Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  GROUNDED!

  Nicole Shea 02

  By

  Chris Claremont

  * * *

  Table Of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  * * *

  WHERE DO YOU GO

  AFTER YOU’VE GONE

  TO THE STARS?

  Lt. Nicole Shea was once a top space pilot. She crushed a marauding Wolfpack—and established first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.

  Now they’ve taken away her flight rating and reassigned her to a diplomatic post on Earth. Shea is supposed to disappear into the footnotes of history.

  But the defeated raiders have not forgotten her—and neither have the alien Halyan’t’a.

  Soon Shea is enmeshed in intrigue more deadly than any outer-space battle. Still, even without wings, a true-pilot can never be...

  GROUNDED!

  * * *

  Praise for FirstFlight by Chris Claremont:

  “A lean, tense storyline, a graphic visual sense, and a talent for action.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An excellent first novel.”

  —New York Newsday

  “Chris Claremont, well-known writer in another medium, makes an impressive debut in novel-length with FirstFlight—solid with plausible technical detail and excellent in story—a writer definitely able to sustain a strong start right to the end. I’m really impressed.”

  —C. J. Cherryh

  * * *

  * * *

  This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.

  GROUNDED!

  An Ace Book/published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace edition/August 1991

  Copyright © 1991 by C. S. Claremont

  Cover art by Royo.

  ISBN: 0-441-30416-8

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  The name “ACE” and the “A” logo are trademarks belonging to Charter

  Communications, Inc.

  Printed In The United States Of America

  * * *

  To Beth

  * * *

  United States of America

  National Aeronautics & Space Administration

  Department of Manned Spaceflight

  Office of the Chief Astronaut

  After reviewing the opinion of the Medical Evaluations Board, together with all other pertinent data, it is the judgment of this office that Second Lieutenant Nicole Shea, United States Air Force, is currently unfit to hold an astronaut’s rating and is therefore removed from Flight Status, pending further evaluation and review.

  (Signed)

  David Elias

  Chief Astronaut

  * * *

  one

  “Baron Three-Six Sierra, Las Vegas Center.”

  “Las Vegas, Three-Six Sierra,” she replied.

  “Departing our range,” the controller said in its perfectly modulated, computer-generated voice. “Terminating direct route radar coverage. Squawk transponder code one-two-zero-zero until further advised by LA Center.” There was a small beep from the display screen that filled the right side of the control panel as an electronic signal from the ground initiated the frequency change, but Nicole took a look anyway to confirm it visually, then pressed the transmit button on her control yoke. Manual backup for what the electronics should have done automatically. Another beep and a flashing light on the display indicated the controller’s acknowledgment of her transmission. “Contact them directly,” she was told, “on frequency one-one-nine-point-seven-five.”

  “One-one-niner-seven-five,” she echoed, entering the numbers on the secondary transceiver channel.

  “Have a nice day, Three-Six Sierra.”

  “You, too, Center.”

  Nicole Shea shifted in her seat, rolling her shoulders to ease a slight stiffness. There were few things she loved more than flying, and few things about it she found more annoying than not being able to get up and stroll about the cabin when the mood struck. A problem she wouldn’t have in a bigger, more modern aircraft than this antique that rolled off the Beechcraft assembly line in her grandmother’s day. But then, the actual flying wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun.

  She’d taken the flight cross-country in easy stages, four days to cover what she could have done in one—although, she told herself with a grin, spending the weekend with friends in Durango didn’t really count—rarely airborne for more than a couple or three hours at a stretch. The Baron was good for five—she as well—but traveling alone it was always better to play things safe. There was far more of a margin for error down here in the atmosphere than out along the High Frontier, but a stupid mistake could kill you just as dead.

  Automatically, she scanned the dials—checking altitude, course, engine stats—the pilot’s side of the panel crammed with analog instruments that any airman worth the name since the Wright Brothers could easily have understood, while the right-hand side was an ultra-modern flat crystal display. At the moment it was illuminated with an overhead schematic of her course—a smaller, localized version of the display available to the Air Traffic Control network. The autopilot was running things—quite nicely, as usual—but that didn’t mean she had to take that for granted.

  It hadn’t been a pleasant scene at Sutherland Station after the shuttle’s arrival. There were some outraged noises from the corporate rep, demanding to know precisely how Nicole had discovered the violations she’d reported, intimating that she’d been poking her nose into restricted data bases and was therefore potentially in far more trouble than the pilots. Simone Deschanel put a fast stop to that. “How Lieutenant Shea developed this information is irrelevant,” the Secret Service agent said with an icy outrage that was no act.

  “The point, gentlemen,” she continued, while Nicole squirmed uncomfortably in her own chair, partly wishing she’d kept her mouth shut even though she knew she’d done the right thing, “is that your actions put the President at risk.”

  “Bullshit,” one of the crew protested, “there was never the slightest danger. Even Lieutenant Shea can’t say there was!”

