Virus

by Bill Buchanan

  “Five percent,” Napper said solemnly. His jaw was tightened.

  “In addition,” Jackson added, “Colonel Boyd should take off low and slow over water.” He paused, then continued with the reason why. “We pick up ten percentage points on takeoff, but our improvement diminishes once the prototype gains altitude.” There was no technical discussion. Results were all that really mattered in this numbers game. Following a short pause, Jackson concluded. “I propose Logan Airport with takeoff over Boston Harbor.”

  Mason second-guessed the technical reason why. Any slowly moving stealth target was difficult to detect near the surface of the water. “I want you to understand one thing clearly, Colonel Boyd.” He paused, took a breath, and went on. “I will not order anyone into a life-and-death situation where the chances of survival are—unacceptable. I want you to rethink your decision to volunteer with this in mind.”

  The silence which ensued lasted more than thirty seconds.

  Wild Bill looked up, holding his head erect. His voice, calm and barely audible. “I have given the matter a great deal of thought, General, and my mind is clear.” As he spoke, his voice gained strength. It was as if his ears heard what his mouth was saying for the first time and he believed it. “As I see it, our situation’s damn near hopeless. We only have two chances to get out of this man-made fiasco. Two alternatives—that’s not a hell of a lot. We need to do everything we can do to pull this off. Whether I like it or not, that fact is undeniable. That bunch on Hope needs our help. They’re not trained soldiers and frankly, sir, they’re gonna need all the help they can get. I wouldn’t want to trade places with ’em.” He paused, then continued with a softer voice. His tone was sincere. “I’ve been in this Black Hole program from the get go, and Jackson here will agree, I’m the best you’ve got. Considering our situation, I don’t think anything less will do. We need to take our best shot and frankly, sir. I’m the logical choice.”

  Mason closed his eyes for a few moments, struggling desperately to find the right words. He focused on his message, the essence of what he believed. “I agree with your assessment, Colonel—I wish I did not,” he lamented quietly.

  Scott, who’d been silent, now spoke to Wild Bill for herself, and on behalf of her crew. “You’re risking your life for us and there’s precious little we have to offer you in return.”

  “That’s true,” groused Jackson, interrupting Scott midstream. “Why are you doing this? Nobody does anything for nothing.”

  “It’s my job,” Wild Bill snarled instinctively at Jackson. After a few moments, he thought about how his response must sound to the people stranded onboard Hope. Turning away from Jackson, Wild Bill allowed his face to relax and winked at Scott. “Well, somebody has to do it, right?” “Once this nightmare is behind us,” Scott said quietly, “we’d like to meet you in person.”

  “No problem. That can be arranged, Major Scott, under one condition.” Wild Bill forced a grin to ease the tension. “I don’t rescue XR-30 crews for free, you understand. My services don’t come cheap. Don’t get me wrong, your lives are important and all, but I’m an old stick and rudder man myself.”

  From the look in his eye, from the tone of his voice, Scott knew exactly where he was headed. One glance told her Mason knew it too. She’d heard variations of this setup before. Wild Bill was a test pilot and any pilot worth his salt’s looking for a throttles-to-the-wall flight in Hell Fire. Making eye contact with General Mason, they communicated without an exchange of words, then Scott spoke. “Hell Fire always has room for one more, right, General?” “Absolutely. Any speed—fast as you want to go—anywhere. And one other thing, Bill. I’m driving to Boston to meet you and see the Black Hole firsthand. I want to be there.”

  “I look forward to meeting you, sir.” Wild Bill paused. “Now about that ticket?”

  “I’ll bring the paperwork. You fill in the destination.”

  “How about one round-trip ticket to Freedom, General. . . window seat?”

  “Done.”

  The meeting was adjourned following a discussion of when and where the Black Hole prototype flight would take place.

  Once the conference line had been disconnected, Mason looked at Napper. “Run the shop while I’m away and keep Scott in the loop. They need to know status—anything relevant to the Black Hole flight—in real time. Call me if anything changes.” His instructions were crisp.

  “What are you thinking, General?” Napper looked perplexed.

  “I’m headed to Boston to meet Colonel Boyd face-to-face; it’s important to me. I’ve never ordered anyone into a situation this dangerous, and I want to meet the man with courage enough to face it.” Now out of the spotlight with the TV monitors dark, Mason’s private agony shone through his eyes. “You do what must be done, but it extracts a terrible toll.”

