“Yeah. Eris Space Enterprises,” Zara said. “Strictly speaking, we’re not doing exploration; we’re just providing cargo transport.”
“Wow… so, you’re all grown up and focused on something now!” Anna-Nicole said, sounding like a parent.
“Yep.”
“I bet your dad’s proud.”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
“What?”
“We haven’t kept in touch since he left.”
“Oh…” Anna-Nicole felt awkward and changed the subject. “Well, I’m working for Governor Snyder on his reelection campaign.”
“Cool!”
“Yeah; I love it. You get to meet all kinds of interesting people in this job. Where are you living now?”
“Preparing to move to Houston,” Zara said.
“Oh. An oil town? Weird place for someone like you…”
“It’s also a space town.”
“Of course! That makes total sense. You could start dating an astronaut!”
Zara laughed. “I am, shall we say, keeping my options open on that front.”
“Ah. In other words, not looking then!”
“You got it. Focusing on my business for now.” After a short pause, she continued: “Well, I’ve gotta go. I have a million things to do.”
“I hear ya. Well, stay in touch, pretty lady. Ciao for now.”
“Ciao.”
The self-proclaimed Knights gathered at their round table. Virtual meetings were now more important than ever, as Zara was no longer staying with Christopher. She had moved into her new apartment in Houston.
“The ship’s design is finalized,” Christopher said. “We’re going to have a flexible interior space that we can configure for cargo on the way up and passengers on the way back. I got a few funny looks from the designers when I dropped the requirement for passenger transportation on them, but I think they bought my explanation.
“Also, the launch is scheduled, from Kwajalein Atoll, two days after Dawn leaves. That way, we will intercept them at about thirteen hundred kilometers altitude—well out of the range of most spacecraft that could be commandeered by the Chinese to interfere with the operation.”
“Very good,” James replied. “On my end, I’ve nearly finished the cargo manifest. We’re looking at about twelve tons, comprising: three shape-shifters, five tons of liquid oxygen, the new O2 recycling system, a workstation, two hundred kilos of modules, nine hundred kilos of elements—just about everything on the periodic table—and Zara’s personal stuff.”
“Can’t forget the toothbrushes,” Zara said. “I really don’t want to need dental work in deep space.”
“Got it,” James replied. “So, how are we going to pacify and capture the crew of Dawn?”
“I don’t think a bunch of geriatric ex-astronauts are going to do it,” Christopher replied. “I’ve been thinking, and we’re going to need mercenaries or something.”
“Where do we find people like that?” Zara asked. “I don’t think they advertise. There isn’t a find-a-mercenary-dot-com site, or anything like that.”
“There are militias for hire,” James replied. “They call themselves security firms, but they’re staffed by ex-special forces guys. The US government uses them all the time for clandestine wars now, instead of risking American soldiers. The overt wars we’re involved in are little more than cover for a dozen more low-level conflicts that don’t make the news.”
Aleksandr nodded. “Then I will find them. We’re taking an enormous risk of the plot being uncovered by involving others, but I don’t think we have a choice.”
A full year went by, during which many plans were made and details finalized. The conspirators sat around the same virtual meeting table.
“Status?” Christopher asked.
“I saw the Eris today,” Zara said. She had bags under her eyes, and the strain showed. “She’s coming right along. Her basic hull is complete. Instrumentation is going in. Undercarriage and engines are assembled, and installation is due to start next month. She reminds me of the old shuttles from the twentieth century, only skinnier and sleeker.”
“Excellent,” Christopher replied. “So, how is Dawn coming along?”
“As far as I could tell from a chartered sightseeing shuttle, she’s almost complete,” Zara replied. “I got a ton of pictures using a telephoto lens from a kilometer away. Displaying them now.”
“The hull is complete,” Aleksandr said, examining the pictures closely. “I can make out a couple of technicians in there, without spacesuits on, so she’s obviously pressurized. Looks like there are many circular decks inside the conical glass section, which go the entire width of the hull.”
