The Tycho Incident: MarsX Archives, #2

By Michael Vetter

The Tycho Incident is a near-future thriller about a near-assassination on the Tycho moonbase. Two investigators are ordered by the U.S. president to solve the crime before adversaries find out and spark an international incident. The sleuths are an unlikely pair with their own murky histories: Army CID agent Lex Tilton is ready to retire but owes the president a final favor; Marine Destiny Montana is a champion sniper, but holds her own secrets.

 

When China picks up bits of a rumor about the attempted assassination, accusations fly and the U.S. military is put on full alert while China and Russia respond in kind. The Tycho Incident, as it is known within the White House, eludes a break through until a Top Secret artificial intelligence tool called MAINTOP brings the mystery to a frightening conclusion just before President Espinosa is held to account before the United Nations.

 

As Lex and Destiny work together, they face their own PTSD nightmares. Their spiritual struggles finally catch up with them during a sudden meteorite storm. Each must put the past behind them and decide to live their lives as God intends for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Vetter
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223160908

Michael Vetter

Michael Vetter is a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with degrees in Mechanical Engineering from UMass Lowell and Ocean Engineering from MIT. The Tapez Scroll—Remnant Rescue Series | Book 1 is his fifth book of fictional adventure that melds speculative technologies with Biblical themes. Michael and his wife Mary live in Salem, New Hampshire. Contact him at [e-mail]

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Chapter 1

Orion Lunar Gateway Space Station

Everyone since creation has looked up at the Moon on a clear night and wondered what that bright sphere was like. Earth-born humans first stepped onto that barren, airless, orbiting sphere more than a century ago. Thousands have followed since. There is still a mystique about escaping Earth’s gravity, orbiting another celestial object, and leaving boot prints in a grey dust as fine as talcum powder.

Six international Very Important People, or VIPs, and their three bodyguards began their journey to the Moon strapped into an austere cargo shuttle at the Orion Gateway Space Station in anticipation of a ninety-minute descent to the lunar surface. The shuttle’s guidance computer automatically triggered a kick from a small rocket and they launched away from the docking port to begin their spiral descent to the United States Tycho Moonbase.

Tiny satellites of the Lunar Positioning System (LPS) guided them to within centimeters of the center of a landing pad adjacent to the lunar base. Without a human pilot or crew, the shuttle’s flight computer flew the fastest, most fuel-efficient profile possible and landed with uncanny precision.

The visiting dignitaries represented the highest-ranking members of the MarsX Space Council. MarsX is shorthand for the United Nations Mars Exploration and Migration Consortium which is the international body formed to take the first team of explorers to Mars and to prepare for a mass migration to the Red Planet in the next decade. The first manned trip to Mars is supposed to search for extraterrestrial life, but its most coveted achievement will be to stake sovereign national claims on mineral rights that will justify the multi-trillion-dollar cost of the voyage.

Sultan Fahad bin Ghobash of the United Arab Emirates heads the U.N. MarsX Council delegation. The other VIPs from MarsX countries were: Hyram Renfroe, United States of America; Dmitry Rogozin, Russian Federation; Zhang Rongqiao, People’s Republic of China; Jean-Jacques Perrin, European Union; and K. G. Pajmanabhan, Republic of India. The esteemed group of scientists and diplomats were flying to the Moon to symbolically sign the Interplanetary Mineral Treaty, a formal agreement that sets ground rules for slicing up the terrain of Mars for future exploitation. Their respective countries have a vital interest in what the crew of the spaceship Isaac Asimov does when they first land on the Red Planet.

The Moon, Tycho Mining and Research Station (Tycho Moonbase)

The shuttle’s automated landing at Tycho was perfect as its landing legs touched the steel landing pad with barely a perceptible bump. The engines turned off and a flat, computerized voice announced, "Welcome to the Moon" as if this was a routine train stop.

The VIPs unbuckled their seatbelts and tentatively moved around the shuttle’s large cargo bay testing the Moon’s gravity which was one-sixth of Earth’s. They wore customized, brightly colored, lightweight space suits to protect them from the vacuum of space for their short walk between the shuttle landing pad and the entrance portal to the underground base. The ground crew opened a hatch on the side of the shuttle and each passenger disembarked in a practiced order of protocol. It was a personal moment of triumph for each man representing his country. From the moment they stepped off the boarding stairs, they could proudly boast: I walked on the Moon!

We should take a group photograph, the leader, Sultan Fahad bin Ghobash, said over his helmet intercom. He motioned with his arms for his fellow VIPs to stand on each side of him with the shuttle’s gleaming hull in the background. On cue, their escorts produced cameras to capture the momentous occasion. For a second group photo, they moved to place the entrance portal in the background. The portal to the underground base was a squat, shabby-looking hut partially buried in the rocky hillside under a thick layer of lunar dirt, or regolith, piled on its roof. A scrawled sign with the words "American Tycho Moonbase" above the portal entrance in the background made for an other-worldly picture.

