INBOUND
Impact Series
Book 1
By
E.E. Isherwood
Mike Kraus
© 2019 Muonic Press Inc
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Table of Contents
Two days ago
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Author Notes
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
IMPACT Book 2
Available Here
Two days ago
“What’s the worst that can happen today?”
Everyone in the room went silent until Captain Davis got out of his seat to respond to the geologist. “We don’t talk like that up here. The worst that can happen is this tin can splits open and we all spill out into space. Everything else is gravy by comparison, right?”
Heads nodded.
“So, let’s get to our stations, finish this mission, and then smile for the cameras. I, for one, would like to get back to Earth for some R & R.”
The ten officers hopped up with excitement. Like any good leader, he knew the magic words to get them moving. They’d been flying in the void between Earth and Mars for over four months. They’d landed on the inbound asteroid, as planned. Today, the entire crew was ready for the final act.
Captain Jim Davis walked out of the Tikkanen-2 operations room ahead of the others. He’d spent a solid hour going over every detail of the procedure with his team leaders and listened as each officer repeated the sequence. Over the last few months, they’d practiced on the simulator until they’d gotten it down to robotic precision, so the meeting was largely symbolic.
That one final question weighed on his mind, though. A lot of things could go wrong, and being sucked into the vacuum of space was terrible, but the absolute worst for him would be missing his big chance at immortality. If they screwed up today, there would be other ships. Other captains.
So, don’t screw it up, Jim, he thought.
He hustled to the bridge with the weight of history sitting comfortably on his shoulders. He was the master of a mining spacecraft maneuvering almost three thousand miles above the moon. The Earth was just beginning its rise behind it; the orb hung there like a swirling blue, white, and green marble. To some, it might have been breathtaking, or a celestial reminder how fragile and insignificant the human race truly was; to Captain Davis it was simply another day at the office. His full attention was on the asteroid underneath the ship.
“How long until terminal burn?” Davis asked as he settled into his captain’s chair. While stretching his legs, he accidentally kicked the back of the pilot’s seat. There wasn’t much room anywhere on the five-person bridge. It was built for function, rather than comfort, like the rest of the waffle-shaped mining tugboat. “And get me the final readouts on the asteroid’s rotation.”
It wasn’t supposed to spin at all, but it had stayed within tolerances the past several days.
“A little over a minute until the thrusters power up, sir.” His first officer was a young woman named Jane Ferrier. She came from corn country south of Chicago, like him, although her small-town upbringing hadn’t influenced his choice. He picked her for this mission because she’d scored the highest marks for piloting in the simulator. After months of flying around the moon for this operation, he’d come to appreciate the selection; she knew her stuff.
“The rotation has stopped,” his engineer added. “We’re golden.”
“Excellent. Is the boss on the line?” He looked left, to the backside of his communications officer.
“Aye, sir. He’s there.” Tom’s voice was full of sarcasm, suggesting they all knew the answer before the question was asked.
The owner of the company was never far away, even while in deep space. Davis had to look no further than the ship itself. Tikkanen-2 was named after the boss—Petteri Tikkanen. A man who built the company into the international conglomerate it was today. They’d gone beyond terrestrial mining, even after dominating the industry in places like India and China. Now, they were making a serious effort to mine the last frontier—space. Part of Tikkanen’s success was due to an attention to detail and micromanagement bordering on mania. The owner listened to almost all transmissions to and from the ship, and there was a rumor he’d implanted microphones in the hull so he could tap into every private conversation onboard the craft.
“And the military, sir,” Tom added.
Tom leaned over so Davis could get a look at his computer monitor. An array of small video boxes displayed nine different locations tracking their progress. Mission control in south Texas was in the top left corner. A California telemetry station was next. Then several other company branches. The last two were blacked out, but the feeds were live. That meant the people watching didn’t want to be seen. Davis had long since grown used to the secrecy surrounding the mission. There were riches beyond reckoning in the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Naturally, the United States military would be following with great interest.
Tom turned around and motioned for him to come closer. He spoke at barely a whisper. “One of the blackouts is Peterson Air Force Base. NORAD.”
Davis nodded, and the man spun back to his screen.
He scoffed at the notion they needed babysitting from the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Their job was to prevent the world ending by nukes or EMP blasts or sunspots. They carried no jurisdiction over what Tikkanen Kinetic Mining was doing on or above the moon.
“Excellent. Nice work, everyone. This should be a piece of cake.” He wanted the name Jim Davis to go into the history books, just like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Captain Picard of Star Trek fame. It didn’t hurt to make the crew feel appreciated at the same time.
