SpaceCorp (16 page)

“Change?” This time the voice from the audience was timid.

“Yes, change. You folks have made incredible achievements in the last twenty-odd years. Every time you launch a new space station, that’s an achievement, and launching a space station is an incredible achievement, and don’t let anybody tell you different. But the irony is that the path to the stars is not blazed with achievement, but with change. There is a limit to how far any given achievement can take us. Then that achievement has to yield to change or progress stops.

“Now we’re asking you to participate not in another achievement such as you’re used to, but in a great change. Your grandchildren who live among the stars will mark the passage of history not by your achievements, but by this change I’m inviting you to participate in. The change is what will be remembered. So put aside your sheet metal brakes, your riveters, your milling machines, your vulcanizers—those are the tools of yesterday. Today we grow algae... in space. Today we harvest nanocellulose... in space. Eight times the strength-to-weight ratio of stainless steel! It makes aluminum look like cooked pasta. The space craft that take us to stars will not be made of aluminum. They will be made of nanocellulose, a material change that you will be remembered for by the citizens of the stars.”

An hour later

Hangar Deck, Quad IV,
SCS Pelican

“That was some speech,” Jason Byerly said. “I felt like I was listening to Alexander the Great pumping up the troops before a big battle.”

“Actually it was a loose paraphrase of Henry the 5
^th
pumping up the troops before the Battle of Agincourt—Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene III. I was reading it on the way up here. I wanted to work in the line about ‘we few, we happy few,’ but then I realized there wasn’t going to be a ‘we.’ I’ll be heading back to Earth on the next shuttle.”

“He reads Shakespeare when he goes to space,” Monica said. “It takes his mind off what he believes is his imminent death.”

Mack grinned and blushed. “She’s right. For all my cheerleading, I’m a certifiable pussy when it comes to space flight.”

Monica laughed. “You should have seen him once when I tried to get him suited up for an EVA. I thought he was going to rip the stanchion off its mounts.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m weird that way. Most folks are terrified of looking down when they’re on a cliff face, but those same folks do fine looking out an airplane window. I’m the opposite. When I looked out that hatchway and saw the Earth 700 kilometers below... well, I just couldn’t hack it.”

“Well,” Jason said, “I guess we all come with our little surprises. New subject: Monica, do you think
they
bought his speech?”

“I hope so. If they didn’t, we’re going to have to do a huge swap-out on the crew. That’ll set the schedule back several weeks. Make that months—I was assuming we had a new crew trained and ready to go.”

“Should we start working on that down below?” Mack asked.

“Not a full change,” Monica said, “Not just yet. Just the new skills. Arcane stuff like algae farming, and nanocellulose. Better get some specialists for the nuclear rockets too—I still can’t believe we’re going to mount a nuclear rocket on a space station. Oh, and you better get some of Jason’s ray gun guys up here. We can start trickling them up as soon as they’re ready. That way it won’t look like a mass lay-off. There are always temporary specialists coming and going on the
Pelican
. They call them yo-yo’s, Jason.”

10 minutes later…

Monica grabbed Mack by the arm. “You’ve got about thirty minutes before your shuttle boards. Come get a coffee with me.”

“Something up?”

“No. We just aren’t going to be getting any time together for the next several months. I want to sit next to you and feel your warmth and maybe even hold hands.” She leered at him as she spoke.

“In public? Without protection?” He feigned alarm. “Well, all right. Maybe I should give each of the other passengers a token to go the movies?”

Monica punched him on the arm. It looked playful but it made him wince just the same. One of the hazards of having a girlfriend who was into
Muay Thai
.

They each got a coffee and took a seat at one of the little tables off in the corner of the passenger waiting area. There were only three other returnees on the flight so the waiting area was quiet and they could at least talk in private.

“Okay, what’s on your mind?” Mack said.

Monica blushed, then looked at her watch and fretted for a few seconds and grabbed his wrist pulling it toward her. “Oh, hell… Logan, I want to get married… when I get back… after we get this tub launched.”

