Fulcrums of the Universe: A TESS NOVEL #2

by Randy Moffat

  “OK… OK… Let me help you understand truth.” He said in his awkward English, cocking back a fist and slamming Jeeter in the face with it.

  Jeeter could do nothing to prevent the blow. His head snapped back and he passed out in a shower of drool. You can only beat a 76 year old man so much.

  I had resolved to wait three days. The more I thought about the situation the more I found I was just stewing my anger up to a rolling boil. I am ashamed to say that I gave up the fight. I was so bloody angry about Jeeter that I finally embraced the angry me and let it spurt me into additional action again thirty one point five hours after my first contact.

  I called the Secretary of State of the United States back.

  Before he could even talk I asked him my question.

  “Any luck on finding Mr. Jeeter, Mr. Secretary?” I asked abruptly.

  He had the good taste to look a bit embarrassed.

  “No, High Admiral. Not yet. I have checked in with our intelligence services. I sent you several reports that may be of use, but I am afraid… .” He made a complicated gesture with his face, head and neck that conveyed helpless negation.

  I changed my tone.

  “Good… I am glad you are afraid. I am afraid too. Afraid that an old man will not be found soon enough. Fear is healthy at times Mr. Secretary. It motivates people. You know that since its inception TESS has had many reasons to face our own fears. My own fears are compounding however. For example, some weeks ago TESS’ computer servers were attacked with a military grade virus that was clearly intended to steal TESS critical information and I lost one of my oldest team members defending it—his mind and then his body were slaughtered cruelly and callously. I freely confess that losing my people is one of my greatest fears.” I kept my voice as level as possible though I could feel my face settling slowly into its old glower. “Then it came to my attention that a few days ago an agency of the United States, specifically the FBI, attempted to infiltrate an agent into TESS clandestinely. This was an act in direct contravention of the mandate that created TESS and the very formal cooperative agreements made since that time with your country. Now, in immediate temporal proximity to those events Mr. Jeeter has come up mysteriously missing. Frankly Mr. Secretary the proximate relationship between these three things appears to me to be much too close for TESS to ignore.”

  The Secretary was looking abashed. He had not been able to control what I took to be real astonishment to hear about an FBI agent being involved and opened his mouth to protest on autopilot about the connections to his country. At a guess he had not been told about her. I drove on to save him any embarrassment later.

  “Now I would belabor these points, Mr. Secretary… these fears. I think that in time I will take them up with you and discuss pointedly whatever role that the United States has played in these… actions… . but frankly I am currently too distracted to do so. Instead I have yet another professional crisis to deal with. It takes priority over my own personal needs. I just learned that we have lost control of a piece of space debris we were hauling into orbit as a possible satellite platform and it is now heading for Earth itself under the influence of gravity. In a spirit of unconstrained interagency fellowship Mr. Secretary, a sense of fellowship that takes no notice in the least of these recent assaults on TESS as an organization and imply absolutely no strains in our relationship…” I said pointedly, making sure the strains were crystal clear. “. . . . I need to alert you officially of this incident. TESS apologizes a priori for any inconvenience this may bring about… but my team informs me that the debris is leaving orbit and is already deep in the upper atmosphere which makes it urgent. It will increase its angle of descent in two hours and twenty minutes from now and will plunge through the lower atmosphere to earth at a very acute angle. It is beyond our power to stop it or interfere in any way. Again, we regret this… accident. We have calculated the current point of impact. My operations team assure me that you should clear these coordinates for a safety radius of 20 Kilometers immediately…” I ostentatiously referred to a slip of paper as if reading. I recited the impact georef coordinates slowly and carefully knowing full well that we were being recorded. “The impact point appears to be thirteen point one statute miles off the coast of South Carolina… I am told the explosion should be… somewhat spectacular.”

  The Secretary appeared to be wrestling with the entire concept. The word ‘explosion’ has an arresting effect.

  “This debris is explosives? A weapon of some kind?” He asked nervously in a slightly befuddled way. The poor man was trying to catch up and on.

  I smiled in my ‘too-cool-condescension-to-the-uninformed non-TESS science masses’ look. I imagine it was indistinguishable from my sneer.

