Captain Jenkins spoke to all the crew and ground expedition personnel that had crowded in to the small mess deck. “Ok, listen up everyone. We have a lot of things that have to happen fast when we get to orbit. I need everyone up and at their stations. You already know about the solar storm. The flare that the scientists are so excited about is going to rotate our way in about four days. We will start seeing some early effects from it before then, though. We’re going to attempt to get the landing expedition down to the surface before we have to turn and run. To do that, we’re cramming three weeks of flight operations into less than three days. As soon as we get into geo sync orbit and the ship is ready, Lieutenant Greco is going to guide the robotic crew ascent ship down. Once it’s on the ground safe, the expedition crew is going down in their lander and then we’ll send down the other robotic ships. We don’t stop flight operations until the landers are all down. We’re going to have to hustle, but at the same time, we cannot afford to make mistakes.”
Hank looked around at his crew. They had determined expressions on their faces. On the other hand, the ground expedition personnel, especially the civilians, looked like the proverbial rabbits in the headlights as the old saying went. “As soon as all the ships are down, we’re breaking orbit and making course for Phobos Base. We’re going to try and stay in the shadow of Elpis as long as possible. We’ll have to live in the storm shelter for a few weeks, but we should have enough consumables to make it to Phobos.”
“Questions or issues anyone?” Hank asked.
“Why don’t we just stay in orbit until the flare passes?” asked one of the engineering Petty Officers.
“Because, even with the EM shield at maximum power, we’re going to be taking some heavy radiation exposure. The magnetic field of Elpis is not as strong as Earths and cannot protect us. That’s why all you lifers were asked to save egg and sperm cells on Earth when you joined up. Eventually, you’ll cook your gonads up here if you make a career of it. Trying to stay in the shadow of Elpis will help somewhat with the more energetic particles, but we’re still going to get a pretty good dose of radiation. We’re not looking at doses high enough to make us sick or cause any immediate problems, just high enough that we’ll probably get some extended time earth side for the rest of the year when we make it back to earth orbit. We’re probably going to be stinking pretty bad by the time we can leave the storm shelter since there are no showers in there. I would recommend you get a good shower one last time before we leave orbit. We’ll set course for Phobos and put everything on autopilot as soon as the landing party is down. Nobody will leave the shelter after that unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Any other questions?” Hank asked. “All right then, we’ll be spinning down the habitats for EV operations in eight hours when we enter orbit, so get your asses in gear,” he growled as he headed for the ships control deck.”
Chapter 27
April 15th, 2047
Elpis Orbit
Allan Greco reached under the visor of the VR helmet and wiped the sweat from his forehead as he concentrated. Forty thousand kilometers below him the crew ascent ship was hovering on its rocket engines about a hundred meters above the ground. He was attempting to land the ship in a flat valley one set of hills over from the alien artifact site. While watching his instruments closely, he slowly reduced power to the engines and the ascent rocket settled to the ground on its four landing struts. He gave a sigh of relief and shut down the ship’s engines. “Eleven percent fuel left. Not bad at all,” he said to himself. As he took off the helmet, Captain Jenkins patted him on the shoulder.
“Lieutenant, I have to admit that was some damn fancy flying. I believe you may be as good as they say you are,” Hank said.
Allan grinned. “That was a cake walk. That wind shear at three thousand meters just made it interesting.”
Hank nodded. “Let’s just hope that your brother is as good as you are,” Hank replied.
…
The David Honstein was parked in geosynchronous orbit about a thousand meters from the Mike Pierce. Lieutenant Jason Greco and Commander Kristy Nichols and the rest of the ground expedition on the ship had been monitoring the landing of the crew ascent ship with abated breath. That ship was their ride back up into space. Without it, there could be no landing for the ground expedition. When it was safely down, they all let out a collective sigh of relief.
Jason let out a cheer. “All right, we’re next! Let’s get this show on the road.”
Commander Nichols turned to Commander Edwards in the cramped operations center of the Honstein. “Do we have permission to suit up and board the lander?”