“Hmm...” Mack leaned back in his chair and cupped his chin in his hand. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“You are, you idiot!”

“Oh, well in that case, I accept!”

There was an awkward silence.

“I want to have a baby too. And I want to be a groundie, no more yo-yo.”

“Uh, Monica, don’t get me wrong—I’m thrilled—but what brought all this on? I mean I thought you love being an astronaut.”

“I do. I wouldn’t take a million bucks for a single minute I’ve spent up here, but I’m not getting any younger… and neither are you.”

“You’re not—”

“No. And if I was I’d get rid of it. All the radiation up here… you know.”

“When I get down, should I look into the viability of your eggs… the frozen ones, I mean?”

“You wouldn’t be allowed… we… ah… we’re not married.”

Mack hesitated before answering. “I could stick around for the next shuttle. We could get the captain—“

Monica beamed and put her finger over his lips as she shook her head. “No, I want a nice wedding. I was thinking of your home in Agoura—it’s so beautiful there… and you have such nice parents. Besides the quicker you get down and get back to work, the quicker I can get down. And I already checked my eggs before I came on this tour—still viable.”

The shuttle passenger team began to gather at the spaceway.

Mack looked distraught. “This is a lot to process. Mom’s going to want a date… I really don’t want to get on that shuttle.”

“Nothing new there. You hate getting on shuttles.”

“Yeah, but this time it’s for a whole new reason besides being scared out of my wits.”

“Look at the bright side, you’ll have so much on your mind you won’t remember to be scared.”

“I still don’t want to get on.”

“Come on, I’ll go with you. They’ll let me on to help you get suited up and strapped in.”

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Mack was suited except for his helmet, and strapped in. Monica held his helmet while he toweled the sweat off his forehead one last time.

“This is fun,” she said. She smiled at him with her beautiful full red lips. “Kinda like bondage.” She leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then before he could recover, she slammed his helmet over his head and locked the collar. Shuttle passenger helmets fit tight like motorcycle helmets and the padding nearly took his ears off as she jammed it over his head. Then she turned the valve to activate his suit’s internal environmental controls. “You should cool down now.”

Mack shook his head and shrugged, motioning to his ear with his gloved hand. Monica nodded.

A very young flight attendant put his hand on her arm, “One mike… er, one minute, ma’am.”

Monica snickered. “I know what a ‘mike’ is.” She started to leave, then hesitated and bent down and planted a red kiss mark right in the middle of his faceplate. Then she turned and ran out.

Outside the shuttle, the liftoff crew was suited up and readying the tethers for release. Monica went back into the passenger lounge where there was a window in the floor she could watch through as the shuttle lifted out of the hangar deck through the giant overhead hatch.
Ma’am? I’m engaged less than twenty minutes and I’m already getting the ‘ma’am’ treatment!
She wiped a tear from her face. A middle-aged woman standing beside her noticed.

“You okay, sweetie?” she asked, her hand on Monica’s arm.

Monica laughed, “I’m gettin’ married!”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

January 2071

Cold, windswept mesa in a remote desert, location unknown

In the background the rotor blade of a chopper teetered in the wind. The pilot chased it trying to catch the blade tip, but every time he got close the wind would shift and tip it back the other way. Finally, he looped the end of the tether that had a pair of lead-weighted bags over the blade and pulled it down. Then he put the tether hook through the bracket at the end of the blade and secured the other end to one of the skids. The task completed, the pilot climbed back into the cockpit where he blew into his cupped hands to warm them.

The three passengers were standing near the mesa rim. Each of them wore a heavy windbreaker. One of the passengers—the host—had on silver lensed sunglasses and a thick coat of zing-oxide on his nose. He kept gesticulating with his hands to indicate some imaginary event that was about to take place. The other two—one quite tall and the other comically short by comparison, stood backs to the wind, observing in the direction the first man pointed. Then the first man paused and pressed an earbud into his ear. “Okay, here it comes. See the car kicking up the dust trail out there? Don’t worry—there’s nobody in it. It’s robotic. Watch closely now, it should be any second now.”

