Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  They were a lot later than they’d originally planned—a weather hold had kept them on the ground at San Diego until well after sundown—and the sprawling flight line was mostly deserted, save for a Boeing ScramJet being prepped for takeoff all the way across the base at the North Field Complex. Nothing unusual about that; depending on the orbital configuration of their destination, and the importance of their cargo, HighJumpers went anytime, day or night.

  She clambered onto the wing, stepped stiffly to the ground, shaking her legs one after the other to clear the kinks from joints and muscles, then finished the job of putting her plane to bed. She’d just slung her bag over a shoulder and locked the doors, wondering without enthusiasm or energy if she was going to make it the couple of miles left to her own doorstep or if she’d be better served simply crashing in the Ready Room over here, when a Range-Rover pulled up, Colonel Sallinger ordering her into the back.

  There was someone already there, and Nicole offered up a tired smile of greeting at the sight of Simone Deschanel.

  “A ways off your turf, aren’t you?” Nicole asked as the wagon pulled away from the hangar.

  “That’s the joy of the Secret Service,” was the amused reply, “every day its own little adventure.”

  Sallinger half leaned over the seat, held out a personal flight bag. “All your ID, Lieutenant,” he said, “in here, please.”

  “May I ask, sir”—even as she complied with the order—“what’s going on?”

  “You may ask.” And he handed a second bag over to her. She snuck a peek, found a CardEx with her face on a totally different name, toiletries, and change of clothes, civilian and uniform.

  “You’re flying jump seat on tonight’s run up to Sutherland,” he continued. “Essentially, a dead-head. You’re not on any manifest; officially, you won’t even be aboard the vehicle.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That makes us pretty much even. First I heard of this caper was when Ms. Deschanel walked into my office late this afternoon with a sealed, handwritten order from the White House. In my whole professional life, young lady”—this was to Simone, who took it in stride, making Nicole wonder on what other occasions she’d played a similar scene—“I have never seen one of those and I’ll be quite happy never to again.”

  Nicole looked to Simone for an explanation.

  “Report came down to the Boss”—meaning, Nicole assumed, President Russell—“by hand from Althea Maguire,” who was Deputy Chief United States Marshal at DaVinci. “She wants to see you, in person and immediate. Boss agrees. She’s been Lunar too long, Terrestrial gravity’s too much of a strain for her. More importantly, her presence Earthside would be noticed. Sutherland’s a different matter, it’s within her jurisdiction.”

  “So the mountain goes to Mohammed?”

  “Depending on your point of view, child, precisely.”

  “Won’t I be missed?”

  “You’re about to come down with a bug,” the Colonel said. “Very nasty. Confined to quarters, bedridden, that sort of thing. As far as the world’s concerned, for the duration of your absence, Agent Deschanel will be you. She’ll have your CardEx, and we’ll put a Mask filter over your phone to screen her appearance.”

  “Seems like an awful lot of trouble.”

  “Boss figures you’re worth it,” Simone replied.

  “I don’t know whether to be flattered or scared stiff.”

  “Try both. But here’s something else to chew on,” Simone said while Nicole lay on her back in the cargo space, struggling into a flight suit.

  “I’m listening,” but she wasn’t really, a trouser leg had gotten twisted under her and she snarled as she fought it the right way around. Regs required that at least one flight-qualified member of any ScramJet crew wear a full pressure suit, so that—in case of any environmental emergency, such as a loss of atmosphere—someone would be left capable of handling the vehicle. And while current designs were an impossibly vast improvement over their first- and second-generation counterparts, they still weren’t meant to be donned in the back of a moving station wagon.

  “You remember what happened on the Moon, prior to your departure?”

  “Environmental systems malfunction that damn near killed me.” A pause, Nicole breathing in small pants, taking a moment to wipe her face—and any other part of her she could reach—with the towel Simone handed her. Then she reached over, switched on the PortaPak air conditioner, and plugged it into the suit’s main input valve. Wouldn’t do a ferocious amount of good until she was finished and fully sealed, but it was at least better than nothing. Problem with a closed system, it got real hot, real fast; she was already slick with sweat all over, with a fair ways to go before she was done. “So what about it?”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Nicole peered up over the back of the seat as she shoved one arm up a sleeve. “Come again?”

