Red Alert- Missles Inbound

by Cliff Deane

  RED ALERT: MISSLES INBOUND

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  RED ALERT: MISSLES INBOUND

  Book One of The Oort Chronicles

  Published by Creative Texts Publishers

  PO Box 50

  Barto, PA 19504

  www.creativetexts.com

  Copyright 2018 by Cliff Deane

  All rights reserved

  Cover design copyright 2019 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, persons, businesses, and incidents is strictly coincidental. Locations are used only in the general sense and do not represent the real place in actuality.

  Kindle Edition

  RED ALERT: MISSLES INBOUND

  by Cliff Deane

  CREATIVE TEXTS PUBLISHERS

  Barto, Pennsylvania

  This book is dedicated to Mrs. Eileen Nearing Greene,

  a dear friend of more than fifty years.

  A Note to My Readers

  The science behind the premise of this book is accurate.

  I surely hope you enjoy reading

  Red Alert: Missiles Inbound

  A Prelude to Apocalypse

  It is estimated that as many as two-trillion comets still reside in the Oort Cloud, which is the farthest known limit of our Solar System.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Science Stuff

  The Oort Cloud

  The Star System named Sol

  It is estimated that as many as two-trillion comets still reside in the Oort Cloud, which is the farthest known limit of our Solar System.

  The distance is so great that a number written in miles would have absolutely no meaning, even to Astronomers. To create a measurable distance, Scientists now use a term called the AU (Astronomical Unit). One AU is equal to the distance from the Earth to the Sun, some ninety-three million miles. In math notation that would be 93,000,000, and since the Oort Cloud measures out to as much as ten-thousand AUs, using the number nine-hundred and thirty billion miles becomes incomprehensible.

  The Holly Thorne Comet began its descent toward the Sun after being struck by, and fused with, several other dirty snowballs. These collisions sent the now huge comet tumbling out of the Oort. As she began falling toward Sol, Holly Thorne picked up other small comets. She now measured thirty miles across. The series of glancing blows created a wobbling rotation.

  The voyage of Holly would take two-thousand three-hundred, and fifty-nine years from the time it began to plummet toward Sol. The birth of Jesus Christ was still three-hundred and fifty years in the Earth’s future.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Discovery

  Mt. Palomar Observatory

  Palomar, California

  Trent Allison sat at his desk looking over computer images of the night sky, searching for anomalies that portrayed objects moving through the heavens that did not follow the normal path.

  “Hey, little guy, just where are you going in such a hurry?” asked Trent of one such anomaly. He directed the computer to take the available data on this, as yet, unnamed comet, and extrapolate a possible trajectory. The data returned by the computer caused Trent to run the information twice more. The results were the same; this could be a close rendezvous. He garnered his findings, then called his Supervisor, Doug Shelton, to ask for a few moments to discuss his discovery.

  “Sure thing, Trent, I’m taking my lunch break. Why don’t you come on down now, if that works for you?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be there in five minutes with my own lunch. I’m transferring my data to your desktop, now.”

  “Good deal, I’ll see you in five.” Doug pushed the button that ended the call before turning to his desktop computer.

  Trent rarely hurried anywhere, but he made an exception for his new discovery. He knocked on Doug’s Office Door and heard his boss say, “Come on in, Trent.”

  Trent entered the office and took the seat offered by Doug, who said, “Well, doesn’t this just suck? When did you first come across this potential harbinger of bad news?”

  “About an hour ago; I was running overlays of the last thirty days along the Jupiter quadrant when this little guy showed up. I ran a projected trajectory, and my computer says it may pass us, but if it does, its passage will be between the Earth and Moon.”

  “Did I hear you right, may pass us? Now, isn’t that definitive? Okay, what does your computer say about the chances of it slamming into us?” asked Doug.

  “Doug, I don’t want to be Chicken Little, but my station says between an 85 and 92% with a plus or minus 4% chance of it making an impact. Sir, I need to run my raw data through the Big Bertha computer. Doug, if I didn’t think this Comet could prove to be a potential strike threat, I wouldn’t ask, but we need Bertha’s deep computations.”

  Doug looked over his reading glasses at Trent and asked, “How far out is she?”

  “According to my station she is nearly eight-hundred million miles out and moving at close to forty-five thousand miles per hour, so, my estimate is around two years out.”

  “Yeah, I agree, but the scheduled users are gonna be so mad that their breath intake could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Some of these guys have been waiting for two years to have some of Bertha’s time, but you’re right. Okay, you have her for forty-eight hours. I’ll get with the Jet Propulsion Lab to give them a heads-up on her. We’ll give them what we have now, and they can also run it through their big computers. Oh, have you checked to see if you are the first to see our visitor?”

  Now Trent’s face lit up with a smile resembling Alice’s Cheshire Cat and with eyes bright with joy said, “Yes, sir, I did. Apparently, I am the first.”

