Table of Contents
Title Page
Preface
Flare
Dead Men Flying
Bad Seed
Dead Men Crawling
Separation Anxiety
The Fourth Way
Aim, Fire, Ready?
Brainstorms Ahead
Course Commit
Mutiny
Recall
Jenga at 75,000 kph
Cruise Control
Flyby
The Long Dark
Worker Bees
Ride 'em Cowboy
Earth Defense Operations
Armor
The Foundry
Slow Cooking
Glass Blowing
Collateral Damage
Someone Set Up Us Da Bomb
Green Acres
Easing Uphill
Hill Sphere
Recovery
Credits
Want more?
ENTRY INTERFACE
Dedications
Acknowledgements
About the Author
DEAD MEN FLYING:
A Riddled Space Novel
by Bill Patterson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
DEAD MEN FLYING
Copyright © 2018 by Bill Patterson
All rights reserved.
Cover design © 2018 CHRISTIAN BENTULAN
All rights reserved.
Preface
THEY HAVE TWO OPTIONS, AND BOTH OF THEM LEAD TO CERTAIN DEATH
The Mars Expedition should have succeeded, but the Moon exploded. The shattered rock and debris from that explosion will surely kill them when they return to Earth. But they cannot stay on Mars indefinitely--theirs was an exploration mission, not a colonization mission. Death to return, death to stay, and no way to use Martian resources to ensure survival--the Mars Expediation needs a fourth option. When a voice they long thought dead--Chief Engineer McCrary of Moonbase Collins– arrives over their radio, they get that option, but it is one that is as fraught with danger as their first options. But when you are Dead Men Flying, you have little choice but to try.
Flare
UNSOC Spaceships BurAye and RayBee, June 17 2082, 1000 EDT
A small tic sounded in the gently susurrating air on board the UNSOC Spaceship BurAye, which everyone unofficially called the Burroughs. Small sounds like that were routine, and after a brief scan of the control panel, Mickey Donovan went back to the e-book he had been reading, A Passage to India.
Fascinating story. How the world has changed in 160 years. I wonder if India is facing us.
Donovan flicked on the rear-facing camera to get a glimpse of the beautiful double-crescents that were the Earth and the Moon. The Mars Expedition, of which the Burroughs was exactly half, was launched three months ago from that single oasis of life in the entire solar system. The Expedition was some twenty percent into a fifteen-month journey to the Red Planet to begin a systematic exploration of Earth's enigmatic neighbor.
The screen washed out in a blue-white glare. The control panel lit with alerts, primarily radiation alarms and sensor malfunctions.
Donovan punched the intercom over to the other half of the expedition, the UNSOC Spaceship RayBee, commonly known as the Bradbury. The two spaceships were connected to a large iron ring; the entire apparatus spun to give the astronauts the feeling of gravity.
“Puna here. What's going on? My board's lit up like Diwali week.”
“Mine's a Christmas tree over here, Puna. Big flare behind us. Can you see anything? I had the sensors trained behind us and now they're offline.”
Ragesh Puna worked his board, bringing a sensor pod out of its storage position to bear on the Earth. “Piping it over to you. Sweet Buddha's left nut! Some kind of explosion on the Moon! I make it out to be in the south, maybe in the polar region.”
“Better wake the commanders, shouldn't we?” Donovan hated waking Roger Smithson, his commander. The guy wasn't getting enough sleep as it was. He pushed the intercom for Commander Smithson anyway. It wasn’t every day that the Moon exploded.
“Yeah. Punching his alarm now.”
“Leave this line open. Commander's going to want instant comms.”
“Done. Good luck, Mickey.”
***
Roger Smithson looked at the radiation decay curve and frowned. The Burroughs carried one hundred men, six in the 'awake' crew and ninety-four in hibernation. The Bradbury was identically manned. The 'awake' crews were going to be fine. The total radiation dose was somewhat less than one hundred millisieverts, so there was little chance that anyone would have radiation sickness. The radiation alarms were set to go off at the hundred millisievert level, so they didn't sound. That would have to be changed.
“It's the ones in hibernation that worry me, Mike,” he said in the intercom. “They won't get the chance to work off the damage.”
Michael Standish, Commander of the Bradbury, shook his head. “That was something we worried about during Command School. The hibernating crew members accumulate radiation damage during their sleep, and have to repair it when they wake up. What do you propose?”
“Good question,” said Roger. “It's a coin flip. Waking someone up and putting them back under entails a certain risk-hibernation isn't perfect. But so is waking up with a ton of damaged cells. Well, it's not something we have to solve today, but we shouldn't forget about it either. I do want to find out what's going on without joggling UNSOC's elbow too much. What have your guys been able to figure out?”
Michael grimaced. “Not much. Some kind of explosion. Debris, certainly. UNSOC isn't keeping us in the loop—my guess is they've got a major emergency on their hands. Beyond the possible damage to the sleepers, I can't think of a thing that would necessitate a call to UNSOC.”
“Me either. I'm going to wait a couple of hours, see if they get back in touch with us or not.”
“Sounds like a good idea. I'm going to stay awake and monitor the situation from here.” Michael frowned. “I've got a bad feeling about this.”
