by Sean Wallace
A dull, heavy feeling settled into the pit of Mat’s stomach.
“Hari, what is going on here? I thought they were observers,” said Mat.
Hari looked uncomfortable. “They are here to observe. Directly, for the president.”
Kones looked at Mat, his eyes briefly contemptuous before becoming guarded once more. His jaw was clenched. “We are here to observe, and to take direct control of this program.”
The other men, who were dressed in identical black suits with closely shaved haircuts, were busy on their laptops, and were ignoring the exchange.
Mat’s heart began to hammer in his chest, and his hands came down protectively on the keyboard of his laptop.
“Hari?” asked Mat, his voice shaking with outrage.
“I’m sorry, Matrick. The president’s own team have always been closely monitoring the program. With the current situation . . . we felt a change was needed. The public needs reassurance.”
“What about the Russians and the Chinese?” asked Mat.
“That is being handled at the diplomatic level,” said Kones.
“But this is a scientific project . . . ” Then it hit him. They were not talking about another intervention. They were planning a nuclear strike on Erebus.
“Hold on a minute—” started Mat.
“No, you listen to me!” snapped Hari, his face flushing a dangerous red. “You had your chance. How you managed to fuck this up, I don’t know. But you and your people are to give Kones and his team your full cooperation, understand me? They have a mandate from Yerry himself.”
Mat was shaking not only with anger—but with fear. Time was running out, and the wrong move could spell the end for all of them.
“But, Hari,” said Mat, pleading with his boss. “Surely you know that a full strike will not prevent impact. That thing is not a metallic body. Even with penetrators it will just shatter into fragments.”
“Oh, we will smash it all right,” said Kones. The men at his side laughed coldly.
Mat’s eyes flashed down to the laptops they were using. Heavy duty. Military. They were inputting launch codes. This could not be happening. This was everything he and his team had tried to avoid.
“No, I can’t let you do this.”
Kones’s eyes flickered to two heavy-muscled, armed MPs who had been standing guard unobtrusively at the door. They were behind Kones’ chair in an instant.
Mat’s jaw went slack and he looked across to Hari in disbelief.
“I’m sorry, Matrick. National security.”
Kones motioned with his chin, and the two marine MPs returned to their position.
Jereece, oblivious to the whole thing, turned toward them and held up his hands, counting down with his fingers.
“Feed in ten, nine . . . ”
They all looked up to the huge screens above the room, now displaying the NASA logo.
“ . . . three, two, one.”
One of the screens flickered, went dark then filled with an actual magnified view of Erebus, coming in from their advance observation satellites. The asteroid was a tiny blip against a field of bright stars.
“Jereece. Anything from Control on Erebus?” asked Mat.
Jereece’s face was grim. He shook his head. Seven astronauts. His people. Gone.
Mat’s attention went to the second screen, which had a bright set of orbital schematics set against a light blue background. A heavy black line denoted the corrected orbit Erebus should have taken, while a red line showed another trajectory entirely, one with multiple, irregular changes to speed and direction. It looked like a joke. Something concocted by a team of drunken NASA scientists after the Christmas party. Asteroids just did not behave like this.
But Mat did not draw any conclusions; he was too well trained for that.
“Jereece. Feed the trajectory information over the network,” called Mat.
“Okay. Should be coming across . . . now.”
The raw data loaded into Mat’s program and he initiated an interpretive scenario. The fast little machine spat the results out in less than ten seconds.
His breathing grew fast and shallow as he looked over the results. His hands began to shake, his fingers tingling with hyperventilation.
“Work the results,” he muttered to himself. “Work the results.”
The room was full of raised voices on the edge of panic.
He forced his breathing to slow.
“Quiet down, people. Focus on the job.” His voice was stern, but controlled.
The noise receded.
“We only need the current orbit for the targeting satellites, gentlemen. Let’s not waste any time,” said Kones.
Mat could hardly believe the insanity that was taking place here. Any nuclear strike—however massive—would leave myriad smaller fragments to rain down on Earth. Not only that, Erebus was now too close for even the most massive of explosions to divert. He had to shut Kones out of his mind. He needed to understand what was happening.
Based on his modeling, it appeared that somehow Erebus had flipped itself, not once but seventeen times until every one of the four NTR mounts and the Control base had been dislodged, along with the automated ice-miners. Then it had changed its own orbit by applying thrust. There had been no collision; no explosion. It had been a carefully controlled orbit correction. Erebus was acting like a spaceship. A spaceship under the control of some sort of intelligence. There was no other explanation.
But the surveys? Multiple sample points, taken randomly, some at depths of up to ten kilometers below the surface. They revealed nothing but carbon, ice and rock, all mixed like a pudding across the surface of the body. The composition had been remarkably consistent—yet they found nothing that would suggest an artificial construct. Their high-energy scans of the internal structure had been designed only to determine if it had enough integrity to take the applied thrust of the NTRs without fracturing.
The secure cell on the desk in front of Kones rang. He swept it up and answered it with machine-like precision.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Kones here, sir. Everything is ready. Do we have the Russians and the Chinese on board, sir?”
