by Read, John
Copyright 2015 by John A. Read
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by Steven James Catizone Editing by Editworks
www.editworksusa.com
Final Copy Edit by Johnnie Mazzocco Formatting by Heidi Sutherlin
www.mycreativepursuits.com/
Angels and Airwaves lyrics used with permission from the artist.
High Flight poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is public domain.
Interior artwork:
“Electro Glider over Yosemite” and “Mayflower Over Mars” are works by the Author.
Follow me here:
www.facebook.com/TheMartianConspiracy
Twitter: @JohnAaronRead
Google: plus.google.com/+JohnReadAuthor/
Acknowledgements
Prologue
PART I
Chapter 1: 2071 - California
Chapter 2: Impact
Chapter 3: Shockwaves
Chapter 4: Eddie Rizzo
Chapter 5: Search and Rescue
Chapter 6: Recruited
Chapter 7: My Last Day on Earth
Chapter 8: The Nurse
Chapter 9: The Assignment
Chapter 10: Planetfall
PART II
Chapter 11: Launch Window
Chapter 12: Kicked Out
Chapter 13: Special Request
Chapter 14: Underground Secrets
Chapter 15: H3
Chapter 16: Amelia
Chapter 17: The Plan
Chapter 18: A New Roommate
Chapter 19: Bakersfield Active
Chapter 20: Just Work the Problem
Chapter 21: Training
Chapter 22: Breach
Chapter 23: Revolution!
Chapter 24: We Meet Again
Chapter 25: Power Drain
Chapter 26: The Reactor
Chapter 27: Chain Reaction
About the Author
It all started when my parents bought me a used copy of the October 1981 issue of National Geographic. On the cover was the Space Shuttle Columbia launching into space for the very first time. From that point on, I was hooked on space.
First, I’d like to acknowledge my childhood heroes Julie Payette and Chris Hadfield. As a child growing up on Prince Edward Island, these two Canadian astronauts were my window to the cosmos.
I’d like to thank NASA Engineer Robert Frost and NASA Astronaut Clayton Anderson for being an endless supply of knowledge on the dynamics of space travel. Your dedication to teaching the public through your participation on Quora.com has been instrumental in helping keep this book as scientifically accurate as possible (my apologies for the artistic liberties included in these pages).
A huge thank you to James and Claudia Altucher, your “ten ideas” strategy hatched the creativity between these pages (including the idea for this book in the first place).
To all the brilliant folks at SpaceX and Orbital ATK for bringing the human exploration of Mars closer than ever. I truly believe the work you do will open the door for human exploration of the solar system.
I would also like to thank Tom DeLonge and all the members of Angels and Airwaves. Many ideas in this book came to me while listening to your albums.
To the cover artist, Steven James Catizone: May your amazing artwork continue to inspire budding space enthusiasts around the world.
To John Harten, the editor: Your guidance, patience, and wisdom have taken this book to a level surpassing my wildest expectations.
A huge thank you to the beta readers: Erin Patel, Jennifer Read, Debbie Nadler, Jim Read and Susan Peters. These amazing individuals weeded through several unedited drafts, making hundreds of suggestions that added enormous depth to the story.
Special thanks to Graeme Shimmin, author of A Kill in the Morning, for writing the blurb for the rear cover and also for your blogs, especially your post on story archetypes, which helped drive this story to where it needed to be.
Finally, to my wife Jennifer and sons Isaac and Oliver: I couldn’t have done this without your love and support.
JULY 2068 - MOFFETT FIELD, SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
It took me five years to rebuild the vintage Katana. I sat in a timeworn leather seat and threw the red master switch. The cockpit came alive with the hum of whirling gyroscopes as the instruments came online. A key rested in the ignition and I turned it clockwise two clicks. The engine coughed several times, sputtered, and rumbled to a steady idle. Air washed into the cockpit, carrying with it the smell of hot tarmac and engine oil. I reached up and closed the canopy, put on a classic green DC headset, and fixed the microphone to my chin.
