SpaceCorp (33 page)

“The rest of the ship is on a different system, so you can be stingy or not, as you like. New rules: on our next pass over Iran, you will immediately engage any space bound targets rising from the Iranian surface as soon as you get them in your sights. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Captain, copy engage any rising targets immediately upon acquisition, and most enthusiastically I might add.”

“You are aware that is counter to the State Department policy?” Captain Dinesh asked.

“We are, Captain.”

“And you have no problem violating that policy?”

“No, Captain.”

“Thank you. I will, of course, assume sole responsibility for any repercussions that come from that order. Stay on the channel. Rock Watch, this is Captain Dinesh. How many pilot fish are you currently tracking?”

“We show five currently, Captain.”

“Are they maintaining their standoff distances?”

“So far, captain.”

“We need to save electric power for Gun Watch to engage any rising bogeys coming up from Iran. But if one of those fish breaks formation, notify Gun Watch immediately with orders to splash on acquisition.”

“Roger, Captain.”

“Gun Watch, do you copy?”

“Yes, Captain, copy splash any pilot fish that maneuvers out of formation.”

Mission Control, ISA Launch Facility, Shahrud, Iran

“Well, Doctor, what happened?” Shirazi asked, impatience in his voice.

“We’re still sorting that out, Minister.”

“Did we hit them or not? Surely you can tell us that much!”

“We hit them—of that I am sure. The warhead proximity fuse showed no target signal, and we got no secondary signal that the warhead detonation command fired. The warhead is no longer communicating—we lost its vital signs signal a few seconds after it passed the target.”

“How did that happen, Doctor?” General Farahavi asked. “Can you speculate?”

The doctor thought for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “The warhead passed through the ring—we know that. The proximity fuse should have picked up a signal from the hub or spokes. We crafted it to not be able pass through an opening between the ring and a pair of adjacent spokes without detecting something and detonating.”

“Could they have jammed us?” Farahavi asked.

The doctor raised his eyebrows and pointed his right index finger upward. “That must be it, General. No wait, that can’t be it! The warhead can detonate three ways: radar proximity fuse, infrared proximity fuse, and impact. They may have jammed the RF signal, but the IR? Too coincidental. And if there was no detonation, why did the warhead suddenly go mum? No, I think they shot it with their laser while it was inbound. The laser burned through the nose and destroyed the detonation mechanism. That’s the only way I can see that they killed the warhead in passing. If I am right, that means they mounted their laser on the top side.”

“What about the
Aqrab
?” Shirazi asked.

“Yes, the
Aqrab
! Move the
Aqrab
into viewing range and put her target video feed on the main monitor!”

In a few minutes, the
Aqrab
had moved to a position one kilometer behind and 300 meters below the
Einstein
.

The three men stared in wonder as the
Einstein
came into view. “I don’t believe it!” Rahmani said. “They jettisoned their hub! Spokes and all.”

“We flew right through the ring and saw nothing because there was nothing to see!” Farahavi said. “We were actually a little too accurate. Had the warhead passed through the ring off-center, we might have picked up an RF or IR signal from the ring hull. By scoring a bull’s eye, we foiled our own plan.”

“But look!” Rahmani said. “The laser cannon is deployed. You can see it plainly on the end of its pedestal. They chose a bottom mount after all.”

“It appears to be pointed right at our
Aqrab
,” Farahavi said.

At that moment, the monitor feed went blank.

“What happened?” Shirazi asked. “Get the picture back!”

“There is no picture, Minister,” Rahmani said. “All vitals from the
Aqrab
are negative. I think they shot us down!”

“So quick,” Farahavi said. “One second we can see them, then nothing. We didn’t even see the flash.”

“Those sly bastards!” Shirazi said. “What are we going to tell the Supreme Leader?”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
T
WO

September 21
^st
, 2071

On the Bridge of the
SSS Albert Einstein

The hub and spokes of the
Einstein
were now 300 m below the orbit of the
Einstein
. The increase in angular momentum was enough to put them 25 kilometers ahead of the
Einstein’s
ring.

“
Einstein
, this is Commander Gomez of the
SOS Grouper
in trail position one kilometer behind you and on your altitude. What are your instructions?”

“This is Captain Dinesh of the
Einstein
. Thank you for coming so quickly, Commander. We’re still working out a retrieval protocol. As you can guess, this isn’t the sort of incident one normally expects up here.”

“Captain, if it might help, we think we can dock with the hub and spokes to off-load the crew. That would give you the option to deorbit the hub and spokes.  I understand there are 24 crew, all suited?”

“Commander, affirmative on the 24 crew, all suited. We may take you up on off-loading them, but we cannot allow that hub and spokes to deorbit. There are eight NTRs in the hub and their nuclear fuel is 96 percent enriched—that’s well over bomb grade.”

“You don’t think it would burn up on reentry?”

“Doubtful. The motor casings are designed to contain extremely high heat from internal nuclear heating. At best we’d have a major nuclear spill. At worst, terrorist elements could retrieve a lot of kilograms of bomb grade nuclear material. We must put maximum priority on recovering at least the hub. Meanwhile, how certain are you that you can dock with one of the spokes?”

“Quite certain, Captain. There are standard docking points all along the each spoke.”

“Can you dock cross-wised with the spoke? We need you and
Grouper
and
Sunfish
to dock in position to fire their thrusters against the hub’s spin direction. Our plan is to zero the spin rate on the
Einstein
, match the positions of the ring and the hub & spokes, then slowly have the hub and spokes lowered into place inside the ring. Once the spoke ends are secured to the inner ring, we can spin up again to return to full gee.”

“That’s a non-standard docking maneuver, Captain. Can you give us a few minutes to work on feasibility?”