  Doug rose from his chair and reached across the desk to shake Trent’s hand. “Well, my friend, good for you, well done. Being the first means you get to name it. Have you thought of a good moniker?”

  “Yes, sir, I have,” grinned Trent. “I have decided to name her after my ex-wife, Holley Thorne.”

  Doug was a bit surprised and said, “Damn Trent, that’s quite an honor for her, and, I might add, a very thoughtful thing for you to do.”

  Trent’s smile only grew as he added, “I decided to name it after Holley because she is such a cold, miserable, whining, and complaining harpy who has made me want to stick my head in a gas oven many times.”

  Doug and Trent both laughed loud and hard. “Good one, Trent, but what will you really name it?”

  Trent stopped laughing and said, “Holley Thorne.”

  Immediately after Trent’s meeting with Doug, the word went out that a new, fast-moving object, probably a Comet named Holley Thorne was rapidly making its way toward the Sun.

  NASA quickly rearranged the most advanced orbital telescope, Hubble V, rotating around the Red Sands Mars Colony to update the track of Holley Tho
rne. Once word of Holley Thorne got out, everyone at Red Sands was disappointed that they would miss out on the fireworks since they were not in the path of Holley’s Tail.

  Trent spent the next two days in Big Bertha’s Lab fine-tuning his data and was somewhat relieved when she spat out a best guess trajectory that indicated Holley would miss the Earth by nearly two-hundred thousand miles on March 6, two years hence in 2118. Two-hundred thousand miles in the vastness of space was a distance which was described as being smaller than the width of the head of a needle, and according to Bertha, the odds of a collision was still in the 45% range.

  Bertha also pointed out that Earth would quickly pass through Holley’s tail which stretched out behind her for nearly two-hundred million miles. Holley Thorne is thirty miles wide, twice the size of the McNaught Comet which passed the Earth in 2007.

  Trent was thrilled to learn of Earth’s passage through Holley’s tail, and he thought that the Comet’s tail of two-hundred million miles was about right for his ex. He quickly realized that the light show would be even more spectacular than the Comet which buzzed the Earth a couple of hundred years ago. He thought that comet had flashed by sometime around 1918, just after the end of World War I, and just before the Spanish Flu Pandemic (H1N1) of that same year which killed as many as one hundred million people worldwide.

  729 Days to Holley Thorne

  March 7, 2116, AD

  Presidential Conference Room

  White House

  President Eileen N. Greene convened her National Security Council to discuss the Holley Thorne Comet’s potential danger to the Earth. One by one the President met each member’s eyes, gauging their concern. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I sincerely hope your whiz kids have come up with a way to move this comet to well outside the orbit of Luna. NASA, let’s start with you.”

  “Yes, Madame President,” said Gordon Winters the NASA Chief, “Fortunately we do have a two-year window, and we are able to use several Asteroid Mining Vessels for this mission. They are currently at Red Sands dropping off cargo and taking on provisions now.

  “There are, however, two potential hiccups. First, as this is the first ever attempt to move a stellar body by half a million miles, two years may not prove a sufficient window to move Holley Thorne outside the orbit of the moon. We just don’t know for sure. All of our computer simulations say yes, but ultimately this mission is in its infancy. If the safety factor presents a significant possibility of directing the comet into a collision with Luna, well, we must think long and hard. Yet, with a projected clearance of only forty-thousand miles from the moon, the odds of a strike are already very high, our computers estimate a 50% chance of a hit.

  “The second concern is that the debris field from a melting comet creates an extremely hazardous mission for the ships and crews of the vessels assigned to push it outside of the moon’s orbit. There are many huge rocks in that tail traveling at forty-five thousand miles per hour. Now, having said all this, I can tell you that we can launch the ships within thirty-six hours. Three of them are currently being provisioned and equipped as we speak.”

  “I see,” said the President, “I think I understand the risks involved, but can’t we just launch some nukes to blow the damned thing to hell?”

  Winters said, “Madame President, this comet is the largest ever recorded. It is roughly thirty miles across. Holley Thorne is twice the size of Comet McNaught, which was previously the largest comet ever recorded. Attempting to blow it to hell could well be problematic, in that we would likely just break Holley up into Mount Everest sized chunks that would most likely change the trajectory, causing strikes both on the moon and the Earth, and If that happens, well, we will go the way of the dinosaurs.

  “Ma’am, I am afraid that the nuclear option is, unfortunately, not a viable response to Holley Thorne. Though dangerous, I believe that we must try to push it outside the orbit of the moon.”

  Mack Holland, Chief of Homeland Security interrupted saying, “If Holley is that big, won’t she weigh too much to just push around?”

  Gordon swallowed his smile before answering, “Mack, don’t forget that in the vacuum of outer space, there is no element of weight.”