  The Practice Run, 12/14/2014, 2030 Zulu, 1:30 P.M. Mountain

  Standard Time

  The Red Face

  Space Station Hope

  Scott heard Pasha’s transmission crackle over her headphones: “Prebreathing complete. You’re clear for EVA.” Before Scott and her crew could safely begin their Extravehicular Activity (EVA), they had to prebreathe pure oxygen in order to purge nitrogen from their systems. Otherwise, the lower pressure inside their space suits would cause nitrogen bubbles to form in their bloodstreams, leaving them with a lethal case of the bends. Scott’s heart was thumping now. Her breathing rapid. From inside the zip-pered pocket on her sleeve she extracted the tiny four-leaf clover Jay had given her many years ago. It was a gift she always carried with her.

  After a brief moment’s reflection, she pulled the depressurization handle and vented Hell Fire's atmosphere into space. When the indicator light turned from red to green, she began turning the hatch wheel on top of Hell Fire and carefully opened it.

  Tightly gripping Mac’s hand, she pulled him from the reconnaissance bay in Hell Fire's belly. Sweat poured off his forehead. Before pulling herself outside through the hatch, Scott checked Mac and Gonzo’s equipment one last time. All seemed well.

  After taking a deep breath, she disconnected her oxygen umbilical from Hell Fire. Once free, she pulled herself through the small hatch and out into space. Immediately afterwards, Mac passed her EVA backpack through the hatch along with a small thruster, an Aqua-Lung sized tank of compressed gas. Scott carefully slipped into the backpack and attached her umbilicals. Once a tiny gauge showed oxygen flowing into her suit, she began breathing again. Smiling to herself, she thought how she hated that nagging lag between breaths. Finally, she grabbed the handgrips on the small auxiliary thruster and clipped it to her pack.

  Once Scott, Mac, and Gonzo extracted themselves, they moved in unison like a team of precision fliers, using their thruster tanks for propulsion. Approaching the red face, the trio retarded their speed by releasing braking bursts of gas. Scott entered the opening first, followed by Gonzo, then Mac. Passing through the slit, Mac accidently slammed his thruster tank into the flimsy skinlike mesh that covered the space station. There was no sound as the metal tank scraped against mesh, but Scott and Gonzo could feel the handrail of the corridor vibrating through their gloves.

  Once inside, the space station looked abandoned. As expected, all the lights in the central core, including the control room, were off. Scott knew that humans tended to hunt by light—that humans were attracted to light like moths to a flame, and where there was light there was very real danger. Only the emergency lights remained on, illuminating the corridors connecting the central core to the spiked, outside skin. The corridors led to the central core, to the power plant and nervous system of the space station, but the corridors were punctuated with danger.

  “There’s the first one.” Gonzo spoke over the low-power intercom inside his suit. He motioned ahead to Scott and Mac.

  Scott admired Gonzo’s low-light nocturnal vision. For several moments, even though she knew it was there, she couldn’t see it. Then in the distance she made it out, a shape
like that of a gargantuan shotgun shell. Mac could see it too. Ahead, maybe twenty-five yards down the corridor, they saw the blunderbuss; its cylinder-shaped ceramic warhead reflected only the faintest glimmer of light. They knew that the cylinder-shaped vessel was secured to a base made of plastique explosive and was filled with thousands of pea-sized stainless-steel pellets. When the plastique base detonated, each steel pellet emerged with the same kinetic energy as a round from an M-16. The ceramic container would erupt spewing out the pellets in a sawed-off-shotgunlike scatter pattern, a pattern used to scatter shot at close range and tear pressurized space suits.

  Mac carefully lifted the “boomer” out of his tool kit, placing it firmly on the corridor. It looked something like a radio-controlled miniature tank with robotic arms. Rolling on special magnetic tracks, it held firm against the corridor floor. “Hope this gadget works,” Mac muttered into his intercom.

  Over his headset Mac heard Pasha’s voice come back loud and clear. “Not to worry, Mac. It’s a minesweeper. It’ll work.”

  Mac prepped the boomer for action by attaching a vertical flagpole to the tanklike body. On top of the pole he wired a diesel glow plug, a glowing heat source which would trigger the blunderbuss. He covered the top of the boomer with a protective shield of Kevlar armor then checked his handheld remote. Finally, after moving the throttle on the remote control, the drone tank lurched forward. “Good,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”

  Gonzo and Scott set up a Kevlar shield across the corridor, positioning themselves in line behind it. The Kevlar shield would stop the pellets but not heavy metal fragments from a high-explosive warhead. Mac started the boomer rolling slowly then took cover with Scott and Gonzo.

