The Farpool: Diaspora

By Philip Bosshardt

: In the early 23rd century, an exploratory mission is sent to Europa to examine what may lie in its sub-ice ocean. But contact with the mission is lost and a rescue mission is planned.
Charley Meyer, an officer in the Farpool Service and granddaughter of Chase and Angie Meyer (from The Farpool) is given command of the rescue mission. She becomes more than usually motivated upon learning that her one-time boyfriend Reynaldo Diaz was aboard the lost ship.
However, the Ponkti water clan of the Sea People also have designs on Europa as another world their own people can occupy and exploit. The Ponkti mean to keep humans away from Europa. When the rescue mission is fired upon and Charley realizes the Ponkti are behind the attack, a vicious struggle for the Jovian moon ensues and Charley and her crew are captured and imprisoned in an under-ice base run by the Ponkti.
Unknown to the humans, the Ponkti have made contact with an alien presence existing in Europa’s deep ocean. But instead of exploiting this alien presence, the Ponkti and their base come under attack from the aliens. Their Ponkti captors are killed but Charley and her crew escape to the surface, where they must hike across the icescape through severe radiation fields to a temporary farpool corridor set up for them.
Charley and Reynaldo make it to the farpool but through a navigation error wind up on Earth hundreds of years in the future. The Earth is completely flooded. Billions have died. And the same alien presence encountered on Europa is now moving into the outer solar system, consuming all in its path.
Through a newly created, long-range farpool called the Expool, Charley and Rey agree to make a test flight to a habitable world in the Trappist-1 star system. But before they can make it back, hundreds of desperate refugees from Earth also come through. Now seemingly stuck on this distant world, Charley and Rey must decide: should they stay and try to make a life on the world of Trappist-1e? Or should they chance one more trip through a rapidly deteriorating Expool and try to make it back to Earth?
Unknown to Reynaldo and the others, Charley intends to make one final trip. But this one won’t be back to a flooded, threatened Earth. Instead, the trip she wants to make will lead to adventures scarcely imaginable, a final mission vital to the survival of the human race.
Seventh title in The Farpool Stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Bosshardt
• Release date: Nov 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005264000

Philip Bosshardt

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.For details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com or his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt.

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The Farpool: Diaspora

Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

Copyright 2021 Philip Bosshardt

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Chapter 1

Aboard Europa Clipper

Jupiter Orbit Insertion

January 5, 2210 (Earth U.T.)

Three days and a handful of hours after arriving in Jupiter orbit through the Atlantic Farpool, Europa Clipper had put in at Gateway Station for some light maintenance work and re-provisioning. Alicia Wu and Evgeni Kotlas were sitting at a table in the ship’s crew’s mess, nursing a few beers. Kotlas fiddled with the gain on the main viewer to bring Jupiter into full resolution.

Looks like a fuzzy beach ball, Wu said. With hair—

Kotlas pronounced himself satisfied with the view. Yeah, a beach ball with enough radiation to fry your pretty little brain in about two seconds.

You’re assuming I have a brain…I checked mine at the recruiting station when I signed up for Farpool school.

It was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles.

Ten seconds to separation, Sonora called. The captain scanned her boards and instruments, pronounced herself satisfied with what she saw. Europa Clipper was docked at the forward nose port of Gateway Station, a giant sausage stuck on a plate, secured to a kebab skewer, as Alicia Wu had termed it.

"Three…two…one…separating now—"

There was a gentle shudder and the sound of capture latches releasing. Sonora pulsed Clipper’s aft thrusters and the ship backed off at a stately pace, eventually settling into a co-orbiting position several thousand meters from the Station.

Below them, Europa turned like a cracked golf ball, dimpled, rutted with deep ice canyons and odd brown streaks. As Clipper backed away, the huge banded disk of Jupiter itself poked over the Europan horizon, at a crazy angle. The moon was in a three-and-a-half-day orbit about the giant planet, averaging three quarters of a million kilometers above her cloud tops, bathed in hard radiation.

Miriam Sonora was glad Clipper and Gateway both maintained active rad defensive shielding and emitters. Otherwise, they would have all been fried to cinders days ago.

