Fulcrums of the Universe: A TESS NOVEL #2

by Randy Moffat

  As the primary headquarters over-watching space operations for the US the agency staff suddenly found themselves getting very little peace and their processes and procedures built for a time of buggy whips and surreys found themselves having to keep abreast of changes from yesterday and last week rather than last year or inside some carefully choreographed five year window. More than that, the open architecture of TESS allowed anyone paying for TESS support to launch virtually anything that could be crammed into an eighteen wheeler out of the Earth’s gravity well and into space. This meant that outer space had moved from being a gentleman’s club where only the wealthiest of nations could play polo, into a madhouse of egalitarianism. Chad was now a space power for crying out loud.

  As a staff officer it meant that Spruance had to word things in the briefing carefully these days. Personally he was a TESS booster feeling that Admiral McMoran had accomplished something utterly and amazingly remarkable for humanity, but he was also aware that the opposing view was held by his own commanding general who hated their guts; holding the personal position that the TESS had stolen the technology from the American people in regulatory filibuster of creation. The General held the opinion that their being made an independent agency was a betrayal of the first order to the United States as a nation. In many ways, the General was a laid back guy, but mentioning TESS too often could bring him into a frothing rage these days. Still, it was not really possible to mention current space operations without mentioning the extraterrestrial agency particularly since they were delivering more and more payloads for many of the nations of earth as a whole—including the United States of America. Traditional delivery by rocket was still occurring with some frequency, but the writing was on the wall since TESS had launched her second ship now and as she readied to take on mission load TESS was already estimated to be delivering 16% of the total of space borne payloads. It turned out that TESS was such a cheap date that many of the old rocketry companies were scrambling just to remain relevant and stay in business. Major Spruance was therefore rather pleased to have something to report about space deliveries other than those made by TESS alone. China was in a state of near civil war right now… but that was not Spruance’s area. His area was space. It was a field that seemed oddly calm and detached relative to the rest of that country. The China National Space Administration or CNSA had juggled their launch programs in the last several months in remarkable and unprecedented ways. It had launched five previously unscheduled rockets in less than three months from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using their biggest rockets and capsules. They had contracted with the European space agency, the Russians and two private space companies in the States to launch additional supply rockets during the same timeframe, sending up considerable amounts of materiel. To do it Spruance knew they must have expended years worth of Chinese cargo capacity they had carefully lined up for other long-stated objectives. All five Chinese launches and the contracted ones had gone straight up to their Tiangong space station instead of several other previously planned locations. The Tiangong station had now gone well beyond its design specifications thanks to China combining their conventional launches with their accelerated TESS mission loads to ship more inflatable Kevlar living modules up to the station than anyone had expected or anticipated that China had ever planned to produce. They had been so busily enlarging it that Tiangong station was now the largest space station ever built by any nation on earth. What made the whole thing really worthy of his briefing for Spruance was that word that had come in from smart intelligence guys that their last delivered trips by Chinese rocket ships had been accompanied by 20 personnel. Importantly there were already three space station crew aboard Tiangong who had stayed up there also and they had not disembarked that crew after the delivery of the new personnel. That meant there were at least 23 personnel up there now and even though the station had added five modules to the existing 4 they still must be crammed in there like sardines. And now had come today’s data! Sophisticated displacement measurements showed that the most recent rocket launched vehicles had gone up full and come back empty. By ‘empty’ Spruance meant minus all payload, but also minus one man out of the two man crew aboard each of those capsules. By Major Spruance’s estimate that meant that there were now 28 personnel jammed into Tiangong. Something had come together in Spruance’s mind. They had just received three payloads by conventional rocket that TESS had specifically not delivered. It was possible that it implied that the CSNA did not want TESS to see those loads since they had gone up the old fashioned way. He typed a note to that effect at the bottom of one slide, thought about deleting it then shrugged and left it in.

  Spruance rubbed his jaw. It was the old space command joke… “Something was up.” Strategically Major Spruance planned to display these slides last. He hoped it would make the general take his eyes off the word TESS and focus them on the acronym CSNA instead. With luck it would go a ways in defusing today’s emotional rollercoaster.

  Corporal Liue of the 122nd Guards Infantry battalion crotched in the darkness outside his Commanding officer’s tent. His unit had been very active. Mostly moving every three days to avoid air attacks by the Chinese Air Force who remained loyal to Premier Lau. At least twice they had found themselves trying to cram into a concealing meadowland in the middle of the woods only to discover two other Hú units trying to move into the same space. It was insane to be a rat seeking shelter only to find the rat hole already full of other rats. The first blush of rebellion was beginning to pale just a bit.

  Liue was a young political commissar who had been inserted into the People’s Army as a backup to the regular political officer straight out of his Communist Youth organization. Liue had watched three days ago, along with most of the troops while Major Chu, the formal political officer of the unit had been shoved up against a wall and shot in the head simultaneously by the commander and executive officer of the unit in a fine show of solidarity. They had shaken hands afterward over the body. A good day’s work well done. Liue had faced the execution with mixed emotions. Chu had been generally disliked as an arrogant prick by most of the troops in the unit and few tears had been shed. Truth be told Liue had shared their opinion with one proviso. It was Chu who he secretly reported to. It was Chu who Liue received his orders from as an undercover political agent. Chu’s death meant that Liue’s regular line of communications to headquarters had been cut. Luckily this was China, the birthplace of cunning and other contingencies had been planned.

