Delta Blue

by William H. Lovejoy

  Powering up the computer, McKenna called up the MakoShark’s maintenance log. The computer automatically kept a record of the hours used on all of the critical subsystems. Upcoming maintenance requirements were flagged. McKenna scrolled the log up the screen, but did not see anything imminent. A couple more flights, and the doppler radar was due for calibration. The turbo-ramjets would go for another 1500 hours before requiring overhaul.

  The chime went silent and the red strobe quit blinking as the fuel technician detached his special fittings and began to retract the hoses into their receptacles.

  McKenna didn’t have his helmet, with its microphone, so he reached into the crevice between the seat and the side of the cockpit and found the alternate microphone. Tapping in the frequency for Themis’s maintenance office on the radio pad, he said, “Beta One, Delta Blue.”

  A few seconds passed before someone got to the console. “Beta here.”

  McKenna recognized the voice of Lt. Col. Brad Mitchell, who was the chief vehicle maintenance officer.

  “I’m ready to dump data.”

  “Okay, hold a minute. Delta Blue. Go.”

  McKenna keyed the command into the computer pad, and all of the updated maintenance data files from the MakoShark were transferred into Beta One’s computer files. Beta One maintained current files on all vehicles operating outside of the atmosphere.

  “Okay, got it. Anything pressing, Snake Eyes?”

  “I don’t think so, Brad.”

  “Is Shalbot out there?”

  McKenna looked around and saw T.Sgt. Benny Shalbot, the head avionics technician, hanging onto the hangar door frame. “He’s here, just thinking about it.”

  “Well, tell him to get his ass in gear, then get over to Hangar Four. Delta Red’s got a nav radio problem.”

  Delta Red was a reserve craft.

  “Got it, Brad. Blue out.”

  McKenna released his toehold, tapped the seat sides with his fingers, and rose out of the cockpit.

  “Hey, Benny, your boss is looking for you.”

  Shalbot, a gnome of a man with curly white hair, a bulbous nose, and an infectious grin, said, “And if I’m not careful, Colonel, he’s going to find me.”

  Shalbot shoved off the door frame, towing a large black box behind him, did a somersault in midflight, and landed with practiced ease on the nose of Delta Blue.

  “He said something about a navigation radio problem on Delta Red,” McKenna said.

  “Fuck. Second time in two trials. I’m going to have to change it out. You got any glitches, Snake Eyes?”

  “None that Tony or I picked up on.”

  “Good.”

  Positioning the black box — one by three by two feet in size — in midair above the windscreen, Shalbot opened its lid and withdrew a long umbilical cord. Diving head first into the cockpit, he plugged the multiple-pin connector into a receptacle at floor level on the left side of the cockpit. He rose feet first out of the cockpit, tucked his legs, and rolled upright.

  “You need me for anything, Benny?”

  “Nope. Go sleep or something. Hey, Snake Eyes, you get a chance to do something this trip?”

  “No. Got close, but got called off at the last second.”

  “Shit. That’s what this goddamned job does for you.”

  Not his job and not McKenna’s job. This job. It was all one effort, every task melded into the singular task, and most of the forty-nine people who were aboard Themis regularly felt like they were part of a team, as Shalbot did. And like anyone in any large organization McKenna had ever known, Shalbot was instantly prepared to complain about the job. He would also be instantly ready to defend it. He was part of an elite team.

  Shalbot activated his PDU — Portable Diagnostics Unit — and began the sequence that would test every electronic circuit aboard the MakoShark for operation within specified tolerances. One malfunctioning integrated circuit board, or one diode overheated too many times, could turn success into catastrophe, and the MakoSharks’ electronics were tested each time they arrived on Themis.

  McKenna launched himself off Delta Blue and sailed through the doorway to grab a handhold and deflect his flight downward along a wide corridor. All “up” aboard the satellite was toward the center of the hub, and all “down” was away from it.

