Red Horizon: The Truth of Discovery (Discovery Series Book 2)

by Salvador Mercer

  In a pre-prepared moment, Lisa was allowed to make the call. “Red Horizon orbital insertion maneuver complete.”

  The room broke out into applause, and Rock looked back at Smith, who simply nodded and pressed his cell phone to his ear. Rock knew that in the next twenty minutes or so, he’d be getting a phone call from someone, perhaps even the president, though if she held back, it would be until they actually stepped foot on the planet’s surface. Lisa continued her analysis of the signal data, reading various systems as green and then acknowledging various flight systems and control elements in the same manner. They would be busy for quite some time.

  Rock’s ear piece clicked again, and Lisa’s informational monologue was interrupted by Marge. “Everything looks perfect, Rock. I think this is the best orbital insertion we could have hoped for.”

  Rock hit his private push-to-talk. “Sure looks that way, and I’m betting Lisa isn’t going to get anywhere near the yellow line, much less the red line, on any of our subsequent aero braking maneuvers.”

  “So the question begs, what comes next?” Marge asked.

  “I don’t follow,” Rock said.

  “Compared to Apollo Twenty-One, this is a walk in the park. When and where will Murphy show up?”

  “Ah,” Rock said, understanding his second-in-command’s concern. “According to Mr. Smith, that will be in approximately forty-seven hours, when the Chinese arrive.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Marge said.

  “You’re not the only one,” Rock said. “Let’s hope Major Carter and his men are all that we want them to be.”

  “There’s no room for hope in space, or on Mars, for that matter,” Marge said.

  “True,” Rock clarified, “but we don’t have much of a choice here now, do we?”

  “Not that we ever did,” Marge said.

  “No, not really,” Rock said, letting a long sigh out, as the worst of the journey was over with, at least until the knuckle-biting lander touched down on the planet’s surface. “I’ll simply be happy if Mister Murphy remains missing in action for just awhile longer.”

  “Amen,” Marge said.

  *****

  Red Horizon

  Mars’ orbit

  In the near future, Year 4, Day 175

  “What’s our approach vector looking like?” Maria asked from her seat behind Julie Monroe on board the lander designated as Red One.

  “It’s clear all the way down,” Jules said, looking at her FLIR, Forward Looking InfraRed camera. “Not a storm in the sky.”

  One of the crews’ biggest concerns was the environmental storms that Mars was known for, especially its dust storms that could destroy a lightweight lander like the one they were in now. Also the extreme cold of night was not something they wanted to test their equipment against if they didn’t have to, so the ship took two more orbits over the next eight hours in order to aero brake further and bleed off excess speed, thus tightening their orbit. When they were finally ready to go planet-side, over eleven hours had passed, and they would conduct their primary exploration of the alien transmitter and the heat source near the large canyon during the Martian day.

  “Our radar track has you five by five,” Neil said from his seat onboard the second lander, still attached to the Red Horizon. Procedure dictated that the second lander was manned, readied, and prepared to launch within five minutes should something go wrong with the first lander.

  “Lieutenant Harris sat in the side seat opposite Jules, while Petty Officer Jackson sat behind him. Major Carter remained on the ship. Jules was surprised to learn that the admiral allowed a Special Forces army officer to lead his SEAL team. The admiral had explained that Major Carter was the premier trainer in hand-to-hand combat for all four branches of service, and was specifically selected to lead the team based on his experience and abilities. In fact, one other SEAL had come from the marines the year before, and the other four were navy, with Carter being US Army.

  “Copy Red Two,” Jules said, using positive identification for her radio call. Only sloppy radio protocol and brash Hollywood movies allowed for a simple copy that remark.

  “Ready to make history, Commander Monroe?” Doctor Hill asked.

  “Affirmative, Doctor Hill,” Jules said, wondering if the man simply had to get his name over the radio airwave, which was being broadcast back to Houston and then to the entire world.

  “Look at that,” Maria said, her hand appearing in Jules’s peripheral vision as she extended it to her left and pointed at Olympus Mons in the far distance.

  “Is that our target?” Petty Officer Jackson asked from next to her.

  “No,” Maria said. “That is the largest feature on the planet, but we’re close. We’re headed to the middle of one of those,” she said, pointing now with her other hand at three large mountain-like features that were in front of them and slightly to their left.

  “The middle one, Pavonis Mons, is our target, or I should say the flat ground at its southeast base is,” Jules clarified, looking over at Harris, who was a man of few words. He had hardly talked to her or any of the crew, and he watched intently at the vista laid out in front of them. “Hang on, I’m going to bleed off some speed now.”

  Jules pulled back on the stick, bringing the lander swooping up as if heading back into space. The move fought against the gravity of the planet and slowed the acceleration that they had picked up from their inbound flight.

  “Not the most aerodynamic, is it?” Neil noted from his vantage point, watching her telemetry and a video of her FLIR system. In an emergency, Neil could remotely pilot the vehicle as well. Another redundancy built into the mission. NASA didn’t take chances when it didn’t have to. Space itself was one big roll of the die as it was.

