Month: March 2020

Categories
Narrative

Just a Friendly Warning

Being the daughter of the settlement’s Chief of Engineering had its perks, but there were also times when it could be difficult. Like when he takes you aside for a “little talk.”

Brenda tried not to avoid her father’s gaze. “Honest, I was just making conversation with Sprue yesterday evening. Especially since we both work at the radio station, I couldn’t exactly ignore him.”

Ken Redmond gave a curt little nod. “We’ve talked about the importance of discretion in your line of work.”

“Dad, please, I know all that.” Brenda hoped she wasn’t coming across as a whiny little kid, but she just wished he’d let it go. Quite honestly, there wasn’t that much she could’ve told Sprue. She was vaguely aware that the news department was seeing a lot of stuff that wasn’t getting passed to the DJ’s, and at least some of it was getting passed up from Medlab. She’d overheard Autumn Belfontaine talking with Dr. Thuc, and that halfalogue did not sound like someone receiving good news.

But how could she tell him without looking like she was telling him gossip? Or worse, looking self-serving?

Maybe it was just as well to promise to be more careful in the future — and to watch and listen a little more closely to what was going on in the news department. Sprue was right — whatever this business was, it was big, and someone was very interested in keeping a lid on it.

Categories
Narrative

Like Ripples from a Thrown Stone

Glad for the privacy of his apartment, Rick Sutton read both e-mails through a second time. Hunter Cartaret and Quinn Merton were both pretty level-headed guys, not surprising given their geneset. And both messages gave the appearance of having been composed with great care to convey the utmost of calm and rationality.

Yet a little reading between the lines made it pretty clear that both of his young clone-brothers wanted to know whether he’d heard anything they didn’t know already. Not surprising from Hunter, but Quinn did the Full Moon Barn Dance at Shepardsport Pirate Radio, so he should have access to everything that was going through the newsroom.

Unless there’s something going on that the news department isn’t telling the DJ’s.

Most of the on-air personalities were quite young — back on Earth they would still be in college, and a couple still in high school. But Autumn Belfontaine was a professional reporter who’d worked at an actual commercial radio station before getting sent up here as an AP stringer to cover the fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Especially given that she’d been trying to hide how badly she’d been shaken by that business about the cruise ship, it was quite possible that she was getting more information but it was embargoed for one reason or another, and she wasn’t confident the kids could keep a lid on it.

Maybe he should’ve been paying more attention to the scuttlebutt around the water coolers in Port Operations. Coopersville’s spaceport might not be a big traffic hub like Slayton Field, but it got a fair number of flights in and out every day. And while it might not be like the wild and wooly days of Mercury and Gemini, a lot of the pilot-astronauts still liked a good game of one-upmanship. And knowing something the other guys didn’t was always a way to score big points.

On the other hand, if there were something big going on, discussing it on NASA bandwidth could be risky. Not to mention that as a commissioned officer of the US Air Force, he was under the UCMJ. Discussing something that was supposed to be secret over an insecure e-mail network could get him into more trouble than he wanted to think about, even if he hadn’t gotten the information via secure communications.

Better to counsel caution — ears open and mouths shut. He and Doyle would be flying up there in a few days, so he could arrange to talk face-to-face with the kids. Keep their voices low and some music on, and there shouldn’t be any reason to worry about awkward recordings like the one crew on the first Skylab station.

Categories
Narrative

In Search of Answers

The children were sound asleep and Brenda was supposed to be getting ready for bed. However, enough troubling thoughts were running through her head that she could tell that trying to go to sleep would be futile. Spruance Del Curtin was right — something was going on, no matter how hard people in authority were trying to keep it quiet.

How long had she been sitting her looking at her phone, trying to decide whether to text her husband or not? Things would’ve been so much easier if Drew could just get transferred over here from Slayton Field.

Except she’d never wanted to pressure him about it just in case it were to have a negative effect upon his career. Although her father had gone into the reserves and started working for NASA before she was born, she’d grown up with a fair understanding of what it meant to be an officer’s wife.

