Tribulation chapter 1

As a mysterious rogue planet passes the solar system, Gentaro Daigo is in the tropics to prove he has what it takes to go to space, and avert a pending treason charge back home in Japan.

 

Tribulation

 

Kaz Morran

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part One

(chapter 1.1 ~ 1.8)

 

#1.1

1770

 

Having rounded Cape Horn, Captain James Cook and the British commissioned Endeavour sailed west to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun. The French instructed its men-of-war to grant the Endeavour safe passage, for her crew was “out on enterprises of service to all mankind.” The resulting observation taught mankind the distance from the Earth to the centre of the Solar System. 

The Endeavour’s chief science objective now complete, Cook unsealed the secret orders for the next phase of their journey: to seek the fabled, Terra Australis Incognita. 

It was there, up the coast of the Coral Sea, on the evening of June 10, 1770, that the Endeavour struck a reef and hours later ran aground. 

And there, the crew encountered a land born in the Dreamtime, born at a time when the world tore in half; at time when the great landmass, Gondwana, broke free from Pangaea, when the crust of Earth buckled, thrusting mountain ranges into being and forming new coastlines, and when lava flowed like wine at the gala of wrathful deities. 

The crew encountered the Kuku Yalanji, keepers of a land where great granite outcrops plunge into canyons of raging rapids, and where coffee coloured rivers meander along banks of mud and mangroves, hidden from daylight by the fog and canopy of the world’s oldest rainforest. It is a land where ancient fauna and flora are preserved as living remnants of the age of dinosaurs; where the chorus of four hundred birds varieties and thousands of insects is never silenced; where fingers of coconut palms reach out over white sand beaches to caress the calm, clear waters of the world’s largest coral reef; and where eight meters of rain can fall in a year, but when the night is clear not a light can be found to hinder the glory of the starry southern sky.

Despite the wedge of coral plugging the breach, water poured into the hull and the ship began to sink. The crew’s frantic efforts to bail water, make patches from sails, and pitch canons to lighten the payload succeeded in keeping the Endeavour afloat. But none of these things could relieve the captain’s mood, and he named the landmarks as he saw them through the filter of the ship’s misfortune: Mount Sorrow, Mount Misery, Weary Bay, and Cape Tribulation, “because here begun all our troubles.”

 

#1.2

Day 1  MON 08/14/2023

05:56

 

The minibus traced the contours of the Captain Cook Highway, deeper into the Australian Wet Tropics. 

Gentaro wiped the condensation from the window with the sleeve of his jumpsuit, and every shade of green in the rainforest streamed past; a wall of vegetation broken only by an occasional waterfall. 

The window re-fogged, and again he wiped it.

“Just open it already,” said Ronin. He glared at Gentaro with one black pebbly eye, then the other, between the gap in the seatbacks. 

Gentaro glanced left, to his seatmate, Nyla. She looked up from her phone, wrinkled her nose, and went back to the screen. 

The window protested with a squeak when he slid it, so he stopped halfway. Six in the morning, Australian winter, but the air blew warm and humid. 

“That’s all?” Ronin’s boulder of a head reappeared between the seats. 

The driver navigated a bend, and a mountainside eclipsed the rising Sun.

The seats bounced, and a second later Ronin’s minotaur-like frame stood in the aisle. He put his hands on the tops of his and Nyla’s seats. His ponytail fell over his shoulder like entrails when he leaned forward and told her to swap seats. Unable to settle on a target, Ronin’s eyes darted back and forth between Nyla and Gentaro. 

“Something on your mind, professor?” said Gentaro.

“After she moves.” He raised his chin.

Nyla reached for the backpack between her feet. “No problem,” she said with a smile that could only have been fake. Diplomacy would score well with the evaluators. She got up and pushed past Ronin before Gentaro could convey any sort of apology on his countryman’s behalf. 

The aisle seat groaned under the sudden weight and broad shoulders of the man who commandeered it. Ronin smiled at Gentaro the way he often did, as if he wanted people to think he knew something they didn’t. 

Ronin’s arm shot toward Gentaro’s head. Just as fast, Gentaro knocked it aside and fought to pin it behind Ronin’s back. 

 Laughter strong enough to pressurize the hull of the bus burst forth from Ronin’s barrel chest. “The window, hafu.” 

Gentaro steadied his breathing, not wanting to show the effort it had taken to block what he’d mistaken for an attack, not wanting to show how deeply that word raked his skin.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Oh? Is it half-breed, then? Or halfwit?”

“What do you want?”

Ronin lunged. His upper body halted before impact; he reached past Gentaro’s head and shoved the window the rest of the way open. The aluminium frame squealed against the damp seals. Ronin cupped his hand on the back of Gentaro’s head, and leaned into Gentaro’s ear, radiating hot, rancid breath, and the stink of deception. But this time, Gentaro didn’t flinch. 

 “What did you tell Nyla?” Ronin hissed. The rush of wind through the window muffled his speech so he need no whisper. “Did you tell any of the others? How about the contractors? Or NASA? Who’d you tell?”

“It’s not in my interest to tell anyone.” 

“Good boy.” Ronin withdrew and patted him on the head. Then he reached for the window and slid it shut, slowly this time. He added, “It’s not very good for the Earth, you know, opening a window when the air conditioner is on.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

Ronin got up from his stolen seat, stroked his ponytail, and traded back with Nyla.

Gentaro saw Nyla, the lone Canadian among the six candidates, reflected in the window against a backdrop of exposed black volcanic rock, watching him, expecting an explanation he didn’t have. She sat with her back as straight as her long black hair, hands folded, like a baby-faced Buddha statue, stoic, but with big black manga eyes that undermined her severity. Superimposed on her refection, the inverted name patch looked back at him from his sleeve -- the words, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. He imagined, as he’d done as a kid, gazing out the window of an airlock, watching the planet cycle by, waiting for his suit to pressurize, waiting to step out into the great black void between worlds. 

