Magwave (The Rorschach Explorer Missions Book 2)

by K Patrick Donoghue

  By luring this UMO colony, trained by Shilling, to accompany the Rorschach Explorer, Amato had hoped to shave months off the travel time to Callisto…if, that was, Shilling could manipulate the UMOs to behave as desired.

  And therein was the problem.

  Shilling’s primary experience training UMOs had centered on keeping them away from high-value satellites in Earth’s orbit. Using Pavlovian conditioning techniques, he’d trained the honeybee-like aliens to gather and feed at designated ion-pod satellites instead of aggregating around the International Space Station, military payloads, or crucial scientific or commercial satellites. But Shilling was learning on the fly how to adapt that experience and his conditioning techniques to gain the UMOs’ assistance in propelling Rorschach.

  In the earliest stages of the mission, his techniques had worked. But the last time Morgan looped Rorschach around to look back at Earth, the UMOs had magnetically bumped two of the probes surrounding the ship, disrupting communications with the CubeSats and making the probes veer off course, nearly clipping Rorschach’s instrument array. If the errant probes had collided with the ship, they could have caused significant damage or destroyed the ship. Therefore, it was critical to avoid a repeat occurrence.

  Shilling claimed the mishap merely demonstrated that the UMOs had learned to associate the fleet’s use of maneuvering thrusters with the eventual powering up of their engines. In other words, the bumping was the UMOs’ way of communicating they expected to be fed.

  To solve the problem, Kiera had suggested feeding them with a short burst of the engines before using thrusters. Shilling disagreed, fearing this would cause the UMOs to associate their bumping with spot-feedings, encouraging them to employ the bumps whenever they wanted to eat instead of adhering to the feeding schedule he had established through training.

  Morgan, unfortunately, had sided with limp dick. The colonel had tasked Kiera with developing a software fix to overcome the effects of the bumping on ship-to-probe communications. Though Kiera still held to her opinion, she’d followed the colonel’s orders.

  And now it was time to try out Kiera’s patch.

  “Julia, deactivate RCS auto-pilot,” Morgan said.

  “Aye, aye,” said Carillo. “Kiera, verify fleet management is active.”

  Kiera responded with a half-hearted “Roger that” and checked her data screen. “Fleet program running. All probes green.”

  “Confirm probe RCS synced with Rorschach.”

  “Reaction control system sync is confirmed.”

  “Bob, keep an eye on our UMOs,” said Morgan. “I want to know if they get frisky again.”

  “Copy that,” Shilling replied.

  “RCS now on manual,” said Carillo. “Commencing turn.”

  Kiera kept her focus on the data screen showing the status of each probe as Carillo fired the maneuvering thrusters. The ship veered left, and the probes’ fired their own thrusters to follow the ship’s turn. Two more thruster shots by Carillo produced further synchronized reactions from the probes.

  “So far, so good,” Kiera said. “Probe RCS nominal.”

  But within seconds, Shilling piped up. “Uh…Colonel, I’ve got activity. The UMOs are splitting up.”

  Red alerts began to flash on Kiera’s screen. “I have sensor faults on three Shield probes.”

  “I see the alerts,” said Morgan. “Are they still in formation?”

  Kiera darted her eyes from one set of probe data to another. “No, they’re veering off course.”

  “Colonel, we’re getting interference spikes on X-band,” Ajay said.

  “How long should it take for the patch to kick in?” Morgan asked Kiera.

  “Should have been almost instantaneous.”

  “Damn. Julia, kill thrusters. Kiera, shut down the breakaways.”

  Carillo quickly acknowledged, but Kiera delayed acting on Morgan’s command. Under her breath, she urged the probes to get back on course. “Come on, come on. Go to UHF. Pay attention to your neighbors.”

  “I said shut them down, Kiera.”

  Kiera watched the readings from the three probes begin to adjust. “Hold on. It’s starting to work. They switched over to UHF. They’re coming back into formation.”

  “I don’t care. Power them off. Now.”

  “Just give them a little more time…the new code is working.”

  “Colonel,” cut in Ajay, “the X-band radio interference is subsiding.”

  Morgan shook his head. “Shilling, update?”

  “The UMOs are re-forming behind Rorschach.”

  On Kiera’s screen, the sensor alerts ceased. “All probes green.”

  “Roger that,” said Morgan. He turned around to face Kiera. “What happened? What caused the delay?”

  “The cutover to UHF took too long. I’ll have to re-look at the patch to figure out why.”

  “They’re back on X-band now?”

  Kiera scanned her screen. “They are.”

  “All right,” said the colonel. “Let’s not take any chances. Override X-band comms and switch fleet comms to UHF so we can finish the turn maneuver. Work on the program later.”

  “Roger that.”

  Kiera clicked a drop-down menu and changed the default comms channel to UHF. After verifying the switch by pinging all sixteen probes, she confirmed the change to Morgan. The colonel then gave Carillo the green light to resume use of Rorschach’s thrusters to finish the loop maneuver.

  The UMOs bumped the probes again, but this time all the probes maintained their positions.

