AB (The Blake Reynolds Chronicles Book 1)
Read AB (The Blake Reynolds Chronicles Book 1) Online
Authors: Bret Dee Landon
AB
The
Blake Reynolds Chronicles
Bret Dee Landon
Copyright
© 2014 Bret Dee
Landon
All rights reserved. Except as
permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may
be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of
the author.
First Digital Edition: December 2014
Cover Design by Keary Taylor
The characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead,
is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Landon, Bret Dee, 1963-
AB : a novel / by Bret Dee Landon – 1
st
ed.
Contents
Day 3: Captain
John Nellis, USNS Mercy
.
15
Day 10: Lieutenant McBride/Sir
92
Day 12: USNS Mercy/Captain Nellis
.
121
Day 14, 9:00 am: Lord Dameon
.
131
Day 14, 10:00 am: Lord Dameon
.
134
Day 14, 10:15 am: Lord Dameon
.
138
Day 14, 10:20 am: Lord Dameon
.
141
You
never know how far you can go unless you have been forced to go somewhere you
didn’t want to.
-- Major
Blake Reynolds
Dr. Ottah Kun
sipped his morning coffee as he scrolled through his hundreds of daily emails.
He was only slightly paying attention to the screen because his mind kept
wandering to what he was going to present at NASA’s Deep Space Conference in
London next month.
Suddenly, his
cell phone rang. He rolled the chair over to his desk and grabbed the phone from
the top of a stack of papers. “Hello, Dr. Kun speaking,” he spoke in his heavy
Indian accent. Tony Fines, one of his graduate interns working at the Maui,
Hawaii Space Surveillance Site, was on the other end.
“There is a meteor
headed almost directly towards Earth!” Tony blurted out. “It is on a near-direct
path to us!”
Tony continued
to ramble until Ottah interrupted him. “Slow down and start over.”
“Last night I
was sitting at my desk reviewing the previous hour’s tracking data. I noticed
something that hadn’t been there the night before. It was a small meteor, about
a quarter mile wide and two million miles out. Now that by itself wasn’t worth
getting excited about because, as you know, we get hundreds of these every
year. So I watched it for a couple of hours and monitored it so I could run the
numbers and plot the trajectory of the meteor. Doctor, this is where it gets
quite intriguing.
The data shows that the
meteor will come within 500 miles of the Earth in the next twenty-four hours
.”
It only took a
second for what he had just heard to sink in. Dr. Kun’s eyes grew wide, and he
spit out his coffee across the desk. In the history of the Near Earth Asteroid
Tracking (NEAT), they had never recorded anything coming so close to the Earth.
A few times a year, they might track a small asteroid or comet that would come
between the Earth and the moon, but never anything this close.
“Have you
rechecked your data?” Dr. Kun asked.
“I checked it three
times! It comes back the same every time.”
“Send me that
data, now!” Dr. Kun ordered before hanging up the phone.
Ottah’s finger
twitched as it rested above the mouse. His eyes stared at the screen as he
clicked the reload button on his email account. The longer he waited, the more
frequently he clicked until it was continuous. After several minutes, it
finally appeared.
He struggled to
steady his hand as he clicked the download button. The next two hours were
spent analyzing the data and checking the trajectory.
Dr. Kun leaned
back in his chair and placed his hands on his head. “Should I notify my boss at
NASA how close this thing will come to our planet or just let it pass by and
write a paper about its passing?” he muttered to himself. After mulling it over
in his mind for another hour, he decided to call the director of NASA and
inform him of what was coming.
The phone call
with the director was brief, and a meeting was scheduled with the president of
the United States and his chief of staff for the afternoon. They would review the
possible impact the meteor might have.
As the time
approached for the conference call with President Fisher, Ottah began to sweat
and became tenser. He had never spoken with him before and he was afraid that the
president would not be able to understand his English.
When the phone
rang, it startled Ottah. He quickly picked up the phone. “Hello.”
A young woman
on the other end spoke, “I will be placing you on a conference call with the president
and the director of NASA.”
