The Vostok Revelation

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hadfield Mining Station, Outer Main Belt. November 2339.

The last of the four re-purposed mineral probes moved to within 500,000 kilometers of the objects lingering between Uranus and Neptune. Pleased with the rapidity of his team’s improvised solution, Ben Carson, Technical Supervisor of Hadfield Mining Station, verified the signal integrity and strength between the three fixed nodes in the proposed relay. In less than thirty minutes Probe One would fall into position approximately 100,000 kilometers from the objects, completing the communication relay.

Using their limited resources and mimicking the Federation’s Deep Space Communication Network, the Hadfield solution placed one probe every 250,000 kilometers across the last million kilometers leading up to the objects. Probe One was provisioned with more power and as many communication and sensory devices as Hadfield could craft or scavenge. It would scrutinize the objects from a safe distance, perhaps even attempt to establish contact, and then transmit the opening salvo in what was hoped to be a slow but efficient data stream back to Hadfield. Hadfield would then amplify and retransmit the consolidated and compressed data to the Deep Space Relay Network between Earth and Mars which would, due to the two planets current alignment, deliver it to Ottawa in approximately twelve minutes time.

Probe One broadcast its full spectrum of electromagnetic waves to assess the four objects. Seconds later a wealth of spectroscopic data began to populate its memory banks. Approaching its memory capacity, following protocol, it prepared to make its broadcast to the next leg in the communications relay, Probe Two.

Barely completing its initial broadcast, the volume of incoming data doubled. Its memory buffer full again, Probe One dutifully broadcast its payload to Probe Two. A half-second after Probe One’s memory store flushed it was saturated by more incoming data, which had again doubled in capacity. Promptly Probe One broadcast its payload.

Ten seconds later, with the volume of the incoming data stream steadily increasing, a fault occurred within Probe One.

All wave broadcast to and from the probe ceased.

Hadfield Mining Station, Outer Main Belt. November 2339.

“Shit,” Carson slammed his palms down on the padded armrests of his office chair. After waiting fifteen minutes for any signal to arrive from the relay the transmission cut-off after only a few seconds. Annoyed, he verified the signal strength between each of the four nodes. The issue was with Probe One, the only probe that was more than a dumb rely terminal. Probe One still had power. Whatever occurred had crippled all communication to and from the probe. If Carson and his people couldn’t reestablish a link to Probe One the twenty-eight megabytes of data would be the only hard information Ottawa and the Federation would receive.