If he could get through the next three weeks, he’d finally have a chance to.

 

Three years earlier 

 

“Sorry, can you just turn your mic up a bit?”

“How’s that?”

“Great. And look directly into your webcam, okay? Good. Ready?”

Gentaro cleared his throat and sat up straight. “Ready.”

            “Okay, now just relax and wait for your cue.”

“Got it.”

“Hello, the Universe! You’re listening to Spatial Dimensionswith me, Gareth Shieling, and your co-host, Jesus Cardoza.”

He’d never missed an episode of the podcast through his ear buds. Now, here he was, about to be a guest, albeit through video chat from the comfort of his apartment. 

After Cardoza read some sponsored content, Dr. Shieling gave Gentaro his cue: 

“What’s that, JC? We have a guest?”

“You bet your burning flags we do, Doc. Joining us from across the Pacific, and across spacetime via the magic of a free app, is grad student Gentaro Daigo . . .”

“Hey. Good to�"” 

“Welcome to the show.”

S**t. He wasn’t supposed to talk yet.

“So,” said Dr. Shieling, “Gentaro, you’ve proposed a rather interesting way to study this rogue planet thing, Loki. Is that right?”

“I hope so,” said Cardoza. “Else I don’t know why we got him on the show.”

“It’s a rogue brown gas-giant dwarf star-planet. Some unconventional nomenclature that justifies an unconventional description. What do you call it, Gentaro Daigo?”

“Well it’s right on the border between planet and star. The IAC is calling it a brown dwarf.”

           “Like Jesus Cardoza, here.”

“You said that, not me.” Gentaro laughed, and it came out high-pitched. “Loki is actually more of a bruised reddish purple colour.

           “Oh, so more like what JC has down his�"”

           Cardoza reached across the table in the studio and covered Shieling’s mic. “Hey now. Are we talking about me, or our guest?”

           “So, tell us Gentaro,” Shieling said once everyone had calmed down. “What’s so hard about observing Loki and its moons?”

“Loki’s moving farther out of our sightline as we speak. As it is, the way Loki, its moons, the Earth, and the Sun all line up with respect to the angle of each axis and the solar system’s plane of orbit�"we’re lucky to see anything. And this chance isn’t going to last.”

           “Oh, God, it’s terminal,” said Cardoza, feigning distress. “How long do we have?”

“Twelve years at most.”

Dr. Shieling said, “Twelve years to build, launch, and get something out there to observe those moons.”

“But our man, Gentaro Daigo, has a plan.”

“Well, my team at ISAS does.”

“ISIS? Are you a terrorist, son? Does Japan have terrorists?”

“No, no, no. ISAS is the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. It’s the main research and academic body under JAXA.”

“The Japan Aerospace ex-ploration Agency,” said Dr. Shieling, with emphasis on the ex.

“You got it.”

Cardoza looked into the camera and asked Gentaro, “But how hard can it be to look through a telescope for little green men?” 

Gentaro hadn’t exactly rehearsed, but he expected this question. “So, you’re in LA and I’m near Tokyo. Imagine I put two little Christmas tree LEDs right up to a Tokyo Dome floodlight, and I set the LEDs moving so they only just graze the top hemisphere of the floodlight every so often, but I don’t tell you how often or how fast. Then I get the whole floodlight-LED system zipping around at thirty thousand miles a second. And you’re moving almost that fast too, but around your own even-bigger floodlight and you’re spinning while you’re doing it. Now I ask you to tell me the mass, orbital period, speed, axial tilt, diameter, surface area, volume, core composition, density, temperature, pressure, reflectivity, apparent brightness, magnetism, and radiation of my two little LEDs across the Pacific. Individually. They’re different. Don’t confuse the two. And most importantly, I want to know the chemical composition of their atmospheres�"what gases hover around them, and in what layers and ratios, the changeability, densities, and what that might mean for conditions on the surface of those LEDs, in particular if there could be little microorganisms living there. Critters that�"all LED analogies aside�"on Earth are too small to see without a microscope.”

“Doesn’t sound so easy when you put it like that.”

“It’s an engineering challenge.” Gentaro shrugged. “Engineers like a challenge.”

“And these moons, Brokkr and Eitri . . .” said Dr. Shieling. “It seems like we get a lot of conflicting info about whether they’re habitable.”

“Yesterday they were socialist utopias. Today they are radioactive wastelands,” Cardoza mused. “Nobody knows what’s going on out there.”

“And that’s why we need to go out there and have a look,” Gentaro said.

“Nice segue, G. Tell us about your spacecraft.”

           “It’s called MONSTAR-X.”

“Awesome.”

“The Microlensing Oort cloud Nuclear Space Telescope for Astrobiological Research and Exploration.”

“Wow. How long did it take to grind out that acronym?”

“Wow, what a s****y question, JC. Let the man speak.” 

“First,” Gentaro said, “I want to be clear that this is only a concept. It only exists on paper.”

“Got it.”

“Loki is far. In the Oort Cloud somewhere around ten thousand AU. Ten thousand times farther from the Sun than the Earth is. We simply do not have a propulsion system to get us there. Not in twelve years. Not in our lifetimes.”

“But . . .?”

“But for viewing other really distant objects, astronomers have a cheat. A hack. Something really massive like a star or galaxy has enough gravity to bend the light of whatever distant object lies behind it.”

“Gravitational microlensing.”

“Right. We’ve gotten lots of great pictures and data by zooming in on the deep universe this way. Now, obviously there’s no massive galaxy between us and the outer Solar System, but we do have the Sun. The Sun’s gravity is strong enough to bend the light of whatever passes behind it, too, but the focal point isn’t here on Earth.”