  At Shilling’s behest, Morgan waited thirty minutes after the turn was completed before giving the order to power up the fleet’s VLF engines. Aided by the push from the feeding UMOs, the engines remained on until they had reached their targeted cruising speed, at which point Morgan ordered the engines powered off. They would proceed toward the asteroid belt on momentum.

  He then dismissed everyone but Kiera from the flight deck. The look on Morgan’s face told Kiera to expect another lecture about following orders.

  Juno Mission Control Center

  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  Pasadena, California

  August 29, 2019

  Project manager Ed Chen scooted his chair closer to the computer screen and shushed the other controllers gathered around his station. The next downlink from Juno was due to arrive within minutes, and he needed to concentrate.

  The venerable Jupiter probe was in orbit around Callisto, serving now as a data relay satellite between the marooned Cetus Prime and NASA’s Deep Space Network. Chen, like many of his Juno team underlings, had not been thrilled when the probe was redeployed for this seemingly mundane mission, but that opinion had changed after the JPL whiz kids discovered a way to reactivate Cetus Prime’s twenty-five-year-old external cameras.

  While some of the ship’s cameras had their views obscured by a mix of ice and dust, others did not. Two of them could still rotate, and one of them had a working zoom. And with the skill of the NASA photographic experts, Juno had been able to relay stunning images to JPL, including still images of the Nuada crater and the abandoned alien spaceport first discovered there by Augustus Amato’s CubeSat ten months earlier.

  None of the images were more remarkable than the photographs that had led Amato to accelerate the launch of the Rorschach Explorer — the ones that showed streaks of light melting away the ice encasing the ancient alien structure. In fact, UMOs appeared to be systematically de-icing the building from one end to the other, revealing more of the structure’s features. As a result, each new batch of photos produced jaw-dropping new details.

  It was Chen’s job to make certain Juno’s relays of the downlinks were received, processed and distributed without incident. That was why he nearly soiled himself when a stream of empty files and error messages began to populate his screen.

  Around him, the sound of epithets and keyboard strokes rose up in a symphony of angst. Chen’s staff had seen the errors as w
ell.

  Chen scrolled through the file listing on his screen. Of the hundreds of expected files, only a handful had made it through with any data, and none were photo files, just files containing readings from Juno’s array of instruments.

  Chen pushed back his chair and looked down the row of stations to the instruments controller, Sergei Kolov. “Sergei,” he called, “you’re the only one with data. Report. What do you see?”

  The hulking, seven-foot Russian shook his head and mumbled something inaudible.

  Chen repeated his query, this time louder. Most of the other controllers stopped what they were doing and turned toward the Russian.

  “It’s gone,” he said. “Juno’s fried.”

  Office of the Chief Administrator

  NASA Headquarters

  Washington, D.C.

  Dr. Helen Brock, NASA’s chief administrator, hovered over the speakerphone. “You’re certain? Absolutely certain?”

  “Yes, Dr. Brock, there’s no doubt. Juno is LOS,” Chen said.

  “Could it be an issue with DSN?”

  “No. DSN passed us what they received.”

  “Did you try handshakes on all bands?”

  “We did. No return pings on any band.”

  Brock slumped back in her chair and massaged her temples. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe my baby’s gone.”

  Chen remained silent as Brock absorbed the news. She had invested ten years of her career getting the Juno program funded and off the ground, and another ten as its internal champion as she rose through the ranks at NASA.

  “What happened?” she asked at last.

  “Gamma burst,” said Chen. “Juno’s GRS detected a huge spike before its electronics were cooked.”

  “Where did the burst originate?”

  “Unknown. Our first thought was the spaceport. But if it originated from the structure, it didn’t affect Cetus Prime. After we lost Juno, we pinged Cetus Prime directly and it answered back. None of its systems were affected, as far as we can tell. What was working before the burst is working now.”

  “What about the UMOs that have been de-icing the spaceport?” Brock asked. “Could they have been the source of the burst?”

  “As far as I know, they’ve never been observed to emit gamma rays.”

  “True, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. And they’ve certainly been known to knock out satellites with active spectrometers like Juno’s GRS.”

  “I guess it’s possible,” said Chen. “But Juno’s been orbiting Callisto for months, Dr. Brock. Why would UMOs only take notice now? It’s not like we just turned its spectrometers on.”

  “Well, we shouldn’t discard the possibility.”

  “We won’t discard any possibilities.”

  “I’m sure you won’t. What other ideas do you have?”

  “Well, we were thinking along the lines of a magnetar, but there aren’t any known magnetars with beams in line with Callisto’s current position. At least, not that we can detect from Earth.”

  A magnetar is a type of radio pulsar that emits powerful beams of electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma rays. While scientists estimate there are more than thirty million magnetars in the Milky Way galaxy, a grand total of twenty-three have been observed from Earth. Not twenty-three million. Twenty-three. And many of those are located far beyond the Milky Way. The rest are either inactive or, if they are active, invisible from Earth.

