Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “Stop it,” she said quietly to herself, suddenly tired of the rant. Wishing wouldn’t change a thing and obsessing about it did nothing but make her miserable. Of course, there was a tremendously seductive luxury in that, it was an attitude that served Alex supremely well. And seeing him as the reflection in her mirror didn’t sit well with Nicole.

  She dunked herself a final time, then hauled herself up and went in search of a towel, still physically on autopilot, while her thoughts played cat-chases with each other: Al Maguire saw the Cobris behind the Wolfpack Nicole had destroyed. Made sense. Assume that as the primary given. Primary suspects? Manuel? Same question now as before, why? He’s got more power than almost anyone, what does he need with more? By the same token, she sighed sadly, why seek to perpetuate yourself with genetically engineered children?

  She shook her head. Even allowing for his hand in the Wolfpack, that doesn’t explain what’s happened since. Business is business, the attacks on me were personal. And she had to chuckle, grimacing at her face in the washroom mirror and the witch-crone rat’s nest of damp hair spiking all directions from her head, no matter what she tried it never behaved, and wondering if she wouldn’t be better served simply cutting it off. The laugh, though, had nothing to do with her appearance, but with the suspicion that if Manuel wanted anything to happen to her—good or bad—there would be no mistake and no need for a second attempt. He was a ferociously precise man, like all engineers; if she was the target, she would be the target, there’d be no bystanders clipped on the sidelines.

  Alex, then, prompting another chuckle and a rueful shake of the head. Fantasizing a hit was one thing, but actual, real-world execution? No, what’s needed is an amalgam of Alex’s raw genius and Manuel’s ruthlessness, coupled to a being who acts on impulse. Who perhaps, in a fit of pique, sets in motion a killing scenario only to think better of it and call the victim—ostensibly her friend—to pull her to safety before it’s too late.

  And she remembered her father’s words at the reception: “He’s worked for what he’s got, that tempers a person.” But for someone with all the power and drive and passion and none of the leavening effects of experience...

  “Amy,” she breathed. Baby and brilliant, the person no one would suspect, for the same reason no one thought to look for Alex off the Earth. He traveled Virtual or not at all, an actual space shot was inconceivable.

  She was a kid, and kids simply did not do these sorts of things. Only she wasn’t a kid, not really, but her father in small, picking up where he was leaving off, testing her limits in the directions he wouldn’t go. Pushing the outside of her envelope as all kids do, a totally natural evolution from setting up a network at Edwards to one that spanned the System. A perfectly natural attitude for one born to power to view the environment that gave her that power as her own private fiefdom. And like any kid, to stake that possession indelibly as her own.

  Nicole got in the way. Nicole ruined things. Nicole had to pay. And she wondered how Amy had gotten Alex to set up the software scenario? If Alex had ever made the connection between what he’d done—because only he had that kind of expertise—and what had happened to her? But that was before they’d met, and Amy had come to actually like this woman she wanted hurt.

  “Sundowner,” she heard announced over the PA, the pilot call-sign Harry Macon had given her the day she’d arrived.

  “Here,” she acknowledged from the nearest WallCom.

  “Your presence required in briefing.”

  “Five minutes.”

  She’d pulled one of her old flight suits from storage, emblazoned with the Wanderer mission patch over her left breast; over that went her leather flight jacket. She returned to the Ready Room with a minute to spare.

  “Lieutenant,” Sallinger called as she entered, nodding approval of the obvious improvement in her condition as she stood to attention and snapped a parade ground salute. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  “For as long as it lasts, boss.”

  “Or you do, hmnh? Fair enough. You had some valid points earlier, I won’t order you to make this flight. Instead, I’m asking—do you feel yourself capable of handling this mission?”

