Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (72 page)

“That was inevitable,” Dick said. “I wonder if we can sue to get our money back?”

“Yeah right,” she said. “I’m sure they can’t even find it anymore.”

“On an aside to that,” Worthington said, “Joshua Lange has confirmed that during the night three engineers committed suicide at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.”

“That sounds like the old Soviet Union,” Dick said.

“More grist for the millstone,” she said, taking a deep breath of coffee vapor and hiding her face and her feelings behind the cup. “So what’s next?"

“Stormhaven,” he said.

“So what’s Taylor done this time, started an interstellar war?” John said sarcastically.

“Not yet,” the DHS Secretary said, not smiling. “Early this morning he signed the Independent Space Alliance Agreement with Japan.”

“We knew that one was coming,” she said.

“But we didn’t know the ESA, the IAA, and Australia would sign on too.”

“So we really are alone now,” Dick said.

“We’ve also heard that the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have expressed an interest in joining their Alliance,” he said.

“What?” she blinked in surprise. “How did they find out?”

“Norman was LDS,” Dick said. “He’d been pretty well placed in the church before he came to Washington. I don’t know how the Pope would have found out. As far as I know the general public is still pretty much in the dark about it.”

“What about the news?” she asked. “Is it ours again?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Worthington said. “All except GNS. It’s still operating freelance.”

“We’ve got all their hardware locked up,” John said. “We took away their IP addresses and killed their domains.”

“That’s what’s ironic,” he said. “They’ve apparently moved their webcast servers onto the Defense Contractors Internal Communication Network. It’s the most secure network in the country, and even we can’t track it.”

“You’re shitting me?” Dick said, laughing.

“This guy’s got more twists than a good horror movie,” John said.

“Yeah,” she said. “What scares me is that he’s got half the world’s economic power behind him now. He was bad enough when it was just him, now there’s no way to stop him.”

“Which brings me to the last point about Stormhaven,” he said. “They’ve asked for permission to fly three more ships to Tokyo. This time they didn’t so much ask, as tell us, they were going to do it. They’ve given us twenty-fours to grant them unconditional licenses or they’re going to relocate all their facilities to one of the Alliance Member States.”

“I suppose that would also mean that they’d withdraw their offer to give us the
Aquila
,” Dick said.

“They didn’t say so, but I’d assume that would be true,” Worthington said. “From a technological perspective, that would be a serious loss to the country.”

“If we give them their damn license, then maybe we can keep some form of control,” Dick said. “Make the license contingent on allowing us to place observers in their Flight Operations centers. At least then they’d be less likely to broadside us again.”

“I like that,” she said, setting her cup down. “We’ll need to tell them it’s because we never know what to expect from them, and we don’t need any more loose cannons. That’s basically the truth anyway. If they agree, then cut the papers."

“I’ll let them know,” John said. “They’ll want to know how long it will take to get an observer into place.”

“Shapiro’s still out there isn’t he?” she asked.

“He’s back down to just the original support team and the Guard Units,” Worthington said.

“Fine, have him stay” she said. “Get him a staff to make sure he knows what they’re doing. Technical help, whatever he needs. And let Stormhaven know that if they can give him an office, we’ll pull the last of the Guard out."

***

Chofu-City, Tokyo:

Colton stood on the deck outside the penthouse of the Hyundai Center. The lights of Tokyo spread out as far as he could see, shimmering in the distance like a beautiful carpet of glowing jewels. Today they’d made the first significant step toward the future. He allowed himself a small moment of pride, but only a small one, because he knew how far they still had to go, and how twisted that road was likely to be.

He walked back into the main room and the wallscreen flashed that he had an incoming call. The ID said
Stormhaven, Viktoria Rosnikov.
He punched the remote and sat down on the huge overstuffed recliner facing the wall.

“Hey Vik, what’s up?” he said, feeling more calm than he had in months. He enjoyed it even while the voices in the back of his head said it was only temporary.

“John Herman just called to let us know that we are good to go,” she said, smiling. “They only had three stipulations, and I didn’t think they’d be problems so I gave him a tentative nod.”

“Yes!” he said. “So what did they ask for?”

“The
Aquila
and the science, which you’d already offered,” she said, ticking off items on her fingers. “The promise that we’d not pull any more ‘fast ones’ on them. And the right to put observers in our launch and control facilities. Presumably so we can’t pull any of those alleged fast ones.”

Colton laughed. “Nothing about the
Reliant
?” he asked. “They’ve got astronauts up there that are going to be needing food soon.”

“They didn’t mention it, but I know Joshua Lange was online with Daryl a couple hours ago, so maybe he said something,” she said, shrugging.

“So when do we expect to get the spy?” he said.

“As soon as you say it’s all good,” she said.

“Give them the green light,” he said. “I’m tired of wasting time.” He reached over and grabbed the wine glass off the table beside him and took a sip. “So do we know who we’re getting yet?”

“Yeah,” she said, grinning. “Douglas Shapiro.” Cole snorted and almost choked on the wine.

“Oh my God. That poor bastard. They’re punishing him for letting us get out of the bottle.”

“Yeah, it’s really not fair,” she said, her grin almost bubbling into a giggle. “Condemning him to hell.”

“So it’s late here, and I think I’m actually sleepy,” he said, kicking back in the chair and yawning. “Anything else I need to know?”

“One more item,” she said. “Mica send him the file.” A screen opened on the lower corner of the wall, and even though it was frozen he could tell that the Chinese were making the announcement.