“You can have your crew suit up. As soon as Alpha control can run though a complete system check on the crew ascent ship, you guys will be go for crew transfer and landing.”
“I’m going to get suited up then,” said Kristy. “Let me know when we have permission to proceed.”
She turned to tell Jason to get ready but he was already up the access tube and on his way to the suiting area by the access hatch. She hit the ships intercom switch. “Ground expedition personnel suit up and report to the boarding hatch. It’s time to go people.”
Brian shook her hand. “Good luck, Kristy. Stay safe down there.”
Kristy grinned. “Just make sure you’re here in four years to pick us up.” She turned and gave a tug on the ladder and floated down the access tube and kicked off toward the access port. Putting on a pressure suit in zero G was not a fun procedure. She knew she had better get started suiting up right away. When she got to the suit storage area the others were already there and being assisted into their pressure suits by the Honstein’s crew. Kristy counted them off real quick in her head. Lieutenant Jason Greco was almost suited up. Chief David McGill was suited up except for his helmet and was assisting the others. Petty Officer Donald Chamness and Doctor Albert Abernathy were struggling into theirs. All the ground expedition crew that had ridden the David Honstein from Earth was present and suiting up.
Two of the Honstein’s crew came over to her. “Your next, Commander,” one of them said.
Kristy nodded and stripped off her coveralls down to the skin tight inner lining that was worn in the pressure suits. She held on to a grab-bar while her legs were extended out and they slid the suit up her body. “I hope you took a pee recently,” one of the female petty officers helping her said. It’s going to be very uncomfortable riding down with your legs crossed if you didn’t.”
Kristy laughed. “Yea, having to use an absorbent to pee into while in that cramped cabin would not be fun. We poor females cannot whip it out and use a bottle like the guys can.”
Kristy held onto the rail while they fitted the rest of her suit. After five minutes, she was ready. “Thank you all for the trip out and your help,” she told the Honstein’s crewmen that were present.
“Good luck, Commander. Have a safe trip,” they all wished her.
Kristy climbed through the access hatch of the lander and closed it behind her. She cycled the hatch mechanism and floated up to her place in the co-pilots seat. Jason was already going through the pre-release check list one last time even though he had already done it three times in the past twenty four hours. The others were already buckled into their seats. Kristy buckled her harness and called to the others, “last chance to get off.”
“Let’s do it,” said Chief McGill.
Kristy clicked her radio switch. “Honstein, this is Commander Nichols. We’re ready for release.”
“Roger that lander, We have a mission go from alpha Control,” replied Commander Edwards. “Releasing latch mechanisms now.”
They felt a series of thumps as the four large clamps holding the lander were released. Jason briefly fired his maneuvering thrusters and the lander floated away from the David Honstein’s cargo truss. Kristy looked at the Honstein out her view port as they slowly drifted away. She hoped that it would return on time in four years to pick them up.
Maneuveri
ng over to dock with the Mike Pierce,” said Jason as he fired the maneuvering thrusters a few more times. Jason flipped the lander over and Kristy could see the shape of the Mike Pierce slowing getting bigger.
…
On Board the Mike Pierce, the rest of the landing party were in their pressure suits waiting for the lander to dock to pick them up. They floated by the access tube hatch watching a view screen as the shape of the lander grew in size as it approached. Captain Hank Jenkins waited with them. Eventually, there was a thud and then some mechanical noises as the lander docked with the Pierce. A crewman reported that the pressure seal was good. There was a sigh of escaping air and the landers hatch swung outward into the access tube. Chief McGill stuck his head out and grinned. “Do any of you ladies want a ride planet side?”
“Back inside you old goat,” Master Chief Sims said. “Everybody going ashore needs to get in,” he said as he stood aside for the three female expedition members and Doctor Vaughn to climb through. After they were all in, Captain Jenkins motioned for the Chief McGill to hold up before he shut the hatch. Hank floated into the lander and pulled himself up to the cockpit. Jason looked up and grinned at him.