No sooner was the second picture taken, than one of the escorts holding a camera fell to his knees and clutched his leg. His companions heard him scream in pain over their headsets. He managed to say, My suit is leaking! Around the group, puffs of lunar dust rose several feet high in the brilliant sunlight.

Meteorite shower! one of the experienced ground crew yelled. He’d seen this sort of thing a few times before and ordered the visitors to take shelter. Run for the portal airlock! He helped the fallen man while a second crewman rushed to open the pressurized airlock.

Within seconds, the first crewman pressed a quick-patch adhesive appliqué over the tear of the suit, sealing the leak. His rescuer noticed that the meteorite had also drawn blood. By then, the escort was unconscious.

As more puffs of surface dust flew up, the terrified passengers huddled around the airlock door waiting for it to open. The operation took barely ten seconds, but in their panic, it seemed much longer. The VIPs crowded into the airlock until it was full, leaving a few others outside. The door closed and the airlock went through a thirty-second pressurization cycle before the inner door opened. They tumbled to safety into the pressurized building.

The portal receptionist had seen what happened outside on a video monitor and immediately recycled the airlock to admit the remaining people, including the injured escort.

A tall, African-American officer dressed in a tailored Space Force jumpsuit with a colonel’s insignia greeted the VIPs with a weak, apologetic smile. Gentlemen, I’m sorry for the inauspicious arrival. We deal with meteorite showers here from time to time. I’m Colonel Jim Watkins, commander of the American Tycho Moonbase. We’ll see that your injured man receives the best of care. When the others are inside the welcome center we will take the elevator down to the reception.

A member of the delegation with a U.S. flag patch on his suit removed his helmet. He was red-faced with rage. I am Hyram Renfroe, head of NASA. This is not supposed to happen, Colonel! Our multimillion-dollar Lunar Meteorite Warning System (LMWS) is supposed to give us ten to fifteen minutes of warning ahead of a dangerous meteorite shower. We could have been killed! I want to know what happened!

Before Watkins could respond, a loud Pop! Pop! Pop! reverberated through the reception room followed by a piercing alarm and a computerized announcement: AIR LEAK! AIR LEAK! SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY! This time, the meteorite shower had punctured the seal of the secure portal building.

The temperature in the room dropped instantly as pressurized air escaped the room into the vacuum of the Moon. The humidity in the depressurized air instantly formed ice crystals and filled the room with a white, opaque mist. Neither Watkins nor the receptionist were wearing space suits. They could die of asphyxiation and exposure to the cold in a minute or less. They hurried to the safety of an elevator that itself was an airlock to the habitable spaces below. Renfroe, the NASA dignitary, donned his helmet and called for his fellow passengers to do likewise and follow him to the elevator.

Wait for the others! Watkins shouted amid the commotion. At that moment, the airlock to the outside opened again and its occupants stood momentarily stunned by the blaring alarm and the cloud of frozen mist. One of the other VIPs, connected to the others by intercom, urged the new arrivals to the elevator. As soon as they were all inside, the elevator door slammed shut.

Watkins and the receptionist, without space suits, shivered in silence as they rode down to where a crowd waited in the large cafeteria that doubled as a conference hall to welcome the VIPs for the treaty signing ceremony and a celebratory reception.

The portal receptionist was a young college student on a lunar work-study program who had been assigned to register new arrivals that day. She moved closer to Colonel Watkins and whispered, "Something’s wrong, Sir. We had no warning from the LMWS, but the reception portal is supposed to be a safe shelter from meteorites. I saw three holes appear in the side wall of the shelter. What happened?"

I don’t know, the dazed officer admitted. The group of VIPs chatted with the welcoming crowd and didn’t hear him say, Whatever it was, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

Chapter 2

Tycho, Cafeteria/Conference Room

The formal treaty-signing ceremony took place in the large cafeteria that also served as the Tycho conference hall when the tables were taken down and chairs arranged for auditorium-like seating. Colonel Watkins turned the event over to the NASA Administrator for a round of speeches and excused himself to check his phone. The screen showed that he had two text messages. The first was from the dispensary saying that the wounded escort would be fine. His wound was so minor that the medic had closed it with super glue instead of stitches. The other message was from a man named Wilhelm from the Tycho maintenance crew who was assigned to reseal the reception portal. "Minor leaks repaired and the building is re-pressurized. Request you inspect."

