Atlantis a-1

by Robert Doherty

  Dane twisted his head. Chelsea was with Sin Fen, looking none too happy. He sent an image of Chelsea to the woman, curled up on her pillow at home

  I’ll take care of her. Sin Fin’s mental projection echoed in his brain.

  Dane leaned over and yelled so that she could hear him above the noise inside the plane. “Foreman sent you to be the link, didn’t he?” Dane asked. “He thinks you and I can communicate once I go into this place.”

  “Yes.”

  “How far away can you communicate with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Great.”

  “Foreman also thinks you are capable of much more than just communicating with me,” Sin Fen added.

  “A clue about that would be helpful.”

  “It is for you to discover because it is beyond what we know.”

  “Great,” Dane repeated. “Any idea what this place is?”

  “You know more than we do, since you’ve been in there. But we must know if the MILSTARS satellite system is being used by the force inside the Angkor Gate.”

  “Used for what?” Dane asked. He was surprised as an image of the entire planet came into his mind, overlaid with various colored lines. There were several glowing spots along those lines. He could also see a spy satellite directly over where they were going and Dane knew, without knowing how, that the satellite was blind; that nothing could see into the Gate.

  “That’s the power being propagated by a source inside the Angkor Gate,” Sin Fen said. “The dots are MILSTARS satellites. The building force will rise to dangerous, lethal, levels in less than day. We have to stop it.”

  “What does Foreman want me to do?”

  “Find out what is causing this to happen. And stop it.”

  “Sure. I’ll be back in time for lunch.”

  “This is very dangerous, more dangerous than you know. These areas are expanding and they could destroy the world.”

  “Thanks for letting me know that now.”

  Dane tried penetrating her mind, to see if there was anything else she was hiding from him, but his psychic probe came up against a black wall that allowed him to go no further. He cursed inside his head and her voice echoed on top of the curse.

  It takes practice. I have trained very hard to discipline my mind.

  “Then maybe you should be wearing this parachute,” Dane said out loud.

  No. You are the one.

  “One minute!” Freed yelled.

  Dane thought about the place in Cambodia expanding. He reached down and made sure the straps to his rucksack were secure, then cinched his leg straps.

  The back ramp began opening, the top half disappearing up into the tail well, the bottom half leveling out. Freed moved toward the platform.

  Dane blinked as wind whipped his face. It was still dark, but he knew dawn was near. Freed was kneeling, holding onto the hydraulic arm that moved the platform. The four Canadians and Beasley, all outfitted in bulk gear, were between Dane and Freed, waiting.

  Freed stood. “Stand by!” He scooted to the edge, giving a thumbs up to Paul Michelet.

  “Go!” Freed stepped out into the darkness, the Canadians hustling behind him. Dane could see their chutes billow out behind the plane, the deployment bags still attached to the steel cable, twisting in the wind. Beasley paused at the edge, but Dane simply shoved him off.

  Dane followed, shuffling his feet along the metal until there was no more floor. He felt the familiar sensation of freefalling as his static line paid out behind him, then the abrupt tug of his chute opening.

  Dane looked up, checked to make sure he had a good canopy and grabbed his toggles, then he switched his gaze downward. He could barely make out the rapidly nearing dark green carpet of vegetation below. As he got closer, he could see that he was coming down on the side of a ridge covered in triple canopy jungle. He could also see the other chutes, a couple of which were already in the trees.

  Dane wheeled his elbows across his face and tensed his body as he approached the top of the jungle. He hit leaves, then he was in, bouncing off a branch, breaking another, then suddenly he was still, hanging from his harness. Before Dane did anything else, he closed his eyes.

  Sin Fen.

  The voice in his head came back immediately.

  I hear you.

  * * *

  The SR-75 passed through Mach 2.5 over the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 60,000 feet. At this altitude, the radical nature of the aircraft’s design came into play as the conventional turbojet engines were now strained to the maximum, gulping for air at the extreme speed and altitude of their design specifications.

  In the cockpit, the co-pilot lifted the cover on a series of four red switches. “Ready for PDWE ignition,” he informed the pilot.