“Yes, Commander.
Grouper
and
Sunfish
won’t be here for another couple of hours. Meanwhile, can you pick up one of our crew here on the ring? She was the construction supervisor of the
Einstein
and has intimate knowledge of how the hub & spokes were built.”

At the airlock of the
SOS Grouper

Saluting was one of the military customs set aside with the wearing of bulky spacesuits. Not even the practice of raising the helmet visor—ancestor of the salute—was retained. Airlocks might be full of air, or they might not—a newly arriving astronaut couldn’t be sure until he or she was greeted by the ship’s crew when the inner airlock door opened. Best to set aside military protocol until you were inside the hull of the receiving spacecraft.

As soon as the inner door was sealed, Monica was greeted by the ship’s Officer of the Deck or OOD and one other Able Spaceman, both of whom helped her out of her Delta Team space helmet and suit—no mean task in zero-gee. Only then did military custom reassert itself.

Monica faced the
Grouper’s
medallion—used on all spacecraft in lieu of an ensign—that was mounted on the bulkhead and rendered a salute which the OOD returned. Then she faced the OOD and saluted again, “Senior Astronaut Monica Carvalho, permission to come aboard to render technical support?”

The OOD returned her second salute and said, “Granted and welcome aboard the
Grouper
, Monica.”

“Hello, Royce. Didn’t figure on running into you up here.”

He shrugged as he led her toward the bridge. “Yeah, two weeks now. Chance to be part of a real crew. Couldn’t pass that up, could I?”

“Guess not. Rebecca must be pretty thrilled for you.”

“Actually, she’s not. We… or make that
she
… decided we should stop seeing each other when I accepted the post.”

“‘Sorry.”

“Don’t be. She knew I’d been trying to find a crew slot ever since you and I… well, you know.”

Monica looked at him sideways. Back when they were an item, Royce had wanted himself and Monica to crew on the same ship. A few married couples on each ship were thought to be helpful to good order and morale—provided the male underwent a vasectomy. Pregnancies were punishable by both parties being sent to ground on the next available flight. It did not even matter if the parents were married—DNA records were on file for the entire crew and genetic matching meant the father would be found out in a matter of minutes.

Royce had proposed the married-crew-couple idea some months after they’d started going together. He swore that the idea had nothing to do with getting a berth as crew on a ship, but part of her believed that he would do anything—even marrying her—if it would raise his chances. That crewing was the only viable future he could see for them was one of the reasons she had broken it off… that and a chance to work with the guy who was building the next generation space station. While she wasn’t lily-white in the ulterior motive department, she hadn’t realized she’d be falling so hard for Logan MacGregor. Logan may have been sixteen years her senior but at least he hadn’t turned white the first time she’d mentioned bouncing little astronauts on her knee.
That really was a smile, wasn’t it?
If they had a child right now, Logan would be in his late sixties when their child came of age.
That’s not so old.
Healthy men routinely lived well into their nineties these days. He’d smiled when she ‘proposed’ on the
Pelican
, even when she again declared she wanted a child. He definitely smiled then… she thought.

On the bridge of the
SOS Grouper

Commander Gomez looked to be about her age. His eyes were old though. Space-Only-Shuttle (SOS) captains mature fast or wash out. SOS crews only do about a week at a time on their shuttles. Then they rotate with a standby crew on their home space station. Zero-gee wrecks your muscle tone after the first week. Still, it’s considered good duty for an ambitious officer in SpaceCorp’s astronaut corps.

Commander Gomez did not get up to greet her since he was strapped in to the center console seat. There were two other seats to his left and right, each one mounted low enough so the commander could see over them. All three seats had fully operational controls with a full set of monitors to give them a full 360° x 360° virtual view. Monica floated herself up the narrow passageway leading from the cabin to the cockpit area where the command consoles were located.

“Sam, you have the helm,” Gomez said.

“I have the helm.” Samantha King was a compact, muscular black woman who shaved her head. Her scalp looked like she paste-waxed it.

Gomez pivoted around to face Monica who squatted left of the center console. He offered his hand and Monica shook it. He had big thick-fingered hands with soft warm skin that made her look down to see what she was really holding.

“So you’re the lady with the plan,” he said.

“Well, I have an idea,” she said. “But it may require four crew to spacewalk some heavy hawsers into place.”

“Isn’t that risky?” Gomez asked.

“I’ll volunteer to be one of the spacewalkers,” Monica said.

“Keep talking.”

“Well, first you have to hover in position at the anchor point on the end of a spoke. The
Grouper
will fly around in a circle over the anchor point matching the spin of the hub & spokes.”

“Sam, you listening?” Gomez asked.

“Yeah, Boss.”

“Continue,” Gomez said.

“We’ll need four heavy hawsers on remote-control reels…”

Outside the
SOS Grouper
above the anchor point of Spoke IV

Royce was the first spacewalker out of the airlock. Monica would have preferred he stayed back to supervise, but he was too ambitious for that. She just wanted to hook up her hawser end and get back inside before she caught a 40,000 kmph lug nut through her facemask. He’d want to float around outside, tempting fate and hoping for a chance to be heroic.
How do personalities like that ever get through psych screening?
And then there was their personal history. Nothing like a broken relationship to multiply the risk in a tight situation.

Commander Gomez left Sam at the helm so he could direct the attachment of the four hawsers. They were 5-cm thick braided stainless steel brutes—ungainly in spite of being in zero-gee. This was more a factor of their stiffness than their mass. Ordinarily, the
Grouper
would extend mechanical struts with special grippers to attach longitudinally to the spoke. But her grippers could not pivot more than 5° in any direction, and since she needed to be mounted transversely to the spoke, her grippers would not be able to find a purchase. By mounting transversely instead of longitudinally her thrusters could fire against the spin of the hub & spoke assembly thereby zeroing the spin-rate.