Mat could hear Yerry’s voice, small and mouse-like across the link, but could not make out the words.
“Yes. We have relayed the targeting information,” said Kones in reply.
“Wait!” yelled Mat. “Stop! Erebus is some sort of spaceship.”
Suddenly Mat was lifted from his feet and dragged away into the corner of the room, one MP on either arm.
Jereece watched it happen with incomprehension, the pen in his mouth falling to clatter on his desk. The other members of Mat’s team had ceased work, some standing up from their seats.
“Get back to work! All of you,” yelled Hari.
Reluctantly they re-took their seats, but their eyes were glued to Mat. Not a single one of them was moving.
“The feed, Jereece! Crank the magnification on Erebus to max!” yelled Mat.
Jereece worked his terminal furiously.
Mat did not struggle. He would win this only by convincing Hari and Kones what they were dealing with. If he was right, if Erebus was a spaceship on its way to visit Earth, then it would already be shifting into position for an orbital insertion but it was not. It was on a collision course.
The tiny image of the asteroid increased in size until it filled a quarter of the screen, then magnified again.
Gone was the irregular shape, crusted with ice and debris from its long journey through the Oort cloud.
What they saw now was a long segmented form, like a string of pearls, flanked by six wings of reflective material that drew together at ninety degrees to the body like the petals of some enormous flower. Each spherical segment was faceted, like the featured surface of a geodesic dome. The wings were supported by wedge-shaped structures that emerged from the central segment, darker in color than the bright wings themselves.
“Jesus, those sails must be more than a hundred
kilometers square,” said Jereece.
“They are symmetrical,” said Mat in wonder. “This has to be an artificial structure. Hari! Kones! This is a ship. A spaceship.”
Kones looked at the image without emotion. Beside him Hari’s mouth was open, his eyes fixed on the screen.
“Is it still on a collision course for Earth?” said Kones.
“Yes,” said Jereece. “It’s accelerating.”
No. This cannot be right.
“Jereece. Its course must be consistent with some sort of orbital insertion. Check it. Quickly!”
Jereece rapidly worked the data. He paused, shook his head then tried a different approach, then turned to Mat.
“Whatever this thing is, Mat. It will impact on its current course.”
Mat could not understand. If it was some sort of a ship, perhaps driven by an automated system, was it possible that it had been damaged by their efforts to divert it? No. Its orbital corrections had been too precise. The conclusion was inescapable. The intelligence that directed Erebus meant for that thing to hit them.
The panic rose again, and this time Mat did nothing to stop it. What could he do?
As they watched they could see jets of material shoot in unison from it segments.
“It’s increasing speed.”
The huge, gossamer wings fell away, leaving only the stubby support structures. The whole body was becoming streamlined, the segments drawing together and flattening out.
Kones lifted the cell link back to his ear. “The object is still on collision course and is accelerating, Mr. President,” said Kones.
“Acknowledged, Mr. President.”
“Kones! Tell your men to release me,” said Mat.
Kones gave Mat a level look, then nodded to the MPs, who let him go and marched back to their station at the door.
Mat took his seat and watched the screen, fighting a sense of unreality. It was as though he had left the world he knew and stepped through into somewhere else—somewhere utterly alien. He knew a nuclear strike would not avert the threat. Yet as furiously as he considered the problem, he could provide no alternative. How could he have foreseen this? This! Perhaps Rotanski’s people could think of something.
Kones looked across to his men. “We have the Russians and the Chinese on board. Let’s proceed with the strike.”
“Mr. Kones,” said Mat.
Kones looked across at Mat, his eyes intense.
“Is there any way we could delay the strike? Get Rotanski’s people in here? There may be something else we can do.”
“Negative,” said Kones, continuing as though Mat had said nothing.
Mat pushed his palms into his eyes, trying to stifle the impulse to scream at Kones. He had to seize control of the moment—to think of something. But it was too late.
“Gentlemen. Target locked. Satellite on line. Initiate on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark.”
Kones and his team hit their keyboards in unison. Four soft taps, and their fate was sealed. Seconds later there was a series of snaps as the lids shut.
“What are you hitting it with?” said Mat.
“This has all been modeled by our own people,” said Kones, reopening his laptop. “I’ve sent the data through your network. We have one hundred and twenty-five warheads converging on Erebus. More than a thousand megatons of firepower. Seventeen will penetrate the asteroid itself; the rest are programmed to detonate at the surface.”
Mat plugged the data into his own model, but he already knew the answer. Finding those launchers at short notice was impressive. Even so. Ten years ago, with Erebus so much further from Earth, a strike like this might have made a difference, but not now. His own model confirmed his fears.
It would be more than seventeen hours before the missiles closed on Erebus. For now he needed a strong coffee, and to collect his thoughts.
He pulled out his cell to check his messages, but before he could even turn it on Kones snatched it from his hands.
“No private communications allowed.”
Mat glared at Kones, but he seemed invulnerable to any protest.
Kones waved to the two MPs.