  There’s the rub, she thought, the first answer coming to mind being, I honestly haven’t a clue. And she turned towards the video wall, to Elias and Canfield above. But the words she heard came from Harry Macon, the pair of them sitting side by side in the XSR cockpit, Nicole looking pole-axed as he told her she’d be flying its first reentry with him. “Flying’s like money,” he said, popping a square of gum into his mouth, interrupting every few words with an attempt to blow a bubble, “if you have to ask how much a thing costs, you probably can’t afford it. If you have to ask someone whether or not you’re capable of flying, you probably aren’t. Certainty is our stock in trade, young Lieutenant—that’s where the arrogance comes from, can’t be helped, we’re only human—the measure of a great pilot is the ability to know which is which. Knowing you can do something, as opposed to telling yourself you can.”

  “Suppose you’re wrong, skipper. Suppose I’m wrong.”

  “Then, kiddo”—pop went Macon’s bubble and he made a face as he scraped goo off his mustache—“we’ll both of us get our pictures on the Hot shots’ wall.”

  “Yes, sir,” she told Sallinger simply.

  He nodded, the questioning quirk to his brow making Nicole wonder how long she’d zoned before answering. “You’ll have two as crew,” he said. “Tscadi will be systems monitor, I’ll take the right seat.”

  She wasn’t surprised.

  “When do we go?”

  “Soon as we’re dressed.”

  Someone had fixed the pilot’s seat since she’d last sat in it, modifying its configuration to better suit her back. On the central console, between her and Sallinger, was attached a PortaComp, hard-wired into the panel itself so its data could be displayed on the much larger built-in screens. Behind, at her engineer’s station, Tscadi was running through the start-up checklist. It was a painfully laborious process, because each time the Hal spoke, Nicole had to spend crazed seconds hunting around her head for the proper response. The unconscious facility with the language that had come from the adrenaline rush of the assassination attempt had faded in the days since; she still possessed the knowledge, but she’d lost the automatic ease of using it. And though she’d executed the procedure scores of times in the simulator, this was her first live flight and she was determined to take the time to make sure she got things right. It was a decision arrived at without doubt or hesitation, one she knew she’d have made under the most ordinary and normal of circumstances. They wouldn’t have this kind of opportunity once they lifted.

  “Ascent profile established and enabled,” Sallinger reported, “shall I lock it in?”

  “Negative,” she said, “display only. From ground-to-ground, this has to be a hands-on mission.” Manual control, the whole trip. That way, there was no risk of any interference.

  He nodded agreement, and with clearance granted from Mission Control—seconded by the Edwards Tower—the sun cracking the mountains behind them, the dawn air miserably still, Tscadi fired the mains.

  To facilitate the launch, the shuttle had been towed out onto Rogers Dry Lake, with virtually the entire length of the landing bed stretched out before them. They started moving the moment the engines came to life—Nicole saw no sense in using the brakes to hold them in place with kilometers of room to play with; the idea was to get off the ground, not do so in a mad rush, and she wanted to use the opportunity to begin to get a feel for the craft—a leisurely start, initially slower than a man could pedal on a bicycle. But with a “Go” cue from Tscadi, Nicole moved the throttle sticks forward and the huge vehicle began to seriously move. The aerodynamics of the Hal design were every bit as impressive to fly as to watch, only improved by the addition of the Terrestrial hydrogen-fueled ramjets; with very little urging from the control stick, the shuttle was airborne in less than
three klicks, slicing easily upward through the cool morning air. It was no Corsair—and, in truth, no spaceplane, either—making much slower progress out of the blue, but again this was time well spent by the crew getting to know each other and the craft.

  They flew the same basic profile as any spaceplane flight out of Edwards, a climbing leg far out over the Pacific before course was reversed for the final ascent into LEO, low Earth orbit. The primary difference being that the spaceplanes had barely an orbit’s hang time to achieve rendezvous with Sutherland, or any of the other LEO stations, before they’d have to return to the surface; powerful as they were, they lacked the thrust to achieve true escape velocity. This Hybrid Shuttle was a different breed. Given the right enhancements, it was theoretically capable of high-orbital insertions, all the way out to a geo-synchronous station. And with refueling, of traveling anywhere in near-Earth space. Operating as easily from there to the ground as the reverse.

