"Ashes On The Face of the Sun"
by Steven James Robeson
A Short Story Inspired by the "Re-Imagined"
"Battlestar Galactica"
by Messers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick
Inspired by the novel
"Saga of a Star World"
and the original television series
"Battlestar Galactica"
By Glen A. Larson
Except for those intellectual properties of the above stated persons, this story is copyrighted©2014 by Steven James Robeson and is protected under the laws of the United States of America.
Unauthorized use of this manuscript will be prosecuted.
CHAPTER ONE
Conference Room Bravo
United States Lunar Installation Alan B. Shepard
Story Musgrave Center
05:15UTC 22 May 2093
"…So what, exactly, is it I am supposed to be looking at?" Major General Jim Stevens, U.S. Aerospace Forces, assistant commander of USLI-Shepard, was more than a little miffed at having been asked to come to the conference room at this hour of the morning. There was no fire. The installation's seven domes were intact. And to the best of his knowledge, no one of any rank had died since he went to bed only three hours ago. The tone of his voice reflected his displeasure.
The lab-coated scientists at the end of the conference table nervously shuffled several table-top sized charts and documents and spoke anxiously amongst themselves for a moment. The tenor of their own conversation was rising slowly until one of them, the more senior-appearing amongst them, stood at his seat. The scientists quieted and watched as their colleague rose.
"Uh…General…we've witnessed something, well, unusual, uhhhhh…around and…well, on the planet Mercury." The elderly scientist looked over each shoulder to the seven others seated with him. One of them, an Asian woman, nodded her head towards him and then towards the general with that 'look' like one would give a playmate when trying to break the news to a parent that they had just sent a baseball through the neighbor's closed bedroom window.
"Doctor Minerovic…" the general's baritone voice reverberated through the room almost as if the sound waves themselves dared the walls to not shake, sound-proofing or not. "…I can appreciate that you and your colleagues have found something that is no doubt newsworthy, especially in light of the fact that you have your hands on the first multi-billion dollar observatory on the moon. But unless you found gold, oil or a new football franchise on Mercury, what couldn't have waited until a more reasonable hour to hold this briefing?" The tension in the room was palpable.
With that, the scientist's face grew even redder, and it was easy to see that he was getting more flustered by the minute. The general was unarmed, and to the best of anyone's knowledge, he'd never been a combat warrior before, but that didn't minimize his overwhelming presence in the room.
The doctor stood, almost transfixed for a moment, unable to make his mouth move in a way that allowed the thoughts in his brain to come out coherently. He had thought to try and rehearse his presentation earlier, however his associate's rush to announce their findings left him little time to prepare.
The general sat quietly for a few seconds while the elderly physicist stood anxiously at the end of the table. The general contemplated the scientist's disheveled appearance and almost obsessive-compulsive movement of his hands from his hips, to his sides, and back again. Still, the general knew that the greatest minds of past generations had looked like they slept under bridges, yet they landed men on the moon, nearly cured cancer, and managed to pretty much stop famine. Perhaps the benefit of the doubt was due.
"OK…an anomaly. On Mercury? Or just near it?" The general's tone softened a bit as he took a deep breath and pushed back in his chair, actually allowing himself to slide back in it a bit. Afterall, he was up now, and he might as well hear what he had to say. "And how does this affect us here, almost sixty million miles away…?"
The Asian woman sitting next to Dr. Minerovic abruptly reached into a valise on the table and handed the doctor a dog-eared note pad and several sheets of paper. He took them and only acknowledged her with a smile and a nod.
"Well…as you may know, General, we've never had a really good view of Mercury except for the Mariner mission of 1974 and the Messenger mission that was supposed to map the surface in 2011. That satellite reached Mercury and successfully inserted into Mercurian orbit, but mysteriously disappeared after only four orbits. It went around the far side on its fourth pass and never came back around. We hid the fact that it was destroyed from the press, and a week later, no one knew or cared."
"I remember the reports, Doctor" the general interrupted. "It was presumed that a solar flare or a minor coronal mass ejection swamped the bird and it was lost."
The doctor was taken aback by the soldier's sudden interjection on a subject that he assumed the warrior would have no knowledge of. He was both impressed and embarrassed that he'd stereotyped the General so. He hoped that the general didn't make a similar assumption about him.
"Yes, that's correct! Yes Sir!" The doctor suddenly became more animated. Perhaps the general's demonstration of familiarity on the mission put him at ease. No matter. "Now here…" the frumpy scientist quickly spread several papers across the tabletop. The general quickly recognized them as satellite photos. "…are the mappings from the Mariner 10 mission in 1974. Well, it wasn't a true mapping mission, but we did get many fine shots of the surface, which brings me to this…"
The doctor set the majority of the papers to one side and then spread an oversized terrain surface map out on the middle of the expansive conference table. He turned the massive document one way, then back another, until he got the map at the angle he wanted. "Here, right here…see this small plain between these two craters?"
