Red Hope: An Adventure Thriller - Book 1 by John Dreese

Author:John Dreese [Dreese, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JOHN DREESE
Published: 2014-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

“Can you hear me?” said the shaking image of Chris Tankovitch on an iPad. It was sitting on a table in the Little Turtle as it raced toward Mars. The astronauts were gathered in front of the screen.

“Yes, we can hear you fine. The picture’s kind of blurry right now though,” responded Adam. He would have to wait another ninety seconds to get a reply.

“Okay, hang on. We’re making some adjustments,” said Chris to the iPad. He walked out of frame for a while and came back holding a Coke. He started tinkering with something near his camera lens. Suddenly, he was in sharp focus.

Chris looked into the camera and said, “Okay, this time delay is going to make this tricky, so I’m going to talk for two minutes, and then you can talk for two minutes.”

Chris reached down to his table and pulled a photograph out of an envelope.

“Guys, to the left of your upper escape hatch door is a locked pink cabinet. I’m going to unlock it right now, remotely.”

The astronauts could see Chris typing a code onto a console on his desk. They heard an audible clunk sound come from the command room above them. Keller scurried up the ladder and came back down with a big brown envelope. He opened it and pulled out the stack of photos.

Chris continued with his two minute talk, “You’ve seen most of these already, but you haven’t seen Photo D. That is the most important image, and it will guide this entire mission. This is the photo I showed the president last year that caused this entire Mars mission to become a reality. What you’re looking at is a fossilized hand holding what we believe to be a granite slab the size of a credit card. On that slab are some symbols. A vertical line followed by a circle and then another vertical line.”

Keller laughed under his breath and said, “So their ‘LOL’ took two million years to get to us? Okay, I guess my cellphone plan isn’t the worst after all.”

Chris didn’t hear Keller due to the time delay, so he continued right along. “At first, we believed these to be a number sequence, but note that there is a third vertical line inside the circle. And if you look closer, there is a small horizontal mark on that vertical line inside the zero. It looks like a tall cross. I’ll give you a minute to soak these in.”

The astronauts stared intently at the photo.

“It’s Calvary,” whispered Adam.

Keller looked confused and asked, “You mean… like with the bugles and the horses?”

“No, no, no; you’re thinking of the cavalry. I’m talking about Calvary. Didn’t you guys ever go to Sunday school?”

They stared blankly at Adam.

Adam didn’t want to trot out his conservative Southern upbringing, but he decided now was a good time to explain.

“Okay, so there’s a hill outside of Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. It’s called Calvary. There were two other guys crucified next to him. One on his left and one on his right.

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