Terminal Reset Omnibus: The Coming of The Wave

by A. E. Williams

  The black jet hit the rotation point at an indicated airspeed of 133 knots, arched upwards and began to climb out over Miami. Daniel spoke to the departure control on 133.675 and said he would be flying MNATE ONE, and turned to heading 110, rising to an altitude of 15,000 feet, with an indicated airspeed of 350 knots. He spoke another few terse commands to Lucille and began to climb to flight level 025. He was headed to the Cayman Islands and hopefully could reach them before anything else happened.

  As the jet crossed the ADIZ boundary, he switched the squawk to a frequency that did not match his original idents. He gave Lucille a cryptic voice command by saying “Alakazam!” As he did, the plane changed color. It was now entirely white. The tail markings were now black, and the number corresponded to a local business courier that was based out of Boca Raton Executive Airport. Lucille was providing tactical readouts for situational awareness, and it all looked good.

  He chuckled at the abilities of the technological chameleon he was piloting. Suddenly, his attention was attracted by the noise of small blips coming from his console. Lucille’s monitor changed to show a series of small screens, each with blinking red and yellow alerts.

  An alarm bell went off, indicating a missile lock, and his headphones reverberated with a voice:

  “Mr. Anderson. You are to divert to Guantanamo Air Base, immediately. We are locked onto your aircraft and will not hesitate to fire. Begin maneuvers now.”

  He saw on the video monitors of his console he was bracketed by two F-22 Raptors, each one with their weapons-bay doors open. He counted the number of AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile inside each of them and silently cursed. His countermeasures could not react in time to that many targets, and even if he deployed the full-package of chaff and flares, the range was so close it would have been futile to even attempt.

  While he was contemplating his next move, Lucille squawked again, and he now saw another pair of jets bracketing him above and below. These were F-35 Lightning II aircraft, armed with four AIM-132 short range air-to-air missiles.

  A quick burst of cannon fire crossed his nose, dangerously close. “This is Anderson. I will comply as directed,” he said. “No need to be pushy,” he muttered. He spoke to Lucille, giving her the destination waypoints and sat back as she flew the plane towards whatever waited at Gitmo.

  He removed his headset, wiped his hair back from his eyes, and pounded a fist on the armrest. “FUCK!” he yelled, at no one in particular.

  Daniel “L@Z3rDr@g0N”Anderson was trapped.

  *****

  BOB HOPE AIRPORT, CALIFORNIA

  Jennifer Harding was reviewing their itinerary again when David walked back from the restroom. They had been looking forward to this vacation cruise for quite some time, and Jennifer had been concerned that David’s work might interfere with their planned recreation.

  They would be traveling in one of her father’s private jets from Bob Hope Airport to Love Field in Texas, and then on to Miami, where they would board the ship. They were scheduled for a ten-day cruise to St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Amalie among other destinations.

  Although he was anxious to see the latest telemetry from the Mars rovers, Harding looked forward to some time off. He knew that there was not much use in worrying about The Wave on an emotional level. His intellectual curiosity was piqued, but there was no way to ascertain the outcome of The Wave impacting Earth.

  Despite being employed by JPL and involved in SPARTACUS, Dr. David Harding was not privy to the unedited versions of the feeds coming from the Red Planet. He had no idea of the existence of life there. Even though it was he (and Tatania, to be fair) who had sounded the alarm about The Wave, there had been no need to elevate his clearance to the levels required to access the raw data.

  He had continued with his travel plans, looking ahead to some alone time with Jennifer. He felt that a relaxing vacation cruise in the Caribbean would be an excellent idea, and held a vague hope that it might alleviate a few of their marital issues.

  They had discussed taking this trip for well over a year, but the timing had been mostly off because his work schedule had been hectic.

  Oddly, with The Wave due to impact Earth in less than a week, he had been asked by his boss if he was still going to go on the scheduled cruise. Although Harding was very interested in what the data would show, he was convinced that the Jupiter telemetry meant only that there was a possible atmospheric anomaly that was not truly a danger, since that planet’s atmosphere differed so greatly from that of Earth.

  Harding mentally calculated that they would be in the middle of the Caribbean Sea when the impact of The Wave happened, but nothing in his experience set off any alarms in his mind. Earth was in its path, but he had resigned himself to the fact that there was really nothing he could do about that.

  *****

  ARECIBO RADIO TELESCOPE, PUERTO RICO

  Dr. Tatania Golovonov’s eyes were focused on the huge dish of the radio telescope suspended above her. She had been ordered to travel to a Russian research facility that was shared with an international task force. The facility was about three miles from the dish, so she took a small detour to look at it once more. Early in her career, she had participated in Coqui 2 ionospheric investigations, and once assisted with protocols for using moon-bounce telemetry to detect hidden military transmitters. Her excellent work on these programs had earned her the notice of her superiors, who promoted her into more challenging and responsible positions.