“Hey, you don’t have to put up with my driving this trip, Captain,” he laughed.
Hank squeezed Jason’s shoulder. “You get this thing down safe Jason, you hear me?”
“No problem, sir. You just tell that brother of mine to get the rest of our gear down in one piece. I would hate to die of starvation because he screwed up.”
Hank looked at Commander Kristy Nichols as she looked up to meet his gaze. Jason did his best to look away and become invisible. The entire Space Force knew of the rocky relationship that Captain Jenkins and Commander Nichols had gone through. They had met, fought like cats and dogs, fallen in love, gotten married, fought again, and then divorced in just a few short years.
Hank cleared his throat. “Kristy, err…Commander Nichols, you, I mean…all of you be careful down there.”
Kristy’s expression softened as she looked up at him floating behind her seat and she saw the concern in his gaze. “Thanks Hank, we will. I’ll see you in four years or so.”
Hank nodded. He turned and pulled himself back to the access hatch. “Good luck Chief,” he told Chief McGill as he left the lander and pulled himself back into the access tube. The lander hatch shut behind him and he shut the access tube hatch and kicked off down the docking tube to re-enter the Pierce. When he was back in the suiting area he headed toward operations where he would monitor the landers progress down to the planet.
…
Back on the lander Chief McGill finished securing the hatch and took his seat behind Commander Nichols and strapped in. Commander Nichols leaned around the back of her seat and looked at the eight other landing party members seated two by two behind the cockpit. The Chiefs were looking bored and the two Petty Officers were trying their best to do the same. Doctor Abernathy and Doctor Vaughn had stoic looks on their faces while Doctor Doucette and Brianna were grasping each other’s hands across the aisle from each other. She noted that Doctor Doucette looked terrified and Brianna’s face was as pale as her white pressure suit.
She tapped Jason on the shoulder. “Let’s do it.”
Jason reached up and cycled the landers docking mechanism. There was thud from the hatch area as the docking clamps released them.
“Maneuvering clear,” he said as he applied a few thruster bursts to move them away from the Mike Piece.
“Ok, everyone,” Kristy called out. “I’m turning on all the recording cameras and imagers. We’re making history and need lots of pictures and video to send to the people back home who are paying for this vacation. Everybody smile.” She turned on the recorders.
“Pierce, this is Commander Nichols. Are you copying our telemetry signal?”
“Roger that Lander, we have your signal. Be aware that we have quite a bit of static. The edge of that particle stream from the flare is edging closer,” came the reply from the Mike Pierce.
“We’re initiating automated de-orbiting sequence now, lander out,” she said.
Jason reached down and initiated the computer program that would guide their trip from orbit down into the atmosphere. He would not actually take control of the lander until they were well into the atmosphere and had slowed down to about Mach three.
The computer flipped the lander around until it was orbiting stern first. “Hold on, everyone,” Jason said.
The lander’s deorbiting engines roared into life and the lander started dropping toward the surface of the planet as it slowed and lost orbital velocity.
Brianna clenched her eyes shut and thought of her parents. The teeth rattling vibrations of the lander’s de-orbiting rocket engines could be felt through the landers structure. After about ninety seconds the engines cut off and everything was quiet. Brianna opened her eyes and said, “Are we there yet?”
Everybody laughed nervously. “Honey, that was just the foreplay. The real ride won’t start until we hit the atmosphere,” Jason called joyfully.
Kristy looked over and gave him a dirty look. “Why does everything a man says need to have sexual connotations?”
Jason grinned and winked at her. Looking down at his instruments he said, “Eleven minutes to atmosphere interface.”
To Doctor Doucette, it was the longest eleven minutes of her life. She discovered that she did in fact still believe in God and spent most of that time trying to remember the Catholic prayers of her childhood.