Why would Willie want me to inspect his repair work now? Watkins knew the fastidious maintenance chief well enough to trust his work. If he said it was fixed then it was fixed. He typed a reply that he’d be there after the ceremony. Seconds later another text message appeared: "Colonel, request that you come to inspect ASAP!!!" He thought about sending a stronger reply, but something was odd. The formal address and three exclamations were his way of saying that his superior’s presence was urgently needed. NASA Administrator Renfroe could handle the formalities of the treaty ceremony and the reception that followed. Watkins sent a text to his senior lieutenant standing across the hall from him and asked him to make sure logistics for the reception went smoothly while he left to take care of something. The officer made a quizzical frown after reading the text. Watkins hurried toward the elevator and didn’t see the lieutenant’s raised eyebrows. What could draw the senior commander away from the most important event in Tycho’s short history?

What is it, Willie? Watkins tried to hide his irritation when he stepped out of the elevator into the room where less than an hour earlier he and the others had almost died. The maintenance supervisor, Wilhelm Willie Nagel, part of the international contingent and a German Luftwaffe Warrant Officer, motioned him to the wall across the room from the elevator.

Three holes each one centimeter in diameter, Wilhelm said pointing to black adhesive patches on the rubberized Kevlar material that lined the room to pressurize it from the outside vacuum. "Three round holes in a side wall." He waited to see if that registered with Watkins.

Yes, the receptionist mentioned holes in the wall. Maybe a machinery accident outside? Was anyone working nearby when it happened? Watkins thought for a moment about other possible explanations. But the shuttle ground crew saw clouds of lunar dust around them before the one man was hit. And those holes in the wall were made after they entered through the airlock.

Exactly. While Watkins puzzled over this, Willie led him back across the room toward the elevator. He pointed to a spot on the inner wall about waist-high. Three holes here are in the same pattern as the three round holes in the outside wall. Whatever came through the outer wall is now buried in this wall. Whatever the projectiles were, they missed the elevator airlock by half a meter.

What were these projectiles? Watkins asked. A thought crossed his mind that seemed impossible.

That is why I waited for you. To be a witness.

Watkins swallowed slowly. All right, let’s see what’s in there.

Willie took a utility knife from his tool belt to dig into the sheetrock wall.

Wait! Take pictures of everything before you go further, Watkins ordered.

I already did that, Sir, the maintenance man smiled. He already knew what he would find and had been meticulous in his observations.

It didn’t take long before Willie cupped a grey metal object in his palm. He brushed it off and handed it to Watkins. Without being told, he went to work on the remaining holes while his assistant captured everything on his phone’s video camera.

Watkins turned the scratched rifle slug over in his hand. Someone had tried, without success thankfully, to kill five of the most important people in the MarsX program.

Tycho, SF Operations Center

Jim Watkins closed the door to his office, let out a deep sigh, and began composing a double-encrypted message to his Space Force boss that would kick off a series of events that together were later called the Tycho Incident.

Like many senior officers who had worked at the lunar station and the Orion space station, Watkins wore the coveted wings of a Command Astronaut. He’d flown the B-21 Raider bomber in the Air Force, earned a Ph.D. in Astronautical Engineering from M.I.T., and stayed with the Artemis ship that orbited the Moon eight years ago while a team of engineers descended to the surface to build the first stage of the Tycho Moonbase. He was a slim, tall African-American in his fifties with grey eyes and salt and pepper hair in a short cut. Flecks of lighter freckles on his face accentuated a quick smile. At this moment, that smile was gone.

He called Colonel Mike Safford, head of security for the U.S. sector of the Orion space station, and told him what he knew. Someone had fired multiple gunshots at the visiting VIPs, but nobody had been killed. Everyone thought that the incident was a micro-meteorite shower and it had been quickly dismissed as a failure of the warning system. The treaty signing continued with relief that the VIPs had dodged the meteorites. How long would the misunderstanding last? The holes in the reception portal walls had been repaired and painted over as if nothing had happened. Watkins downloaded photos and videos of the damage to his phone from the maintenance supervisor’s phone. Wilhelm and his assistant were sworn to secrecy and he prayed that word of an attempted assassination wouldn’t become public, although he knew that eventually, the news would leak out.

Watkins wrote a short report on his secure computer, marked it TOP SECRET–CRITIC, printed it, and carried it to the communications center. The less information that circulated on the station’s internal classified network the better. So far, only four people knew what had happened.

The communications operator’s eyes bulged when he saw the CRITIC tag at the top of the single printed page. He’d never seen one of these before apart from his crypto training. He knew that it had to go to the White House immediately. It would be in the president’s hands in ten minutes. His shift was about to get a whole lot more exciting.

Will you want a dedicated video circuit, Sir? he asked Watkins as he turned to scan the message into an automatic character reader.

