Red Horizon: The Truth of Discovery (Discovery Series Book 2)

by Salvador Mercer

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say their redundancy was in their crew. They’re expendable in the eyes of their government.”

  “What do you expect with one point six billion citizens?”

  Vlad nodded. “Yes, well, as I said, we have work to do. I’ll sign the necessary documents, and you get the replacement crew to add the secondary tether module as soon as possible. If there are any problems, I want to know now, not later.”

  “You going to Moscow?”

  “Yes, but not for a few days yet. I’ll meet with Dmitry, and together we’ll welcome Yuri and the others properly. If I’m any judge of character, the man will be livid with the arrangements once he finds out.”

  “Da, he’ll be upset for sure when he learns our special forces will accompany them.” Vlad laughed, and Alex looked confused. “What?”

  “It’s not the Spetsnaz he’ll be angry about,” Vlad said, suppressing his laughter.

  “Then what?” Alex asked.

  Vlad stopped laughing, gaining control of himself. “I was e-faxed the candidate roster by Dmitry’s office this morning. Olga Petrov was listed as lead commander for the Lander.”

  “Bozhe moi, my God,” Alex said.

  “Exactly,” Vlad finished for him.

  Chapter 10

  Shuffle

  Krasnaya Zvesda (Red Star)

  Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1

  In the near future, Year 4, Day 8

  “Suxa Sin, son of a bitch,” Yuri said, anger rising within him.

  “What did you say?” the flight controller Anton asked over the radio.

  Yuri realized he was thinking out loud. “Nothing . . . Well, are you sure the roster is correct?”

  “It was leaked by someone over in command. We’ve had it all day here, but there wasn’t a chance to tell you about it till now.”

  That was a benefit to having these middle of the night chats with Ruscosmos, though Yuri knew that all communications were recorded. There was so much data flowing between the various components of the space program that he was sure not every transmission was monitored, and if they were, then most likely a low-level analyst would have himself a chuckle at his expense. “Understood.”

  “You’re not upset at me, are you?” Anton asked.

  “Of course not,” Yuri said. “I was hoping for a pleasant trip. It will be a long time.”

  It wasn’t a secret that Yuri and Olga had a rough working relationship. Truth of the matter was that they actually worked well together when focused on the mission. It was during those long stretches of downtime that the two were polar opposites and friction grew between them from extended periods of close proximity. The idea of taking a trip to Mars, for more than a year, with Olga wasn’t exactly something that he was looking forward to.

  “All right, I thought you’d like to know who was on the list,” Anton said.

  “No, that is fine. You did good to tell me. So we’ll depart in a few hours. I think we’ll see each other groundside.”

  “Yes, you’re all scheduled to meet here with the new director after you arrive.”

  Yuri had a hard time thinking of Vladimir Berdenko as new. He had literally been running the show since it started, considering the injuries that Minister Osnokov sustained in the attack on their command and control center four years ago. “Very well, see you soon.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Anton said. “Get some rest. You’ll be leaving in a few hours.”

  “Roger. Temshenko out,” Yuri said, using formal radio procedure. It didn’t hurt to hedge his behavior in case someone was listening after all.

  Yuri, floated away from the mini communication’s console. Its intended role was as a backup to the primary communications module, but he didn’t want to travel to the other end of the ship. It was bad enough that he had to haul himself down the Centi-Well hand over hand, over a hundred meters to their sleeping quarters. The last thirty meters was always the hardest, fighting the centrifugal force of their spinning tether. It would have been nice to have a mechanical lift the way the Americans had constructed theirs.

  Sighing, he pushed off almost absentmindedly from one of the tactile pads on the far wall, and pushing off sideways from one of the support struts, he flung himself into the ship’s main corridor, somersaulting and using his feet against the opposing pad. Like a pinball, he bounced down the hall, gaining momentum and smoothing his trajectory until he reached the middle of the ship.

  He took a moment to look out one of the main view ports at their shuttle that would take him back to Earth. They’d gone EVA and had performed a visual inspection of the ship, taking care to inspect the underside and its robust heat shield for any signs of cracking or flaking. They would perform another inspection with one of the bots, but experience had shown that a camera just couldn’t replace the human senses of touch and sight and did little to alter human psychology when it came to morale and safety.

  The Minsk sat still, docked to the Red Star, paying tribute to Belarus for having joined the new Second Soviet Union three years earlier. The major cities and capitals of their confederate states had, or would have, a ship or shuttle named for them, a cheap price to pay for their loyalty and service.

  Yuri oriented himself to the rotating section of the ship, aligning himself to face the door leading to their quarters and securing himself by grabbing a handhold and slipping his feet into a large bar that acted as a brace or stirrup. Once oriented, his body rotating in synch with the drum, he used his hand to slam the door button inward. The damn thing started to stick after the first year, and despite changing it twice, it continued to defy engineering logic. After a few weeks, they gave up on it and simply accustomed themselves to hitting it harder to engage it. The airlock door opened, and Yuri flipped feet first into the chute to travel to their quarters.