“Good thing, or else come midday we’d be like bugs under a magnifying glass.”

“Talk about getting antsy.”

“Hardy har har.”

“The point where light passing from behind the Sun is focused and magnified in front of it�"the solar foci�"starts at five hundred and fifty AU. Still far, but a lot closer than Loki’s ten thousand AU.”

“What kind of magnification and resolution are we talking about?” said Dr. Shieling.

“Depends on the telescope we put out there, and tons of other factors, but in the thesis we say basically it’d be like having Google Maps for those moons.”

“Hot damn, son!”

“I’m not the first to think of using the solar focii as a lens, but I think the architecture my team laid out is the only one that uses a liquid mirror, and magnetic shielding, plus . . .”

“Presumably, it would take more than a few years to build this thing�"”

“Presuming anyone builds it.”

“�"so this thing has to get out to five-fifty AU, farther than anything we’ve ever launched, in something like five or six years. How are you going pull off that feat of engineering?”

“We think we’ve come up with an approach using a hybridized nuclear electromagnetic pulsed plasma thruster,” Gentaro said.

“Nuclear . . .” said Dr. Shieling as if not sure how the word tasted on his tongue.

“The other N-word,” said Cardoza. “People don’t like to hear that word.”

The three of them knew how unfounded people’s fears were, but Gentaro also knew that public�"and more importantly, political�"perception had the power to sink the whole project. 

“The decision to go with nuclear didn’t come easily,” Gentaro said, “but in the end, we saw no other way to get there in time.” Even then, while theoretically doable, nothing close to what MONSTAR-X proposed had ever been done, and plenty of people doubted it could be. 

Dr. Shieling gave Gentaro a good twenty minutes of the podcast to detail MONSTAR-X and persuade the listeners.

“Okay then. We’ll put your contact info and links up on the site if anyone wants to follow your work, and for those who do, what sorts of things can we expect you to be up to in the near future?”

“Well, assuming my thesis gets accepted . . .. I’m not entirely sure to be honest. If JAXA likes the proposal they may want me to stick around. Otherwise, I’ll have to get a real job. Or I might even apply to be an astronaut.”

“Maybe you’ll get to fly your own design.”

“It’s robotic, but maybe they’ll let me push the payload-release button.”

Theme music came on in the studio.

“We wish you the best of luck. A big thanks to Gentaro Daigo of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science for being on the show.”

“Thank you for having me.”

            

 

06:13

 

The bus began to descend, and fat drops of rain burst against the windows. Aside from the occasional flash of lightning, all scenery vanished into the fog.

“People think survival is all about getting water and shelter,” Ronin told his seatmate, Kristen, one of two Americans on the team, a lean shorthaired woman. “It’s not.” And then in the same breath, in a voice as deep as his tact was shallow, Ronin added, “You like snow leopards? I do. Beautiful creatures. Vicious little fuckers when you get them cornered, though.”

Gentaro let out a groan, which made Nyla look over at him. He rolled his eyes and they shared a quiet chuckle. 

Ronin could at least pretend to be a normal. But on second thought, he probably couldn’t. Professor Ronin Aro had been a lot of things in his life, including Gentaro’s mentor and thesis advisor, but he’d never been normal, not as far as Gentaro could tell. And if any of it was an act�"including the his husky, wounded warrior voice�"he never broke character. 

Ronin continued: “The first days of a crisis are crucial. You can only think about water, food, shelter. You secure your basics, and then . . ..” He shifted closer to Kristen, forcing her to retreat against the window. “That’s when your thoughts turn inward.”

“Is this . . .” �"Nyla gestured toward the conversation in the seat in front of her and Gentaro�" “typical?”

“No. Well, yes, but . . ..” It was typical of Ronin, but not of a Japanese astronaut candidate. It wasn’t typical of anyone in Japan outside of a psych ward.

Ronin was a liability to any mission, simulated or not. That much must have been obvious to everyone, and Gentaro felt guilt by association. He didn’t know the details, but midway through the first round, well after JAXA had narrowed down its pool of five thousand qualified applicants to thirty-two, they replaced one of the qualified candidates with Ronin. Despite the obvious risks Ronin posed to team and mission stability, and his many breaches of protocol and outright failures during the first three rounds, he’d staved off disqualification to become the only other candidate besides Gentaro still in the running to be Japan’s next astronaut. His presence in the final round was no mistake. People didn’t go to space on a clerical error.

Project Daintree organizers had named Ronin the excursion’s payload commander, in charge of the safe transport and deployment of any mission-specific equipment. To Gentaro, payload commandersounded like a fake title to make a kid feel big about carrying his own backpack.

“Sorry, you don’t have to answer that,” Nyla said.

“Probably best I don’t.” That may have been a lie. Gentaro could get up right now, go to the back of the bus, and tell the contractors Ronin didn’t belong in Project Daintree, that Ronin posed a serious risk to the participants of objectives of the mission. Of course, that would be the end of Gentaro’s role in the mission, too. Their six-person team would be dissolved. He’d have ruined it for all of them. And Ronin would know. JAXA would know. Detective Sekihara would know. 

 

 

Gentaro kept quiet. He watched the rain streak across the window, imagining the world go by, wondering if he’d get to see that world from beyond the horizon. As the excursion’s navigator�"officially: mission specialist/crew environment, responsible for navigation and cartography�"he’d been assigned a role outside his expertise. His academic background in aerospace engineering had landed him a job with Mitsubishi, working on superconducting magnets for levitating trains. He quit after the company’s two-year probationary training period. Two years also happened to be the minimum work experience needed to apply for an astronaut position. 