  “Ignite.”

  The co-pilot flicked the switches from left to right. In the rear of the plane, nestled below the turbojet engine, the pulsed-detonation-wave-engine came to life. The PDWE was a rather simple device, consisting of a group of small chambers in which mini-explosions occurred in rhythm. These explosions caused supersonic shock waves to form and rush out into a larger combustion chamber. The shock waves compressed the fuel-air mixture and thus produced another larger shock wave that was channeled to the rear of the plane, providing propulsion at ranges never before produced by man.

  Leaving behind a series of white puffs in the high atmosphere, the SR-75 pulsed its way even higher, as its speed raced through Mach-5 on the way to its maximum speed of Mach 7, or 5,000 miles an hour.

  * * *

  The C-123 was banking across the sky, ten kilometers from the drop zone. The ramp was still down. One of the crewmen was slowly unreeling a set of nylon straps that held the pallet the daisy-cutter bomb was attached to. The pallet was on rollers and the crewman let out slack in the nylon until the pallet was perched the very edge of the ramp. He pulled a large hook off the top of the parachute on top of the bomb and hooked it onto the static line cable.

  He was listening to the pilot via a headset and when he got the word, and the green light went on, he cut the nylon with a razor sharp knife, allowing the pallet to fall off the ramp.

  The bomb and pallet fell, then a large cargo parachute billowed open. The C-123 circled above as the bomb drifted down. It hit the jungle and crashed through the top layers. Just before touching the ground, it exploded in a flash of five thousand pounds of high explosive.

  In the C-123 overhead, Paul Michelet saw the instant landing zone they had created. He pressed his intercom. “All right, let’s get back to Thailand.”

  Michelet turned to Sin Fen, who had sat quietly with the dog throughout. “I want to know who you are and who you work for,” Michelet demanded, sitting down next to her.

  Sin Fen’s eyes were unfocused and slowly she seemed to gain awareness of her immediate surroundings. She shifted slightly so she could look at the old man. “What you want is no longer important.”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a small SATCOM radio. She began to punch into the handset when Michelet reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  “Listen here,” Michelet hissed. “This is my plane, this is my-”

  He gasped in pain as Sin Fen placed her free hand on his upper arm and applied pressure.

  “Do not ever touch me again,” she said. “Do not ever get in my way again.”

  She released her grip and finished dialing.

  “They’ve jumped,” she reported as soon as she got a reply. She listened for a few seconds then turned off the phone.

  “A helicopter has taken off from Angkor Wat,” she told Michelet who was glaring at her, massaging his arm.

  “What?”

  “Hie-Tech,” Sin Fen simply said.

  “Goddamn!” Michelet exploded. “Those sons-a-”

  “Enough,” Sin Fen said. “Hie-Tech is not something that you need worry about. There are much larger concerns.”

  * * *

  “My recommendation is th
at we take out MILSTARS,” Foreman said. His eyes were focused on the computer screen that showed him the display from the SR-75. It was flying at 125,000 feet over the western Pacific now, traveling at Mach-7.

  “Are you insane!” Bancroft sputtered. “Do you know how many billions of dollars we have invested in that system?”

  Foreman ignored the National Security Adviser. “Mister President, somehow our satellites are being used by this force. We are going to have fatalities in less than twelve hours near some of the Gates. We need to stop this before it’s too late.”

  “Can you prove this?” Bancroft demanded. “We’ve got nothing proving that these waves are being propagated through MILSTARS.”

  “I have proof from the NSA,” Foreman said.

  “No, you have a theory from the NSA,” Bancroft said. “I’ve seen what they’re saying and the only thing they’ve got is coincidence. Hell, some of the MILSTARS satellites don’t seem to be affected at all. That’s not conclusive proof.”

  “By the time we get conclusive proof, it’ll be too late,” Foreman said. “Remember what happened to Bright Eye.”

  The President finally spoke. “My advisers do not agree with you, Mister Foreman. They neither believe the threat is as great as you claim or that MILSTARS could be used in this manner. They say it’s impossible.”

