Fractured Earth Saga 1: Apocalypse Orphan (2 page)

“Okay, okay, I’ll get someone on it. The astrobiologist we assigned to look into it went on maternity leave three days after you reported it. We only have the one scientist right now, thanks to budget cuts. That’s probably why it fell through the cracks. In the meantime, upload your data to Cap Com.”

“You better hurry. I’ve got a very bad feeling about this,” Wolf muttered, reaching inside the collar of his flight suit and pulling at a leather necklace. It was connected to a small medicine bag that had been passed down through his family for generations. Made from buffalo hide and decorated with a wolf’s head in white beads, it contained his “power items,” including bits of rock, bones, herbs, and claws. He uploaded the data and then gazed pensively at the blinking lights on the computer.

Two hours later, Wolf was still sitting at the computer, reminiscing about how he had become a NASA astronaut. He had been top of his class at the reservation, which was not saying much. He went to college for free on American Indian scholarships and excelled in linguistics. Able to learn languages with ease, he astounded his linguistics professors, who passed him around from one to another like a coveted book. His downfall was engineering and mechanical design. He just couldn’t remember the technical jargon and mathematical formulas; but he managed to squeak by and finish college. During his final year in school, he helped design a lunar rover that won NASA’s “Great Moon Buggy Race” and put him on NASA’s recruitment radar. A few months after graduation, he was approached by an Air Force recruiter and persuaded to join.

Standing six foot five and built like a Greek statue, Wolf was of Native American descent. His skin was a rich, copper color, and his eyes were light hazel. His black hair was long, well past regulation length. Deep dimples and straight white teeth added to his masculinity. Yet, he was unaware of how his good looks affected the opposite sex. Women threw themselves at him, but Wolf remained oblivious, which only added to his naïve charisma.

Wolf piloted jets in every minor skirmish America had during his tour of duty. He was highly decorated, and he had received the Air Force Medal of Honor during his last tour. He was debating whether to continue his military career when a NASA recruiter approached him and asked if he’d ever considered becoming an astronaut. The recruiter’s name was Charlie Richards, and he was very persuasive. Wolf and Charlie became instant friends, so when Charlie offered him the job, Wolf couldn’t refuse. After several years of intensive training, he became one of NASA’s most respected astronauts. He was no rocket scientist—he could handle mechanical problems, but astrophysics and all the other learning just wouldn’t stick. Everyone liked Wolf, and his high moral values, loyalty, personality, good looks, and single-minded dedication to duty made him someone people went out of their way to help.

Charlie came back on the radio, sounding alarmed. “Wolf. This is Cap Com. Do you read?”

“Yes, I read you.” Wolf moved to a computer panel and used one of the many cameras to look in the direction of the mysterious object. “What do you have?”

“You won’t believe this, but a large comet has come out of its heliocentric orbit. It’s an unknown rogue. History does not mention it anywhere.”

Wolf searched his memory but came up blank and asked, “A helia-what orbit?”

“Heliocentric…an orbit around the sun. How the hell did you get out there?” Charlie laughed. “Oh, never mind, I put you there. Almost everything in space is in a heliocentric orbit.”

“So what’s the deal—anything we need to be worried about?”

“We’re running simulations right now. Early predictions on the Torino scale suggest it’s a seven; we’re calculating its mass now. It’s on a hyperbolic trajectory with Earth. It might use us to slingshot back out into space. At least, that is what we’re hoping. This comet’s speed is incredible. We think it’s a longer-period comet that may have originated in the Oort cloud. This one is unique, though, because we’ve never seen anything that moves this fast before. Wolf, we want you to tow the WISE further out into space. Take the shuttle that’s docked to the ISS.”

“That thing’s a piece of shit,” Wolf protested. “It’s been sitting up here for months. Hell, it's so beaten up it can’t even land back on Earth.”

“Yes, but you are not landing back on Earth. We’ve prepped the ship so you can tow the satellite to its new coordinates. It will be a ten-day mission. The satellite can’t take itself where we want it, so it’s up to you,” Charlie said.

