Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (32 page)

“You’re right about that.” Shapiro walked in, interrupting their bitching at each other. “It’s already out on GNS. They’ve got pictures of you three looking like scared-assed rabbits running for the hole. The headline on the story was about attempted sabotage.”

“Well, at least they got that right.” Abrams flopped down in the chair peeling his stealth suit down to his waist.

“Whichever one of you dumb-asses shot at the flying machine cemented the notion in their mind,” Shapiro said.

“Sorry sir,” Abrams said. “If I could’ve blinded it, we might have made it out of there. I figured that since the mission was blown—“

“Hey Boss,” DeMarko yelled from across the tent. “We’ve got a problem."

“What now?” Shapiro growled.

“They’ve gone live down there. GNS and SNN say they’re planning on lift-off in about ten minutes.”

“Fuck me!” Shapiro roared, dashing for the door. “Start dialing Space Command. I need an intercept on that bitch before it gets to orbit.”

***

Space Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado:

General Marquez was an early riser, but it was an hour before his alarm was set to go off, and the phone call was not something he needed. “Marquez here,” he said, clearing his voice. He’d been late getting back from busting Danielson, so the fog cleared slower than usual.

“General, this is Special Agent Shapiro. I need a TAV intercept on an outbound from Northeastern Arizona,” the voice on the phone ordered.

“Excuse me? You need what?” He sat bolt upright in bed slapping his hand on the light switch to look at the clock and make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“I need a Starhawk to intercept an unauthorized launch from Stormhaven and I need it NOW!” The agent’s voice sounded stressed, his request wasn’t making sense either.

“Look Shapiro, you need to take this through channels. If there was an unauthorized launch we’d be all over it by now.”

“General,” Shapiro said, cutting through the remaining fog in Marquez’ brain with his tone. “Maybe someone dropped the ball on your end, but I have Presidential Authority. If you don’t have a TAV in pursuit of that launch in the next few minutes, there’s going to be a big breach in Hammerthrow. Do I make myself clear?”

Victor swung his feet out onto the cold hard floor. “I’ll put the wing at Warren on standby, but I still have to check this out.”

“According to the news, you’ve got less than six minutes, and then you’d better hope you can catch them, because they’re going to be off the ground before you are,” Shapiro said.

“Ok. Let me make the call.” He jammed the button down and punched in the Command Center.

“I need a targeting resolution on an outbound from somewhere in Northeastern Arizona,” he said, without waiting for the shift commander to identify himself.

“Negative on outbound, but we have a down satellite in that zone. The bird lost command control about forty-five seconds ago.” He could hear the stress in the officer’s voice. “I was debating on whether I should call you or put it through to Communications."

“Shit. Shunt us over to another bird I need that zone online. I also need you to scramble the 152nd immediately. Have them rack the birds for hunting. This is not a drill.” He was already pulling his uniform on with one arm.

“Yes, sir. What should I have them intercept?” the officer asked.

“Get another satellite on it and then point them at whatever’s moving upward. Now move! I’ll be on deck in five minutes and I want everything done by then."

***

Stormhaven:

The one-eyed mini had been pulled out to fly an orbit about a thousand yards from the
Dancing Star
. A dozen small cameras in the back cargo platform fed images to the ground, and the giant screens on the stage carried one of the channels live.

The word had gone out to the public camp, and the surprised but enthusiastic crowd had come running carrying lanterns and flashlights, looking like thousands of bouncing fireflies. The darkness was still impenetrable once you stepped away from the circle of spotlights that illuminated the stage.

Viki, Tom, and Daryl sat on the stage listening to the communication between the crew and Mica, while Bradford Stone asked questions and tried to keep up a running commentary for the online audience. They sat barely a hundred feet from the hull of the massive ship, seeming unconcerned, but the news anchor nervously watched them and the ship for signs that he should clear out of the way.

“Here we go,” Viki said, nudging his arm and pointing at the
Dancing Star
. The only evidence that the ship was preparing to begin its flight was the hissing sound of the landing gear retracting. It hung motionlessly, pulling the tree trunk sized legs off the ground.

Brad swiveled to watch the eerie process for several seconds before he recognized that the massive ship was actually airborne. It eased upward until the bottom of the hull was well clear of the top of the screens.

“I don’t know what to say,” the journalist began, trying to figure out how to describe the unearthly sensation of watching an apartment-sized object drift off into the sky like it was unconcerned with gravity. “This is utterly unbelievable. I’m sitting here less than a hundred feet from the launch and I couldn’t even tell when it started. I just hope the cameras can do justice to what we’re seeing,” he said.

At that moment a roar erupted from the audience as the
Dancing Star
leapt skyward soundlessly.

***

Camp Kryptonite:

“There’s nothing we can do from here,” Shapiro groaned into the phone. “I called Space Command, and General Marquez assured me he was going to intercept, but the way this thing moved out of here I don’t know if they’re going to be able to catch it.”

Norman Anderson almost sounded like he was swearing under his breath. “I have to tell the President.”

“Yes sir,” Shapiro said. “We did what we could, but there wasn’t any way to slow them down.”

“It’s not your fault,” Anderson said with a strangely understanding tone. “Now it’s in Marquez’ hands."

His phone clicked off.

“We’re offline,” Watkins shouted from the distance. “The satellite’s down again. We’re recording everything we can get, but there’s no way to upload it. Once the server maxes, we’re buried.”

“ Just keep trying to re-establish the link.” Shapiro headed outside to watch the flight with his own eyes, giving up on being an agent for the moment and settling for being a spectator.