The general scooted forward in his chair, and then rose to lean over the table. "OK, I see it, but as far as I can tell, this might just be a picture of the dark side of this moon for all I know. Craters…ridges…dust…So what?"
"I'm getting to that…Uhh…Maybe I better let Doctor Park explain this part…"
Kim Li Park was shocked at hearing her name. The slender yet beautiful Asian woman who'd been handing the older doctor his papers suddenly looked up at him in a panic. "What do you mean I should…?!" Her voice trailed off as the doctor leaned over to whisper something in her ear. The general could only see the doctor's animated hand gestures, and the Asian woman's frequent nodding.
Then the doctor stood back and motioned to the woman. She turned to the general and cleared her own throat a couple of times, sheepishly grinned, then started to speak
"This all started two weeks ago. The telescope had just come on line, and we were testing various combinations of filters that we plan to use when ever we need to make solar or near-solar observations." Kim turned back and forth to the screen several times, as if looking for the words she needed to speak next. She paused for a second, and then seemingly 'found' herself. Suddenly, she seemed more confident. She turned back to the table and towards the general. "To establish a reference, we chose to use Mercury's phases to determine pre and post filter insertion effectiveness since it was just coming into a visible phase. We were watching the monitor with the planet in real-time, switching between two filters, when we saw this…" The comely woman reached across the table and found the remote control for the conference room's video monitor. She held the device up, seemingly aiming it over the general's shoulder, and pushed a button. A multi-paneled wall behind the officer suddenly rotated, exposing a viewing screen.
The room darkened somewhat, albeit not completely. The young scientist again aimed the controller at the wall and pushed another button. The wall came alive with video from the telescope's observations.
They all watched for a moment as the position of the small solar planet seemingly shifted in the middle of the viewer, no doubt the telescope itself being shifted slightly to center-up the target. After a few seconds of watching the small orb seemingly wander in the center of the shot, it settled down to a relatively stable view in the picture.
There it was, the planet Mercury, centered in the middle of the screen. Looking at it on the viewer, the planet was notable for being bigger than other distant objects in the near-view of space, the Sun being at an angle to the camera that put it well to the right of the viewer and therefore out of the view. That angle, plus the distances involved, gave the viewer the sense that Mercury was hardly anything more than a reverse letter 'C', no bigger than a peanut in the vast darkness of space.
With that, the view suddenly changed, with the bright orb in the center of the viewer taking on a ghostly pallor. "Here we switched in the first filter to get our density and luminosity readings. It was then that this appeared…" From the left of the viewer, a small, relatively faster moving object abruptly appeared. Everyone in the room, including the general, slid to the edge of their chairs as if that few centimeters of movement might provide them with a greater appreciation for the bizarre object. "Had we not switched in the filters at just that moment, both the over-glare from the sun itself and the reflected light of Mercury might have masked the object's transit" the newly outted doctor said.
"You've done a spectral analysis of the object, Doctor Park?" The general's tone was now softened and quizzical.
"No Sir. The spectrum analyzer for this camera and telescope haven't been installed yet…however it probably wouldn't have mattered."
"And why's that, Doctor Park?" At hearing her name, the young scientist wasn't so sure that having her face and name known to the assistant administrator was necessarily a good thing.
"Because of this, Sir…" She pushed a button on the controller, and the video began racing through hours of observations in only a few seconds time. Even without any enhancements, it was easy to see that each subsequent approach of the object brought it closer to Mercury's thin veil of an atmosphere as the phase of the sun changed rapidly across the face of the planet. In the lower right corner of the video, the elapsed time was spinning at a break-neck speed. Then, seconds later, the object disappeared behind the planet, to not return again.
"Where'd it go…?!" asked the general with renewed enthusiasm.
"That's the interesting part, General…keep watching" said Park. The video continued to run at break neck speed, whole hours elapsing in mere seconds. As it did, the planet continued to bring the 'dark side' of its disk into view. Suddenly, the video stopped. "Look here…" continued the young physicist.
She stepped out from around the chair that had been a sort of crutch to her the whole time she'd been standing. Moving up to the front of the room, and just behind the general's seat, she took out a laser-pointer, and drew a circle around what looked to be a smear ending in a smudge on the screen.
"Look familiar?" asked the young Park.
The general leaned back in his chair. Yes, unfortunately it was all too familiar. He'd not only seen, but taken pictures like that before. Usually after some hot dog had taken liberties with his or her plane, but sometimes after some avoidable maintenance faux pas that resulted in an accident.
"A crash site…"
