The Shadow Ark

Chapter 5

It all happened so quickly. It felt like the blink of an eye and Cyrus's unit was all strapped in to the seats in the shuttle and mission control was counting down until launch. Cyrus's teeth were chattering and he hoped no one else in the unit could notice. The reality was that everyone in the unit was nervous as hell. Give them a building to storm or a city full of combatants to fight any day. This was different. This was space and no one had any idea what they would be facing or even what to do when they got there. Cyrus did not like the idea of having to wait for orders from NASA HQ and wondered how a protocol could have been devised for something that had never been encountered before.

The ignition of the rockets and blast off was like being blasted into the sun. The shuttle was as hot as hell and for a moment Cyrus felt like he just could not take the heat and noise for a moment longer. He tried to relax his mind by focusing on his breath and taking his mind off the fact that he was being propelled into space at a speed that human beings probably were not designed to cope with. The vibration of the shuttle shook every bone in Cyrus's skeleton and he wondered if he may pass out.

"You OK marine?" Sergeant McCarthy's voice came in on Cyrus's intercom.

"Yes sir!" Cyrus said without the same conviction as normal.

"This part will be over before you know it," the Sergeant said.

Eventually the shuttle's rockets were disengaged and the shuttle started to be controlled by a combination of NASA HQ, auto pilot and Major Curry and his co-pilot, Angus Burke, a British air force pilot who had been embedded with NASA.

Major Curry received a message from HQ shortly after thruster rockets were disengaged.

"Barracuda 1 do you copy? Over," the controller at HQ said.

"Controller we copy. Over," replied Major Curry.

"C1 and R1 have launched assets as well. We are in communication with them and have reserved trajectories for each asset. Over," replied the controller.

Angus Burke looked over at Major Curry and raised his eyebrows. Curry was thinking to himself that this was going to be even harder than he thought. Not only was he trying to dock with some unknown object but he had to avoid a collision with a Chinese or Russian rocket wanting to do the same thing. The interior of the rocket was as hot as hell.

Cyrus nodded to Milton when the object came into view on the display screen in the rocket. It was not like anything Cyrus had seen before. The object was almost black and was spiky. It could easily be mistaken for an asteroid but it clearly wasn't.

"What is that?" Cyrus said.

Everyone on the rocket just stared at the object in awe until Major Curry's voice could be heard by everyone on the rocket.

"Crew – this is Curry. We are approaching the object and will be within docking range within fifteen minutes. There is a Russian and a Chinese rocket also approaching the object. Control is sharing our coordinates with Russian control and Chinese control so that we avoid a collision but do not be alarmed if we need to make a sudden adjustment to our trajectory."