  In his guise as a regular 21st century soldier Liue had experienced withdrawal symptoms because cell phone towers had been widely sabotaged in the area and he had not had access to texts, social media or the internet in several days. He had not had a drink in days either. Last night, against orders, several NCO’s had quietly departed the camp in a body under the wire and hoofed three kilometers into town to get a drink. Safety in numbers. By a miracle there was an internet cafe still operating next door to the bar. Liue had snuck over after a public appearance over a couple beers in the pub. A crumpled copy of an innocuous e-mail was nestled like treasure in his pocket. It had cost him an entire Yuan to get it printed out. A Yuan! Highway robbery! The cafe owner had explained sorrowfully that toner supplies for his American/Japanese built printers was getting hard to come by what with the war and everything. Price gouging was to China what Apple pie was to America and Liue had taken it philosophically. The message he had bought was terse, but isolated as he was Liue was canny enough to know he wanted a hard copy as proof against some later court martial for “misunderstanding.” The message said only “Climb Yúntāi Shān with joy on the birthday of Chairman Mao,” but Liue had something of an education and the homage to the Japanese attack on the Americans at Pearl Harbor was not lost. The date of Chairman Mao’s birthday was certainly not today. The code meant simply that Liue was to execute the plan and the “with joy” part simply meant, ‘do it immediately.’

  The plan was simple enough. Arrest or k
ill the officers who had declared for Vice Premier Hú. Arrest was clearly impossible. Hú had a lot of loyalists in Liue’s unit. So it was kill. The thought made Liue’s stomach tighten. He had never killed anyone before. In fact he had no combat experience at all. It made him queasy to think of it. The troop’s rifles were kept under lock and key in the arms truck so the only weapon Liue had access to right now was a switchblade he tended to carry in his pocket.

  As he knelt there in the dark he tightened his hand on the handle of the knife until it hurt as he thought about having to use it. He hesitated for what seemed forever, but finally steeling his nerves he lifted the canvas next to the tent stake he had slowly worked loose. He crawled inside on his belly by abortive stages, being careful to make no noise. Even if he had made a sound no one could have heard it over the steady roar of the commander’s snoring. Liue rose to one knee and crouched by his boss’s cot for three whole minutes, the knife gripped in a hand that was shaking violently. He felt as if he was leaving his body as he brought the blade towards the Colonel’s head. Liue hesitated even then, watching the blade as if removed in space and time from the event. The blade kept jerking back and forth in an uncontrolled manner and he could hear himself swallowing repeated. It felt like the hardest physical labor he had ever done. Then, suddenly, there had come an odd moment of mental calm and clarity that swept over him like a weather front in summer and abruptly his jitters disappeared. A weird kind of stillness took over his nerves and replaced the jerking. He blinked. He understood then that he had mustered his resolve in the face of his duty as a communist. With a smooth motion he reached out and sliced the knife blade across the sleeping man’s neck. The Colonel half reared up then and a horrible gasping sound escaped the hole in his throat and he clung to the Corporal for almost a minute, fading further and further away before he collapsed backward. At the last he tried weakly to bring his hands up to cover the horrible wound, but Liue grabbed them mechanically and held them down while the Colonel struggled more and more weakly. Then the Colonel lay there, thrashing oddly, strangling and finally going motionless with his eyes wide and staring up with dead eyes into death’s face. The whole time Liue was thinking… . “I am become death… destroyer of worlds.” Where had he heard that? It was wrong somehow. Liue took it all in a moment, then without further sound Liue lay down flat on his belly in the dirt and slithered out the way he had entered.

  Three minutes later he was standing panting in the moonlight in the shadows of burnt out building near the motor pool. He wretched and vomited twice, until there was nothing left in his stomach to come up. The cool night air filled his lungs in gasps and he swilled a drink from his canteen and spit it out. Liue was examining his feelings about cold bloodedly killing a man. He had expected to be horrified and repulsed. It wasn’t like that at all. He realized with something like a shock that he had liked it. Enjoyed it! How odd.

  He went to find the executive officer’s tent.

  Aboard the Tiangong station MAJ Sen Sho faced his men. They were easy to face because they were cheek by jowl in the number 5 and 6 Module that had been added to the station shortly before their arrival. Unlike the previous modules that were made for scientific experiments, exercise and living, the new capsules were largely empty space… intended all along for the single purpose of billeting Major Sho’s men. Billets was about all they were since they lacked most washing amenities and stank of human animals. They had three toilets. They were built in a row at one end of the modules, but lacked even a curtain for privacy. Shitting had become entertainment as teammates cracked wise, trying to make their comrades straining on the bowls laugh hysterically and lose focus. Simple entertainments for simple men. Liquid waste from the potties was vented into space and solid waste was exposed to vacuum to kill bacteria, which prevented some odor problems and killed pathogens—but in the end men going to the head in the same compartment where they slept unwashed for weeks could not help adding up odors like the Gnomes of Zurich hoarded gold. There was a pong that stung the nostrils hanging over everything and could not be quite removed by the CO2 scrubbers.