  “Not an accident. Deliberate sabotage, keyed to your CardEx.”

  “How?”

  “Maguire didn’t go into specifics, I gather her people are still figuring things out. Sounds as if someone’s infiltrated the Lunar computer networks. That’s why we’re playing with your identity. Using a Tripwire program, she’s managed to uncover three separate sniper sequences, designed not so much to kill but incapacitate and cripple.”

  “What about the others,” Nicole interrupted, “the rest of the surviving Wanderer crew, Hana and Ben and Andrei Zhimyanov?”

  “Null response thus far to any provocation, and believe me Maguire’s troops have been trying. Their consensus is, you’re the sole target.”

  “Hence, Lieutenant,” from Colonel Sallinger, “the need for prudence.”

  “You realize the implications, Nicole?” Simone asked.

  Second arm now, a couple of shrugs of the shoulders to settle it comfortably about her before she pulled the helmet’s seal ring over her head and around her neck and zipped the entire mess closed.

  “Nicole,” Simone said again, a fraction louder, “you understand what this means.”

  “Someone knows,” she said flatly, gripped suddenly by an eerie duality she’d felt before, that this wasn’t really a moment and event happening to her but to someone else who bore an uncanny resemblance, while she—Nicole—watched safe and secure from a distance that seemed to get farther and farther away all the time. “That it was me commanding Wanderer, not Ben Ciari.”

  “More, I’m afraid. Al’s assessment, and I agree with it, is that whoever’s responsible for this is brilliant, viciously inventive like no one I’ve ever seen. This person doesn’t want you dead so much as hurt, he wants you—and those around you—to know what’s happened and live with it a long time. That isn’t the mark of a professional.”

  “Cold comfort, Simone.”

  “Damn it, woman, will you listen? It could be that this isn’t business for whoever’s after you, it’s personal. And if that’s the case, it isn’t going to end—they aren’t going to quit—until they nail you. Or you get them.”

  New flight boots. Like the suit, her size but not even marginally broken in. And she prayed for a quick, uneventful flight. Sooner they were up to Sutherland, sooner she could turn into something civilized.

  “Apologies, Lieutenant,” Sallinger said. “But someone might notice if we pulled your personal gear. These are from basic stores.”

  “I’ll manage, sir. What’s my brief when I get up there?”

  “Listen to what the Marshal has to say, do as you’re told, come back safe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He pulled the Range-Rover to a stop on the ramp and turned to Simone. “I’m afraid we may have something of a problem. Next month, the Lieutenant’s scheduled to participate in the International Aerospace Conference in New York, to accept their Gold Medal on behalf of the Wanderer crew. She’ll also be participating in a symposium about the mission and the contact with the Halyan’t’a. There’s an address to the Wings Club, and a reception t
hey’ll be hosting afterward. I believe the President... ”

  “He’s especially looking forward to it,” Simone said with a nod of dismay. “Even under normal circumstances, I don’t think we could talk him out of it, and with the political situation being what it is... ” She didn’t need to finish. The race had grown so tight, with Vice President Mansfield bolting to stage a third-party candidacy, that Russell was cashing every marker he had. “Fortunately,” Simone continued, “in this instance, I’m naught but a spear-carrier. Time for higher echelons to earn the big bucks that come with the big titles.”

  Sallinger looked to Nicole. “In your bag are the latest performance specs on the combined vehicles, from Thursday’s flight,” he meant the Hybrid Shuttles, mating Terrestrial systems to the Hal spacecraft and vice versa. “I want to expand the envelope another five points, especially as regards comparable maneuvering regimes in mid-atmosphere.”

  “Shouldn’t I run these by Colonel Kinsella?”

  “Nicole, you’ve been structuring the program since it started, working with the Halyan’t’a team. I know Grace has been signing off on the reports, I also know who’s been crawling around in the guts of both ships. I have her assessment, I want yours. Is that a problem?”

