Free Radical (52 page)

A display screen flickered to life on the console in front of him. A message appeared.

He turned to see that the bridge access elevator was still working, and the car had arrived. The door slid open to reveal the trashed interior that had been scavenged for parts.

"What is happening?" he demanded.

"What?"

He crawled in slow, labored movements over to the elevator with his right arm dragging uselessly beneath him. Once he'd tossed himself inside, the door slid closed and he began his descent.

The control room had slowly cleared out over the last twenty minutes. Rebecca sat in silence, watching the incoming signal feed in idle disinterest. She wasn't expecting Hacker to make contact, but it was her job to to sit here in case he did.

Their best guess was that a number of explosions - at least two, possibly more - had occurred several minutes earlier. The station was quickly hemorrhaging atmosphere, and would probably be uninhabitable within a few hours. However, the major problem was that the core was overheating, and if it wasn't shut down soon it would suffer a small-scale nuclear explosion.

"Ms. Lansing?," it was one of The Director's assistants, standing in the door to the conference room. It looked like just about everyone involved with the operation had gathered in there.

"Yes?," she sighed.

"The Director says you're done for now. You should probably just come in here."

The conference room had become a theater. The chairs had been un-stacked and were now arranged in groups facing the wall of display screens.

Everyone watched the screens in silence. The Director stood, stone-faced, at the front of the room with his back to the group. Several of the screens were eclipsed by his bulky frame.

Rebecca pulled another chair from the stack and found an open spot towards the back of the room.

The wall of monitors seemed to be watching about ten different news stations. There was an audio track playing, but she couldn't figure out which particular screen it belonged to. A woman's voice was going on about a shuttle launch of some sort.

Finally one of the screens cut to an external view of Citadel. The screen had the rough, blurry appearance of a digitally-enhanced telescopic view. It showed a small white dot emerge from the body of the station. The view zoomed in on the dot and it became possible to recognize the distinct outline of a TriOptimum orbital shuttle.

Everyone knew what this meant. The reactor core was overheating, and the only person who could do anything about it had just left the station. This was exactly the opposite of what TriOp had wanted. They had hoped that the station would survive and that Hacker would be killed. Now he was not only alive, but in front of millions of eyes on every network licensed to carry news. They couldn't just blow up the shuttle with the world watching, which meant that they would have to get him down safely. Rebecca tried not to smile.

The Director silenced the newscast and fired off a single query, "How?"

A voice from the front of the room jumped in, "He must know how to pilot a shuttle. There is no other way he could have made it out of there. In order to launch, he would have to prep the shuttle, open the bay doors, and then fly it out. Those birds are complex. You can't just jump in and start flying."

A voice came from off to her left, a voice she recognized as belonging to Morris Brocail, "The shuttles are usually programmed for launch. Theoretically, Shodan could have gotten him out."

Rebecca shot back, "But why would she do that?"

Morris shrugged, "I said theoretically."

There was a long moment of silence as The Director stood facing the wall of information in silence.

Rebecca saw that the footage of the launch was being shown again. Obviously this had all happened a while ago, and the media had simply been showing the footage every minute or so since then.

Finally The Director spoke, "Get him down here. Make sure he lands at the nearest airport with available orbital facilities. Seal off the entire facility..."

"Sir, we will never get an entire airport to ourselves. I can almost guarantee it. Not on such short notice. The airlines will respond with their lawyers and keep us out until this whole thing is over." The comment came from one of the cronies he'd brought with him. They seemed to be the only ones that had the nerve to tell The Director something he didn't want to hear.

The Director still had his back to the group, and it was impossible to read his face. When he responded, his voice sounded calm, "What about just one wing? If we let them know we could have a severe security threat on our hands, could we get that much of the facility sealed off?"

"Yeah. We're talking GALF, right? That would be the closest airport. The western leg of the place is reserved for a bunch of private jets and a few small-time carriers. I bet we can kick them out for a day or so, I just need to make a few phone calls."

The Director nodded, "Good. Get it. Seal it off, and I mean complete containment. Replace the security team with our guys, and kick out all of the airport employees. No media. Make up some excuse to give us license to shoot on sight."

"Wait. You want our guys armed with 
lethal
 weaponry?"

"Absolutely."

The assistant whistled, "That will be tough. It is just not easy to get that many guns into an airport legally." He sighed, and tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling. He thought for several moments before responding, "You know, if airport security has rights to lethal weapons, then we can get the same rights. Totally do-able."

The Director turned from the screens and faced the group, "Fine. Get together a team that can keep their mouths shut, and get them into place. We seal off that wing, bring that shuttle in, and we deal with him once we have him unloaded. It looks like we are going to have 100% containment, so I think its time we let our PR guys loose. Let's feed this media dog so it stops biting us in the ass."

"Okay, so who will be in command on-site at the airport?"

The Director pointed at his chest with his thumb, "Me. Also, we'll be taking Lansing with us."

Rebecca was still trying to deal with The Director's thinly veiled orders to have Hacker murdered. She had guessed at what his plan would be, but was shocked to hear him say it aloud. Now he was going to bring her along to witness the whole thing. She knew better than to try to argue. Besides, she wanted to be there. She wanted to see how the story ended, and she knew she wasn't going to find out anything from watching the news.

Someone in the group gasped, and suddenly all attention was back on the wall of monitors. The loop of speculation and shuttle launch footage had ended as new developments emerged.