Including the way her actions could reflect upon him. She had to assume that all communications would be monitored — some early astronauts had gotten into awkward situations when their conversations were captured by microphones aboard their spacecraft and subsequently listened to by mission controllers on Earth.

And if someone in authority had a vested interest in keeping something quiet, it could be very dangerous to ask too many questions. Or at least to ask them too openly.

Which meant it might not be wise to use text messaging right now. Although it wasn’t as realtime as voice telecom — until you tapped the send button, you could still revise or erase a text — the back-and-forth nature of texting made it easy to write too quickly and not consider your words.

Maybe she’d be better off sending him an e-mail. She could consider her words carefully, maybe even save it as draft and come back tomorrow morning to re-read it with fresh eyes.

And make it look like something insignificant, that was the ticket. Just another crazy stunt Sprue was pulling, as if they were going to just laugh it off. That way, if Drew really didn’t know anything of significance, he wouldn’t end up curious enough to ask her awkward questions.

Categories
Narrative

More Questions than Answers

The module lounge was already crowded by the time Sprue got back from supper and his mandatory exercise hours. Not surprising, since this residential module had a particularly nice lounge, complete with an electric fireplace and a fish tank, in addition to the usual planters brimming with spider plants. Which meant that whenever people were doing group study, they tended to come here instead of the other people’s residential modules.

Sprue wasn’t really excited about retreating into his apartment to study. Not that his roommate was all that difficult to get along with, but there just wasn’t room. Sure, the nightstand could fold out into a desk, and there was a sling-back chair, but do that too much and your subconscious started to associate the place with work instead of sleep.

And then he saw Brenda Redmond, the Chief Engineer’s daughter. Or Brenda Redmond-Reinholt as she now styled herself, at least when she wasn’t doing her air shifts.

Dammit, why do both the girls you really want to catch have to go and marry your clone-brothers?

Still, the fact that Brenda was married to a pilot from Grissom City meant that she might be in the know. And right now Sprue wanted to know just what was going on. For certain it was a whole lot larger than just a Mayday by one cruise ship.

He leaned over the back of the couch where she was sitting, looked over her shoulder at the tablet in her hands. Routine refresher course on communications protocols from the look of things. He’d done that course last term and had it out of the way for another three years.

Before he could even speak, she said, “Hello, Sprue. What are you up to now?” She didn’t even bother to look up from her tablet.

Usually that was an indication that the person really didn’t want to speak to you, but Sprue had a fairly good idea of how far he could bend the rules and get away with it. He slid over the couch and into the seat beside her. “Just wondering if you’d heard anything about stuff going on.”

This time it got Brenda to look up from her work. “What kind of stuff?”

“You know, things that seem a little out of the ordinary.” Should he be more explicit about what he was looking for, or would that be too leading and actually cause her to overlook things? “Maybe Drew’s mentioned something that seemed a little, you know, odd.”

Brenda narrowed her eyes and studied Sprue. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

Crap, she’s stonewalling. Sprue knew with absolute certainty that she and Lou must’ve talked. Damn that little goody-two-shoes of a Chaffee. Just like their ur-brother, always the Boy Scout.

“More curiosity than anything.” Sprue considered how to soft-pedal it so that Brenda didn’t go rat to her dad. The station was technically part of Engineering, even if IT did take care of a lot of its functions. “There’s been just enough things happening lately that make me think, hey, that’s odd, and I’ve been wondering if I’m the only one.”

“Probably not.” Brenda switched to that Very Grown-up Voice she used sometimes. “However, we are not supposed to be spreading rumors or engaging in unfounded speculation. Even when we’re not on the air, we need to uphold a professional standard.”

Make that definite, she was going to stonewall and nothing he said or did was going to get her to loosen up. Better wind this conversation up, because it was going nowhere and he did have his teaching responsibility tomorrow to prepare for.

Categories
Narrative

Who Knows What and Which?

The Shepardsport dining commons was crowded this evening. And it didn’t look like just a matter of people who had their lunches sent to their desks showing up now.