  “Not this trip, perhaps,” Simone shot back, “but what about next time? Ten-twelve months down the line? What to my mind is established, beyond doubt, is a pattern of slipshod disregard for procedures that shouldn’t be tolerated on any flight, much less a presidential one. And which had damn-all better be fixed before the Boss leaves atmosphere again!”

  The crew got reprimands. In a sense, they lucked out, since they weren’t fired—the need was too great and qualified personnel still too hard to come by—but they’d probably end their careers flying bottom-of-the-barrel shitloads. Total loss of seniority as well, plus the pay and perks that went with it.

  “You jealous, Shea, that it?” the co-pilot snarled at her after the hearing. “You figure, you lost your rating, you want to make sure to drag some other poor slobs into the garbage dump with you?”

  She didn’t have an answer—then or now—and anything she said wouldn’t have mattered much of a damn.

  And her mind put her back on the Moon, in the office of NASA’s Chief Astronaut, meeting David Elias’s gaze but not really seeing him, barely aware of anything in the room at all. His desk was abnormally
clean, its clutter piled away on sideboards and cabinets. This was a formal moment, it deserved an appropriate setting.

  The letter lay in front of her, where he’d placed it.

  “No comment?” Elias asked softly, with the faintest of Georgia drawls.

  “Doesn’t this say it all?” she asked back, her own voice equally quiet and surprisingly steady.

  “Actually, it does—but I think more than you realize. The operative phrase in your case is ’pending further evaluation and review.’ The file isn’t closed, the decision’s not final.”

  “Yet.”

  “That sounds a mite cynical.”

  “Physically, I’m fit—fully recovered from my injuries.”

  “No argument. Indeed, the medical staff was quite impressed; in some ways, they count you as better than before. But your ‘First Flight’ was an ordeal that would have put experienced command officers to the test. You went up against a Wolf pack, got your spacecraft shot out from under you, half your crew killed, and then pulled off a First Contact encounter with an extraterrestrial civilization. Most people don’t see that much excitement in a career. And you did well.” The way he said that last line made it clear this was, for him, the supreme compliment, more so even than the Solar Cross she’d been awarded.

  “But I’m grounded.” There was a flat, bitter edge to the words, as though they were a living, breathing enemy she could vanquish simply by speaking them.

  “Yes.”

  “I feel fit, Dr. Elias, I can handle the job!”

  “Do you, Lieutenant? Can you? I’ll be blunt, the vote was as close as it can get, and none of the Board members were certain; I’ve never read more dissension in one of their opinions. Empirically, you’re quite correct; you aced the recertification exams, as well or better than you did when you first came up here. You have an excellent case for reinstatement, because in the final analysis, my decision came down to instinct. I choose the fliers in my shop.”

  “I should have guessed. You tried your damnedest to get me thrown out of space from the moment I arrived.”

  “Because I thought you were cocky and arrogant, too good to be true, so good that you were guaranteed certain to make the kind of stupid, careless, overconfident mistake that would get you killed and cost the taxpayers a multibillion-dollar spacecraft. Goes to show, I’m not infallible.”

  “If that holds true for then, why not for now?”

  “This is different. I know you now, Nicole. As much, I think, as you do yourself. You won’t even need Canfield’s intercession this time. You want to challenge my decision, all you have to do is request an Appeal. I’ll lay odds you’re flying within the month.” He pulled another sheet of paper from inside the desk, slid it across to her. She spared a glance, saw a standard form. “You’re entitled, everyone is, and more’n a few take the chance.”

  “How many successfully?”

  “There’s always hope. We invest considerable money and time and effort training you people, makes no sense to throw it all away. We are only human, we do make mistakes. In both directions. This could indeed be one. Hell, maybe you’re right—perhaps I am erring on the side of a personal bias, that’s been suggested already.” She looked up, surprised, wondering who had stood up for her. “This is as close to certain as things come, Lieutenant,” he finished, indicating the paper.

  She touched it, wanting more than anything to sign; then she shook her head and pushed it away.

  She rose to her feet, unconsciously, automatically, standing to attention; Elias was civilian, but she wasn’t, and seven years in a blue suit had left its mark.

  “Will that be all, sir?” she asked.

  “We’re done, Ms. Shea, you can go.”

  She saluted, did an about-face more suited to the parade quad of the Air Force Academy—a quarter million miles away, in the shadow of the Colorado Rockies—and strode out of the office.

  “LA Center,” she tried, deliberately breaking herself out of her reverie. “Baron November-One-Eight-Three-Six Sierra, with you at ten thousand five hundred, on a two-eight-zero radial, thirty miles outbound from Dagget VOR, westbound VFR to Mojave, over?”

