ERO

by F. P. Dorchak

  But up there right now was some pilot who’d been able to get through pilot training, Fighter Lead-in training, survival training, and had flown jets better than anyone else. So good in fact, he’d been handpicked for this highly coveted assignment dealing with testing hypervelocity platforms. Hybrids that could leave the atmosphere at will—go orbital. Technology light years beyond whatever was officially advertised.

  And inside it was a living, breathing, pilot. Maybe two.

  Someone or ones of flesh and bone piloting around the absolutely coolest pieces of hardware ever.

  Cherko’s telescope lost track of the bogie after mere seconds. Whoever that pilot was... was at this very moment... having a ball.

  As Cherko took back manual control of his on-orbit telescope, he realized there were all kinds of quiet activity going on on the ops floor. Without appearing too obvious, he glanced about him. Morrow went from one workstation to another... and appeared greatly concerned.

  He’d love to play poker with this guy some day.

  As Morrow hurried past, Cherko cast an unintended glance up to him, and caught a look of surprise on Morrow’s face that was quickly erased. Cherko couldn’t help but glance over to Michelson and Fender.

  “Dammit, Cherko—knock it off!” Morrow threw over his shoulder as he continued past to another console. “You know the rules!”

  Yes. Experienced first-hand. Grilling at the hands of Security and its do-you-like-little-girls poly. Oh, yes, he knew the rules. And the more he thought about it, the more he began to wonder... had that been a training scenario set-up to indoctrinate him, or had it been a real-live event? Apparently messing around with one’s head was not only par for the course, here, but encouraged. And it wasn’t like he could ask around.

  As Cherko performed his visual inspection of the NSA bird on his screens, he heard quiet dialogue going on at the console closest to him.

  “... Mach 15. It just... disappeared. I mean it accelerated—”

  “I think you had an error there, Lieutenant,” Morrow said, quietly. “Recalibrate.”

  As Cherko completed his pass of the reconnaissance vehicle, he received another bogie indication... but this time said nothing.

  He pulled back the field of view of his telescope and saw it. There, in the distance behind his target satellite. He glanced at his range and directional indicators.

  Relative heading 305.

  Speed... Mach 25.

  Cherko stared incredulously into his screen. Again enabled autotrack.

  Unlike the so-called Aurora he’d just tracked, this bogie did not register with the mainframe’s database. It was tagged on-screen as “XID008.”

  008?

  Cherko watched the bogie slam to a complete stop.

  It actually stopped on-orbit.

  Paused.

  Stopped moving.

  Then it changed vector—it changed its frigging course.

  It not only did the equivalent of a change in velocity, or a Delta-V, but it also changed its inclination, or Delta-I. Maneuvers like that were impossible with current technology—or so he’d been informed from his space training. That was a lot of fuel and capability that he’d been instructed simply did not yet exist for such maneuvers.

  In a burst of incredible, unbelievable speed and maneuverability, the object was suddenly right in the face of the telescope—did a complete course reversal without slowing down—then another 180-degree course reversal that brought it back up-close-and-personal.

  The object again paused—then bolted completely out of view.

  All within seconds.

  Cherko exploded out of his seat and shot backward several fumbled steps.

  “Cherko!” Morrow shouted.

  Cherko stared at his screen, speechless.

  “Lieutenant! Get back to your position! Now,” Morrow shouted. The other crew members looked to him. Morrow rushed to his side; looked frantically to his screen. He depressed selections. Looked between Cherko and his console.

  Cherko stared at Morrow.

  “Pick up your chair... and get back into position,” Morrow commanded. It definitely sounded like a threat. “Michelson—Fender... bogie acquisitions?”

  Michelson and Fender looked back to their consoles, then to each other. “Negative bogie, sir,” Michelson finally said.

  “Negative acq,” Fender chimed in.

  Morrow turned back to Cherko. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Cherko returned to his console.

  “That was no fucking Aurora,” Cherko said. “That was not ours.”