  “No, Mr. Secretary. No. It is simply inert matter. Quite ordinary matter… as a matter of fact… excuse the pun…” I paused smiling without humor at my own joke. It was instantly obvious by the look on his face that my incredible wit wasn’t particularly working so I drove on brutally. “. . . Primarily it is just rock and some metal. However, as you may not have realized any matter that falls from a great height will strike with a remarkable impact—a factor of potential energy due to altitude being converted into kinetic energy as it accelerates to reach the speed of earth’s gravity until it is traveling at a rate of decent is 9.81meters per second per second. It will therefore strike with a great deal of speed and release the stored energy on impact. I have heard it argued that the mathematical formula used to calculate the result is the point from which all other physics is derived; Force equals Mass times Acceleration. But I digress and there is no time for it… essentially that equation is why meteorites make such big holes in the ground and… . not to alarm you… . why dinosaurs go extinct when extremely large rocks fall from the sky. The mass that will be falling this time is negligible. Tiny compared to historical events really, but enough of it will survive the fall through the atmosphere to… cause an… arresting vision. The energy that will be released through the impact will be something on the order of exploding kilotons of munitions but without any radiation or follow-on deleterious effects that you would see from nuclear type explosions. Rather more like a conventional bomb without any man-made explosives being involved. I would elaborate in more detail Mr. Secretary; however we haven’t much time and while the good news is that it will strike the sea… . the bad news is that you only have a couple hours to clear that sea of any possible shipping or traffic that might get in the way—removing them from harm’s way at flank speed I might add. I think we can both be grateful that the object will be striking relatively open ocean just outside US territorial waters and not some densely populated area… on land.”

  The Secretary looked thoughtful as my thinly veiled threats penetrated the diplomatic double talk fully for perhaps the first time—he most likely twigged the thrust around the reference to US territorial waters rather than my using the more neutral term ‘International waters.’ Territorial waters ended at 13 miles. Point one mile less than the strike point. It might take him a few minutes more for him to figure out perfectly that I was leaning down on the lever of implied violence balanced on the fulcrum of my falling rock to move him out of his complacency in helping me. Helping TESS. Given time he would eventually figure out the impact of the rock was intended to back up an ultimatum. Threatened violence between leaders of states is the penultimate ultimatum after all.

  I reached surreptitiously for the cutoff switch to our communications link.

  “I know you have a lot to do Mr. Secretary… .” I said contritely “But may I just say at this point that TESS would very much appreciate the United States doing everything it possibly can to continue to assist us in finding Mr. Jeeter… as quickly as you can… TESS has few resources to search for missing persons. It is distractions like Mr. Jeeter’s absence that causes us to lose our focus on those tasks that logically fall into our providence… like policing up errant space d
ebris that might strike the planet with little or no warning.”

  I thought the smile I threw at him had just the right amount of the look of having bitten a very sour lemon and I cut the com link before he could speak again. Rudeness was certainly not me, but as I say… . I was pissed. I liked Jeeter.

  Lieutenant Commander Dillard, US Coast Guard was pissed too. He and his cutter with the broad orange stripe near the bow. She was the “WMSL Miller” and they had been executing a series of carefully calculated training exercises crafted to up the skill set of his crew in anti-drug interception missions off the coast of South Carolina. Then a preemptory and strongly worded command came in from his headquarters at the Department of Home Land Security ordering him to cease and desist all operations and proceed immediately to clear sea lanes of oceanic traffic inbound for the port of Savannah.

  His training cycle was important to him. In an age of shrinking budgets a chance to get his green crew members up to speed on high risk missions was an invaluable resource he could not afford to waste. Instead of training hard he was now wandering about shooing dopy freighters the size of Delaware and assorted vacuous half-drunk fishermen out of an imaginary box drawn on the map.

  Dillard thought the whole thing was a colossal waste of time since the weather guys said the seas were gentle for two more days and there was no obvious threat anywhere else. He was performing his duty like a professional, but steadily cursing his lot inside his head. Luckily, this area was just not that heavily frequented. The total shipping came to three tankers, a pair of container ships and two cruise ships all of whom responded immediately to radio requests and lumbered off north or south of the required limits without significant objections. Twenty minutes ago they had found two long pole charter boats wandering about pretty far out from shore trying to hook Marlin or a Swordfish for their bloated passengers who were basically lolling about on deck swilling beer and waiting for the unlikely moment when one of the half dozen poles snapped up a miracle tuny in waters long since denuded by overfishing.