“What did they say?” he asked.

“They announced their mitigation mission,
Zhen-Long
or something like that. They’ve conducted a successful test of a 125-gigaton warhead, but they were very specific that it was strictly for destroying asteroids.”

Cole whistled. “That’s a record, I think.”

“They went on to explain that they were expecting to test a 1,000-gigaton device within the next eighteen months. They also admitted that they’re building and testing these weapons on the lunar surface, even though they know this is a violation of international agreements. They said it was their belief that a bomb of this magnitude should never be built on the Earth where it might be used as a weapon of war.”

“No shit,” Cole said.

“They did say this was for use against
undiscovered asteroids
that
may
be
determined to be dangerous to the Earth. They very carefully avoided saying that there’s one already out there with our name on it.”

“I’ll bet that made Sylvia Hutton happy,” he said.

***

Exhibiting Insufficient Reluctance

Stormhaven:

“No,” Viki said, for the third time. Cole and Tom sat across the table from her, apparently deaf to her protests. “I’m not going to do it,” she insisted, slapping her palm down on the top of the table.

“You’re the only one who can,” Cole said, trying to soothe her with his tone. “If you don’t, then it’ll be nothing but trouble up there.” Ever since he got back from Tokyo he’d been trying to convince her that she had to head the first outpost mission to the moon.

She was having none of it.

“Look Cole,” she said, “you need a scientist, an engineer, a geologist, anything except a psychologist to head your project. You need someone with skills to build things. Like Daryl or Sophie. Shit, I don’t even know how to use an airlock, for Christ sake.”

“You’re right,” Cole agreed, “and you’ll have all of those people up there with you. What we need is a people-person. Someone who can keep them working together when they’re bottled up in a confined space.”

“Come on Vik,” Tom said. “You know you’re the only one for the job. You wrote that proposal to NASA to study the effects of living and working in a limited environment. You even climbed into the box with the team."

“Yes, I did,” she admitted. “But that was a game. If it’d gotten screwed up, we could always bail. It wasn’t like being a quarter-million miles from home and having no way out."

“That quarter-million miles is only four hours,” Cole said. “The transit time to and from, the moon is less than it takes to drive from here to Phoenix, or Albuquerque.”

“It’s not the same,” she said. “When we were doing that study we didn’t have the reality of the environment adding pressure to the situation. If somebody screwed up, they didn’t die. If you fuck up in a vacuum, you’re pretty much dead. That makes a big difference.”

“True,” Cole said. “It does, and that alone makes it essential we have a psychologist on the first mission. After we’ve got things going up there, you can come back if you want to.”

“What about Feinberg, or Matsumi?” she said. “They’d both jump at the chance to go."

“Neither one of them has the qualifications you do,” Tom said. “You’ve got the sociology to back up the psych.”

“What you’re really saying is that they’ve got families,” she snarled. “I’m single, so I’m not leaving anyone behind.” She closed her eyes, trying to bury her real issue. She’d started to build a connection with someone, and she didn’t want to be away. She knew it was purely selfish, but it was
how she felt.

“Viki,” Cole said quietly, trying to sooth her resentment. “I understand how you feel, honestly I do. But there’s nobody else who can do it.”

Tom studied her face for several seconds, watching her struggle to hold back her tears. “It’s Dave, isn’t it?” he said.

She blinked but said nothing.

“He’s our Chief Astronaut,” Cole said. “He’ll be commanding the first mission and he’s going to be spending most of his time out there. You’ll see more of him on the moon than you would here."

“You’re not going to take
NO
for an answer, are you?” she asked, knowing without a word spoken. “Fuck you both.” She pushed back from the table and glared at them.

“How long do I have?” she asked, standing to leave.

“The mission’s ready. We’ve been waiting for you to volunteer,” Cole said. “Daryl already certified the habitats, and we’re loading them on the
Draco
right now.”

“Volunteer?” she spat out. She clenched her teeth together to stop her rage from roaring out in a wave. She took several deep breaths and blew the last one out as a long slow hiss. “Have you already got a crew?” She asked after she had composed herself.

“Yeah, we posted the list of skills we needed, and then asked for volunteers,” Tom said. “Cole and I went over the list and narrowed it down to forty-six.”

“That’s too many,” she said, remembering how crowded the Study Habitat had seemed with only twenty-four.

“Yeah I know,” Cole said. “But we figured that you’d go over the list and thin some out. They’ll all be going on the first mission, but only twenty-seven will stay. The rest will go up in a few days, once we’ve got a few loads of supplies in place. We should have another residential habitat ready to ship by the end of the week.” He opened a file on the tabletop and slid it toward her. She collapsed back into her chair in resignation.

“That’s the rest of the stuff you’ll need to know,” he said. “And if you’re really worried about how to use an airlock, it’s in there too."

***

Washington:

Project Prometheus
. Carter Anthony walked around the conference table handing out comb-bound booklets. The cover showed a strange device that looked like a laser cannon from an ancient Saturday morning matinee.
Buck Rogers and the Guns of Prometheus.
Or maybe something that Stormhaven came up with.

The President looked at the image, and turning to Dick Rogers, almost made a comment wondering if his Uncle Buck had had some influence on this proposal, but she bit her lip. Dick did actually have a great-uncle Buck, but it was a long way from there to the sci-fi action hero. His face looked like he’d thought the same thing, as did the Secretaries of State and Defense, but no one took the bait.