Lunar Discovery: Let the Space Race Begin Read online

  Lunar

  Discovery

  Salvador

  Mercer

  Dedication

  To the men and women who gave their lives in the quest and search for knowledge. May we never forget.

  Lunar Discovery Copyright © 2015 by Salvador Mercer.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact; [email protected]

  www.salvadormercer.com

  Edited by: Courtney Umphress

  http://courtneyumphress.com/

  Book and Cover design by Christine Savoie aka ‘Cagnes’ c2015

  ASIN: B014IEFS8M

  First Edition: September 2015

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Discovery

  Chapter 2 Executive Decisions

  Chapter 3 China, Russia, US

  Chapter 4 Race

  Chapter 5 Planning

  Chapter 6 Opening Moves

  Chapter 7 NASA

  Chapter 8 First Move

  Chapter 9 Russia

  Chapter 10 Payload

  Chapter 11 Payback

  Chapter 12 Space Station

  Chapter 13 Planning

  Chapter 14 Change of Plans

  Chapter 15 Respites

  Chapter 16 Russian Plans

  Chapter 17 China Strikes First

  Chapter 18 The Russian Strike

  Chapter 19 Regroup

  Chapter 20 Difficult Decisions

  Chapter 21 BlackJack

  Chapter 22 Gambit

  Chapter 23 The Moon

  Chapter 24 Russian Pride

  Chapter 25 Nuclear

  Chapter 26 Microwaves

  Chapter 27 America Returns

  Chapter 28 Lunar Surface

  Chapter 29 Anticipation

  Chapter 30 Contact

  Chapter 31 Atomic Arrival

  Chapter 32 Russian Assist

  Chapter 33 Rescue

  Chapter 34 The Rabbit

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The Neanderthal looked up in time to see the large, black, angular shape entering the earth’s atmosphere, causing the oxygen around it to ignite as it was superheated from its rapid entry. He spoke to his comrades who were hunting the blood trail from the mammoth they had wounded the day before. There was no need to point at the strange object as the sonic boom rolled over them, surprising several enough that they dropped their crude spears and fell to the ground, covering their ears.

  Kark wasn’t one of them. He stood on the edge of the forest’s tundra, feeling the cool permafrost under his feet, looking north toward the rapidly slowing object. He didn’t know what it was, but unlike his brethren, he couldn’t allow himself as leader of his clan to show fear, no matter how bizarre the display.

  The sleek-looking form seemed to stop in midair, floating a few miles north of where they stood over a glassy, ice-laden lake that started where the forest ended. Slowly his companions stood, helping one another and pointing to the mystical object. The sense of God, or any other omnipotent power, was a foreign ideal to these people, and the thought wasn’t even possible in a species that had literally no culture.

  A bright beam of blue light shot out from the tip of the angular shape, illuminating the ground beneath it at the lake’s shore. The object moved again, floating southward toward Kark and his hunters. The blue ray of light pulsated, sweeping the ground from lakeshore to forest’s edge, and then it disappeared momentarily as the object swung about, hovering over the trees.

  Kark heard faint shouts from the forest before seeing the Cro-Magnon hunters running from it toward the base of the hilltop where Kark stood. His rivals had been tracking their prey, and Kark felt anger rising within him. Without warning, the object moved, once again sending out the surreal blue light sweeping the forest behind the Cro-Magnons who were now running directly at Kark’s group, the object following.

  “Prepare, battle!” Kark uttered, his voice strong and powerful but guttural. The sight of their rivals galvanized the Neanderthals into action as they picked up dropped spears and formed a rough line next to their leader, facing the fleeing Magnons. “Hold!” Kark shouted, hefting his spear and preparing to throw it.

  The Magnons ran until the blue ray of light intercepted them. Several suddenly stopped, falling where they were as the rest scattered in all directions, no longer heading toward Kark’s group. “Run,” Kark said, pulling his spear in tighter to his body and sprinting quickly downhill toward the other group and the light. Several smaller black objects dropped from the large angular one and floated just above each Cro-Magnon.

  Kark ran faster until his group was within a hundred yards of the spectacle, caution finally slowing and then stopping his advance. There were no signs of the other Magnons who had kept running either back into the forest or over the far hills near the lake. Kark would not allow fear to show in front of the Magnon, though several of his hunters looked at him apprehensively. Kark prepared his spear in his attack stance, facing the blue light and the immobile Magnons.

  Each levitating black ball had a slender, silver-looking line coming out of it, and they were placed or injected into the spine of each of the prone Cro-Magnon, none of whom moved. Then, just as quickly as they arrived, the smaller floating objects flew back to the angular object, disappearing within its massive shadow, and the blue light ceased its probing sweeps, stopping altogether.