  There was really no conception of up or down, and looking down the dimly lit tube gave him the feeling that it could lead him to the abyss itself, if he didn’t know better. Still, while there was no gravity in the ship, the artificial force created by spinning a large habitat module on a multi-stranded tether made from crystal aligned Kevlar-type material that had the unique property of demonstrating an incredible tensile strength. Good thing too; he didn’t relish the idea of the tether breaking and him spending the rest of his short life rotating aimlessly through space.

  Further down, he’d begin to feel the centrifugal effect, wanting to force him down at a higher rate than he would feel comfortable. By the time he reached the outer airlock door below, it would be exerting enough force to equal slightly over a half g of Earth gravity. This was even more than what they would encounter on Mars, which would only be thirty-eight percent of Earth’s. The extra gravitational exertion of their centrifuge had nothing to do with Mars. No, it had to do with keeping their bodies from wasting away in zero gravity. Muscle loss, lower red cell counts, weaker heart muscle, all were symptoms of prolonged exposure to zero gravity, and they would face this for an extended period of time.

  So he dutifully allowed himself to drop, lowering himself to the closest thing that would have to suffice for gravity until they returned to Earth, their rotating module swirling around at the end of a long tether at nearly two revolutions per minute. He would enjoy his last time on Earth. They’d keep him there for a month at least and finalize the medical profile before departure. He would be ready. Yuri would be the first human to step onto another planet. He would make history, not the Americans and not the Chinese . . . if he lived long enough.

  *****

  NASA Space Command

  Houston, Texas

  In the near future, Year 4, Day 9

  The trip back to Houston had been uneventful. Rock received the plans for attaching the extra modules onto the Red Horizon. Two were actually hooked up to their space freighters, a simple name to describe the unmanned ships that circled ceaselessly in a dual orbit around the Earth and moon, only occasionally burning propellant to maintain it. They had been laun
ching from Earth and sometimes hitching rides on the pair of ships that circled opposite one another; when one was circling Earth, the other was circling the moon.

  He had asked Major Carter to do a full brief once the main crew was Earth-side. They had to review the numbers in light of the extra payload to be carried, and the lack of fuel due to the burn that Red Horizon executed in saving the crew of Polo One.

  “Good morning, Richard,” Lisa said, coming in the door to the conference room that overlooked the control center from the second floor. Jack and Marge filed in behind her, and Rock immediately felt the absence of Tom.

  “Morning, everyone,” Rock said. His team sat down, coffee and papers in tow, and settled in, looking at Rock to set the agenda. “Have you had a chance to look at the manifests that the major gave us yesterday?”

  “We have,” Marge answered for them.

  “And?” Rock asked.

  “We’re not peachy keen on any of this,” Jack said. “Guns in space? Come on.”

  “He’s right,” Lisa said.

  Marge cleared her throat and finished the trio of comments. “Honestly, Rock, we don’t have the time or the space for armed troops. I can’t believe the president signed off on this.”

  “You heard her yourself; she seems set on the matter for some reason,” Rock said. “Let’s skip that, then, this morning, and get down to brass tacks. With the loss of Sanchez, we need to shuffle things a bit.”

  The team nodded in unison. While it wasn’t discussed openly, it was widely understood that the man was being groomed as copilot of the Red Horizon, second to Neil Sullivan, who was commanding the large ship now. No positions were filled, but there was a candidate roster and there were several classifications for every position. Some positions required more expertise and training, resulting in an interesting jigsaw of a puzzle when it came to filling them.

  “What did you have in mind, boss?” Jack asked.

  “This stays confidential and in this room. Am I understood?” Rock said, lowering his voice and leaning forward slightly.

  “Agreed,” Marge said, while Lisa and Jack nodded.

  “I took the liberty to place a call to the White House and ensure that I’d be supported on finalizing the roster, even if that meant making last-minute changes to it,” Rock said, giving each of his staff a good glance and a moment to let this information sink in.

  “She was good with that?” Lisa asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Rock nodded. “In light of the challenges we’re facing now, and coupled with the addition of the military’s involvement, she gave me the green light to modify in any way I saw fit.”

  The pleasant surprise was evident on all their faces, and Marge spoke first. “Rock, are you telling us that you can change the commander position?”

  “I am.”

  “Son of a bitch, you’re going to do it, aren’t you, boss?” Jack said, a huge grin rolling over his face.

  Rock wasn’t going to make it too easy. “Do what, Jack?”

  “Oh, come on, you’re going to pull rank on that psychoanalyst and put Jules up there, aren’t you?”

  It was a well-known fact that the security advisors to the president, working with the good Mr. Smith, had ensured that their psychologist had what effectively amounted to veto power over any roster candidate in any position. The roster was a well-kept secret, but everyone on it had to be trained to the same level, so the actual pool of who was in what position wasn’t exactly large.

  Julie Monroe had come up in the number-one spot and was summarily rejected on psychological grounds. Some in the security organization thought she was too much of a hot head for continued flight certification, especially for this mission, and the current psychologist appeared to have a bias against those candidates with children at home.

  Rock tried to prevent his own smile, but couldn’t. “I am. I’ve decided to move Commander Sullivan to second seat and put Julie Monroe as pilot and overall commander of the Red Horizon.”