 The minibus pulled into the dirt parking lot of a little rundown eco-tour and scuba shop. Four Hilux 4x4s perched proudly in a row, angle parked on a rocky incline against a backdrop of jungle, each sparkling a different hue of masculinity and armed with f**k-you tires, snorkel exhaust, and a bull bar poised to raze a village. 

 “Survival’s no different than space travel,” Ronin told Kristen as he pulled his backpack down from the overhead compartment. He always sounded so intense, like everything pertained to something imminent and life affirming. “Keep your head in the game or lose it. That’s what they say in the Girl Scouts, am I right?” 

“I wasn’t actually a Girl S�"”

“Ever killed a Tibetan snow leopard?” 

“I did,” said Ronin. “With an old Hokkaido invention called a tsuraranyou. An icicle of urine. A pissicle.It’s brilliant. 

“I really don’t�"”

“My head was in the game.”

“What?”

“Like those polar bears who get down real low and wait at the ice for a seal to pop up. I knew to wait. Mindful as a f*****g monk. You’re a zoologist, right?”

“Not exactly, but�"” 

As the excursion’s lone science officer, Kristen would oversee biological and geological sample collection.

“So you can appreciate this.”

“I’m not sure I�"” 

“I waited until she got to suckling her cubs . . .” 

Kristen made a series of small noises, none of which conveyed a desire for Ronin to elaborate, and none of which made him stop. 

Gentaro stepped down from the bus next. Guidebooks failed to mention that beneath the lush green beauty of the Daintree lay a thick foundation of mud, but the feature would haunt the team like a curse, beginning now in the parking lot. Still low in East out to sea, the Sun baked Gentaro through his jumpsuit. The night’s showers and morning mist had retreated, but the ground had yet to dry. Where the claylike packed earth had dissolved, his bootsteps squished against suction; where only the surface had turned slick, he skated with a supressed childlike glee. 

 “Aren’t snow leopards extinct?” Gentaro heard Kristen say to Ronin as the group of six candidates and six contractors made their way across the lot to a paved area beside the shop where a large eucalyptus offered shade. 

“Sure, now,” said Ronin.

“I see,” said Kristen. The evaluators would give high marks for diplomacy. 

They dropped their backpacks against the side of the small, single-storey building and waited for the shopkeeper to show up.

The two crews chatted, joked, and compared muddy pant legs. Thankfully, everyone on the excursion wore uniforms�"blue jumpsuits for the candidates, white for the contactors.

 Unlike the suit jacket and golf pants preferred by his contemporaries, Professor Ronin Aro lectured in a patchwork vest of rodent hides�"the furry memento of an epic escape from a North Korean labour camp across the central Asian steppe. At least that was the story Ronin told. 

Ronin had a lot of stories, and for the moment a crowd of open ears.

Seeing Nyla had strayed from the gathering to the edge of the mud-splattered pavement, Gentaro took the chance to get to know his teammate. She stood, small in stature, but confident and relaxed, feet apart, hands clasped behind her back, and she looked out across the parking lot, up to the fog sweeping over the hills.

“You know,” he said, and cleared his throat, “actually my dad’s from Vancouver.”

She turned her head toward him for half a second and then looked back at the hills.

He made it worse: “But he came to Japan before I was born. And a lot of my family is there.” His gut tensed. She probably thought he was about to ask if she knew any of them. What a stupid icebreaker. He wanted to apologize, explain that a lifetime of being identified and defined solely by his half-ness had polluted his social skills. But that wasn’t something to admit out loud. Word could get back to the evaluators. Of course, no matter how hard they tried to fake perfection, three weeks under surveillance would uncover their cracks.

That was the point of the excursion. 

Still . . .. No need to rush into it.

At last, Nyla turned to face him. She spoke slowly and clearly, her husky voice a contrast to her childlike face. “My family’s in Nunavut.” She didn’t smile.

“Cool,” he said, like an idiot. 

Not until a minute later when she turned away and he saw her in profile did he deduce she was Inuit, and not of Southeast Asian descent as he’d presumed. 

“The real name of this area is Kulki,” she said. Her voice felt therapeutic compared to the toxic discourse wafting from Ronin and the others. “The traditional owners are the Kuku Yalanji.” 

Gentaro nodded. “Do they still live out here?” 

 “Perhaps,” she answered with a side glance past Gentaro toward the knee-slapping merriment over his shoulder. 

He joined her in looking out into the fog. 

She didn’t speak much, he thought. Not that he minded. Although, he couldn’t help see the irony; as the excursion’s flight engineer, she’d be in charge of communications.

He took in the chorus of bird songs and insects, and wondered what it’d be like to live somewhere like Cape Tribulation. Maybe he’d find out. If he did poorly in this final-round excursion he could flee into the rainforest, find a nice little spot populated by psychotropic frogs, plant a flag, and dig in for a long ride through the universe within. He wouldn’t get to ride a rocket to space, but it’d be better than going back to Japan to face The Dick�"Detective Sekihara�"and the bullshit accusations. 

But now wasn’t the time to think about all that. One thing at a time, and for now he had to focus on getting to basecamp. 

 

Gentaro and Nyla turned back toward the huddle against the wall of the shop. 

The contractors nudged each other and giggled at one of their colleagues, who’d strayed solo across the lot to try out selfie poses with the 4x4s. The hair on his forearms waved in the breeze, and salt-and-pepper hair danced atop his photogenic head while he chewed his gum and looked whimsically to the sky through oversized sunglasses. 

As if on cue, an eagle screeched overhead. 

“We call him the Aviator on account of his sunnies,” one of the contractors, a mid-sized, middle-aged British woman, whispered to Gentaro and Nyla, but not at all quietly. “Not one of America’s finest,” she added, and tossed her head back and cackled so wildly Gentaro stumbled backwards.

