Red Hope (17 page)

Life onboard the International Space Station slowed down once the Mars
astronauts were gone. The media attention had left the Space Station just 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 on the Storage
Wart. It still hung off of 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 there and 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 often won.

The Storage Wart garnered very little attention from
Mission Control so 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 because it woke up Larry
too. He looked at James and asked, “What’s going on?”

“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. Um, 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 disappeared down 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 and it’s evacuated. I’ll be at
the special auxiliary compartment in a minute,” said Larry as he 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. He looked like an ant crawling on a big tree branch. James saw Larry’s
silhouette on the outside of the Space Station. As the sun peaked over the
horizon of the Earth, Larry lit up like noon in Texas. 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 was wafting out. Larry was excited
because nobody knew what type of equipment was installed in this compartment. He
attached his safety tether to a metal anchor loop and then twisted the big toggle-turn
fasteners that kept the doors closed on the compartment.

The doors hinged open and flexed back and forth as
thin metal doors do. Larry’s heart pounded as the blinding sunlight illuminated
the eight thermonuclear B61 bombs loaded into the compartment. They were
mounted on some type of ejection racks. It was the same kind Larry had seen
when he worked in the Air Force as a crew member on a bomber airplane. These
bombs were modified from what he remembered; each one had a rocket motor attached
to it along with a guidance system. The smoke that he saw came from a small white
control box. It had cables running to all eight of the ejectors.

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

“I see the problem all right,” Larry answered in the
calmest tone he could find.

“What do you mean? What do you see?”

“I think somebody in the Pentagon thought the Storage
Wart would make a good permanent spaceborne launch platform for nukes. There's enough
destructive firepower here to start a new hell.”

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

Larry said, “This auxiliary compartment on the Storage
Wart is filled with
bombs
. B61’s I think. The
big boom
kind. It
looks like the ejector controller is sparking. Some kind of short circuit for
sure. Maybe the wires got chaffed on the bumpy ride up here? They built these
modules too quickly.”

“Sparking? Bombs? Um, let me contact Mission Control.”

Larry smirked and said, “I don’t think there is a
checklist for this problem.”

His heart rate skyrocketed. He saw the smoke coming
from the corner of the white ejector control box. Larry carefully grabbed onto
one of the bomb bodies for leverage and reached up into the tight compartment
trying to feel with his thick-gloved fingers. He managed to move a large spring
loaded retainer clip from the cover of the white box.

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 leaped out of the compartment with
their arming panels lighting up and coming to life. The violent ejection ripped
the glove off of Larry’s suit and the decompression happened so fast that he
didn’t have time to scream out in pain. His radio crackled for a few seconds
as James asked him what was happening. There was no response.

James had his face planted to the observation window
trying to see what was happening. He saw Larry’s body floating at the end of
the tether. Just past his crewmate’s body was a cluster of bombs sinking down
toward Earth silently and slowly. He was screaming at the other astronauts to
come help, but they couldn’t get James to calm down enough to tell them what
had happened.

The bombs floated down for a while until their rocket
engines lit and they took off in large curved trajectories toward targets in
Russia. Chaos was happening behind James as he stared helplessly out the portal
window mouthing the words, “No, no, no!”

Large flashes appeared on the ground in Russia, each one growing
its own mushroom cloud. James screamed over the radio to Mission Control, "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 dozen retaliatory
missiles launch from rural locations in Siberia and head over the North Pole
towards America. Each astronaut on the Space Station had his face planted in
one of the available portholes with a view down to Earth. Minutes passed.
Plumes appeared on the blue and white planet below them.

A solid buzz alarm turned on. The space station was
losing pressure. The jolt caused by the ejectors going off had caused a leak
between the Storage Wart and the rest of the station. The Wart was now killing
its host. It was losing pressure quickly and electrical problems were plaguing
their rescue attempts. The crew couldn’t seal off the other compartments fast
enough.

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

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

With a clunk, the module separated. They floated
quietly down toward Earth where visible mushroom clouds pockmarked
the surface like big deadly flowers. As they looked through the porthole window
back at the Space Station, they saw the Storage Wart shaking and then ripping
from the International Space Station. It was as if the Space Station had flung
off an irritating parasite.

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

Adam ran around clearing them all, but the worry shown
on his face became more pronounced with each one. They were slowly losing
contact with Mission Control back home. After engaging the last backup
communications switch, he heard nothing but pure silence. The kind that doesn’t
end well. The video screens went blank. The laptops were disconnected from the
servers in Houston.

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

The racket woke Yeva up and she came stumbling in.

