior families which have migrated to the

outer system, were condescending toward their Primary captain; his weaknesses were forgiven, but not

easily forgotten.

Kinnard has been captain of this vessel for three years now. He has come to trust his crew, and

believes that they trust him. But their differences are more broad than their similarities, and he never

permits himself to forget this fact.

"Very well." Kinnard loosens his seat straps as he rotates it to face the bow windows. "Isidore, initiate

rollover maneuver. Jon, finalize trajectories for Saturn atmospheric refueling and Titan rendezvous.

Cayenne, ship status?"

"All systems nominal, sir. A full report is on your screen." Cayenne Christ-Caswell doesn't resort to

the broken-English patois most Superiors use when they're not in the presence of Primaries. Even after

two voyages with her, Kinnard still doesn't know whether he should be complimented or insulted.

Kinnard calls up the report and pretends to study it, but cannot help looking up as Intrepid turns

end-over-end until its bow is pointed toward Saturn. Even at the distance of twelve million kilometers,

the planet fills the deck's portals. He involuntarily sucks in his breath as the ringed giant glides into view.

He has twice been to Mars and--during the short-lived Callisto Station insurrection, which Intrepid

helped put down--even the Jovian system, yet even Jupiter's vast and terrible beauty pales next to the

serene majesty of its cousin. No photo, film, or VR simulation he has ever seen has prepared him for this

first glimpse of its intricate rings, nor the dull yellow-orange bands of its cloud patterns.

A hushed silence falls upon the deck as his crew takes in the spectacle. "Kronos," Isidore

Christ-Ortega murmurs, using--as common practice among Superiors--the ancient Greek name for the

planet. "She is beautiful, eh?"

Kinnard smiles. Considering Superior stoicism, his first officer's reaction is a small wonder in itself.

Yet understandable; Intrepid is only the second crewed vessel to venture this far into the outer system.

His people are among a rare handful to see Saturn through naked eyes, bio-enhanced or otherwise...

And no one knows what happened to the first group of visitors.

This thought brings Kinnard back to the present. "Okay, let's get back to work." he says. "Plenty of

time for sightseeing later." He catches Jon's eve and favors him with a wink. "Specially you, navco. You

get the fun part."

For this, he is rewarded with the fleeting grin. Jon Christ-Caswell can't wait for the challenge before

him. This is noticed by Cayenne, who lapses into google-speak. "Cut you no tether now," she warns her

first-husband. "This ship not built for joyriding boyshit, hey?"

"Ease off the feedback, fem." Jon turns back to his console. "We copy, over."

Kinnard ignores this as he reluctantly unbuckles his harness. "Marie, have you received anything from

Hershel Explorer?"

"Word nyet, Captain." Slender wires leading from the back of Marie Christ-Ortega's skull drift about

her braided black hair as she shakes her head distractedly. Her eyes are unfocused; her brain's

MINN--Mnemonic Interfaced Neural Net--is linked with Intrepid's comnet, so her attention is divided

between com deck and cyberspace. "Negatory on all channels. Solid telemetry link on Q and A bands,

but nada talkback."

Isidore turns to look at his first-wife. "Huygens Station, try microbeam downlink with them, eh?"

"Do that, okay." Her lips move silently as she subvocalizes a message to the outpost on Titan's

surface, her long fingers pantomiming keyboard strokes as she opens a microbeam relay to the base.

Kinnard pushes himself out of his seat and, pulling himself along ceiling handrails, moves to the map

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Allen Steele - Kronos

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