vessels had completely changed their courses. Instead of charging forward out of the Jovian system, both had for reasons unknown decelerated and emerged—or not emerged, he corrected himself, since Nebula Storm was nowhere to be seen—on utterly unexpected vectors. It had actually fallen to the Infra-Red Survey Telescope (IRST) to detect the wreckage of Odin and allow the others to home in on it and try to start making sense of the disaster.
As no trace of Nebula Storm had yet been found, the theory that made the most sense—a terrible sort of sense—was that she had for some reason slowed enough to drop orbit, scrape the atmosphere of Jupiter itself and be drawn ever closer until the friction melted even her alien hull and Jove pulled the remains down into the crushing blackness of its deadly atmosphere.
Nicholas shook his head and felt the ache not just in his head but in his joints, seeming buried in his bones. I’m getting too old for this, he thought.
It dawned on him with a faint chill that, in fact, he was getting old. I’m past seventy now. It’s been nearly fifteen years since Helen, Joe, and Jackie first dug up Bemmie. Ten years since I stood on Earth and watched Nike blaze its way out of orbit. Almost five years since we discovered a base on Ceres.
These days seventy wasn’t that old, true. When he was born—when personal computers were new and the web not yet worldwide—seventy was nearing the end of a man’s life. People lived longer now and the last great medical advances had pushed active, healthy lifestyles even farther, so that he was physically more as his father had been at forty or forty-five.
But right now he felt more like twice that.
He sat back down and called up the almost blank document which was supposed to be a press release—one he simply couldn’t put off much longer. Oh, there’d been a quick one expressing everyone’s shock and loss, with some hope that perhaps Nebula Storm would be located soon—but this was different. He would have to decide what direction he would take, both in public and behind closed doors, in placing—or not placing—blame for the disaster.
The European Union itself certainly wouldn’t have resorted to such tactics…but the European Space Development Corporation might have; according to Walter Keldering, who was still the United States’ representative here at Phobos Base, the ESDC’s Chief of Operations Osterhoudt had some rather dark-gray, not to say black, operations history.
“Not directly, of course,” Keldering had said, some weeks ago, “but he’s connected. We’re sure of it back at the Agency. And with the political pressure and having seen the benefits coming out of the discovered bases thus far…no, I wouldn’t put it past him.” He’d made a very expressive face. “And picking—rather forcefully—FITZGERALD for this? Sorry, Nick, but that pretty much screams ‘dirty tricks.’”
He’d appreciated Keldering’s honest input—the more so since he could get it now. The President who’d tried to screw Madeline over and, when Maddie foiled him by resigning and signing on with the IRI, sent out Keldering as a replacement was gone now, his final term marred by a completely home-grown scandal that put the opposite party in power. The new President was much more interested in cooperation, the more since he could then rely on others to do a lot of the work while he showed a focus on domestic issues. With those pressures gone, Agent Walter Keldering had become more an associate who simply had to be treated with respect and the same caution over proprietary information as any other, not a specifically-assigned spy.
He sighed again and started dictating. “The IRI apologizes for the delay in this announcement, but we have all been in a state of shock, and mourning, ever since we received the news that the Nebula Storm and the Odin had both been lost or suffered terrible damage, presumably resulting in the deaths of all aboard. We have lost friends and even family on those vessels, as have those in the European Union, and we extend our own sympathies to our brethren in the EU over this terrible accident…”
This was, naturally, the obvious and wisest course, to say nothing to anyone. Treat it as a terrible tragedy whose cause would likely never be known and perhaps arrange a true joint mission to Enceladus with the EU.
But he had to stop the dictation again, because the very idea made his gut rebel. They killed my friends. How can I