Nuclear explosions in space were dull in comparison to the Earth-bound version of the same phenomenon. Without an atmosphere to create the infamous mushroom cloud, and without a surrounding landscape to obliterate, it lacked the visual punch that everyone had been expecting. Citadel was vaporized instantly. Within two frames of video it was reduced to a cloud of tiny radioactive particles that were rapidly speeding away from one another, spreading the invisible remains out into deep space. The personnel in the control room were visibly shocked. Everyone had imagined that Citadel would perish in a glorious, roaring fireball fitting to its size and monetary value. Instead, they had footage of what looked like lousy special effects. The station was there, and then there was a white flash followed by a view of empty space. The station had been obliterated in absolute silence, without any pyrotechnics at all.

It was disconcerting to think that something so large, crafted entirely by human hands, could be so completely unmade in the space of a millisecond or so. Once it was gone, there was no visible debris, nothing to indicate the station had even existed. Even cities destroyed by nukes had the foundations of their buildings to serve as markers of what had once stood there.

One by one everyone slipped out, leaving The Director alone with the newscasts.

The rain, which had been splattering Uppernet all morning, finally took a break. For a moment it even looked as though the sun might stick around.

The sun reached down and warmed the small park area in front of the TriOptimum Corporation headquarters. Over the past few days it had become a sort of trailer park for a multitude of reporters and their vans, turning the area into a forest of broadcast antennae. The grassy square was covered with a mild overgrowth of cables for the video cameras and broadcast equipment. Despite the rain and lack of anything substantive to report, the reporters were glad to be here, because this was a choice assignment. The videos they had taken of themselves over the past few days would be played for years to come, and those who brought this story to the world were sure to see a positive affect on their careers.

The security forces had held the sea of journalists at bay with grim determination and lots of reminders that they were just doing their job. Their stunners hadn't been drawn yet, but the crowd was closing in and it was obvious that TriOp needed to say something soon to avoid an exchange that could only make them look worse.

The doors parted and a TriOptimum spokesman emerged from the building. The line of security forces parted, gratefully yielding their position as the first line of defense against the hoard of journalists who were waving their microphones in the air like the pitchforks of an angry mob.

This was a man designed to address the public. He had a wholesome, caring appearance that would instill trust in the most skeptical opponent. His age was ideal for delivering just this sort of message. He wasn't so old that he would turn off the average viewer, but he was old enough to convey a sense of wisdom and grandfatherly charm. He was dressed in a somber black suit, and his face was turned down in a look that was full of both sorrow and determination. His face was noble, chiseled with lines of care and seriousness, and topped with a perfect, silver hairline. He stood at the top of the steps and waited until the crowd had settled and everyone had their broadcast equipment in place.

Once the group fell silent, he looked into the wall of cameras and delivered his heartfelt speech, "Today, TriOptimum Corporation, it's families, and indeed the entire world suffered a terrible blow with the destruction of the Citadel Orbital Station. This is a shocking and horrible tragedy for all of us to bear, but we will bear it together."

"I wish to say to the families that have lost loved ones, that your loss is our loss. When the citizens of Citadel perished, we lost our friends and coworkers, our trusted partners, and some of the finest scientific and business minds the world has known. This is not just a loss for TriOptimum and our families, but for humanity itself.

He paused, looking upward as if searching for the strength to continue. After a calculated pause, his eyes met the crowd again and he continued with renewed strength, "Despite the terrible financial loss that the company has suffered, we are bound by conscience to stand by those who have shared our loss. That is why TriOptimum has dedicated a generous sum of money to start a support fund for those who lost loved ones on our beloved station. I hope 
everyone
 will join us in giving generously to these families in this, their time of greatest need.

"However, we must not let our grief deter us from our duty to find out what went so terribly wrong. We will be conducting an intense investigation, and we intend to share all of our findings with the public. We promise that everything that 
can
 be known, 
will
 be known. We will not rest until we have discovered all we can about what has taken so much from all of us. However, a great truth is that information is often listed among the casualties in times of disaster. With the destruction of the station, the truth of what happened may never be known. Like Amelia Earhart, or the Jamestown colony, some disasters are forever hidden in mystery, their secrets buried along with the brave souls who were taken from us in so untimely a manner.

"We will never forget this day, or this loss that happened so many miles from the surface of our Earth. We believe that by standing together, we will face this challenge. Let us turn our hearts from the sorrow of the past to the hope of the future, and let us stand together, that we may stand strong. I thank you."

The spokesman turned on his heel as the barrage of questions began. The line of security forces parted, and he disappeared into the building.

The rain, invigorated by the short rest, began again in earnest.

The operation to bring Hacker down safely was more difficult than they had expected. The shuttle hadn't been refueled since its journey up to the station weeks earlier, and had only the bare minimum supply of fuel required for a safe flight home. The return trip needed to be as fuel-efficient as possible, not allowing for any errors in piloting. This was made harder by the fact that Hacker had absolutely no idea how to fly the thing.

A doctor was brought in to talk him through the process of treating some of his more serious wounds using the shuttle's emergency medical supplies, and a group of pilots were called up to help him put the shuttle into a safe re-entry trajectory.

The Hacker then raided the supply of in-flight snacks and took a short nap while everyone on the ground worked out what to do next.

The main problem for the ground crew was that no amount of coaching from a pilot could get Hacker to fly the shuttle with the precision required to bring it in safely. Shuttles normally required a crew of three highly trained pilots, although it was possible to do the job with only two if they had enough experience.

Eventually the ground crew worked out a system with Hacker where he would jack directly into the controls, and then open his communications link to them. He would pass information between the ground and the shuttle controls, using himself as a bridge between the two. In effect, the pilots could fly the shuttle from their stations on the ground.