  Barely a mile below, desert stretched to the horizon in all directions, broken here and there by small mountain clusters and the occasional solitary butte. A sea of dull yellow, scattershot with darker strains of brown or red-orange. Nothing green. Precious little evidence that the land was any different today than when the first Indians found it aeons ago. A satellite doing a local fly by might understandably conclude that the world was fundamentally uninhabited, or possessed of only the most minimal technology. Until, of course, she thought, they conducted an atmospheric analysis. A half century of increasingly serious and enforced environmental legislation had made a substantial difference—the air far fitter to breathe and the seas mostly safe to swim in—but there was still a ways to go.

  She repeated her call to Los Angeles Center, and this time was rewarded by a reply.

  “Transmission acknowledged, Three-Six Sierra,” another computer-generated voice, as pleasant and featureless as the one she’d heard from Vegas, and indeed every other controller from one end of the country to the other. Actual human beings only came on-line when there was trouble; otherwise, it was an entirely computer-run system. “Your current position is beyond our direct radar coverage”—to be expected, given Nicole’s altitude, in this rugged, randomly mountainous terrain—“but be advised that your course will take you through restricted airspace, a Military Operating Area.”

  “Understood, LA,” she said, “I have authorization for transit through the MOA to Mojave Airport”—outside the town of the same name, just north of the sprawling Air Force base, it billed itself as the Civilian Flight Test Center—“and will be contacting Edwards TRACON for specific vectors, over.” She stifled a yawn—more the effects of flying at altitude than actual fatigue—looked suddenly out the right-hand window as a distant flash caught her eye, down low on the deck. Probably nothing, she decided when she didn’t spot anything, somebody hot-rodding across the dunes, sunlight bouncing off his windshield.

  “Acknowledged, Three-Six Sierra. Contact Edwards Traffic Control on frequency one-two-four-point-eight.”

  “One-two-four-point-eight, LA, roger.”

  “Three-Six Sierra, LA, over?” New voice, a person this time. She sat a little straighter in her seat, took a quick glance across the sky around her.

  “Three-Six Sierra, go ahead.”

  “Say again your aircraft type.”

  That prompted a smile. No major crisis then, but a question she heard most often from mainline hub facilities, where the personnel dealt more with state-of-the-art commercial equipment than the smaller fields she preferred, where they still remembered the old days and older planes.

  “Beechcraft,” she told the woman, “Baron, Model B for Bravo, five-eight. Over.”

  “Baron?” the controller repeated, voice rising slightly into a query of disbelief.

  “Twin-engine, propellor-driven, six-seater, circa 1985.”

  “And it still flies?”

  “Very well, thank you.” Which prompted a low whistle of admiration.

  “More power to you, then, Three-Six Sierra. However, we recommend you exercise a heightened degree of discretion. You’re in a sort of no-man’s-land between Vegas Center, us, and Edwards airspace. At your altitude, we cannot provide comprehensive radar coverage.”

  “Acknowledged, LA, and appreciated.” She switched the main display over to RADAR, refined the scan to give her a clear picture of the route ahead. Looked clear. For all she knew, might actually be clear.

  Four years since she last walked the high desert. She’d been assigned to Edwards after graduation from the Air Force Academy, which had been a major shock, since her career profile had her on track for NASA and astronaut training. Turned out the Commander of the Flight Test Center, Harry Macon, had asked for her specifically, and for the better part of the year she spent there she
functioned as his shadow, pulling all the scutwork duty that went with being an aide but getting as well invaluable training and hands-on experience in the art of flying. The tour culminated in her being tapped to be his co-pilot for what turned out to be the first successful test of the XSR-5 Controlled ReEntry Vehicle. A week later she’d been part of the memorial overflight for Harry’s funeral. And within a month after that, she was on her way to NASA.

  Now, full circle, she was coming back. Step up, step down, she didn’t really care. Part of her was still numb and she was beginning to wonder if it’d ever thaw.

  She blinked, looking off to the right again, tilting the wheel slightly to tip the Baron starboard side down as she eyeballed the desolate landscape. Pulled off her RayBans to see if there was any difference without her sunglasses. Something had registered out of the corner of her eyes, more as an afterimage than anything else; truth to tell, she wasn’t sure it was anything at all but she felt better making certain. Another small smile, but this with a lot less humor. One of the more hellish realities of flying was how infernally hard it was to actually see anything. More times than she’d care to remember, she’d gotten a call about another contact in her vicinity, been told where to look and how far away, searched the sky with diligent ferocity, only to come up empty. Amazing how aircraft that looked so big close-up could disappear so completely once they got off the ground.

  She keyed the transmit button, to give Edwards TRACON a call.

  And her plane seemed to run into a wall.

  No sound, no warning, a dart-winged shape blurring past her nose, trailing twin spikes of flame as afterburners hurled it for the stars, had to have been transitioning through Mach, sonic booms creating the jet wake of a plane ten times its size, waves of solid air punching the Baron’s nose down with brutal force, throwing it one way, Nicole snapping the other, crying out as her head bounced off the wall. Alarms and telltales were flashing all across her control panel, mixing with the light show inside her skull, while some insistently heavy hand tried to shove her out of her seat and squash her flat on the ceiling.