  “Mr. Smith isn’t going to be happy,” Lisa remarked.

  “Forget him. That psycho guy is going to blow a gasket for sure when he finds out,” Jack said.

  “You can still refer to him by his name—Doctor Richardson,” Marge said. “He at least earned that much.”

  “Doctor, my ass,” Jack said, going from grin to scowl in a second.

  “You’re still upset with his evaluation of you,” Lisa said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t take it personally. It’s just the man.”

  Jack and Tom had received a rather harsh summary when they were evaluated, and, though it didn’t cause them to lose their mission status, the remarks were borderline insulting. “He called me self-centered,” Jack complained.

  “He called Tom a bigot, remember?” Marge said.

  “Yeah, well, Tom was a little bit in his own way, but so what? He was old school and spoke his mind.” Jack defended the man.

  “I’m not arguing with you,” Marge said. “I also don’t want to impugn the man’s memory, but I think we can let the days of those early evals go now, right?”

  Rock jumped in before Jack could complain. “Marge is right. Time to move on. I don’t want to hash over old ground, so let’s move forward with the rest of the roster.”

  “What about Craig?” Lisa asked, removing her hand from Jack’s shoulder after giving him a good squeeze.

  “You could put him back up there with Jules,” Jack said.

  “Sullivan won’t like that,” Lisa said.

  Rock held up a hand. “That won’t be necessary. I got off the phone with Craig less than an hour ago. He’s made up his mind and won’t go topside again even though he’s still flight certified.”

  “He must be pretty shaken still even after all these years,” Marge said.

  “Yeah,” Rock agreed. “It’s taken a few years to sink in, but if you’ve noticed, with each passing year, he’s disengaged more and more, and to be honest with you, I’ve facilitated his withdrawal by authorizing his new assignments into training and flight sims.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Rock,” Marge said.

  “I don’t,” Rock said. “But, he’s not an option, even for second seat. I think Barbara talked him out of it before she passed.” Barbara was Craig’s deceased wife.

  “I can’t say I blame the man after nearly getting sterilized by that alien device, and then disintegrated by the Chinese nuke. No wonder the man’s finished with space flight,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair.

  “Not to mention losing Barbara,” Lisa said.

  “All in all, not a good few years for our friend,” Marge said.

  “Well, that’s understandable,” Lisa said.

  “So?” Marge asked, looking at Rock.

  Rock nodded. “So we put Monroe and Sullivan up front. We keep our mech and tech per the roster. That at least should assuage the protest we’re going to get from security. And then I was thinking of going with Doctor Hill as our med specialist.”

  “He was third, wasn’t he?” Marge asked.

  “Yes, but in light of current events, I think he may be better suited for the position now,” Rock said.

  “How so?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah, he’s the youngest and least experienced,” Jack said. “I would have thought that Bernard or Morrison would have been better fits.”

  “They were, and in that order,” Rock said. “Hill, however, is combat tested, worked in the triage tents in Jordan and Saudi during the Iran War.”

  “Bernard and Morrison are trauma certified,” Lisa said.

  “Car accidents and industrial,” Rock explained. “I’m not taking anything away from either man. They are both fine doctors. But if there is going to be combat troops up there, then we may need to rethink having perhaps a combat doctor to go along with them.”

  “Hmm,” Marge said, looking down for a moment. “That does make sense in a very academic way, though I’d say we’d most likely face decompression injuries, radiatio
n burns, perhaps even blunt force trauma from changing g-forces or emergency maneuvering. I still have my doubts about bullet wounds even occurring.”

  “Agreed,” Rock said. “I still want to consider the change. Besides, he’s logged the most hours up there by far.”

  The others nodded. The two senior-most doctors spent a majority of their time on Earth, working in trauma centers and occasionally training for flight certification. Only recently did they commit to full-time space operations.

  There was a moment of silence before Marge spoke. “You haven’t mentioned the sixth member, our science officer.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Rock said, looking for a long moment at Marge.

  “What?” Marge asked, her eyes growing wider.

  Rock waited a moment longer. “Do you want it?”

  “Are you joking?” she asked.

  “No, I’m serious.”

  Marge looked at him for a moment and then narrowed her eyes. “You know what Doctor Richardson said about me.”

  “I do,” Rock replied, “and I don’t care. I have the authority to bypass protocol now, and select whomever I feel will forward our mission goals and ensure its success. What better person than you, Marge? Our team will be on their own, unable to take commands or controls from us, as we’ll be a light hour out of synch.”

  “Go for it,” Jack said, giving Marge a nudge on her elbow.

  Marge looked around for a moment before returning her attention to Rock. “You know I’m not flight certified, but I appreciate what you’re doing. Instead, just promise me you’ll keep Maria at the top of your list.”

  “What, you mean Rock’s not serious?” Jack asked Marge.

  Marge simply shrugged and looked back at Jack, but Rock intervened. “I was serious, but I knew Marge would most likely turn me down for not being certified. Still, with her dedication to our SETI program, I wanted to make the offer even if it was refused.”

  “Richard, you were bluffing, and Marge should have called you on it,” Lisa said.