“Sweep everyone. No communications are to go in or out. The network is already sealed to the outside.”
Mat looked over at Hari. “What the hell is this?”
Hari shrugged, and for the first time Mat saw defeat in his slumped posture.
“I’m sorry, Mat. They’ve taken mine as well. This is being controlled by the military now. Orders were to keep a lid on developments—God knows how they can hide more than a hundred simultaneous launches. Any tin-pot country with a satellite and space program must know what we are trying to do.”
“And how futile it will be,” said Mat.
Kones eyes swept over to lock onto his, then Hari’s, his gaze determined. “I will only say this once. If we are facing a global crisis, this needs to be coordinated from the top down. The President and his staff are already secure. Other preparations are being made for the impact. Your only job, Keterson, is to tell us exactly where those fragments are going to land after the strike on the body.”
Mat was roughly pushed to his feet. One MP stood by impassively while the other swept him with a portable metal detector.
He could feel the small, heavy lump of Athy’s cell in his pocket, and was resigned to giving it up. But the hand-held swept over it without registering a blip. Then he remembered the sleek, metallic casing. It was shielded! Bless you, Ms Jates.
“We’re getting something.”
Mat jerked awake, scattering the greasy cardboard relics of yesterday’s dinner onto the thick gray carpet of the Erebus mission room along with a very cold, very ugly brew of coffee that was more than seven hours old.
His head pounded and he focused on the big display with difficulty. There were no magic pills to help him this time. He rubbed his stiff neck while he took in the images. He felt as though he had been watching that huge plasma rectangle his whole life.
The view of Erebus was better than ever. The petal-like wings were long gone now, the segmented body flattened, the six stubby support structures now woven together beneath the flattened under-surface like the wings of a hypersonic aircraft. The whole structure seemed so rigid it was hard to believe it had re-shaped itself at all.
The surface of the body comprised multiple elements, each of which now glittered like lenses. Like eyes.
Its whole structure was baffling.
“One of the forward observation posts has taken a spectral reading of the gases being ejected by Erebus,” said Jereece.
Mat looked down into the central part of the room. Like the main desk above, the consoles were scattered with the remnants of takeaway meals and Styrofoam coffee cups. Yet where before—over a thousand long nights—these had been an integral part of the feeling of camaraderie within the 2047KW13 team, now they were like the remnants of prison food. The whole atmosphere in the room was oppressive.
Three more agents had joined Kones, along with five more MPs. They were in danger of outnumbering the scientists. Hari had lost his seat on the upper table, evicted by another “specialist,” and had been forced to take a vacant seat in the main room below. It seemed the NASA hierarchy had been temporarily voided. No one had been allowed to contact friends or family. “Arrangements have been made,” was all Kones would say.
“What have you got?” asked Mat.
“The gases are mostly hydrogen, ejected at very high speed, followed by a trail of water vapor.”
The views flickered and changed. A one-minute countdown started in the corner of the screen.
“This is it, gentlemen,” said Kones, pointedly ignoring the four female members of Mat’s team who were busily working on the floor below.
They saw an actual view of Erebus on one screen, with a schematic of the incoming trajectory on the other.
Mat’s heart was hammering so violently it shook his whole chest. The headache, his aching neck—all was forgotten.
“There they are,” yelled Jereece. The chemical boosters on the nukes were powering up for the final strike, standing out like a forest of fireflies before the leviathan of Erebus.
One of the women cried out, and one of the others reached across quickly to put an arm around her. At some unspoken signal, most of his team left their seats and crowded together before the screen. He should have been with them.
Then, just before impact, something incredible happened.
Erebus applied a massive thrust away from the detonation coordinates.
“Sir! Sir! All one hundred and twenty-five warheads have missed the target,” yelled one of Kones’s men.
“Get control of yourself!” snapped Kones.
The picture went suddenly white, then dead. The screen with the tracking information displayed a large red ERROR. The nuclear detonation had obliterated the forward observation posts.
Hari rushed toward Kones.
“What the hell just happened?” demanded Hari.
A marine MP blocked him.
Kones was sitting silently, collecting himself. He reached forward and shut his laptop.
“Most of the warheads were programmed to detonate at fixed coordinates. That was what blew out your satellites.”
“But they missed.”
Kones nodded. “Yes. But the seventeen penetrators were smart-bombs. Our own,” said Kones with a touch of pride. “They will have tracked the target. Of that you can be sure.”
Mat rose unsteadily to his feet.
“How can we track the debris field now?” yelled Hari, his voice breaking as he pushed against the MP. “The NASA satellites are gone. That thing was due to impact in less than four hours.”
“You and your whole team are to relocate with us,” said Kones.
“Where?” demanded Mat. “These people have families. They might all be dead in a few hours. They deserve their own freedom, Kones.”
Kones merely returned Mat’s gaze. “You will all be moved to a secure location. As for your families, they will be taken care of.”
Mat stepped back, and collided with the bulky MP behind him.
God help them.
He reached down and touched the solid shape of the secure cell in his pocket.