  Her clearance had also been expanded to include Soviet military intelligence operations, where she used Celestial mechanics to plot MIRV re-entry trajectories.

  Now, as she drove to the base, she idly wondered about her brother, Anton, who was a Major in the Russian Air Force, based in the Saratov Oblast. She knew he was a pilot of one of the fastest and most dangerous bombers in history, the Tu-160 Blackjack, and she worried about him from time to time.

  Mostly, it was an almost matronly concern, but occasionally she would get flashes of emotion that oddly coincided with times when he would be in the most perilous of situations.

  Pulling into the base perimeter, Tatania had been ordered to stop to one side of the guard house as her papers were examined. She was there to assist in preparations for communicating with satellites in geosynchronous orbits, using military protocols for encrypted transmission to Russian submarine assets. Some of the communications were apparently being used for command and control of nuclear missiles.

  That the Russians were concentrating efforts in the Ukraine area, as well as along the Chinese border, indicated a military expansion posture that she had not observed for many years, and it bothered her. Although she did not have access to strategic doctrine, she had participated in enough exercises to be able to fill in many of the blanks, with logical precision borne from her keen insights. For instance, she knew that the deployment of certain Naval vessels in the Bering Sea was a precursor of simulated attacks against the United States Early Warning System radar bases near Anchorage. It was thought that a detonation at a high altitude would eliminate the detection of incoming missiles because of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. All of this was an academic exercise, up to this point, but based on strong scientific principles, and the understanding that stemmed from years of Cold War scenarios played out in countless war games.

  And, of course, Afghanistan had also shed light on much of the inconvenient aspects of Russian military doctrine.

  The sergeant at the guard house handed Tatania her papers, then raised the gate, and she drove onto the base proper. She parked outside of a nondescript building, whose only feature was a small dish antenna on top.

  She gathered her belongings from the rental car, then closed and locked the door. As she approached the building, two men appeared at the door. They were wearing civilian clothing, but Tatania knew they were Spetsnaz. A third man, set back from the entrance and wielding an automatic rifle of some type, eyed the proceedings grimly.

  They asked for
and received her papers, then handed them back to her. She was directed to the rear of the room, where an airlock was opened. She entered, then waited for the doors to close. As she stood there, she listened for the tell-tale beep that signified she was allowed to occupy the airlock. She smirked inwardly at the thought that, if she did not hear the beep, she would have been dead from a dose of GB nerve gas. They were not taking any chances here, regardless of the political illusions many of the politicians sought to embrace. This was an old-school operations center. She heard the beep, then the inner airlock door opened to allow her entrance to the control room.

  She belatedly realized she had breathed a sigh of relief. It depressed her a bit to know she had added this ritual into her life – travel to a secure area, assist with secrets, and never knowing what effects these arcane vignettes had on the outlying world. Initially, it had been very exciting, when she was much younger and not as jaded. The possibility of being killed ‘in-the-line-of-duty’ added some spice to her work, but as the years went on, she worried more about a bureaucratic error causing her premature exit from this life.

  Although she had long ago resigned herself to the necessity of these activities, being trained in the processes for protecting the information assets of Russia, it also saddened her that there had been so little actual progress in limiting the aggressive tendencies of nations against each other.

  Such philosophical arguments were dismissed as she met her coordinator, Major Dr. Ilyich Markov. Markov greeted her, and after some exchange of pleasantries, and yet another inspection of her orders, they set to work.

  For the next several days, Tatania went diligently about her work, but she was concerned about the current situation surrounding the deployment of some particular military assets, especially in light of the recent discoveries regarding The Wave. She knew The Wave was on its way, and she had seen some of the data surrounding the Jupiter event. However, she could not logically conclude that there was any threat to human life, even though the initial sighting of The Wave was ominous in both its size and sudden appearance. She thought that many scary looking astronomical events were benign, or they did not have any truly deleterious effects on human beings. True, solar flares and coronal discharges from the sun, or the passing of comets could affect satellites or bathe the Earth in electrical fields that might wreak havoc on television or radio communications, but these were understood. The Wave might be only another cosmic phenomenon that would pass by, a brief visitor from the outer reaches of infinite space.

  At least, that is what she hoped. She busied herself and tried to ignore the small voice in her head that wanted to hear David Harding’s voice again.

  "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."

  -- Niels Bohr

  "Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response."

  -- Arthur M. Schlesinger

  "Every crisis offers ...extra ...power."

  -- William Moulton Marston

  Chapter Eight –

  JPL HEADQUARTERS, LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE, CALIFORNIA

  The Wave began its assault on Mars. Curiosity had been transmitting detailed photographs and videos of the area for over two hours. In the sky, it was noted that several of the large floating drurgler swarms were positioned near The Kimberly, lazily drifting along on the Martian wind. Large hordes of Teslas crowded around the site, doing their odd dance. The area was dotted with shlorgs, but none was interested in feeding, it appeared.