Gentaro unzipped the front of his jumpsuits and rolled up his sleeves to combat the rising humidity. 

The lady continued, “He couldn’t get hired in the States, so he’s trying his luck in Oz.” She cackled in Gentaro’s direction and took a swig from a thermos. “He got on with some dodgy third-rate island hopper, but his luck must be running out if he’s doing temp gigs for T3.”

Gentaro smiled politely and shrugged.

T3 was shorthand for the company,Tactical and Technical Training.

Tensions between nations always looked small from orbit. Even in the height of Cold War, Soviet and American crews had docked vessels in space and embraced through the hatch. The International Space Station had been continuously crewed since 2000 by a sixteen-nation consortium, so to Gentaro at least, it made sense for JAXA, ESA, the CSA, and NASA to pool their astronaut candidates for Project Daintree. He didn’t find it odd, given NASA’s resources and legacy, for the US to lead the project. But it did strike him as odd that NASA had handed over general operations of Project Daintree to a private security and logistics contractor, namely T3.

“Okay, listen up, AsCans,” called the furry-armed Aviator. He spit his gum into the mud in front of the trucks and stepped on it as if putting out a cigarette. “From here on out, T3 is in charge of your safety and logistics.” He paced the row of 4x4s, splashing red mud up the legs of his white jumpsuit. He spoke for several more minutes, louder and louder, before everyone gave him their attention. “The objectives of Project Daintree are threefold.” He spoke like one of Gentaro’s old supervisors at Mitsubishi: with a rising intonation at the end of each statement, which made him sound pissed off and condescending. “First and foremost, Project Daintree is a test of your interdisciplinary skills. Your adaptability. Your resilience . . .. .”

According to news archives, T3 had once been called, rather ominously, Executive Outcomes. EO used to recruit, train, deploy what they called “private security personnel,” and what the United Nations called illegal mercenaries, a violation of international law that prompted EO to shift focus and rebrand itself  T3.

“Secondly,” the Aviator continued, “the terrain you will encounter is not intended to be a Martian analogue . . .” 

Obviously, thought Gentaro as he stood at attention, itching to jump in one of the 4x4s and get going. 

“But it will mimic the physiological and psychological experiences of off-Earth exploration . . . The other two wings of this trifecta are science, navigation, mapping, and isolation.”

This guy’s an idiot.

“Isolation in particular should be fun for us at T3 to monitor from afar.”

And kind of creepy.

 

“I’m driving,” Ronin yelled when the Aviator finished and the shopkeeper arrived with the keys to the trucks. “You two” �"he pointed with two fingers, one at Nyla, one at Kristen�" “ride with me.” He raised a knowing eyebrow at Gentaro andstroked his ponytail. 

The cab of each truck sat three; two trucks for the candidates, two for the contractors.

“I’ll drive the other one,” Gentaro said, turning a lip up at Ronin, who snorted in reply. 

Gentaro gave a nod to his passengers, Travis Tate and Mats Lindstrom. 

“You guys ready?”

Travis swatted him on the arm. “Let’s do it, bro.”

Admirals and lieutenants suited a navy just fine, but space was the realm of explorers and scientists. The Project Daintree candidates had no ranks, but that didn’t mean they had no commander. 

Commander was Travis Tate must have just come in under NASA’s height, weight, and age limits. He had the head of a Lego figure, but pink and squishy looking like a loaf of ham, and topped with silvery crew cut. Though from the South, he was no redneck. His bio said that in childhood his family had shuffled from one NASA facility to another, and every relative either worked for the agency or in the industry. Travis, however, had gone the route of a Navy test pilot�"the surest of the unsure paths to touching space. 

“Let’s go,” Mats said with a grin, making no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. 

Gentaro imagined Mats, a passive and elongated Swede, more as a dad quietly tagging along on a school trip than as an astronaut. He had kind, slow moving eyes, and a soft smile, and the pattern of his eyebrows and receding hairline formed a Batman logo on his forehead. As a paramedic, he’d worked Rwandan refugee camps and done triage on several frontlines in the Middle East. 

Three weeks in the jungle without a medical mishap would be a miracle, thought Gentaro. Mats would be a good person to have on hand when things went wrong.

 

The 4x4 hit yet another crater of a pothole. Mats’ focus danced between the track ahead and the phone in his hands as he tried to text between jolts. He wanted to update his wife and grown daughters on the progress of his journey before the candidates lost cell reception. 

His eldest, Ester, worried to the point of anger about him. Not about the excursion to Australia; about what came after it if her father got selected. She called him irresponsible. He’d hardly been back in Sweden a year, and already leaving. 

But this time was different. This was what all the other times had been preparing him for.

Freja, his youngest, and not Ester had come to see him off. They met midafternoon at Slottsträdgårdens Kaféand sat outside. Only partly shaded by the parasol; sweating and sipping iced tea, they first made small talk complaining about the heat. He laughed at that now, knowing how nice and cool Scandinavian summer was compared to the heat outside the air conditioned cab of the truck. 

“Are you sure?” Freja had said after she slid off her sunglasses, folded them, and set them neatly down on the table on top of her phone.

“The flight’s tomorrow, sweetie. Everything is set.”

“But are you sure?”

He sat up straight and folded his hands on the table. “Of course.” He gave her a gentle smile. As sure as one could be, anyway. 

Truth be told, he was terrified. But that had never stopped him before.

She mirrored him and pulled her posture straight. Her choice of clothes�"a tank top�"showed her tattoos. He’d gotten used to her tattoos, and to the orange hair she called “apricot” colour, but something new caught his eye. 

“What’s that?” he said, squinting at her.

“What?”