Roger, overall commander of the expedition, nodded grimly. “So do I. I can't put my finger on it precisely, but there's something telling me we're in deep shit. I'm staying awake, too. Probably go back and review the Contingencies part of the mission plan. Until then, if we contact UNSOC, I will be the one to do it, clear?”
“No problem, boss. Anything else?”
“No,” said Roger. “Burroughs, listening, out.”
Roger turned to Mickey Donovan and shook his head. “I think we're screwed. Somehow, some way, we're in deep trouble. Keep an ear on the circuits. Let me know if there's anything from UNSOC.”
“Wilco, sir. If I may, sir. An explosion that big should have a lot of debris associated with it. Some of that might get into Earth orbit.”
Smithson stood stock still in the three-tenths gravity of the Command Deck. “Yeah. I'll have to think about that.” He crossed to his command chair and dropped into it. He slipped a pair of virtual reality goggles over his eyes. “I'm going to review some contingencies, Mickey. Hit the alert button if anything turns up.”
***
Four hours later, Roger Smithson slipped off the goggles and blinked his way back to his current reality.
“Mickey, is the Bradbury still on the horn?”
“Yes, sir. I've been talking with Ragesh Puna about the whole moon thing.”
“Any conclusions?”
Mickey ordered his thoughts. “Well, sir, we've both come to the conclusion that if there
was as large an explosion as the flare indicated, then there's a good chance that all of the space between Earth and the Moon is going to be filled with debris of all sizes.”
“Filled?”
“Not in the sense of filling a box with sand, sir. More like a high chance of running into a chunk of something within a short period of time. Even a grain of sand moving a few kilometers a second is enough to punch a hole in something vital.”
Smithson thought. “That's not a good thing. I really don't want any holes in Burroughs. How long is this likely to last?”
“No idea, sir. My field is spacecraft systems, particularly communications. I leave the cosmos to the astronomer johnnies.”
Smithson nodded. “All right. Ask Ragesh to find his Commander and put him on. Time to get some answers from UNSOC.”
Dead Men Flying
DTG
“UNSOC CAPCOM, this is BurAye and RayBee, Commanders Smithson and Standish, over.” A long silence ensued.
“What's the delay up to?” Roger asked Mickey.
“Eighty-two seconds, sir.”
Roger waited a minute and a half and repeated the call. He realized that a conversation with three minutes between call and response was going to take forever, so he continued talking.
“All we saw was the Earth lighting up, then nothing. No radiation alarms, so we must have missed that part of it. We can't raise the Collins or the Chaffee, oh.”
Three minutes after the second call, a voice erupted from the speakers on both ships.
“CAPCOM A to BurAye and RayBee. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I bet you're wondering what's going on.” There was a short pause, as if CAPCOM was waiting for a reply. “There was some kind of energetic event on the Moon. Collins dropped off the air twelve minutes later, no telemetry. We tracked a shock wave sweeping through their position. Chaffee got hit with a burst of radiation. You might or might not have gotten that. No word yet from parts of the Earth that was under that blast.”
Roger stopped, listened to the rest of CAPCOM's message, then continued. “There's nothing we can do, of course. How is the Chaffee?”
CAPCOM continued his status report. “The Chaffee is fine now, but the Commander is concerned about the plume of Lunar debris blown into space by whatever happened. She feels that if the lives of all aboard the Chaffee are in danger from the debris then the station should be evacuated. There is a difference of opinion as to the danger posed by the debris, and we are trying to get enough data to make an informed decision.”
This time Roger waited for the 'end of transmission' beep before replying.
“Understood, CAPCOM. Wish we could help. Any idea if the debris will clear by the time we get back?”
“Not at this time, guys. But we have a long time to figure it out. I'd love to keep chatting, but things are due to get busy here in a minute. CAPCOM, listening, out.”
“BurAye and RayBee, message received. Good luck, out.”
Roger thumbed the selector switch to Intercom. “Michael, gentlemen, it looks like we're on our own.”
***
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, sponsor of the Mars Expedition, beamed a retransmission of all UNSOC transmissions to and from the Chaffee towards the Burroughs and Bradbury. The news was unrelievedly grim.
Lisa Daniels, Commander of the Chaffee, evacuated all but one of the crew of that space station. The crews made it back to Earth in hand-built Emergency Reentry Vehicles made from smuggled parts. The wisdom of her decision was reinforced when telemetry from the Chaffee showed multiple impacts some three hours after the crew splashed down in the waters of New York Harbor.
The United Nations Space Operations Command, or UNSOC, was rocked when it was discovered that its Director-General, Subraman Venderchanergee, not only shut down the Operations Center, but refused to allow the ERVs crucial guidance information during reentry. It was the ad-hoc assembly of old NASA Mission Control personnel, broadcasting via a hacked TDRS ground station, that helped the ERVs get to a safe splashdown.
When the UN tried to find the Director-General of UNSOC, he had disappeared, along with a considerable amount of cash in 'special service fees' that he charged to those who had competed to secure space on the Chaffee.
