Rogue Command (The Kalahari Series) Read Online Free PDF

reasons.
    Alex Elston was quite different: Science Officer Extraordinaire , as he was affectionately known – a title awarded by Duval himself after Alex had singlehandedly saved their lives and their mission to the Martian moon Phobos, two years earlier. Elston had jettisoned a heavy ballast tank in the nick of time and subsequently calculated the required orbital escape velocity on a hand-held calculator after a combination of electrical power and partial thrust failure had left the survey vessel Minerva spiralling towards the planetoid’s surface. His sharp intellect and wit was acknowledged by all, especially after his latest health check found that his Mensa rating was the highest in the fleet. For any who dared challenge Elston’s mental supremacy, however, there was a sharp edge to his character. Most of the crew just never went there. Despite this, he had an easy sense of humour and was well liked.
    There was a requirement to be well liked on this assignment. It was official. Personality screening for the furthest manned undertaking to date – a twenty-month mission code named “Operation Saviour” – took three months in itself. Everybody had to get along; there could be no behavioural disorders. Big on brains, big on experience and big on affability – that was the hallmark of this crew. Ten months in each direction for twelve men and five women, all cramped into accommodation the size of a three-storey, 400 square metre house, and a predicted radiation dose for the two-man Lander crew that would shorten their life expectancy by a decade, meant that the crew of Hera had received a heroes’ send-off from Cape Canaveral. Now their time had come.
    Of the four Kalahari crystals that had been recovered early in the summer of 2050, the largest, used in the Nogent-sur-Seine plant in France, continued to generate electricity at close to optimum output, but the remaining three – the ‘Mars’ crystals – had again lost output after only a few years in operation and for no apparent reason. An expected five to seven years’ potential at maximum output was now predicted as only four to five. Within a few short years of salvation, and for a second time, humankind was running up an energy debt it could not hope to repay.
    Since their installation, and coordinated by the ISSF, the very best of the world’s scientific community had sought an insight into the unique chemical structure of the Kalahari crystals – and with some measure of success. Subsequently, in 2051, the Earth orbital Hubble 5 telescope had been fitted with a modified spectrometer designed to sense the occurrence of this precise molecular composition anywhere in near space. For a year it had probed every corner of the solar system. Eventually, two locations were identified and their potential confirmed by spectral line analysis. The first was a site on the Martian moon Phobos, a barren, porous, crater-riddled rock believed to be a captured asteroid with its origins in another galaxy. The second was on the geologically most active object in our system, Io – innermost of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter.
    “You confirm that one hour in every two would be safe – unless, of course, we leave earlier?” Commander Duval ventured with a Gallic gesture.
    “Affirmative, and that’s erring on the safe side,” replied Alex.
    Duval turned. He looked across the bridge and nodded. “Let’s see what we’ve got. Open the shutters please.”
    Alex was first to the window on this new world. He smiled in anticipation; nothing had been this close to Io, not even a probe. “This should be interesting,” he speculated, as the thick silvery-black shutters, that resembled Venetian blinds, motored upwards and out of sight. The bridge officers all looked at him as if to say the same thing: there he goes . . . the undisputed master of understatement!
    At 1.7 metres, stocky, fair skinned and with ginger hair Alex Elston hailed from Lancashire. There