“What is going on?” she asked while 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 data. Nothing”

These two humans were all alone on a desolate planet
and they didn’t know why. 

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

Adam nodded.

“Yes, I’ve tried them all. Nothing has come back so
far. We’re cut off from Earth,” said Adam.

He looked up at Yeva with a worried look on his face.

“We’ll just have to wait, I guess.”

Adam jogged over to the window and craned his neck
upward to see the long-range antenna tower sticking up out of the top of the
Little Turtle. It was their main communications antenna. During the long trip
between the two planets, it was their only means of communication and had to
always point toward the Earth. If he looked up now and saw that it had fallen
over, then that was something he could potentially fix. His heart sank when he
saw that it looked perfectly fine.

He ran back over to the communications station to
check the data connection between Little Turtle’s antenna and orbiting
communications relay satellite. That link was working fine too.

Adam frowned with intense worry.

“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.”

He sat back in his chair. “I don’t like this at all.
Mission Control better get things fixed or we’re in big trouble.”

Adam picked up the microphone and said, “NASA, we are
transmitting into the blind here. We are not receiving any signals from you
guys.”

He looked at Yeva for a moment and then added, “However,
we will continue on with our mission. 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-distance antenna protruding from the roof of
the Little Turtle. Those signals were 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. No signal would be sent back to Mars.

The astronauts both sat down. Their anxiety levels
were climbing. The pure silence didn’t help.

“This mission is
cursed
,” complained Yeva.

“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
yes, I understand. It is horrible. What do you think we should do?”

Yeva looked down to think and then said, “Well, the
next stage of the mission was to start the terraforming with the green bombs.
However, I don’t know if we should risk that or just pack it up to return
home.”

Adam stretched his arms up above his head to think.

“Well, let’s get something to eat first; we still have
a few days of food and water here in the Big Turtle that wasn’t destroyed when
the airlock was left open. Then, maybe we’ll launch the green bombs. Let’s take
this one hour at a time.”

The green bombs were the culmination of twenty years of
research in terraforming experiments planned for Mars. They were quite simple.
At their core, they were small helicopter drones that carried tiny Plutonium
bombs. They differed from traditional 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), dust, and soot into the atmosphere causing an accelerated
greenhouse effect. With enough of these devices, they would eventually recreate
a habitable atmosphere like on Earth. It would be complete with rain and a relatively
constant temperature, albeit still cold. However, it would take several years
for this effect to stabilize. This was all in theory of course. Everything
works in theory.

They finished their meal. Adam spent the next hour trying
to make contact with NASA to no avail. For a brief moment he did hear some
static followed by some unintelligible yelling, but that quickly stopped. He
dropped the microphone in frustration.

Adam and Yeva put on their pressure suits and wandered
out through the airlock. In the utility storage cabinet they found a dozen of
the surprisingly small green bombs. Each one was about the size of a shoebox
and weighed about ten pounds.

Adam and Yeva 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 metal shaft. From that top block, another
block sprang up yet another six inches. Both of these resulting blocks then
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
like traditional helicopters. In the very thin Mars atmosphere, large rotor
blades were not only necessary, but they also had to spin at incredible speeds
to generate enough lift to fly.

Adam looked out upon the flock of Plutonium-carrying
drone helicopters. Several of the rotors were already slowly spinning thanks to
the natural winds on Mars.

“This is quite a sight,” said Adam.

With the drone units now powered up, the two
astronauts walked back into Big Turtle and powered on the drone flight control
computer. It was specifically designed to handle a swarm of drone aircraft. It
kept track of their positions and prevented them from smashing into each other.
According to the user manual, this procedure was called
deconfliction
.
Once that potential danger was gone, this computer told each aircraft where to
go and detonate.

Yeva sat down in front of the control computer and set
about engaging the system. Each launch was a performance. The counter-rotating
blades were terrifying to watch as they spun up to speed. They looked like the
world’s most dangerous lawnmowers.

The rotor blades pushed enough air down to swirl up an
enormous dust cloud. Dust devils began forming all around the launch area. One
by one, the drones lifted up and flew away disappearing over the horizon. Only
one detonated within visual sight, but even then it must’ve been fifty miles
away. The red mushroom clouds rose up and began wafting through the atmosphere
immediately. It was reminiscent of the smoke trails rising up high from a
forest fire. 

After the last drone was done, Yeva breathed a sigh of
relief. She looked over at Adam with a tired frown.

“Well, that marks the official end of our major
tasks.”

Adam was sitting at the main communications computer
trying to contact Mission Control again. Still no luck. As night fell, they
each lay down in their bunks and went to sleep with the hope that communication
would be established the next morning.