For several days after departing Gateway, Europa Clipper coursed through the Jovian skies in a steeply inclined orbit, skirting the shoals and reefs of her radiation belts, until at last they found the first of several holes in the sheath of charged particles. Captain Sonora passed the word to all hands that the ship was about to begin a series of maneuvers which would end up bringing them into orbit around Europa. Clipper dropped to a lower orbit through the first of these holes, like navigating a minefield in a wartime harbor.

After a few days had passed, the ship settled into orbit half a million kilometers above the cloud tops. By now, the planet filled nearly a third of the sky and hundreds of frothing spicules and cells of gas swept by beneath them. The speed of its rotation flattened Jupiter at the poles and widened it to a bulge at the equator. Ferocious winds resulted and they smeared the columns of gas into all sorts of grotesque and beautiful shapes. Wu and the rest of the crew that came by the crew’s mess watched the scenery below for hours at a time. Wu found herself transfixed by the ever-shifting palette of colors and shapes. She could well imagine the planet’s visible face as a giant’s palette, where Nature worked as the artist to create an ever-changing panorama of colors, forms and brush strokes.

In time, Clipper made her way into orbit about Europa. Clipper’s pilot, Reynaldo Diaz, joined some of the crew in the mess compartment, as the cracked billiard-ball of a world turned slowly below them.

Gives me the creeps, Casey Winans said. She shuddered involuntarily and sucked at her drink.

All those cracks are seams in the ice plates, Belket klu kel: Om’t marveled, his voice labored and wheezing through his mobilitor helmet. And to think that’s where we’re going, right into one of those seams.

And below— added Sonora. She decided it was time to finish up their final briefings and get ready for the landing. All right, boys and girls, all hands lay aft to the Service deck. I want to go over last-minute details before we head down.

The briefing lasted half an hour.

De-orbit burn in five seconds, Sonora announced. This will be quite a kick in the pants.

She took a peek out the nearest porthole. Two hundred kilometers below, the surface of Europa looked dingy gray white, wrapped in dark lines and crevasses like a ball of yarn, oddly smooth in general appearance but definitely textured and shadowed in bizarre, even menacing ways.

…three…two…one…engine arm—

Clipper shook and shuddered like a wet dog, as her engines lit off, slowing her down for a steep descent toward the surface. The ship was attached to a landing platform that contained her descent and ascent engines and provided a stable base to set her down on just about any surface. If all went well, the assembly would make landfall at a site 168 degrees west by 42 degrees north, near the end of a meandering dark reddish-brown chasm called Minos Linea, in a territory known to the astros as Falga Regio.

From there, Clipper would trundle off the platform onto the surface and begin boring her way downward, toward the subsurface ocean said to be about thirty kilometers below. Once submerged, she would head east by southeast, to begin her survey and mapping expedition in a region known on the maps as Rathmore Chaos.

Aptly named, thought Sonora, as she eyed the surface coming up fast through the porthole.

Sonora and Reynaldo Diaz were busy with the landing, calling out waypoints and targets with cool efficiency.

Two hundred meters, said Diaz, his voice crackling with a slight tremor of excitement. One eighty…coming down at ten, drifting to the right…five forward…now five forward….

Clipper had cut her forward velocity almost to zero and was now descending almost straight down. Outside the porthole, the linear vent opening that was their landing zone loomed larger and larger, a seam of streaked warmer ice separating two churning ice rafts, dozens of kilometers square. Sonora watched the ground coming up fast. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine herself on a ski lift at Breckinridge, Colorado, coming down the slope toward the lodge.

One hundred meters…three forward, on target, throttling down ten percent…fuel is good…looking good, Captain—

Sonora worked the controls and gently stabilized Clipper as she dropped closer and closer. Europa’s gravity was about a tenth of Earth’s, so movement in and around the surface would be no problem. Beyond the porthole, Sonora could see the surface rising higher and higher in her view…rugged boulders and icescapes tumbled all over like some giant kid’s play toys.

—contact light…okay, engine stop…that’s it, Captain! You did it!

Clipper settled onto the surface with a last-minute lurch and suddenly, everything went silent.

We’re down, Sonora announced. I’m reading off target by about twelve meters…not too bad for an old cycler captain.

