“I am so very sorry, my love,” she whispered just barely loud enough for Brent to hear.
BOOM.
The Wyvern capsule was rocked again by another explosion. It was a sound Brent’s mind could only imagine as the tearing down of a skyscraper or the rending of an airplane in half. It ripped through the capsule. His hands were rapidly flitting across the touchscreen display, disengaging the connector protocols.
“Buckle up!” he shouted to Andrea, motioning with his head to the seat next to where Williams was lying, unconscious still. “And get him fully strapped in.”
Andrea, face gaunt and distant as a shell-shocked soldier, moved forward to comply with the order. Brent looked to the heads-up display that showed minute separation.
Not happening fast enough! We’re dead if we don’t get some more thrust…
Brent activated a separate console display used for the six reentry thruster rockets to slow the Wyvern down for landing—not the minute and detailed thrusters used for space ops. He held his breath, hit the button, and waited for the acceleration.
Nothing.
Nothing happened. He looked down and saw the screen was visually crossed off, displaying the words: Action Prohibited.
“Action prohibited!” Brent shouted. “The hell it is! This is my Wyvern!”
Brent pushed aside the console and reached down between his feet to pull up the manual controls. He locked it in place, found the six red panel covers for the thruster switches, and flicked them up.
He was about to flip the switches when he heard screams from behind him. He looked back to see the rescued crew staring out at the viewport window. Half of the Pisces III was on fire, the translucent blue fire that Brent had only seen in space experiments at small scale. From this close up it was both mesmerizing and terrifying, and it was spreading rapidly to where the main oxygen tanks were housed.
“My God…” Brent said. Then, he flipped the switches.
Full thrust buried them all back in their seats just as the Pisces oxygen tanks exploded. The Wyvern accelerated forward, chased by an ever-expanding fireball threatening to engulf them.
Chapter 3
Minutes later, after narrowly escaping incineration, Brent shut down the thrusters at a safe distance from the wreckage of the Pisces in order to conserve the rest of their fuel for landing. He reengaged the Wyvern’s automated controls and was running a diagnostic on the hull. Heat shields were good for heat; not debris from exploding spaces stations.
Brent unbuckled his harness and floated over to the porthole view to try and see the Pisces—what was left of her. She was a smoldering hulk in the distance, only visible as the smaller debris around it still glowed an eerie pale blue like space’s version of a glowing red ember from a campfire.
Andrea joined Brent at the porthole view, watching the space station go down.
“All my life’s work,” she said. “My partner…”
Brent looked at her, knowing nothing he could say would help. She was lucky to be alive. He was lucky to be alive. They all were. But sometimes being lucky wasn’t enough to take away your pain over losing someone close to you.
Brent looked back as Williams began to stir in his seat. Brent’s eyes drifted to the empty seat where Jean Louis should have been.
This is going to change things, thought Brent. And not for the better.
T-Minus 6 Years
Chapter 4 - Location: New York City, United States
The floor of the United Nations building was a wild, tumultuous scene. A raucous, unruly congregation raised their voices loudly as they began to process the announcement made by the Professor of Foreign Relations from Stanford University. Shayla Carlson stood in the center of the floor with over 200 dignitaries from foreign nations looking down at her with skepticism, and in many cases, disgust.
Well, that didn’t go over too well, her expression said as she looked back to her husband Brent.
At the U-shaped table, some distance in front of Shayla’s podium, the jowls of U.S. Ambassador Smith shook as he reached forward to adjust his microphone downward.
“Mrs. Carlson,” he began. “My apologies. I meant Dr. Carlson. What you are saying is that we pool our resources, and simply dissolve all barriers to technology sharing across all nations, in order to—to… take a trip to Mars? Why in the world now? Especially after the devastating tragedy that befell the Pisces. What has changed? And why would we ever trust our secrets with…” He shot a look at Ambassador Jiang from China. “With nations who have proven untrustworthy?”
At that, a new chorus of consternation arose, and several of the members at the table swiftly stood in immediate protest, turning and shouting.
“A nation such as yours has utterly no grounds to preach to others of trustworthiness!” leveled Jiang.
Many more had now risen, and the scene threatened to turn into complete discord when Brent Carlson took the mic.
Brent cleared his throat. “Hem, hem… Sorry to interrupt this… discourse. But I couldn’t help but say something.”
“You do not have the right to take the floor,” said Smith. “Security!”
Brent looked around nervously and spotted a guard advancing on his position.
“Let her husband speak,” shouted someone from the surrounding stands, followed by more calls of the same. Quickly the chorus rose throughout the chambers.
“Seems your occupation as an astronaut has garnered you a bit of celebrity in these halls,” said Smith, contemplating the political fallout from denying Brent the right to speak. The guard looked to Smith, who shook his head. “Okay, you have two minutes, Mr. Carlson, but get to the point.”
“Ah, well, hmm,” said Brent, noticing the hundreds of eyes fixed upon him, and realizing that he really didn’t know exactly what he was going to say.
Shayla cocked her head and leaned in. “My husband can fly at the tip of a twenty-story rocket but can’t talk to these old, fat blowhards?” she whispered.