“But it’s cloudy,” a tall man said. “How is the operator supposed to see?”

“Infrared. We’ve got about 5000 feet ceiling above ground level right now, but we would be just as effective if we were completely socked in. Good for night operation as well. Now, keep your eyes trained on the cloud layer immediately above the car. There!”

A few seconds later a blurry image of a speeding missile plummeted into the approaching car causing an enormous silent explosion, destroying the car. “Did you see the glide bomb? It was going at Mach 1.2. We should get the sonic boom followed by the sound of the explosion... there! I always love it when you get that flash, then a boom, then a bigger boom. Twenty kg of shaped charge high explosive. Plus a layer of shrapnel surrounding it. An armor penetrator and antipersonnel in the same round.”

“And where is the drone’s operator?” the tall man asked.

“That’s classified. But let’s just say he was over a hundred miles away.”

“Shouldn’t we have heard the drone?” the shorter guest asked.

“Not from 35,000 feet. And it would have been almost impossible to make out with the naked eye had the weather been clear.”

“Where’s the drone now?” the tall man asked.

“On its way home. Survivors in the target area will never know he was there.”

“Okay, I’ve seen enough,” the tall man said. “Let’s head back—it’s freezing up here.”

*   *   *

The passenger cabin of the chopper was heated. After everyone was buckled in and had their headsets on, the host offered a thermos and some cups. “It’s real chocolate—hard to get these days.”

“So true,” the short man said. “Where did you get this?” His accent sounded European—pronunciation too precise, too deliberate, too off to be American.

“We have a…
friends
in Brazil,” he winked when he said ‘friends.’ They ship us some now and again in return for helping them… ah… stay in business.”

“Yes, there are a lot of troubles down there… staying in business,” the short man said. He smiled.

The tall man took off his head set and pointed to the pilot. “Can he hear?”

The host flipped a couple of switches on the overhead panel. “Not anymore... so can I put you down for one?” the host asked with a self-deprecating grin on his face.

The tall man looked at his comrade for a moment. The shorter man paused, then nodded faintly.

“How soon could we get a hundred?” the tall man asked.

“A hundred?”

“Yes, how soon?”

“Well, that depends on whether you want 100 drones each equipped with one glide bomb, or a lesser number of drones flying sorties to deliver some multiple of glide bombs.”

“How about a hundred drones delivering some multiple of glide bombs, say, ten glide bombs per drone?” the short man asked.

“And we’d want the hundred launch teams positioned around targets of our specification,” the tall man said. “Could we get them by the end of the year?”

“And we’d want our own operators,” the short man said. “Your fellows can launch, but then piloting is handed off to our fellows. We’d return command of the aircraft to you after the glide bomb is launched. We’d want our guys to guide the bombs. Can you handle that?”

“How would your operators be trained?” the host asked.

“I guess you’d have to set up some kind of operator school. Can you do that?” the tall man asked.

*   *   *

The chopper landed in front of a hangar hidden in a box canyon off to the side of a runway. Inside the host led them to an elevator and took them down several floors to a basement manufacturing facility.

“This is it,” the host said. “It’s based on an old Israeli ‘Harpy’ design, about ¾ scale. The delta wing is actually longer to improve loiter time at altitude. The Harpy was actually a round of ammunition with a 70-kg warhead. The operator literally flew it into the target. Big waste of components. With ours, the glide bomb is launched out the nose with a cold gas rocket. The rocket also keeps the bomb away from the pusher prop in the back. That maneuver is partly aided by the sudden loss of 20 kg of mass causing the aircraft to climb abruptly. The fuselage reserve fuel tank sits behind the warhead and moves forward to restore weight and balance and also provide an aerodynamic nose as the glide bomb leaves the airframe. Once it’s free, the bomb noses over and begins its descent reaching Mach 1.2.”

“What’s its mission radius?” the tall man asked.

“Five hundred kilometers with a loiter time of ten hours.”