Lou Corlin looked over at the pilots’ table, crowded to capacity. He hadn’t seen it that full since Shepardsport was handling flights displaced by the cyber-attack on Slayton Field. Usually Shepardsport got mainly cargo landers, since Farside wasn’t exactly a tourist destination.

A lot of the local pilots preferred to sit with their families at one or another of the small round tables. Bill Hearne almost always sat with his family, and Sid Abernathy often joined his wife at one of the scientists’ tables.

Still, the sheer level of crowding made Lou uneasy, and not just because of the increased difficulty in finding a seat. Usually one of his clone-brothers would have a free seat at his table, but from the looks of things, he was going to have a hunt on his hands.

And then someone shouted his name. He turned to discover that no, it was not a fellow Chaffee, but a Shep.

What does Spruance Del Curtin want with me now?

Although Lou really didn’t want to sit with Sprue, giving him the cut in such a public setting would be rude in the extreme. And while Sheps could be incredibly competitive with one another, having one of their number dissed by a clone of a member of the third astronaut selection group might just be enough to get them to circle the wagons. And becoming a target of the mischief of Sheps would not be a pleasant experience.

Lou slid into the available seat. “What is it, Sprue?”

“What have you heard about the Glorianna?”

“Only what was on the announcement this afternoon.” Lou studied the Shep, wishing he could look through those buggy blue eyes to the mind behind them and see just what he was up to. Is he trying to lead me into speculating about what’s going on? “It does sound disturbing.”

“Disturbing is a mild way to put it.” Sprue didn’t even bother to hide the annoyance in his voice. Make it definite he wanted to gossip-monger, never mind how many times senior leadership had warned against passing rumors or speculating on partial information. “I was hoping you might know something, especially since you do your operational responsibility down in IT. I’m sure you get to see a lot of data going by.”

How to get this conversation into a parking orbit without blatantly shutting Sprue down? “Of course I do, but most of it’s pretty technical stuff. And anything from Medlab is covered by patient privacy law, so I’m not even cleared to see the metadata. I’m not even supposed to talk about how many cron jobs they’re putting through, because in theory that could allow someone to know what questions are worth asking.”

Sprue nodded, but the annoyance furrow remained between his eyebrows. “And you probably can’t tell me if any department’s been showing unusual levels of web traffic either. But you know as well as I do that all those public service announcements about sanitation didn’t come out of nowhere. I’m thinking that whatever bug got loose on that cruise ship, someone around here has known about it for the past several days.”

“That’s quite possible.” Lou considered how many times he’d had to run one of the several pre-recorded announcements over the past three air shifts. “But speculating on it isn’t helpful, and it could get both of us into some serious hot water with the higher-ups.” He cast a significant glance at the people who were beginning to look their way.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Sprue didn’t sound happy about having to make that admission, but he’d gotten in trouble more than once for things that gotten him taken off his air shifts as punishment. “But I think all of us ought to keep our eyes and ears open for anything significant.”

Lou didn’t like agreeing; it felt too much like promising something he shouldn’t. But at least it allowed him to move the conversation onto a more neutral subject.

Even so, he found that he was still thinking about the subject by the time dinner was over and he headed back to quarters to study for that upcoming test in DiffEq.

Categories
Narrative

The Balloon Goes Up

Normally Spruance Del Curtin looked forward to his air shifts. He’d even warned more than one instructor that he was not to be held over if it were going to interfere with making his air shift.

However, the last few days had been getting annoying. How many times could you keep repeating announcements about standard sanitation protocols after every set before it started sounding ridiculous? Not to mention how people were really starting to wonder what was going on. It was getting annoying to go down to the dining commons, or any public area for that matter, and get peppered with the same damn questions, especially since he didn’t have any answers for them.

At least the messages were pre-recorded, so it wasn’t like he had to read a card off a monitor. Or worse, a hand-written note, like Ken Redmond had given him for a couple of emergencies.

The current set was coming to an end, so he’d better check which one was lined up for this commercial break and station identification.

As he did, the door opened and in walked Autumn Belfontaine. She was cutting it fine — two minutes more and he would’ve been on the air.

