A Second Moon

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Three Years Later…
ORBMICOM Observation Station 093
Ascraeus Mons, Mars

“Anything?”

“Are you kidding me? I haven’t seen so much as a comet in a month. This whole project is a bunch if s*** if you ask me” Corporal Sean Larson spun around in the seat, letting out a huge yawn and a stretch. Behind him, his holoconsole silently hovered, showing rapid images of patches of sky, compiled from the facility’s telescope.

Corporal Rebecca Thompson, sitting at the only other holoconsole in the small observation station that sat perched at the summit of Ascraeus Mons. Ascraeus Mons was the second tallest mountain on Mars, with a maximum height of eighteen kilometers, and Observation Station 093 was right up at the top. The facility itself was brand new, having been constructed only a year after the London Disaster as part of the USA’s new SpaceGuard initiative. Consisting of a small metal building attached to the massive main telescope, OS-093 was barely adequate for the two people it currently played home to. The designers had devoted most energy to the telescope, which had a mirror sixty meters in diameter and was capable of seeing deep-space objects both large and small with amazing clarity. The idea of putting such a large telescope on Mars was that if any more asteroids, comets or pieces of space debris were headed for Earth, the telescope would be able to detect it and give ORBMICOM sufficient time to prepare a response. So far, however, the project was not yielding anything more than a few asteroids that weaker telescopes could have picked up just as easily, and more and more often SpaceGuard has being criticized as a waste of money and resources.

This was the general feeling among the soldiers made to serve in the SpaceGuard program, including Sean and Rebecca. Being trapped up in a metal sardine can was not a pleasing experience, and both of them planned on requesting a transfer as soon as possible. For the moment, however, they were stuck in the tiny metal building’s control room, looking over the data flowing in from the massive telescope above their heads.

“Well, maybe so, but we’re stuck with it for now, so let’s just do our job, alright?” Rebecca didn’t like the situation either, but unlike Sean, she was determined to make the best of it. She turned back to her station, scrolling through images that the telescope had been taking over the past year and a half. They showed nothing of great interest, only some minor stars and one or two very distant meteors.