And there was light
The shuttle hung over the earth. It hummed for its crew alone; the sound of its positioning thrusters was silent in the vacuum. They nudged it this way and that, aligning it ever more exactly with its prey. The earth below shone blue in the sunrise. Clouds swirled far below, and the horizon was curved in the distance. The shuttle was blocky, resembling a parallelepiped beluga whale with a red seven-pointed star where there should have been an eye. It faced straight up, its main thrusters towards the earth below. Alongside it hung a piece of space junk, an old space mine: a train-car sized lump of solar panels, antennas; at its heart, a chunk of toxic debris. A booster pointed out of its top into space, and its bottom was a mound hanging towards the ground like a hammer. The shuttle crept in beside it, slowly, subtly. Then all was perfectly still.
A magnet shot out of the bell of the shuttle towards the mine, trailing a cable; the slack played out as the shuttle’s boosters engaged. The magnet struck the side of the mine, whereat the mine’s booster engaged, driving it down towards the earth below. The shuttle moved up as the mine began to fall down. For a moment the two moved in opposite directions, taughtening the slack in the cable. Then the cable was taught and the shuttle bucked against the mine’s downward thrust.
“Woah there!” crackled over the radio waves.
“Yee haw!” was the reply.
The shuttle began to drag the mine spaceward, its main thrusters fully engaged against the mine’s booster. The mine span at the end of its tether, trying to find home on the earth’s surface.
“Just a few more seconds…”
The mine’s booster petered out, and the shuttle leapt forward, no longer pulled down. It towed the spent mine into a higher orbit, joining a cluster of similarly-gathered mines above, floating out past the furthest debris.
“Another one for ya.”
“Roger that.”
A tiny figure, hardly larger than a person, sprang out from behind the cluster of mines held together by wrapped cable. The shuttle’s magnet disengaged from the mine’s side and retracted into the shuttle’s belly. The small vehicle maneuvered to catch the mine, whose momentum now carried it upwards. The figure attached the latest catch to the others, tying it down by a metal cable.
“That’s it tied down.”
“Aye aye.”
The shuttle hovered absently by the cluster of spent mines. Its operators went on break.
The main passage of the shuttle was a tube down its axis from front to back. Access to the engine room in the rear and the piloting bay in the front terminated the channel. Both hatches opened simultaneously. An older man and a younger boy faced one another down the hall, the man from the front and the boy from the back. They nodded, calmly, professionally, as they drifted towards one another, weightless. They met in the center of the tunnel, grasping handles on the corners of the square passage.
The older man opened a cupboard on the side wall and pulled out a drawer of vacuum-packed plastic bags of food. He picked one for himself as the younger man fiddled with a set of buttons on the wall opposite him. Speakers behind metal grates sparked to life, and there was music. The younger boy spun around to the same drawer of snacks, picking out his own as the older man drifted towards the front of the shuttle. The music was smooth, like strings.
A news announcement followed the final decrescendo: “Union officials denounce Federation attempts to reactivate retired mines, calling them an ‘unacceptably aggressive act.’ The Union reaffirms its support of the Red Star’s dismantling of the mines and their ejection from Earth’s orbit, calling their continued presence a ‘humiliating vestige of more savage times.’ Federation representatives defended their actions by claiming the experiments were of purely archaeological and historical interest. According to a Federation spokesperson, all participants are civilian scientists and engineers motivated purely by a desire to understand early Earth’s military history. The Red Star reaffirms its commitment to omnilateral disarmament, pointing out that the mines’ decaying orbits and risk of accidental activation due to collisions with space junk present an unacceptable risk to the human species. They also comment that the mines are derelict according to the Treaty of Io and devoid of any inherent scientific interest. In other news…”
The broadcast continued with discussions of asteroid mines, extra-Terran colonies, terrestrial resource depletion, and threats of violence from unaligned blocs on the surface. The younger boy listened attentively; the older man attended to his lentil stew, now reheated and filling the tunnel with the scent of cumin. The speaking ended, and abstract drums and winds radiated from the speakers. The younger boy reheated his soup and ate. The two didn’t have much to say to one another.
They returned to their posts to resume work. The pilot’s bay had printed photos of him smiling in front of green hills with a woman and children, hugging them in his arms; an infant wrapped and red-faced; a couple in wedding clothes kissing. The mechanic’s engine room had posters of test ships; prints of great racers’ vehicles; a model of the shuttle tethered to a wall.
“Ready?”
“Yup.”
The shuttle fired up its main thrusters and assumed a new trajectory towards their next target.