  Eileen asked how the comet would be nudged.

  “The ships are equipped with stand-off lasers which will fire short bursts into the left side of Holley. The heat they generate will cause the ice to boil and act as jet propulsion. This will create sufficient force to slowly alter her trajectory. Asteroid mining vessels use them in their normal day to day operations.

  “Madame President we can launch by 9 March. The ships will intercept the comet in roughly six months by launching from Mars. Our vessels can readily match the speed of the comet, and the mission will take roughly ten to fourteen months to push Holley outside the orbit of the moon.

  “There is, however, one thing of which I am absolutely certain; the mining crews are going to make some very heavy demands, considering the personal risk involved. Be prepared to agree to whatever they want. We have no time for negotiating, and ultimately, they hold all the cards.”

  Eileen asked, “Gordon, why are we using civilian mining vessels? Isn’t this something NASA or our Space Defense Force (SDF) should be handling?”

  “No, ma’am, the reason we must use the mining vessels is that their ships have both enhanced, and stand-off armored plating. Such armor is absolutely necessary for them, as the asteroid belt is a regular shooting gallery. Our ships don’t have this armor because of the age-old bug-a-boo called budget constraints.”

  “I see,” said Eileen, “well, that is a problem for another time. All right, Gordon, get them launched and let’s put an end to this threat. I can see that my next hurdle will be to keep Russia, China, and India from using nukes. Those folks still think that if one nuke won’t do the job, then use ten. Yes, when you think like a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

  “Madame President,” said Dr. Tyler Deen, a virologist, and the CDC Director, “there remains another consideration.”

  The President looked warily at Deen before saying, “Yes, Dr. and that would be what?”

  “Madame President, we have learned that comets often carry the elements necessary for life, to include viruses. I don’t wish to raise a panic here, but we must devise a failsafe to ensure that these ships do not return to Earth, or Mars until we can be assured that they carry no threat, significantly that of viral contamination.”

  “Yes, I suppose that would be the prudent thing to do. Admiral Perry, I would like for you to work with your Computer Gurus and come up with a computer virus that, upon command will not allow the ships to attain orbit should they become infected by, oh, anything.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll get right on it.”

  “You know, for the very first time in my life, I kind of wish the old United Nations hadn’t fallen completely apart after we withdrew from it back in 2022,” said President Greene.

  The President then spoke with each remaining member of her staff and, finding no better alternatives, set the launch in motion.

  CHAPTER TWO

  March 7, 2116, AD

  Heinlein Space Port

  Red Sands, Mars Colony

  Reginald (Reg) Lee, the Space Port Administrator at the Red Sands facility, ended his call from Gordon Winters. Gordon was the Earthside NASA Boss.

  Reg stood 5’8” in height, with brown eyes and deep black hair. Though he was of Taiwanese ancestry, the place of his birth was at the Mars, Red Sands Colony. Reg loved Mars and the only time spent on Earth had been for his Collegiate education at Cal Tech. Besides the fact that Earth caused him to weigh nearly three times more than on Mars, the danged place was green, with a blue sky. No, Reg definitely preferred the red tones of Mars.

  The colony existed under a huge series of domes, connected by tubes, both above and below the surface and were constantly being expanded to accommodate the growth of the Mars Colony.

  The planet was being terraformed, needing another
two- hundred years to complete the process. Reg was glad that he wouldn't be around to see the beauty of Mars turn blue and green.

  By 2100 AD, human life expectancy was well beyond a hundred years. By 2120 AD, the estimation of the normal human lifespan was poised to take another exponential leap in longevity through both medical procedures and bionic hardware. These new technologies would modify the gene structure retarding the aging process, as well as the introduction of an individual Artificial Intelligence, inserted directly into the cerebellum of the brain. This device was the size of a grain of rice.

  Reg had the sole responsibility of ensuring the orbiting freighters assigned to the Holley Thorne mission were resupplied and prepped for launch within the next twenty-four hours.

  Using his intercom, he asked his secretary to find Jim Bream and ask him to drop by. Jim was the perfect match to take on this new mission.

  Jim was the Senior Cargo Specialist, in charge of lifts and drops for every ship using the Red Sands Space Port. He coordinated the usage of the three Space Elevators which, while tethered to the ground, were moored to their destinations at the cargo stations which remained in geosynchronous orbits. The elevators were held in place by using dense poly-carbon fibrous cable, both for ground retention and for the cable along which the elevators made their way for the entire two-hundred and twenty-five miles to the orbiting Space Station.

  These magnificent inventions were first conceived back in the 1960's, but it took until 2050 for advances in technology to catch up with the capability of lifting cargo and people into space via an elevator. The cost savings in lifting cargo by elevators as opposed to using cold fusion drives, made the Red Sands Colony very wealthy.