My grandfather was a combat pilot. Even though he always felt distant I liked him. When I grew older, I realized that he was always aware, always looking for any signs of danger. Shell shock, PTSD, it has many names. My mother told me that he didn’t use to be like that, that he changed when he came back from Vietnam.
My grandpa's profession was likely the reason why I was obsessed with space, astronauts, planes and pilots. We used to talk about it when we were together. He was a really skilled and high-ranking officer in the army, and he knew some people, even a couple of really well-known astronauts. When I once asked him, if he met anyone who went to the moon, he simply replied:
"Don't ever talk to me about the Moon, boy. It's a dark and evil place."
He died back in 2004 from natural causes.
About two months ago, we decided to renovate my grandparents’ old house. While clearing out the attic. I found an old metallic box. In the box, there was a number of things which as I assumed belonged to my grandfather. There was a military medal, a stack of papers and an old picture of my grandfather and two other men I didn’t recognize. My grandpa looked around 40, so I assume that the picture was taken in the 70s. All of them were wearing space suits, and the scene was a typical backdrop used by NASA, but the logo was missing. Only a blank monochrome background. The mission patch was titled Dawnbreaker. I didn’t understand anything. My grandfather was an astronaut? Why did he never tell anyone about this? Dawnbreaker? I never heard about such mission. It must have been covered up really well. But why?
I found the answers in the papers on the bottom of the box. I’ll rewrite the literal contents below, but I warn you that many people might find it very disturbing.
My dear family,
If you ever find this, I must confess something. In 1972, I wasn’t in Vietnam. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but if you have found this, it probably doesn’t matter anymore. Back in 1965, me and a handful of other pilots were selected for a non-public team of astronauts, who would participate in covert missions in space for our government. We wouldn't get the glory and fame of regular astronauts, but our country needed us, and so we were there.
In early 1972, we were told that for an unspecified period of time, our country had a secret satellite orbiting the Moon. They never told us what it did, or why it was there, just that a few weeks prior, it had crashed to the surface on the dark side of the Moon for unknown reasons and that the data it carried was crucial. The government needed to recover it, and thus was sending me and two other astronauts to reclaim the satellite’s memory module. The equipment of the planned Apollo 18 mission was essentially transferred to us. From what we'd been told, the Apollo team was furious. They had a reason to be after all. It seemed that whoever we've been under was much more powerful than NASA. The whole mission was top-secret obviously.
I was officially deployed to Vietnam, while in reality we underwent extensive training for the mission. After a couple of months, we found ourselves standing on the launch pad in front of this behemoth of a rocket, that would take us to the Moon. I was the mission commander, while Lt. Carver was the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) pilot and Lt. Ackermann was the Command/Service Module (CSM) pilot.
The flight to the Moon took roughly three days. After arriving, we made a couple of orbits around it. Each time we flew behind the horizon created by the Moon itself, I felt a bit of helplessness when our communication to the whole world went dark, as the signal got obscured by the spherical mass of rock and dust below us. The dark side of the Moon was nothing like the light side, which we see on almost a daily basis. Instead of smooth grey fields and tranquil lunar seas, it was completely covered in dark, deep craters and holes, like as if it was being slowly eaten away by the universe itself. It was finally decided to begin the descent to the surface. Me and Carver exchanged wishes of good luck with Ackermann and in the Lunar Module named Charon we separated from the CSM named Trinity.