Europa gave them a fantastic vista outside the portholes. The sky was black, mostly filled by the lopsided half-crescent of Jupiter itself, the banded, striated giant filling nearly a quarter of the sky. Deep shadows accentuated the chasms and gouges along the top of the ice surface, which was a blocky, jumbled mess of frozen forms and shapes.

Looks like an ocean frozen in time, Skipper, said Evgeni Kotlas, craning his neck to see. Waves washing up on a beach, then zap! Freeze it right there.

You’re not far wrong, Sonora said.

Sonora scanned her controls and instruments. Outside temp is about a hundred degrees Kelvin…that’s about minus two eighty Fahrenheit, boys and girls. Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood…let’s get going.

The crew unstrapped and set to work preparing Clipper to leave her landing platform. After half an hour, Sonora recalled everybody to their seats.

I’m firing the capture latches now, she announced. A loud series of staccato bangs reverberated through Clipper’s hull. No longer secured to the top of the platform, the borer submersible was free to move out on her own.

Engage treads, Sonora ordered.

Diaz flipped several switches. Clipper’s treads, three longitudinal tracks mounted circumferentially around her waist, spun up. A low frequency vibration could be felt throughout the ship. The submersible was coming alive.

Drop the clutch, Sonora said. Diaz complied. Clipper lurched forward, grinding against her restraints. We’re underway on treads.

The giant sausage began crawling off its plate. Sonora worked her steering through a tiny joystick at the center console, nudging it forward. Clipper’s nose dipped as she dropped onto the ramp and trundled like a fat pig down onto the surface of Europa.

I’ll drive off about five hundred meters and set up for boring, Sonora told them. She twisted the joystick and fought the rough surface as Clipper ambled forward, rocking against boulders and tilted ice cliffs. I don’t want to start boring too close to the lander. We’ll need the platform to get off this big ice cube.

A ten-minute drive brought them rocking and bouncing to a small ledge, overlooking a narrow chasm, filled with darker ice. Sonora braked to a halt and edged over the lip of the chasm, pointing the nose of the submersible toward the chasm floor. Reynaldo Diaz sounded the surface with radar, and pronounced the ravine approachable.

Temps reading twenty degrees warmer…ice may be thinner here too. Recommending we breach here, Captain.

Sonora agreed. She parked the sub perched on the edge of the chasm. Let’s get the borer set up. Alicia, if you please—

Sonora unstrapped and headed with Alicia Wu, the borer operator, forward through the central gangway to A deck, where the borer and containment systems were located. Once released from containment, the borer lens would be filled with uncountable gazillions of nanobots, optimized for disassembling solid-phase structures…like ice.

Clipper would literally chew her way through Europa’s ice crust to the subsurface ocean thirty kilometers below them.

Inside A deck, Wu worked at the borer controls, prepping the bots for release. Sonora helped her with configuration management.

This should only take a few minutes, Sonora was saying. These bugs are optimized for speed of disassembly. They like to eat things…like ice.

Master config loaded and verified, Wu’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

I’m cycling the capture port…coming open now…. Through the vid screen, the lens and parabolic emitter at the nose of Clipper became hazy with a blue-white glow, an incandescent glow as bots flowed out of containment, stripped atoms and began building the borer lens. When stable and fully formed, the lens would be a hemispherical swarm of disassembly nanobots, blue-white hot from bond breaking, the teeth of the whole array. Clipper would lower herself to the ice and the borer would chew a path through…thirty kilometers through, if the thing worked properly.

Lens forming up— Sonora studied the seething globe of fire that formed at the front of the submersible. Looks steady, config is stable, normal bond energy levels, just a little edge effects, from what I see. The tunnel may be a little ragged at first, but the dimensions look good from here.

I concur, Wu said.

I’m setting us down on the ice now— Diaz called up to the compartment.

Sonora flipped a few switches and Clipper’s treads folded, lowering her nose to the ice. At the same time, the borer lens began slicing into the surface, its swarm of bots snapping bonds and obliterating atoms like a hot knife through butter. The entire front end of the sub was soon bathed in the blue-white glow. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, Clipper slid forward, her nose inclining down at an angle. In moments, as the borer chewed into the ice, the sub began sinking lower and lower, until her portholes were below the surface and covered with the dingy gray murk that was Europa’s icy crust. A faint vibration could be felt throughout the hull and slight groans from her outer skin flexing could be heard.