She didn’t even say hello, just sat down in the second chair. Whatever was going on, asking her would not be a good idea.

The moment the last song ended, Autumn began to speak. “This is Autumn Belfontaine, news director at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. We have important breaking news, just in from the South Pacific. The United States Navy reports they have responded to a distress call from the cruise ship Glorianna, off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Initial reports indicate that crew and passengers were stricken with illness several days after completing a visit to Bangkok.”

Even as Sprue admired her calm delivery, his mind reeled at what he was hearing. He’d heard stories about illness spreading on those giant floating cities, but it was usually an intestinal bug that meant a few days of utter misery, but no great danger to any but the frail elderly or people with prior health conditions. Usually because someone was careless about what they ate and drank at some Third World port of call, and got sick just in time to infect everybody.

This sounded like something far worse. Which made him really wonder about all those public service announcements he’d been having to run for the past several days. How much had the higher-ups known, and for how long?

Categories
Narrative

A Little Less Conversation

Listening to Shepardsport Pirate Radio in your office could be tricky here in the Roosa Barracks, since Grissom City was still trying to stay cozy with the Administration. But Peter Caudell had enough family over there on Farside that he liked to keep it on, even if he had to keep the volume low or listen on headphones. Which was a lot easier these days than it had been back in the days before Bluetooth.

And right now he was just as glad he’d picked the completely private option, because something seriously strange was going on over there. For starters, they were playing way too much Elvis. It would’ve been one thing if this were a Sunday morning, because that was Payton Shaw’s program, the Church of the Blessed Elvis. Two hours of nothing but the Man from Memphis.

But today was a rather ordinary Tuesday. Everything he could see was showing ordinary levels of traffic in cislunar space, and the Sun was behaving itself quite nicely. None of the messy coronal mass ejections that seemed to be characteristic of a solar minimum and could wreck havoc with space activities.

So why did so many songs by Elvis Presley keep showing up on their playlist? Even in the Classic Rock program in the afternoon, Spruance Del Curtin tended to favor acts from the 70s and 80s, but today he’d played half a dozen Elvis songs.

And now that the disco program was on, Spencer Dawes was playing that cover of “A Little Less Conversation.” What was that band’s name? Something-or-other XL, Peter had never paid much attention because disco wasn’t his kind of music. Was it worth the risk to go online to the Shepardsport Pirate Radio website and check their official playlist?

Still, it bothered him just enough to be a persistent itch at the back of his mind. Maybe he ought to make a few discreet inquiries to his clone-brothers over there, see if any of them had heard anything. Too bad none of them had landed a position on the station staff, which was a shame when one considered Scott Carpenter’s fondness for music.

Worst case, there was always Payton Shaw. Sure, he was a Cooper, but the clones of the Mercury Seven did stick together.

Categories
Narrative

A Meeting of Import

Autumn Belfontaine didn’t know when she’d gotten into the habit of counting the airlocks as she went from one part of Shepardsport to another. However, it had become a useful way of marking her own progress on any journey of significant distance. Go from one sector to another and you went through an airlock. Go between modules within a sector and you went through more airlocks.

From the radio station offices to the commandant’s office was eight airlocks. Since there was no need to wait for pressure to equalize, it didn’t take all that long to go through them, but there’d been trouble with people overriding the safety interlocks to get through faster, never mind it defeated the purpose of having the settlement modularized.

She arrived to find Captain Waite already in conference with Dr. Thuc, Shepardsport’s Chief Flight Surgeon. From the sound of it, telling the kids to keep a lid on it had been the right thing to do.

As a civilian, Autumn didn’t have to formally report to the commandant upon arrival as pilots did. All the same, the various courtesies helped to smooth the difficulties of life in such close quarters.

Reggie gestured for her to take the other seat. “We’ve got a problem on our hands.” He turned to Dr. Thuc. “Barbie?”

“I’ve just received alerts from both Jerusalem and Tokyo about an emergent disease in multiple places in Central and South Central Asia. I’ve queried Star City, and they’re telling me they’re waiting for a report from Academician Voronsky before making any definite announcement.”

