April

by Mackey Chandler

  There was a long silence from the back. Easy was starting to regret his question.

  "I'm so sorry." Dr. Singh told him. "The amount we had was almost completely used up to fill our machine. We expected to need this amount, for what we thought it would do. However the effect we observed was totally unexpected and we have no real model yet to explain it. So if we had a similar apparatus scaled down to a half, or a tenth size, we don't have any idea what it would do. We never had time to find out. I should have asked these questions myself, but was caught up in doing what we needed to escape instead of think. I'm so embarrassed," she concluded.

  "Well, is the machine it goes in especially difficult to fabricate or expensive?"

  "No. By the standards of lab equipment it is fairly simple. Our shop budgeted somewhere around eighteen thousand dollars USNA to make it. Mostly materials as it was all made on automated tools. Why do you ask?"

  "Could you instruct them to scale your design down and build just one to full scale, because we know that will work and then another perhaps at half scale and one at a quarter scale and we can try them to see which works and possibly have more than one working machine available fairly quickly, if the smaller ones work?" Easy wondered.

  Eddie spoke up. "Have them build a full scale, two at half scale and four to a fourth scale. Then we'll use the smallest which works at no delay. I'll give you my irrevocable Business Visa to pay for it, with my digital signature."

  They were all looking at him in surprise. It was a pretty big hunk of money for a station security cop to be toss away so casually.

  "Don't worry," he assured them. "It won't get refused."

  "Scale them all down about five percent to allow for any loss loading them," Nam-Kah said, implying acceptance of his offer.

  "You realize you are marking yourself as a rebel, if you start financing something like this?" April asked him. "I mean I'm in the same position, having this armed boat and firing on the Chinese and the USNA both. But so far you are just a passenger. You could plead you couldn't do anything to stop us and were just carried off trying to rescue the Drs. Singh. You sure about this?"

  "April, I thought you were super smart for your age, but you're naive about this. As I said, I'm sure I don't have a chance of not being blamed as much as all of you. I'm a marked man. I might as well go down fighting if I have a chance to at least try. I could have thrown myself out the airlock back at ISSII, to get away from all of you and it wouldn't satisfy the government."

  "You can be arrested now down home, if you just stare wrong at a federal official. I had a friend arrested and lose his job, because he took a camera and was taking some pictures of downtown Chicago. He was arrested for suspicion of aiding terrorist organizations. They wanted to argue about his disloyalty, because his grandfather who died before he was born, was Syrian. To hell with them; if you see everyone as your enemy it comes true."

  "When we get back I'm going to do more than finance some projectors. I'm going to buy a ship to mount one on, if you'll speak to Jeff for me about outfitting it like this one."

  "I'd be happy to do that," April agreed. "But I'd say after your part in getting his Dad loose, he'll be disposed to help you even without my recommendation."

  * * *

  Easy sat for his statement and surprised them with its brevity.

  "I am Jefferson Carter Dixon, ID 674-91-20, Master of the Happy Lewis out of M3, speaking for myself and ship's company."

  "Because the United States of America has attacked us, announces the occupation of our home and denied us freedom of navigation, we have decided to deny them access to any region of space and right of navigation within our power to deny. We will regard as hostile and attack and destroy any satellite or vessel of the USNA or China, or unknown vessels which we see, unless they identify themselves as neutral, or surrender to us first. The exception to that is those satellites which we know to be for entirely peaceful use, such as crop surveillance and scientific research. Any other nations or institutions of Earth, concerned we may damage their property in error, are encouraged to broadcast on this frequency the orbital elements of the spacecraft they wish spared, with a clear statement of their ownership. Please stand by for additional messages."

  "There you go April. Tack that on Ajay's spiel and we'll call dispatch again and give you a chance to see if you can send Nam-Kah's plans as well."

  Easy got a quick reply from the dispatcher's shack this time. "Yeah, we have been waiting for you to call again. Great to hear from you. I'm Ed Yoho, dispatching this shift. Marty left instructions for us to send your message to our private systems and wipe all information about where we are aiming the dish and the files you send off the public system. All the construction gang appreciate your heads up. We are working and scheduling a lot different, knowing it may get risky out here and we may have to shut down quickly."

  "Earthside they are still not confirming the video you sent as real. I suppose they may still claim it was faked in a studio. But the vacuum rats here know reality when they see it. No studio could fake that complex a zero G scene. I'll patch you into the local net and shut down the link when I see no traffic. The shorter you keep it the better. You only have about twelve minutes before the Earth is behind me from your line of sight again." He signed off and the net menu for M3 came up on their screen. April sent Heather a text message with encryption, that they had two messages in the clear, they wanted broadcast and explained their desire to send plans securely. She also included their request for a running contact to be maintained one way to them, even if they didn't call and how to ping them and where they should be approximately. Heather agreed and didn't hesitate. "April you can switch the files to your own pad can't you?"

  "Sure no problem."

