Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (42 page)

“Roger that,” Joshua said, grabbing his epad to jot a memo to look into the problem. “I’ll have them get on it. Anything else I need to know about?”

“They’re going to be getting tight on consumables if they have to wait for the next shuttle flight, but you already knew that.”

“We’ve got it covered,” Lange said. “Roscosmos pulled the Baikonur Launch Center out of mothballs and they’ve said we should have the first cargo module ready in a week to ten days.”

“I’ll pass the word on to Scott,” McDermott said. “What about Hiroko Tamami, is she coming down with us?”

“JAXA’s insisting that we bring her back, but she’s informed them she’s no longer on their payroll,” Lange said. “I’m inclined to let her stay until I get direct orders from Washington. She’s got better space legs than anybody up there except Scott and Sergei, and God knows they could use a steady hand.”

“Gotcha,” Warren grinned. “If she misses the boat again, oh well.”

“That’s the way I see it,” Lange said. “We’ll probably catch hell but—“ At that moment an engineer came bursting into the Director’s office with his secretary right behind him.

“I’m sorry sir—“ she managed before he cut her off.

“We’ve blown an oxidizer pump in the VAB,” he said. “They’re reporting three dead and dozens injured.”

“Shit!” Lange snarled. “Warren I’ve got to go, we’ve had an explosion at Canaveral.” Joshua slapped his hand on the disconnect button and followed the engineer down to the control center, his mind already looking at the hundred problems that were going to pile up while they repaired the assembly building.

***

Chang-Er Prefecture, Tycho Crater:

Yao Lin-Tzu yawned and rubbed her dry eyes. She’d been sitting in the same position for the last six hours and had been on duty for twenty-four of the last thirty. Her job had become one of the most critical in Chang Er and she knew it was only going to get tougher over the next several months. She still didn’t know the details, but she’d come to understand first-hand the magnitude of the
Zhen-Long
mission.

Through the monitors in the tiny communications node, she could see the drop-zone of the crater floor littered with cargo containers. Scattered over several square miles, the boxcar-sized canisters had rained down for the last several hours. With the exception of the two soft-landing containers being delivered to the Amundsen crater site, the flight operation was over for the moment.

At first she’d worked as landing controller and then as dispatcher. She’d given the orders to the retrieval crews in the rovers and had watched them weaving their way across the cluttered landscape. She stretched and yawned again, glad that her part was over, at least for now. Glancing over her shoulder at the sound of someone approaching, she tried not to look too sleepy, but was still stifling the tail-end of the yawn.

“Ni hao, Lin-Tzu.” Commander Feng stopped at the edge of the communications platform behind her seat. “You need to rest. You have been on duty for twenty-four hours,” he said, smiling at her.

“I am not tired,” she said, lying. She knew dedication was appreciated by the commander, so she tried to look more alert than she felt.

“Of course,” he agreed, his eyes showing that he didn’t believe her. “You should rest while you have a chance.” He pushed on the edge of her seat to rotate it away from the console. “You do not need to burn yourself out so soon. There will be plenty of opportunity for that, later.”

In an uncharacteristic show of compassion, the commander held out his hand to help her from her chair. “Please."

Relinquishing her position, she stepped out of the small bubble that had been her entire world for the last day. “I am hungry,” she admitted. “I will try to eat and then nap. When should I return to duty?"

“Sleep as long as you can,” he said, slipping into the seat she’d just vacated. “We will be having the ceremony for the investiture of the new Prefect tomorrow morning at 0800. After that, Prefect Czao will be holding a staff meeting and as Chief of Communications you will be required to attend.”

“Prefect Czao? Chief of Communications?” she asked, feeling her reality shift in two profound lurches.

“Yes,” he said, his smile expanding until it creased the corners of his eyes. “I have been instructed to give field promotions to my most diligent crew members. Your dedication has long-since qualified for the position.” Turning toward the console, he waved her toward the galley.

Odd that he would be sitting a shift in communications,
she thought, as she headed off for a meal. Perhaps it had to do with the two soft-landing containers still in orbit.

The dining hall, one of the largest rooms in the complex, was crowded with the new members of the crew. Most of them were wearing military-issue coveralls and she watched them struggle to learn to move in the light lunar gravity, shuffling like old men, or bouncing like awkward children inflated with helium.

The Chang Er crew had almost doubled in a single day, and even with a large portion of the newcomers marching in circles around the room, all of the booths were occupied. She grabbed a meal kit from the dispenser and approached a young woman sitting alone at a table. She could tell that she was a new arrival, not just because she was an unknown face, but also from the slightly green cast to her skin. The gravity change was not sitting well with her.

“May I join you?” Lin-Tzu asked, nodding toward the table.

“Of course.” The woman smiled up at her, her eyes not quite focusing.

Lin-Tzu grinned, sliding into the small booth to watch the floorshow as the newcomers tried to get used to the environment. “It will get better,” she offered. “The ear takes time to adjust and then you will be fine.”

“If you say so,” the woman said, trying not to look at the food pack the communications officer was tearing open, her green complexion deepening to the point of near-criticality.

“Sorry,” Lin-Tzu said, realizing that she was only aggravating the woman’s condition. “Maybe I should sit somewhere else?"

“I need to get used to it,” she said, sweat beading up on her lip as she took several deep breaths. “They gave me one of these, just in case.” She held up a plastic bag that clearly had only one purpose.

“I remember having one of those when I first got here,” Lin-Tzu said. “But they used to be clear.”

The woman’s green skin turned white, and she held the bag up to her face, waiting for the inevitable containment breach. The communications officer turned politely away, focusing instead on the soldiers and not what was happening across the table.