I taxied to Moffet’s runway, got clearance from ATC, and took to the sky. The airstrip disappeared below me, replaced by the murky shoreline slough. The Rotax 912 engine tugged at the air, pulling the Katana higher into the California sky. I flew over San Jose’s rusted desalination plants and continued north toward San Francisco. On my right, windmills on the East Bay’s skyline carved the atmosphere with three-hundred-foot blades.
Sailboats with colorful spinnakers littered the bay, but the skies over San Francisco were empty. It was just me and the seagulls this morning.
I flew over Bernal Heights, where my wife and I were about to move. Marie had dreamed of renting one of the Victorian flats that peppered San Francisco’s historic neighborhoods. We had made that dream a reality, signing the lease the previous Friday.
Passing the Golden Gate Bridge, I banked right, heading toward wine country. I checked my watch. Forty minutes until I have to land.
The southern tip of Napa Valley had airspace dedicated to aerobatics. Would the controllers let me use it? The Katana was agile but by no means a stunt plane. I decided to give it a try. “Sonoma Tower, this is Katana two seven niner foxtrot, requesting permission to enter practice area Charley over.”
“Copy Katana two seven niner, Charley is empty, you are clear for aerobatic flight up to six thousand feet.”
“Roger that, tower, six thousand feet, Katana two seven niner out.” I grinned.
With the throttle punched in, I cranked the stick to the left, rolling into a steep left bank that pressed the airframe to its structural limits. Adrenaline pulsed through me, or was that just the G load? It was probably both. I dove, gaining speed as altitude dwindled. A hundred feet from the swamps of Skaggs Island, I pulled up, shooting back into the sky. As the aircraft bled off speed, I kicked the rudder to the right, throwing the Katana into a hammerhead. I'd never be able to do this again. Better make it count!
I exited the hammerhead into another dive, and then leveled out, thinking of Marie. On that note, I kept my distance from the ground. Marie would kill me if I died, I thought.
After a few more wingovers and attempted loops, most of which ended in stalls, I’d had all my stomach could take. I radioed Sonoma Skypark and requested permission to land. After a single circuit around the airport, I set the aircraft down and taxied toward the hangars.
A man in his mid-fifties waited on the tarmac and waved as I taxied by. He was getting a fully rebuilt Katana, a plane he’d surely enjoy for years to come.
The Katana came to a stop. I pulled back on the mixture control, switched off the master and pulled out the key. I unclipped the four-point harness and flipped up the canopy, tossing my headset onto the copilot’s seat.
We shook hands and I handed over the oil-stained registration.
I never thought I’d sell my aircraft. But two weeks earlier, we had
discovered Marie was pregnant. We did some math, drawing up a budget. Rent in San Francisco and a child, we could afford, but hangar fees and aircraft maintenance would put us in the red.
The Katana had to go.
That night Marie and I stood on the deck of our apartment and took turns looking through a telescope she had given me for Christmas. As a boy I had been fascinated with space, leading me to my dream job as a NASA engineer. But since I’d probably never have the chance to visit Mars or even the lunar colony, I got my pilot’s license. It wasn’t the same, but flying had provided me an authentic joy.
Marie looked into my eyes, took my hand and squeezed it. We had prepared ourselves for a new set of adventures and were eager to experience them together.
JULY 20TH, 2071. THIS WAS THE DAY NASA STARTED A WAR.
I stepped out of the car in San Francisco to the familiar smell of fresh coffee and homeless people. A musician sat on a bucket playing a saxophone, his music echoing between the buildings. I walked down Market Street toward the Embarcadero, grateful for the chance to stretch my legs. It can be a long drive from NASA’s Mountain View research center, and driverless vehicles always obey the speed limit.
I glanced up at the Ferry Building, fog hovered around the clock tower. The sun would burn it off soon. San Fran’s mornings were always a bit chilly. I stepped into a café, grabbing a coffee. When I left the shop, I walked back to the musician and passed my wristwatch over his case, transferring a few dollars.