  “Lowering angle of attack,” Jules said. “We’re within the glide path; will use the booster rockets at three thousand.”

  “Roger, Red One,” Neil said, monitoring their flight.

  The ship took several more minutes to come within range of their target, and the ground loomed up in front of them. There was no longer the inky blackness of space littered with the beautiful velvet backdrop of twinkling stars. They had entered deep into the Martian atmosphere, even if it was a fraction of Earth’s, and now the sky was a butterscotch, yellow-brown color.

  The ground was now rushing below the craft, and Jules glided it with the HUD or heads-up-display active on her windshield. Max was inputting course corrections and attitude adjustments for the craft, but allowing the humans to follow them. It didn’t matter that computers could not perform many tasks better than humans; sometimes the mere human touch, or sensation of feedback from the stick of the ship, its lateral and vertical motions as well as its speed and the pull of gravity, all gave indications that only a human could understand. Together, they were working as a team to ensure a successful landing.

  The last maneuver was the riskiest. The engines of the lander were pointed straight back, and Jules would have to bring the ship swooping down and then, right over the target, pull up so that its nose was pointed directly overhead. The ship would then fire its rockets and lower itself onto its rear struts, landing with the ship upright.

  The atmosphere was so thin that landing vertically like a plane or the space shuttles on Earth was not an option. There wasn’t enough air or other gaseous material to create sufficient lift even for the lightest of NASA’s designs, so a purely rocket-powered concept was utilized to land and take off. The other side of the coin was that Martian gravity clocked in at only thirty-eight percent of Earth’s so that more mass could be lifted by the rockets, including fuel.

  “Reaching vertical point . . . now,” Jules said, pulling back hard on the stick in order to follow the intense curve lined on her HUD. The ship pulled up into a vertical climb where it finally stalled as the motors were ignited, creating thrust out the back and lowering the ship down to the planet. The stick fed data inputs into the gyroscope, and lateral stabilizer motors took over, blast
ing occasionally from eight different points in the nose cone to keep the craft from tilting over.

  Jules watched her main monitor that now looked down at the planet from its large tail fin, allowing it to clear the rocket’s exhaust. Another HUD overlaid a large X target where the ship was descending upon. “Gear extended.”

  The main video feeds from a half-dozen different camera angles were being fed to the Red Horizon as it raced away toward the planet’s terminator and from there to Earth. The lander finally hit the planet’s surface, its landing struts beefed up with huge shock-absorbing hydraulics and mechanical springs. “Touchdown,” Julie said, flipping off the rocket motors. “Red One has landed.”

  “Roger, Red One has landed,” Neil Sullivan confirmed. “Congratulations, Commander Monroe on an excellent approach and landing.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without the team,” Jules replied.

  The rest of the moves were rehearsed dozens of times. They spent nearly ten minutes confirming that the strut pressure was within tolerable norms, and that the ground beneath them would not shift, as well as allowing for the dirt and dust that was hurled into the air to subside a bit so that they could see more clearly, especially with the video feeds of the first steps onto the surface of another planet by a human being.

  “Moving toward the inner hatch,” Jules said.

  She moved past her crewmembers and entered the small airlock that would allow her to open the outer door and descend a heavily reinforced and massive ladder. Closing the inner door, she activated the airlock as the ship’s mini chamber decompressed to near zero pressure. She was already fully suited for the trip down and didn’t require anything further with regards to life support.

  The entire ship was built with two orientations in mind. The first was the horizontal that gave the lander the appearance of an airplane, albeit one with a stubbier appearance. The second was vertical, and it was designed with the astronauts in mind for this exact moment when the ship rested literally upright. It had to have stepping places that could support their weight, stairs and doors, hatches, and other necessary egresses to reach the outside, as well as various equipment bays.

  “Red One, you are authorized to EVA at this time,” Sullivan said formerly from his position aboard the Red Horizon. Once Jules had left the large ship in orbit, she was no longer its commander, though she was still the overall mission leader. Sullivan was simply relaying the orders from Houston, allowing them to exit the craft and step onto the planet. Jules understood that it gave her actions a more formal appearance, and she was ready to make history.

  “Red One acknowledging authorization. Opening outer doors now,” Jules said, hitting the green button on the airlock and turning it red, indicating that the seal to the outside was now broken. The two small side doors of the circular exit point opened, and Jules stepped through and down the ladder that extended when the doors opened.

  She reached the bottom where a large, flat landing pad was built into the hydraulic ladder only a foot above the planet’s surface. Jules came off the ladder and stepped onto the mini platform in her modern-looking spacesuit. It wasn’t bulky like the old ones; she had a form-fitting one that kept pressure around her body with minimal interference with her mobility.

  Jules took a deep breath and stepped out and onto the planet itself. “We dedicate this landing to expanding the horizon of all mankind,” Jules said, having practiced her speech months earlier. She had it vetted by Houston just in case, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They couldn’t control what she said. She understood the importance of what she was doing and didn’t want children in schools decades or even centuries from now reading about a wise ass female astronaut who couldn’t control her tongue. No, she would play ball with the best of them, and in doing so, make her nation, and indeed, her planet proud.

