Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance Read online

  Her expression was sympathetic. That was the first thing he noticed about Emily. What she was telling him, however, was just being recorded and stored in some subconscious vault, deep inside, where it could not hurt him, at least not for the moment. Needing distraction, he focused on her face. Sympathy emanated from her eyes, but her expression told him more than he wanted to know. He could see concern, pain, resolve, and even something akin to his own personal loss in the set of her jaw, her furrowed brow, and the slight puffiness around her eyes. She was obviously very empathetic.

  “Your crew has been very concerned about you. Unfortunately, they are not your crew anymore, Captain. Your recovery will be long and tedious, and a new captain is being assigned to the Revere. They will be departing soon on a mission to head off a near Earth asteroid that will come uncomfortably close to striking Earth. That mission could not be delayed.” She took a breath before continuing. “You, on the other hand, will have to make some tough decisions about your future. Vice Admiral Bunting will be coming over from the naval base tomorrow morning to discuss the details of your accident and your potential paths forward.

  “But let’s not concern ourselves about tomorrow. Today, we need to get you started on some liquid food, get you up to speed on all of this equipment surrounding you, and then you need to get more rest to allow your body to push through the recovery process. I have taken the liberty to order a liquid lunch and a soft-solid dinner based upon your taste preferences. Solid food will start tomorrow.”

  This is all too much! I’ve just woken up and found out that my whole life has changed. My crew! The Revere! How will they react to a sudden change in captain?

  My legs are gone? They feel just fine. That must have been a mistake. I didn’t hear that right, did I?

  “My legs feel just fine! What are you telling me, Emily?”

  “I’m very sorry, Captain Richardson. You may feel like your legs are there, but believe me; your spacesuit saved your life in the only way possible. You do remember how the suits operate, don’t you, Captain?”

  “Of course I do! If the suit loses compression in any of the limbs, it isolates that limb above the nearest joint with internal clamping. If the suit detects that the limb is freezing and pressure has not been restored, it amputates the limb, establishes new suit integrity, and stabilizes the suit’s internal pressure while cauterizing the amputated stump. The sailor survives, but the limb doesn’t. So, I lost both of my legs?’

  Emily nodded. “Yes. Again, I am very sorry, but you will have to learn to live without your biological legs. We have already cast your stumps and are in the process of preparing prosthetic legs for you to train with going forward. The legs will be delivered in about two weeks on a shuttle coming up to the base from the space naval yard outside of Santa Fe. Meanwhile, it’s time you got a little more rest. Tomorrow, we start rehab, and we have much to accomplish before your new legs arrive.”

  That was when it all came flooding back!

  “Lorraine and Jeremy are dead!” he cried as he began sobbing uncontrollably. His memory flashed with the image of bloody pieces of their helmets flying over his head. How could this be possible? It couldn’t be true. “What about the plans we made just before we left the Revere? She can’t be dead!”

  Emily knew it was time for more sedation. Captain Richardson was obviously unable to handle all of the grief right now. She administered a sedative in the IV line and watched as his uncontrolled sobbing subsided.

  Chapter 8 – The Recurring Dream

  Sted had been dreaming again. The dream had replayed itself in his sleep many times over the past twenty years.

  He was eleven years old again. He and his best friend, David Barns, were playing in the dry streambed between two fields of hay that stretched between the small islands of look-alike homes where they lived. David had spotted a cottontail rabbit and chased it along the streambed until it disappeared into a pile of driftwood scrub where the old stream veered sharply past a high bank covered in deep scrub brush.

  David started to pull at the branches of the driftwood to dig out the rabbit, and that’s when it happened. A Diamondback Rattlesnake sank its fangs just below David’s shoulder while he was reaching into the pile to grab the next branch.

  David screamed as much from fright as from pain. As he backed away from the rattler, Sted picked up a long stick and beat the snake around the head until it slithered back under the pile of debris.

  Unfortunately for David, neither of them was trained on how to treat a venomous snake bite. The two of them moved back downstream, away from the snake’s lair, with David crying and holding his shoulder, as if that would reduce the pain.

  After Sted got David calmed down enough to talk, they decided to head for David’s home for help.

  It was a good half-mile walk, and by the time they got to David’s front door, David was finding it difficult to breathe. David’s mother called 911, and the medics were at the house just ten minutes later. Sted was brushed aside, and he could only look on helplessly as they tried to stabilize David and get him loaded into the ambulance. That was the last time he saw David.

  The dream always ended the same way. They just took David away, never to be seen again.