Trying not to laugh while the Training Officer marched them in circles around the room was a challenge. A comic ballet of crashing into each other and bouncing up in embarrassment. Often one of the trainees would slip, forgetting that although their mass and velocity were the same, their reduced weight meant the friction of their feet on the floor was substantially less. Even the short-pile carpet behaved like ice when you were moving. Standing still, it was easy to keep stable, but put a body into motion and it tended to stay in motion.

The first stage of learning to walk on the moon was in not bounding hopelessly into the ceiling. Once that was mastered, the lack of friction still required learning to manage. The Training Officer repeated the instructions incessantly, “Never lift your feet more than two centimeters. Never change direction quickly.”

The retching sounds had ended and she glanced at the woman sympathetically. “Sorry,” she said, the embarrassment evident in her face now that her color was somewhat closer to normal. “I’m just new to all this.”

“I understand,” Lin-Tzu said. “I guess you didn’t get enough time in the microgravity trainer."

“The what?” the woman asked. “I got no training at all.”

“Excuse me?” the communications officer said. “If you have had no training, why are you here?”

“Because they made my husband the Prefect and I had to accompany him.” She nodded across the room to where a striking young man stood talking to an older man, although they were both newcomers, neither was part of the comic parade. She recognized one of them as Czao Yeiwan, the Administrator of Jiuquan and the other man she knew, even though she couldn’t place him.

Confused, Lin-Tzu shook her head. “You are the wife of the Prefect?"

“I didn’t want to come, but Yeiwan gave me no choice,” she said, sadness hanging in her voice. “I studied Western Culture in college, not space science."

“So you speak English?” Lin-Tzu asked in an almost perfect American accent.

“Of course,” the woman said, also in English. “I went to school in California."

“I am Yao Lin-Tzu,” she said. “Communications Specialist.”

“I am Wang Yi, but my English speaking friends call me Becki,” she said, offering her hand.

“Thank you for sharing your table with me, Madam Prefect,” Lin-Tzu said, standing to leave with a polite nod. “I have been on duty for the last twenty-four hours and I do need to get some sleep before my next watch.”

“Please. I prefer Becki,” she said, returning the nod.

“Would that be appropriate?” Lin-Tzu asked.

“Since I am the Prefect’s wife, it is if I say so.” Becki grinned. “I’m afraid I’m going to be here for a while and I’d like to have a friend,” she finished in English.

The man who had been standing with Czao bellowed suddenly, “How can you fools expect to assemble a warhead, if you cannot even walk?"

He’d been watching the parade of stumbling soldiers with clear disgust on his face. In the instant she heard his voice, Lin-Tzu knew why he’d looked familiar. General Wan Len-Ji was the Director of the Chinese Nuclear Weapons program.

Shaking his head, he turned from the room, walking like he’d been born to the environment. What was more frightening to her than his presence under these extraordinary circumstances, was that obviously he’d been here before.

***

Stormhaven:

Although no one doubted the operation was still Cole’s to run, he’d started including most of his key personnel in the decision-making process, holding daily briefings to discuss the status of the various projects. The subject of today’s meeting was one of those that kept them widely divided:
arming themselves.

“In reality, it was fairly easy to adapt the Mark-VIII engines,” Daryl said.

“Once we figured out how to damp the backside field,” Sophia added, shooting him a dirty look. “They almost squashed me against a wall before we realized what we needed to do.”

Colton raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“We needed to create a harmonic damper, to kill the field backwash,” Glen explained. “As the beam projected from the front aperture, there was a reverse effect from the opposite end. Soph was standing in the wrong place when we tested it, and the field damn near blew her through the wall.”

“You’re ok?” Viki asked.

“Yeah a little bruised, and my dignity might never recover, but I’m fine,” she said. “It should have been obvious."

Daryl called up the image of the device on the screen and Tom whistled. “Looks like it means business,” he said. The gravity laser hung on a yoke with a cluster of opto-cables running from one end. The entire lower half of the mounting platform was ringed by a massive coil-assembly that was the damping system.

“It does,” Sophie said. “It has an independent 250kw power supply and can probably collimate a beam all the way to the moon."

“Do we have any way to limit its range?” Cole asked, imagining the collateral damage that could result from firing off a beam of that magnitude.

“We’re working on it,” Sophie said. “Our thinking is to create an inverse phase array with a variable angle aperture that should create a finite end to the beam by phase cancellation."

“Right,” Tom nodded sarcastically. “I got it."

“Yes, we can,” Daryl said.

“Good,” Cole said, relieved it wasn’t another missed point. “So the question is, how effective is it going to be?”

“That’s the biggie. In a narrow beam it could be pretty catastrophic,” Sophia said, “but you didn’t want to use it as an offensive weapon.”

“Exactly. That has to be the last resort,” Cole said, standing up and walking over to look at the image up close.

“In theory, in a diffused state, it will be able to alter the inertial field of any real object at a remote location,” she said.

“In English?” Tom asked.

“We should be able to stop almost any mass-projectile while it’s still some distance away,” Glen said.

“Like a force field?” Viki asked.

“Not exactly. More like a repulsion field,” he said. “Something heading toward us would be met by a force wave that would slow it down. It wouldn’t necessarily stop it, but it could definitely make it less dangerous.”

“And the more power you put into it, the more it would slow something down?” Tom asked. “That would explain the huge generator."

“Not entirely true,” Sophie said. “It’s also a function of mass density and frequency of—“

“Never mind. I don’t need to know how it works,” Tom said, shaking his head.