Critical Mass Read online

  Also by Daniel Suarez

  Daemon

  Freedom™

  Kill Decision

  Influx

  Change Agent

  Delta-v

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2023 by Daniel Suarez

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  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Names: Suarez, Daniel, 1964- author.

  Title: Critical mass : a novel / Daniel Suarez.

  Description: [New York] : Dutton, [2023]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2022017530 (print) | LCCN 2022017531 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593183632 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593183649 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Science fiction. | Novels.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.U327 Cr 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.U327 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017530

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017531

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender; Cover images: (moon) Romolo Tavani / iStock / Getty Images; (space) Andrei Cosma / Arcangel

  Adapted for ebook by Estelle Malmed

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_6.0_142488116_c0_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Daniel Suarez

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: Earthbound

  Chapter 1: Reckoning

  Chapter 2: Prognosis

  Chapter 3: Liftoff

  Chapter 4: Master Plan

  Chapter 5: Ajegunle

  Chapter 6: Wide-Awake

  Chapter 7: Waterline

  Chapter 8: The Cape

  Chapter 9: Smoke Screen

  Chapter 10: Oga

  Chapter 11: Through the Looking Glass

  Chapter 12: Adrift

  Chapter 13: Cargo

  Part Two: Orbital

  Chapter 14: Transit

  Chapter 15: Base of Operations

  Chapter 16: Ex Post Facto

  Chapter 17: Settling In

  Chapter 18: La Trocha

  Chapter 19: Visitors

  Chapter 20: Mission Plan

  Chapter 21: A Slender Thread

  Chapter 22: Distraction

  Chapter 23: Realm of Possibility

  Chapter 24: Green Team

  Chapter 25: Surface Operations

  Chapter 26: Nightfall

  Chapter 27: Price of Admission

  Chapter 28: Declaration

  Chapter 29: LOC/LOM

  Chapter 30: LEML-Mark-I

  Chapter 31: Skin in the Game

  Chapter 32: Monument

  Chapter 33: A Going Concern

  Chapter 34: Conception

  Chapter 35: A Modest Proposal

  Chapter 36: Biosphere

  Chapter 37: Topping Out

  Chapter 38: Proliferation

  Chapter 39: Monster

  Chapter 40: Legacy

  Chapter 41: The Exchange

  Chapter 42: Debtpocalypse

  Chapter 43: Overton Window

  Chapter 44: The Amy Tsukada

  Chapter 45: Oberhaus

  Chapter 46: Confrontation

  Chapter 47: Return

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix

  Further Reading

  About the Author

  _142488116_

  For Michelle Sites, my guiding star

  Give me but a place on which to stand, and I will move the world.

  —Archimedes of Syracuse

  Prologue

  MARCH 5, 2038

  Adedayo Adisa stared at a holographic model of Earth floating translucent before him. With a hand gesture he altered a red line that skimmed the virtual planet’s atmosphere, causing the line to plunge downward and terminate on the model’s surface. Another adjustment and the line once more rebounded back into space. Gesture after gesture resulted in more of the same—either burning up on reentry or skipping back off into space. No iteration resulted in a stable planetary orbit.

  Footsteps sounded on the decking behind him and then the wheel of the habitat’s pressure door rotated, creaking open.

  He turned to see Isabel Abarca step into the compartment and unclip her long black hair. She rubbed her scalp as she sighed in exhaustion. Her faded blue flight suit was patched with white Kapton tape in several places.

  She resealed the pressure door behind her, then looked up. “The number two oxygen generator needs maintenance. We’ll have to cannibalize parts from Hab 2.” She noticed the holographic model. “How are they doing?”

  Adisa’s Nigerian accent was thicker than usual, betraying his stress. “Their spacecraft is on course to encounter Earth in twenty-six days.”

  She smiled. “Then you did it, Ade.” Abarca came up to look over his shoulder. “So they’ll make it back to Earth.”

  “Yes—but only momentarily.” He tried another failed trajectory.

  Abarca’s smile faded and she sank into a seat next to him at the galley table. She stared at the holographic model, too.

  Adisa remained uneasy. “Because of their delayed departure, high velocity was necessary to encounter Earth—which means they will have difficulty slowing on arrival. On their current trajectory our crewmates will skim Earth’s atmosphere at over 100,000 kilometers per hour. At that speed orbital capture through aerobraking is difficult. They are likely to either plunge too deeply into the atmosphere—burn up and die—or sail straight through and back into deep space. Lost forever.”

  “How likely?”

  It was several moments before he answered. “Atmospheric variability makes it impossible to know for certain, but their autopilot software will not even calculate an aerobrake solution at that velocity. The required deceleration might kill them. Which means they will have to pilot the craft manually through unknowable variables—all while under 10 or more g’s. A feat that I have been unable to model.”