  Dillard had been rather abrupt over his loud speakers to their dozy skippers to burn fuel out of the designated zone. Dillard had personally taken the helm and towered the hull of his ship over them in a quietly threatening manner; herding the power launches like geese as fast as their poorly maintained engines could carry them. They had reached the edge of the required zone just ten minutes ago.

  Dillard’s radar and sonar operators informed him that there were no longer any targets visible inside the defined danger zone that he had been ordered to clear and he stepped out onto the wing bridge to look off to the east and south to scan the whitecaps on the two foot swell for anything they might have missed.

  His XO arrived at his side and reported that the camera’s they had been ordered to train on the empty region of sea out in the Atlantic were mounted and the ships UAV airborne on the same task He glanced over his shoulder, picking up the distant shore of the barrier islands astern and verified that the cameras were in place and running as reported. He was a stickler that way. Eyes on.

  Dillard simply nodded to her. She was smart and reliable and would have anticipated anything he could have thought of to improve placement of equipment. She had a walkie-talkie that squawked loudly. She huddled over the squawk box and spoke to someone a moment.

  “Skipper…” she said. “Radar reports a contact at 45 angels that is moving pretty fast… .”

  Dillard looked up reflexively. 45,000 feet was too high for standard commercial other than the now defunct Concorde and even for most military aircraft. That implied it was coming from higher up… . from space.

  He heard a whistle over her squawk box and some more blurted speech.

  The XO shook her head and he heard her demand verification. The response came in a snarl of static. He heard the roger and a repetition of something still intelligible. He could see the XO look at him and he met her eyes.

  “What’s the target’s heading?” Dillard asked.

  “Almost straight down. It will impact center of mass in the cleared area.” She said quietly.

  Dillard’s mouth went dry. He was not above suspicion that his superiors might not value him and his ship as much as he did. He shrugged his shoulders—he still had his duty.

  “How long to impact?” He asked.

  The XO was as sharp as he suspected and already knew the answer.

  “Two, maybe three minutes maximum depending on if it is free falling, accelerates or tries to control its flight profile.”

  Dillard smiled.

  “If it impacts instead of flying or self destructing in mid-air it will create heavy swell… order all ships to face center-of-circle on the cleared area. They are to assume quarter speed on a radius to the center of mass… . and use that bull horn as a cattle prod on our… gentlemen fishers.” He glanced at the power boats with the peculiar distaste that professional military sailors have always reserved for the merely mercantile seamen.

  The XO nodded and turning she grabbed her bullhorn and moved aft at a double time.

  Dillard stepped into the bridge and directed the helm to take up a heading of 105 degrees and increase engines to 20 percent revolutions as his XO hollered sharply and repeated something like his orders to the civilian boats off the stern. She stood watching them fall into a kind of straggling order behind the cutter like goslings after a mama duck. Abruptly she scurried out of sight to the radio room below.

  Thirty seconds later in the long distance haze Dillard could actually see one of the big tankers begin a turn that would put her bow on to the center of the cleared zone in compliance to what he guessed was her radio message. She was a sharp officer. Trying to exude confidence he stepped out into the breeze on the flying wing bridge again after ensuring the Miller’s bow was aligned with his own instructions. He lifted the binoculars and began to the scan the sky high up.

  “Message sent. “The XO said from behind his shoulder breathing a bit hard from all her jogging about.

  Dillard nodded and focused his binoculars on a bright red streak that was from falling from out of the sky like a meteorite.

  “She is ballistic all right.” Dillard said. “A straight drop from the outer atmosphere.” He handed her the binos and gripped the rail in front of him tightly. He was filled with suddenly anxiety that skipper’s reserve for their ships and crew.

  “She is burning hot. Trading mass for heat.” Remarked the XO dryly. “I am no expert but she looks big enough not to break up completely in the atmosphere.” Twenty seconds later, after peering through the binoculars in her usual serious manner she started to open her mouth again but Dillard beat her to it.