  They were trained to take discomfort though. Chinese machismo was layered in as part of that stench.

  Most of them were Marines—the best combat soldiers that Sho had been able to latch onto who were also intensely loyal to the idea of China. They had to be since their mission was without precedent outside a science fiction movie. They must attack and hold a space station or a ship while operating in outer space.

  If anyone had asked Sho seven months ago that they were contemplating a scheme as ridiculous as warfare in space he would have slapped them silly. Now he was standing here trying to figure out just how miniscule his chances of survival were and still sound confident and studly to his troops. How do you cast your fates to the wind when there is no wind in space?

  Earth-side Sho had demanded and gotten the best training environments he could lay hands on before actually deploying his personnel up here. After recruitment his men had spent thirty days running up and down mountains and through deserts until they were physically in tip-top shape and inured to physical hardship. Then they had been sent into fitting sessions for space suits—the suits hurried into production and then pressed too fast into training scenarios in deep swimming pools of water on an old army base. It had cost him two good marines. The inadequate testing of the tawdry suits had resulted in leaks and in the case of his two casualties the suits had ripped open along seams and flooded too quickly to recover their wearers. Sho had cursed the shoddy manufacturing, but had accepted the deaths stoically. Casualties as his troops practiced rigorous training in combat tactics in the here-to-fore untried effects and movements they would encounter in space was to be expected. It had gotten worse of course… these things always did. After they got used to the suits and tested them in pools they had moved them out into the deeper water of the South China sea for more testing and come close to losing yet another man who had dropped out with a case of the bends having gone too deep and rushed a decompression stop on rising to the surface. Then the idiots in the Air Force were added into the military equation and had made the bad worse still. The jet jockeys had promised a plane to make high parabola runs that would make his men feel weightless as the plane arched over the curve of a high flight. The notion was to allow them to begin practicing movements they would encounter in space. The men had loved it until flight number 14. During that flight what the American’s called the two “hot dogging” pilots had dived far too fast and had torn the wings right off the plane killing another six of Sho’s men and secondarily six of their own Air Force pukes. It was a good thing, because if they had survived then Sho would have had to find them and beat them to death. The Air Force guys had seen movies of the American’s NASA aircraft doing the maneuver and no one had thought to check and find out that the NASA plane had been specially modified and strengthened by the Americans for additional and repeated stresses in that specific flight profile. Their off the shelf Chinese plane had crumpled structurally, not up to the task of multiple repetitions of the maneuver that took all pressure off the airframe and then instantly shoved it into a final push to high G as it topped a parabola and dove towards the Earth.

  In a secret corner of his mind Sho was a bit smug that he had made the initial call for his requirements of men at 120% of his projected needs. After all the losses in his training program he was now at 98% strength which was just right. The other good news was that the end result of this hard training regimen was very high confidence in those Marines who had survived the process. The troops had then been smuggled up to the space station on board standard rocket and capsule missions over a couple months and for the last five days they had been practicing space walks while Sho had been developing modifications to the tactics, techniques and procedures into what he thought of as the first ever tactical doctrine for outer space infantry warfare. The weakest suits had gone by the way side long since during the ocean work… but
yesterday the weakest link had not been in a suit, rather it was in a yet untested tether for a marine doing extravehicular activities. He and his team had been working on a maneuver calling for a ‘rapid deployment’ across a theoretical distance of two hundred meters. Essentially a jump across open space from one hull to another—except there was no other hull to land on and their tethers were meant to halt them once they reached the end of the distance. They had launched themselves into space in the indicated direction with their QBZ-95 carbines clutched across their chests simulating a scenario that envisioned a surprise assault on an airlock opposite them.

  The true surprise had come when the team reached the end of their tethers. It had turned out that Corporal Suen’s had not been properly secured to the hull of the station and he had leapt only to just keep going. He had tried to be brave for a few minutes—toughing it out, but finally ended up blubbering and finally shrieking pitifully as he faded further and further into the distance while his appalled team mates watched him grow smaller and smaller. His radio was working fine and the rest of the team had been forced to listen to every frantic breath and plea for assistance for almost an hour. There was a pair of spacecraft attached to the station that might have fetched him back, but their fuel was strictly limited. The ships were critical to mission success and Sho knew within minutes that he could not risk expending any thrust mass in those capsules chasing one block-headed soldier through space to recover him. Sho had instead finally figured out how to cut off his radio calls by pulling a cable forcefully from a receiver on the station’s communications rack and stopped torturing the rest of his men who could all too easily imagine themselves in Suen’s place, stuck in a suit with only an hour of air left in it and falling endlessly deeper and deeper into space. The entire experience had been bad for morale.