“I don’t have a co-pilot. It’s against protocol for me to fly solo that long,” Wolf replied.

“The solo mission has been approved, Wolf. It’s a priority one mission that we have to launch ASAP.”

“All right, send me the coordinates and I’ll be gone in the next few hours,” Wolf agreed reluctantly

“The coordinates have already been fed into the computer, and you’ll leave in the next thirty minutes. This is urgent, Wolf. We’ll let you know as soon as we get the final data. Cap Com out.”

Wolf looked out into space and tried to visualize the comet, wondering where it had been all these years. What incredible wonders had it seen as it drifted on its lonely journey through time and space? He flipped a switch and announced, “All personnel…this is a priority one alert. Report to the mess area immediately.” Wolf turned off the mic and headed off to the kitchen area to update his colleagues on what soon would take precedence in all of their lives.

The ISS crew assembled in the kitchen, grabbing snacks. The researchers on board were all from different backgrounds. Ron White was the most educated and next in command.

“I have news from NASA,” Wolf said. “We’ve found a comet. That is nothing unusual, but this one is coming fast. It’s a rogue from the Oat Cloud.”

“
Oort,
Commander,” Ron White corrected with a faint smile. “It’s the Oort Cloud, not the oat cloud. How did you get up here?”

“Whatever. Oat, Oort … anyway, it’s a seven on the Totino scale. It could hit the earth.”

Ron laughed. “Torino scale, not Totino scale. Wow! My friend, did you pay any attention in school?”

Wolf ignored him and continued. “NASA is moving the Hubble into position, and some other telescopes and satellites are studying it. Until we get more info, I want all your efforts focused on this comet. All research on your pet projects is to stop, and the new word of the day will be
trajectory
. Even though NASA is turning the Hubble and using the other satellites, I want any additional information you can gather. I’m taking the Endeavour out to reposition the WISE satellite. I’ll be gone for ten days. Ron will be in charge here.”

“Thanks, just what I’ve always wanted—a command of my own! Come on, Captain America, I’ll help you suit up.”

The crew drifted out of the mess area as Wolf and Ron walked to the ISS airlock. Wolf stopped to remove a flight suit from a locker and began suiting up. Ron checked the auxiliary breathing apparatus and seams of the suit as Wolf donned the bulky outfit.

“These suits are as old as that shuttle out there, and I don’t like that you’re being allowed to take the shuttle out alone for an extended mission,” Ron said with a note of concern. “No way NASA should send you out in that antiquated heap without a co-pilot. It barely made it up here.”

“I know. They’ve authorized me to fly solo for a priority one mission. NASA thinks this thing is bad news, and I’ve got a very bad feeling about it myself.”

Ron helped Wolf with his boots, fastened the suit, and then helped him stand up, pushing him towards the airlock. He shut the door after Wolf and walked into the small tunnel connecting to the shuttle's interior. Pressing the speaker button, he said, “See ya soon, Wolf. Be careful out there.”

Wolf boarded the shuttle. It was prepped and ready to go. NASA wasn’t playing when they said to leave immediately. The sense of urgency gave Wolf an uneasy feeling. He eased into the pilot’s seat, detached the locking clamps, and fired the port retrorockets to ease the craft away from the space station. Patching into the coordinates for the WISE, he headed out to the satellite.

An hour before he reached the WISE, he prepped the arm and reviewed the repositioning assignment to place the satellite in the projected path of the comet. When he spotted the satellite in the shuttle viewport, he radioed, “Endeavour to Cap Com. I am coming up on the WISE.”

“Roger, Endeavour, we have shut down the WISE. You should be able to grab it with the robotic arm.”

“Copy, Cap Com. I will be within range in sixty seconds…”

Wolf left the flight deck after executing the rendezvous and went to the payload bay. Once there, he put on his helmet and opened the bay doors. Using the remote arm, he grabbed the WISE and pulled it into the ship. As the bay doors closed and air pressure normalized, he removed his helmet and radioed, “WISE is on board. I am programming the new coordinates for redeployment.”

“Roger that, Wolf. Get it into position and then head back.”

“Endeavour out.”