Brianna sat in amazement as she listened to the two chiefs talking about a bar they had gone to the last time they were on Earth. Petty Office Mullen had her eyes closed and Petty Officer Chamness had pulled out a vid player and was watching some old movie that had to be from around the turn of the century. All of these Space Force people were crazy she decided. She was about to ride a fireball down to an alien planet with a bunch of certifiable crazy people. She was about to ask them to turn around and take her back when she felt the first vibrations as the lander started encountering the planet’s atmosphere.
“Here we go,” called Jason. “Everybody hold on.”
A purplish glow developed around the landers cockpit windows and the lander started shaking and vibrating. Kristy looked at her instruments. Even though she was senior officer and in charge of the expedition, she was just the co-pilot during the landing. Lieutenant Jason Greco was the only person alive who had actually piloted the lander during an actual re-entry before. And that was just one time back on Earth.
“Hull temperature is rising rapidly,” she said.
Jason nodded. “We are nominal on trajectory. Looking good so far. Releasing booster pack, we won’t need that anymore.” He hit a button that allowed the de-orbiting rocket booster to separate from the lander. It had stayed attached this long just in case they needed to try and get back into a low orbit. The booster would burn up in the atmosphere. With the booster gone, the lander was now much more streamlined and the buffeting eased off a little.
“We are losing the communications link with the Pierce,” Kristy said. “We’re passing behind the planet and should regain communications in about seventeen minutes.” The buffeting started increasing again as the lander plowed into thicker atmosphere. They were rapidly converting speed and altitude into an equivalent amount of heat energy. That re-entry heat was attempting to burn through the composite insulating armor on the landers nose, wing, and belly surfaces. Kristy hoped that the design engineers had made it thick enough.
They rode in silence as the lander shook and bucked around them. The computer was making thousands of calculations per second keeping the lander on trajectory. A human mind would not have been able to even attempt to control the lander at the speed it was traveling.
“We’re coming back around the horizon again,” said Kristy. “I’m picking up the transponders from both the Honstein and Pierce again. We should…yep, we have a telemetry lock again.”
“Altitude is twen
ty thousand meters, speed is Mach five, we’re still a little fast according to the computer,” Jason said. “How far to the LZ?”
“Showing twenty three hundred kilometers to the ascent ship’s beacon,” Kristy reported.
“We’re still too fast,” said Jason. At Mach three I am taking manual control.
Kristy was watching her displays with alarm. “We’re going to over shoot the LZ.”
“Something isn’t right,” said Jason. The computer is taking us in too shallow and we’re not shedding enough speed. I’m taking manual control now.”
Jason overrode the flight controls and took manual control of the lander. He put the lander in a bank to port and initiated a big banking circle in the atmosphere. In effect, the lander was skidding through the sky using its lifting body as an air brake. As the orbiter came back around from completing its giant circle in the sky he saw their speed had dropped back down to near what it should have been. “I’m showing just over Mach two. How far to LZ?” he called.
“Seven hundred kilometers. Attitude is seven thousand meters,” Kristy called.
“Opening engine shutters and intakes,” Jason informed her.
There was a series of loud thuds as the doors slid off the openings to the air breathing jet engines and the gimbaled exhaust ports.
“Spinning up turbines,” Jason said. There was a loud whining as the engines were rapidly spun up by the supersonic air flow coming though the twin intakes. “Initiating start sequence.” Jason held his breath until he felt and heard the two small explosions that indicated the turbines were now burning highly oxidized jet fuel and oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere. He rotated the exhaust gimbals to twenty degrees and slowly turned the lander on course toward the beckoning transponder on the crew ascent ship at the LZ. “Increasing the throttles up to fifteen percent power,” he said as he banked the ship left and right to test his controls.
“Ok, we have powered flight. Descending toward the LZ,” he informed everyone.
If anyone had been watching from the ocean below them, they would have seen the blunt arrowhead shape of the lander scream overhead at just over the speed of sound followed by the sound of its sonic boom moments later.
Blue Planet Rising (Pebbles in the Sky Book 2) Page 15
