Red Hope: An Adventure Thriller - Book 1

by John Dreese

  When the Big Turtle was done pressurizing, Adam wandered toward the return ship and investigated. He opened the door and walked in, closing the door behind him to keep in some of the heat. The water was still liquid. He breathed a sigh of relief. He cranked up the heaters on the entire complex to prevent any more disasters.

  Yeva took an inventory of their food supplies. The food was fine, but half of their water tanks had exploded from the cold.

  Yeva stood up after reviewing the water situation and said, “Looks like our departure deadline has been moved up quite a bit.”

  After a few minutes, they took off their helmets.

  Yeva admitted, “It’s still pretty cold, but we are so lucky that our oxygen generators weren’t damaged. Good God that was close. I hate to think what else is broken that we don’t know about yet.”

  She noticed that the communication station light was blinking again. There was a message waiting for them. Yeva pushed the Play button.

  “Guys, this is Chris Tankovitch again. Hello? Look, we need you to talk to us. I realize things are crazy up there with Keller gone, but we’ve got a real public relations nightmare happening down here. One of our heroes is dead, and the rest of you guys are AWOL. You need to contact us. Molly, check your medical sensors. Something is wrong with them. Try to reset them. Adam, I need you to contact us in private, okay? We have some quick questions to ask you.”

  Adam could imagine what their questions would be about. Talking to Mission Control was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

  The Sun set and gray redness draped across the landscape. The salmon-colored sky had evolved into the violet and dark tones of the evening. The two astronauts decided they would sleep through the quickly oncoming night and send Mission Control the terrible news about Molly in the morning. Adam would get one more night of sleep while still a hero to his family.

  There would be plenty of time to become a villain.

  They started the streaming music service and decided on something quiet and peaceful. After the ten minute wait for the data to start streaming from Earth, calming Mozart melodies began pouring from the speakers.

  Adam climbed into bed and heard a crinkle sound beneath his pillow. He reached under it and found a piece of paper with a note signed by Molly. It said, “I watched your helmet video.”

  Chapter 24

  International Space Station

  Orbiting Earth

  Life onboard the International Space Station slowed down once the Mars astronauts were gone. The media stopped paying attention to them as soon as the astronauts and their Little Turtle launched toward the Red Planet.

  Frankly, there wasn’t much left for the Mars support crew to do on the Space Station. In between playing poker with magnetic cards on a metal table, they tended to the occasional maintenance issues on the Storage Wart. It still hung from the ISS like some terrible growth. Every morning they had to make sure the large communication antennas were functioning properly. Without those, the crew on Mars would have a hard time communicating with Mission Control.

  News of Keller’s death made it to the ISS. A somber mood settled over the crew. Mission Control told them to continue doing their daily system checkups. In just one more week, a fresh crew of astronauts would arrive to relieve the current batch.

  The two Storage Wart maintenance positions were manned by Larry and James, two astronauts from Boston and Mississippi, respectively. The Russian crewmembers on the Space Station had an ongoing contest regarding which American was harder to understand. Mississippi usually won.

  The Storage Wart garnered very little attention from Mission Control. The daily routine consisted of going over endless checklists and turning off most of the power-hungry computers, except for the communications relay to Mars.

  Just after midnight, an alarm turned on. James opened his groggy eyes and hustled over to the status display readout. In red letters, it stated: RELAY #23 - OUTER STORAGE BOX-OVERVOLTAGE. The alarm was a series of loud beeps that were meant to be annoying. It worked. It woke Larry up too.

  “What’s going on?” asked Larry.

  “You know that special auxiliary compartment on the outside of the Storage Wart? It looks like a relay in there may have shorted out. Unfortunately, we don’t have a camera view in that box. We might have to get suited up.”

  They stared at each other wondering who would do the spacewalk; like two brothers staring at each other to determine who had to clean up the dog poop in the yard.

  Larry had more experience with spacewalks, so he suited up and floated into the utility module where the airlock was. James heard a loud clunk which meant Larry had sealed himself into the airlock compartment.

  “Okay, I’m in the airlock, it’s evacuated. I’ll be at the special auxiliary compartment in a minute,” said Larry. He opened the door and wandered outside the womblike protection of the Space Station.

  James moved over to the porthole to get a better look at his crewmate outside. Larry clambered his way from the airlock exit over to the Storage Wart. James saw Larry’s silhouette on the outside of the Space Station. He looked like a bug crawling on a milk jug. As the Sun peaked over the horizon of the Earth, Larry lit up as bright as a flare. This sunrise surprise happens every 90 minutes on the ISS.

  Larry floated out to the far end of the Storage Wart where the large rectangular box was located - the box specially requested by the president himself. Larry was now out of view of James. The compartment was still closed, but a little bit of smoke wafted out. Larry was excited; nobody knew what type of equipment was installed in this compartment. He attached his safety tether to a metal anchor loop and twisted the big toggle-turn fasteners that kept the doors closed on the compartment.