  The side of the hub opposite the hangar/storage half was a maze of corridors, offices, and more storage spaces. Technicians darted along the corridors with purpose, appearing from and disappearing into labs and maintenance areas. He passed the maintenance office, waving at Mitchell as he went by, then slowed to peek into the exercise room. Technically, it was Compartment A-47, but outside of the station commander and the maintenance officer, McKenna didn’t know anyone who called it that.

  It was a large space, fitted on all walls — there was no true ceiling or floor — with specialized equipment for maintaining muscle tone. In the center of the wall opposite the door was a small centrifugal weight machine. All of those aboard Themis who did not regularly return to the earth’s surface were provided with an exercise regimen by the station’s doctor. And everyone spent ten or fifteen minutes a day spinning in the artificial gravity of the centrifugal weight machine.

  At the end of the corridor bisecting the hub, McKenna came to the curved hallway that went clear around the outer diameter of the hub. Gripping a grab bar for an instant, he deflected his direction and pushed off again.

  At irregular intervals along this corridor were self-sealing round doors that led into the spokes. Currently, there were sixteen spokes, though the corridor also had an additional eight doors, locked and painted red, to accommodate the addition of eight more spokes. On opposite sides of the hub, there were also airlocks allowing passage outside the satellite for repair and maintenance.

  Four of the modules at the end of their spokes were residential, containing sixteen individual sleeping quarters, recreation/dining spaces, kitchens, and personal hygiene stations. The personnel complement was divided into separate dormitory areas primarily for safety, rather than for social or organizational reasons. If there was an accidental blowout in one of the residential modules, three-fourths of the personnel complement would still be intact. Explaining that cut-and-dried safety consideration to temporary residents like a physicist or biologist brought an ashy shade to their faces.

  Other spokes led to the nuclear power plant, the laboratories, the production plants, and the command section. Primary electronics, ventilation, and power were located in the hub, feeding the spokes, so that the loss of any spoke would not cripple the ship. The exception to that rule was the nuclear plant, but backup batteries and solar power sources would still be available for a limited time. The “hot” side of the hub, exposed to the sun, mounted a massive solar array.

  McKenna arrived at Spoke One and tapped the large green button mounted on the bulkhead. The automatic door wheezed, rotated two inches to free itself from the locking tangs, then swung open on its massive hinge. The hinge was mounted solidly to the bulkhead, and two bars from the top and bottom of the hinge met in a “V” at the center of the round door, allowing the door to pivot around an axle at the point of the “V”. Decompression in any compartment automatically closed every door on the station.

  Once he had clearance, McKenna pushed himself through the opening, pressing the red button on the other side. The door closed behind him, and he pulled himself along the spoke. It was twelve feet in diameter and double walled. Between the walls ran the ventilation ducting, electrical conduits, heating and cooling coils, and thick insulation. Since the satellite did not rotate, there was a hot side and a cold — night — side. The variation in temperature from one side to the other was several hundred degrees, and one computer alone was kept busy cooling and heating the satellite’s skin in order to keep the interior livable.

  Access panels were irregularly spaced along the spoke’s forty-foot length. Spoke One was the longest of the spokes. The design of the station allowed for unexpected
expansion, as well as for oversized modules at the end of a spoke. Including the largest modules and the spokes, Themis currently had a 470-foot diameter, the equivalent of more than one-and-a-half football fields. To those approaching the station from space, it was a speck in a vast emptiness. To first-time visitors aboard, it was an amazingly complex and huge city.

  The interior of Spoke One was lit with three flush-mounted lamps, and there were no windows.

  Windows were in short supply on Themis. There was one large round port in each of the four dining rooms and two in the command module. None of the portholes in the dining rooms could observe the hangar side of the hub. If visiting scientists from Air Force-client companies were aboard, they would never see any of the MakoShark arrivals or departures.

  On the outer end of the spoke, McKenna negotiated an automatic door in order to reach the command spaces.

