Breaking Orbit: Volume I of the Titan Run Trilogy: Titan Run Trilogy, #1

Copyright © 2016 Robert C. Murray

All rights reserved.

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DEDICATION

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For dad, who taught me so much.

I’ll always measure twice and cut once, and never stop looking up.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost I must thank my dear Kathryn for the love, support, and strength she provides, both to me and as an example. May our future joys be as innumerable as the stars in the heavens.

I must also thank my wonderful editor, friend, and sister, Anna. Her red pen is always full of ink and her eye is always sharp. Any typos you might find are not on her, they are errors she will have caught that I failed to correct.

Thank you to my mother for her continued love and support, and to the father who taught me so much in the time we had together. We’ll always miss you, dad.

Finally, I owe great thanks to my friends and artistic collaborators Sam and Alyssa Little. Their insight and advice can and will be felt throughout the entire trilogy of the Titan Run.

Now then, let’s see what’s out there.

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001

Hit your Panic Button! Marcie, your Panic Button! Hugh yelled, sucking down his own precious oxygen as he filled his lungs, stumbling over the uneven Martian mountainside, desperate to reach Marcie before it was too late.

Marcie gasped for oxygen but drew only hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide into her lungs. The thin mixture of poisonous gasses infested her suit through the hole she had torn after slipping on a loose rock. The heating elements in her suit had shut down, and now the cold and toxic air was preserving her flesh while taking her life. She could not hear Hugh shouting at her over the alert channel.

Hugh fumbled with the flap on the pocket in his own suit that held his repair kit. He dug for the roll of tape that might save her life, fighting back the voice in his head that told him it did not matter how fast he moved; he was already too late.

Marcie had regained her feet and took a few clumsy steps in Hugh’s direction, but stumbled again and fell to her knees. Her body spasmed reflexively, diaphragm pumping, lungs sucking at the atmosphere for oxygen that was not there in defiance of what millions of years of evolution had come to expect. She dropped to all fours, chest still heaving, slowly grateful that the intense cold had taken away her ability to taste the air as the darkness closed in around her.

Hugh pulled a length of patch tape from the spool he had finally recovered and tore it roughly. In his haste, half the strip’s adhesive became hopelessly coated with red dust as it dragged across the ground. Now useless, Hugh tried to shake it from his gloved hand only to find it stuck there. He managed to tear another piece free from his spool and turned to face Marcie. She had finally stopped sucking at the air and instead lay slumped on the ground with her helmet’s faceplate against the regolith.

He ran to her and slapped the dangling length of tape over the hole in her suit, mumbling about how she would be okay, she just had to hold on.

Hang in there Marcie, I have the patch right here; we’ll get you back to the dome and the docs will have you fixed up in no time.

He rolled her over and looked into her face plate. Behind the dusty plastic of the face plate her skin was purple and blue, her eyes horribly frosted over already; he noticed the red warning light on her suit flashing a warning: the heating element in her suit had been unable to withstanding the onslaught of Martian cold from both sides.

Looking down the length of her suit he noticed that her chest was not moving. Nothing that was Marcie was moving. Then her eyes darted and locked with his. Her arm shot up and grabbed him by the handle on the front of his own suit. She stared at him accusingly with a blend of hatred and disappointment in her impossibly cold eyes. The skin of her face was a sickly purple. She shouted at him, something he could not at first make out, and then he slowly realized it was his own name:

Hugh! Hugh!

Hugh! Rose shouted as she shook his shoulder with increased urgency. Hugh Saracen blinked and looked around him. He was not out on Tharsis at all. He was in his lab, safe and warm. He was staring at the results of the survey that had cost them all dearly; Marcie had been a great researcher and a better friend. Her notes from that day were up on his tablet, superimposed over the data. The notes ended at a time stamp that Hugh knew was only moments before she had fallen. The last words she spoke on the official record were to do with the growth rates of the areophilic bacterium they studied. When he had first realized this days ago, Hugh knew that Marcie would have liked that her last words were to do with science.

Oh no, Hugh said as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, hoping Rose had not heard him.

It happened again, didn’t it, Rose asked; she had heard Hugh mumbling to himself and she had recognized the reverie for what it was.

Yeah, but ... I’m okay, Rose, I promise. I just need to finish checking Marcie ... Marcie’s ... I need to finish checking these field notes against the survey data and then I promise I will go home. I told Dalton I would cook for us tonight, anyway.

Rose sighed and offered Hugh a sympathetic look. She had lost people before to field accidents – everyone had – but Marcie and Hugh had become close in their years of working together at the research lab. "Why don’t you go ahead and take off now?

In fact, Rose continued, I want you to take a few days. I know you didn’t take the time off you had coming after the accident. Take it now.

But I’m fine, I swear.

You are not fine. I’ve had to recheck your results twice already this week and I can’t have you jeopardizing our grant funding, she hated having to use tough love. Look, I know it’s rough. We’ve all lost someone out in the field. The surface of Mars is...

...is more dangerous that being in space, Hugh recited. I remember the safety training.

You damn well should, Rose replied.

"Why do you think it was nothing but robots for seventy five years before any humans arrived to explore this place? It’s not because no one wanted to come.

Go get some rest. In fact, get some rest and call Dr. Jimenez; make an appointment if you need to see him in person. The work will be here when you’re up to it. Mars won’t be terraformed in a week.

Hugh sighed. I guess you’re right, he conceded.

Thanks Rose – I’m sorry about the screw up with the results; Marcie and I used to check each other’s numbers before submitting the reports.

I know; it’s one of the things that made you two a great team. Now go on before you get me worked up, Saracen. I have a lab to run and I’m now down two of my best researchers. By no one’s fault, Rose added when she saw the look forming on Hugh’s face.