  The doors hinged open. They flexed back and forth as thin metal doors do. Larry’s heart pounded as the blinding sunlight illuminated eight thermonuclear B61 bombs loaded inside the compartment. They were mounted on some type of spring-loaded ejection racks. Larry remembered seeing this type of bomb for the first time when he worked in the Air Force as a crew member on bomber aircraft. These particular bombs, however, were modified from what he remembered: each one had a rocket motor attached to it along with a guidance system. The smoke came from a small white control box. It had cables running to all eight of the bomb ejectors. They were sparking.

  Unbeknownst to the Space Station crew, the president and the Defense Department thought this orbiting missile launch platform might come in handy someday if an aggressor tried to put America in a military bind. It would reduce the time necessary to strike first, depending on where the International Space Station was at the time.

  “Hey, do you see the problem? Is it a blown fuse?” James asked over the headset.

  “Oh, I see the problem, alright,” answered Larry in a shrill tone.

  “What do you mean? What is it?”

  “I think somebody in the Pentagon thought the Storage Wart would make a good permanent space-borne launch platform for nukes. There’s enough destructive firepower here to start a new Hell.”

  James was confused. He pushed the microphone button and asked, “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “What I’m saying is… this auxiliary compartment on the Storage Wart is filled with rocket powered bombs. B61’s I think. The big boom mushroom cloud kind. It looks like the ejector controller is sparking. Some kind of short circuit for sure. The wires all look chaffed; the protective insulation is scraped off. The bumpy ride up here must’ve ruined these control wires. Man, they built these modules too quickly.”

  “Sparking? Bombs? I think we should contact Mission Control.”

  Larry, now even more tense, said, “I don’t think there is a checklist for this problem.”

  His heart rate skyrocketed; his pulse pounded in his neck . He saw the smoke coming from the corner of the white ejector control box. Larry carefully grabbed onto one of the bomb fins for leverage. He reached up into the tight compartment trying to feel with his thick-gl
oved fingers. He managed to move a large spring loaded retainer clip from the cover of the white box hoping to disconnect the power cable.

  The control box exploded in a shower of sparks. All of the bomb ejectors fired off, sending a sharp mechanical jolt through the entire Space Station. Eight B61 thermonuclear bombs flew out of the compartment like a flock of doves thrown from a cage. The arming panels on each bomb lit up and came to life. The violent ejection ripped the glove from Larry’s suit. The decompression happened so fast he didn’t have time to scream out in pain. His radio crackled for a few seconds.

  “Larry! Larry! What happened?” cried James.

  There was no response.

  James planted his face to the observation window, trying to see what was happening. In the distance, Larry floated motionless at the end of the tether. Just past the body was a cluster of bombs sinking down toward Earth silently and slowly. James screamed for the other astronauts to come help. When they finally arrived, they couldn’t get James to calm down enough to tell them what happened.

  The bombs floated down for a while until their rocket engines ignited. They took off in large curved trajectories toward targets in Russia, the default targets chosen long ago by some Pentagon committee that thought they’d never actually be used.

  The other Space Station crew members floated to the nearest porthole windows to see what was happening. James stared helplessly out the window mouthing the words, “No, no, no!”

  Large flashes appeared on the ground in Russia, each one growing its own mushroom cloud. James managed to engage the voice communication channel with Mission Control, yelling “Tell the Russians not to retaliate! It was an accident!” Unfortunately, his voice was so loud that it squelched out any useful communication.

  Suddenly, James went silent. He saw a swarm of retaliatory missiles launch from rural locations in Siberia, heading over the North Pole towards America. Each astronaut on the Space Station still had his face planted in one of the available portholes, with a view down to Earth. Minutes passed. More mushroom-cloud plumes appeared on the blue and white planet below.

  A solid buzz alarm turned on. Everybody’s ears popped like a high-altitude airplane ride. The Space Station was losing air pressure. The jolt from the bomb ejectors firing off had caused a leak between the Storage Wart and the rest of the station. The Wart was now killing its host. The International Space Station was now losing pressure quickly, and electrical problems were plaguing their rescue attempts. The crew couldn’t seal off the other compartments fast enough.

  The captain, realizing that the station was doomed, got on the intercom and gave the signal, “Abandon ship. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.”

  The astronauts put on their pressure suits as fast as they could. They made their way to the emergency escape vehicles and belted in. The doors closed and they started the release sequence.

  The escape vehicles separated with a clunk. They floated quietly down toward Earth where visible mushroom clouds pockmarked the surface like big, deadly flowers. The crew looked out the big window in the roof of the vehicle toward the Space Station. The Storage Wart was shaking back and forth. It started to rotate. Finally, it ripped away from its mount completely. The International Space Station seemed to be flinging off an irritating pest.

  Chapter 25

  Big Turtle Housing Unit

  Mars Landing Site

  The streaming music stopped playing over the speakers on Big Turtle. That was the first sign that something was wrong. Alarms blared, one by one, ending in a crescendo of ear-splitting chaos.

  Adam ran around clearing individual alarms, but the worry on his face grew more pronounced with each one. The ship was losing contact with Mission Control back home. The computer screen that normally listed the names of sent and received files instead displayed a complaint: “Lost server connection.” On Earth, that same error would just be annoying. On Mars, that error was unsettling.