  “Nonetheless, Mister President, it is being done,” Foreman forced himself to keep his voice level. “Do your advisers have an explanation for what is happening?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then, sir, we have-” Foreman was cut off by the President.

  “You’re asking me to destroy billions of dollars worth of equipment,” the President said.

  “The equipment can be replaced,” Foreman said. “People can’t.”

  “We don’t even have a way of taking out MILSTARS,” the President said.

  Foreman looked once more at the computer display. “Actually, sir, we do.”

  “And that is?”

  “Thunder Dart,” Foreman said.

  “What the devil is that?” the President said.

  “No way!” Bancroft exploded before Foreman could even answer. “You already cost us Bright Eye. Now you propose putting Thunder Dart in harm’s way?”

  Foreman leaned back in his chair. This was the part of the bureaucracy that he despised. “Its launch platform is already in the air and Thunder Dart is two minutes from deployment.”

  “Foreman!” Bancroft yelled.

  Foreman leaned forward and spoke earnestly as the speaker. “Mister President, let Thunder Dart take out one of the affected MILSTARS, the one closest to the Angkor Gate. The first one affected. Let’s see what happens. If it affects the propagation, we know for certain that the MILSTARS satellites are being used. If it doesn’t then all we’ve lost is a non-functional satellite.”

  There was a long silence. Foreman glanced at the display. Thunder Dart was a minute from launch.

  “All right,” the President finally said. “Take it out.”

  * * *

  A door in the belly of the SR-75 slid forward and upward at the same time, specially constructed adapters bearing the intense stress of the thin air buffeting by at over Mach-7. The opened bay was also aerodynamically designed, so the speed of the plane slowed a mere 500 miles an hour.

  Inside, securely locked by two hydraulic arms, rested Thunder Dart, the progeny of the SR-71 and the other half of the Penetrator. With a 75 degree swept wing delta configuration, it too had a PDWE propulsion unit built into its body, although on a much smaller scale. The Thunder Dart was less than forty feet long from nose to tail, and thirty feet wide at the full extension of the wings.

  Nestled inside the specially constructed cocoon cockpit, Major Frank Mitchell patiently waiting for his moment. His gloved hand tightly gripped his throttle, thumb poised over a red button.

  “Are you green?” the co-pilot of the SR-75 mother craft asked him.

  Mitchell had had his eyes on nothing else for the past ten minutes, but he swept them over the gauges one last time. “All green.”

  “Free in five,” the co-pilot informed him. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

  Mitchell felt the weightlessness as the hydraulic arms let the Thunder Dart go and he lost the G-force of the SR-75’s constant acceleration. The sky below was light, but he was so high he could easily see the curvature of the Earth ahead. This was his third time piloting the Thunder Dart, although he had over 3,000 missions in the simulator. But no simulator could make up for the feel of free falling at 125,000 feet with an initial forward velocity of almost 5,000 miles an hour. Above, the SR-75 slightly turned and disappeared from sight.

  Mitchell’s thumb closed on the red button. He was slammed back in his seat as the pulse engine kicked in. Pulling back ever so slightly, he angled the nose of the Thunder Dart up five degrees. Mitchell looked out the cockpit. He could see that the edges of his craft were already glowing red from heat, but that was normal. Even at this altitude there was enough oxygen molecules to cause friction. The specially designed titanium alloy hull could handle the heat as long as he maintained positive control of his craft.

  He looked up higher and saw the blackness of space. He glanced down at the flight path outlined in red on his computer screen. The triangle symbolizing his craft was slightly to the right of center of the path marked in green. Mitchell edged the stick to the left just a tad and centered out.

  * * *

  “I’m on-line with all my systems,” Jimmy said. “Anything changes, we’ll know.”

  Jimmy was seated across from her, his laptop open, the line in the back jacked into the central network to allow him to directly access those satellites that channeled the radioactivity and electromagnetic data.