  Abarca studied the hologram silently as the virtual ship burned up yet again.

  “I fear that by guiding them onto this trajectory I have not saved our crewmates—but killed them.”

  “There was no other choice, Ade.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “We were out of time, and that piecemeal propulsion system was imprecise. Without your course corrections they would have missed the Earth entirely.”

  He gazed at the hologram. “That was only necessary because I took too long integrating systems. If I had finished on schedule, we would have made the transfer window to Earth and all returned hom
e safely. The fault is mine.”

  “It was no one’s fault. Rushing that work could have caused ten other failures. Again: missing the Earth entirely.”

  “It hardly matters now.” He lowered his head. “Do I contact them? Do I let them know?”

  “No. They’ll realize their situation soon enough. Allow them their hope.”

  He sat for several moments in silence. “I compelled them to go.”

  “We compelled them.” She leaned down into his view. “If they stayed, we’d all starve.”

  He turned to her. “So we get to survive while our friends die?”

  She gave him a woeful look. “Oh, Ade. The Konstantin is breaking down; even if we had the parts, two people can’t maintain this ship.” She turned to the hologram. “That was the last chance for any of us to get back.”

  “I had to stay behind, but you did not.”

  “We discussed this. A captain doesn’t leave people behind. And as it turns out, it made no difference.”

  Adisa nodded.

  “If anyone deserves blame, it’s me. I’m the one who recruited you all.”

  “Then you should blame Nathan Joyce—he recruited you.”

  She laughed grimly. “I guess there’s blame enough to go round.”

  “We all knew the risks, but I had hoped I would at least get Priya, James, and Han back home safely. Instead, the entire expedition has failed.”

  “I disagree.” Abarca gestured toward the curving aluminum wall of the habitat’s core, upon which scores of “firsts” were scrawled like graffiti in permanent marker ink. “Look at the history we’ve made out here. We’ve gone farther and longer in deep space than anyone. We perfected asteroid mining. We sent back thousands of tons of refined materials toward lunar orbit—enough to get humanity started in the cosmos. I’d say that’s a success.”

  Adisa studied the achievements on the wall—many written by crewmates now deceased. “Do you really think it will make a difference, what we did out here?”

  Abarca was about to respond when Klaxons sounded an alarm. A synthetic female voice said, “Critical alert: new radar contact. Repeat: new radar contact.” Strobe lights flashed on the ceiling.

  Adisa gazed up and sighed. “More debris . . .” With a wave of his hand, he swept aside the hologram of Earth and brought up another virtual window, this one showing the ship’s radar console. A blip glowed a hundred kilometers out from their position alongside the asteroid Ryugu. “Wait . . . this is something else.”

  Abarca pondered the screen. “Is it the Argo?”

  She was referring to a robotic mothership sent to Ryugu three years earlier by a billionaire competitor of their boss, Nathan Joyce. Several such billionaire “Space Titans” were vying to mine off-world resources, and kilometer-wide Ryugu was the most promising asteroid in the inner solar system. However, unlike the Konstantin, the Argo was autonomous and had lain dormant ever since its dozen mining crafts broke down—defeated by the asteroid’s highly abrasive regolith.

  Though not before killing a member of the Konstantin’s crew.

  “No. The Argo has not moved.” Adisa pointed at a different blip well over a hundred kilometers out and off to the side. “This is something new.” He checked the telemetry. “And it is adjusting course to match Ryugu’s orbit.”

  Abarca opened up another virtual window—this one a feed to an optics array. She aimed a camera at the incoming bogey, and in a moment they had a visual. The virtual screen revealed an ungainly spacecraft against a background of stars. “I’ll be damned . . .”

  The mystery vessel consisted of a propulsion unit docked to a series of other modules—the lead one an old Soyuz capsule. The ship’s rocket engine was oriented away from them, burning silently to circularize its orbit.

  Adisa zoomed in the image. “No visible markings. Perhaps a robotic resupply craft?”

  She pointed. “Those look to be life support modules. A small centrifuge segment.”

  “Perhaps it is a rescue vessel meant for us.”

  “It’s too late for a return trajectory to Earth, and mission control would have told us.”

  Adisa nodded glumly, then checked comms. “If someone is aboard, they are not hailing us.”

  She stopped short. “Maybe because they believe the crew of the Konstantin is dead.”

  Adisa looked at her. “So you think this was sent by the new owners?”

  “Don’t grant them that much legitimacy. They’re Nathan’s creditors, nothing more.”

  “But why would they send a ship?”

  “This could be a replacement crew.”