The phone went
silent for a moment. Ottah could feel his throat swell and knew that the words
would be hard to get out.
Once he was
connected, Ottah could tell that he was hearing the middle of a conversation.
“…good, sir. But
unfortunately, this call isn’t for a friendly catch-up. I have with me on the
phone Dr. Ottah Kun. He is in charge of the department in NASA that tracks comets
and asteroid in our inner solar system. What he has to report could inject fear
and panic in the people of this country, if not the entire world. Dr. Kun,
please repeat what you told me earlier today.”
Ottah cleared
his throat, trying to calm his nerves before he spoke. “Well, um, sir … my
English, I, meteor track, close.”
The President interrupted
him. “Dr. Kun, please relax and start from the beginning.”
“Yes sir, thank
you. Early this morning, we were tracking a previously unknown meteor
approaching our planet. This is not unusual; we see several of these a month,
and a few even pass between the Earth and the moon every year. Most meteors
have an elliptical trajectory as they circle the sun. However, this particular meteor
seems to be following a straight trajectory. This is very rare.” Ottah paused,
waiting for the “aha” moment to reach the president.
Ottah could
just imagine in his head the president sitting back in his chair and rolling
his eyes.
“Doctor, this
is very interesting, but tell me why I should care.”
“Sir, this meteor
is quite large, and my data shows it will pass very close to Earth. Depending
on what it is made of and if it has any debris trailing from it, a quarter of
the population on the planet will see the largest meteor shower in the history
of mankind. The meteor shower will even be seen in the daylight!”
Ottah could
hear the squeak of the president’s chair over the phone, as he sat up.
“Does it pose
any threat of damage to our planet?”
“No sir. Not if
it stays on its current course. But it should be a spectacular light show.”
“Doctor, when
is this ‘light show’ supposed to happen?”
“In less than
two days.”
“Thank you, Doctor.
I will schedule a meeting with the National Security Council and the members of
NATO later this evening. I would like you both to be there to present your
findings. I will have planes sent within the hour to fly you here to
Washington. Dr. Kun, please prepare some data for everyone in attendance to
review.”
When President Fisher,
the director and Dr. Kun entered the room, they noticed that all the key
members on the council were in attendance. The vice president, secretary of state,
secretary of defense, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the national security
adviser were all in their assigned seats at the table. There were also two dozen
countries attending remotely.
All three walked
to the head of the table and stood in front of the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen,
less than two hours ago I was informed by the director of NASA and one of their
lead scientists, Dr. Kun, that there is a newly discovered meteor heading directly
towards the close proximity of the Earth.”
He paused for a
moment and evaluated everyone’s expressions to make sure he had their attention.
“Dr. Kun,
please updates us on your latest findings.”
Ottah did not
have much time to prepare a presentation, let alone one for an audience of this
importance. His hair was uncombed, and he still wore the lab coat he had put on
earlier in the day. He rummaged through some papers as he stepped towards the
microphone.
“We have taken
some preliminary measurements, and it appears to be about a quarter-mile wide.
So far, its composition has not yet been determined, so we can’t estimate its
weight. Current estimates have the meteor coming within 500 miles of Earth. But
without knowing its mass, we can’t make precise predictions of when it will
pass by the Earth. We estimate that we have less than forty hours before it
reaches us.”
Ottah stopped
to catch his breath and adjust his glasses. “A copy of our latest data will be
sent to each of you in the next few minutes.” Ottah nervously looked back to
the president and returned to where they were standing.
The president
then stepped forward one more time. “We ask every nation to have their best scientists
help us determine if this meteor is a threat or not. I also highly recommend
that the public should not be informed, other than a simple statement that we
will release in the next few hours. Within the hour, you will each receive all
our current information to help give you a jumpstart on your research.”
When the president
finished, Ottah could see a sense of urgency on the faces of the world leaders
on the screens; they began turning to their aides and whispering things or
picking up the phone and making calls. One by one, the monitors went blank, and
the members on the security council left the room to make plans for their areas
of responsibility.