Deep below the surface of the Earth, in a Federation laboratory, all was in readiness. Distinguished scientists and their assistants hunched over banks of computer terminals. Large monitors on one side of the room showed the Earth from above, projected flat. Curls and waves rolled across its surface: the trajectories of satellites. A gentleman in military uniform stood towards the back of the room, next to a woman with gray hair.
“Are you sure this will work?” he asked her. Her team in front was working through a checklist in preparation for the experiment.
“In all honesty, no, I’m not. But we have every possible confidence that this is the best that we can do. The simulations all pan out, and recent discoveries in captured Union archives have greatly aided our endeavors. So long as the Union or the Red Star don’t intervene, I’m as confident as I can be,” she laughed softly, “which isn’t terribly confident.”
“The tactical power that we would be afforded by gaining control of the orbital mines is enormous: we’d finally be able to overcome the stalemate we’ve been stuck in with the Union for the last century. Finally the Federation could assert its hegemony over its enemies on Earth. Only the Separatists in orbit would remain, and the unaligned blocs of Earth would fall in line when they saw we were the dominant power.” The general’s epaulets and coat buttons shone in the terminals’ light. “This would be a great victory.”
“Yes, it would be,” the scientist whispered to herself. Then, more loudly: “are we ready?” Nods and assent rose from the room. “Then let’s begin.”
At this very moment, the shuttle slid into place next to a mine, sidling through hunks of metal debris. The ship assumed its position next to its prey. All seemed still; the Earth’s surface rolled by below, partially obscured by clouds. The shuttle assumed its position, nose up, belly towards its quarry. The pilot signaled the engineer, who acknowledged readiness to fire.
The mine’s booster engaged and the bomb plummeted towards the Earth.
“What the fuck…?”
“Holy shit!”
A squawk came over the radio as the pilot played with the controls.
“Those meddling assholes!”
“It must have been set off by some pinheads.”
The mine shot downwards towards the atmosphere.
“We have to chase it!”
The shuttle lumbered around and began its own downward course.
“Can you give me any more power?”
“Not without damaging the system.”
“We can’t let that mine go down! Give me anything you’ve got.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The shuttle’s thrusters’ cones glowed red, then white. The atmosphere careened towards them as the mine shot on its course home. In the laboratory, a purple light blinked on the large display. Its trajectory was projected across the continents. Terminals spewed log and telemetric data. Everyone stood very still. The general whispered, “should it be doing that?”
“Everything is set to happen automatically,” came the reply. Behind the purple light appeared a red star, its trajectory projected to intercept the purple light. There were murmurings of shock. “Those meddling idiots! They’ll ruin everything!” The general grabbed the shoulder of a microphoned engineer at a terminal in front of them. “Hail them! Warn them off!” In the shuttle, the radio fizzed.
“You are entering Federation airspace.”
“Goddammit!”
“Avert your course. Further incursion will be punished.”
“This isn’t funny! What did you do?”
“All is according to plan and under control. Do not interfere with scientific activity.”
The shuttle continued to dive, and on the monitor the red star closed on the purple dot. Both satellite and shuttle careened into the upper atmosphere, and air began to appear around them in streams.
The pilot: “we have to recover the mine! Can you give me any more power?” The engineer was surrounded by angry blinking lights; the engine gave off heat that singed the hair off his forearms. He mashed the keyboard of a control terminal. “I’m giving it everything I have! I don’t want to melt the engine!” he screamed.
The Earth shot up towards the falling shuttle and the mine far ahead of it.
The radio: “You have been warned.” The general squeezed the shoulder of the engineer. “Do it.” Defense satellites hidden among the surrounding debris swiveled into action. Their projectiles pierced the shuttle’s reactor, spraying nuclear reactants into the stratosphere. The shuttle’s pieces, carried by momentum, slowly separated and began to burn their way towards the ground. Its passengers crisped and their skin burnt away. The debris fell into the atmosphere, beginning to roar as the air around it thickened. On the monitor, the red star was replaced by a spreading cloud of tiny white dots.
“Can you still recover it?” the general cried.
“We’re doing the best we can!” came the reply. “The mine seems to be reacting to those idiots’ attempt to capture it. We can’t deactivate the circuit now.” Numbers flew past on the terminals.
“Try to shoot it!” The defense satellites turned their barrels to the mine and fired. As their projectiles flow towards the mine, it exploded, scattering radiation throughout the upper atmosphere.
In the laboratory, deep underground, everything was still. The terminals had all ceased their streams of symbols. The purple and white dots were gone from the wall’s monitor. No one wanted to return to the surface. On the general’s hip, a phone began to ring.