Smart kid, his commander thought. Yes. Give me two full-time laser circuits directly to Earth without going through the Orion secure routers. A video conference would minimize misunderstandings. And get me the Space Force HQ duty officer as soon as you transmit the message. Route the video to my office. He nodded his thanks to the communications NCO who was handling the most important message he’d ever seen. The more the communications operator thought about the contents, the faster his pulse raced. Like every operator before him, he thought it a shame that he could never tell anyone about it.

Space Operations Command (SOC), Petersen SFB, Colorado Springs, Colorado

General Roger Mendy Mendez, Chief of Space Operations, spent ten minutes listening to Watkins give his report over the secure video channel. The 39-year veteran of cyber, air, and space conflicts commanded the space resources of the entire United States military. He showed no emotion when the briefing finished. Good job keepin’ a tight lid on this, Jim, he said in a mellow Texas drawl. Are you sure you kin trust the two German maintenance workers to keep it quiet?

Yes, Sir. As sure as I can be of anyone else on Tycho, American or otherwise.

"Fine then. Sendin’ a CRITIC message to the White House was the right call too, Jim. This has all the makin’s of a full-blown international bag ‘o nails—maybe an interplanetary shootin’ match if it runs into the Isaac Asimov goin’ to Mars."

That’s still on, although a bit delayed, Watkins said. He received daily updates from Orion on the spaceship’s departure date which was slipping almost daily due to technical problems.

The plasma drives are givin’ them boys at NASA fits and nobody knows when the ship’ll head off. NASA’s the lead honcho and I’ve managed to keep my hands out of it so far. The four-star general looked at the clock app on his screen and then into the video camera. Listen, Jim, any new developments and you give me a shout, especially if there’s another pop shot taken at those VIPs. What’s their itinerary?

They’ll spend a few hours here at Tycho before they go to the Chinese and Russian lunar bases for another signing ceremony. We’ll fly them to the Chinese base in a Space Force shuttle. It’ll also give the spooks a chance to see what Chinese base security is like, he smiled.

Be ready to videoconference with the White House and tell your yarn a few more times, Mendez added before he signed off.

Somebody get my ride ready! Pronto! the general shouted to his staff in the outer office. He went to his closet to change out of his Class-A office uniform into a bespoke one-piece flight suit that he was pleased still fit him like it did when he was aboard the International Space Station. Thirty-nine years in the Air Force and Space Force and Mendy never lost the thrill of a supersonic Mach-3.5 dash across the country in his personal F-45. It was one of the perks of being in charge of Space Command. He’d stroll into the White House two hours from now—still in his tailored flight suit, of course.

Chapter 3

Washington, D.C.—White House Situation Room (WHSR)

The White House Situation Room (known to insiders as the WHSR—pronounced Whizzer) is not a single conference room as imagined in TV thrillers and movies. It is a complex facility crewed around the clock by civilians and military specialists in offices and meeting rooms backed up by the best computers and communications. The main room where the president holds sensitive conferences with her Cabinet has no windows for reasons of security and is on the ground floor of the West Wing and not in the basement.

A large conference table dominating the WHSR’s main room is ringed by a dozen or more executive-type chairs upholstered in hand-stitched leather. The president sits at the head of the table facing a large screen on the opposite wall. There are cramped rows of uncomfortable wooden chairs along both side walls where aides or assistant staff balance notebooks on their knees and scribble hurried notes. A dozen display screens cover the other walls.

Today there were seven people at the table and the staff chairs behind them were empty. A single video screen was subtitled, Colonel James Watkins, Tycho Moonbase Commander. Watkins hurriedly adjusted his tie before the start of the meeting. The topic was the most sensitive of the current president’s brief first term.

You’re the man of the hour, Colonel Watkins, President Susan Espinosa said with a forced smile to start the meeting. The petite, dark-haired Latina had been president and leader of the free world for all of eleven months. This wasn’t her first crisis since taking office, but it could prove to be her undoing if not resolved quickly. She was a former squadron commander with combat experience flying the Navy’s F-45E Mustang II stealth fighter. Her wartime achievements, aided by her photogenic beauty and passionate bilingual campaign speeches, got her elected first to the House and then the Senate. She won the national election to the White House a year ago by a narrow margin.

We’ve read your message, Colonel, so tell us what you know in your own words.

Thank you, Madam President. Watkins took his time explaining as many details as he could remember beginning with the puffs of lunar dust he saw on the outside camera minutes after the VIPs landed. When he’d brought them up to date he asked if there were any questions.

Who would do such a horrible thing? The rhetorical question from Vice-President Shehla Rashid vocalized what was on everyone’s mind.

I have no idea, Madam Vice-President, Watkins