“Well, we’re ready to detach Agni any time you say,” Keene told him. He turned and resumed following Shayle.
The Executive Officer watched them for a few seconds and then looked back at the screen. Kelm, the officer leading the descent party, was Dione-born, qualified for the Varuna mission by previous space and surface engineering experience with the Kronian Security Arm. The two of them worked closely together. The EO himself had had some involvement with Terran space operations too, before the calamity—or at least, with people who ran them. Some of those people were at Saturn now. In fact, they had worked quietly but effectively to bring about his appointment to the Varuna mission. But it was considered politic to keep that side of things in low profile—for now.
In the previous world he had come from Europe. His name was Zeigler. Kurt Zeigler.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Almost two years had elapsed since the Security Arm’s former training base on Rhea was obliterated by impacting bodies that got past the LORIN defenses. The base had provided an environment for weapons familiarization, field engineering instruction, and deployment exercises that typified airless surfaces to be found all over the Solar System; but since the disaster, SA had transferred the facility to the less representative but safer location of Titan. The sites being excavated for new industrial installations at Omsk had taken some damage too, Delmor Caton recalled. It had happened when he was on shift as Surface Operations supervisor.
He stared down over the ruin of the training base from the passenger cabin of the personnel bus making its descent after the two-hundred-mile hop from Omsk. In the seat facing him, Hector Norburn from Operations Management, also suited up for surface EVA, was sitting forward and taking in the view intently. Unlike Caton, he had never had reason to come out in this direction previously and had only seen the pictures.
What had been the area used for firing practice and tactical training, along with the landing pads and vehicle servicing shops, was buried under mounds of secondary debris from a three-mile-long furrow gouged into the surface by a grazing impact. Outlying surface installations such as antenna arrays and ground beacons had disappeared. The transporter used by the Security Arm people who had arrived at Omsk earlier was standing in front of the buckled remains of the main surface buildings protruding from an overburden of rubble and rock. Figures were standing around it, easily discerned in their brightly colored surface suits. Norburn had said the party consisted of a colonel, another officer, and three technical specialists.
Although Omsk was in production now, supplying forgings and pressed parts for the spacecraft construction program, Caton was still there with the Construction Directorate, looking after new excavations for an extension to the ore processing and rolling facility. Tanya, his former Terran assistant rescued from Mars, had completed her certification as a mining and drilling engineer despite her breakdown shortly after the tragedy, and had moved to Titan. She had joined a group at Essen who were developing methods of quarrying rocks and moving them based on the revolutionary artificial gravity technology that had emerged in the past year or so.
Artificial gravity!
Caton shook his head at the thought. Either he was going to have to go back to school, or his professional days might be numbered.
Being closest at hand at the time of the disaster, with vehicles and equipment from Omsk at his disposal, Caton had organized the first rescue teams to arrive on the scene. But after the immediate tasks of dealing with the casualties, searching the remains of what was left both above and belowground for more survivors, and clearing the worst of the wreckage were done, the later work of salvaging what could be used and evacuating the facility had been carried out by the Security Arm’s own engineering crews from Titan.
So they had left the remains, deserted and unchanging, apart from the rain of dust and occasional fusillades of larger bodies as Saturn and its moons swept their path through the storm of debris that Athena had stirred up across the Solar System.
And then now, all of a sudden, the Security Arm was interested in the place again and had requested Omsk to provide local transportation and assistance for a team that would be coming from Titan to conduct some kind of reconnaissance out there. Some hours after the SA team departed from Omsk, administration had contacted Caton to ask if he would fly out to the site with Norburn to look at something the SA group had found there. Caton’s name was on record as having been involved in the rescue and cleanup activities following the meteorite impacts, and apparently that was considered significant for some reason.