  The module was forty feet in diameter and sixty feet long, divided into a number of compartments. As commander of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, McKenna rated an office here, if it could be called an office. It was a four-by-four-by-seven-foot cubicle in which he could strap himself to one padded wall and operate his “desk.” The desk was a computer and communications console with three cathode ray tubes recessed into the desk top. It allowed him visual access to three documents simultaneously, or if he split the screens, to six documents. Additionally, he could tap into any of the radar or video monitoring systems.

  Except for the console, the cubicle’s arrangement wasn’t much different from his sleeping quarters, and McKenna frequently slept there.

  The commander of Themis, Brig. Gen. James Overton, the deputy commander, Col. Milt Avery, and Amy Pearson had similar cubicles. A much larger compartment was utilized by one of the three communications/radar operators on board. Other compartments were designed for storage or contained computer and electronic gear, safety equipment, and emergency environmental suits.

  McKenna pushed himself down the short corridor past the smaller cubicles and into the main control room. On the outboard end of the module, the command center was twenty feet deep by almost the full diameter of forty feet. The dominant feature was the centered four-foot, round port providing a view of the earth. At the moment, the focus was on the Mediterranean Sea. The earth seemed to glow, radiating her greens, blues, and tans. The cloud cover was particularly white this morning. It had a rose tint to it.

  The command center was a functional place, without much thought given to aesthetics. Conduit and ducting was flattened against the bulkheads, snaking around consoles and black boxes. There weren’t any seats available, though there were a number of Velcro tethers spotted around to keep people operating consoles from floating away from the job.

  Avery, the deputy commander, was earthside, on a week’s leave, and Overton was the man in charge. The commander of Themis was forty-four years old and carried the image of that fatherly airliner captain. He had dark hair graying nicely at the temples and steady gray eyes. At six-four, he was tall but solidly built.

  He looked around from his station near the porthole as McKenna floated into the center.

  “Your birds all sound, Kevin?”

  “We may have to change a radio on Red, but otherwise, we’re in great shape, Jim.”

  “Good. I think Colonel Pearson is going to want you to wring them out a little.”

  McKenna grinned. “How come she always gets what she wants?”

  Pearson stuck her head out of her cubicle, then pushed her way out of it. “Because I know what I’m doing, McKenna.”

  The light blue jumpsuit did nice things for her.

  And for McKenna.

  She also wore a matching headband to hold all that gorgeous red hair in place since gravity wouldn’t do it for her.

  “Of course you do, Amy. I trust you.”

  “That’s a one-way street,” she told him.

  McKenna sighed and thought, one of these days …

  *

  At eight in the morning, the sun was already high on Zeigman’s right shoulder. It was not as high as it would have been if he were flying at a normal altitude.

  The sea was sixty feet below, the white caps visible, the spray glinting as a twenty-knot wind whipped the waves. On his left oblique, dark storm clouds were brewing, their tops roiling, but they were a couple hundred miles away. He would be long gone before the squalls hit.

  He had picked up the crosswind half an hour before and had had to alter his course a little. The airplane was skittish at this altitude if he got his left wing too low.

  Skittish airplanes never bothered Mac Zeigman. He had been flying since he was fifteen, taught by an uncle from Hannover in an old Aeronica. By the age of eighteen, he had commercial and instrument ratings, as well as some experience flying helicopters and jet aircraft. For six years, he had roamed the world, flying whatever presented itself, for whatever the client would pay.

  Zeigman’s given names were actually Gustav Matthew, but an Australian he had met in Pakistan had decided on, “Hey, Mac,” and he had adopted it. He had never considered himself a Gustav or a Matthew, anyway.

  Wherever he was in the world, Zeigman lived his life to the full, and it had aged him quickly. At thirty-two, his life was mapped in the small burst veins of his nose and upper cheeks. His face had a red glow resulting from rich food, Kentucky bourbon, Japanese wine, and good German beer. What had once been a relatively handsome face sagged a little now. There were bags under his washed brown eyes from late party nights and early flight mornings. His hair was thick and dark and widow-peaked. The body was still hard and lean, with only a bit of a paunch. He burned off calories with steady work and frequent high-adrenaline escapades. His work was what he loved.

