Chapter 3

         “Tell me the situation.” Nasalle Ricter strode onto the Inspiration’s bridge, a solar storm pulsing through her veins. She’d had no time to clip her hair back, and it fell loose around her shoulders. At least her blue button-up and slacks were professional.

         Officers turned their attention to her from their workstations. The holographic wall showed the planet Mobius below, its horizon curving like a frown. It wasn’t a real window, of course. The bridge sat at the ship’s heart, a bunker from impacts and radiation.

         “Good to see you safe, Ms. Director.” Captain Lorana Connis, a pale-skinned woman with cropped kinky white hair turned to face her. “We’re still assessing. It has been difficult, considering we’ve been unable to connect to the satellite grid.”

         “What’s stopping you?” Salle asked.

         The comm officer spoke up from his station. “Communication with the satellite network is down. All of it. We’ve confirmed through direct channels that others are experiencing the same problem. Even orbital positioning doesn’t work; we’re flying on our own sensors and the seat of the navigator’s pants.”

         “Any info on the cause?” Salle asked.

         The lines at the edges of Connis’s mouth tightened. “We thought at first it might be an emergency shutdown, but with your shuttle arriving full of holes, it’s looking a lot more like a debris cascade.”

         “A debris cascade?” Salle repeated sharply. Everyone who spent their career in space knew of the scenario, a hypothetical disaster based on the premise that space junk multiplies. In the skies above Mobius, tens of thousands of satellites buzzed with with invisible light beams connecting the ideas, creativity, and trade of all the people of the world. As a rule, the more compact a network, the more efficient it was. Thus, the International Outer Space Cooperative had crammed almost all of those satellites into the lowest thousand kilometers above the atmosphere. At the speed necessary to fall sideways in orbit that deep in a planetary gravity well, any collision would strike with the force of a rail gun, and any debris knocked loose would become fresh bullets.

         The IOSC had kept space junk under control by tracking every stray bolt and removing it as soon as possible. If they failed, a single emergency could become a planet-wide catastrophe in no time, a cascade of debris which would obliterate every satellite in the network. The internet and wireless communication would collapse, automatic positioning would crash, and the entire planet would be surrounded in an impassible zone of death.

         And her dear Tyle was stuck down on the surface, on the other side.

         That would have to wait until after the immediate crisis. “If it’s a debris cascade, then every shuttle in flight needs urgent assistance.” She snapped her fingers. “Pull up the launch schedule. Let’s find and extract as many as we can.”

         “Excuse me, Ms. Director,” Connis said, “but we are still assessing the situation. We do not want to rush—”

         “Every moment we delay, people die.” Salle turned sharply to the navigator, who jumped at her sudden attention. “You. Find a shuttle to save.”

         “Yes ma’am.” The navigator’s hands flew over his console.

         “Director.” Connis stressed the title. “The crew of this ship responds to me. You are not the captain. You are not even IOSC.”

         Salle strode past her. “If you cared about your reputation, Captain, you should have already given these orders so I wouldn’t have to.” She pointed at the engineer. “Find out how hard we can push the hyperdrive.”

         “All bays, prepare to receive emergency shuttles.” The captain leaned over her console, hand on the comm button. “I want a medical crew on their feet at each one.” She met Salle’s eyes, swallowing with the effort of the humility. “We’ll take it from here.”

         Salle gave a quick nod, holding back the grin that wanted to overtake her face, and departed from the bridge in swift strides. A debris cascade would mean chaos for trade. For the first time in history, the space settlements would have to rely on each other, cut off entirely from the home world and the life-giving stream of resources that flowed from it. And as Director of Space Lane Cooperative, the responsibility to wrangle that chaos into a workable system fell squarely on Salle’s shoulders.

         Dammit, she felt alive!

         The Space Lane office buzzed with activity. Conversations ricocheted. Fingers flew over terminals. Approaching her workstation, Salle met the eyes of her coordinator, Toko Ma Chen. The tall, warm-skinned, dark-haired man lifted his prominent chin in greeting. “Welcome back, Salle. Glad you made it.”

         “Thanks, Ma Chen.” She settled into her chair and swiped her computer on. “Give me the rundown.”

         The following hours were packed with activity. The goal: keep the space settlements alive with existing food, water and equipment until they could produce enough of their own to achieve sufficiency. Calls were made, ledgers compiled, routes simulated and optimized. Salle attacked her work with the force of a solar storm. When trade was disrupted on Mobius, people tightened their belts. If deliveries ran late in the space colonies, children would die.

         “Hey, Salle.” Ma Chen stood outside her desk, tapping his finger on it. “Shift’s been up for a while. I’m calling it a night.”

         “Is it that late already?” Salle cast bleary, blinking eyes around the office. Indeed, most of the faces at the stations had changed from when she had arrived. She turned back to the document on her computer screen. “You go ahead. I’ll just finish up a few things.”

         “If you stay much longer, you’ll wake up tomorrow with a keyboard pattern on your face. Besides, have you let Tyle know you’re okay yet?”

         At her husband’s name, her determination evaporated. He’d been there at the back of her mind the whole time, and she’d known that if she let him into her thoughts, it would be the end of her productivity. Yawning, she rose to her feet and put her computer in sleep mode.