  "Tell the pad you want to attach a file to a secure text message and feed your data through it. Our own random number file will be used to encrypt it. It's not on the program screen menu, but you can do it by voice command. It will look at how big the send file is and split it and calve off a slightly bigger random .dat files. Don't worry the master file we gave you is huge. Our side splits off the same size files on our copy. It stops after about each 100K and asks the next few digits of the random file to establish it is still synchronized and discards them. This will use up a big chunk of your random file, so you'll need a new one from us when you get back. This is why we didn't use it to encrypt voice and video in the first place. It simply uses too much random data to carry on a pad. You'd keep running out every few days, but this is worth using it up."

  April transferred the files to her pad, hardwired the unit to the com with a cable and instructed it. The files in the clear went out first, then, within a minute, she had down loaded the contents of Dr. Singh Nam-Kah's pad doubled in size from the encryption, through her own pad and shut it down. They were in even deeper, if that was possible.

  * * *

  "What is that?" April asked, as they eased up on their first target. There was a strange spindly spacecraft, emitting radar and hovering near the first satellite they were approaching. She had it now on the camera and it was maneuvering as they watched, but very slowly. Lining up perfectly with the small nozzle, at the bottom of the huge satellite, which carried a big chunk of TV and data streams for the North American continent.

  "It's a remote piloted satellite tender," Easy explained. "It refuels them and if needed clamps on and uses its ion drive to reposition them in orbit. Used to be, when they ran out of fuel they just had to park them out on a little higher orbit and abandon them, even though the electronics still worked OK. This extends the life of them and will even tug them down to a lower orbit for maintenance if they need it. It's cheaper than bringing a manned shuttle out here."

  "If we take it out along with the satellite, they will be hurting, because there are only a couple of these special remote piloted vehicles. They have very efficient, but low thrust ion drives. Not like ours - the emitter and grid sort. Instead of shooting it up, I'd like to sneak up b
ehind it and shove it right into the satellite."

  "They use a nose camera for docking and the radar has a fairly narrow sweep in front. I'd like to let them get close to docking and then shove them into the bird at the last minute. It will show in their camera and confuse the daylights out of them." he offered with an evil grin. "We still have the load coupling on the nose, for locking on a pallet or container, because you can use it to clamp on a docking pintle like they have outside the Lewis family dock. It'll take a good shove without any damage."

  "Go for it." April encouraged him. "Just don't bump us too hard. OK?"

  He didn't take offense. Your number two was supposed to advise you.

  They all watched in silence as Easy moved the scooter on manual controls with quick and decisive moves. The robot tug was still about a kilometer short of the huge satellite, easing up on it at about four meters a second. Its thrusters were deployed on four booms pointing forward toward the objective. Easy was not sure how far out the operator would cut the speed even further. The satellite probably cost a half or three-quarters of a billion dollars, so they would not rush up on it and take any chances.

  April was astonished how quickly he was within meters of the tug and then as she watched he balanced the front thrusters against the rear, to just barely tweak their motion until their nose was finally a literal hand's breadth from touching the back of the tug. As she watched his fingers dance on the controls she could not even feel the corrections, but the distance closed to within a few centimeters and then finally was so close she could not even tell if they had touched. It was masterful.

  "As soon as they brake again we'll feel it and I'll give them a good shove." He said, with his hands poised on the controls. They could no longer use their radar with the tug in front of them, but they could still see around the body of the vessel. They had a long wait but at probably less than a half kilometer out there was a jar, as the tug braked again and pushed back into their nose. Easy gave a brief burp on the main engines. By the time he pulled back with his front thrusters the tug was only about four or five seconds from impact. It had nowhere near the thrust needed to avoid hitting.

  Easy kept the front thrusters on full and cut in the side thrusters' full power also. The tug was slowing down but not nearly as fast as they were and pulled ahead. They watched it oscillate from the off center push. The auto pilot was also trying to stabilize its attitude, which probably worked against slowing down. A skilled and decisive human pilot might have burned at right angles to its path and avoided contact, but the remote operators had no experience with radical maneuvers under manual control, like a construction worker did. All their experience was geared to slow and careful.

  The tug hit well ahead of them, still going about fifty meters a second. Not much of a difference for orbital motions, but enough to telescope the front end in a couple meters, like a crashed ground car. The larger satellite absorbed a surprising amount of the momentum, bouncing away from the collision. The end of the massive cylinder was visibly mushroomed and the solar arrays on both side had their booms buckle, so they were drooping like a birds wings hanging.

  There was a muted rattle of hits on their hull, as they passed through the small pieces thrown out from the impact. Easy grimaced, uncomfortable with even those small impacts. He twisted the nose around keeping the wrecked spacecraft in sight and went smoothly from forward to side thrusters and then at the last the rears, smoothly easing one off as he eased the next on, until they were almost at rest from the satellite. They were drifting slowly away from the tug behind it.

  "Ok April. Practice time. Go ahead and chop them up, enough that you're sure they are junk and we'll move on."

  April deployed the camera boom and fired on the tug first, as it was moving away.

  The thruster booms and antennas cut off easily and then she held the beam on the main body, cutting deep inside until some pressure vessel inside burst, bending the main body almost into a V and spinning it hard. Then she moved on to the communications satellite itself. Once the visible antenna dish and power arrays were gone, she cut several ragged scars deep in the main cylinder. Once she got some heavy outgassing, she figured the maneuvering propellant was lost and was satisfied it was dead.