A sudden chill gripped Autumn. Nikolai Voronsky was the Russian Empire’s foremost expert in genetic engineering, having learned from his adoptive father, the notorious Vladilen Voronsky. If Star City was getting him involved…

Autumn forced her mind to stay focused, professional, remember what she’d learned about contagious diseases from reporting on that nasty flu during her first full-time job. “What kind of figures are we looking at?”

“Right now information’s pretty spotty. Hardly surprising when a lot of those areas are still held by die-hard fanatics, and the ones that aren’t have governments notorious for corruption and misinformation. But even in the absence of hard data, the anecdotal reports are concerning, in particular the ones of whole villages empty, the goats and chickens wandering freely.”

“That’s not good.” Autumn tried to remember any mention of such things on the news wires. “Why haven’t we heard anything about this until now?”

“Actually, there has been a fair amount of discussion over the past few weeks, if you’ve been following the medical blogs.” Dr. Thuc’s expression darkened. “That’s where I got the stories about abandoned mountain villages. Why none of the official sources have been mentioning these things is hard to say. The local governments may well be covering it up rather than look weak. It may not be considered newsworthy elsewhere, or there may have been a decision to keep quiet rather than risk panic.”

“Understood.” Autumn recalled a journalism ethics class. “The ’76 Swine Flu outbreak was before my time, but we still study the effects of careless reporting on the reaction to it.”

She paused, considering not just the information she’d been given, but the spaces between. “If this is going to be something serious, why isn’t the head of Safety and Security here?”

Reggie jumped in to answer that. “Right now she’s dealing with a problem down in the port facility. As soon as that’s dealt with, we’ll be briefing her. But right now, we need to work out a plan for how we’re going to release information on this situation, so you can lay it out to the rest of the station personnel.”

Autumn fought down an urge to bristle. No, there was no criticism of the professionalism of the DJ’s, just the need to make sure they had a coordinated approach. “Completely understood. The worst thing we can have is contradictory information coming out of different sources. Once people start wondering who’s lying, they lose trust in all sources.”

Categories
Narrative

Like a Distant Storm on the Horizon

As soon as Lou Corlin stepped out of the DJ booth, he was glad he’d just finished lining up a long set. Their news director had just emerged from her office, phone stuck to ear and a worried look on her face.

“I’ll be right up there.” Autumn Belfontaine paused, a thought furrow forming between her eyebrows. “No, I’m not going to tell anyone until I get up there and have a chance to talk to you. We need facts, not rumors and speculation.”

Finished with her conversation, she looked over at Lou and the receptionist, who had been bent over a tablet, apparently studying for a class. “We’ve got a developing situation, and Reggie wants to talk to me right now. You two hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

Although Lou wondered what would require a visit to the settlement’s commandant, he kept his professional face on. “Yes, ma’am.”

Not quite in unison with the receptionist, since she’d gotten surprised, but good enough. And then it was just the two of them.

Lou looked at Cindy, then at the flimsy partitions that walled off the station offices. Unlike the studio proper, the office area was most decidedly not soundproof. Which meant that he’d better watch what he said. “Looks like things are going to get interesting.”

Cindy twirled a stylus between her fingers. “It sounded like something bad’s happening. Like when they had the cyber-attack on the landers over at Slayton Field kind of nasty.”

Lou remembered that day. He’d just been finishing up his air shift when Autumn had come into the DJ booth and practically pushed him right off the mic. Even her trained professional-journalist voice had betrayed a hint of breathlessness as she reported the crash of the first lander.

And even then we thought it was just an accident.

“I think we’d better be very careful right now.” Lou cast a sharp look at the phone at Cindy’s elbow. Not her personal phone, which was lying beside her tablet, but the official station line. “Until we get definite word otherwise, our face to the outside universe is business as usual. In the meantime, I’d better grab my coffee break before this set runs out and the boss yells at me about having dead air.”

“Got it.” Cindy returned to her studying. Technically she wasn’t supposed to be studying during her work hours, but with the station manager off to Grissom City for some kind of training class, things had slacked up.