In less than five minutes, Clipper was fully below the surface, melting and boring her way through the ice, sliding ever so slowly down a tunnel of her own making.

Europa Clipper was underway in earnest now. If all went well, the trip through the ice crust to Europa’s subterranean ocean would take nearly thirty hours.

Sonora stayed on A deck for a while longer, just to monitor boring operations and see that Clipper was on course, nose down at a twenty-five-degree angle and on a heading that would take her to an emergence point some three thousand kilometers from the farthest extent of her survey expedition. After emerging from the underside of the ice, Clipper would be in her true element, operating as a submarine at a depth of five hundred meters below the bottom of the ice, some thirty-two kilometers below the surface of the moon.

Then the real mission would begin.

Clipper was cruising serenely at thirty knots, in level trim, when the first alarm sounded. Captain Sonora had been lightly dozing on the command deck, dreaming of girlhood and rocket-hopping across the Sea of Tranquility with Ralphie and Archie and the others. She was just about to win the race when an insistent beeping awakened her from her slumber.

She realized as she startled herself awake that it was the sonar alarm. Clipper had detected something ahead, something big from the looks of it. Auto-helm was engaged and she had already begun slowing.

Sonora came fully awake and rubbed her eyes. She studied the sonar plot. Whatever it was, it was a large object, some ten thousand meters dead ahead.

What the hell, she wondered. From the nav console, she could see Clipper had just about made the predicted coordinates, hundreds of meters below the ice at Rathmore Chaos. She got on the intercom.

Pilot to the command deck…Pilot to the command deck at once….

Sonora disengaged autohelm and took the controls herself, slowing the ship to a crawl. She didn’t want to run Clipper into something this big without studying it first.

Reynaldo Diaz’s head popped into the compartment a few moments later.

What gives, Captain?

Take a look at the plot.

The pilot slid into the second seat and studied the sonar return. Could be a loose iceberg or something calved off the top ice. Can we get a little closer?

We can try, Sonora said.

Slowly, Clipper closed on her target, dead ahead. The subsurface ocean below Europa’s ice surface was completely devoid of light, black as night. But the returns from Clipper’s sonar grew more puzzling by the moment.

Eventually, Sonora brought them to a complete stop, five hundred meters away.

The two discussed their options.

Her mission was survey and exploration, for UNISPACE and Farpool Service believed that Europa might be a suitable settlement site for Earthborn Amphibs. It had an ice surface and a sub-ice ocean. On Earth, conflict had only gotten worse between humans and Amphibs and Seomish. Many humans had emigrated off Earth to other places around the solar system. But there were voices in the Sea Council, among them Ponkti, that wanted to keep airbreathers away from ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus too, and preserve them for Sea People and Amphibs.

Thus, Clipper’s mission had been approved.

Diaz slid into the second seat and manipulated narrow-band sonar for a better look. It’s in motion. Looks like it’s maneuvering. That can’t be…ice bergs don’t maneuver. I think it’s a ship.

Another ship? Down here…no way.

I don’t think it’s a berg, Diaz said.

Slowly, Clipper closed on her target, dead ahead. The subsurface ocean below Europa’s ice surface was completely devoid of light, black as night. But the returns from Clipper’s sonar indicated that the object was indeed maneuvering, matching every move Clipper made. And steadily closing.

Diaz tugged at his lower lip, increasingly puzzled at what sonar was telling them. It’s too dense for ice. It’s metal, or maybe composite. And look at this little trace— he fingered a fuzzy sidebar on the waterfall display. That looks like some kind of plant noises.

Plant noises? Sonora squinted at the trace. You mean like an engine? Props?

More like water jets.

Sonora thought for a moment. Who the hell is operating another ship down here? Farpool Ops never said anything about another ship. Try the low-freq channel. See if they respond.

Diaz pinged their target with a low-frequency blast of sound, then typed out a text query, which ALBERT, the ship’s computer, impressed on the carrier wave….

