Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (20 page)

“Actually, the orders got to the crew before we could get the arrangements made to have the official briefing,” Al said. “It’s my fault, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to hold the meeting as a teleconference. As it is, Lange had to fly to San Francisco.”

“Ouch,” she said, making a note to talk to John about it. “So, we’ll have to make some apologies."

“I haven’t heard from Lange yet,” he said, “but he should have finished up an hour or so ago. He’s supposed to report when they’re done."

“Let me know as soon as you find out how it went,” she said. The visitor waiting light was flashing on the bottom corner of her screen. “I’ve got a meeting with State and Homeland Security, but don’t be afraid to interrupt if there’s any problem we need to address."

“Thank you,” he said, clicking off the connection.

“Where’s Norman?” she said to John, surprised that Secretary Anderson didn’t appear with him. She leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee.

“He said he needed a couple minutes,” the Secretary of State said. “Apparently he’s got something new going on as well.”

“Don’t we all?” she said. Hammerthrow was the center of their attention but they still had to maintain a business-as-usual attitude.

“You read the report on my meeting with Kozin?” he asked. “We barely dodged the bullet on that one.”

“What about the Chinese?” she asked. “They didn’t come at you too?”

“Not a sound from them,” he said. “I find that rather worrisome."

“Really,” she agreed.

Norman appeared at her door, his expression fitting right in with her concerns. He shut the heavy door and leaned against it, looking like he was trying to regroup.

“What’s up?” she asked. “John told me you had something else on your plate?”

“Two things. First we’ve got the Chinese,” he said, coming over and sitting in the chair across from her. “We’ve just been told by an operative in Beijing that there’s something huge coming down in their space program.”

“Why’s that a problem?” she asked.

“It may not be,” he said. “I just think the timing has to be more than coincidence.”

“Is this something that requires a response?” John asked. He pulled out his epad and started making notes.

“Not yet,” Norman said, “but we’re going to have to dedicate substantial resources to keeping an eye on it. Their military is heavily tied up in the CNSA. Anything can be important.”

“Do you think this is a response to Hammerthrow?” the President asked, watching the Secretary of State scribbling notes.

“I don’t see how, unless they’ve compromised our security,” Norman said. “I know they were invited to the briefing this morning, but this information got to us last night.”

“So we watch them,” John said, shrugging. “I’m sure you’ve got people in place?”

“Several,” Anderson said.

“Any idea why this is happening now?” President Hutton asked.

He shook his head. “All we have is a name. They’re calling it
Zhen-Long
.”

“Red Dragon,” John translated.

“Is it military?” she asked.

“We’ve got no clue,” the DHS Secretary said.

“What’s the other problem?” the Secretary of State asked.

“We’ve been tracking the fourth astronomer in Dr. Anthony’s team,” he said. “We’ve located her, but we can’t get to her.”

“She’s left the country?” the President asked. “As quickly as Al shut it down, I figured there wouldn’t have been a chance.”

“Indeed,” Norman said. “His action was prudent, but she didn’t leave the country. If she had, we’d be able to get to her easier than where she turned out to be."

“How’s that?” John said.

“She’s an employee of Stormhaven,” Norman said. “She’s now a resident in their compound.”

“Just go in and get her,” she said. “What’s the problem?”

“We’ve got several agents on site,” Anderson said. “They’re reporting that Colton Taylor has proliferated the existence of the asteroid across the net.”

“Then why isn’t it on the news?” John asked.

The President grabbed her remote control and tuned CNN to see if there was a report there. They were covering the Damascus Summit, so she shut it off before the Secretary of State turned around to look.

“What they’ve done is encrypt the information with a self-decoding dead-man switch,” Anderson said, handing his epad to the President. “It’s spreading across the web like a virus and we can’t keep up with it.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“It went out piggy-backed on a press release they sent out to more than 5,000 news bureaus,” he said. “We haven’t even started to track all of them, and it’s spreading geometrically.”

“Shit,” John hissed.

“That’s not exactly how I put it,” the DHS Secretary said, in a backhanded reminder of his religious aversion to profanity, “but that pretty well sums it up."

“That seems a bit extreme, just to keep us from arresting this astronomer,” the President said, setting her coffee cup down slowly. “What do they want?”

“It can’t be money,” Secretary Herman said. “I think they’re one of the ten biggest private corporations in the world.”

“Not
one
of,” Anderson corrected. “They are easily
the
biggest private corporation. Possibly the biggest corporation of any type.”

“If it’s not money, what are they after?” she asked, typing Stormhaven into her desktop search engine.

“They want a license to build and fly their own space transport service,” he said.

“No joke,” she said, spinning her screen around so the men could see what she was looking at. “They’ve already announced they’re going to be launching next week.” Stormhaven’s homepage was a huge banner with the countdown-to-launch scrolling over an image of the Earth from space.

“We haven’t given them permission,” Anderson said. “And I don’t see how we can."

“We can’t,” she said. “Do what you have to in order to keep it from happening.”

“Stormhaven’s asking to negotiate for a license,” he said.

“You can’t possibly be asking to negotiate with terrorists?” John said.

“We do it all the time,” Anderson said. “Wasn’t that the purpose of the Damascus Summit?"

“That’s different,” Secretary Herman said. “We call it diplomacy.”

“Semantics,” the DHS Secretary said. “We’ve got a team on the ground waiting for orders. If we can keep them talking, we can buy time while we mobilize resources to seize control of their compound and disarm their internet bomb.”