“That.” He pointed to her left breast. Something appeared to be attached to her n****e, threatening to poke through the fabric of her tank top.

“I can see it through your shirt.”

“Pappa!” She covered her chest and twisted her body away from him. 

“Well . . . What do you expect.”

“I expect you to mind your own business,” she said, not quite shouting but loud enough that he glanced around to see if anyone had taken notice. Every table in the garden part of the cafe was occupied, mostly by tourists or students on summer holiday, but they were all busy gabbing.

Mats sighed and said, “Can’t I express a little concern for what my daughter’s been up to?”

She straightened her top and took a drink of her iced tea. The ice had almost melted. “We were talking about yourlife choices. Not mine.”

He raised his hands in defeat. “It’s just kind of weird to see my own daughter with a n****e ring.”

“Then stop staring at my tits, Pappa!” 

The tables around them went silent. Freja’s face went red, and Mats’ might have, too. And the two of them got the giggles. 

“Anyway . . ..” Mats said once they’d regained control.

“About your life choices.”

“I don’t get the sudden concern. It’s not like I never mentioned wanting to be astronaut before.”

She rolled her eyes. “Only a hundred times a day.”

“When you and Ester were little.”

“Exactly. Way back then. We thought it was just a phase you’d grow out of.” She smiled at him, knowing she sounded like the parent now. “Pappa, what are chasing? Didn’t you catch it in Mosul? You can’t save the whole world. I mean, what’s it going to take to�"”

“It’s going to take becoming an astronaut.”

Silently, they studied each other across the table. A frown appeared on Freja’s face but developed into a straight-lipped smile and then a nod. “So what then?” she said. She didn’t sound angry, just worried. She stooped forward and wrinkled her eyebrows. “What happens if they pick you? You’re just going to leave mom and move to the Moon or something. I mean, you don’t even speak the language.”

“Funny, Freja.” 

“Well?” Her eyes had welled up, but she kept it together.

He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. “I’m not going to leave your mother. Of course not. She’d come to Cologne, too. We’ve talked about it.”

“Cologne.” Freja looked to be rolling this over in her mind, likely estimating how long it would take to come visit them.

He helped her out. “Direct from Malmo, it’s only an hour or so.” Of course, he’d also have to do training stints in Houston and Star City, Russia. Maybe Japan or Canada as well. They wouldn’t be gone more than a few months at a time, though. Except if he actually got a launch. That could be from Kazakhstan, the US, French Guyana . . .. Plus the actual mission, of course. But that was all still hypothetical. He hadn’t even gotten to Australia for the final round of selection yet.

Freja sat back and finished her iced tea, which looked to be mostly water now. “You know Ester wanted to be here, too, right?” she said. “To send you off. She’s not categorically opposed to what you’re doing, she just�"”

“I know.”

“She worries about you.”

“I know.”

“We all do.”

“I know.”

A warm, thoughtful silence passed between them. And then: “Pappa?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“Why do you do it? Why Rwanda and Mosul? Why space?”

The server came by to take their glasses and ask if they wanted anything else. Mats checked his watch and Freja told the server they had to go in a minute.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Mats told her once the server left. “But I hope you understand I’m not just checking off boxes.”

“Nobody thinks that.”

“Ester does.”

“She just thinks you don’t care if you die.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Do you know that when you’re stressed you still run your fingers over your head even though you haven’t had hair since I was twelve?” 

“I still have hair.” His voice rose defensively.

She laughed. “Not up on top or toward the front you don’t. And that’s where you need it most�"to protect your thinking parts from the Sun. That’s what you used to tell me and Ester. Maybe that’s what’s making you want to tie yourself to a giant missile. Nothing left to protect your thinking parts.”

“Yeah, that must be it. Good diagnosis, Doc.”

He started to stand, but she reached for his hand to keep him seated.

“Pappa?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Promise you’ll be careful in Australia, okay? We’ll be rooting for you.”

“Promise.”

“Okay then.”

They argued a little over who’d pay the bill, then they hugged, wiped away a few tears, and she called him a taxi to the airport.

 

 

They strapped their packs to the roof and slid into the cab three abreast. The chorus of insects and bird sound barely paused at the sound of truck doors slamming.

As mission navigator, Gentaro probably should have led the four-truck parade, but for once he didn’t mind following Ronin’s lead. Nobody asked if Gentaro was in any way qualified to drive the Bloomfield Track, but as mission navigator, the crew trusted him, as crewmates should. Except that in this case they shouldn’t have. He hadn’t driven a standard in a decade; not since his driving test. 

He loosened his grip on the wheel, rolled his shoulders to relax, and headed out of the parking lot after Ronin’s vehicle onto a narrow but paved road canopied with banana, palm, fig, and, acacia trees. 

Two minutes later the paved road came to an end. A Land Rover, a pair of pylons, and a ROAD CLOSED sign blocked the way. 

A woman in an orange vest wondered out of the bushes. She zipped up her jeans, tossed a roll of toilet paper into the back seat of a Land Rover, and plucked a can of Fanta off the hood the Land Rover.

            The woman went up to the lead truck and Ronin opened the window to talk to her.

            Gentaro expected someone from T3 to get out from one of the rear trucks and go talk to her. When nobody did, Gentaro hopped out of the air conditioned comfort of the vehicle and into the heavy morning air to join the consultation.

            “You missed huge-massive rains on the track a night back,” she told Ronin and Gentaro between sips of Fanta. “Now ‘til a fortnight she’ll be right, before another trough comes in at weekend, but not the agro type, aye.”

“A cyclone?” said Gentaro. 

“Nah, c**t.” She reached under her vest and scratched something. “Gulfies don’t form in August.”

She said she knew they were with Project Daintree.

“You were expecting us, then,” Ronin said. And: “You’re fly is down.”

