America One: The Odyssey Begins Read online

  AMERICA ONE

  The Odyssey Begins

  By

  T I WADE

  Ryan Richmond has dreamed about going to space since the age of seven. Reading space updates—and seeing pictures of Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface in National Geographic—was the ignition of this dream.

  At nineteen he sold his first company and employed the remnants of the Russian Space Program, three of the best space brains in the world.

  In his twenties he founded and sold two more companies and hired the most outstanding scientists and engineers from the European Space Authority.

  During his thirties, after selling his third company, he invested heavily in Internet start-ups, like Google, netting billions.

  Then he patiently waited until NASA’s shuttle program came to an end and contracted the best brains in the U.S. Space program.

  Now, Ryan Richmond is in his forties, and is going into space, whether anybody likes it or not!

  A Note for the Reader from the Author:

  Now, we together have achieved space travel. The Action-Adventure found in Books 1 and 2 decreases and hard-core Science Fiction increases as our space crew head away from Earth.

  Please understand that the main genre now changes from Action-Adventure/Science Fiction on Earth, to pure Science Fiction through space travel. There are no wars, bad governments or horrible little aliens out there wanting to eat us for lunch. If you, the reader, want non-stop military action and fighting, you will not find it.

  Instead you will enjoy a travel story; a real, current-day science fiction tale takes center stage. A story I have tried very hard to make as realistic with today’s technology as I could write it. You have been warned!

  T I WADE

  AMERICA ONE – The Odyssey Begins

  Copyright © 2013 by T I Wade.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address T I WADE., 200 Grayson Senters Way, Fuquay Varina, NC 27526.

  Please visit our website http://www.TIWADE.com to become a friend of the AMERICA ONE Series, and get updates on new releases.

  T I WADE’s books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: T I WADE, 200 Grayson Senters Way, Fuquay Varina, NC 27526.

  Library of Congress Catalogue-in-Publication Data

  Wade, America One / T I Wade.

  Library of Congress Data.

  Editor–Sherry Emanuel, Write2Right Editing, Raleigh, North Carolina.

  Final Editor–Brad Theado, Stuarts Draft, Virginia.

  Cover design–Jack Hillman, Hillman Design Group, Sedona, Arizona

  EBook edition layout by eBooks by Barb for booknook.biz

  Dedication:

  AMERICA ONE – The Odyssey

  is dedicated to James Cameron, a man who has seen much of this story, but at the bottom of the oceans, and to Planetary Resources, a new company that I believe is the future of asteroid exploration.

  ***

  One day humans on Earth might realize that fighting one another is not as beneficial as it is made out to be, and that furthering science and space exploration might be more important than the aimless self-destruction of our species! A really civilized species would not kill, maim or hurt its own!

  T I WADE

  Note from the Author

  This novel is only a story—a story of fiction, which could or might come true sometime in the future.

  The people in this story are mostly fictitious, but since the story takes place in our present day, some of the people mentioned are real people.

  There were no thoughts to treat these people as good or bad people—just people who are living at the time the story is written.

  ***

  The author is not an expert in the field of space travel. The author is only a storyteller.

  Even though hundreds of hours of Internet research were completed to write this story, many might find the scientific description of space travel lacking, simple, or simply not accurate. The fuels, gases, metals, and the results of using these components are as accurate as the author could describe them.

  ***

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter 1

  “For Your Eyes Only”

  Chapter 2

  Space is beautiful at this time of year

  Chapter 3

  The Repercussions on Earth – Glad I’m not there!

  Chapter 4

  AMERICA ONE powers up

  Chapter 5

  The Chinese visit

  Chapter 6

  Fallout and pleading from Earth

  Chapter 7

  America One has visitors

  Chapter 8

  Mortimer, Bishop and McNealy

  Chapter 9

  Airfield in Nevada – Start of Act II

  Chapter 10

  Gravity, Nevada, Air Force One, and diamonds again

  Chapter 11

  Amsterdam, Idaho Springs, and Space

  Chapter 12

  Next stop, the moon

  Chapter 13

  Bounty by the canister load

  Chapter 14

  The two official visits

  Chapter 15

  Goodbye

  Chapter 16

  The Odyssey Begins

  Chapter 17

  What the hell is that?

  Chapter 18

  Is that a round asteroid or a baby planet?

  Chapter 19

  Mars sighted

  Chapter 20

  Mars – Terra Firma

  Chapter 21

  Mars – The South Pole

  Chapter 22

  Oh my God!

  Chapter 1

  "For your eyes only"

  The Gulfstream lowered its undercarriage for landing into Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a long, military-grade airfield 500 miles north of Moscow.

  Even though it was well into spring, the outside temperature at 5:00 a.m. was still only a degree above freezing. The date was April 15th, nearly a month after Ryan had been unceremoniously relieved of his airfield by the U.S. Government in Nevada.

