Legacy: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  “Right,” Mendenhall said. He waited without breathing.

  “Main engine start in three, two, one—burn,” Ryan said calmly.

  Mendenhall threw the switch and they heard the loudest pop of all as the main engine came to life. Inside Altair they could hear the rumble of the exhaust as it exited the confines of the main engine bell below them. They felt the ship slow as the minimal gravity started to take effect.

  “Main engine cutoff in two, one, zero,” Ryan said. He watched the attitude compass swing north and south on a correct horizontal plane with the surface of the Moon. They were now flying upright, as was the natural order of things.

  Altair became silent. Each individual’s breathing was concealed behind their helmet. The rapid breathing that each feared the others would hear was self-contained, so nobody had to worry about being the only one to have shown fear.

  “Standby for main OHM burn for insertion,” Ryan said, as he adjusted his feet on the Velcro mat beneath his boots. “Everyone go to internal oxygen at this point, please.”

  All crew members, the flight team included, unplugged their suits from the Altair’s air system. Air conditioning and oxygen would be in self-sustaining mode for the duration of the landing procedure—for obvious reasons, Jason thought.

  “Well, I guess we’re ready,” Will said. He looked at the altimeter as Altair screamed down from high orbit at close to three thousand feet per second.

  “This is really going to add to our frequent flyer miles, huh, buddy?” Ryan quipped. He also watched the altimeter. “Stand by for main engine thrust—seventy-five percent power until I say so.”

  “Ready for main engine start,” Will said, his finger poised over the covered switch.

  “Keep a close eye on fuel consumption. We only have five minutes of sustainable thrust.”

  “Five minutes? Oh jeez, I forgot about that.”

  “Should be plenty of time, unless we run into rocks where they have no right to be. Or craters that have up and moved on us since the photo run an hour ago. Or the shots from the Hubble Telescope last month. We should be fine.”

  “If you say so,” Will said.

  “Three, two, one, main engine start at 0120 and thirty-two seconds. Start the clock.”

  Altair slowed its descent and they all felt the craft jerk and shimmy. Outside it was deathly silent as the vacuum of space sucked up sound like a sponge.

  Ryan watched the NAV board closely, adjusting trim to the descent easily, trying hard not to overcompensate. He was learning that the simulator back at Houston was tougher to fly than the actual spacecraft.

  “Three degrees off center, and three and half minutes of fuel remaining,” Will called out louder than he intended. “Altitude is thirty-five thousand feet.”

  Ryan turned the right-hand handle five degrees to port and adjusted angle. Altair at that moment was coming down right on the target mark.

  “Uh, we’re coming down a little fast,” Mendenhall said. He watched the LED readout of the altimeter spiral down by thousands of feet in the wink of an eye. “Thirteen thousand feet.”

  “Copy, Will. Easy there, big fella,” Ryan called out, as he adjusted trim once more.

  “Up throttle in five, four, three, two, one—one hundred percent throttle. Burn it, Will, burn it!”

  Mendenhall reached over and turned the small red knob that sent the fuel injector to full power as it shot the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen into the mixing hub of the combustion chamber.

  Below, on the crew deck, everyone felt the shakes and shimmies of Altair as she neared the lunar surface. They all had their eyes closed and were listening intently to the orders Ryan was calling out. Sarah was glad Altair was shaking so violently because it covered up her own internal shaking. She was terrified beyond belief.

  “Five hundred feet and slowing to a hundred feet a minute,” Will called out.

  “Stand by to power down to fifty percent thrust.”

  “Roger,” Mendenhall said. He tried to swallow but found his throat didn’t work.

  “Throttle down,” Ryan called.

  Will turned the throttle knob. The shaking and loud noises ceased almost immediately. No one onboard knew if that was good or not.

  “Throttle set to fifty percent thrust, two minutes of fuel, altitude at three hundred feet.”

  Ryan turned his throttle to the aft OHM’s jets and brought Altair level once more after she had drifted.

  “Shackleton Crater at three miles.” Ryan breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the rim of the giant crater close up for the first time.

  Suddenly a warning chime started and three red lights started blinking.

  “Goddamn it!” Ryan said between clenched teeth. He started hitting the hand-controlled throttle on the left side of his upright chair. “I have a continuous thrust coming from the aft OHM’s jet. It’s pushing us over!”

  Mendenhall watched wide-eyed as Ryan tried freeing the stuck thruster. “Damn it, it’s not here. It’s the shutoff valve that’s stuck open. We’re not only losing our correct attitude, we’re burning our fuel too damn fast. We have to compensate for the roll.”

  “One minute of fuel, fifty feet to impact,” Will announced as calmly as he could, not wanting to add to what Jason had to deal with.

  “Firing starboard OHMs,” Ryan said, more to himself than to the crew.

  The roll ceased and Ryan was making the correction, but the fuel warning bells started sounding and the computer started voicing its opinion rather loudly.

  “Pull up, pull up. Obstacle detected in flight path. Pull up, pull up.”

  “Shut that damn thing up. I hate its voice!” Ryan said, as he adjusted trim for the last time.