  The drone transmitted a greenish video picture back to a small screen on Mac’s handheld remote. The low-light pictures were grainy, but Mac could see well enough to keep the boomer on track. About ten feet from the blunderbuss Mac stopped the boomer and zoomed in. The blunderbuss looked exactly as they’d expected, no surprises. The next few seconds would reveal just how well they’d done their homework.

  “This is it,” Mac said with an apprehensive quiver in his voice. Lowering his head between his knees, he started the drone forward once again.

  On the whole, it seemed like it took an awfully long time. Then in a fraction of a second, the blunderbuss spent its energy with a sudden flash of light—but no sound. Scott felt a rapid series of vibrations through her gloves as the high-energy pellets slammed into the corridor and Kevlar shield.

  “Bull’s-eye!” Gonzo observed, patting Mac on his shoulder.

  “A mine is a hard thing to miss.” Mac was not impressed, but he was glad it was over.

  Once the explosive blast of buckshot passed overhead, they surveyed the damage to the corridor and robotic drone. As they’d expected, the space station was undamaged. The scattergun support mount for the blunderbuss munition had been designed to reload and fire again, but the exposed parts of the robotic drone had taken a beating. The flagpole and glow plug were obliterated—no surprise there—and the shield had taken a pounding. Underneath it all, the tanklike robotic drone survived without visible damage.

  Mac tested the drone; it worked. “So far so good, Pasha. One down, four to go.”

  The amazing thing is how smoothly things have gone so far, Scott thought. Considering how many problems we’ve had up until now, it’s amazing anything worked at all. At least we started with the easiest traps first. The blunderbuss was the dumb one.

  Advancing down the corridor, the trio executed their detonation operation once again. This time Scott configured the drone-tank with a glow plug and Gonzo ran the handheld remote. They repeated this sequence three more times, each time changing roles. Finally, after the fifth blunderbuss detonation, the corridor was secure—clear from the outer shell to the inner core. Scott’s team felt they had the situation well in hand. Although it was dangerous, blunderbuss detonation was beginning to feel routine for them. Their confidence grew with each success along the way. Within a few hours, Scott’s crew was operating as an efficient and finely tuned demolition team. They hadn't originally been trained as a bomb squad but quickly learned the ropes. Each member of the team fit neatly, each sufficiently trained so that they were interchangeable to some degree.

  Scott checked her watch. About thirty minutes per detonation, three hours to secure the corridor. Three hours was acceptable. They had strength and oxygen enough to sustain themselves for up to four hours without breaking off for resupply. If they could establish a toehold inside Freedom quickly, they could off-load supplies, rest, and regroup for the second more dangerous phase of their operation— their core offensive. Centurion, the power plants, and the control room were all contained inside the core.

  Scott tapped Mac on his helmet. “Whataya say we offload then call it a day?”

  Mac nodded, signaling a thumbs up. “Good. We can handle these babies with the right tools and a little guts.”

  Mac radioed Hope's, control room. “Pasha, how about a little light on the situation?”

  Anxious, Pasha responded immediately, switching on all the operating lights inside Hope. He spoke with a voice that expressed relief. “And there was light.”

  PART

  10

  THE END OF

  THE BEGINNING

  DAYS 16 THROUGH 20-

  DECEMBER 22-26, 2014

  26

  Separation, 12/22/2014, 0530 Zulu, 10:30 P.M. Mountain

  Standard Time Onboard Hell Fire,

  Space Station Hope

  Climbing into Hell Fire was slow work for Scott and her team because they were already wearing their EVA suits. They were bulkier than their regular pressurized suits, but they’d become accustomed to them during the course of their training over the past several days. They were wearing the EVA suits because Hell Fire's interior was cramped and packed tight with supplies and equipment. There was simply no place to change.

  Scott was the last to wedge herself into Hell Fire. Once inside, she wheeled the hatch shut and began making final preparations for separation.