“Yeah. Let’s just call the glass section the atrium, for short,” Zara replied. “There’s an access path right from the top of it to the bottom, by means of a circular hole in the center of each deck. I’m not sure what they’re going to use all that space for—it’s a huge volume.”
“We can’t see the interior of the metal hull, though,” Christopher said. “We have to know the layout in there.”
“I asked Commander Sudbury about that,” Aleksandr said, referring to the leader of their takedown team, “and he said he’s got a way to find out. Some kind of special ops technology. Wouldn’t elaborate.”
“Okay,” Christopher replied with a shrug. “I’ll trust them that it works. Are they in zero-G training yet?”
“Yes. They’re going up to the BOC in disguise, one at a time, and practicing their moves in their cabins,” Aleksandr said.
“Very good,” Christopher said. “You’ve been invaluable with coordinating them.” He turned to James. “What about ground support?”
“We’re buying an old Japanese trawler, and renaming it Sea Scavenger,” James said. “That gets around having ground control situated on land, where it could be attacked and shut down. She’s thirty meters long and will be outfitted with all the computers and communications gear we need.
“We’ll also have to put in an active stabilization system, so the antennas can stay pointed correctly in rough seas. She’ll travel incognito, looking and operating just like a trawler, out of Alaska. No one will be any the wiser.”
“Excellent,” Christopher replied, smiling. “I confess to loving the cloak-and-dagger aspects of all this. Now, there’s one thing we haven’t really addressed yet, which is the fact that they will start maneuvering Dawn when we approach to stop us from clamping onto its hull. This is what I’ve come up with.”
A rendering of a cylindrical object appeared in the middle of the group, rotating slowly.
“I call it a pusher. It’s about four meters long. It has a rocket engine at one end and some sticky pads at the other.
“My thinking is that we’ll launch eight of these, like torpedoes, on our final approach. They’ll fly to Dawn and attach themselves to her hull, sticky end down. Four at the front, and four at the rear, evenly spaced around her circumference. That way, we’ll be able to counteract her attitude thrusters and remotely control her movements in any axis.”
“Outstanding!” James said, wowed by the engineering. “I know a thing or two about building robots that cooperate in swarms, so we can make them work together as a cohesive unit. Now we just have to find some aerospace shop that’ll build them without asking questions.”
Chapter 22
The warm, white sand squished between Zara’s toes as she looked across kilometers of sand and concrete at the gleaming rocket stack in the distance. Atop the stack, poised like a boxer’s fist ready to punch the sky, was the Eris. She was a fine looking craft, a very sleek space plane with a pointed nose, and small, swept back wings toward the rear. She had two small, stubby tailfins, rising up like a V. Everything about her spoke of speed and power, both outside and inside the atmosphere.
Zara’s stomach churned.
Oh, my God. This is real.
Oh.
My.
God.
I’m actually go
ing to do this.
Zara closed her eyes and focused on the feeling of the sun and breeze, the sound of the softly lapping waves, and fresh, salty smell of the ocean. This is the last time I will taste Earth. In a matter of hours, I will cross the bridge from here to the endless void.
A tear ran down her cheek. Anna-Nicole and Mikayla were with her.
“What’s wrong?” Anna-Nicole asked.
Zara looked down at the pattern she had made in the sand with her toes and sighed. “Guys… I’m not sure how to say this. I’m not coming back.”
The others looked at her, aghast. “What?” they said, as one. Zara nodded.
“Where are you going?” Mikayla asked.
“I can’t say. You’ll find out soon enough,” Zara said, still downcast.
Anna-Nicole looked at her in disbelief, shaking her head slowly. “Say it isn’t so… Is this another of your crazy stunts?”
“I’m afraid not,” Zara said, “although, you might think differently when you find out.”
“But… you’re not following in your dad’s footsteps and going on a one-way trip, are you?” Mikayla asked. Zara didn’t answer.