  Mendenhall switched the audio warning off. He knew Ryan was thinking about the nice voice of Europa, the supercomputer back home.

  “Thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet!” Will called out.

  “Main engine to seventy-five percent thrust,” Ryan said, as he eyed the patch of lunar surface below. He knew he had neither the time nor the fuel to maneuver to another spot if he saw they were coming down onto a patch of large rocks.

  “That’s it. Fuel is exhausted,” Mendenhall said. He reached out and braced himself for a hard landing.

  Ryan clenched his teeth as he felt the main engine sputter once and then stop just as three of four landing pads hit the surface of the Moon. He cringed as Altair went motionless, balancing first on three and then on only two landing gear. The giant Altair teetered, nearly rolling over, and then her momentum shifted and she fell back, her round shape behaving like a teetering beer can. Then all four landing gear came in contact with the soft surface of the Moon. Her hydraulic struts impacted and retracted into themselves, and then expanded once more as the gas was released, easing Altair into stillness.

  Throughout the ship, there wasn’t a sound other than the ticking of the cooling engine bell far below the main crew cabin.

  Ryan looked over at Will, who was staring out of the large triangular windows at the crater two miles away. His eyelids didn’t blink and his hand was turning white from his powerful grip on the handle above his head.

  “That was different,” Ryan said, and started breathing again.

  Mendenhall finally blinked his eyes and slowly looked at Jason.

  “Thank you,” was all he said.

  The small Navy pilot smiled and patted Will on the back.

  “Your visor’s a little fogged up.”

  “I don’t know how that can be. You have to breathe for it to do that.”

  Ryan hit his VOX and waited until he was sure of his voice.

  “Welcome to the Moon,” he said.

  SITUATION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The president sat in the White House Situation Room sixty feet below the ground floor of the mansion. He sat quietly and listened to the conference call from the Cape and Houston. Hugh Evans was speaking at the moment, and the president realized for the first time that he was
drifting even as Evans was doling out the first good news in days, outside of the fact that Jack Collins and his minimal ground forces had achieved success in Ecuador.

  “In essence, even though telemetry and communications with Altair and Falcon 1 are down, we have established that Altair is safely on the lunar surface. Unfortunately, we have also confirmed through satellite imagery that the catastrophic debris strike on Falcon did in fact take the lives of the mission commander and the Altair pilot. The loss of Colonel Kendal and pilot Dugan is a very severe setback to the potential success of the mission.”

  The president sat up and leaned toward the table, his eyes roaming over his national security staff, who were being kept in the dark on the most important matters of this and all the missions to the Moon. The people with knowledge of the president’s actions could be counted on one hand.

  “Flight Director Evans,” the president started slowly. “We can assume that someone has taken control of the mission. Do you have protocol that dictates who that someone is?”

  “We have only one conclusion at this time. We believe Lieutenant Sarah McIntire, U.S. Army, is in command, since she is the senior officer onboard Altair.”

  “And it’s my understanding the landing had to have been achieved by Navy Lieutenant Ryan, backup pilot for Altair?”

  “Correct, sir. We have verified the safe landing since the retasking of the Hubble Space Telescope four hours ago.”

  “Mr. Evans, thank you for your time. Before you go, do you have any contingencies for reestablishing contact with the lunar team or Falcon 1?”

  “We are trying to bounce signals off various satellites, but there has been no luck thus far. We do have several other plans, but they require the lunar excursion team to use their own initiative as far as acting on them goes. They could reestablish communications through several sources on the lunar surface. As of right now, we are planning for Dark Star 3 to continue on mission until its conclusion.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Evans. Please stay near the phone.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

  The president leaned back in his chair and looked from face to face. The Situation Room was crowded with stars and men in rolled up shirtsleeves. Not one of them save for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Caulfield, and the president knew the real truth of what was happening. The vice president was officially under FBI investigation for incriminating cell phone calls to the now disgraced and on the run Samuel Rawlins, so the president had officially handed over all NASA and Space Command duties to Caulfield for the duration of the lunar emergency.

  “Gentlemen, that will be all for now. General Caulfield, will you stay behind please?”

  As the council shuffled out of the late night meeting, General Caulfield moved from his seat at the far end of the large table to a seat closer to the president. He saw the commander in chief reach down and place a small laptop on the table. Caulfield immediately suspected that the little bald man with the tired look and thick glasses was on the other end of the monitor.

  “General, we’re being joined by my old friend and advisor Niles Compton from Ecuador. You two have met on several occasions, I believe. Niles, I’m taking you off this damn laptop and am going to place you on our main monitor. General, dim the windows, please.”

  Caulfield hit a button on the console to his front and the windows surrounding the situation room went completely opaque.

  Soon the visage of Niles was on the main monitor and he saw the tired and drawn face of the president.

  “You look like hell,” Niles said from deep inside the Andes.

  “Thank you, baldy. Never let an opportunity slide by to make me feel worse than I already do. I may say the same for you, buddy. It doesn’t look like mining agrees with you.”