Brent gave a light chuckle. She always could make him laugh. A half grin formed at the edge of his mouth, the one she knew well—the one that said he was about to get into some mischief or trouble. Or both.
He began, “Thank you, now, my wife is actually the smart one with the master plan. I am just the worker bee astronaut who spent over a year in space. Just to let you know how not smart I am, did you know that it takes fifty people to plan out my day when I am aboard the International Space Station? Fifty people! That means I am, like, one-fiftieth as smart as a regular person.”
This raised some laughs from the audience.
“I’m wearing a suit today,” he continued. “It took me about thirty minutes to put on. But when I’m flying around the planet at 17,000 miles per hour, or outside one of our launch vehicles, it takes me a full four hours to get my suit on, and that’s with someone else helping! Clearly, I’m lacking in intelligence somewhere.”
The timing was just right and caused more laughter. Ambassador Jiang sat back and gave a quizzical but interested sidelong glance. Ambassador Smith just scowled and tapped his watch theatrically.
“Right, then,” said Brent. “So, I didn’t come here to regale you with tales of my stupidity. As a matter of fact, I just came to support my wife, who has spent the last seven years painstakingly building a plan that could send us to the furthest reaches of space, where we have never been before. This is her show, and the only reason I took the mic is because I couldn’t bear to see the laughs, the jeers, the insults at such a masterfully crafted and thoroughly vetted plan.”
“Mr. Carlson,” Smith interrupted, “this plan has already been disproven. Time and time again, history has shown that when we want to get something done, whether it’s traveling to a new continent or mapping out new territory, it’s been for financial gain. And when we went to the moon, it was because of competition. Your plan has none of that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. What’s not written in those papers, what’s not written down, is th
e human spirit. And not just the human spirit, but also our evolving humanity. I’ve been dreaming of going to Mars ever since I was a kid, and even as an astronaut in a country that has a plan to go, my heart breaks every time a program gets pushed back, every time a timeline is extended by five years. There’s an old saying that goes something like this: You should only have the goal of being a millionaire, not for the money you will make, but for the person you will have to become in order to make it. That’s what traveling to Mars is really all about. It’s a challenge on a global scale, and it’s a goal of humanity to become an interplanetary species, not just to say that we did it, not just to begin building a secondary home to ensure species survival in the case of a cataclysmic asteroid strike. No, it is a goal for humanity, for who we will have to become as a people to pull this off!”
Some cheers rose from the crowd. Ambassador Smith eyed the room, visibly uncomfortable with how the tide was changing.
“They say we can’t do it alone,” Brent continued. “I’m looking around at nations right in front of me who have the technology, the will, and the funding, and are just looking for someone to pull them together. They say we can’t go to Mars unless there is a space race. A competition to pit ourselves against one another. I say there is a competition. And that competition is against those who say we can’t do it. It’s against our past-selves. Our past-selves who committed genocide and slave trading. We are better than those people, just like we are better than the people who need a space race to make this work. There is no place for that in our future. My challenge to you, and you, and you.” He pointed to individuals in the crowd. “And my challenge to everyone out there isn’t how to create a space race. It’s how to get the human race to space, to Mars, and beyond. Will we be better than our past-selves? Will we repeat the same tragic mistakes? Or will we seize the moment to unite for this, our greatest cause? It’s up to you to make the decision. That’s really all I have to say. Thank you. Ad Mars et Ultra.”
The chamber erupted in cheers, and Ambassador Smith smacked his gavel down hard, again and again. Ambassador Jiang leaned forward and slowly nodded as a smile spread across his face.
Shayla turned to Brent. “Wow! Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know!” he said, shaking his head incredulously.
She pulled him down to her face and kissed him hard, oblivious to the crowded room around them.
Chapter 5
Outside the UN building, a man dressed in a black suit, a silver tie, and black, horn-rimmed glasses made his way hurriedly through the crowd to his limo waiting at the curb. He let out a sigh before he got in. He knew what to expect, but he didn’t know what he would do.
He opened the door, and the secure, red phone in the middle console rang. He scuffed the top of his head in his hurry to sit down. As the door closed behind him, his eyes locked on the phone.
What should I say?
The phone rang again.
Don’t let it ring a third time. Just pick up!
He picked it up with a split second to spare. He was met with the familiar electronic tones and hissing of the cyber-encryption scrambling protocol.
Alright, alright, you’ll think of something.
And when that was finished, he was greeted by the operator.
“Yes, I’m ready to be patched through,” he told the operator.
When he was transferred, he was surprised to hear the voice on the other end sounded even more enraged then he had imagined.
“Yes, sir…” he said. “I know, sir. That did not go as planned at all.”
He moved the phone away from his ear to keep the shouts from the other end from damaging his eardrum.
“Of course we have contingency plans.” He paused to listen, holding the phone closer now, as the voice on the other end shifted to a lower tone. He liked that tone even less. He’d heard it used on a colleague before. Shortly after, that colleague had been sent on a deep-cover assignment and hadn’t been heard from since.