  “Lieutenant—shut the hell up.”

  “Are you kidding? There’s no way we can do that!”

  “Cherko—don’t make me—”

  “You can poly me all you want, sir, but I know what I saw, and what I saw was in no way some experimental Aurora project or anything else we have.”

  Michelson and Fender looked to each other, then back to their screens. Cherko caught the look of fear on their faces.

  Morrow got directly into Cherko’s face.

  “Do not make me pull you from crew. Do you want that, Lieutenant?” Morrow lowered his voice into a thicker, heavily enunciated, whisper. “Think about what you’re doing.”

  Then he glanced to the others. Morrow edged in still closer, his mouth right up against Cherko’s ear. He lowered his voice even more, and what he heard in Morrow’s voice caught him off guard. For the first time ever, Cherko heard unmistakable fear in Morrow’s always confident manner.

  “You do not know what you’re dealing with, man,” he said. “There are organizations involved... organizations you can only dream of... people disappear. Please, Jimmy... walk away from this.”

  Cherko backed up. Paused. Jaw set and grinding, he quietly stepped around Morrow, picked up his chair, and set it upright. He sat back down in it and performed his required procedures—but found that someone else had already entered a “new log” command.

  The tape had already been pulled.

  “I know what I saw.”

  Morrow came up behind him. He leaned over his left shoulder, and said, “You. Saw. Nothing.”

  2

  Colonel “Buzz” Hanscomb, clad in an astronaut’s silver pressurized space suit, cross-checked and verified all system configurations against his checklists. He verified with his similarly clad flight engineer, Major Bill “Skunk,” for “Skunkworks,” Anderson, that all systems were go for orbit injection of their trans-atmospheric vehicle, or TAV, also known as the X-30. Hanscomb radioed Groom Lake.

  “Roger, Star Bright, you’re cleared for injection,” was Ground Control’s response.

  “Copy.”

  Hanscomb flicked up the red-guarded switch protection cap on his fly-by-wire stick to the switch that would activate orbital injection. Anderson and Hanscomb looked to each other.

  This was history in the making.

  The first time an air-breathing aircraft was kicking its own ass into orbit. It was to be a short ride, like John Glenn’s history making effort in the early afternoon of February 20, 1962, but they were doing it. The world may never know of it, or would fifty or hundred years from now, long after this program had been declassified, heavily sanitized, and another similarly classified project he couldn’t even begin to imagine had taken this program’s place... but they were about to secure themselves forever a place in the classified history books.

  Hanscomb flicked the switch, and both were slammed back into their seats. Before they knew it, the blue of sky was quickly replaced with the blackness of space. They became two more of the few to see actual on-orbit planet air glow. That view of the thin, fragile film enveloping the Earth known as air, and which was all that separated humanity—all of humanity, not just the rich, the poor, nor the evil—from suffocation and total and utter annihilation.

  “Ground, we have injection,” Hanscomb relayed.

  Hanscomb looked outside the cockpit.

  It was beautiful, haunting.
A religious experience.

  And it got much quieter inside the TAV.

  It was everything those who’d gone before had tried to convey—and more. More than just hurtling into orbit above Earth at Mach 25, and almost one hundred miles up. More than being housed within a titanium and Inconel structure. Mere flesh-and-blood creatures wrapped up in a laughable concoction of environmental protection material that would go up in a fitz! if things went wrong... it was the very concept of what they were doing. Defying the instructed laws of gravity. Physics. Conventional aero- and astronautics.

  He shook his head and looked over to Anderson. Anderson was already looking to him, grinning through his astronaut faceplate. Gave him a crisp thumbs up. Hanscomb smiled and returned the gesture.

  Then both quickly pulled their heads back into the cockpit. There had been chatter going on in their headsets, and they needed to get back to the mission.

  “Uh, roger, Ground; better clear all satellites from our flight path,” Hanscomb said, dryly.

