Awake
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Here's story 285, of 288 so far.
Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.
Awake
The younger man looked nervous, and his supervisor was only marginally less so.
Their visitor passes read ESA, and bore a small holographic mark which they had both assumed was standard, but it had drawn expressions of quickly-concealed surprise from more than one person they’d passed on their way from the building’s grand entrance to the office on the sixth floor. There was no plaque on the door, but there had been two secretaries and three armed guards in the outer chamber.
The office was dark, despite the brilliant blue sky over Brussels on this Tuesday morning. Blinds were drawn halfway down, and all the furniture was dark wood and burgundy leather. The enormous desk held surprisingly few items, the most noticeable of which was a bronze ornament of antique scales, perpetually slightly out of balance.
The Director sat patiently behind her desk, exchanging the briefest glance with the thoughtful-looking military general who stood over by the nearest window. The two scientists shifted uncomfortably in their chairs on the other side of the desk. It was the general who spoke first.
“Please go ahead, Dr. Maes.”
The elder of the two seated men cleared his throat, not quite managing to dispel the impression of being a misbehaving boy sent to the headmaster’s office. He lifted a binder from his lap, opened it, and sat it on the desk. It contained an unlaminated chart with many arcs, some overlapping and some running roughly parallel, with no apparent order. Each had a dot at some point along its curve. One was highlighted within large brackets.
“This is object 29470 1998 DEB,” he said. “What you’re looking at here—”
“Are orbital trajectories above this planet,” the Director interrupted smoothly. “The identifier is a debris classification, first assigned in the year 1998.”
Maes blinked several times, and cleared his throat again. “Ah, yes. Yes, exactly. My apologies.”
“Please continue,” the Director replied.
“Of course,” Maes replied, clearly scrambling to jump ahead past an explanation he’d been expecting to deliver to a less-informed person. “We track a large number of objects above the Earth, in cooperation with various foreign organisations. Almost two hundred thousand, with more each year. Dr. Kerr is responsible for the category subgroup which includes 29470.”
Maes nodded to his younger colleague, and the other man — who genuinely looked barely over twenty-five years old — actually gave a small smile. It came out looking more like a wince. The Director exchanged another brief look with the general, seeing the amusement in his eyes.
“And something about this object has brought you here today,” the Director said. It wasn’t a question, but both scientists nodded nonetheless.
“We’ve been testing a set of promising new technologies for Earth-to-orbit communication,” the younger man said. “Increasing bandwidth and improving signal targeting, for a variety of applications.”
“Primarily including private spaceflight ventures,” the general added, and Kerr looked mildly embarrassed.
“Well, yes,” he replied. “In any case, we use a laser array, very high intensity, all constantly micro-adjusted by a control system. We were conducting initial tests to calibrate, and we were in the region of 29470. We found something… unusual.”
The Director folded her hands atop the desk, and looked from Kerr to Maes.
“There was a lensing effect,” Maes said quickly, sensing the need to get to the point. “It’s where—”
“The path taken by light is perturbed by the gravitational force of an intervening mass, as predicted by general relativity,” the Director said.
Maes and Kerr were both utterly silent. At length, Maes simply nodded. The next to speak was Kerr, to the Director’s mild surprise.
“The object has nowhere near the mass required to cause lensing. And it’s also intermittent, and not correlated with its trajectory.”
The Director nodded. In her peripheral vision, she saw that the general had turned to face the window, looking downwards past the lowered edge of the blinds and towards the street below.
“While interesting, you would not be in this office if that were all you had to tell me,” the Director said, her voice quieter now. Maes still looked flustered, so she turned once again to Kerr. The younger man nodded.
“We noticed the lensing by chance, two weeks ago. We’ve been tracking it closely since then. Its orbit has shifted during that time, but it stabilised three days ago. Our last verification was just before we arrived here today.”
“23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds.”
The sudden sound of the general’s voice startled both of the scientists, but after a moment, Kerr nodded once more.
“That’s right. One sidereal day; its new orbital period. We tracked the precise point that it entered its current band. I don’t think anyone else has noticed yet, but they eventually will.”
“When does it return to its current orbital origin point, and where?” the Director asked, and now Maes once again cleared his throat.
“At just after 20:08 Central European Time, it returns to a point over Geneva. I… imagine that you already understand the implications.”
The Director gave a barely-detectable nod. “The object has entered a geosynchronous orbit, and remains there.”
“And… just to be clear, madam, when a mass orbiting a planet is—”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” the Director said. “Your report is noted and appreciated. If you’ll wait outside, I’ll speak to the general privately.”
Maes and Kerr exchanged looks of confusion, then the office door opened, revealing one of the guards. Both men stood up slowly, and Maes gestured for Kerr to precede him.
“Thank you for your time,” Maes said, and the Director nodded. Ten seconds later, the door closed again behind them. The general crossed the handful of steps from the window to stand behind the now vacant pair of chairs. The Director remained seated.
“We noticed it twenty years ago,” the general said. “You know what those two were getting at.”
“It’s performing stationkeeping,” the Director said. “Gravitationally.”
The general nodded. “Clever trick for a piece of debris.”
“Ensure they’re debriefed, and get signatures,” she replied. “You know our next steps as well as I do.”
“So you’re going to, what is it you say up here? Apply a grading?”
The Director smiled, but it was perfunctory and a little cold. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Raymond. And yes,” she added, reaching out to close the binder that Maes had left behind on the desk, “as of this moment, it’s CHALLENGE-3.”
“The pleasure is mine, as ever,” the general replied, then he walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out, letting it close behind him.
The Director stood, and crossed to a small metal hatch set into the wall. It bore a slightly protruding panel an inch long and half an inch wide. She pressed her right thumb to it.
“Janne Wuyts”, she said.
There was a small beep, and a green indicator light beside the panel illuminated, accompanied by a synthesised voice. “Accès accordé.”
The hatch cover swung softly outwards, and she reached into the space beyond, taking a phone from its cradle within. She tapped on its screen for a few seconds, then held it to her ear. The call connected immediately while she walked back over to her desk.
“Der Bundespräsident, bitte,” she said. “Ja. Vielen danke.”
No more than three seconds passed before she heard a male voice on the line.
“Madam Direktor?”
She sat down in her chair, her gaze fixed on the wooden surface of the desk. When she spoke, her voice was solemn and not entirely steady.
“KNIGHT is awake.”
JINX
KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…
Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.
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