Salvador Mercer - Lunar Discovery

Jack looked at his crew. “Doing well. A bit of nervousness as most my crew are used to handling data from robotic missions. Nothing with a life on the line, but they’ll settle down. It’s a three day flight to the moon, so that will give them some time to settle in and adjust. How you and Marge doing with the big eye of Sauron looking over you?”

Rock resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. He considered it a sign of weakness and would display, in his opinion at least, a lack of professionalism on his part if he was more concerned with the observers and not the mission. “We’re making do. Not an ideal set-up, but it could be worse. Just make sure we don’t miss anything once we get the ball. I don’t feel particularly fond of walking knee-deep into it with the prez watching.”

“You got it, boss. We’ll keep things tight on this side.”

“I know you will. Thanks for the thought,” Rock said, flipping his com channel to mute and dialing up the tower frequency from Canaveral.

“We’re T-minus sixty now,” Marge said over the intercom.

“Damn chinks, we shoulda kept a nuke for them on top,” Tom muttered into the mike.

Rock flipped his com over to private and hit Marge’s push to talk on the private intercom. “Did Tom just say what I thought he said?”

Marge never bothered to look back. “Oh yeah. Look at the newsfeed in the lower right corner and you’ll know why.”

Rock looked at the bottom of his main screen and realized he didn’t have the news screen feeding into one of his picture-in-pictures. He looked at one of the many side screens in front of him and saw the CNN newsfeed. It looked like video of the Chinese-manned space flight that was almost to the moon. He could see the red flag, emblem, and uniformed military spokesperson making some sort of statement. The speech was closed-captioned as they had the volume muted on all sub screens except the main tower one.

“He’s watching the news?” Rock asked.

“What else would he be doing? His section won’t have much to do till they reach orbit,” Marge said, a slight nod in Tom’s direction.

Despite the bigoted remark, no one seemed to notice, didn’t care, or were simply used to Tom’s antics. “T-minus twenty seconds,” came the call.

“Lisa, are you seeing the pressure in the second stage?” Rock heard Marge asking Lisa over the mission intercom which was a separate frequency than the tower. The launch frequency was the one that everyone was listening to, so Rock’s team was still speaking privately to a certain degree, if one could call two dozen participants private.

“Just now seeing it. It looks marginal at best. You want to notify the tower?” Lisa responded.

“Watch the gauge while I dial them up,” Marge started to say, and then Rock heard Lisa cut in.

“Oh shit! We’re losing second stage compression,” Lisa exclaimed, her words frantic.

“Abort, abort, abort!” Marge started to call over the tower frequency, but the tower was on top of the issue and the two spoke over one another.

“T-minus eight, seven.” Then a pause as the tower aborted the countdown. “Launch aborted. Status stand down at T-minus six,” came the monotonous female voice.

Rock watched the screen as suddenly a large plume of white gas started to vent from the gasket seals between the first stage and second stage of the immense Saturn V . The walkway bridge was frantically being pushed into position to evacuate the astronauts. A large amount of liquid hydrogen suddenly started to gush out as the leak became worse, spraying the tarmac and coating the entire lower side of the rocket.

Technicians secured the bridgeway and then assisted the astronauts from their seats as they headed toward the express lift at the rear of the launch tower. Rock could see everyone struggling to move quickly as Julie and Craig were wearing suits with extra shielding that weighed nearly twice the current streamlined ones, and the technicians all had fire-resistant suits that covered them from head to toe.

Finally the crew and support staff left the tower in a low floor mini bus, racing out of site as the constant drone of the tower announcer spoke over the main public address system. Rock noticed a nod from Jack, and finally Rock broke with protocol and looked over his shoulder just in time to see the president leave with her staff. It appeared the U.S. would not make it to the moon anytime soon. Rock leaned forward and put his head in his hands and closed his eyes.

Gordust Space Station

Low Earth Orbit

In the near future, Day 44

Yuri checked his straps for a third time, pulling hard on each one and making sure the buckles would hold. The G-forces for the slingshot maneuver had been increased from five to eight. The pressure suits would help, but they would not be helmeted in order to read the gauges easier and to react if necessary. Despite the computing power of today’s machines, the need for a human presence always prevailed, and this would be no exception.

“Nikolai, Gotov ?” Olga asked over the intercom system.

“Ready Nikolai,” he responded.

Yuri listened in as Gregori, Viktor, and Ivan all reported their status as ready. The lander had arrived two days earlier, and after two days’ worth of spacewalks, it was secured to the station and the fuel pods were attached as well. The newsfeed was sporadic depending on their orbital positioning, but they were watching with interest the Chinese video stream of their lone astronaut preparing to enter lunar orbit.

“Damn bold of them, eh, Yuri?” Olga said, punching in the last commands on her data console and securing her gloves and helmet to her chair.

“You mean the Chinese?”

“Of course. You can’t think I mean the Americans, do you?”

“ Nyet. Their little fiasco yesterday secures our lead today.” Yuri checked the strap to his helmet to make sure it was also secure and it wouldn’t float away or be slammed into the rear bulkhead once they ignited the rocket motors.

“You’re forgetting the Chinese are almost there. What does Moscow think we will do once we arrive if the man has already claimed the prize?” Olga asked, a bitter tone in her voice.

Yuri finished his checks and then turned to his copilot. “If I know Moscow, we’ll pull down his flag and plant our own. It’s six against one with no chance for them to reinforce.”

“That’s just plain stupid, Yuri,” Olga shot back. “I was serious when I asked. We can’t undo history if their video feeds show them landing and claiming the device for themselves.”

“ Da , I know. We’ll just have to show up late to the party and see what we can do. This isn’t over by a long shot.” Yuri nodded.

Moscow Central Control addressed the Gordust at that point, and Yuri prepped the station by initiating an x-axis burn to point the station at the oncoming earth horizon.

“Initiate burn in ten seconds,” the command came in, and Yuri noted the half second delay as the signal was bounced off a satellite. The delay didn’t matter as the computer was synched to the earth-based one atomically and the audio countdown was as much for show and a false sense of control as anything else. When the timer hit zero, the rocket motors would ignite, propelling the station on a downward vector coming within a hundred twenty kilometers of the planet’s surface from their current altitude of over ten thousand kilometers.

“Three, two, one, ignition.” The command came a tad late as Yuri felt himself pressed back into the command seat as all four rocket motors came to life, hurtling the Gordust at over thirty thousand kilometers per hour toward the curvature of the earth.