Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  “I thought we could widen the harvest field,” said Diaz. “Which, I should point out, we did.”

  Tony shook his head. “When I was a kid, I always prayed that God would send me a kid brother,” he said. “I should have known to be careful what I wished for.”

  “Can it, both of you,” Caitlin said. “We’re on approach. Let’s get to work. Shaw will be manning the infrared. Diaz and Tony, you’re going to fire the tag when we get close enough.”

  “We’re on it, Boss,” said Diaz.

  Tony and Diaz floated up the tunnel, heading aft, while Shaw kept his eyes fixed on the screen.

  “We’ve got to make another pass before we’re in range,” he said, his face bathed in the reddish-green light from the board. “Just keep it level and bring us around.”

  “You got it,” said Vee. “Bravo Zulu.”

  Behind them, Caitlin could hear Tony and Diaz squabbling over their assignment. She looked over at Vee.

  “You ever feel like a den mother?”

  “Or a preschool teacher?” she replied.

  “How’s it feel being back on a stick?” Caitlin asked. “Like riding a bike?”

  “Hell yeah,” said Vee. “It’s been a while since I’ve done any real flying. Not since our first year in the Hive.”

  “That’s right,” Caitlin said. “You told me. You and Tony ran a worker tug at the docks, right?”

  “Sure did,” said Vee. “Six months training, then three months’ work before they made us redundant. We liked it, though, being up there above the surface. Just the quiet of it, you know. You could almost forget about your station in life. What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, when’s the last time you flew anywhere?”

  “Well, outside of my one-way trip to the Moon, I haven’t left the ground since the Last Campaign.”

  “You flew in the campaign?”

  “Me? No.” Caitlin shook her head. “I mean, I have flight training, but it’s rudimentary stuff. And when it came to the war, I was just a passenger. I rode in ’em all, though, at one time or another. VTOLs, stealth choppers, tiltrotors, the works.”

  “Man,” said Vee, “must have been something.”

  “Oh yeah,” Caitlin said, “Something . . .”

  The helicopters pass over the desert sand almost silently, their shadows sliding across the dunes like black dolphins breaching on a sun-baked sea. In the distance, the Great Mosque of Samarra rises from the city, a curving tower spiraling up in a graceful ascent toward the heavens. Caitlin sees it and marvels at the splendor of its architecture. She wonders if the hands that built this tower could ever have imagined the abominations it would eventually bear witness to. She turns away and addresses the soldiers seated in the helo.

  “Check your pads,” she says, pointing to the holoprojector on her wrist. She punches a few keys and a face appears, hovering above the glass and flickering slightly.

  “Hamza Mahmood,” she says, getting ready to resummarize the mission. “Murder of US nationals, conspiracy, bombings, the list goes on. We bring him in, and we deal a serious blow to the insurgency. We have intel that says he’s hiding in a safe house off of Al Bank Street. We’re going to fast-rope in, take down the house, and bring him in, alive if possible. All right?”

  “Yes ma’am!” they all respond as one. Caitlin walks up and down the rows, slapping each soldier’s helmet, wishing them luck, and telling them to be careful. One of the men, a cocksure noob named Evers, grins at her.

  “I don’t need luck, Captain,” he says. “I’m invincible.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what,” Caitlin says, “if that’s the case, once we hit the street, I’m going to stand behind you the entire time. Let the Enders’ bullets bounce off your invincible ass so I can get back home.”

  Everyone laughs, but Evers’s feelings are shared by much of the team. They do feel invincible. Strong, powerful, armed with the most advanced weapons and technology available on Earth. Technology at least fifty years ahead of anything anyone else has access to. They are the war hammer of the Allied military machine and they’ve come to strike a killing blow.

  “All right,” says Caitlin, “thirty seconds out. Are you ready?”

  “Yes ma’am!”

  “Are you mean?”

  “Yes ma’am!”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “YES MA’AM!”

  “Then let’s get so—”

  Before she can finish her thought, the RPG hits the tail rotor.

  “Cutter!”