She checked, and found that it had indeed come unzipped. “F**k a duck,” she said and gave Gentaro her Fanta while she did up her jeans. “’Course I bin expecting you. Where you’re from, do road works folks come out at dawn’s arse crack to guard the traffic cones of a road with no cars?”

“No ma’am,” said Ronin, “there’d be eight guys in hardhats and ties guarding this place, and fifty pink bunnies.”

“She snatched her Fanta back from Gentaro, which she clutched as if scared Ronin and Gentaro were about to rob her of it. 

Gentaro tried to ease her fears. “Sorry, he just means that in Japan�"”

“Waist-high cute plastic bunnies. Big eyes flashing with red hazard lights. Feet black from car exhaust. Each bunny holds one end of a pole, or two if it’s a middle bunny . . ..”

“You folks bin briefed on this track or what?”

Ronin and Gentaro looked at each other and shrugged. 

“No ma’am,” said Ronin. “But down that closed road awaits the destiny of six of the greatest goddamn�"”

“Have a listen, c**t,” she said. 

She told them their GPS would lead them off a cliff more times than keep them on the road, and that to limit the impact on the forest, most of the roads and bushwalking trails around the Daintree were constructed without switchbacks, so they’d be in for some steep climbs. 

She also asked why their organizers hadn’t briefed them on the road conditions. When they had no answer, she handed them each a pamphlet and, before leaving them to their journey, pointed her thumb at the sign behind her vehicle:

 

BLOOMFIELD TRACK

 

UNSEALED ROAD NEXT 32 KM

ROAD IS SUBJECT TO EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS, FLOODING, LANDSLIDES, LOSS OF TRACTION, POTHOLING, FALLEN TREES, AND OBSTACLES THAT CAN RENDER IT IMPASSABLE WITHOUT NOTICE AT ANY TIME

DRIVE ACCORDINGLY

 

 

 Two years earlier

 

 

“Top story this week has to be that big boom over West Africa, hey, JC?”

“You’re so eloquent,” said Cardoza.

“Swakopmund. How’s that for eloquent? Twenty miles above the Namib Desert, near the town of Swakopmund. That’s where the asteroid exploded.”

           “An air burst.”

           “Tell us, JC.”

           “By now, everyone’s seen the videos. A fireball across the midday sky. Thirty meters across. A hundred feet. Ten tons.” Cardoza shrugged and adjusted his headset. “And it blew up just above the ground.”

“Vaporized.”

“The shock wave was kind of cool, right? Blew the roof off a school. Broke some windows. Lots of fun. Nobody got hurt.”

           “It killed a sheep.”

           “Allegedly.”

           “But,” said Dr. Shieling, “this is the third such event in under a year, so people are getting antsy, wouldn’t you say?”

           “People get antsy about a lot of things.”

           “Sure, but imagine it hadn’t done the air-burst thing. It would’ve torn the Earth a new half-mile hole.”

“Like that big hole in Arizona?”

“Don’t dis Phoenix, man. We’ve got listeners there.”

“No points. That was too easy.”

 “Last winter,” Dr. Shieling said, “an asteroid bursts over Mongolia, then Iran, and now Namibia. Aren’t you pissing yourself yet?”

“But it really isn’t that unusual, right Doc? You’ve got followers, man. You’re hitting the panic button. Calm them down. They listen to you.”

            “For you, Jesus . . . Anything,” Dr. Shieling said, then screamed, “Calm the f**k down, Earthlings!”

“Care to elaborate, Doctor?”

“Of course people think there’s an obvious link with Loki.”

“Isn’t there?”

“These kinds of events�"impacts or air bursts�"do happen time to time. Maybe every five or ten years. They aren’t that rare.” 

“Third one in a year, though, man.”

“Right. But twice a decade is average, and it’s basically a guess. But, yes, that might be a bit anomalous. But it’s only three data points. And keep in mind that we live in a time when we’ve never had so many eyes and recording devices and scientific instruments pointed at the sky. If this happens ten or fifteen years ago, no herder on the edge of the Namib Desert is whipping out a smartphone to record his sheep getting atomized.”

“Uh huh. But . . .”

“But nothing, JC. Some pretty basic math not only tells us it didn’t come from that thing whipping by the outer solar system, but that it couldn’thave.”

“You got top people running numbers, Doc?”

“Computer modelling, too, buddy. Scientist greater than me on are on the case, and they see just how little Loki’s gravity influences the Solar System. Nothing in the asteroid belt is even aware of Loki’s existence.”

“Sounds like my marriage.”

“Is that emotion I detect, JC? Have a beer already, will you?”

“So maybe Loki’s chucking rocks at us from farther out then. Out by Pluto in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud.”

            “That’s actually possible. But there’s no way those rocks are reaching us already. Loki is over ten thousand AU, and it’s only been out there stirring things up for a few years. But it’s simply not physically possible that the slight increase near-Earth objects is related to Loki cruising past the outer edge of the solar system. Period.”

“But there hasbeen an increase in near-Earth objects. These little guys that burn up on entry or whiz by. Most weren’t even on our radar, is that right?”

“You know how many NEOs we discovered five years ago, JC?”

“Some.”

“Four per day.”

“Sorry, what? That’s freaking terrifying.”

“And how many are we finding this year?”

“More.”

“Four-point-one a day,” said Dr. Shieling. “Get over it.”

“How come we don’t see them coming sooner?”

“They’re small. They slip past us our defenses. They’re too small to spot or track until they’re on our doorstep. Same thing with the one in Namibia.” 

 “So if they catch us by surprise, they’re probably too small to pose a threat?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“There is a tiny chance that one not quite big enough to spot but not quite small enough burn up in the atmosphere sneaking past our early detection systems.”