  How easy would it be to increase altitude, to see just how much higher they could go? To turn the nose toward the moon?

  Interplanetary space?

  Fantasy, yes, but how much closer to fantasy could anyone in their position come? They were closer to fulfilling any fantastical notions than anyone else on the planet right now. After all, when you lived on the edge, just where—and what were—“boundaries”?

  Just as he was about to initiate reentry, Hanscomb had a sudden, powerful, fleeting moment of déjà vu—

  And everything exploded into a brilliant, white fission of light.

  Destruction of the X-30 TAV was instantaneous and absolute.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  100-Mile Low Earth Orbit

  4 November 2021

  0908 Hours Zulu

  Time.

  It was ticking away.

  He had to get moving!

  How much oxygen was left?

  How extensive the damage?

  He looked to the TDU.

  0311 hours.

  “This is fucking insane!”

  Still helpless as a caged animal.

  For a moment, there, it had been as if all of Cherko’s memories had been reality... his reality a dream.

  But, he was still helplessly trapped within a damaged piece of orbiting hardware flying around the Earth at sixteen revolutions per day, while someone was taking cosmic potshots at him like he were no more than on-orbit skeet.

  And those goddamned klaxons!

  Cherko forced his head and shoulders violently back and forth within his bizarre, unyielding, restraints, ran restless legs—paused—then launched back into another all-out agitated bout of full-body angry.

  And what were these damned electrodes attached to his head? Attached leads buried deep within his brain... and that went where?

  A porthole caught his eye.

  Earth.

  It passed slowly beneath... peaceful, quiet... a veritable cosmic ballet. But within this life-sustaining capsule were blaring klaxons, flashing lights, and an abso-frigging-lutely improbable confinement.

  A cold, clammy sweat broke out on his forehead. Beads of it tracked down his face—and, of course into his eyes—around his jaw line, and down his neck.

  “Damn it!”

  Frantically he again thrashed about.

  Stopped.

  Something felt different. Changed.

  Cherko flicked his head to rid himself of the sweat running into his eyes.

  Movement!

  He frenzily scanned the module.

  Something no-shit shifted—moved—inside here, and it wasn’t floating debris!

  He blinked, more sweat dripping and stinging into the corners of his eyes.

  There, at the opposite end of the module!

  He attempted to focus through his clammy sweat. The module danced and shimmered before him.

  Not good... this was not good.

  Cherko willed his blurry vision to focus on the bulkhead behind the shimmering object, and again tried to force coherence into view. This was just like that time, that time—

  What time?

  What additional analogy was he trying to m—

  Maui. Off Maui.

  Lanai?

  A diving trip.

  Yeah... the Cathedrals. His first time out in open water. He’d lost it—thrown up off the back of the boat. Had been told to focus on the horizon... but that hadn’t helped, in fact had made things worse. Instead, he found focusing on the center of the boat, to his nauseated surprise, had worked.

  What a weird fish. Always fighting the norm.

  So, now, he focused on the bulkhead, because, after all, he really no longer had any kind of “horizon.” He looked back to the shimmering spot on the module deck. Squinted. There was something there through all the haze, noise, vertigo, and smoldering electronics...

  A figure?... a kneeling figure?

  Rising up from the floor.

  A ghost?

  No—a man!

  A figure in the crew blue flight bag they all wore. An actual person did indeed emerge from the floor!

  He wasn’t alone—not alone! A real, live, additional Human Being inhabited this orbiting tin can with him!

  He closed his eyes, trying to stop everything from spinning. It was really beginning to hurt.

  Roscoe? Was it Roscoe Pullman?

  Wayne?

  Whoever it was, of course they couldn’t just materialize from the floor... they had to have made their way up through one of the many “snow tunnels.” “Tunnels,” or passageways that connected the MOL. These passageways reminded Cherko of snow tunnels he’d made and played in as a kid. All those snow banks in upstate New York—not that “up” meant anything here. The MOL was large, and they used these “snow tunnels” to get from one module compartment to another, or to and from all the various service accesses internal and external to this rather large space station.

