Acid Sky (2 page)

‘Yes. Clare Foster – second one in the list.’

There was silence as he read her profile, and let the pages fall. ‘Young, bright, talented, and not even close to bad-looking. So why her, and why not the first candidate, Jefferson? His subject scores are better, and he’s further into his training.’

‘Foster’s not as good academically, but she’s a better pilot. She flies instinctively and well, and her instructor rates her very highly – look at his assessment.’ He paused for a moment, considering his next words. ‘Besides, I thought you liked your pilots young and attractive.’

There was dead silence in the room.

‘Get out.’

‘Can I take it that you’ve endorsed my recommendation?’

The older man picked up the file and threw it across the desk. ‘I don’t care who you choose. Just get them here.’

The younger man allowed himself a trace of a smile. ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied. He picked up the file and left the room. The older man watched him go, then looked back down into the depth of his mug. He blinked several times and wiped a trace of moisture from his right eye.

On the desk console, an alert was blinking for his attention. He was needed in the control room. He rose as well and left the room, leaving the coffee, untouched, sitting on his desk.

PART I

Dusk over Venus

CHAPTER ONE

‘Skydive One Four Seven, on internal power, ready for pushback.’

Second Lieutenant Clare Foster’s voice was calm in the dim lighting of the spaceplane cockpit. The heat and glare of the Sun had faded some minutes ago, leaving them in the cool darkness of a star-filled sky, five hundred kilometres above the night side of Venus. Ahead of her, the enormous mass of the deep space tug
Denver
loomed dark against the stars, its huge fuel tanks just dimly guessed shapes stretching away into the distance.

No matter how many times you saw them, Clare thought, you could never fail to be awed by the size of these leviathans, or the incredible distances that they covered. The
Denver
had arrived here yesterday all the way from Earth after a twelve-week voyage. In four days’ time, it would move on again, this time on a five-month journey taking passengers and supplies bound for the dusty plains of Mars. There it would refuel in orbit before returning to Earth, and another mission cycle. Like sailing ships dependent on trade winds, the space tugs of the United States Astronautics Corps followed the shifting alignments of the inner planets, and the careful planners back on Earth had calculated their movements for years ahead, to make the most of transfer opportunities and maximise the cargo that could be carried.

It was the second week in December, 2141, and a busy period in the skies over Venus. Mars was in an unfavourable position for direct flights from Earth, and several vessels were making the journey via Venus, taking the opportunity to exchange passengers and cargo during the brief stopover. It was also a time when incoming flights could leave for Earth almost immediately, instead of having to wait many months for a suitable launch window. As a result, there were several tugs already in orbit awaiting transfers, with more due to arrive in the next few days.

Clare had only arrived here herself two days ago on board the tug
Indianapolis
, as a newly qualified lieutenant on her first flight from Earth. The spaceplane she was piloting today was one of a fleet of four Olympus 240s that moved crew and supplies around in orbit, and worked the shuttle run between the orbiting tugs and Venus.

She risked a brief glance at the night side of the planet, just visible outside her window. The intense white glare of the clouds had faded to blackness as they rounded the night side, but she could still make out the planet alongside them, a huge black curve blotting out the stars. If this had been Earth, there would have been the lights of cities peeping out through breaks in the clouds, but here the clouds covered the entire planet in a featureless cloak that revealed nothing of the planet below.

‘Skydive One Four Seven, all umbilicals disconnected, clear for pushback.’
The voice of the tug’s pilot in her headset broke into her thoughts.

‘Clear pushback, One Four Seven.’ Clare acknowledged the clearance and looked across to the commander in the left-hand seat.

‘Proceed.’ Captain Alan Hartigan nodded to Clare, and she reached up to the overhead panel and flicked a switch underneath a safety cover. The spaceplane shuddered as the docking clamps unlocked, and the craft moved smoothly back from the tug, propelled by four hydraulic rams.

The huge mass of the space tug slipped away from them, its navigation lights winking in the darkness. One of its thrusters flared briefly, correcting its attitude. On Clare’s navigation display, the distance between them widened – twenty metres, thirty, forty.

Clare moved a small handle on the centre console and the nose section of the spaceplane moved upwards and closed over the docking adapter. She watched as a cluster of red LEDs flashed, and then glowed green as the nose section latched shut. A further movement of the handle, and the heat-resistant visor moved slowly up to cover the main cockpit windows, leaving only a narrow slit to see forwards.

‘Skydive One Four Seven, you are clear of the docking area and looking good. Clear to start thrusters and move away. Contact Carrier Two Eight Langley Approach on X band. Have a good day.’

‘Clear for thrusters, contact Langley Approach, Skydive One Four Seven, thanks guys.’ Clare read back the clearance and wrapped her right hand round the sidestick controller. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

This is it. Don’t screw it up.

The trouble was, there were so many ways she could screw it up, and all the time Hartigan would be watching her, assessing her, noting down her performance for later. This was the first time for her as first officer flying a fully loaded spaceplane down from orbit, and if she made any serious error, it would be back to training in the simulator for another six months.

Behind her and Hartigan were their eight passengers, several tonnes of freight, and a hundred and twenty tonnes of super-cold liquid propellants, and it was her job to pilot what was effectively a huge flying bomb, down through one of the most unforgiving orbital descents in the Solar System.

‘I’ll do the passenger briefing.’ Hartigan’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and Clare nodded. It would give her a little more time to get herself ready for the descent.