  Invisible because, similar to pulsars, magnetars behave like celestial lighthouses, shooting out a focused beam of magnetic radiation each time the star rotates. But the only way to detect the beam is if you’re in a direct line with it. In other words, the only way to detect a magnetar’s beam from Earth is if the beam is pointed directly at Earth. If the beam is aimed anywhere else, the magnetar and its gamma-ray bursts are invisible.

  “A magnetar? Did Fermi detect the burst?” Brock asked.

  “No. It was in use for a limited field-of-view project when it happened. Still is. We’ve asked to prioritize a sweep toward Callisto ASAP.”

  The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a NASA space observatory in low Earth orbit. With the ability to view the vast majority of space surrounding Earth, its two gamma-ray detecting instruments have made numerous discoveries.

  “And no other observatories detected it either?”

  “We’re still calling around, but thus far, no. It’s odd. The cone of the beam would have to be crazy narrow to hit Callisto and not hit Earth.”

  “That is odd. And Juno didn’t record any preceding gamma spikes?”

  “Doctor, I’ve been part of this team for four years, and we’re used to seeing background gamma radiation. I assure you, we’ve never picked up a spike like this.”

  Brock rose from her chair. Hands on her hips, she paced behind the desk. The sudden appearance of a gamma burst directed at Callisto, one that wasn’t observed from Earth, suggested three possibilities.

  The most obvious one was an attack on Juno by the UMOs residing on Callisto. Perhaps they were aided by a device in the spaceport, or perhaps this was simply an unobserved-to-date capability. Unfortunately, there was no way to investigate the possibility remotely. Cetus Prime’s spectrometers had been destroyed by UMOs around Mars twenty-four years ago.

  Second, there was a chance a dormant magnetar somewhere in the Milky Way had woken up. While this was theoretically possible, unless the magnetar’s beam was detectable from Earth, there was no way to prove or disprove this possibility remotely either. One would have to scan the heavens for follow-on gamma-ray bursts while in close proximity to Callisto’s orbital position when Juno was knocked out.

  The third, but least likely, possibility was an isolated starquake. Starquakes are earthquakes that take place on neutron stars. Magnetic forces in the crust of the star build up tension until the crust experiences a sudden shift or displacement. When that happens, the neutron star emits an intense beam of gamma-ray energy. Starquakes can occur in isolation or in bunches. When they occur in bunches, the neutron star producing the rays is considered a magnetar and, given the frequency of bursts, is easier to detect. But when starquakes happen in isolation or intermittently, they are much harder to detect.

  Another beam from a starquake on a relatively stable neutron star might not shoot out for thousands of years. One might arrive tomorrow. There was no telling when or how often they would occur. And even if an isolated burst did appear, Jupiter’s and Callisto’s positions in their orbits might put the celestial bodies well out of reach of the beam.

  However, Chen’s observation about the beam hitting Callisto but missing Earth seemed to argue against either a starquake or magnetar. While gamma bursts are narrow at their points of origin, their conical beams spread out as they travel through space. The farther the beam travels, the wider the cone becomes. So unless the burst that took out Juno came from a previously undetected neutron star very close to the solar system, it should have been detected on Earth.

  Brock’s thoughts were interrupted by a comment from Chen. “I’m sorry, Ed. I missed that. What did you say?”

  “I said we were thinking it might be a good idea to alert Mayaguana and have them pass the word to the Rorschach Explorer. If I’m not mistaken, Rorschach is about to enter the asteroid belt.”

  The loss of Juno had hit Brock so hard she hadn’t considered the implications for Amato’s mission. But she recognized them now.

  “Get on it right away, Ed. I mean, like, right now. Get off the phone with me and call Dante Fulton. Don’t stop trying until you reach him. I’ll do the same with Amato.”

  Hangar-1

  A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center

  Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas

  As the doors slid open, the climate-controlled hangar was quickly overwhelmed by the heavy push of Caribbean air. Augustus Amato dabbed his bald pate with a handkerchief and stepped out onto the launch apron.

  He was pleased to see two Cargo probes had already been
loaded on flatbeds and another two appeared ready for their turns with the crane. Filled with supplies and provisions for the Rorschach Explorer, the delivery truck–sized vessels would travel by plane to Florida where NASA would launch them into space next month.

  Without a colony of UMOs to boost the speed of their VLF engines, the supply probes had no chance of catching up to Rorschach before it reached Callisto, but they wouldn’t be needed until the return trip to Earth. There were already four identical cargo vessels in Rorschach’s fleet of probes, with ample provisions to supply ship and crew on the way to the Jovian moon.

  Turning back toward the hangar, Amato unbuttoned the Panama suit jacket covering his prodigious belly and wiped the handkerchief across his neck. With the aid of a cane, the seventy-nine-year-old billionaire walked to the elevator inside the bay, stopping occasionally to greet workers moving in and out of the hangar.

  As he neared the elevator, the doors opened and out stepped Dr. Dante Fulton, the mission director for the Rorschach Explorer’s expedition to Callisto. The trim, black aerospace engineer was accompanied by Dr. Dennis Pritchard, the former chief administrator for NASA and now an executive with Amato’s A3rospace Industries. Joining the two men was Mark Myers, Amato’s assistant.

  Amato halted. It was never good news when all three came looking for him.