  “If she is a nuke we are dead as doornails.” Dillard said dumping his secret thought out as speech and glancing at her reaction.

  “I hear you.” The XO said tritely holding the glasses clear of her eyes for a moment. “I would not think she is though… from the look of it that is a vertical trajectory more than a more normal curved ballistic path you would expect from an ICBM or something. Not enough parabola for a intercontinental miss… uh-oh… uh-oh… . Holy sh… .” She ended as her voice climbed up a register of chords as the object reached its destination.

  “Uh-oh…” Was a moderate enough statement as a precursor to the removal and displacement of a few acres of ocean in an instant. The strike of TESS’ ‘accidental’ meteorite released energy equivalent to several thousand kilotons of munitions being set off and created a hole in the ocean that gysered a majestic column of liquid water upward for a half a mile while the super heat of the extraterrestrial object interacted with the molecules of the ocean and created a widening cloud of vaporized water. The show mesmerized everyone actually watching for a moment until they realized the overpressure generated shock wave from the impact was flattening waves outward in a perfect circle. That circle was aimed directly at the bows of the ships on the edges of the zone. You c
ould see the leading edge of the shock wave coming… . fast. Luckily the bulk of the force of the shock from the object had been sent skyward, was absorbed by the ocean, or was deflected by upward vectors that drove the terrible forces at a climbing angle that passed over the surrounding ships and boats. Initial wind speed of the wave were between 600 and 700 kilometers per hour over the first kilometer or two from the center of impact, but by the time it reached the ships 18 kilometers further out it had attenuated most of its force to a modest 202 kilometers per hour at sea level. Enough of it to smash a breeze moving at just over 109 knots against any flat surfaces aimed dead into it. The WMSL Miller staggered. The hurricane of wind stuck anything with a flat surface like a hammer. The glass panes on the coast guard cutter’s bridge were such surfaces. They were made up of multiple layers of reinforced glass, Plexiglas and plastic films constructed to absorb blows from very heavy Atlantic seas and possibly bullets—but like most of the Coast Guard fleet she was an older ship and they partially failed under a blow that struck evenly across the surface. One pane cracked right across. Dillard saved himself a facial punch by ducking below the heavy aluminum coping of the flying bridge a mere moment before the shockwave reached them, but his XO was not quick enough. Riveted by the view of on-rushing shockwave she stood her ground and took the blast on the side of her head just as her ancient animal reactive system finally sensed the danger and overrode her rational mind to drop only a moment before the wave of compressed air hit the ship. Her late attempt to duck down with Dillard left her head still above the windbreak of the bridge so that the blast flipped her sideways and slammed her head hard against the after end of the bridge plating and opened a slash along her skull—dropping her like a stone.

  Dillard’s lungs and joints hurt from the overpressure and he was half deaf from his ears near rupturing under the 18 or 19 kilopascals of overpressure. He staggered upright only to notice her down on the deck behind him. He bent over her and reached to staunch the blood coming from her skull. The move saved him from the same fate again when the weakened blast wave of displaced air reversed itself and raced backwards to fill up the enormous vacuum that the meteorite strike had created in the atmosphere. The returning shock wave stuck the un-aerodynamic tail of the ship, shoving her in the opposite direction and moving her nose thirty degrees right. Dillard was thrown against the plate behind him again wrenching his back hard. The blow was painful but useful. It reminded him he was Captain of the ship and not her surgeon. He staggered to his feet looked hard towards the center of the blast zone to see a huge wave in the water coming towards them like a galloping horse. The WMSL Miller’s bow now skewed nose was about to take the wave on its quarter. She could broach at that angle! Dillard jumped into the bridge to see his helmsman unconscious by the bridge aft wall. His bosun was on all fours near the entry hatch shaking his head dazedly. Dillard grabbed the ship’s wheel controls and spun them hard left, increasing speed by a further quarter. The bow swung like a log into the wave just as it reached her. The nose rose and rose until all Dillard could see was sky thorough the forward ports. He felt his testicles retract up into his body with the rising view. Then the wave passed the fulcrum of the center-point of her keel and suddenly all he could see was blue sea as she plunged down the far side of the wave to bury her nose hard into the water.