Hartigan turned slightly in his seat so that he could look back to the passengers behind him in the spaceplane’s cramped cabin. They were all wearing the same bright orange crew escape suits that he and Clare had on for the descent, and they looked back at him through their open helmet faceplates.

He flicked a switch, and his voice came over the intercom: ‘Okay guys, Lieutenant Foster’s making the final preparations now for our descent. We’ve a few minutes to go before we fire the engines for the re-entry burn, so I’ll just remind you what’s going to be happening, before it gets busy up here.

‘The re-entry burn takes just over three minutes, and that will slow us down so that we start coming down from our present orbit. Right after the burn, we’re going to turn the ship over so that we face forwards for re-entry, rather than backwards as we are now. Shortly after that we’ll make our contact with the atmosphere, and then it’s a few minutes of re-entry before we’re flying in the atmosphere. We should be landing in about thirty-five minutes from now. Any questions, or concerns?’

The passengers all shook their heads. Hartigan waited for a moment to be sure, but he knew from the passenger list that they had all done this before.

‘Okay, let’s have those faceplates down and locked, and make sure your seat straps are tight; the latest high-level weather report suggests that it might be a little bumpy on the way down.’

He flipped the intercom switch back and spoke to Clare. ‘Ready for the descent checklist?’

‘Sure.’

Hartigan leaned forward and punched up the checklist items on one of the lower displays. ‘Nosecone.’

‘Up and locked.’

‘Visor.’

‘Up.’

‘Air supply.’

‘Both packs on automatic.’

‘Autopilot mode.’

‘Re-entry set and – armed.’ Clare pressed a button on the glareshield panel in the centre of the instrument panel. Both of them knew the checklist items by heart for every phase of the spaceplane’s flight, but the drill of checking against the list was ingrained just as deeply.

She didn’t miss anything, Hartigan thought as they finished the list. He believed in keeping quiet if everything was going well, and he sat back and watched her careful efficiency as she turned the spaceplane slightly to better align it for the re-entry burn. His gaze flicked briefly to her face, and the narrow line of her jaw. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, sitting tall in her flight seat, her ash blond hair tied back from her face in the bulky helmet.

If she’s nervous, he thought, she isn’t showing it. But that was typical of her approach to new challenges. Hartigan had been her commanding officer for the last year of her training, and had overseen much of it himself. For a twenty-four-year-old second lieutenant in the Astronautics Corps she was making excellent progress; she had been earmarked for rapid promotion if she continued to make the grade.

As if aware of the scrutiny, she turned her head and her dark blue eyes looked back at him.

‘Ready for descent.’

As if on cue, the spaceplane’s flight computer spoke for the first time:

‘De-orbit burn in sixty seconds. Decide now.’

‘Proceed. Take us down.’

‘Yes sir.’ She pressed the glowing
ARM
button on the engine control panel, locking in the ignition sequence to the autopilot. Far behind them, she heard valves opening, and faint creaks came through the spaceplane’s structure as the propellant tanks pressurised.

Clare lowered and locked her helmet faceplate and pulled her seat straps tight over her shoulders. From the corner of her vision, she could see Hartigan doing the same. His hand reached out to rest on the autopilot disconnect button on his sidestick, which would cancel the ignition sequence if it was pressed before the engines ignited. Once the engines had started their predetermined burn, it took two separate actions to stop them, as a safety precaution against accidental shutdown.

From here on in, the ignition and de-orbit burn were automatic. The flight computer continuously calculated their position and velocity until the precise moment when the engines needed to fire to reduce their orbital speed and start them on the fiery road down to the planet. Clare just had to monitor the sequence, making sure that the ship followed both the computer-generated flight plan and the independent calculations that she and Hartigan had made before they boarded, as a safety check. They were there in front of her, written on an index card clipped to the instrument console. If she had to take full manual control for any reason, those scribbled numbers would enable her to steer the ship safely through the re-entry corridor and somewhere near to their target.

‘Main engine ignition in ten seconds.’

Hartigan thumbed the intercom to warn the passengers. ‘Firing main engines in – six seconds.’

A distant whine came through the structure of the spaceplane as the turbopumps spooled up, forcing fuel and liquid oxygen into the combustion chambers. Clare leaned back in her seat, and a moment later the four engines fired with a deep rumble, shoving them back into their seats with the deceleration from two million newtons of thrust.

‘Ignition okay, four good engines,’ Clare reported, watching the engine situation display. Thrust was even, chamber pressures were stable, and the propellant flow was steady at thirty-three tonnes a minute of ultra-cold liquid propane and liquid oxygen.

The navigation displays changed to show the spaceplane’s declining velocity against the downward magenta curve of its planned flight path. The engines were firing against the direction of their path, slowing the ship down and allowing gravity to pull it towards the planet. The deceleration increased steadily as the fuel tanks emptied and the ship grew lighter.

‘Two minutes to run,’ Clare reported, ‘Descent profile nominal.’

The spaceplane swayed as the engines’ thrust vector was briefly directed off the centreline, to hold the correct attitude. The swaying increased, becoming more noticeable as the fuel tanks emptied and the ship’s centre of mass altered.

‘One minute to run.’

It was getting harder to breathe now as the deceleration mounted, rising to two gees, and still it climbed. Clare moved her hand to the position where she could shut the engines down if they overran, and watched the seconds count down to cutoff.

As the figures hit zero, the thunder of the engines stopped, and the sensation of crushing weight lifted from Clare’s chest. A long, declining wail came faintly through the craft as the turbopumps spun down.

‘Main engine cutoff,’ Clare reported, her voice sounding strange in the sudden quiet.