  Sted’s parents thought he was too young to attend a funeral and refused to talk to him about what had happened after David was taken away in the ambulance. Only after researching on his own did he find out that they needed to keep the venom away from the heart, and walking all the way home just sped up the process. If he had just known better, he could have propped David against a tree and run for help and then led the medics back to the streambed. He felt he was responsible for David’s death. He should have known better. He should have been better prepared for what had happened.

  Never again would he be caught unprepared.

  But here he was again. He had been unprepared for the death of Lorraine and Jeremy. The loss of his legs was minor in comparison. What could he have done differently? There really was nothing he could have done to prevent a random act of the universe. But he still felt responsible. That thought remained with him as he finally drifted into an unsettled sleep.

  Chapter 9 – Vice Admiral Bunting

  “Good morning, Captain Richardson. I’m Vice Admiral Albert Bunting, and I have taken charge of overseeing your recovery and determining your fitness for further duty in the Navy.”

  “Good morning, sir,” Sted said in a listless tone. He had a hard time looking directly at the admiral as the guilt he was feeling made his eyes slide away from the presence of authority. He knew that failure must be written all over his face. Fitness for duty seemed impossible at this point.

  The Vice Admiral filled the doorway. He appeared to be the type of sailor found in the bowels of a ship tearing apart and rebuilding some major piece of equipment that kept the Space Navy’s vessels functioning properly. He actually was that type of person, except he did not deal with the mechanical part of a ship but with the individuals who manned those ships.

  “I am truly sorry for the loss of your two officers in this unfortunate accident,” Bunting said. “I want to assure you that the Navy is doing everything possible for their families here on Luna and back on Earth. I have already written personal notes expressing the Navy’s gratitude for their service and to let them know that you, as their captain, are still recovering from extensive injuries suffered in the same accident. That is one task I was able to do for you while you were in surgery and post-operative recovery.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sted replied, looking up at the imposing officer with a mixture of gratitude and trepidation. “Over the next couple of days, I will also write notes to their families to let them know how much I appreciated their service to the Navy and to me personally as their captain on this last deployment. They were wonderful people and close friends, and I think the families deserve to know that directly from me.”

  The Vice Admiral smiled. “I am sure that would be very much appreciated. I’ll
have the families’ names and addresses sent directly to your comm unit along with a copy of my notes to each of them. Is there anything else I can send you that would be helpful?”

  Sted shook his head. “No, sir.”

  The Vice Admiral nodded. “Very well then, are you up to discussing your post-recovery career?”

  “Maybe tomorrow or later this week,” Sted replied. “My thoughts are scrambled right now, especially when I try to remember what happened in that airlock. I’m not sure I could retain very much at this point.”

  “Not a problem, Captain. I’m certain it will take time and a great deal of counseling with Ms. Fry for you to deal with the losses you have suffered. I just ask that you give us that time and your every effort to make things right again. I am also asking you to have faith in the recovery plan I have established and the team I have assembled. With all of us working together, I believe we can piece your life back together in a very meaningful way.”

  “I will try, sir,” was all Sted could manage.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Emily said as she pushed past Bunting and entered Sted’s room. “We need to get the captain down to rehab where we can begin the process you’ve outlined in your program.”

  As she spoke, Emily disconnected Sted from the many wires and tubes around his bed and reconnected him to several on the wheeled transport gurney she brought over from the side of the room. Sted wondered what type of therapy they would start while he still required external devices to recover his health.

  “I will return at 1400 hours tomorrow to review some of your options, Captain,” Bunting said. “I have instructed Emily and the hospital staff to give you full access to your proposed recovery regimen. Part of your initial visit to rehab will be setting you up with your own portable tablet from which you can see all of your medical records, including surgical notes, vital statistics over time, your rehab plan as set up by me, and anything else necessary for you to understand your progress and your goals. I put the initial plan into place while you were coming out of surgery, but it will be your responsibility to modify the plan going forward based on the decisions you make regarding your immediate future. Until then, Captain, I wish your good luck and Godspeed!”

  With that, the Admiral withdrew from the room. It was just as well, as Emily needed most of the available space in the room to move Sted from the bed to the gurney. In the lower lunar gravity, his weight would not be a problem. She could easily move him. The only thing that made this difficult was working around the various attachments between him and the equipment on the gurney.

  “Captain Richardson, can you hold on to these three lines while I shift your weight? Hold them up high enough so that when I lift your torso and then set you down on the gurney, the lines don’t get caught under your backside. Then I can rearrange everything appropriately once you’re settled.”

  “Certainly,” Sted replied. “How long do I have to have this IV drip going and the monitoring devices attached?”

  “Your IV will probably be removed sometime tonight, but that depends on the doctor’s evaluation of your progress on getting your digestive track working normally. The monitoring lines will remain in place for at least a week.”