  Scott’s pulse rate increased as it normally did before any flight. Looking back, it was amazing how smoothly their training had gone, yet she had a nagging feeling about this flight and didn’t know why. They’d practiced all aspects of the mission except the flight and final approach to Freedom. For that, they had to depend on their navigational computer. Inside Hell Fire, Scott double-checked the flight path data in the NavComputer. Smiling, she believed that Hell Fire's NavComputer was first-rate. All she had to do was describe the characteristics of their flight path then engage the autopilot. The autopilot would read flight path data from the NavComputer and maneuver Hell Fire through the complex flight path required for their blind-side final approach onto Freedom's red face. Hell Fire also possessed a flight path projection system called MAP which would enable Scott to manually approach Freedom on course if that became necessary. In space, on course is a difficult thing to determine without some fixed point of reference. The MAP system provided the reference point by displaying a projection of the desired flight path overlaid with a constantly updated image of Hell Fire's actual position. Using MAP, Scott need only keep Hell Fire's pipper between the lines. Without the NavComputer, MAP, and autopilot systems, it would be difficult if not impossible to maintain proper position and heading for their blind-side approach out of the sun.

  Satisfied with the flight path data, Scott felt she had done all she could do—for now. Their course was set as long as everything went as planned. But as with Wild Bill’s death, nothing ever worked out as planned. Something always went wrong. Maybe that’s what’s nagging me, Scott thought as she checked her watch and did some mental arithmetic. Two minutes till the explosive bolts fired forcing separation. Allow three minutes for attitude positioning. Another five minutes for radial burn, then a forty-one-hour wait until Freedom passed underneath them. That meant a forty-one-hour wait followed by a seven-hour pursuit. This
is going to be one long wait, Scott thought. And this is the easy part. Scott’s reflection was curtailed when she heard Big Shot’s transmission crackle over her secure radio. There was a muted silence while the encrypted radio signal “synced up” causing the first syllable of the message to be lost. “L Fire, you’re go for separation in T minus sixty seconds and counting.”

  Scott listened to the sounds of her crew over the intercom and noted their increased breathing rate. This was no training exercise. It was the real thing, and they had to take each movement slowly and carefully. A tiny mishap could scuttle the mission. Everyone knew there was a chance for them to succeed now. A real chance.

  From inside the zippered pocket on the sleeve of her pressurized space suit, Scott extracted the tiny four-leaf clover Jay had given her and hung it above her head on Hell Fire's rear looking mirror. She wished she could kiss it for good luck, but her helmet and visor were in the way. She felt they’d need luck more now than ever.

  Big Shot’s transmission crackled over her headphones once again. "L Fire, you’re go for separation in T minus ten seconds and counting . . . nine . . . eight. . . seven . . .”

  The NavComputer flashed a green All Systems Go message across Scott’s head’s up display. After that moment, Hell Fire's crew was no longer in the loop. With their weapons spent, they were now passengers on an orbiting, unarmed reconnaissance platform.

  “Three .. . two. .. one...fire.” Scott saw sparks fly out from underneath the seam of the docking collar as the explosive bolts fired, releasing Hell Fire from Hope's anchorage. “And so we begin,” Scott spoke quietly over the intercom as Hell Fire shuddered beneath them.

  The crew was silent.

  For a brief moment, a wave of exhilaration washed over Scott. She felt the thrill of motion accentuated by their closeness to Hope. Hell Fire vibrated as her attitude positioning rockets fired, slowly increasing their distance from Hope's large triangular face. One by one the gauges in front of Scott seemed to come alive. The thousands of spikelike antennae covering Hope's surface began to sweep by faster and faster. Soon they were a continuous blur. Her four-leaf clover appeared to gain weight, swinging like a pendulum from the cockpit mirror. Once they were well clear of Hope, Hell Fire executed a slow full body turn about the nose, rotating into escape position. Scott was awed by the remarkable view—she craned her neck and looked straight up through the canopy. Hope filled the windshield. Hell Fire was traveling positioned with Hope overhead and pointing away from earth. From this position, the thrust from the main rocket engine would propel Hell Fire further out into space into a region known as the junkyard. Once Hell Fire's position stabilized, Scott felt the shudder from the main engine burn. This burn would increase their orbital radius and slow their orbital velocity, thereby allowing Freedom to overtake them and pass directly underneath. Their flight plan called for approaching Freedom out of the sun but initially they would be positioned one hundred miles above Freedom. Because Freedom was traveling in a lower orbital plane, it would catch up to Hell Fire and pass underneath like a race car hanging the inside track around a curve. Once the space station passed underneath, Hell Fire would close the gap starting from a position about one thousand miles behind her.