  “Nossir. A day and a downlink from Sutherland and I should have it for you.”

  “Good. The launch is in a standard crew hold”—he glanced at his watch—“gives you a ten-minute window to get aboard. Have a safe flight.”

  “I wish I had happier news,” Simone said as she walked Nicole towards the crew access ladder that led upward to the Scram’s forward hatch. Nicole took a moment to run her eyes over the entire spaceplane, flash-carding it back and forth in her mind with the Hal shuttle tucked away in its South Field hangar. As Kymri had said, the laws of aerodynamics apply the same to everyone, so given the similar physiognomy of human and Halyan’t’a, it stood to reason there’d be a commonality of design as well. And superficially, there was. The same sleek lines blending fuselage to wing form, allowing for the optimum mix of speed and maneuverability. Yet she had to concede here as with their pure spacecraft, the Hal designs possessed an inherent quality of beauty that made their Terran counterparts pale in comparison.

  Condensation from the liquid hydrogen fuel sheathed the belly of the spaceplane, creating a translucent cloud of ice-steam that diffused the work lights, casting the whole scene in an eerie fairy-tale atmosphere. Even at the opposite end of the plane, the chill was enough to raise clouds of steam from both women with every breath as they talked.

  “I’m still not sure how to take it,” Nicole said.

  “That’s partly what this meet with Maguire’s all about, to give you some ideas.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble.”

  “She thinks you’re worth it. She isn’t alone.”

  As Nicole turned to go, Simone called out, “You’re looking good, Red. Whatever you’ve been doing down here, it’s made a difference.”

  Nicole shook her head in disbelief. “Look, if there’s anything you need... ” she started to say.

  “Already worked out between me and your boss. And I can always query the house itself. If it’s standard military housing, it has a standard military household computer, right? I’ll be fine. You do the same.”

  “For what it’s worth, Simone,” she said, “I think the President’s right, about the Treaty and the Hal.”

  “Hold that thought. Like I said, he needs the help. Safe journey, Nicole!”

  She settled the helmet on the collar of her pressure suit and locked the seal ring. This was a standard model, padded to fit snug about the head (to protect against violent impacts), with the communications gear built in—as opposed to the “vacuum bubbles” used in open space, which required a separate headset. Moreover, this design allowed the faceplate to be unsealed and left open. Which is how she wore it now.

  She worked her jaw—up, down, and sideways, stretching it to the limit—to make the fit a trifle more comfortable, well aware that it pouched even her long cheeks like a chipmunk’s. Then, with a last wave to Simone, she gathered the PortaPak air conditioner and her flight bag in her left hand. Using her right hand to pull her along the rail—in addition to weighing the proverbial ton, the bulky pressure suit did wonders for her balance—she climbed the ladder to the hatch and stepped aboard.

  She passed over her CardEx to the pilot, who slugged it into the scanner slot and gave the display a perfunctory glance before handing it back, motioning her to the jump seat right behind his. Somebody’d left a pile of gear there and after asking twice for help and getting no response, she moved it herself. With a smile of apology, the flight systems engineer gathered it up and started filing the logs and manuals in their proper cubbyholes. Even a century into the computer age, flight crews still carried hardcopy backups for all their electronics.

  While the crew continued with their checklist, she followed through her own, settling herself as comfortably as possible in her chair and running status diagnostics on the emergency air bottles racked along the wall beside her. Essentially, she had her own system, totally isolated from the mainline environment that supported the rest of the spaceplane—the idea being that despite any disruption or even total failure of the plane’s atmosphere, she’d have these to rely on. Of course, the down side was that—assuming the problem was terminal—it simply meant she’d survive that much longer than the crew, and be aware of what was happening while they were either blissfully unconscious or dead.