UNIDENTIFIED SHIP…IDENTIFY YOURSELF

A split second after ALBERT’s query crossed the distance, a deafening burst of sound rocked Clipper, followed by a series of acoustic shock waves. Intense, painful, ear-shattering waves of sound blasted out of the target and Clipper was soon battered to a full stop, knocked out of trim, careening over like a wounded whale.

Rey Diaz and Miriam Sonora clung to their seats and tried to right the ship, while alarm klaxons cascaded throughout the hull.

"The planes!" Diaz yelled over the reverberation. They’re jammed!

Sonora had already seen that. Propulsors are offline too! We’re sinking…feel it?

Ship’s Engineer Evgeni Kotlas had been scrolling through some notes on the Europan ocean in his bunk when the master alarm sounded through the ship. Instantly, he sprang up and headed out into Clipper’s central gangway. As he headed aft toward the sound of the klaxon, he collided with Sonora, coming down from B deck.

What the hell’s going on?

Sonora was grim.

There’s a hull breach…it’s coming from G deck…there are vital systems down there. Come on— Sonora pushed past and pulled herself along the gangway rails. When she got to the hatch, she slipped inside and came up short.

She saw the problem right away. The hull valve was in the process of failing. And already a thin stream of water was spraying into the compartment.

"The hull valve—watch out!"

Even as Sonora dove head first into the compartment, the valve gave way and high-pressure water screeched into the compartment in an ear-splitting whine. Sonora was knocked off her feet, hitting her head on a nearby stanchion. Water shot across the compartment floor, knocking equipment off nearby shelves, scattering pallets of gear and rapidly filling the compartment.

Through it all, the Master Alarm klaxon shrieked.

Sonora couldn’t get any closer to the valve assembly; Kotlas grabbed the Captain’s arm and held her back. Don’t get too close! he yelled over the din. You’ll be shredded in no time….

Sonora tried to twist free. The valve…I’ve got to—

Forget it! It’s gone—

Water was rising rapidly from the floor of G deck. At least, shut that hatch! It’s watertight…let me get back to B deck and counterflood…try to stabilize the ship! Maybe I can open enough air flasks to keep the breach from getting worse!

Kotlas released Sonora. For a moment, the Captain and the Engineer looked at each other. Sonora knew the situation was grave and getting worse. Get everyone out of the aft compartments, Ev. Right now. Once that hatch is shut and I empty the air flasks, you won’t be able to get out. You’ll all be killed.

Sixty meters above them, Reynaldo Diaz was frantically fighting the boat, trying to regain some kind of stability. He strapped himself into the commander’s seat, as the ship lurched yet again, and his fingers flew over the keyboard.

"Counterflood…counterflood, damn it! he muttered to himself. Come on, come on—"

Diaz managed to open valves on several ballast tanks, overriding all safeties and inhibits, letting tons of seawater in to trim out Clipper and level her out. A quick glance at the board told him all he needed to know.

They were listing slightly to starboard, with a ten-degree up angle on the planes, sinking tail first through four hundred meters and their rate of descent was picking up. Clipper was stern heavy and had lost almost all forward way. Diaz ran the throttles on her powerplant to full, trying to counter the tail drag with as much forward speed as he could but it was a losing battle. Clipper’s waterlogged stern was dragging her down by the tail faster than her engines could move her forward. She was losing speed and sinking, crabbing her way through the water.

Got to counterflood and get her stern up, Diaz told himself. His fingers flew over the controls. If he couldn’t stop their descent and soon, Clipper would rapidly descend below crush depth. Below a thousand meters, her hull would crumple like a wad of paper and all aboard would perish in a particularly gruesome way.

I hope to God that compartment is secure, he muttered. He checked the panel to his right. Indicators showed the hatch had been shut and secured.

It was time to open the emergency air flasks. Emergency blow and pray to God they had enough air to evacuate the compartment and put Clipper back up at the ice level.

Then it would be a race to see if she could bore her way back up through the ice before her air ran out and she slid back down to the depths again.

