Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(44)

“Can we even reach Beta?” Charlotte asks. “And even if we do find it, does the ship have enough—whatever, fuel or reactor power—to get to it? And return home?”

Grigory shrugs. “Depends on where it is and how fast it’s going.”

He leaves unsaid my feeling that none of us are getting home.

“Once we have that information, we can plan accordingly,” Min says. “And to be clear, Charlotte, the Pax doesn’t need to reach the artifact. The ship just needs to be in range of our drones in order to run tests—and wage war if needed.”

A silence settles over the group. Finally, Min says, “Look, I want to know what happened to the Fornax too. But that curiosity doesn’t justify another drone right now. We need to find one of the artifacts.”

Min makes some good points, but his focus is too narrow.

I hand my tablet to him. It shows the Pax and Fornax docked while moving through space.

“Actually, contacting the Fornax is about more than just solving the mystery of what happened. It’s related to your point: drones. We,” I point to Harry and Emma again, “also feel that drones are our primary resource limitation. The Fornax should have drone components that we could transfer here. We know that without Harry they have no way of building drones themselves.”

Min passes my tablet to Grigory, who squints and taps at it. Lina is beside him and leans over to study the screen.

“How feasible is this?” she asks.

“Feasible,” Grigory says. “Will take some work.”

In the end, we decide that we will begin on that work: preparing to dock with the Fornax. Grigory and Min will lead the project. And we decide not to launch a drone to the Fornax for now.

The next launch will be a small, high-speed drone fleet sent to look for the second artifact. We entertain the idea of sending another high-speed drone to search for the first fleet of drones, but decide to wait.

When the meeting breaks, I don’t return to the lab immediately. I go to the med bay, where Izumi is head-down over her tablet.

“Iz.”

She turns to me.

“It was a good idea—breaking the meeting and the straw poll. We’re all stressed out, and we have to be able to debate ideas. That ups our chances of success.”

“It didn’t work.”

“That’s not the point. You tried your best idea, and I bet you learned from it, and I bet your next attempt will be better.” I motion out the small porthole. “That’s what we’re doing out here, every one of us. Trying our best idea and learning from it.”

“Maybe you should be ship’s doctor. You seem to know people.”

“Trust me, Izumi, I’m much better with robots than humans.”

On my way out of her station, I call back to her, “Chin up. You’re doing great.”

As I bound through the modules, on my way back to the lab, I’m struck by how hard Izumi’s job is. The rest of us have our field here on the ship and with the core mission—drones, propulsion, navigation, software, and first contact. Izumi’s focus is secondary and much more unpredictable. Her job is us. Keeping us functioning at optimal efficiency. I don’t envy her.

In the lab, Emma is strapped to the work table, legs pedaling the bike below, hands soldering a circuit board above.

“I feel like a hamster in space,” she says without looking at me.

“So is this a bad time to talk about a ceiling-mounted water bottle with a spout?”

She smiles. “Yes, it’s a bad time to talk about that.”

She studies the circuit board, seems to like what she sees. “How’d you think the meeting went?”

“Pretty good.”

She scrunches her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Really. Everyone on the ship sees the mission differently. That’s good. Min is right. We need to find one of the artifacts, and the one we’ve been chasing could be long gone.”

“You think we have a real shot at finding the other one?”

“I think we’ve got to try.”





Six days later, we launch the Icarus fleet, which consists of three ultra-small, fast drones designed to find Beta. We ultimately decided that if we’re going out there to search, we need to do it right: three drones can cover three times the area.

It’s a good plan, and the Icarus drones are an even better design than the Janus drones. But still, there’s little enthusiasm at the launch. On the whole, everyone seems to feel the same thing: we’re losing time, and we’re not even sure we’re on the right track.

At the next meeting, we debate dispatching a drone to Earth with news. The proposal is narrowly defeated.

Harry, Emma, and I continue work on the mother drone, which we’ve nicknamed Madre. Or sometimes Madre de Dronay. What can I say, it gets monotonous some days in the lab, so we entertain ourselves. Harry is the main instigator in that regard. Today, he suggested we rename it the drone father, then “the Godfather, drone edition.” He does a pretty good impression of Marlon Brando from the old Godfather movie.

His voice is gravelly: “As a drone, you never let anyone know what you’re thinking. You don’t broadcast. You keep your mouth shut. And you comm-patch what you know to your family. Family is everything.”