  Diaz’s crackling voice over the comm shook Caitlin back.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “This baby’s getting closer,” he said. “We gonna tag it or just enjoy the view?”

  Caitlin looked out the window and saw that Thresher was indeed drawing nearer. She could make out the massive number of impact craters on its surface.

  “Man,” she said, “this thing has taken one hell of a beating. It’s almost more crater than asteroid.”

  “That could explain why the rotation’s so slow,” Shaw said, looking at the Thresher’s punched and broken face, the evidence of its hard-fought journey through the solar system. “Large enough impacts could have despun the asteroid and slowed it down.”

  “All right, let’s get to it,” Caitlin said. “Shaw? How are we looking?”

  His face was a mask of concentration. “Just about there. A few more meters.”

  “Vee?”

  “She’s holding steady,” she said, working the thrusters delicately, keeping the Tamarisk on a level course.

  “All right then,” Caitlin said. “Let’s do this. Shaw?”

  “Now’s as good a time as any,” he said. “Punch it.”

  “Diaz, Tony,” said Caitlin, “you heard the man.”

  “Roger that, Boss,” said Tony. “Punch it!”

  There was a slight jolt as the rocket-powered probe was launched from the Tamarisk. Caitlin looked out the viewport as the projectile made its way down to the asteroid’s surface. Ungainly-looking, the probe was little more than a cylindrical beacon placed on top of a set of three spidery-looking legs. Still, it was built with a sophisticated set of thrusters designed to keep the beacon from bouncing off into space in the asteroid’s low gravity. Upon touchdown, the craft’s legs would drive massive screws into the surface while, at the same time, two pitons would fire to firmly secure the probe onto the Thresher.

  If all went well with the landing, the probe would then begin sending out a constantly cycling tracking signal that would, in theory, officially claim the asteroid for Core One Mining.

  Shaw studied the scope intently, watching the probe’s descent. Finally, it struck the asteroid’s surface, gently kicking up debris.

  “We’ve got hard contact!” he said at last. “The probe is down and locked.”

  “Phase one complete,” Caitlin said, allowing herself a brief sigh of relief. “The flag has been planted. Nice work, team.”

  Diaz and Tony floated their way back up the tunnel to the cockpit.

  “Man, if only the whole mission was that easy,” Diaz said.

  “Why isn’t it?” Vee asked. “If we can send a probe down to this damn thing, why can’t we just send these little robots down the same way?”

  “I asked Ross the same question,” said Caitlin. “He gave me some line of crap about how the guidance systems on these things aren’t sophisticated enough to compensate for the asteroid’s rotation.”

  “Sounds like someone went with the lowest bidder,” Tony muttered.

  “Does this surprise you?” Caitlin asked.

  “OK, OK,” said Diaz. “Are we gonna stand around and bitch all day, or are you gonna have some real work for us?”

  “Don’t you worry about it, Diaz,” Caitlin said. “Here’s where the fun begins.”

  “What’s the plan?” Tony asked.

  “On paper it sounds pretty straightforward,” Caitlin told him. “We circle around fo
r another pass, deploy the claw, launch the robots, and get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “I like it,” said Tony. “Especially that last part.”

  Caitlin nodded in agreement, although she couldn’t help but dwell on the subtle difference between theory and practice. The plan was to use the Tamarisk as a gravity tug. Since the gravity of one object affected the gravity of another, theoretically, if they moved the Tamarisk near the asteroid, the asteroid should move closer to the Tamarisk, almost like a dog sniffing out an open hand. Once they had it in their influence, they would deploy the advanced retrieval mechanism and the asteroid would be theirs. It all sounded so simple, but as Caitlin looked out the viewport at the asteroid, hanging there menacingly against the stars, she started to think about what could go awry. As she did, Tony’s reminder once again passed through her mind.

  “Because God might be listening . . .”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After a few passes around the Thresher to get their bearings, the crew began their preparations to line up the Tamarisk to capture the asteroid.

  “OK, it’s showtime,” said Caitlin. “Everyone ready?”

  “Oh yeah,” yelled Diaz triumphantly. “Drop your linen and start your grinnin’! Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to dock with the rock!”