Wolf returned to the flight deck and, after verifying the coordinates, he fired the orbital maneuvering engines and headed towards the comet. He wished he could hold his medicine bag. Was it his imagination or were his ancestors crying out in fear? He used the shuttle’s remote telescope to look out towards the comet. There it was. He could see the pinpoint in the heavens like a harbinger of doom and thought,
I don’t like this ship, I don’t like this assignment, and I’ve got a terrible feeling about this.

Chapter 2

July 28, 2025

I
n the early twenty-first century, the earth had two primary Near Earth Object Detection agencies: NASA’s Sentry program and the NEODyS/CLOMON at the University of Pisa. In 2025, these were still the main organizations that tracked and mapped the skies. In the years since they were set up, neither had ever reported a new object that posed imminent danger to Earth, so budget cuts were inevitable. Massive layoffs had been announced three years ago, and world leaders were now pointing fingers at one another, blaming these cutbacks for the anomaly slipping into the solar system undetected. Something just outside of the Kuiper belt had caught the world off-guard, and despite state-of-the-art monitoring systems, satellites, and robotic artificial intelligence, it had gotten through.

It had been six months since Commander Orlando Iron Wolf discovered the anomaly. Based on scientific data gleaned from research as well as satellites and telescopes trained on the object, it was estimated to be the size of Rhea, one of Saturn’s moons, and it was racing towards Earth with incredible speed. NASA had put Charlie Richards in charge of research into the anomaly because of his credentials in science, management, and the political arena. Everyone knew him, and everyone respected him. He was given the best of every department and division that NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese National Space Agency, and several others could offer.

When Charlie ran the numbers, he realized that the distances involved were staggering. The fastest ships available were still no faster than the New Horizons spacecraft that had visited Pluto in 2015. New rocket technologies had not panned out as the world’s space agencies had hoped. Using 2015 technology, it would take eleven years to travel the 2.66 billion miles to Pluto. Although some new technologies showed promise, Earth had nothing that could travel the distance to get a close look at the anomaly. Whatever was out there was just behind Pluto and moving at incredible speed towards the inner solar system. After months of study, two of the world’s top astrophysicists had reached the same conclusion—it would take eleven years to reach Pluto and observe the object if it were stationary; but the anomaly was streaking toward earth at incredible speed, reducing that distance to earth by the second. Its speed would bring it near Earth in approximately two years, and it would pass close to Mars on the way. If a probe was launched immediately, it would take two hundred and eighty-nine days to even reach a Mars orbit, and if it did manage to intersect with the anomaly, it would leave the earth’s governments less than a year to prepare. The astrophysicists based their conclusions on gravitational lensing, direct imaging, radial velocity, and the simple transit method of briefly blocking some of the starlight behind the object.

The WISE that had been repositioned six months ago by Wolf had malfunctioned, and it was sending only blurry, low-resolution pictures. But there was no mistaking in the images that the pinhole had grown to a large pockmark on the VY Canis Majoris nebula cloud. The photos weren’t sharp enough to reveal the shape or size of the anomaly. The Hubble might have given useful details about its shape and size, but a meteor shower had damaged its mirrors on its redeployment mission. NASA concluded it would be easier to fix the Hubble than the WISE, but it still took time to manufacture the mirrors and more time to get them into space. A crew had just completed the task of replacing the massive mirrors a day earlier, and everyone at Mission Control held their collective breath waiting for the first images to arrive from the Hubble after it was brought back online. The first photo it sent revealed the bad news—the anomaly was a comet. Within 24 hours, NASA had run the numbers, and preliminary data indicated it was the largest comet ever recorded. It was named Nomad, and the new mission was dubbed Nomad One. As the weeks went by and new data poured in from the Hubble and other resources, trajectory simulations confirmed Nomad would pass close to Earth—so close it could do some damage, whether it hit or not. Its relentless approach scattered meteors and small asteroids throughout the solar system. Spectacular meteor showers were reported on Earth, and several large meteor strikes were recorded on Jupiter. The gas giant’s massive gravitational fields sucked them in, sparing the inner planets.