“Would it be game over, or what, if the Namibia one had hit a city?”

“The effects would be isolated. The blast would dissipate and�"”

“How about earthquakes or tsunamis?” 

“Not likely from something that small. I’d have to do the math, but I suppose a small tsunami if something hit off the coast is possible. Or, maybe a localized tremor if it hit land. But I really wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

“Well, sweet dreams, everyone.”

 

06:39

 

At first, Gentaro struggled to keep up with Ronin over the bridgeless river crossings, muddy slopes, minefield-like stretches of potholes, and fallen trees, but once he accepted a certain amount of slipping and sliding, he relaxed behind the wheel and let himself have a little fun with it. 

Twenty minutes in, it began to rain. He kept plenty of distance between him and Ronin, but the wipers only did so much to clear the flying mud. The rain picked up, and he did up the windows and put on the air conditioning. In fiddling with the console, something caught his eye.

            “You guys notice something weird about this set up here,” Gentaro said and he tapped a device mounted under the rear-view mirror.

            “Just a drive recorder, bro,” said Travis.

            “Sure, but�"”

            “It’s two way,” Mats said from the middle seat.

            One lens aimed out at the road�"nothing strange about that�"but a second wide-angle camera pointed at Travis, Mats, and Gentaro. 

Up ahead, Ronin’s 4x4 hit a dip and flew a good half-meter in the air accelerating out of the rim. Gentaro slowed to add space between him and Ronin so he could get a good run at the jump, but the camera in his face changed his mind. Travis laughed at their apprehensive approach, and harder when Gentaro dropped down to low gear to crawl out over the rim. The implication of his laugh being that Gentaro had chickened out.

            The candidates all knew they’d be monitored during the expedition. Gentaro didn’t think T3 he’d have a camera in his face while he drove, though. They hadn’t even gotten to basecamp yet.

            Travis reached up and gave the fisheye his thumbprint. “It’s probably got a mic, too,” he said.

            Gentaro kept one eye on the track and one hand on the wheel while he bobbed his head around the camera and probed it with his free hand, searching for a mic.

            Water showered in the air as the lead vehicle stormed through a creek. 

“Giver, bro,” yelled Travis.

Gentaro focussed on the road, sped up the wipers, and gripped the wheel with both hands. He gunned it just as the front tires reached the water.

“Ah, there’s the mic,” Mats said. “Mounted in the roof.”

Only for a second, all eyes drew to the roof. But in that second, as Ronin’s truck left the creek, the spray of water out the back end stopped, revealing that Ronin had spun his truck sideways and blocked the road. Had Gentaro’s eyes been on the path ahead and not the mic in the roof he might have had time to stop. 

He hit the brakes. The truck skipped and skidded over submerged rocks. The front tires jacked left. Travis, Mats, and Gentaro flung and bounced against each other, and around the cab, constrained by the three-point belts. The truck tipped forward and right, teetered as if undecided, and pitched down onto the passenger side. The truck came to rest in the creek, tilted 45 degrees on its side, propped against the bank of rocks.

“Do you mean to do that, bro?”

“Yeah, man.”

“And it’s all on video,” added Mats. “On mic, too.”

S**t.This would not look good on Gentaro’s evaluations. Think, he told himself. Think . . .. “Uh . . . Did you guys see that? Right out of the sky. It must have been a meteor fragment. Wow. You guys saw it, right? I must have just barely avoided it.”

Mats didn’t catch on right away, but Travis did. “Yeah, it was like, Whoosh!Crazy fast. Nice driving, bro. I can’t believe you managed to dodge it. Mad skills, bro. You totally saved us.”

Now Mats clued in. “It probably moved too fast even for the camera to see it.”

 “Oh, right. Good point,” Gentaro said from his lopsided perch high on the driver’s side. He hadn’t thought of that.

Travis wasn’t done. Squashed against the door, pinned by the weight of two men, he kept up the charade. “A lot of these fireballs and air bursts lately. It’s probably not as uncanny as it seems. I bet a hundred cars a day get bumped over like this.”

That was about all Gentaro could stand. Any more and he’d erupt with laughter, and that wouldn’t help Travis’ plight at the bottom of the heap. But by then, a crowd had gathered around the vehicle to help them down. 

Gentaro did his window down and turned off the engine.

“You want out?” Ronin called to Gentaro from outside.

Gentaro stretched his head out the window and looked around. Ronin, Kristen, and Nyla stood knee-deep in the swift moving current beneath him, but the T3 contractors stayed back by their trucks, dry and chilled, and probably taking notes. 

“Nah,” Gentaro said. “Just winch us down.”

“Say please.”

Gentaro knew Ronin well enough to know he meant it. If Gentaro didn’t comply, they weren’t going anywhere for a long time. “Please,” he said, with his biggest fake smile.

Ronin reached up, and before Gentaro could tell him to use the wench, the vehicle plunged back down on all four tires with a violent bounce that jolted the occupants and nearly rolled them right over onto the other side.

“Say thank you, half-breed.”

“Thank you.” 

Better half-bred than inbred, you sloped-brow troglodyte.

 “Race you to basecamp!” Ronin smacked Gentaro’s and sprinted through mud back to his own vehicle before the parade of 4x4s continued, slip-sliding away, up the track toward Wujal Wujal. 

 

 

Thank you for reading. Your comments (good or bad -- especially criticism) are greatly appreciated.

More chapters coming soon. Just ask me if you want them right away.

 

 2018 © Kaz Morran

[email protected]

ISBN: 978-0-9939363-0-2

Sendai, Japan / B.C., Canada

Author's Note

Is the character of Ronin Aro too ridiculous, too over-the-top?
General criticism is greatly appreciated. Basically, does it make you want to read the next chapter?