  “I would give every chit I ever earn from this day forward if he would just shut up,” Shaw said under his breath.

  “Amen to that, brother,” said Vee. She looked over at Caitlin. “We good?”

  Caitlin gave her a nod and a slight shrug. It was the best she could manage at the moment. She hoped they were good. They’d all been trained in spaceflight and docking procedures, Vee in particular. But this was something entirely different. When two spacecraft docked, they were both moving in a controlled fashion and they had both been designed to fit together, with locks and clamps made to form a perfect seal. Asteroids offered no such amenities, and their asymmetrical, unbalanced shape meant that finding the perfect spot to link up with involved a lot of guesswork and even more luck. If the wrong area was chosen, you could latch on to a smooth patch of platinum. Go somewhere else and you were scraping at dust and rocks with no purchase. And, Caitlin thought, just to add a cherry to the top of the parfait of awful Lyman Ross had served them, asteroids tended to rotate of their own free will, unlike a spacecraft, which could be controlled with thrusters.

  So there was no real way of telling whether they were good. There was only guessing as to the least likely moment for catastrophe.

  “OK,” Caitlin said at last. “Let’s do this. Vee, thrusters at station keeping.”

  “You got it.”

  “Bring us in nice and steady. Shaw, how are we looking?”

  “Thirty meters out,” he said. “I’d throttle back a little bit.”

  “All right. Vee, ease up on the stick.”

  Vee complied and Caitlin called back to Diaz and Tony.

  “Get ready to deploy the ARM,” she said.

  The advanced retrieval mechanism was a clawlike device that extended from the nose of the craft and could be used to dock with other ships or grab something floating loose in space. In this case, that something happened to be a giant hunk of asteroid.

  “We’re in range,” said Shaw.

  “Deploy,” Caitlin told Diaz and Tony.

  The ARM slowly extended out from the Tamarisk, looking like the giant steel talons of an eagle as it reached out for the Thresher. Caitlin watched as the asteroid grew closer, paying close attention to their speed. She knew that if they came in too fast, the ARM would crumple up against the Thresher like a soda can.

  “Slow and steady, Vee,” she whispered.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

  “All right,” said Shaw. “Three, two, one . . . capture.”

  Caitlin felt a nudge as the ARM made contact, reminding her of the bumper boats at Mountain Waters when she was a kid. Like the probe, the ARM was fitted with harpoons, which gripped the asteroid and held it in place. She smiled at Vee, squeezing her shoulders.

  “We got her!” she said. “Now fire the RCS!”

  Tony did as instructed, activating the reaction control system to stabilize the ship and match its rotation to the asteroid’s. The Tamarisk was juked left and right a few times before the jets finally began to do their jobs. Eventually, they were able to slow themselves down into a controlled glide.

  “Damn!” said Diaz. “Now that is how we do that!”

  A smattering of applause broke out on board as the crew collectively released their breath.

  “Nice work, everyone,” said Caitlin. “Let’s get ready to deploy the bots.”

  She took another deep breath to center herself before starting on the next task.

  Almost home, she told herself.

  That was when the fire broke out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Everyone here is going to die.”

  Alex Sutter looked out at the half-empty conference room in the Embassy Suites in downtown DC. He had hoped for a better turnout, but he also knew that what you hoped for and what you actually got were often not the same thing. As a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Alex’s job was to work with the Planetary Defense Coordination Office on monitoring and preventing potential asteroid strikes. The problem was the current budget allotted to both agencies was just about enough to allow them to monitor one-fifth of the solar system, which meant a lot was going on up there that no one knew about. But, in the current political climate, and with tensions rising on the Moon, scraping up more money to pay for bigger telescopes wasn’t a priority. There were too many actual problems to address. Theoretical ones weren’t on the docket. Hence his current predicament, giving a presentation (which, if he was being honest, was a thinly veiled plea for more money) to a lackluster group of people, all of whom looked like they’d rather be anywhere but there. In fact, if Alex were a betting man, he would have wagered that a lot of the people who were on hand had only come out of sheer morbid curiosity. Nevertheless, they were here, and as such, he was obligated to present to them. He adjusted his glasses and pressed on.