  “I scan an anomaly in number three main,” Tscadi reported.

  Nicole switched one of her screens to the appropriate display, noting the slight differences in pressure readings between the four primary engines.

  “Trouble?” she asked.

  The Hal made a hunhn sound—a noise that was part sigh, part groan with none of the meanings of either, indicative more of her being caught up in a sequence of thoughts—and Nicole wished she weren’t strapped in so tight, or hamstrung by the confining bulk of her pressure suit, so she could make her way back to the engineer’s station and get a physical sense of how she felt.

  “Unknown, at this point. There is a possibility this is an aspect of the normal operating regime.”

  “Can I reduce thrust?”

  “To do so will mandate a Mission Abort. We will be unable to achieve the necessary orbit.”

  “Even assuming nothing’s wrong,” Sallinger said after Nicole had relayed Tscadi’s information, “we won’t have time to pull a turnaround. It’s this or nothing.”

  “Edwards,” Nicole said, “Sundowner Zero-One, proceeding as profiled.” The shuttle was downlinked to the Test Center, with every aspect of the flight being relayed instantaneously to the ground for evaluation. So that regardless of what happened to them, the data provided by the mission would be used to help those who came afterward.

  At turnaround, the air intakes cycled closed and the Rams kicked in as full rockets, the shuttle pulling into a steeper climb—though still far less intense an ascent than used by the first generation of vertical-launched shuttles—acceleration pressing the three of them deep into their chairs.

  “Anomaly worsening,” came Tscadi’s supemally calm voice through Nicole’s headphones.

  “Balls,” came far less calmly from Nicole as she tapped the keypad under her fingers—she had a full range of display controls built into the arms of her chair, hard by the sidesticks—to first recall the engine master display and then focus in on the offending thruster. There was indeed a pressure variance—she couldn’t tell if it was because of a rough burn, an uneven consumption of fuel (which occasionally happened), or a possible flaw in one of the joints along the way, or worse of all a weakness in the combustion casing itself.

  “Thirty-eight seconds to orbit,” Sallinger said. Might as well be thirty-eight years, Nicole thought, scrolling through the PowerSystem menu, trying to find any additional data that would give her a better handle on what was wrong.

  “Any thoughts, Tscadi,” she called.

  “Procedure says shut it down,” Sallinger said.

  “We do, boss, odds are we go down with it. We won’t have the height to achieve a decent rendezvous.”

  “You want to do a Challenger, Lieutenant?”

  “Tscadi,” Nicole called again.

  “Ten percent reduction on three,” the Hal answered, “five percent increase on the others. Shift in angle of attack of three degrees. It will mean a longer run to target.”

  “It’s a half hour we’ll have to take. Okay, down on three, up the others.”

  And as the numbers settled down—but only marginally, and Nicole knew that if this had been a standard flight, they’d already be on their way back to the barn—Sallinger made the ritual announcement through clenched teeth, “Black sky.” They were in space.

  “Sundowner, Edwards Mission Control.”

  “Roger, Edwards,” Nicole replied, “go.”

  “We’ve noted the engineering telemetry. Recommend you leave number three inactive for the duration of the flight, we are unable to determine at this juncture the nature and extent of the fault. We also have no predictions regarding future status.” The plan had been to treat the Hybrid’s evaluation flights the same way NASA did the original manned spaceflights; every vehicle that was launched had a twin on the ground that duplicated the mission as closely as possible. Any condition aboard the flight craft was duplicated as closely as possible with its slave-linked counterpart, in hopes that a solution could more easily be found to any fault. But this emergency had come before the backup procedures had been fully implemented, the only four working engines being the ones installed in the Hybrid. Which left Ground with nothing to rely on but computer models and simulations, which under the circumstances were less than nothing. Everyone was blazing new trails. “Determination here is that you proceed on Mission Commander’s discretion.”