  "The next one is only about eighty kilometers away." Easy told them. "April, ease us towards it and take time to make some coffee and take a break. We have quite a few to go. No use using a lot of fuel to hurry to each. We'll let you maneuver manually also for the experience. I'd like to just burn it as we glide past."

  "Easy is there any chance you would give lessons?" Eddie asked. "I'd love to blast one myself, instead of just riding along. Who knows? It might be handy to have another experienced gunner some time."

  "Sure. Why not? Just be aware there is no software yet to keep it from pointing back and shooting at ourselves. It may sound impossible, but people still shoot themselves in the foot all the time. We'll show you how to do it right."

  * * *

  Jeff was busy working, when Heather showed up unexpected at his elbow. He turned and smiled at her and then became concerned when he saw the look on her face. She leaned across from behind and interrupted his work which was so unlike her he didn't object. At least she saved it before she opened another screen. The expression she had was such he wouldn't have challenged anything she did even, if it she had wiped some hours of work.

  "Watch this," she commanded and played the video of his dad declaring war. Then she shared the specs of the machines they were requested to have waiting.

  When it was done she expected anger. Instead he was his father's son. He actually smiled.

  "Well, it seems they cannot leave us alone. If they have to be shown the folly of it we will need tools. This won't be subtle work so I will need some hammers. Big ones. Could you find time to lend me a hand dear friend?" he asked and put his hand over her hand on his shoulder.

  Chapter 28

  "Yes, Mr. President." General Horton of the Space Defense commander spoke. He looked around. The others present were all members of the Security Council, or advisers much more powerful than him. They were all visibly frightened, sitting back from the table and holding their hands in their laps, like they were scared they would touch something of this mess and dirty themselves. None were eager to speak, in the charged dangerous atmosphere.

  He by contrast felt a strange freedom to speak candidly. He was sure he had personally lost everything already. He had been called in to advise, after causing a fuss with his pushy demands for information. He was sure they were shoving him forward where he could complete the destruction of his career. So there was simply nothing left to desperately try to salvage. He went on without prompting after the unnatural long pause. "They have destroyed most of the satellites which carry TV and data."

  He thought off the top of his head what the effect would be. "It disrupts inventory and paging, long distance voice phone and conferencing. I'd expect the banking system will not lose any data, but it will be unable to continue processing new transactions such as ATM requests." "Most retailers will be unable to conduct sales, even if a few people do have cash. Securities trading and settlement, freight tracking systems, police data to the cars and officers on patrol, EMS dispatch and communication with the hospital, Fire department coordination, Customs and Border Patrol, all will be down."

  "That's just off the top of my head. There will be thousands of little problems that aren't life threatening, like soda machines not calling in to report they are low."

  "The civilian land lines just can't carry the increased load and we have no way to cut out the less important users, without extensively reconfiguring the systems. No remote control for backing up the flight crew of aircraft, military or civilian. In fact, some of the newer planes don't have radios for non-satellite contact away from local control, so the airlines won't fly them, without contact and tracking over the middle of their flight. Almost no ability to manage unmanned vehicles, or 'bots of any kind in all the services.
"

  "They have left the weather sats, except for one Naval one and they left such things as crop observation platforms and some sats which watch ground movement for earth quake and tsunami warning. Scientific sats like astronomy telescopes. So you see it's pretty bad. That's just a rough outline of problems. I could go on and on."

  "The fool who advised me earlier, said these pirates couldn't hurt us further," the President said. "I'm starting to doubt everything I'm told about this crisis. How about other countries' satellites? Are we going to face a storm of criticism and retaliation for allowing this to happen?"

  "Actually Sir. They are asking other countries to ID their sats, so they can avoid harming them. We can't be sure of all of them, but the Brits, French, Swiss, all the Europeans actually, Indians, Indonesians, Iranians, Japanese, Israelis, South Africans and a few others have all spoke up and specified what belongs to them, they'd like preserved. The Chinese are in even worse shape than us. They have never revealed what many of their sats were dedicated to do and won't speak with them to avoid losing anything non-military. So, when in doubt, they are shooting the lot of them."

  "Of all the countries the Chinese should be the last in line to blame us, since their ship was hunting the Happy Lewis too. If anything they should get some of the blame from others. It's complicated though, because a lot of LEO sats have been knocked down by rivals, using the opportunity to clear their competitors' sats and blame it on someone else. We've lost a lot of spy sats and even GPS sats. We're pretty sure if they're not out on the 35k level, it wasn't the crew of the Lewis who destroyed them. The Paks were screaming at them about one of theirs being hit earlier and we intercepted the pilot of the Lewis telling them they had not touched anything in LEO. However he put it in this context. He said not yet."

  "How bad is it?" the president asked still not picturing what those outages meant. "How long to fix it and how much will it cost us?" The Space Defense man looked at the other advisers and nobody seemed to want to take the floor. The Chief Economic adviser even made a small brushing sweep with his hand which said - go ahead - so he elaborated.