  Excuse me—spy station.

  Was that right?

  Yeah, that was right.

  Cherko watched the figure slowly emerge to a standing position.

  Man, he had a splitting headache.

  His eyes watered and he was having difficulty getting a handle on his vertigo. Something was happening—happening to him—he was growing weaker, he could feel it. He didn’t feel at all good, and he dropped his head back against the bulkhead behind him. When he lifted it back up, the module again swam before him and his eyes went uncontrollably cross-eyed, rolling up into their watery sockets.

  When he was able to regain a semblance of control, he looked back to the figure. Watched it calmly float across to a console, hit a couple of selections... and all klaxons ceased. It was like a sudden vacuum sucking out the insides of his head. The idiot lights continued to flash, but their blaring noise had finally been terminated.

  Sanity!

  Or whatever passed for it up here.

  Continuing to fight the vertigo, Cherko watched as the man then drifted across the module toward him and calmly took up a cross-legged position on the bulkhead wall alongside him, perpendicular to his orientation. The man’s gaze was direct, unnerving. In the background somewhere, Cherko thought he heard radio chatter, but was still fighting for a genuine sense of mental stability to be too concerned about anything else right now.

  “Thank you,” Cherko said. He grimaced in pain.

  Images flooded his mind.

  Roscoe Pullman.

  Wayne Garcia.

  Rudolf Pedersen.

  “You’re Rud—”

  “What else do you remember?” the still-hazy-view-of-a-figure asked.

  “Remember?”

  “Remember me?”

  “You’re Ruuu... Rudolf... Peder-sen,” he said with a surprising degree of difficulty.

  “Do you remember what you were doing before all this?”

  “Working. I was—no, I was... was I sleeping?”

  Cherko looked down
to himself, giving a half-assed struggle against his restraints. Felt momentary chest pains.

  “What the hell’s—”

  “What else?”

  “W-what do you mean, what else? C’mon, Rudy, could you please....”

  Cherko looked to the time.

  How much air was left?

  What was the extent of their damage?

  Could they expect another attack?

  They had an escape craft of some kind—didn’t they?

  Cherko’s breath grew short and shallow. The walls of the module, his immobility, the vastness of space, and that all he ever knew was the most-distant short trip beneath him, all closed in on him.

  “I-I—don’t understand... don’t feel well...”

  The man continued to stare. Just stare. An accusing glare. Penetrating. Contemplative.

  “Your—”

  Eyes were so dark, Cherko couldn’t say, but thought.

  Had they always been that dark? He’d thought them blue.

  “Think,” the man said calmly, firmly. “What else do you recall?

  “How’d you get here?”

  Cherko felt like an errant child under the intense scrutiny of a correcting parent. Felt like he’d done something horribly, horribly, wrong, and had been caught in the forbidden and forgotten act, caught red-handed, hand in the cookie jar, the whole bit. Felt he was about to be punished for a crime of which he had no conscious memory.

  But Rudy was right... what did he remember?

  Something just wasn’t right about any of this.

  Rudy was right. Rudy was right. Had to remember what was going on, what had gone before. Make sense of his dream, his memories—his reality.

  Think, he commanded himself, you’re a highly trained astronaut, for God’s sake, think....

  2

  Colorado Springs

  1 November 2010

  0815 Hours Mountain Time

  Jimmy stood before the MRI machine at PENRAD Imaging, in the Audubon Medical Campus. He was clad in that tie-behind-your-back garment everyone made fun of in movies and stand-up routines. Hoped no zits or hemorrhoids (if he had any) were visible on his ass end to the technicians hovering about. After his checkout at the emergency room following his little car accident this morning, and his subsequent examination by his primary care doc at Memorial Hospital, an MRI had been promptly scheduled to make sure nothing else was out of whack, yo.