John Sandford - Saturn Run

Zhang was talking with Cui, with increasing exasperation about the information feeds, and about the fact that the Americans may have tried to sneak away with the most important information dispensed by the information-bot.

He was doing that when the screens carrying the feed from the ship’s telescopes flared white, at the same moment that blinding light poured through the ports on the bridge.

Cui, several kilometers away, was looking toward the ship as she spoke to Zhang, and saw the ship flicker, as though it had been lit by lightning. An instant later, though, the ship remained as it had been.

On board the Celestial Odyssey , the radiation alarm sounded for a fraction of a second and went silent. As it went silent, all the ship’s screens, all the interior lighting, went dark. Zhang heard a panicked scream, he didn’t know from whom; it was almost immediately stifled by the embarrassed crew member.

The windows’ glare had been dazzling; anyone looking out a port had been temporarily blinded, although the flash had been several kilometers away.

After a long five seconds, lights began to come back, as well as the various vid screens.

“Shenme zai diyu?” That was the helmsman, Lieutenant Peng. His voice was high, panicked. Zhang knew who had screamed.

Zhang took a calming breath before he spoke. “Mr. Peng, that was a nuclear explosion. The ship’s systems and power went down because the electromagnetic pulse tripped the safeties.”

“But, sir, the shuttle!”

Zhang managed to keep his voice from shaking. “Cong, there is no shuttle. Not any longer,” he said very softly.

“Admiral?” The navigator on watch, Lieutenant Sun, spoke up. “I’m confirming that. There’s nothing on the scope.”

“No shuttle?” asked Peng.

“Peng,” replied the navigator, “there’s nothing. No moonlet, no shuttle. Everything that was there… everyone… gone. Vaporized.”

The helmsman began to sob. It was not professional. Zhang found it entirely understandable.

“Mr. Lei, ship’s status now, if you please.”

The watch officer was already hard at work. “No physical damage likely, not at twenty kilometers. The EMP might have fried some hardware. We’re pretty well shielded against that—original ship’s design in case it got caught by a really bad solar storm or a coronal ejection mass. But that’s a whole different level from a close-by nuclear pulse. The major systems will be okay or have backups. We could lose some lesser equipment. I’ll have a survey done now.”

“What about the radiation flash? What effect would that have on the crew?”

“I don’t know. The hull would protect us from normal background radiation, but a short, intense dose like this? I don’t know. I will talk to Medical. We may want to start everyone on radiation sickness preempts, just in case.”

“Do that. Mr. Sun, what is it?” The navigator was signaling urgently.

“Captain, we may have another problem. Those small autonomous spacecraft, like the one we were trying to catch? A lot of them, hundreds it looks like, are changing trajectory. They’re moving in our direction.”

Ta ma de, thought Zhang, we kicked the anthill.

Francisco, the executive officer, had the watch when the bridge klaxon sounded the three-note tone that signaled a radiation emergency. Startled, he lost his grip on the slate he’d been reading; the slate slowly fell to the end of its tether.

He ignored it. “Comm, kill that noise. Engineering, Science, talk to me. Frank, you first.”

Lieutenant LaFarge scanned his console. “It’s a real alert, sir, not a computer fault or test run. Outside sensors reported a radiation spike. Safety systems kicked in like they’re supposed to and set off the alarms.”

Comm spoke up. “Confirming that, sir. It’s a radiation storm alert.” All over the Nixon , except in the shielded engineering module, warning lights and bells were going off, while the computer system’s voice instructed personnel in the unshielded sections to immediately go to their nearest hidey-hole.

“We’re ten AU from the sun. It has to be one hell of a big solar event for us to notice it way out here. Why hasn’t space weather sent us an alert?” The Earth-orbit monitoring stations had near-instantaneous response times. They couldn’t beat the initial X-ray burst to the Nixon , but their warning should have arrived by now.

“Sir?” Albers Janssen was at the science station.

“Go ahead, Albers.”

“I don’t think it was the sun. The directional data says the burst came from the general direction of the alien depot. That’s well off the sun line. Also, the burst was too short for a solar flare or coronal mass ejection.” Janssen peered closely at the time plots. “Make that two short bursts, close together. A small one and then a much bigger one.” He switched his attention to the spectral plot. “Aw fuck. The main spikes are gamma, not X-ray—511 keV. That was an antimatter detonation.”

Fang-Castro hurried onto the bridge: “What happened?”

“We think the Chinese may have triggered off an antimatter explosion,” Francisco said.

“Oh, no. Can we see them?”

Navigation: “No. We’d have line of sight, but the edge of the ring is in the way. We should have visual in… eight minutes.”

Cui turned as the air-lock door behind her closed: she didn’t know why it had done that.

Suddenly feeling alone in the universe, she called the Celestial Odyssey : “Sir: What happened? Something is happening here.”

Zhang came back: “Cui, evacuate your crew immediately. Duan’s crew apparently set off an antimatter explosion and the ants are beginning to cluster between us and the planetoid. We need you back here, until we can reassess our status.”

“Yes, sir. The crew is out of touch at the moment—immediately after the flash, the air-lock doors closed, separating me from the crew. There is no… Wait one…”

In front of her, the air-lock doors were opening again: inside the lock, she saw her entire crew.

“What happened?” she asked Wong. She kept the relay open to Zhang.

“We’ve been ordered out of the planetoid. Narcissus told us we have to leave. I have vid, sending now.”

The vid popped up on a display screen.

Narcissus said, “There has been damage to the depot. Containment Module 7251 was disrupted. Members of your species intercepted one of the antimatter transport units while it was docking with the containment module. It appears that they tried to disable the unit, leading to a failure of its isolation vessel. The vessel contained 2.5 grams of antimatter. That explosion, in such close proximity to the containment module, caused it to fail as well, resulting in a larger explosion. Sanctions apply. Access to this depot and my database are denied, effective immediately.”

Wong tried to shift blame, to keep the planetoid open: “We didn’t do this. It was an action by another ship, not authorized by us.”

Narcissus said, “Sanctions automatically apply to all vessels of a species. You have five Earth minutes to collect your equipment, secure your suits, and vacate this room. In five minutes the security system will discontinue life support, evacuating the atmosphere and ceasing illumination and thermal regulation. In six minutes, further countermeasures will be taken.”

Wong asked, “What countermeasures?”

“I do not have that information. That information is available only to the security AI.”

Wong had heard enough. To the crew, he called, “You heard it, everybody. Get it together and let’s get out. Narcissus, for how long are the sanctions in effect?”