“Sure I can’t talk you out of it?” Mikayla said. “Besides, you couldn’t spend the rest of your life on that thing, anyway.” She nodded toward the Eris. “Even I can see it’s much too small to live on permanently. Are you going to live on the space station, or Mars perhaps?”
Zara shook her head. “I can’t tell you yet. Just keep watching the news…” She sighed again. “I wanted you guys here so I could say goodbye.” They group-hugged and the tears flowed freely.
“Don’t forget about us,” said Anna-Nicole pleaded.
“I won’t. You guys mean more to me than you know.”
“One minute to go,” Launch Control said. Pilot Aleksandr Kozlov looked around at Zara and Christopher, seated behind him, and nodded. All were spacesuited and seated facing the sky, which they would shortly shoot through.
Zara and Christopher nodded to each other and then looked back at Arthur Sudbury and his seven commandos. Steely and focused, they neither nodded nor moved.
“Time to throw a thousand-mile punch,” Zara said. Her eyes narrowed her and jaw clenched. I’m coming to you, Dad.
“Systems check?” Launch Control asked.
“Eris is all nominal,” Aleksandr replied.
Radio traffic from outside continued: “Power internal. All umbilicals retracted. Range check?”
“RSO is go.”
“Ten seconds.”
“Five seconds.” An ear-splitting roar and vibration shook them violently. “Main engines good, solids are good,” Launch Control announced. “Zero.”
The acceleration pinned them to the back of their seats. Smoke billowed up around outside the windows and then disappeared just as quickly as they cleared the launch tower. The white comma shape that was the atoll fell away, leaving only the azure sea and powder-blue sky.
Launch Control could be heard again: “Altitude: one kilometer. Thrust is good. First stage performing as expected.” They rode the column of fire into a darkening sky. “Roll complete. Coming up on max-Q. Eris systems check?”
“All nominal. Trajectory is good,” Aleksandr replied. “Max-Q passed without incident.”
“Very good, Eris. Stage sep in one minute.”
The roar began to grow fainter as there was less air to transmit the sound. “Stage sep.” The craft jolted, and they were momentarily weightless before the second stage kicked in. The curvature of the Earth was now easily visible.
“Altitude: sixty-one kilometers, velocity: three thousand, one hundred and seventy meters per second,” Aleksandr said. No turning back, Zara thought. Soon, the engines gave only a low, muffled rumble as they entered the total vacuum of space. The craft continued to vibrate.
“I have Dawn on radar,” Aleksandr announced. “She’s right where she should be. Can’t get a visual yet, though.”
“Stage two sep,” Launch Control said. The last stage ignited. “Trajectory is nominal.”
“Copy that,” Aleksandr said. The third stage burn continued, pushing them back in their seats, squeezing their chests with ever greater force as though the hand of God was hurling them away from Earth. Zara looked around at the others, and they looked back, eye-to-eye. The bond of friends and conspirators needed no words. Their trajectory now began to tilt away from the vertical.
“Altitude: one hundred ninety kilometers, velocity: seven thousand, four hundred and ten meters per second. Two minutes to MECO,” Launch Control said.
“Roger that,” Aleksandr said.
“The Flight Director has two questions for you,” Launch Control said. “Why’d you pick such an elliptical orbit? And why do you have so many crew members on a first test flight?”
No response.
“Shutdown,” came the announcement from Earth. The last stage separated and fell away. “You’re on your own now, Eris. We wish you well.”
Aleksandr fired their engines, and they streaked on into the blackness. What have I done? Zara asked herself. Am I crazy? Am I about to wreck—or even end—a bunch of people’s lives?
“Engine burn fifty percent complete. Altitude: four hundred and fifteen kilometers,” Aleksandr announced a minute later. “Trajectory for intercept is good. ETA: twenty-nine minutes.”
“You know why I named the ship Eris?” Zara asked.
“Some kind of mythology?” Christopher said.