Three blocks away, the Transbay Transit Center’s glass facade twinkled as the sun broke through the clouds. I walked there, enjoying the hot coffee while pigeons dodged my feet. Usually, I’d stroll through the station’s five-acre rooftop garden, but not today.
I jogged down the escalator and boarded a train. Cameras inspected my eyes, billing me for the ticket as metallic doors clanged shut behind me. My body pressed into a cloth seat as we rocketed out of the Bay Area. I held my coffee in the air to prevent it from spilling.
My tablet clung to the seatback like a magnet on a fridge. I was about to start working when my phone chimed. It was my wife. She called every day around the same time, the calls so routine I took them for granted. Marie and I had met at George Washington University when she was a junior and I a senior. We took a film studies class together, spending our evenings watching classic sci fi movies and falling in love. When the semester ended we watched three movies a week until the day we were married, three years later.
I slid the phone from my wristwatch and my son’s face filled the display. “Hey dude!” I said. Branson was two and a half years old. His brown hair was a mess and needed to be trimmed.
“Dada!” he replied. Branson struggled in my wife’s arms as she pulled him back from the camera. “Dada on loop!” he said, looking up at his mother.
“That’s right buddy!” I said, leaning forward and smiling. I had left for work before either Branson or Marie had woken up. “Did you brush your teeth this morning?” Branson nodded enthusiastically. He loved the hyperloop and laughed every time we rode the super-fast train. I guess he thought of it as an amusement park ride.
I had driven to L.A. twice since we moved to California. Driving to L.A. is kind of a pain, and takes about six hours. The fastest route used to be Interstate 5. But, since the Cartel expanded in the Central Valley, I tried to avoid that route, not wanting to be mistaken for a government official or the DEA.
“Sword!” Branson said holding an action figure in one hand and an oversized plastic sword in the other. The figurine had huge eyes, dark skin and wore a turban. The toy was from his favorite Disney movie, Mongol, the one about the boy who was tired of pillaging.
“Johnny, come home early as you can.” Marie’s voice sounded soft and pleasant but also tired. She’d taken time off from teaching genetic anthropology at UC Berkeley and got cabin fever from being at home while I was away. Marie grabbed my son’s hand to prevent him from pulling out her braids. She had done her hair in loops like Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back.
“I’ll try, but it could be another late night.”
Marie frowned then covered it with a smile. She wasn’t looking forward to another evening watching Disney characters dance around the holovision.
“I’ll make it up to you. On my next trip, you can join me in L.A. and we’ll go to Griffith Park together. We’ll take Branson to the observatory. It’ll be great, I promise.” This seemed to satisfy Marie, at least a little.
After ending the call, I opened the blueprints for Destiny Colony, currently under construction in Earth orbit. The name symbolized humanity’s future as a space faring species. I twisted my hand in the air, rotating the view on the screen. The design had been a staple in science fiction, a two-mile wide rotating ring. It was time to make the dream a reality.
Construction of a space station is as much about accounting as engineering. Launching from Earth is the most expensive method, so this was kept to a minimum. The aluminum was mined on the moon, while other raw materials, various silicates, carbonate, and oxides, came from Mars.
Six months ago, a spacecraft named the CTS-Bradbury had been in orbit above the surface of Mars. The Bradbury, an unmanned cargo vessel the size of ten Carnival cruise ships, was loaded with enough material to complete Destiny Colony. The ship, and its massive payload, blasted towards Earth at fifty thousand miles per hour, accelerating further as it fell deeper into the sun’s gravity well.
Today, six months after leaving Mars, it would arrive.
Stepping out of Union Station in Los Angeles, I took in the blue sky and breathed the fresh air. I could hear the gentle hum of electric cars racing along the San Bernardino Freeway. In the distance, the skyline was laced with the vertical farms that provided California with an effectively unlimited supply of food. Almost half of L.A.’s population was freeliving and it was obvious wherever you looked. It was the middle of a work day, and dozens of the non-working middleclass people sat outside Union Station, enjoying the sun.