  The angular object turned away and started to rise into the bright blue sky until it disappeared from sight over the horizon many miles distant. Kark’s hunters lifted their spears and shouted their war cries, triumphant in deterring the unknown object from their lands. Then the Cro-Magnon all awoke at the same time, standing and brandishing their own spears in front of them, despite being outnumbered. Kark prepared for battle, but his fate and that of his fellow hunters was sealed. The future of the Neanderthals was over; the rise of the Homo sapiens had begun.

  Chapter 1

  Discovery

  37,000 years later

  NASA Space Command

  Houston, Texas

  In the near future, Day 1

  “Telemetry readings are no longer updating, Chief,” Jack said, peering over the communications console and looking at Mission Leader Richard “Rock” Crandon sitting at the main control console. “We have new signals, multiple types, multiple frequencies, but no more data from the rover or orbiter.”

  “Low gain on our interceptor or an issue with the originating signal?” Rock Crandon asked in return, leaning forward in his black leather chair.

  “Wait one,” Jack shot back, using his old military lingo and concentrating on the computer feed coming into his work station. “Marge, you getting the same readings I am on that Chinese probe?”

  Marjorie Jones was the senior-most analyst in NASA’s black ops room. She had more PhDs than the rest of the technicians combined. “You referring to those intermittent gamma bursts?” Marge replied, not bothering to raise her eyes from her console where she sat just in front of the command desk. Rock liked to keep her close. Any intelligent man would, and for the same reasons.

  “Not just gamma. I’m showing activity on the x-ray band, as we
ll as low gain AM and higher gain FM,” Jack said, standing to look at Marge for confirmation.

  Marge began typing furiously on her keyboard, eyes constantly trained on her main monitor. After a few long seconds, she finally peered over her bank of monitors at Jack. “Confirmed on all frequencies.”

  “What the hell is going on, people?” Rock asked, standing to observe his control room better.

  “It seems the Chinese probe’s telemetry feed has been terminated,” Jack said, “and replaced with unknown radio bursts covering the entire RF band.”

  Rock was confused. “You’re saying the digital data feed has been replaced by radio waves, Jack?”

  “That’s what it looks like from my desk, sir.”

  “Something’s not quite right with that,” Lisa said from one of several consoles in the room. Only about four of the twenty consoles were being manned for the overnight mission as not every NASA staffer had been cleared by the NSA for this operation.

  Marge looked disconcerted at Lisa’s remarks, a fact that didn’t go unobserved by Rock. “Marge, you have something to say?”

  “No,” Marge shot back, returning her focus to her bank of monitors at the scientific desk she manned.

  “Lisa, what isn’t looking right from your perspective?” Rock asked.

  Lisa Wilson was the antithesis of Marge. Tall, young, and with more than her share of good looks, she commanded attention in most any room dominated by the male scientific and engineering types commonly encountered in the old school NASA ranks. Rock chalked up the unusual interaction between the two to some sort of female rivalry, which extended to not only the physical appearance but the intellectual as well.

  “Richard,” Lisa said, refusing as usual to use his nickname, “can you look at my console repeater? Specifically look at the signal strengths that are being recorded.”

  Rock sat back down, turning his attention to his third monitor which repeated what Lisa had displayed on her main console. There were several data bands that showed the radio signal telemetry that NASA’s interceptor was currently receiving. He had to pay close attention to the key metric graph to the far left of each signal line. They no longer read in the lower decibel microvolt range, but instead in the millivolt range, and the lined graphs were in the hundreds, not single digits.

  “Are these decibel readings accurate, Lisa?” Rock asked, looking even more confused at the data he was currently viewing.

  “The main housing array on board the Orca is confirming it, sir,” Lisa said, referring to their ELINT spy trawler near the Chinese coast, just within international waters.

  “That would mean the RF signals currently being broadcast would be in the gigawatt range, would it not?” Rock asked.

  “It would, sir,” Lisa said.

  “Could the Chinese probe produce something that strong? Is it even possible?” Rock ventured, standing again to look across the cavernous floor of his control center.

  “Impossible,” Marge said. “The maximum voltage from the probe, or even the main Chinese orbiter, couldn’t exceed a megawatt, even if the entire orbiter had nothing but energy capacitors on it.

  “Explanation?” Rock asked Marge, looking at her intently while she pulled up data from Lisa’s console. As the second in command of the mission, Marge had access to every work station, including the unmanned ones that automatically gathered and recorded various data from the Chinese lunar activities.

  “None,” Marge said, continuing to look at her data stream from Lisa’s console.

  “Damn it, Marge, guess then,” Rock ordered.

  Marge did look at Rock then, not accustomed to his outburst and definitely not used to him asking her to guess. He knew her well enough to never ask that question. She was a professional, and she didn’t guess. Marge pulled a stray strand of sandy brown hair from in front of her eye, tucking it behind her ear before she answered. “The RF signals are from a secondary source.”

  “What are you inferring?” Jack said now that everyone was standing. Even Tom, the mechanical engineer, stood from his desk, looking at Marge, and Tom never got excited. He was too old for that.