         In her quarters, she set her personal tablet on its desk stand. A smudge of blood had dried on the screen, and she scratched it off. Most of her channels of communication were down, courtesy of the debris cascade. Luckily, she and her husband were affluent enough to have an ansible connection, bypassing the satellite relays with sympathetic particle pairings.

         His square, rosy face appeared, framed by his neatly trimmed black hair and beard. To the world, he was Tyle Martof, spaceship engineer and the face of popular astronomy. To her, he was her stellar companion, dancing with her in their shared celestial orbit. His tight face relaxed when he saw her. “Salle,” he breathed. “They told me you were alive, but I’m so glad to see your face.”

         “You too, Tylen,” she said gently, caressing the screen with her thumb and imagining the soft prickliness of his beard. “I’m sure they’re going to have you working around the clock finding a way to clean up the sky.”

         “More than that,” Tyle said, closing his eyes for a long moment, the bags beneath them standing out. “The press is surging at the door. Satellite broadcast is down, but they’re making do with old fashioned cable and cell networks. I’ve been telling them we’ll have the situation under control soon, but . . .” His eyebrows turned up, cheeks sagging. Her heart ached for him, remembering that lonely genius she had found all those years ago at university. “I lied, of course. Anyone with a brain would realize we can’t just patch it up. Every satellite beneath two thousand kilometers has been shredded to bits. Even once we figure out how to clear the space, we’ll have to replace all those satellites with entirely new ones. On top of that, the launch rails are chewed up too. It’s a hell of a mess up there.”

         “Tylen, you and your team will figure something out. Everything will be fine, we just have to keep our heads on our shoulders.”

         “There’s more. The data from our monitoring network suggests our orbital infrastructure wasn’t in danger of a debris cascade, not even close. So either there were millions of tons of shrapnel flying around that our sensor array missed, or . . .”

         The implication sank in. “Or someone attacked us.” But how? Causing a debris cascade was like triggering a thunderstorm. Possible if you had the right resources and the pressure and humidity were on the brink, but you’d have better luck waiting for it to happen naturally. And who had a motive? Everyone on Mobius relied—had relied—on the satellite network for communication, and Tarran lacked the hyperdrive technology to reach the Mobian system on their own.

         Tyle shook his head, eyes drifting in defeat. “And Kenko Utsara is salt in the wound.”

         “What’s happening with Utsara?”

         “You didn’t know? She was on your shuttle, so they tell me. Had a micro-meteor punch right through her gut.”

         Salle felt like a micro-meteor had punched into hers at the news. The Hand of the International Outer Space Cooperative taken out when good leadership was needed most. “Is she alive? Why am I asking you, I’m the one who can check the infirmary.” Salle curled one hand into a fist and covered it with the other, sorting through the jumble of stresses and responsibilities racing in her head. “Tylen, I’m going to be extremely busy for the foreseeable future. I’ll try to keep in touch, but . . .”

         “I know.” Tyle reached forward, his hand disappearing, and Salle knew he was caressing the screen. His eyes misted with tears. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to touch each other again.”

         Salle’s heart crashed through the floor. He was right. Between them was a zone of death, a gulf so small, yet it might as well be the breadth of the universe. She touched her own cheek, imagining placing her hand over his, and forced a smile. “Be strong, my love. I will come back to you.”

         He smiled as a tear ran from his eye and was absorbed by his beard. “Thank you. I will work day and night so that day may come sooner.”

         “I know. And my heart will be there with you.” She held his gaze for a long moment, then signed off.

         She only meant to sit for a count of ten, but allowing herself to feel at all opened the floodgates. Curling up on the bed, her body shook, tears staining the blanket as memories of the bloody panic in the shuttle flashed behind her eyes. She knew what was happening. She was in shock. A perfectly normal, understandable reaction for someone who had survived that kind of trauma.

         Sleep called with the seduction of an incubus, but her talk with Tyle had added one more thing to her to-do list tonight. Fixing on the center of her self, she let the torrent of emotion wash through her and pass on, leaving her in the calm safety of her quarters. Senses and strength returning, she stood up and headed for the infirmary.

         The doctor on duty led Salle to Kenko Utsara in emergency care. A respirator covered the old woman’s face, her white hair spreading on the pillow. Compared with the spry, fiery leader who had been such a pleasure to negotiate with, the frailty of the woman on the bed shook something deep inside Salle’s core. For a moment, Salle saw not only the woman, but the entity she represented. The IOSC, the symbol and product of the human drive to explore that transcended nations. And Salle wondered if the organization, like its leader, might harbor a critical vulnerability beneath its unshakable appearance.

         “She has severe blood loss,” the doctor said, “a punctured lung, several shattered ribs, and other injured organs. With anyone else, the chances of recovery would be slim. At her age, it’s a wonder she’s alive at all.”

         “Don’t count her out too quickly,” Salle replied. “Utsara is the strongest woman I know.” She brushed the sleeping woman’s wrist. “Hang in there, Kenko. The world needs you.”

         Utsara showed no sign that she heard.

         “Keep me updated on her condition,” Salle told the doctor as she turned to leave.

         “Of course, Ms. Ricter.”

© Christian D. Horst, 2025, christiandhorst.com

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