  The crab-like creatures scurried about and collected around the robotic explorer. Usually, these gatherings produced some interference in the transmission from Curiosity, because the static electricity discharges played havoc with the radio systems. The video feed was interrupted at intervals, blurring or going briefly dark. It was maddening to the technical staff, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  In the JPL control room, eyes were watching the unfolding scene as a group of old analog clocks ticked away the remaining time. These clocks were set to various time zones on Earth, and another set mirroring the first showed the local time on Mars. The second hands swept around the old analog clock faces. The clocks were an anachronism in the vastly digitally enhanced control room. Over the years, many efforts had been made to remove them and put something more modern in their place, but sentimentality had won out over practicality. This was primarily due to a sense of tradition, but also because the JPL people were a superstitious lot. As was usual during critical times of a mission, the sound of peanuts being eaten was very noticeable over the background noises and hums of equipment.

  At zero-hour, everyone in the room was focused on their monitors, despite knowing full well that it would be another fourteen minutes until the telemetry data caught up with the delay in transmission between the rover and the laboratory. Other satellites and orbital assets, along with radio telescopes and spectrometers, were turned to Mars, to collect as much data as possible. Tensions increased as these other sources started to come on-line, and their information was received and collated.

  The ISS was inconveniently orbiting Earth on the side away from Mars at zero-hour, but they had been continually updating JPL with as much data as they could supply. In forty-two minutes, it would be able to continue observations.

  When the clocks had indicated that fourteen minutes had passed, the intensity of the scrutiny being applied to the situation increased an order of magnitude. The video feeds showed nothing especially noteworthy, as the leading edge of The Wave impacted Mars. As the minutes passed, the image became clearer, with less static than had been noticed. Eventually, the video stabilized and it was possible to see exactly what had occurred on Mars fourteen minutes in the past.

  Gasps and shouts of surprise could be heard from all over the room. One technician began to choke on his peanuts and spat them all over his console. He was coughing and pointing, unable to believe what he was seeing.

  All over the room, the scientists, technicians and managers were looking at each other, doom clearly visible on their faces. Some were reviewing the readouts of the various instrumentation, but the video feeds spoke volumes. There was some discussion among a few groups, and one or two attempts to collate the data with the other analysis being received. Some on the team had begun weeping, and several only stared dumbly at the screens. The managers reminded everyone of their secrecy oaths, and armed guards were stationed to prevent unauthorized exits.

  When the ISS came back online, the Commander reported that it would be another twenty or so minutes until they could collaborate the information with their own instruments. The JPL transmission was played back for the astronauts, and as they watched the video, emphatic swearing could be heard in various languages coming over the comm lines. By the time they had finished, corroborating evidence was being seen on the ISS as well. From JPL, Commander Armstrong was given coded orders for his eyes only. He frowned deeply as he deciphered the messages and began to issue a series of unusual commands that ended up segregating the non-American astronaut contingents away from the USOS assets. This elicited a series of puzzled looks and questions, to which he just repeated his commands. He retired to his berth, to begin encrypted communiques with Washington.

  Several senior managers left the control room, with instructions that the raw feeds be sent directly to them and to the White House. The President would have to be made aware of the latest data.

  To all intents and purposes, it appeared that The Wave had made Mars a dead planet.

  *****

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  A short time after the Mars impact, the President was sitting in the Oval Office, reviewing a list of various meetings to which he was going to attend during the day, when he was made aware by his Chief of Staff that his presence was urgently required. Excusing himself from the other Cabinet members present, he set down the half-sandwich he had been eating and instructed the group to carry on in his absence. He told them he would reconvene with them later
that afternoon, and to continue with their work. The President had noticed the black envelope that his CoS was shielding in a small dossier and knew that this meant trouble. As he moved into the hallway, the adjutant carrying the Football followed along, as did the Presidential security team of Secret Service personnel.

  Moving rapidly down the corridor in a phalanx, suppressed pistols were removed from holsters, submachine guns unslung and body armor passed around. Orders were being barked into headsets, and the corridor cleared of any other White House personnel. An intern poked her head out of a room and one of the agents unceremoniously shoved her back inside with enough force to knock her unconscious.

  The President was escorted outside to the waiting Marine One helicopter, already primed to lift off. He and the others boarded and strapped into their seats. A contingent of Secret Service secured the area around the helipad as Marine One departed. The President and his entourage were immediately flown to the underground bunkers at Camp David.

  At the same time, key personnel across the globe were being relocated to secret installations. Highly encrypted secret communication avenues were initiated, and code phrases issued to deploy assets that had been planned decades in advance.