  “Thanks for the compliment, and no, I hate field work.”

  “Niles, your three lieutenants have done one hell of a job stepping up like they did. You heard Flight Director Evans on their status.”

  “I did, but they’re one hell of a long way from the finish line. As far as we know they may have people with guns waiting for them before they reach that line.”

  “I know, I know. There’s still no word from the Chinese on their attempt to change the chairman’s mind about cooperation.”

  “I never thought I would see the day when we could convince the Chinese military to cooperate and have to finagle and make deals with the devil to get the civilian government to deal with us. It’s nuts,” General Caulfield said as he slid the knot in his tie down and unbuttoned the top button of his blue shirt.

  “So, there’s still nothing from Beijing?” Niles asked, the worry on his face evident.

  “Not a damn thing. Their people could be waiting for ours to step foot on the lunar surface and then massacre them. We just don’t know.”

  “Well, we are now in direct contact with our complex, and Colonel Collins is trying to get into the second mine gallery as we speak. Thus far we haven’t turned up any useful information outside of a large grouping of graves onsite, as I have explained to you already.”

  “I do have this from the FBI field team in Ecuador.” The president held up a flimsy. The good Reverend Samuel Rawlins and former Army officer James McCabe were found murdered in a Quito hotel room this morning.”

  “That means whoever led the strike team against Jack and his men has gone rogue from his employer,” Niles said and shook his head.

  “That’s my thinking. Thus far our forces in country haven’t turned up any leadership for the assault force. The FBI believes they may have made their way out of Ecuador. Niles, had the colonel considered the need to bring more men inside the mine? Your telling me of those German graves was a little unsettling. If it’s security he’s worried about, explain that I am giving permission to bring the rest of the SEALs and the British contingent inside. We can control the British through the prime minister.”

  Niles lowered his head in thought. Then he looked into the camera.

  “I have already given Jack that order. We now have forty personnel in the mine. It’s not only the mass graves we found—I have a feeling that as aggressive as these maniacs have been, they won’t stop at getting back that mine, or at least its contents. And until we know the Chinese intention on the Moon, Operation Columbus is that much more important.”

  “Agreed,” said the president.

  “I have one bit of information you may want to have that I’ve been reluctant to tell you with all these other concerns.”

  “Go ahead, Niles, while I’m numb inside.”

  “We had two additions to our ground team here in Ecuador. It seems Garrison Lee and Mrs. Hamilton came along for the ride.”

  The president stared into the camera and didn’t say a word. He lowered his eyes and rubbed his temples.

  “I’ll bow to whatever you want to do, Niles. If you want them out, I’ll order it.”

  Niles became quiet as he mulled over the question. He looked away for a moment, then removed his glasses and placed them on the table. It was as though he were fighting back some very powerful emotions.

  “I think maybe he’s earned the right to be anywhere he wants to be. I also think he’s earned the right to hear what this whole mess is about.”

  The president looked away for a moment before looking back at a dirty-faced Niles. He took a drink of water.

  “I agree. Leave him and Mrs. Hamilton alone.” The president shook his head as he placed the glass of water carefully down on the polished table. “You know, he’s a national treasure, Niles. If he wants to go along, you’re right. He’s earned it.”

  OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN, BEIJING, CHINA

  The chairman of the People’s Republic of China sat at his large, barren desk and read the latest communications from the Moon mission, Magnificent Dragon. He smiled as he read the report that the American spacecraft was down and his men were ready to spring the trap that would ensure that China received the greatest edge in technolog
y the world had ever known. He laid the communiqué down and removed his thick glasses. Then he wiped at them with a silk handkerchief that had his initials embroidered on its corners. The handkerchief and two dozen like it had been a birthday present from the president of the United States upon his last visit to China. Now the chairman only hoped he could repay the gift, only not in the way the president would have liked. The eighty-one-year-old chairman had replaced the thick glasses when his intercom buzzed.

  He sat silently without moving to answer. His official title was that of president, just like the American, but he privately ordered his subordinates to call him Chairman, a title he vastly preferred to President. Its association with the great Mao was in keeping with his power, he thought. The buzz came again from the intercom.

  “Yes,” he snapped angrily into the infernal device. He had left instructions with his personal secretary that he not be disturbed.

  “The vice chairman of the National People’s Congress and General Guo Boxiong, executive vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, are here to see the chairman,” said his squeaky-voiced personal assistant.

  “Very well. Send them in.”

  The massive double doors were opened by two Chinese army sergeants. The two men stepped inside the large office and made their way, hats in hand, toward the large and empty desk.

  “Vice Chairman Zhaoguo Wang, General Guo, to what do I owe the pleasure?” the fat old man asked as he folded his hands on top of the polished desk.

  “The situation on the surface of the Moon, Mr. President,” answered Wang.

  The chairman looked angrily at the second most powerful man in China. His scowl was meant to send fear into the much smaller, younger man. His use of the title “President” was meant to cause his temper to rise.

  “And what would concern you about the mission?”

  “We have made our protests well known. And now we are prepared to take our concerns directly to the ruling body of the movement.”