He’d imagined his big day almost constantly for the last two years. That’s when he’d learned the exact physical dimensions of 586001 Tuonela, the asteroid traveling beneath their feet. An unmanned retriever spacecraft had spent two years slowly maneuvering the boulder seventy-
five million miles from the asteroid belt to the rendezvous point near the moon. His job was to get it the last few miles.
“Sixty seconds coming up,” Davis said with dramatic flair as a small countdown clock appeared on his screen. “And…mark!” He took a moment to savor what was about to happen. After all, it was the culmination of thousands of hours of work and tens of billions of dollars of investment. After proving mining in space could be done safely and cost-effectively, this moment was the gateway to untold trillions of dollars of reward. Why not celebrate?
He looked down at the moon again. Soon, the potato-shaped, 1600-meter wide rock they’d pulled out of the main asteroid belt would hurtle into the gravity well of the moon, skip across the barren surface, then split apart into millions of easily-accessible chunks. Over the next few years, the remnants would be digested by the automated salvage drones down on the surface. It would be like children collecting Easter eggs, and about as exciting.
That’s why he thanked his luck he was going to be at the crux of the most important maneuver of the whole operation. He was going to matter. Jim Davis, the guy who started it all.
“Thirty,” he said with renewed vigor, stowing away all his misgivings. “We’re about to kick off a new era, people. Unlimited energy. Unlimited materials. Ships to the stars in our lifetimes. Whole new branches of science. Look alive.”
One of his engineers called out the time, because it was an important aspect of their calibration. They had to burn the engines in a precise sequence at the appointed moment, so the asteroid’s trajectory was nudged just enough to get it into the proper impact window. Too steep, and the rock would go straight down into the moon’s crust, making mineral extraction exponentially more difficult. Too shallow, and they’d lose the rock to deep space.
“Coming up on final burn. Ten second countdown begins on my mark…” He paused and then tapped Jane on the arm; he couldn’t take a chance she would miss this important directive to fire the ship’s engines.
She gave him the thumbs-up sign.
All was good.
“Ten seconds to launch!” Davis said in a steady voice. His heart was already at warp speed. He brushed at his thinning hair to help calm the buzz of excitement at having his moment videotaped, but he leaned all the way back in his chair to prepare for the imminent thrust.
“Five! Four!"
They will remember my next words forever.
“Three!"
A vibration in the floor caught his notice, but he couldn’t stop now.
“Two—"
“Abort! Abort!” A female voice interrupted. “It’s rotating!”
The entire ship jerked to the left, as if they’d been struck by something. Warning lights kicked on, and alarms screamed in unison. Davis was thrown against his seat and his vision blurred from the rapid motion. Determinedly, he coughed up a defensive reply.
“Can we compensate?”
It felt like being on a carnival ride. After the rough start, the mining ship slowly rolled with the monster below them, like a flea riding a dog. Vibrations continued to rumble through the ship’s hull.
“Can we?” he pressed, imagining his blood pressure spike, like someone was squeezing his heart.
“We can’t save it!” Ferrier replied, wildly shaking her head. “The rock sheared apart!”
He double-blinked. “Did that cause the spin?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I need time. It might have been the moon’s gravity.”
As if on cue, pieces of the giant rock floated by the window. Some looked as big as houses. His training demanded he do something. Anything.
“We have to fire the engines,” he said in a near-panic. Whatever the cause, he needed to get what was left of that rock on the moon. “If we miss our window—”
Jane spun in her seat. “We already missed it, Jim! The physical characteristics of the captive asteroid have changed. We don’t have a solution programmed in for a different weight. Hell, we don’t even know what the weight is anymore!”
She showed him a video feed of the asteroid using her view screen; the smaller end of the potato looked like someone had taken a hammer to it, severing about two hundred meters of the 1600-meter object. The bulk of the rock remained in one piece, but dozens, perhaps thousands of smaller shards shot off in all directions. His ship was still attached to the largest chunk, safe for now, but spinning with it.
The alarms faded into background noise. Every feed on the comms was asking for a status report.
Captain Davis was the consummate professional, trained for any situation in space, and he instinctively appreciated what this curveball meant for his legacy. His big moment had come and gone. He never got the chance to say, “Make it so,” like his TV hero. There would be no statues of him. No schools named after him. No futuristic dreadnoughts with “Jim Davis” on the hull.