  She was seated behind her own desk. A small joystick was next to the keyboard, waiting for her control. She picked up the baseball cap with the astronaut wings and placed it on top of her gray hair.

  Jimmy looked at her and smiled. “Ready for warp speed, helmsman?”

  Conners grinned. “Ready.”

  * * *

  “All systems go,” Major Mitchell said into his oxygen mask. The small triangle in his screen was dead center. The altimeter read 155,000 feet, over 27 miles high. Mitchell knew the air was so thin outside that even the pulse engine was having problems now.

  He looked down once more. There was the faintest trace of a flashing red circle at the very center of the display.

  “Acquisition initiated,” Mitchell reported. His free hand went palm down on top of a flat display. The face was specially designed for the pressure glove, each button an exact match.

  “Arming MHV.” Mitchell had the process memorized and his fingers worked the code perfectly. He felt the slightest of stutters in the pattern of pulses from the PDWE.

  “Insure you get both beacon and trajectory lock,” a voice ordered in his ear.

  “Roger that,” Mitchell said. His fingers pressed down. A series of numbers came up on the right top side of the display. “I’m turning on the MILSTARS beacon. Beacon on. MHV is locked on MILSTAR beacon. Locked as primary.” He watched as the red circle stopped flashing and became steady. His thumb pressed down on another panel. “Ground, do you have control?”

  A woman’s voice came back. “This is Ground. I have control.”

  “Ready to fire,” Mitchell said.

  “Fire.”

  “Firing.” Mitchell’s thumb pressed down on the button on top of his control stick.

  Underneath the belly of the Thunder Dart explosive bolts fired, separating the MHV from the body of the aircraft. Less than eight feet long and only eight inches in diameter the MHV was the result of eight generations of anti-satellite (ASAT) development. It’s own very sophisticated and miniaturized pulse engine kicked in once it was clear of the Thunder Dart and it angled up toward space.

  Major Mitchell had the MHV on his screen as he banked his own craft ever so slightly and began a carefully calculated descent back to
ward earth. “MHV running smooth and clean,” he reported.

  * * *

  Patricia Conners knew the MHV stood for miniature homing vehicle. And she could see the same image from the rocket as the nosecone fell away, allowing the built-in infrared imaging scope to go active. It filled the entire screen of her computer.

  “There!” Jimmy said, pointing at a very small dot in the center of the screen. “That’s MILSTARS 16. The MHV is homing in on the satellite’s secure beacon so there should be no problem of a hit.”

  Conners hand hovered over the joystick, just in case.

  In the nose of the HMV rocket, the guidance computer had the exact location of MILSTARS 16 beacon; the same beacon that the space shuttle used to find and dock with the satellite to refuel it every two years. The beacon was normally silent, except when activated with a special access code, much like the landing lights at a remote airfield were activated by an incoming airplane signaling on a certain FM frequency.

  The nose also held an infrared camera. The camera was sending to Conners a picture of MILSTARS and the golden glow growing around it.

  “What is that?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Conners said. Her hand was now resting around the manual control. “But it looks a lot like what took out Bright Star.”

  “Oh, man!” Jimmy exclaimed as the glow expanded. “How does it know the HMV is inbound?”

  “The radio,” Conners’ free hand was typing into her keyboard even as she said it. “I’m going to shut down the radio link from the HMV to Thunder Dart.” She hit the enter key as her other hand tightened around the joystick. “I have control of HMV,” she announced into the headset.

  Jimmy quietly stepped back. He knew that Conners was now controlling an eight inch diameter missile traveling at 4,000 miles an hour toward a target less than twenty feet wide. There were forty, tiny, solid fuel booster rockets lined around the circumference of the rocket that she could fire to alter the course but this was like threading a needle stuck in a mailbox by leaning out a car at 60 miles an hour.

  “Thirty seconds out,” Conners announced.

  The golden glow was growing. “Oh, boy!” Conners muttered, trying to think with one part of her brain, even as she kept the small dot indicating the MILSTARS satellite centered. “Jimmy, tell Thunder to-” she paused as a golden fireball separated from the main aura and raced to the right.