“Do it,” she said, rubbing the stress out of her temples and wondering what else could happen.

A message-waiting icon appeared on her screen and she opened it. It was from Al Stanley.

“The Chinese walked out on the NASA briefing,” she read out loud. “Lange thinks they already know.”

***

Polarization

Outside Stormhaven:

Shapiro stared at the setting sun. Its orange disk hanging below the thin clouds at the horizon. While he’d written an update to his report, a rapid storm front had passed through, blanketing the harsh terrain in a thin coating of new snow. Bracing himself for the cold, he stepped out of the stranded truck that they all now called his field office.

Paul Abrams stood near the front of the surveillance truck shivering while he looked through the scope at Stormhaven. Schimmel and one of the techs were apparently hiding in the back of the truck.

They’d drawn straws to see who’d get a hotel room and who’d stay for the night shift. Watkins and two of the techs drew lucky and started the rotation. Each evening three would go while the rest would hold the post.

“How’s it look over there?” Shapiro asked, handing Abrams a cup of coffee from the fire.

“Just like it looks here, except warmer.” Obviously adversity put humor into Abrams repertoire and although that wasn’t surprising, it was disconcerting.

“Nothing new?” Shapiro asked.

“No sir. Nada,” he said, wincing as he sipped at the coffee. “I thought I might have seen one of their flying machines over the main structure. There was no heat signature and by the time I got it locked in, it was below the ridge.”

“When did that happen?” he said.

“About fifty-five minutes ago,” Abrams said, looking at his watch.

“That’s about when the back sensors went offline again.” Schimmel startled them, stepping up to the fire to pour himself a cup.

“You mean you lost another set?” Shapiro asked.

Schimmel nodded. “Yep. Same way. We got a 1.6 gig signal and then they all went dead."

“You think there’s any correlation between that and their flying machines?” Shapiro asked.

“Who knows?” Schimmel said. “We’ve only got ten left, and with the media setting up down there, we’re going to have a hard time keeping those operational. We can’t keep replacing them."

“I’ll order more,” Shapiro said. “I’ve got a feeling we’re here for a while.” Sweeping his hand across the hood of his truck to clear the snow, he grabbed his satellite computer off the seat and squinted into the sun.

His phone signaled that he had a message. Waiting for the computer to lock and log, he listened as Norman Anderson told him about the President’s decision.

“I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,” he said to Abrams and Schimmel, who were both standing by the fire. The distant sound of a helicopter rumbled across the open prairie. “Good news is that we’ve got reinforcements on the way.” He walked over to the observation gear and looked off to the southwest where three choppers were skimming toward them. “The bad news is that we’re here for the duration. This is no longer a situation. They’ve bumped it up to an incident."

“I’d say it’s becoming a circus,” Abrams said, pointing at the news trucks in front of Stormhaven, where several cameras were tracking the approaching aircraft.

Within minutes the air around them was a frenzy of flying debris as the Air Guard choppers settled into the small depression behind their encampment. Several officers jumped out of the first helicopter, running up the slope toward them.

“Are you Shapiro?” the leader asked. “I’m Major Marcus Eriksson. I’ve been instructed to provide logistic support until the rest of the units arrive.”

“Units?” DeMarko asked, rubbing dust and snow out of his eyes. He’d been sitting behind the surveillance truck, working on his epad, and had caught most of the rotor-wash in the face.

“Yes sir.” The Major nodded toward the agent. “We’ve got a Marine security unit en route from Yuma and two engineering support units coming up from Fort Huachuca and Phoenix. We’ve also got a Triple-C coming down from Warren and an air suppression squadron on standby out of Luke."

“I understand what they meant by calling it an incident,” Schimmel said, shaking his head.

“Yes sir,” the Major said. “We were told to keep a low profile, but since they caught our fly-by down there, that’s a bit irrelevant now, wouldn’t you say?”

“Probably right about that.” Shapiro shook his head, looking at his phone, wondering what to say when Colton Taylor called threatening to pull the trigger.

***

San Francisco:

Takao Mito was not the type to show emotion, so instead he listened to his colleagues rant about the American pronouncement and stared out at the view of the city and the sun settling over the bay.

When he could take no more of their complaining, he turned back to the table. “We do have alternatives.” The conversation stopped, everyone turning toward him. “We each have a substantial stake in Alpha,” he said, pausing to sip his wine, “but we also have a vital role to play with its maintenance. The supply missions are our responsibility and that does mean we can push for some input into the affairs of the station."

“You’re saying we should refuse to send supplies?” Jonathon Merrill the Director of the Australian space program said, smiling. “So we starve them into letting us have a say.” His accent made his somber assessment somehow seem like he thought it would be a great bit of fun to bend the Americans over a bit.

“I would not put it quite so enthusiastically,” the Japanese Director said. “I do however think that it should give us a stronger position in negotiations."

“Bah. Roscosmos will pick up the slack.” ESA Director Schmidt snorted. “They have plenty of Progress modules sitting in a warehouse collecting dust."

“Yes, but they have no way to launch the bloody things.” Merrill thumped the table with his hand. “They’re always barking about being too broke to meet their obligations in the first place. Can you imagine how much money they’d have to spend to pick up the slack that we’d leave in the supply chain?"

“Of course Wilhelm is right,” Takao sighed. “They don’t need to worry about costs, the US will just begin writing checks and the Russians will dance.”

“We’ve got to pull out,” Jonathon said