The Day the War Struck Home

Astronaut Peter Caudell comes home to find his daughter struggling with a school assignment. She's to write an essay for Memorial Day, and her teacher has suggeted astronauts -- but she wants to write about combat heroes, nto REMF's. So Peter suggests the NASA Massacre, and relates his own experiences.

It's the summer of 1994 and the Energy Wars are raging in the Middle East. On the home front, it's the Summer of Fear, a season of continual terrorist attacks. All eyes are upon Kennedy Space Center,w here a space Shuttle is launching for a critical on-orbit repair of a spy satellite. When it goes up without a hitch, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

However, the intelligence proves incomplete -- the actual target is Johnson Space Center. Suddenly Peter is in the fight of his life, as the presence of multiple police agencies further complicates matters.

It's a story of courage, patriotism, and self-sacrifice that proves a much greater lesson than the teacher imagined.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

Oiriginally published in Liberty Island Magazine as an Honorable Mention for the Memorial Day contest.