  After reorganizing everything on the gurney so that Sted was comfortable, she swung the gurney around to point what was left of his legs toward the door. “Okay, let’s get you downstairs to the computer lab so Larry can get you set up properly.”

  Sted knew things were moving rapidly, but somehow, he didn’t care. He knew he would make the effort to write to Lorraine and Jeremy’s families, because that was his responsibility. That was about the extent of his plans. After that he just wanted to curl up into a ball and escape the pain of their loss.

  Chapter 10 – The Newsies

  The print media was almost dead. Everyone relied on one or more forms of electronic media to catch up on the day’s news and events. That was the problem. If you controlled all forms of electronic media, you controlled the flow of information to almost everyone on the planet. This was particularly true in the North American Union (NAU) and especially in the larger cities like New York City, Chicago, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. The masses in those cities had to be kept in the dark about any bad news to prevent possible rioting and looting. Freedom of the press had been thrown out the window with the NAU in control of the vids and the Internet.

  The only exceptions were the splashy tabloids found at all of the grocery stores’ checkout lanes and in most bodegas around the city. Very few people believed what they read in the tabloids, but it was too much fun to read and speculate about the rich and famous celebrities around the country and around the world.

  The “Insider” knew that many important stories were suppressed in the electronic media, so he decided to go with Plan B. He would leak the information to someone in the tabloid print media. By the time it got out, it would be too hard to suppress the story.

  Tendrils of the hot and muggy summer afternoon seemed to find their way past all the defenses of the small, ramshackle offices of the New York Rag. The building on Canal Street in Manhattan had definitely seen better days, and the central air was fighting a losing battle.

  Richard Collins could barely afford the rent for the upper two floors above the ancient Burger King at street level. The top floor held what was left of the Rag’s assets, which consisted of little more than a few desks, overflowing file cabinets, four workstations, and ten-year-old communications equipment necessary to transmit each edition of the Rag to Splash Printing.

  The fourth floor was not much better than the fifth. Richard’s apartment mirrored his life. Every piece of furniture had seen better days, and the dust collecting in the corners and under the bed whispered of sadness and decay.

  If the circulation of the Rag did not pick up soon, the paper would go the way of Richard’s marriage. That would mean that his five employees would be out of a job, and several of his bloggers would lose their main source of income.

  A change was needed, and Richard was keenly aware of this fact, but the direction of that change was a mystery to the only son of the founding editor of one of the few remaining tabloid newspapers on the island. Tomorrow morning’s edition was a wrap, but Richard knew the stories were tepid at best. What could he do to breathe some life into the Rag?

  The incoming mail notification sounded from the iBlog server right next to his desk. The train whistle sound had been set up by his father to indicate the arrival of a story from a blogger of unknown origin. It was a sound that the walls of this office had not heard in years.

  Richard woke up his workstation and logged onto the server, thinking this was either an omen of good things to come or the death knell of his paper.

  The lead on the blog read, “Space Navy Scrambling.” The blogger identified him or herself as “The Insider,” which was intriguing. What followed was a comprehensive story of how the United Space Navy (USpN) was having a difficult time organizing a last-minute asteroid redirect mission (ARM) for a small asteroid heading toward a possible collision with Earth. It detailed a rare accident at Tranquility Base on the moon where a small meteorite had killed two officers and nearly killed the captain of the USpN Revere as they were about to be briefed on the mission.

  The writing was riveting, and the story would catch the attention of New Yorkers if the facts could be verified. At the end of the transmission were instructions for payment to the author if the story was published, along with the name and VidPhone addresses of the chiefs of information at Tranquility Base and at the Neil Armstrong Shipyard where the Revere was being refitted for immediate departure.

  Richard clicked on the VidPhone address of Commander Roy Hatchman at the shipyard to verify that USpN Revere was actually docked and being refitted. If that part of the story panned out, he would contact Commander Phyllis Marsden at Tranquility to verify the details of the accident and the possible impact of the asteroid if the mission failed. If he were going to halt the printing of the morning edition,
he would have to hurry. The print resubmission deadline at Splash Printing was only two hours away.

  Chapter 11 – Career Options

  “It is time to wake up, Captain Richardson,” Emily said. “Vice Admiral Bunting will be here in fifteen minutes, and I need that time to refresh your leg preservers.”

  “Whatever,” Sted replied as the dream he was experiencing evaporated into nothingness. His pillow was soaked in sweat again, so he knew something important was happening in the dream, but he could not hold on to what it was.

  “I think it might be helpful if you watch this process so that you can understand that the leg tissue above the cut line is in very good shape. The surgeon’s report indicates that your upper legs are in ideal shape for accepting the new prosthetics.”