As revelation after revelation pounded the United Nations, the demands to shut down UNSOC grew. After all, with the exception of the Mars Expedition, there were no longer any known manned projects in space, with the lone exceptions of far-off probes around the outer planets and solar weather observation craft. Those would easily be handled through places like JPL and the large radio antenna installations at Goldstone, Spain, and Australia.
The men aboard the Mars Expedition watched the Earth-bound disaster and contemplated their fate.
“Looks like we're not going to be able to get back home,” said Mickey, chatting with Ragesh during their mutual watch-standing. “Even if we could, we'd get holed as soon as we got close to Earth.”
“I agree,” said Ragesh. “Much as I hate to admit it, what we're doing now is fairly pointless.”
Mickey shook his head. “It's not pointless. We're going to do some great science on Mars. Who knows, they might have a solution for the orbital debris problem before we get done and have to head back.”
Ragesh gave a short bark into his microphone. “How? Let's list the possibilities. The only effective thing they can do right now is try to fire lasers from the surface of the Earth to fry the debris. The atmosphere's going to screw that up. Hell, if there was anything they could do from the ground, they would have done it back in the 1990s, when the problem of orbital debris first came to light. No, buddy, they and we are equally screwed. They're in for a hard rain——a rain of red-hot rock from the sky.”
“They could always blast it with a nuke,” said Mickey.
“And risk EMP destruction of everything electrical? Hardly!”
Mickey gripped his chair arms tightly. “They'll blast everything that will cause a lot of deaths. You can't just stand aside and do nothing as your country gets pounded. You watch—the nukes will start going off when the really big stuff comes into range.”
“We're still out of luck,” said Ragesh. “It's the small stuff that's so bad. The only way I think we can succeed is to have a big freaking laser on the front end of the Burroughs, like a snowplow, clearing away the debris. Only, we're undefended from debris coming from all the other directions.”
“Ok, so we're beat. Why not stay on Mars?” asked Mickey. “We've got enough food for three hundred for five years. Before then, we'll have a greenhouse set up, just you watch.”
“And do what?” asked Ragesh.
“Science!” said Mickey. “And wait for the skies to clear above the Earth.”
Ragesh leaned his chair back against the three-tenths gravity. “Do you have any idea how long that will take?” asked Ragesh. “Decades is the bare minimum. I don't know about you, but I barely agreed to give up five years of my life on this venture, not decades. And, in case you haven't noticed, there's over two hundred people on this mission and no women. I don't fancy hanging around nothing but dudes for the rest of my life.”
“All right, Ragesh, if you know so much, what's your answer?” Mickey carefully arced a mechanical pencil end-over-end toward a cup stuck to the radio desk.
“I don't have one. I don't think the commanders have one, either. As far as I can tell, it's a whole bunch of 'wait and see'.”
“You are a real joy to be around,” said Mickey, bending forward to pick up the pencil and try to lob it into the cup once more.
***
Unbeknownst to either watch stander, their expedition commanders were having an eerily similar conversation through their own channels.
“Bit of a problem, wouldn't you say,” said Smithson, frowning at the spreadsheet on the display.
“You're a master of understatement,” said Standish. “We've got three options, as I see it. Continue the mission as planned, land on Mars, do science until the next
launch window, come back to Earth, and pray we can get down without getting holed.”
“Not a great option,” said Smithson.
“Agreed. Alternatively, we could land on Mars and stay there until Earth gets its debris problem solved.”
“Worse option. No women. Even if we did have women, we're not set up for colonization. Sure, we've got some hydroponics, but that's just to give the air recycler some help.”
“I agree with you, Roger. But it helps to list off everything. Finally, there's the 'something else' option.”
“What's that?” asked Roger Smithson.
“It means, literally, do something else that's not on the plan. Something will come to us, Rog, and we're going to have to give it some credence.”
“Got anything in mind, Mike? As I see it, we have to choose between the first two alternatives, and I'm not liking what I see so far.”
Standish got up to pace his stateroom. “Not right now. I've got the damndest sensation that I know what it will be, but I can't resolve it. Oh, it will come to me, but until it does, I recommend that we continue on the mission as if nothing has changed.”
“I agree. In fact, I ought to give a short speech to the awake crew and give them a heads-up. What say, 1900 tonight?”
“Good for me. If you want to shoot me an advanced copy, we can present a united front.”
“You got it. 1900. Until then, Smithson out.”
***
The Command Deck was crammed with bodies, all six of the 'awake crew' were actually conscious and sitting in front of consoles on the Burroughs. The crew of the Bradbury had gathered together as well.
“Gentlemen,” said Roger Smithson, “We have an unprecedented situation, as you all know. I understand that everyone has seen the replay of the flare. There's been a major explosion on the Moon—my guess would be some kind of impact near the Lunar southern pole. The impact ejected a tremendous amount of debris into cis-Lunar space, all the way down to Low Earth Orbit. Lisa Daniels, of her own volition, evacuated the Chaffee and flew everyone back to Earth. They are currently in the hospital undergoing radiation treatment. Roque Zacarías elected to remain aboard, and frankly, nobody blames him.
Dead Men Flying Page 1
