Chapter 29: The attack

Tiger and Squeaker were on the tour with Cynthia and me when it happened. There was a station alert and an alarm. Fritz was next on board and soon the rest of the squadron was on board and at their stations. Then I remembered Tiger and Squeaker in the galley.

We were in launch mode. In fact, we were in the last ten minutes of count-down to launch.

I notified Fritz of our guests. He said, "They were part of the Graton Squadron before. They are now a part of it again. We do not have time or resources to send them back to the space station."

He put our assistants in charge and had Reagan and I connect with him. He explained the situation. There was a second asteroid on an Earth impact orbit. This rock was three times as big as the last one and was projected to hit in the Pacific Ocean. It would mean the end of civilization on earth and maybe even life as we knew it.

We would have one chance with this rock. It was already approaching Mars orbit. Fritz had Reagan and myself go over the mission plan. He especially wanted us to confirm our trajectory to the rock. We would have three months transit time to prepare our individual Soyuz missions.

I contacted Tiger and Squeaker on net and had them strap themselves in as well as they could. They were going to the asteroid with us.

We would only have a 0.7 G burn to leave Earth orbit. If you were not ready, things could get broken.

The squadron really cooked. We were all ready and secure at our assigned stations.

Fritz gave the command to go. The count-down finished and the rockets started. At the same time Reagan started the Ion drive. We were on our way.

I was monitoring the communication on Earth. There was no panic. There was concern. They all knew they had six months. UNASA cranked up the Moon Terraforming project.

Yuri Gagarin City was put on top priority. The second and a third wheel would be complete by impact date. A second storage satellite was under construction next to Yuri Gagarin City. The Yuri Gagarin City, New London, on the Moon would be able to sustain themselves for twenty years.

Lifters and fuel were also stored near Yuri Gagarin City.

On Earth hardened sites from the cold war were resurrected. These were converted to living and storage sites. They also had storage for twenty years. The Earth sites were to be converted and staffed in five months. Resources like the Library of Congress were condensed and stored in hardened locations. People were to move to inland locations above 2000 feet MSL. The new communities were not on rivers as these would flood.

The biggest question was who would be selected to live in the protected sites. The WE came to the rescue. They would select the individuals to be protected. They did not want the task and had great hopes for our mission. All prudent measures to sustain life were to be taken. Those that could not be sustained would live until the last second. Then they would sleep. It was hoped they would wake up still safe. If not their death would be painless. They would still be missed.

God, please help us.

I shared all this with the crew. We knew we had to be successful no matter what the cost to us.

The next three months passed slowly, but they passed.

We finally got within visual range of the asteroid. It was a gnarly beast with crags and canyons all over it. We determined that it was a nickel iron rock asteroid and would be hard to move without it breaking up. Reagan and I made our calculations on how much force we would need to modify the orbit to miss earth.

It was determined that the combined force of the Soyuz tugs and the rocket boosters would do the job. We had to be very careful where to place the force. We had our plan.

We just had to get there. Reagan had turned the mother ship and had the ion drive acting as a brake. We were now within 100 miles.