Lieutenant Sun’s models had confirmed Zhang’s instincts. The Nixon was a million kilometers from Saturn, far from the Celestial Odyssey, but it was only moving away at nine kilometers per second. That velocity would steadily increase, day by day, but the Nixon would be gaining only a few kilometers per second each day.
The Celestial Odyssey was traveling twice as fast and it would pick up even more velocity with its course correction burn. It’d lose speed relative to the Nixon as it coasted in free fall, but the Chinese ship would put as much distance between itself and Saturn in a day as the Nixon had in eleven. By then the Nixon would’ve moved on, ever-accelerating, but the Celestial Odyssey still had the sprint advantage.
With some midcourse corrections, as soon as they got an exact fix on the Americans’ intended flight path, the Chinese ship could catch up with them in a little over a day and a half. They’d both be about two million kilometers from Saturn and their velocities would match. A rendezvous was achievable, a rescue possible.
The scopes on the Nixon easily picked up the Chinese exit burn. The ten plasma exhausts were impressively bright even from a million kilometers.
Fang-Castro had been eating breakfast in her quarters with Martinez, talking about the condition of the ship and the testing of the alien readers, when Francisco called from the bridge. She tried not to jog to the command station, the better to maintain her dignity.
“Not another antimatter depot?” she blurted.
“No, the flare’s continuing and we’re not seeing any gamma rays. The Chinese are leaving. It’s the only thing it can be.”
She watched for a while, then said, “Department head meeting in half an hour. Comm, let everybody know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Fang-Castro went back to her fake scrambled eggs and real oatmeal.
The duration of the burn was a surprise. “Admiral, they’re not heading back to Earth as fast as I would’ve expected,” said Harbinson, from Navigation, at the meeting. “Unless they’re planning a big burn later, which wouldn’t be a very efficient use of their reaction mass, it’ll take them two and a half years to get home.”
“They took a lot of external tank damage during the aerobraking,” Martinez said. “Maybe this is all they’ve got. They escaped retrograde, like we did, the fastest way to drop down to Earth’s orbit. Or maybe the depot’s security AI ordered them to go, and they’re simply hightailing before something bad happens.”
“All speculation. We’ll have a better idea after they do their course correction burn,” said Fang-Castro. “Nonetheless, I’m happy to see the last of them. We’re fortunate we beat them to the depot and that our bluff worked. The shoe could’ve been on the other foot.” She turned to the President’s liaison. “Mr. Crow, do you have anything to add?”
Crow nodded. “I hope you’re right… about seeing the last of them. We have some intelligence that has suggested that Beijing is looking into various rescue plans. We’ve also heard that Beijing has told Xinhua to reserve a block of vid time for a special presentation”—he looked at the time code in the corner of the room’s vid screen—“about forty-five minutes ago. We’ll see it in another thirty, if it’s relevant. We have to consider the possibility that they’re not headed for Earth—that they’re coming after us.”
Fang-Castro looked at him for a moment, then said, “Oh… no.”
Oh, yes.
As soon as the Chinese burn began, the information ministry released the pretaped interviews with Zhang, in Chinese only, and Cui, in Chinese and English. Her children were seen on swing sets at a Chinese elementary school, with their handsome father, waiting for Mom to get home… if only the Americans would help.
The Nixon’s leadership was still sitting in the conference room, waiting, more than anything, when the first reaction arrived, Santeros herself, from the Oval Office:
“The goddamned Chinese are asking for a rescue. They say the Celestial Odyssey has calculated a trajectory that will pair up with you in a day or so….” She called off-screen, “Is that right? A day or so? A day and a half?”
She turned back to face Fang-Castro and the others. “A day and a half. They issued the goddamnedest propaganda vid you ever saw, the Odyssey’s first officer, cute as a button, hoping we’ll help, pictures of her kids at their school, waiting for Mom. She speaks English… the vid’s gone viral, it’s on a half-billion phones in India alone, probably a hundred million here…. We’re gonna cut it in at the end of this briefing so you can see it yourself. We got all the big brains working on a reaction, but I’m telling you, there’s no way we can say no. Not with those kids on the swing set. I suspect they’re about to produce a vid of her breast-feeding the little fuckin’ crotchfruit.
“So, you need to start thinking about how to contain the Chinese, because they’re coming for you. What’s gonna happen then, we don’t know, but we’re working on scenarios. You better start working on some of your own, you know the ship better than we do.” She looked to the side again, this time asked, “What? What? Oh, yeah.” She turned back to the camera. “Some of our guys think that they’re, well, they’re gonna try to take the Nixon. Take the alien tech. Can’t let that happen. That’s the first priority: they cannot have the tech. Let us know what you’re thinking…. Here comes the vid.”
The rest of the day was taken in video-conferencing, with the tiresome round-trip time in the discussions.
Toward the end of the day shift, Ferris Langers pinged Fang-Castro; a ping with an urgent tag. She was in the bathroom. Fang-Castro had a number of informal rules, which, though informal, were quite clear to her staff. One was that if a ping was labeled urgent, it goddamned well better be urgent. The goddamned was not articulated but was well understood.
She touched her slate, audio only. “What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Ma’am, I’ve been running the numbers of the Chinese ship. The solutions don’t make any sense for a return to Earth. I guess I’m confirming what everybody’s saying. They’re coming after us.”
“Would you care to elaborate on that?” A pro forma request. She’d known what the Chinese were doing since the moment Crow suggested it, even before the call from Santeros.
“The Odyssey just completed their inclination and course correction burns. When I figured up their new trajectory, it was still directed at the inner solar system, but it came close to ours. I ran the timeline forward, and it wasn’t just close. In a little more than a day, they’re going to be at about the same place in space that we will, with a similar velocity vector.”
She commed Crow. “Mr. Crow, the Chinese have corrected course, and there’s no longer a question. I need you in the conference room, fifteen minutes. Bring all your ideas.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She closed the link. After issuing several other peremptory come-hithers, she poured a cup of tea, cradled it in her hands, and thought very hard about just how much trouble they might be in.
When Fang-Castro arrived at the conference room twenty-two minutes later, she was gratified to see that everyone she had summoned was already seated. Crow, looking pensive; Martinez, almost sleepy, which meant he was thinking hard; Major Barnes, freshly out of medical isolation, intent; Fiorella, engaged; Lieutenant Langers; and Greenberg, the chief engineer. All swiveled in their chairs and looked at her as she entered the room. Darlington didn’t; he was busy checking the settings on the recording equipment. Langers kept glancing down at his slate, where orbital models were running.