  “I’m not inferring anything, Jack,” Marge answered rather shortly. “These signals are coming from a different source near the probe, but definitely not the probe nor its orbiter.”

  “Lisa, run a diagnostic on the receivers. Make sure they are both functional and accurate. Do it now,” Rock said, looking at each of his analysts in turn.

  “Running diagnostics now. Should be two minutes,” Lisa replied, her focus back on her monitor.

  “Ruskies?” Tom asked, a tone of hesitation in his voice.

  “Oh, please,” Marge exclaimed, impertinence in her voice.

  “What? Why not? They have the equipment for it,” Tom said, piping up now. Tom was definitely old school. He seldom talked, but when he did, it usually was about the glory days of the Apollo program and the lunar landings back in the sixties. He was known to have a thing against them Ruskies, as he always put it.

  “That would be a hell of a way to start a war,” Jack said. “Nothing like the Chinese and Russians duking it out in space.”

  “You going to let this continue?” Marge asked Rock, giving him that look that she got when she was listening to someone less intelligent trying to explain a simple concept and failing miserably at it.

  “Well, unless them spooks didn’t tell us there was Russian equipment at the Chinese landing site, then I’d rule them out,” Rock said.

  “Spooks are them CIA folks. NSA are geeks, Rock,” Tom replied matter-of-factly.

  “I thought we were the geeks,” Jack said.

  “We are—good geeks here and bad geeks there,” Tom said, sitting back down and rubbing his back as he usually did after standing. His hair was pure white, and his face wrinkled except when he smiled. He had to be pushing seventy, if not older. Still, he was brought out of retirement specifically due to the nature of this operation, and the fact that it consisted of foreign operations on the dark side of the moon. He was one of the few living people that had actual experience with lunar operations. Screw the low orbit programs, this was a quarter of a million miles from earth, not a few mere dozen, and Tom knew his stuff well.

  “I’m sure the NSA—” Rock started, but was interrupted by Lisa who stood straight up.

  “Diagnostics confirmed, everything is five by five. The signal strength is rated in the one-point-two-gigawatt range, sir,” Lisa said, smiling as if she had just won an argument.

  “So what the hell is going on up there?” Jack asked, his face revealing an unusually confused look across it.

  Rock never got a chance to respond. He was about to grab the direct phone line that had been installed months earlier when it rang first. It could only be one person. Rock looked at his team noticing that no one was monitoring their consoles anymore. They all had their eyes on him.

  Rock picked up the receiver. “Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Smith.” Rock knew the liaison officer between NASA and the NSA wasn’t really named Mr. Smith, but that was how the man was introduced to Rock’s team.

  “Are you receiving any unusual readings down there?” Smith asked. Rock could hear something of a commotion occurring in the background where Mr. Smith was at in Maryland.

  “Should we be?” Rock responded.

  “I’m serious, Crandon. What do you have?”

  Rock thought about it for a moment and then decided to roll the die. He’d had enough of Mr. Smith’s semi-abusive mannerisms and lack of information sharing. As a professional, he put science in front of politics and felt the government, his government, would do better if they operated the same way. Oh, he understood the need for national security, but he knew way too many things were cloaked under that broad umbrella and hidden from public scrutiny. He knew he was close to retirement and, while most common American taxpayers didn’t know it, most every federal employee was represented by a union including managers and directors, so he had a modicum of protection if n
ecessary.

  “Tell me what’s going on first so we can make sense of the data,” Rock said over the phone.

  It was hard to gauge the man’s reaction from over a thousand miles away, especially when there were no body language clues to inform the speaker how the listener was accepting his words.

  “Now is not the time, Crandon,” Smith said.

  “You heard me, Smith, what’s happening on your end?” Rock asked, louder this time.

  Smith must have been in a hurry as his response was quick and desperate. “They lost both their lander and orbiter. Now what’s going on there?”

  Rock knew the NSA covered HUMINT or human intelligence and they had the linguists to do the job. If he said the Chinese lost their entire mission equipment, then this was being confirmed by HUMINT or actual personnel involved in the lunar operation, not just speculation or a wild hunch.

  “Their telemetry stopped at oh three forty-seven hours. It appears to confirm what you said,” Rock responded.

  “You’re sure it’s a full equipment failure?” Smith asked, his tone rising a bit, perhaps a touch of anxiety displayed within it.

  “No, I said their telemetry ceased. There were no updates to the data stream. We have no way of knowing the status of their equipment,” Rock said, trying hard to keep his tone level. He didn’t like the man putting words in his mouth.

  Smith breathed heavily for a second and then said something muffled to someone else in the room where he was before uncovering the mouthpiece. “All right, then you’re not receiving any electrical signals.”

  Rock looked at his team and was glad they weren’t hearing this conversation. He knew it would frustrate them more than it was himself, and he was getting impatient with the good Mr. Smith. “Not from the Chinese probe or its orbiter. We are, however, receiving RF signals from a secondary source.” Rock knew this was going to get complicated.