  And for the past five years, his work had been steady. Zeigman had been recruited by Oberst Albert Weismann to a direct commission as a hauptmann in the German air force, and a year later, promoted to major. Since he was already a squadron commander, he expected to be an oberstleutnant very soon.

  Weismann commanded the Zwanzigste Speziell Aeronautisch Gruppe (20.S.A.G.), comprised of Zeigman’s Erst Schwadron, Metzenbaum’s Zweite Schwadron, a transport squadron, and a helicopter unit. The air group supported the GUARDIAN PROJECT and was based at New Amsterdam Air Force Base near Bremerhaven. The seaport offered Zeigman nearly any form of revelry he could have hoped for.

  The Luftwaffe offered him the kind of flying he required.

  Zeigman’s squadron was equipped with twelve Panavia Tornados. A multination, multicompany — Aeritalia, British Aerospace, and Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm — design and production effort, the Tornado met several combat roles. It was equally capable of battlefield interdiction, counter-air strike, close air support and air superiority functions. In the ADV (Air Defense Variant) model, originally built for the Royal Air Force, it took on the additional tasks of air defense and interception. The 1st Squadron of the 20th Special Air Group had ADV models.

  It was a dual-seat fighter with variable-swept wings, adjustable from 25 to 67 degrees of sweep. A key characteristic was the exceptionally tall vertical stabilizer, also steeply swept back. With Texas Instrument’s forward-looking and groundmapping radar, Foxhunter Doppler navigation radar, and a GEC Avionics terrain-following radar, the Tornado could go almost anywhere its pilot wanted it to go, and in the worst of weather conditions.

  And when it got there, it could use its IWKA-Mauser 27 millimeter cannon or any of up to 9,000 kilograms of free-fall, retarded and guided bombs or a variety of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. The 1st Squadron’s Tornados were generally armed with air defense weaponry such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles.

  And the Tornado got wherever it was going at 2300 kilometers per hour. Major Zeigman loved it.

  Frequently, like this morning, Zeigman performed his patrol without his backseater. He preferred solitude when he was flying, and when the visibility was good, he didn’t need the radar or weapons control.

  At sea level, Zeigman was u
sing fuel rapidly, though he was holding the fighter at 600 knots, well below its top speed. He did not care. Somewhere, 9,000 meters above him, was his tanker.

  When he saw the tip of Svalbard Island rise on the horizon, Zeigman turned to a heading of 340 degrees. Three minutes later, a ship appeared in his windscreen. He adjusted his heading once again, and headed directly for it.

  Two miles out, he identified the silhouette as that of the missile cruiser Hamburg, the flagship of der Admiral Gerhard Schmidt. Grinning to himself, he lost yet more altitude, to less than twenty feet above the wave tops.

  Obviously, since he had not been challenged, the cruiser’s radar had missed him, lost him in the clutter of radar return off the waves.

  Dialing his radio to the frequency assigned to the marine division of the VORMUND PROJEKT, Zeigman thumbed the transmit button on the stick and yelled into his helmet microphone, “BANG!”

  He pulled up abruptly, rolled inverted, and passed over the ship, in front of the bridge, fifty feet above the foredeck.

  There was consternation on the decks, seamen running wildly about. White faces pressed against the bridge’s windshield, heads swiveling to follow him.

  Zeigman gave them the finger, a gesture he had learned from American mercenaries in Zaire and Angola.

  Rolling upright, he continued his patrol, and when the radio began to squawk with indignant German naval demands, he switched frequencies again.

  Within five minutes, he reached the first of the platforms, Bahnsteig Seeks. Passing within a mile of it, he did not devote much of his attention to activity aboard the platform. He had seen them before, and they all looked alike.

  Instead, he scanned the skies and the seas for intruders. That was the job, and the job, as always, was boring. Once in a while, he would see a few fishing boats out of Greenland, but unless they approached within a couple miles of a platform, they were left alone.