Their unknown target wasn’t making things any easier. Every few seconds, another burst of acoustic shock waves pounded Clipper’s hull. Diaz noticed the other ship had now started backing away, and turning about. But he couldn’t worry about that now.

Time to get the borer started again, he said. He went through the start sequence.

Miriam Sonora then shoved her way onto the command deck, clinging precariously to a stanchion as she launched herself into the other seat.

They both looked at each other and took deep breaths.

Do it she ordered.

When the emergency air flasks were open full, air at several hundred psi would begin screaming into the compartment on G deck and into all Clipper’s ballast tanks. Sonora wasn’t sure if the crew trapped in nearby compartments would survive the blow. If there was a merciful God in heaven, they would all drown before that happened.

Diaz swallowed hard and pressed the buttons to start the blow.

A blast of high-pressure air shrieked into G deck.

Icy cold water still poured in, but the water flow seemed to have slacked off. A shrieking blast of high-pressure air was still sweeping the compartment. It was Diaz’s effort to contain the flood, and drive the inrushing water out of the compartment, into Clipper’s drains and bilge, where it could be flushed back into the sea.

Just outside the watertight hatch to G deck, Evgeni Kotlas covered his ears and screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to equalize pressure inside his head.

But it wasn’t enough.

The unknown target had now ceased blasting them with sound shock waves but the damage had already been done. Europa Clipper was mortally wounded, tail heavy and continuing to sink.

Her planes were jammed and her propulsors were out of commission. Springing more leaks in every compartment, her hull plates flexing and groaning in tortured screams of rending metal, she was descending with increasing speed toward crush depth.

Dead in the water of Europa’s black Ocean of Night, Europa Clipper was heading down toward certain destruction, unable to maneuver, unable to communicate, unable to stop the many leaks, her hull bending and compressing under the increasing pressure of the sea, her life support systems failing.

Automatically triggered by her onboard computer ALBERT, Clipper’s emergency buoy was released into the water. The buoy was designed to ascend to the ice level and bore its way through topside to the surface.

But unknown to Sonora, strong currents instead swept the buoy east by northeast below the ice, bearing toward the region known on the surface maps as Rathmore Chaos.

Farpool Operations Center

Muir City, the mid-Atlantic

January 6, 2210 (EUT)

Sergeant Marisa Colbert had been on duty for less than ten minutes in the Watch Center when a Level One alarm disrupted her early morning routine of a blueberry bagel and coffee. The alarm had been triggered by the Center’s main computer WINSTON and multiple system alerts crossed her board in a dizzying profusion of colors and chirps and beeps.

What the hell? she muttered as she scanned the panels in front of her. WINSTON didn’t throw out this many alarms unless something was seriously amiss.

She quickly realized the alarms had come in from Europa Eye, a network of stations orbiting Jupiter’s moon hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

She massaged the controls and tried to dig deeper into what WINSTON was telling her, get better resolution on the alarm. Europa Eye didn’t beep without reason. Somewhere in its nearly infinite memory were ephemeris data and trajectory details for nearly every detectable piece of space junk in the Jupiter system, out to several million miles. Like an overprotective mother, Europa Eye knew where everybody was supposed to be, right down to the nearest centimeter.

She only beeped and chirped when someone was out of position.

A quick perusal made the hairs on the back of Marisa Colbert’s neck stand up. The system displayed a list of likely targets, based on radar imaging and known ephemerides. She scanned the list and swallowed hard when she realized what Eye was telling her.

It was a distress call. It was Europa Clipper. The signal had been transmitted from Clipper’s base station in the icy surface of Europa.

The Farpool ship had lost contact with her base station. She might be in trouble. She might even be down.

Colbert rang up the Watch Center commander’s office.

Moments later, she was joined at her console by several officers. Among them with none other than Jump Admiral Lucas Cash, commanding officer of Farpool Service. Cash had been running a briefing at the Ops Center, laying out plans for follow-on missions to Europa and other ocean worlds in the outer solar system…Enceladus, Titan, and others.

Cash tugged at a trim white goatee. What have you got, Sergeant?

Colbert wet her lips. "It’s Clipper, sir. She’s lost contact with her base station."

Cash studied the board and the scroll of the ship’s final telemetry. The signals had just been received across the vast distance between Jupiter and Earth. The one-way travel time was now up to forty-five minutes.