  He was looking forward to landing, as it would be the first time he could get close to equipment that was sophisticated enough to enable him to speak to his crew aboard America One, his new spaceship 350 miles above him.

  Ryan was alone in the Gulfstream. His savior, Martin Brusk, had left him during a stopover in London. An important meeting with the European Space Authority had forced them to head in different directions.

  The owner—or ex-owner of Astermine Inc., a space company—was thin and his ribs still hurt. Even though he had the military doctor at Guantanamo to look after him during his three-week stay in Cuba, his ribs still needed a few more weeks to mend.

  Once he and Martin had taken off from U.S.-owned soil in Cuba, Martin told him of their flight plans. Martin Brusk had also owned a space company until very recently, when the U.S. government condemned him as an enemy of the state after learning he worked with the country’s former president. Martin’s assets, even the deposit the U.S. government had paid him for his company several days earlier, were frozen and within seconds came under government ownership. All of his U.S. property had been confiscated and a bounty was put on his head by the CIA.

  After the former U.S. President suggested he leave the country, Martin managed to escape the clutches of U.S. agents who were looking for him only hours before the emergency orders were passed by the government. Even the former president of the Unite
d States of America was now under house arrest; this sudden and shocking news was released by news teams on the White House beat less than 24 hours after Ryan landed in Cuba three weeks earlier.

  That morning the news shocked every American. Even with a ravaged network of operational news channels (due to the continuous destruction of the world’s satellites) nonstop coverage about the former president’s house arrest began before dawn.

  “Treason!” “Acts against the country!” “Harboring terrorists!” “Secret talks with China!” were the news headlines in the morning papers.

  “The ex-president is under house arrest as of midnight last night,” stated a news reporter in Chicago. “Shocking allegations from the Oval Office itself abound about the former president secretly communicating with the Chinese government over future space development. The White House Press Room is full, every seat taken, and we are expecting the Press Secretary to give us more information within the hour…Weather in Chicago today is…”

  Martin Brusk was watching the news from the Savoy in central London, a hotel in which he held a major ownership share. Only hours after he knew that the airfield in Nevada had been attacked, whispers of problems led him to check his Swiss bank account, get the Gulfstream topped off and take off from his home on his space base—or ex-space base—in New Mexico. His base, now owned by NASA, was guarded by U.S. troops. Martin was still free to go where he wanted, but he realized that his friend Ryan wouldn’t be taken without a fight; hours after Ryan was forced from his airfield, Martin’s airplane was also taking off, bound for Zurich, Switzerland.

  It hadn’t taken the government long to enact an order to hold Martin. He was only an hour out of U.S. airspace when the orders came through from the NSA to confine him; an hour later everything he owned in the USA was wiped clean, as if he never owned it.

  Many government employees, unimportant and in lower positions, didn’t understand how the rich worked and certainly were unaware of how fast the elite thought. On the other hand, NSA Director Joe Bishop, NASA Administrator Hal McNealy, Tom Ward, the new Director of the CIA, and General Mortimer, now Chief of Staff, did not understand that Americans were not as stupid as they thought. Human sixth sense still worked in many U.S. citizens; it was what kept them alive and made some of them rich, and it had worked well for Martin.

  Yes, Martin Brusk lost 90 percent of his worth to the government, but he still had over $100 million in foreign assets; enough to live on for the rest of his life.

  The ex-president also had his sixth sense working. He had planned for an attempt on his freedom for over a year, ever since he began to understand that the new government was imposing a pernicious form of terrorism on U.S. businesses and citizens. He wasn’t going anywhere; he knew that he had to stand and fight, just as Ryan had done, to show this new president that it was impossible to be a despot on U.S. soil. The new president still would be affected by Constitutional checks and balances and ultimately answer to the citizens of the country.

  He had planned well, and when the soldiers closed down the front and back gates of his house to anybody leaving or entering, he had television cameras recording everything they did.

  It didn’t take long for opposition members of Congress and the Senate to begin to cause havoc to the new president’s plans, and he was reminded that Americans, under the rule of law, are innocent until proven guilty.

  Three days later the Supreme Court allowed the former president to be allowed to go free until and unless due process proved any guilt.

  Once he was free, black SUVs tailed the ex-president’s every move, until he caught a plane at O’Hare and headed north into Canada. The Canadian Prime Minister, a good friend of his, ignored the orders from Washington to extradite the man; instead he gave him an open invitation to stay as long as he wanted. Canada had already suspended all dealings with their neighbor to their south.

  From Canada, the ex-president was free to travel, and he did so; to the UK, France, Germany and then Moscow and Beijing. During his term in office, he had established friendships with the leaders of many countries, and they were still prepared to listen to him. He held talks with the countries’ leaders, explaining what was going on in the United States and Washington.