I jumped into a car with Nicolas, a young engineer from Houston. Nicolas was fairly new to NASA, fresh off his internship. He had been assigned to me to help with logistics. I was an electrical systems engineer by trade, but NASA required its engineers to do a stint in logistics.
Nicolas was a quintessential engineer. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a pocket protector for his phone. He always wore slacks, even though most of us wore jeans. And he wore glasses, a recent retro trend, and as far as I could tell, his only concession to style.
The car sped north on Highway 101. Palm trees lined the freeway and the Hollywood sign loomed in the distance. The original sign had been replaced after the 2042 quake and a new and bigger sign sat in its place.
Nicolas ignored the scenery, concentrating instead on the bumper to bumper traffic speeding along at seventy miles per hour. He had a childlike curiosity, studying the algorithms the auto-cars used to optimize the traffic patterns, allowing us to travel anywhere in central L.A. in less than ten minutes.
“Do you think you’ll get to go into space?” Nicolas asked as we approached NASA’s Spacecraft Operations Center.
“Probably not, but I’ve always wanted to.” I had a pilot’s license, was an engineer, and worked for NASA. In a sense, my resume suited me for a job in Earth orbit or the Martian colony. “How about you?” I asked.
“Nah,” he responded, “Never thought of myself as an astronaut.” This surprised me. I pictured him in space, staring out in childlike awe from Destiny’s control room.
“You know they don’t call anyone who goes into space an astronaut,” I said. “Thousands of people have been to space.”
Nicolas gave me a serious look. “And so few understand how amazing that is.”
I nodded my agreement.
We left the car in northeast Los Angeles near Pasadena and headed into the lobby of NASA’s Watney building. The car drove back onto the boulevard in search of its next customer. We rode the elevator to the control roo
m on the thirteenth floor.
The elevator’s window granted us an outside view. Griffith Observatory rested on the hill in the distance. I imagined holding Branson up to the eyepieces of the historic telescopes.
We stepped out of the elevator and walked through a set of double doors into Mission Control. A confident looking man wearing a white vest welcomed us as we walked down the aisle between the stations.
“Today’s the big day, John,” Norman said, smiling and patting me on the back. Norman Kim, the flight director, stood well over six feet tall. He had to be over sixty, but rumor had it he could still dunk a basketball and was savage on the court. This was our second time meeting in person. The fact that he remembered my name was moving. “We get this shipment in orbit and you guys can get to work.”
“It’s about time,” I joked. The shipment was on schedule, down to the nearest second. I introduced Nicolas and Norman. Norman always made an effort to inspire NASA’s young engineers. He asked Nicolas how he had gotten interested in space, and how he ended up at NASA. The two of them continued to make small talk as I settled into my station.
I looked around the room and realized that everyone was smiling. In fact, they were almost giddy. Everyone was excited for the supplies to arrive from Mars, but even more excited to finish building Destiny Colony.
Today’s plan was simple. The CTS-Bradbury would park in geostationary orbit. Once there, the logistics team, which included me and Nicolas, would take over. We were in charge of ferrying the supplies from the CTS-Bradbury to Destiny’s construction site, thirty-six thousand kilometers above the Galapagos Islands.
We watched the projection at the front of the room. A telescopic camera in a high orbit gave us live images of the spacecraft as it approached the orbital insertion burn point.
“Excuse me,” Norman said, as he and Nicolas ceased their conversation. He brushed past us and headed to the front of the room. From there, he gave a quick pep talk.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” he began. “Since the days of Isaac Asimov, engineers like us have dreamed of the day we could construct the first rotating space station. Today, we are poised to make that dream a reality.” He paused, letting the gravity of our mission sink in. “Once the CTS-Bradbury settles into orbit, I will start this clock.” He pointed to a digital countdown clock on the wall that read, 1,095 Days, 00 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds. “Three years from today, we will open the airlock to a new chapter in human history.”