  Adisa was taken aback. “You think they would actually send people out here?”

  “It’s starting to make sense. Their refusal to honor our contracts with Nathan, even though we mined all these resources—and then remotely shutting down our life support. If you hadn’t found a work-around we’d all be dead. The plan might always have been to get rid of us and recrew the ship with their own people during Ryugu’s next close approach to Earth.”

  Adisa looked aghast. “If it is a replacement crew, what happens when they discover us still alive?”

  She studied the screen. “I don’t know.”

  The incoming vessel continued its circularization burn, edging closer by the minute.

  Abarca spoke without taking her eyes off the screen. “How many mules are still operational?”

  “Just one. At the upper airlock.”

  “Move it into the supply yard.”

  “Surely you are not thinking of ramming them?”

  “No, but I’m keeping our options open.”

  Adisa instantiated a virtual command console in his biphasic crystal work glasses. Suddenly an augmented-reality 3D model of the Konstantin rotated before him. The Konstantin looked more like a collection of construction cranes than a spaceship. Its spine was a 250-meter-long box truss of carbon fiber girders—only the bow of which protruded above the horizon of the asteroid and into sunlight. The mast there was studded with solar panels, communications antennas, and a laser transmitter.

  The main body of the Konstantin sheltered in permanent shadow behind the asteroid—on station, 3 kilometers above Ryugu’s darkened surface. The ship’s upper airlock stood well aft of the solar mast with four docking ports arrayed at compass points—two of which were occupied by well-worn mule spacecraft. Only one of which was still operational.

  Adisa remotely activated this mule, undocked it, and telepiloted the craft beyond the sweep of the Konstantin’s three rotating radial arms. These arms each extended a hundred meters from a central habitat at the ship’s waist and consisted of a box truss through which a narrow tunnel ran to inflated habitat modules at the end. The radial arms rotated three times a minute to simulate gravity; Isabel and Adisa sat in one of these: Hab 1.

  He remotely piloted the mule down the length of the Konstantin, and the craft glided past empty construction scaffolding, past the Konstantin’s chemical refinery, lower airlock, and engine room—which was empty. The rocket engines had been unstepped to power robotic tugs returning refined resources toward an orbit around Earth’s moon.

  The lack of main engines meant the Konstantin was now a permanent fixture at Ryugu.

  Pivoting the mule, Adisa could see a series of small robotic spacecraft orbiting along the asteroid’s terminator line. These used parabolic mirrors to concentrate the Sun’s light for “optical mining” of bagged boulders, which had been teased away from the asteroid’s surface in its minuscule gravity. The delicate flight control dance of the mining robots was managed by systems the crew had perfected over the past four years, and operations were now largely automated. The system was producing thousands of tons of refined resources per month and would continue to do so into the foreseeable future. Still, with a total mass of 450 million tons, it would take centuries to consume
Ryugu at this rate.

  Abarca clicked through virtual UIs. “We need to notify mission control. Would that alert this new ship to our presence?”

  “No. The long-range laser comms are secure.”

  Abarca opened the laser comm channel and checked her HUD display. “We’re at just over three light-minutes from Earth—which means more than six minutes before we get a reply.” She keyed the transmit button. “Konstantin to mission control. Konstantin to mission control. Mayday. Mayday. We have an unidentified, potentially hostile spacecraft inbound and maneuvering to match our trajectory for possible docking. This is an emergency. Please advise. Out.”

  Adisa, meanwhile, nestled the remotely piloted mule among bladder tanks of refined ammonia, water ice, and cylinders of silica in the nearby supply yard. By then the interloper’s spacecraft had arrived. Its rocket engine cut out a few hundred meters away. Silent puffs of thruster gas issued from various nozzles as it maneuvered precisely toward the upper airlock of the Konstantin.

  Abarca watched the monitor. “That thing must mass at least 30 tons.”

  This was a small percentage of the Konstantin’s mass, but in a collision it could still destroy the radial arms of the Konstantin’s hab units as they swept past in rotation. Fortunately, the mystery spacecraft seemed to be expertly piloted.

  Abarca switched to an exterior camera focused on the docking ports. “That’s not being remotely controlled. Not at this distance from Earth.”

  “It could be autonomous.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  She brought up additional holographic user interfaces. “The Konstantin won’t respond to their remote commands, correct?”

  “Correct, my bypass will prevent it, but anyone on that vessel will soon become suspicious.”

  “They could think it’s a malfunction. Our exterior is scarred with micrometeor damage.”

  He tapped virtual controls. “Yes, but that will not stop them from manually docking and working the airlock.”

  “Can you disable the docking port or the hatches?”

  “No. The Konstantin was not designed to keep people out.”