  Meanwhile back in Washington, the mounting problems facing the new president were growing. Members of both houses were demanding that committees look into his actions and how he was running the country. This was not due to news about Ryan and Astermine as much as recent orders from the Oval Office denouncing big business and business leaders who, up to the last election, were prominent members of U.S. society.

  Through his press secretary, the president denounced all allegations against him, and warned several members of both houses to prove their allegations before coming forward. One senator said that he had proof, and that he would present his proof the next day. Later that night, the senator was taken ill and by morning he was in a coma in the hospital. Tom Ward’s men had done their job well.

  This provoked more outcries, and this time General Mortimer countered by dispersing the Army and National Guard throughout Washington. Immediately, riots began to fill the streets with citizens calling for the president’s impeachment. The army, for the first time since Vietnam, brutally attacked the rioters, with several deaths due to baton attacks. Not one bullet was fired.

  Over the next week, the rioters decided that it was too dangerous to display their grievances. The president returned to the air waves to thank his military personnel and to tell viewers that there were certain factions in the country trying to denounce his authority; they all could be traced to the ex-president, who had run like a dog out of the country to escape trial for what the president stated were acts of treason. He warned Americans that if anybody got out of line or broke any law, the powers of the federal government would come down heavily on them. He had enacted new powers, allowing the NSA to set up curfews in areas wherever trouble brewed.

  NSA Director Joe Bishop took this as a privilege to bully anybody he wanted, and police and NSA agents also took their new liberties seriously.

  Within days of the new orders, several retired and elderly USAF officers suddenly went missing all over the country. Bob Mathews, aboard his ten-day old new boat, escaped whatever was going on. He was off one of the islands in the Caribbean fishing when news trickled through by radio communications from friends that air force colleagues he knew had begun to disappear. He decided to stay where he was.

  What benefited the president was that the news channels were few, and it was becoming more difficult for citizens to see or hear the current daily news.

  With so much junk in space—a result of General Mortimer’s late release of the third set of nukes—one by one satellites were either destroyed, or were bounced off their geo-stationary positions. It would take weeks to get them realigned.

  U.S. television stations were down to nine, from nearly 1,000 a few weeks earlier, and much of the news had to be delivered by mail in DVD form to local stations for airing. Stations like CBS had their programing reduced to two to three hours per day in the hours they could cover their programs nationwide. CNN, out of Atlanta, finally gave up and closed their doors. So did 90 percent of the other news channels.

  The paucity of news coverage gave the president’s men time to act without being noticed. Only the FBI watched what was happening and kept files on seventeen of the president’s most active men.

  Joe Everson was the man in charge of collecting information. His team of 300 agents went to ground as soon as one of their own met a violent death in Los Angeles. There wasn’t much footage surrounding the killing, except that one older street camera recorded a dark SUV leaving the crime scene seconds after the shooting. The decipherers studying the footage could see four men in the SUV and, one of their faces, although extremely blurry, looked American; an NSA operative to be exact.

  Joe Everson was asked to fly to Canada where he met with his old friend, and a plan was formed to get Ryan Richmond
out of Cuba. Joe also viewed the first draft of the “60 Minutes” presentation due to be aired on CBS in two weeks; Joe Downs had worked on it for ten days straight in Las Vegas. For some reason, Joe Downs, who had worked for NBS was now with CBS, which was the better station for airing the documentary.

  The FBI agent was shocked at what had been collected by Ryan and Astermine over the last couple of years. Consumed with rage, his complexion turned noticeably darker, and he nearly broke the arm of the chair he was sitting in while viewing what the president’s men had been up to since the elections.

  Joe Downs had carefully pieced together everything Ryan and the ex-president had given him, while working for the two different media stations, to show a timeline of the actions the president was taking against American citizens. The program started days before the new leader was sworn in, and then moved to a couple of days after being sworn in and taking the oath of office. The new president was seen attending frequent dinner parties with certain members of specific government agencies, as well as with certain members of Congress. The footage documented abhorrent behavior that would anger every viewer watching it. Richard Nixon had nothing on this guy.

  All the president’s men could be seen illegally enacting orders given from the man himself, although nobody was actually harmed during the time. The president relied on the term “for the benefit of the country and its people” about as often as he said it was important for his own “popularity, and bank account.”

  The 30-minute exposé was ready for the media to air it. Because the satellites were not in a position to relay “60 Minutes” nationwide in its normal Sunday evening time slot, backup plans were devised to make sure the show would be seen by the people all over the country. The ex-president worked hard to make sure that the truth came out. He had his own name to clear.

  On his travels, and before he headed to Cuba, he found that much of the world was in disarray. Without modern surveillance systems, most countries couldn’t control rising crime.