  “Everyone is going to die,” he repeated. “The question is, how long do you want to wait before you buy the insurance policy? Every single day, approximately one hundred tons of debris from space strikes the surface of this planet. Barely any of it is noticeable, mostly just dust and pebbles from nearby comets. But every once in a while, something bigger gets through.”

  He clicked the tiny remote in his hand, and the screen behind him changed to a grainy black-and-white image of three people standing in a room. Above their heads, a hole had been blasted through the ceiling. One of the people, a man in a suit, was holding a black rock in his hands. Looking at the rock was a policeman and, standing in between both men, a middle-aged woman with a distressed look on her face. It was this woman that Alex wanted the attendees to pay particular attention to. He was always excited about this part of the presentation, believing for certain that her story was guaranteed to get them hooked. It had worked in the past—usually with kids during school presentations, admittedly—and he hoped that it would tonight as well.

  “Meet Ann Hodges,” he said. “On November 30, 1954, she was taking a nap in her home in Sylacauga, Alabama, when a rock the size of a grapefruit smashed through the roof of her house, bounced off her radio, and landed on her. Her arm and hip were badly bruised, but she managed to walk away from the impact relatively unharmed. What struck her was this . . .”

  Another click of the remote and the image changed to a close-up of the rock, now on display at the Alabama Museum of Natural History at the University of Alabama.

  “A chondrite,” Alex said. “A meteorite that broke off from a larger asteroid and made its way to Earth. Now, as I said, this piece was no larger than a grapefruit, and yet when it entered our atmosphere, it made a fireball large enough to be seen from three states. Had its descent not been slowed by the roof and the furniture in M
rs. Hodges’s house, she most likely would have been killed. So if something the size of a grapefruit can do that, imagine something larger? Maybe the size of a small house?”

  Alex paused for dramatic effect and was greeted only by the sound of rustling papers, weight shifting in seats, and an errant cough or two emanating from the semidarkness. He sighed, cleared his throat, and went on.

  “October 9, 1992, witnesses in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, all report a green fireball streaking toward Earth. It’s captured by no less than sixteen independent video cameras. And this is in 1992, in the days before everyone had a video camera in their pocket. Those who saw it reported it as being brighter than the Moon, which was almost full at the time. It crossed several states in forty seconds before coming down over Peekskill, New York, and striking Earth. Or, more accurately . . .”

  Alex tapped the remote again, and the image changed to a red car sitting in a driveway. The rear of the vehicle on the passenger side was completely pulverized. On the ground beside the bumper was a black lump of rock. The image brought a slight ripple from the group, which Alex took as a good sign. He continued.

  “. . . striking Michelle Knapp’s Chevy Malibu, where it almost hit the gas tank. Experts from the American Museum of Natural History confirmed that the object was a meteorite. A twenty-eight-pound meteorite about the size of a bowling ball, to be exact.”

  Another touch of the remote and a video rolled, showing a bright-white object streaking through a dusky winter sky captured from different angles.

  “February 15, 2013,” Alex said. “Chelyabinsk Oblast in the Ural Mountains of Russia. A meteor enters the atmosphere at a shallow angle. This angle, combined with the fact that its most likely point of origin was close to the Sun, meant that the object entered our atmosphere undetected. It streaked overhead until, approximately twelve miles from the surface, heat and pressure caused it to explode in an airburst over Chelyabinsk. The amount of energy released was five hundred kilotons. That’s thirty times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. More than fifteen hundred people were injured as a result, mostly from broken glass due to the number of windows shattered. Additionally, the force of the explosion sent out a shock wave that made its way around the planet twice. The Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest natural object to enter our atmosphere since the Tunguska blast of 1908 and proof positive that humankind is vulnerable to objects from space. At the time, Dmitry Medvedev, the then-prime minister of Russia, as well as representatives from many other countries, called for an organized, interconnected global system to be put in place to safeguard the planet from impending strikes. To date, despite many valiant tries from various agencies, including NASA, no such system is in place.”