  She looked to Sallinger, because that was his hat.

  “I defer to pilot’s discretion,” he said quietly, isolating the intercom so that he spoke to her alone.

  I don’t want the goddamn responsibility, she screamed inside her head. But said, in a voice that matched his for evenness of tone, “We’ve come this far, boss.”

  He dipped his shoulders, the only way available to let her see he was nodding agreement, and he relayed the decision to the ground.

  “Acknowledged, Sundowner,” the controller said, “we have further information. Telemetry relays from Cheyenne Mountain indicate that Target One has impacted with Target Two.”

  “Terrific,” she said. And to Edwards, “Status?”

  “Unknown, Sundowner. We had a full-spectrum LOS”—loss of signal—“with Target One immediately prior to impact. Consensus is this was not, repeat not, a natural occurrence.”

  “Alex cut ’em off,” she said to Sallinger.

  “Further, there are indications that Target Two has begun to roll.”

  “Oh, joy!”

  “We’re currently determining the effect this will have on Target Two’s orbital status, we’ll relay to you as soon as we have something.”

  Nicole popped her belts and switched umbilicals to a walkabout air bottle, which she clipped to her left thigh.

  “Mind the store, boss,” she said to Sallinger with a soft clap on the shoulder, “be back in a flash.” And pulled her way aft along the ceiling to Tscadi’s station. The Hal suits were far sleeker than their Terrestrial counterparts, with more intrinsic strength—so that even a standard suit was the equivalent of midrange body armor—with less bulk. She reached past the Hal to call up a course display, then said, “I need a fifteen-second burn on one and four, to take us to about there.”

  “A higher orbit. But a slower approach velocity.”

  “It’ll add a little more time to the intercept, but when we do catch him, we’ll be coming up on the nightside terminator. The sun’ll be at our back.”

  “And in the Cobri renegade’s eyes.”

  “That’s the idea. Can do?”

  “Seventeen seconds would be better. Twelve-degree ascension, from here. Establish a shallow parabola, to allow Earth’s own gravity to increase what you would call our delta-V.”

  “Go.” Nicole started to turn away, then swung back to touch her helmet to Tscadi’s, letting sound induction carry her voice to the Hal engineer, rather than the intercom. “Something more,” she said quietly.

  “Shea-Pilot?”

  “Can you establish a full power approach to Patriot?”

  Tscadi turned her face full tow
ards Nicole, plainly doubting what she’d just heard, so Nicole repeated it.

  “Number three is not dependable,” the Hal said.

  “Have to chance it. If he’s armed, our only defense is surprise and maneuverability.”

  “Provided that surprise maneuver does not do us more harm than good.”

  Nicole grinned. “And Kymri said you had no sense of humor.”

  “Your pardon, Shea-Pilot, but a sense of humor is all that has kept me sane on this world of yours.”

  “One full orbit, we should be on him,” she told Sallinger as she regained her seat.

  “Ground isn’t happy. Things are looking very tight from their perspective. They want to pop a boomer from Sutherland on the next circuit, to crack Patriot into as many small bits as possible to minimize the impact damage below.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “If it comes to the crunch, Lieutenant, we’re considered expendable.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “There is something else.”

  “Sir?”

  “How would you characterize the boy?”

  “Alex? Very smart, very bitter, very good with toys. Give him a remote to play with, he’s probably as good as it gets. Reality, though”—and she shrugged—“that’s a whole other concept.”

  “He covered all the bases, except the Hybrid.”

  “No easy way to get at it?”

  “On the ground. But he had to assume the attempt would be made, to use this to rescue his father. Manuel Cobri’s too important to simply do nothing.”

  “So?”

  “If you were him, Ms. Shea, what would you do?”

  Thank God I’m not, she thought. “I’d have a gun,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been figuring, too.”

  “Can I try calling him?”

  “We don’t have line of sight, you’ll have to bounce it off the ComSats.”