"Hmmm. If I’m reading this right, Clipper may have suffered some kind of flooding casualty. This data indicates…is this right? Some kind of powerful sonar blast. I’m reading acoustic attack…shock waves…hull breach…."

Watch Center commander Jae Kim nodded gravely. She may be down, sir. If this telemetry’s accurate….

They’re in deep kimchi, Cash finished the thought. Any other ships or missions in or around or under Europa?

Kim shook his head. "None that we know of, sir. Clipper’s survey mission was pretty hush-hush from the start. Farpool didn’t want to alarm the Ponkti or the Chinese. You know they’ve had eyes on Europa for a long time."

Cash agreed. I need to speak with CINCSPACE. Where is the rat bastard anyway?

Kim checked his wristpad. Publicly, General Komora’s supposed to be at Farside. Some kind of dedication…new wing or something.

Set up a vidcon for— Cash checked the time, —1100 hours our time. Komora, me and maybe UNSAC as well.

Kim said, Should we notify Sea Council, Admiral?

Cash scowled. Those bottom feeders…hell no. This is Farpool and UNISPACE business. Keep the fish people out of this. They’ll just cause trouble. Right now, we need answers from people who know what they’re talking about.

The briefing was held in Kim’s office. The Watch Center commander maintained a suite on the upper floors of Muir City, with views looking south across the wavetops and the forest of structures that was the City.

CINCSPACE General Hideki Komora vidconned in from Farside, his avatar drifting about the office liked a disembodied ghost.

Cash was grim. "You have the latest telemetry from Clipper?" he asked.

Kim nodded, calling up blocks of text from the signals. Data drifted over the conference table. "Clipper streamed a wire through her borehole when she bored through Europa’s ice shell. Her telemetry goes up that wire to the base station on the surface, then on to Gateway…and the Europa Eye net."

Cash and Komora both perused the signals. Hmmm…depth three two five meters. Heading one two zero, across Rathmore Chaos. Speed twenty-two knots. Level trim. Nothing there.

Kim pointed out one data block. "The last sonar returns showed Clipper had detected a submerged object of some kind. Maneuvering shows she was turning to avoid an intercept course."

Komora spoke up. Though CINCSPACE was a quarter million kilometers away, the furrows on his brow were quite distinct. So was the vein that throbbed in the middle of his forehead. An iceberg? Or an ice raft detached from the surface?

Kim shook his head. Whatever it was, the object matched their maneuvers to stay on an intercept course. It had to be a ship, of some kind.

That brought a scowl to Cash. Who else is operating at Europa? The Chinese? The Ponkti?

"Unknown, sir. These data blocks are from Europa Eye—" he waved at a passing stream of video and sensor readings.

Cash’s scowl grew deeper. I see only normal readings…what’s this temperature spike over Tara Regio?

Kim consulted his wristpad. "Geos say it was probably a diapir…a column of warmer ice rising toward the surface. Eye didn’t see anything out of the ordinary."

Cash was sour. He paced about the room, staring out at clouds scudding low over the mid-Atlantic. Then we have a lost sub, don’t we? And that final telemetry—

Kim gestured at a trio of data blocks, which obediently came over to hover near them. Multiple pulses of acoustic shock waves were detected.

Komora theorized, Some of kind quake? Ice slide, maybe?

Kim said, "Unlikely. Clipper triangulated the shock waves to be coming from that object…the ship…which had closed on their position."

Komora rubbed his eyes, disappeared from their view for a moment, then came back. "I guess I’m not fully briefed on Clipper’s mission, Admiral."

Cash was matter-of-fact. Survey and exploration, General. Europa’s been a target of conflict for some time. Her ocean has attracted the attention of a lot of fish people—it’s come up in Sea Council meetings a lot—and we knew from Intel that the Ponkti and the Chinese were planning a mission to get there before Farpool Service could show up. It’s not enough that the Purple drove millions of normals—like me—off Earth. Now the fishheads want half the solar system as well. The Amphibs are drooling all over the oceans of Europa and Enceladus and Titan, if Amphibs can even drool. Seomish designs on these worlds are detailed and, if you believe the intel, well advanced.