“We had no idea Brent Carlson was going to speak, let alone sway the entire Security Council to vote like that,” he explained. “Even Ambassador Smith reluctantly…”
The voice on the other end interrupted him. His face dropped, and he became acutely aware that he might not get a second chance. His hand went to rest on his holster, his eyes leveled on the divider that separated him from the driver, half expecting it to lower at any second.
How easy would it be to take me out in this armored, soundproof car?
He snapped back to the conversation, realizing he had been asked a question.
“Sir!” he said. “I will make sure this gets taken care of. I will do whatever it takes—whatever it takes—to make this right and ensure your anonymity. I have a plan that I am putting into place as we speak.”
There was no response on the other end for what seemed like a full minute. Just as he was about to ask if the connection was still good, he got his response.
“Yes, sir. I understand completely, sir.”
The phone went dead. He let it hang there in his lap for a minute, too stunned to move. He’d been given an ultimatum. He had to make this go away, or he would go away. Permanently.
Well, at least I have one more chance. Better make it count.
He hung up the phone and pushed the intercom for the driver.
“Start driving,” he said, and released the button.
“Where to, Mr. White?” replied the driver.
“Just drive!” he screamed into the intercom, jabbing his index finger on the button so hard and fast that his fingernail bent back and tore off.
As the limo began to drive away, he said to himself, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
He hardly noticed the blood from his half nail-less finger. It dripped down the cell phone screen while he frantically dialed the one person who might be able to solve his problem. He didn’t want to call him, and he didn’t care for his methods.
But what option do I have? The stakes are just too high.
T-Minus 3 Years
Chapter 6 - Location: Silicon Valley, United States
Brent and Shayla’s silicon valley home was located on the gradual, rocky slopes of the Mountain View terrace with a perfect view overlooking the lake. The rare hard rain had driven away any late-evening walkers ambling about with thoughts of acquisitions, taking their startups public, and the latest breakthroughs in technology that would surely change the world. The rain pounded down on the windows in hard sheets.
Ding-Dong!
The doorbell sounded, and the rain drowned out the sound as it carried lightly through the empty, decorated rooms of the house. In the living room, a thick layer of dust lay on neatly arranged artifacts: Shayla’s doctorate degree, Brent’s Fort Benning Combatives fighting championship trophy, their smiling faces in their framed wedding photo. This was Brent and Shayla’s first house together, and it was full of good memories. There were a couple of extra bedrooms for the kids they planned to have. Here, they hosted many of the tech world’s elite, the new space industry’s luminaries, and many of the area’s smartest and wealthiest. They devised their own world-changing ideas in this house, spending late nights working on their crazy plans and lazy Sunday mornings snuggling in bed. They had been living the dream.
Ding-Dong, Ding-Dong!
The rain came down even harder now, and the muffled sound of the doorbell died out as it carried through the halls, past the dining room and into the kitchen. Instead of dust, everything was covered with a thin film of filth. Dirty dishes overflowed from the sink. Pizza boxes were stacked high in the corner. Flies buzzed about the room, swarming over the trashcan, seeming to enjoy the permeating smell of mold and whiskey. At the kitchen island table a precarious stack of bills and mail spilled onto the floor and around a bowl of half-eaten Chinese food noodles takeout.
And there, Brent sat.
In his hand was a glass with another double’s worth of whiskey. The bottle next to the glas
s was half-full.
“Ever the optimist, even till the end,” Brent said to himself and laughed out loud, swatting too dumbly and slowly at the fly that chanced upon his arm.
The impatient doorbell sounded again and again, but Brent was too lost in thought to hear it. He finished off the rest of the whiskey in one gulp, face twisted and lips puckered. He’d never gotten used to that.
He opened the table drawer at his side and sifted through the contents with a detached certainty and a sigh. He turned back to the photo in the frame in front of him. Picking it up with both hands, he opened his mouth to speak.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Brent dropped the frame and jumped to his feet, looking around, feeling guilty and exposed like a deer in headlights. Someone was knocking at the back door, and hard.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
“Open up, Brent!” came a muffled voice. “I know you’re in there!”
“Crap!” said Brent.
He bent quickly and pulled the plastic tarp off the floor and grabbed the other section of tarp off the counter, balling them up as he walked to the back door. At the back door, the banging came again.
“Alright, coming!” Brent shouted, and sent the ball of plastic tarp sailing into the next room and over the side of the couch, out of sight.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
“You son of a bitch!” Brent shouted as he rushed to the door. “Now I’m gonna kick your…” Brent swung the door open to see Mike Johnson, the Chief Administrator of NASA, at his doorstep. “…Ass.”
“You were saying?” said Johnson with eyebrow raised.
Johnson’s nostrils expanded, probably taking in Brent’s stink. Water from the hard rain poured off his fedora, through his exposed snow white hair, over the shoulders of his trench coat. He had a leather bound binder under his arm. Brent stared dumbfounded, mouth agape, hardly able to believe what his bloodshot eyes were seeing.
Mars Journey: Call to Action: Book 1: A SciFi Thriller Series Page 2