  “Roger your EVA, Red One. Looking good, Commander Monroe, and welcome to history,” Neil said.

  Jules smiled. She was sure she’d raise hell from the politically correct crowd back on Earth. She didn’t care; mankind or humankind, what mattered was that they were all as one on a lovely blue and green world floating through the cosmos, and the first extra planetary landing was performed by a woman.

  Chapter 22

  Deja Vu

  Red One

  112° West, 2° South

  Base of Pavonis Mons, Mars

  In the near future, Year 4, Day 175

  The next hour after history was made was rather mundane. The crew of the lander had to unload the light rover that Jules and Lieutenant Harris would use to ascend the mountain side to reach the transmitter seventeen miles away. Maria and Jackson were on the surface, collecting soil samples and securing a small weather monitoring station onsite. While they had a primary mission to fulfill, this didn’t mean that the advancement of science stood still.

  The officer didn’t speak much, and Jules wondered if they’d make the entire trip in silence. Her coms were now on local only, and she was monitoring the Red Horizon, which had raced away and was on the other side of the planet. She was still in contact with it via the communication satellites.

  “I’ve read the brief on the device, but you can confirm for me that basically, if we trigger the device in the same way as the moon one, then we’re pretty much toast,” Harris said.

  Jules was driving the electric rover and looked over at him for a moment. He was still looking straight ahead at the landscape of red dirt and near blackish rocks that littered the surface of Mars. “If by toast you mean dead, then yes. We don’t have the shielding for it this time. It was too heavy to bring with us.”

  “Then let’s hope the device remains inert,” the officer said, finally gracing her with a sideways look.

  “I think the briefs were fairly clear on the matter. These signals, the one from Mars and the other from Jupiter at least, were only high-band radio-wave signals, not the excessive gamma- and x-ray-type waves found on the lunar device. I think it’s safe to assume that they’re not hostile.”

  “Key word is assume,” Harris said. “Many a battle was lost based on assumptions.”

  “All right,” Julie said, “but we’re not in a battle.”

  “If you say so,” Harris responded, resuming his blank look at their target, which was now a fixed point based on their previous triangulations.

  Jules continued in silence and, within twenty minutes, arrived at their destination. It was obvious from a few hundred yards away where the mini obelisk-like transmitter was located. Its shape and form now a part of their memory from so many pictures and silhouettes that there could be no mistaking it. “Let me run the initial test that Houston prepared before you break out any of your toys.”

  “Fine by me, Commander,” Harris said.

  The pair exited the rover, and Julie walked the last twenty yards to stand in front of the device, bringing along a small bag with her. “Strange,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Harris asked.

  “It’s pointed at an angle, forty-five degrees, unlike the lunar device, which was standing completely vertical.” Julie touched a pad on her wrist and spoke again on the main frequency. “Red Rover One to Red Horizon, do you copy?”

  “Reading you loud and clear, Commander Monroe.” Sullivan’s voice was cool and calm.

  “We still broadcasting?” she asked.

  “Affirmative,” he said simply.

  “Roger, then. Show my arrival at ten forty-two mission time.”

  “On site, Alpha target at ten forty-two, Roger that,” Neil said.

  “Initiating Houston protocol for consideration,” she said.

  “Roger, Houston protocol initiating now.”

  Jules took a deep breath and pulled out a mini transceiver from her bag, one specially made by NASA to transmit a genetic marker similar to the one used on the moon years ago. “Here goes nothing,” she said.

  She was about to press the device to the flat, black, metallic surface of the device when she heard Neil’s voice.
“Roger your commencement on universal broadcast channels.”

  Hesitating slightly, she almost laughed at Neil’s subtle reminder that the entire world was most likely watching and listening to her every move. The rover had a forward-facing FLIR camera as well, and it was broadcasting its data back to the Earth via the Horizon. Perhaps she needed to choose her words more carefully . . . “Initiating protocol now.”

  She pressed the flat magnetic head of the mini transmitter device against the alien device and hit the execute button, transmitting the code at precisely ninety-eight point three megahertz. The results were the same as years ago. A blast of reddish-orange dirt and dust exploded over her, eliciting a question from her companion.

  “Commander Monroe, are you all right?” Harris asked.

  “I’m fine, Officer Harris. Hold your position and let the dust settle.”

  After a few seconds, Julie could see a familiar and haunting sight. The dark ramp-way looked the same as before, black and lifeless. She knew what to expect next. “I’m going in.”

  “Roger that,” Harris said.

  “Confirm walkway and ingress at ten forty-four mission time,” Neil said, still monitoring everything she said.

  She stepped onto the ramp-way and breathed a sigh of relief when the ankle-level lighting illuminated for her. “What’s that?” Harris asked.

  “That’s the interior lighting, same as before. Nothing unusual,” Jules explained.

  “Roger Commander Monroe, advising Houston that the ramp-way interior lights illuminated upon entry,” Neil said.

  Jules walked down the ramp, feeling as if she was entering the side of the ancient, inactive Martian volcano. At the very end, she was almost startled when the semi-circular door opened for her automatically, evoking memories from over four years ago. “Interior door self activated,” she said for the record.