  Adam engaged the emergency backup communications channel. He heard nothing but pure silence. His stomach sank. The video screens were filled with error messages. The laptops were disconnected from the servers in Houston. No information was coming in.

  The alarms woke Yeva up and she stumbled in.

  “We’re completely cut off,” Adam complained.

  “What is going on?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “I don’t know. We’ve lost all communication with Mission Control. We’ve got power, just no signal. No video. No audio. No data. Nothing.”

  The two humans were completely isolated on a desolate planet, and they didn’t know why.

  “Have you tried the deep-space emergency frequencies?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Yes, I’ve tried everything. Nothing’s come back. We’re just… cut off from Earth,” said Adam.

  He peered at Yeva, one eyebrow raised.

  “What else could it be?” inquired Yeva.

  Adam jogged over to the window and craned his neck upward, trying to see the long-range antenna tower sticking up out of the top of the Little Turtle. It was the main communication antenna between the two planets. If it had fallen over, that was something he could potentially fix. His heart sank.

  Looks perfectly fine, he thought.

  Adam ran back over to the communications station to check the data connection between Little Turtle’s antenna and the orbiting communications relay satellite.

  Looks perfectly fine, too, he thought.

  Adam frowned with concerned helplessness.

  “Everything on our end looks okay. The trouble must be on their side. Maybe the Space Station lost power? I guess we’ll just have to wait until they get it fixed.”

  Adam sat down in the chair and eased back, letting his arms hang dejectedly. “I don’t like this at all. Mission Control better get things fixed, or we’re in big trouble.”

  He picked up the microphone and said, “NASA, this is Big Turtle. We are transmitting into the blind here. We are not receiving any signals from you guys.”

  Adam glanced at Yeva for a moment and added, “However, we will continue on with our mission duties. Just send us a message as soon as you can. We have all channels open, even the deep-space emergency frequencies.”

  Adam turned off the microphone and said to Yeva, “They’ll get that in five minutes and, hopefully, we’ll get a reply back in ten.”

  His message was converted into electro-magnetic waves and transmitted from the tall long-range antenna protruding from the roof of the Little Turtle. Those signals beamed to the communications relay satellite orbiting Mars. It amplified the signals and retransmitted them toward Earth. Those signals travelled through space at the speed of light. They reached the abandoned and unpowered International Space Station five minutes later.

  Inside the Big Turtle, anxiety levels were climbing. The pure silence fueled the tension.

  “This mission is cursed,” complained Yeva.

  “I hope…” he trailed off. “I’m sure this is just a technical glitch. Look, the loss of Keller and Molly has been horrible, I know. They knew the risks, but… it is horrible. What do you think we should do?”

  “I suppose all we can do is wait. The good news is we’ve completed many of the main mission goals already. The final planned task for us was to start the terraforming process with the greenhouse devices. We’re supposed to do that right before leaving, but given the current circumstances, we may need to accelerate the schedule.”

  Adam stretched his arms up above his head to think.

  “Well, let’s wait it out and see if we can re-establish contact. We still have several days of food and water here in the Big Turtle. Then, maybe we’ll launch the greenhouse devices. Let’s take this one hour at a time.”

  The greenhouse devices were bombs. They were the culmination of decades worth of research; terraforming experiments planned for Mars. They were quite simple. At their core, they were small helicopter drones that carried tiny Plutonium-based atomic bombs. They differed from tradi
tional nukes in that the warhead was designed to use up all of the Plutonium during the detonation. It would explode like a massive atomic bomb, but with a minimum amount of radioactive fallout.

  The explosions would send debris, organic matter (hopefully), water, and dust into the atmosphere, causing an accelerated greenhouse effect. With enough of these devices, they would eventually recreate a habitable atmosphere like that of Earth. It would be complete with rain and a relatively constant temperature, albeit still cold. However, predictions estimated the full effect to take many months, if not years, to stabilize. This was all in theory of course.

  Everything works in theory.

  Adam spent the next two days trying to make contact with NASA, but to no avail. For a brief moment toward the end of the second day, he heard breaks in the static followed by some unintelligible yelling, but that quickly stopped. That was the last signal he ever received.

  Just after breakfast the following morning, Adam and Yeva decided it was time to execute the greenhouse device launches.

  They put on their pressure suits and wandered out through the airlock. In the utility storage space on the side of Big Turtle, they found a dozen of the surprisingly small greenhouse devices. Each one was about the size of a shoebox and weighed about ten pounds on Earth – just under four pounds on Mars.

  The two astronauts carried them to a designated launch spot approximately 100 feet away from Big Turtle. This distance would minimize the effect of the wind eddies swirling from the edges of the spacecraft. After setting each one down, they switched on the power button and stood back.

  The top split open like a clamshell and a block sprang up about six inches. Beneath it was a round metal shaft. From that block, another block sprang up another six inches. Both of these resulting blocks unfolded into their own massive 10 foot wide rotor blades. Having these stacked counter-rotating blades eliminated any need for a complicated tail rotor system; the kind found on traditional helicopters. In the very thin Mars atmosphere, large rotor blades were not only necessary, but they also had to spin at incredibly high speeds to generate enough lift to fly.