***

Space Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado:

“I’m sorry sir, we shunted over to Intel-six as it came over the horizon and it locked-out almost instantly,” the Communications Control Officer said.

“What does that mean to you, Lieutenant?” Marquez stood over the shoulder of the officer glaring at the screen.

“Someone’s hacked us,” he said. “We’ve been having glitchiness across the satnet for the last week, but there was never a pattern to it, so it looked like unrelated failures.”

“Why didn’t I hear about that? No, never mind.” He stopped himself mid-thought, remembering that they had a bigger fish to catch. “Before I-six went down, did you have a target?”

“Possibly, it was still below 10,000 feet, but it did have a nearly vertical ascent,” he said.

“That’s it. Can we intercept?” Marquez asked.

“There wasn’t enough of a baseline to know for sure,” the Lieutenant said. “It appeared to be accelerating slowly."

Marquez grabbed the phone, connecting to the Flight Authorizations Officer. “Go to Condition Red. I repeat go to Condition Red. We have a live target for visual acquisition.” In his mind he could see the Starhawk crews rolling out to the runway.

“Uploading heading and coordinates. Launch when ready. All pilots are authorized to engage and destroy the target.”

***

Above the Arizona Desert:

They’d been pulling about a half-G since the launch, holding to a slow climb out of the lower atmosphere. Even though the gargantuan ship was capable of much quicker acceleration, Cole decided that it made sense to take it easy until they were above 200,000 feet. As it was, they were approaching Mach-one before they broke 20,000 feet.

“I don’t know what kind of strength you think this hull has boss, but I’m seriously concerned about going transonic until we get way up.” Dave could already feel a shuddering vibration in the floor plates of the bridge that told him that they were easing toward what might be maximum dynamic pressure.

“I agree. Let’s maintain this speed until we get into the thinner air,” Cole said from his command station.

“We’re also still flying almost flat,” Dave said. “If I nose us into the direction of flight, we’re going to lose our sense of up and down, but we’ll be a bit more aerodynamic and it’ll ease the stress load."

“Do it,” Cole said, nodding.

Dave swung the ship’s nose up and the vibration eased to an almost imperceptible level.

“We’re at a steady one thousand feet per second and will be going transonic in a few minutes anyway,” he reported. “As the air density drops, Mach speed lowers but the loading on the hull will drop too. Hopefully it will all balance."

Danielle sat beside him, nodding while she watched the visual readouts. Suddenly she slapped her hand down on the console and switched one of the scanners into high-resolution mode.

“We’ve got company,” she said, twisting in her seat to look at Cole. “It looks like sixteen or eighteen fighter jets about 300 miles to the north and closing fast.”

Dave leaned over to look at the telemetry on Dani’s console. “We’re so humped. They’re Starhawks. They’ll be able to chase us all the way to orbit.” He looked back over his shoulder for a second, then said, “Boss, I don’t know if we can outrun them or not. I know they can do sprints of twenty-G.”

“We can always abort and try to make it back to Stormhaven,” Glen said from his engineering station.

“Or we can push it, and make orbit.” Sophie glared at her husband. “I vote we go. I know we can’t do twenty, but we can squeeze four.”

“Your call, Dave, if you think we can do it,” Cole said, deferring to the only one on the bridge with fighter experience.

“Hang on to your hats folks, this is going to get bumpy.” The
Dancing
Star
squared its trajectory and accelerated. He slid his hands forward on the controls until his arms almost couldn’t hold their place. The shuddering increased until it felt like the ship was about to shred itself.

“This is as bad as it gets,” he said, as they snapped into an eerie silence.

“That’s better” Cole said, relieved that the hull held.

***

Stormhaven:

Since the cameras in the mini had long since lost sight of the
Dancing Star
in the dark sky, Mica brought the vehicle in and parked it in the space where its giant sister had been sitting moments earlier.

The cameras inside the
Dancing Star
had been showing a disturbingly shaky ride, and although the public feed didn’t offer any audible explanation, Viki and the other two had been hearing the communication on the bridge itself. She struggled not to let her fear show.

Unexpectedly, the ground shook all around them with the thundering rumble of several simultaneous sonic booms. Far overhead more than a dozen thin lines were barely visible as pale pink slashes across the sky.

In front of them a bright white spark appeared as the
Dancing Star
flashed into the sunrise. Sighing heavily Viki explained, her voice carried out over the PA system to the people in the audience, and simultaneously around the world. “What you’re seeing up there is the
Dancing Star
having passed out of the shadow of the Earth. Unfortunately it also appears that she’s being pursued by several interceptors. According to the telemetry, the Air Force jets are closing to weapons range.”

Brad, who’d been staring up at the amazing display in the dark sky, covered his mic and whispered to Viki. “Are they going to get away?”

She shrugged. “According to the conversation I’m listening to onboard, they don’t think so.”

***

Above Four Corners:

“Bulldog Leader to Base, we have visual on the target, but cannot get a weapons lock. We are negative on radar and IR.” The pilot of the lead Starhawk watched his targeting computer. “We’re at 150 miles and closing.”

“Repeat, Bulldog. You are at 150 miles and visual?” the Flight Controller said.

“Affirm on visual. This thing is a flying mountain, and it’s going vertical at near hypersonic. Biggest damn thing I’ve ever seen in the air.” The pilot leaned to the side to clear his HUD and shook his head in amazement. It looked like it was glowing in the dark sky because of reflected light, but it still sent back almost no radar reflection.