He drew in a deep breath, then let it out. “Can you give me a projection for where the remaining bulk of Petteri is going to take us if we don’t fire the engines at all?”
She pivoted to her screen and typed like her life depended on it. He watched in horror as more boulders floated by, until he couldn’t wait another second.
“Jane?” he snapped.
To her credit, she managed to get the answer right away.
“Sir, assuming the trajectory of the ship matches the remains of the rock below us, we’re on a course which is going to take us to—” Jane choked up.
He sighed, resigned to the fact he’d made a liar out of himself. Contrary to his earlier statement, this was the worst that could happen. An unforeseen eventuality with his name plastered all over it. “I already know. This planet-killer we’re riding is heading right for Earth, isn’t it?”
She swiveled in his direction and nodded.
Corn fields flashed through his memory, like he was seeing his life before his eyes. Both he and Jane came from the same part of the world. Were their hometowns now in jeopardy?
He was almost afraid to ask the question. “Do we have the fuel to keep it out of Earth’s gravity well?”
Jane averted her eyes, providing the answer.
He glanced at the window; the Earth was indeed rising higher over the horizon as they moved toward it. Davis held out his arm and hid the entire planet behind his hand. When he let it drop, he saw the world anew.
He’d never noticed how clear it was over the northern part of Africa. The dunes of the Sahara Desert seemed to glow from within, like a paper lantern hung below Europe. And he’d never taken the time to observe the beauty of the clouds, how they bunched up over the mountains or swirled wild and free over the oceans. The worst part, he now realized, was that he’d never considered his fellow humanity down there. Under those clouds, next to those deserts, on those seas.
He raised his arm again, blotting out almost eight billion souls.
Davis found himself getting a little emotional.
“God, what have we done?”
When he lowered his hand again, he caught motion in the void above the moon. Broken shards of the asteroid raced off like they couldn’t wait to spoil the picturesque painting of Earth. Many were already being consumed by the vastness of space as they fled the ship, but a few of the larger ones shimmered in the sunshine.
Some of them were going to reach Earth a lot sooner than the main body.
He sat up straight, recovering somewhat from the shock of the moment.
“All right, people, we’ve had a setback. I need to know everything about what’s left of Petteri below us. I need mass. I need weight. I want to know this rock better than the back of my hand.”
Jim Davis reflexively studied his hand, then pointed ahead, but he didn’t use the famous catchphrase he’d intended. Not until he knew the Earth was safe.
“Let’s get it done.”
Introduction
Humanity’s yearning for exploration and discovery is hard-coded into our very DNA. We’ve always been explorers, pushing the boundaries of thought and scie
nce as we’ve spread to every continent, surveyed every square inch of land between the poles and delved into the darkest, deepest hidden places on our planet. Beyond our natural curiosity, the underlying drive for our exploration is as simple as it gets: resource gathering. Need more firewood? Go over the next hill. Need more oil? Go drill under the ice caps. Need exotic minerals for your smartphones? Go deeper into the deserts.
After crawling over—and under—the surface of the Earth, the more daring of us cracked the planet’s crust to extract even more resources. The gold rush was followed by the oil boom, which was followed by the hurry to extract as many rare-earth minerals as possible to fuel our modern lifestyle. Even now, we’re already looking for the next big thing—it most likely won’t take place on the Earth.
A logical next step in humanity’s quest for resources is the asteroid belt. In 1998, NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker probe went by a rock named 433 Eros, making it the first asteroid studied from orbit. Significantly, the probe determined the heavenly body could contain more gold, silver, zinc, and aluminum than has ever been mined on the Earth’s surface.
The Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft was the first ship designed from top to bottom to rendezvous with an asteroid and bring back a sample. The 2005 mission was a success overall, and it returned to Earth in 2010 with about 1500 grains of dust. That may not sound like a lot, but it gave us a definitive look under the surface of these mysterious objects. Analysis of the sample showed trace amounts of the minerals pyroxene, plagioclase, and olivine. A second Japanese probe, Hayabusa2, went up in 2014 and is now on the surface of 162173 Ryugu collecting samples. It is scheduled to stay there until December 2019 and return a year later.
NASA, building on the success of Hayabusa, is working on bringing back a more substantial mineral sample from an asteroid, too. The OSIRIS-Rex mission launched in 2016 and is already at 101955 Bennu, a 600-meter B-type asteroid, which means it is carbon rich and a primitive relic from the early solar system. We’ll learn the potential riches when the return flight comes back in 2023.
Impact (Book 1): Inbound Page 1