  When she was satisfied, she transferred her external environment lines from the PortaPak to their on-board junctions, and plugged in the communications links. Immediately, she could hear the crew and the Tower. To her right, the FSE—nicknamed “Fuzzy”—monitored the co-pilot as she entered the navigational data by hand into the guidance computers. The information had already been uploaded electronically, this served as yet another layer of cross-checks; a query from any element along the chain and they’d start again. Nicole pulled her gloves from her flight bag, locked them to the wrist couplings at the end of her suit sleeves. All that was required now for full integrity was that she close her faceplate. Finally, she pulled the four-point restraints over her shoulders and locked them in place, tightening the straps until they were snug about her. Couldn’t move worth a damn, but that was the point.

  “Major,” the pilot called over the intercom, and Nicole had to remind herself that he meant her, “you all set?”

  “Systems clear on my board, all readings nominal,” she acknowledged, and got a backup confirmation from the FSE. These were strangers to her, which she assumed was no coincidence.

  “Edwards Mission Control,” the pilot said, “this is HighFlight Zero-Two, prestart checks complete, all on-boards in the green, awaiting Activation Clearance. We are in receipt of Information Hotel.” Which was a recorded announcement of the basic conditions of the airfield, updated every hour.

  “Roger, HighFlight Zero-Two,” replied Mission, which shared jurisdiction for the Scrams with the Tower, “cleared for start. Flight plan approved as filed.”

  One after the other, the great engines were fired and spun up to idling while the crew—this time, with Nicole included—went through yet another checklist. There was a relaxed ease to the exchanges that bespoke long familiarity, both with the procedures and the personnel, but just because they’d done this before—probably more times than they cared to count—didn’t mean they were going to take anything for granted. The crew that got careless was begging to get dead.

  Just like any ordinary air-breather, the Boeing taxied out to the runway, Nicole closing her visor as they turned into place. The pilot advanced the central throttles, co-pilot calling off the numbers, velocity and distance, as they picked up speed. Nicole felt a faint rise beneath her, less of a sensation from the nose gear far below as thrust pushed the body of the spaceplane down on the mains, while lift took ever more pressure off the nose, stretching the oleo strut shock absorber to th
e limit of its extension.

  “V2,” the co-pilot called, announcing that they’d reached the minimum speed necessary to get them into the air. Next, a few moments later, came, “V1.” Decision speed. Should they lose an engine, they still had sufficient velocity to complete the takeoff, or runway enough to stop if the pilot chose to abort. They were racing along now, the runway lights starting to blur into a single yellow streak while G-forces gently, firmly pressed Nicole into her chair. She couldn’t see the pilot’s console—his body blocked her view—but didn’t need to; her station had its own, albeit limited, heads-up display, capable of projecting basic flight and navigation data. Moreover, she had her own experience and instincts, so far telling her this was a prime takeoff, every element optimum.

  “Rotate,” the pilot said quietly, both he and the co-pilot pulling back on their yokes, the nose rising immediately to what seemed like so steep an angle of attack that the instinctive, instantaneous reaction was that the spaceplane was sure to stall. But the Boeing had power to burn, an extraordinary thrust-to-mass ratio, and it left the ground with a tremendous rush, leaping skyward as easily as a fighter plane a fraction of its size. Little more G now, though nowhere near what Nicole had experienced in vertical rocket lift-offs.

  The pilot keyed their assigned cruise altitude and course into the autopilot—again, a manual confirmation of what was automatically uploaded into the navigational computer—then settled back in his chair. They were flying a standard profile, taking them up to twenty kay and five hundred klicks offshore, where they’d make their turnaround and begin the eastward run to orbit. This was the fundamental disadvantage of a West Coast launch. Orbital tracks ran west to east, following the rotation of the Earth, which was fine for anything lifting from New York or Canaveral, or even down along the Gulf. But environmental regs, and hotly debated safety restrictions, mandated that anything boosting out of the atmosphere do so primarily over unoccupied territory. Ideally, the ocean. An east-west frontal intercept was considered prohibitively difficult—hardly surprising, since that meant the two objects, spaceplane and space station, would be hurtling towards each other at a combined closure speed of better than fifty thousand kilometers per hour—so the Scrams were forced to fly an hour out to sea, climbing to the top of the stratosphere in the process, and then begin their orbital insertion. By the time they crossed land once more, they’d be pretty much in space.