Komora shrugged. "Had to be expected, I guess. What about Clipper’s crew?"

Cash snapped fingers and Kim produced the crew manifest. The Admiral went down the list. Commander was Miriam Sonora, human airbreather. Ten years in Farpool Service, a good leader. She knows her way around time jumps and she doesn’t scare easily. Pilot was Reynaldo Diaz, also human. Young, good fitreps, but inexperienced. He was selected because the Board wanted him to have some seasoning with a real mission.

Komora studied the dossiers. This manifest says you’ve got a full-blooded Seomish male onboard. Seems like a sop to the Sea Council, if you ask me.

Cash acknowledged how it looked. "Belket klu. From the Omtorish kel. Yeah, he’s a fishhead. Has to wear a modified mobilitor the whole time. He’s the navigator. Selection Board thinking said his skills and knowledge in deep water could prove invaluable on Clipper’s mission. Political…maybe, and a definite risk. But the Board had to give the fishheads something. You know how it is."

Komora frowned. All too well. And the rest of the crew?

Cash went through the remainder of the manifest. "Alicia Wu, Amphib female. She’s the borer operator. Evgeni Kotlas, human, is the ship’s engineer. And Casey Winans, human and science officer. Like I said, Clipper’s mission was survey and exploration, pure and simple. Farpool Service wanted the good guys to have a say in what happens at Europa. We can’t just leave these places to the Ponkti…they pretty much already run Earth’s oceans. Or the Chinese. We need to have a hand in the game as well."

Komora was thoughtful. Then I guess we’re looking at a full-scale rescue mission.

Cash asked, What kind of assets has UNISPACE got in the area?

Komora studied something off view. "Well, there’s Gateway. But the closest ship is one of our corvettes…the Brisbane. But she doesn’t have a lander. Couldn’t you send another jumpship? Isn’t the Jupiter farpool somewhere nearby?"

"Just off Callisto…beyond the worst of the radiation belts. We’d have to modify a ship for boring and subsurface ops. We don’t have anything readily available and we need to get down there fast. Every hour we don’t hear from Clipper is bad…that crew could be nearing the end of their life support in a few days, depending on what happened. If they’re even alive."

Komora agreed. "I’ll get Brisbane redirected to make a close approach to Europa and render any assistance they can. At the least, they can recon the surface around the base station and collect any data they can from that location…maybe something will turn up."

Cash had suddenly stopped pacing. He stared at the Komora avatar. "We need information bad. If nothing turns up in the next twelve hours, I’ll have to notify friends, family, next of kin…tell ‘em Clipper is believed down. We’ve lost contact and some kind of rescue is being planned now."

I don’t envy you, Lucas, Komora was sympathetic. Any ideas on who should lead this rescue mission?

An unexpected smile flickered across the Farpool Service c/o’s face. As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve got just the right person for this little trip in mind….

Oasis Shores and Cabana Crater Resort

Imbrium Sea

The Moon

January 6, 2210 (EUT)

For Charley Meyer, the waters of the Imbrium Sea were too cold, a bit too salty and maybe not deep enough for gill-girl like her, but she still enjoyed the delicious feeling of sliding and slicing through the water like a torpedo, twisting and turning and diving and cavorting with dozens of others from resort, while ignoring the curses and catcalls from the beachgoers dotting the shore. Their words still stung and she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to surface and go through that again…not that it was anything new.

"Freaking frogheads…go back to Earth!"

"Amphibs suck water!

"Drown and die…you slimy seaworm!"

Better to stay down below the waves, skirt the seabed of this century-old sea—really, it was more like a big lake, not deeper than fifty meters at the most—and come up somewhere else, maybe that big headland south of Oasis that reminded her of Jump Admiral Cash’s chin…Imbrium Sculpture somethingorother.

Meyer had three days’ worth of R and R left to fill. She’d been on the Moon for a week now, in and out of both Farside and Tranquility Station, overseeing the refit of the Service’s newest jumpship Lisbon. It wasn’t going badly if you didn’t mind dealing with blockhead dockhands and dopey techs and engineers, every one of whom knew way more than she did