Thanks; look, I’ll try to make it in tomorrow. I’ll take the night to think things through and clear my head...

Rose held up a finger and shook it at him and then pointed that finger firmly at the door. You’ll take as much time as Dr. Jimenez says you should take, and I’ll be calling him to make sure you’ve spoken with him. You have the time, Hugh – take it – because I can’t have you working here if you don’t.

Hugh nodded, knowing that the conversation was over. He gathered some of his personal effects from his desk and with a nod to Rose he left the lab. The flashback about the accident and then the conversation with Rose had drained him emotionally, leaving him exhausted and even more sad at the loss of his friend than he remembered being right after it had happened. He decided that some fresh air would do him good and so he walked the hour home rather than suffer the already packed trams that would have had him home in fifteen minutes.

Soon enough Hugh was away from the lab and its windows, and he was down on the streets where buildings and trees blocked most of his view of the red wilderness. Hugh’s mind mercifully drifted away from thoughts of Marcie and by the time he was home he was planning the night’s dinner menu. He would call Dr. Jimenez in the morning.

COMMUNIQUE

FROM: BPOE HEADQUARTERS,

ACIDALIA PLANITIA, MARS

TO: LIEUTENANT COMMANDER DALTON SIMMONS, 

BPOE HQ, ACIDALIA, MARS

SUBJECT: ORDERS EFFECTIVE

MESSAGE DATESTAMP 

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Lt. Commander Simmons,

In light of your exemplary record and exceptional performance w/r/t Project UPRIGHT, you are hereby promoted two (2) full grades to captain and hereby requested and required to assume command of the BPOE Patrol Cruiser PHOENIX.

Both orders are effective immediately.

Report to Order Command tomorrow morning to receive command credentials and further instruction.

Congratulations, Captain Simmons.

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SIGNED Admiral van Ostern, BPOE System Exploratory Division, BPOE Command

002

Built in to the human psyche is the need to meander, and the newly-minted Captain Dalton Simmons of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Explorers felt a deep-seated need to do just that. Plus, he thought as he walked along the boulevards while briefly considering the evolutionary logic of the purposeless meander, I need some more time to figure out how I’m going to share all this news with Hugh. It’s going to be a lot for him to take in at once.

The streets and boulevards of most Martian domes were laid out in a logical grid that made meandering more of a challenge than what evolution had prepared him for, but in the fashion of a man worth his new rank he solved that problem and turned a five minute walk into a thirty minute stroll in the general direction of home. He only crossed his own path once. Quite the navigational feat, Captain, he thought. He smiled inside and out, but for so many more reasons than just his clever walking skill. This day was special. He had earned his promotion years before he thought possible, and more! But how to tell Hugh?

His long had settled him down somewhat, but Dalton had still failed in his secondary objective, which had been to determine the best way to deliver his bounty of good news to his husband, who himself was suffering the loss of a dear friend; in truth they both were. Marcie had been Dalton’s fired as much as she had been Hugh’s, and the memory of her death was in sharp contrast to the fresh news of his own promotion. Dalton stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs that led into their apartment building, and turned at what he remembered – ever since Hugh had shown him – to be the perfect spot. He could see a strip of the Red Wilderness from between some elm trees. We miss you, Marcie, he thought. She would have been ecstatic for Dalton over his promotion, and she would have been a great comfort to Hugh for the rest. But she was gone, and Captains did not shy away from their duty. Not to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Explorers, not to their friends, and certainly not to their families.

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As he walked down the hallway, Dalton’s smile slowly faded as he approached the apartment door and his hand hovered over the entrance pad. Hugh knew that this planet-side assignment had been temporary. They had been apart before, ironically most of their time together had been apart as Dalton served for months or years at a time on BPOE vessels. But Dalton also knew that sometimes Hugh chose to ignore the facts in evidence when they did not match his favored viewpoint. This thought made Dalton chuckle darkly, because he knew damn well that Hugh was adamant about getting the facts right in the lab. No matter what his initial hypothesis had been. Dalton had even chided Hugh more than once about having used up all his objectivity on the soil samples in the lab, leaving none for his own husband. Yet too many loud nights over too much wine and Marcie’s take on Martian mushroom casserole had passed between them, Hugh and Marcie hashing out results for hours while Dalton enjoyed their company and their peculiar microbiological theater, seeking the truth in the facts they had pulled from the regolith. Marcie’s face would have been a welcome presence, but that was not to be.

Still standing outside the door to the apartment, Dalton fixed a small supportive smile on his face and decided that the direct approach was the best.

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Meanwhile Hugh fidgeted at the table, nudging the flatware and making minor adjustments to the placement of the glasses. He had already made three circuits around the apartment, straightening things that had not been moved in years and generally trying to be productive with all his restless energy. He checked the time again. Dalton should have been home a half hour ago, which meant that either he was working late (he would have called) or he too had decided to walk at least part of the way home. Hugh went back into the kitchen nook and made adjustments to the various cook settings so that dinner would still be palatable for them when Dalton finally did get home, damn him for not calling! Why was it so hard for him to offer a little common courtesy?

Hugh shook his head and put down the towel he had been wringing. He took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, slumping against the sink. He knew it was nothing to do with Dalton, in fact, Hugh had every reason to be happy; content even. They had built a good home together (late getting home), and they had finally been able to see each other every day for the last Martian year thanks to Lieutenant Commander Simmons’ latest assignment, stationed planet-side to oversee the design of a new class of ship.

Then there was Hugh’s work; exciting, meaningful work, but then part of that excitement was due to the danger of working outside the dome. And there was the rub. The danger that had jumped up from nowhere and stolen a close friend and an even closer collaborator. Hugh took another deep breath and this time held it for