“She’s the Greek goddess of chaos, strife, and discord.”
Chapter 23
Seung Yi and his pilot, Jin Liao, relaxed on the bridge of Dawn. It was a dome-shaped space in the tip of the craft’s glass nose, roughly six meters wide and four meters high. It offered a panoramic view of space. The floor was glass, as were all the other decks from there to the bottom of the atrium fifty meters away. All decks below the bridge were gardens, containing a wide variety of plant life. The top of the upper ring could also be seen from the bridge. It was intended simply for outside observation, and two crew members in their red flight suits could be seen looking out at Earth.
A ping was heard. An alert window popped up in midair showing an object on an arcing trajectory, with the words UNKNOWN OBJECT INBOUND.
“What the heck?” Liao said as he snapped to attention and examined the object’s thermal signature. “It’s another ship, headed straight for us!”
“What? The only other launch I knew about today is the Eris, by Sasake-Robbins’s daughter!” Seung replied, aghast. “I don’t know why they launched into such a highly elliptical orbit, in the same plane as us. Keep an eye on it!”
“They’re still under power, and raising their orbit…”
“Why on earth would they do that? Try and raise them on comms.”
“Computer, open channel on ISF 901,” Liao said. “Eris, this is Dawn. Please respond.”
Silence.
He repeated the request. Still nothing.
“I don’t like this,” Liao said after closing the radio channel. “Any ship has to identify themselves when called on that frequency.”
“Get the others up here, now!” Seung said.
The rest of the crew arrived on the bridge within a minute and were apprised of the situation. Nobody knew what to make of it.
“Engines shut down,” Aleksandr announced. For the first time, they were weightless. “ETA: eighteen minutes. We’re coasting up to their altitude, losing speed as we do so. Then, we’ll do one more burn to circularize the orbit. We’ll approach them from below, since we’ve got to watch out for their exhaust plume.
“Mass driver engines work by direct nuclear heating of a reaction fluid, so they put out an astounding amount of gamma radiation. It extends about a hundred and forty kilometers from the rear of the ship, in a thirty-degree cone.” Christopher nodded. Zara looked concerned.
“Range?” Christopher asked.
“Sixty kilometers.”
“Launching the pushers�
� now.” The two doors of the small cargo bay at the rear of the ship opened outward, and the bright plumes of the pushers’ rockets could be seen as they formed into a tight group and streaked towards Dawn.
“What the…?” Seung said as they lit up on the radar. “Missiles?”
“Oh, my god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Liao panicked. “What the hell do we do?” The rest of the crew looked at each other, fear written all over their faces in the undulating glow of eight new alert boxes. The ship’s general alarm sounded.
“Those things are closing fast!” Liao said. “We never planned for this!”
Seung looked him in the eye. “Turn the ship so her engines are facing them. The radiation’ll fry their onboard electronics.”
Liao was aghast. “But… the Eris! It’ll also fry the occupants!”
Seung Yi’s grim expression was unchanged. “It’ll be an accident. They snuck up on us unannounced while we were maneuvering. The properties of N-ships are well-known…”
“You wouldn’t…”
“Do it.”
A mid-air display on board the Eris showed the camera view from one of the pushers. Dawn was still a point of light ahead, moving slowly. Abruptly, the picture went blank.
Christopher’s head whipped around to look at the radar. “Shit!”
“What?”
“Number eight blew up! The fragments took out number seven, too!” His voice trembled.
“Oh no!” Aleksandr said, shocked. “Will they still be able to do their job?”
“I don’t know,” Christopher said grimly. “Depends on whether James programmed them to adapt to a failure like that.” Then his eyes grew wide. “Oh, my God!”
“What now?” Aleksandr said.
“They’re turning Dawn!” Christopher said, his eyes still glued to the radar.
“What are they going to accomplish by doing that? It’s not like her miniscule thrust is going to help them escape.”
Christopher’s voice was as grim and serious as Zara had ever heard it. “They’re not trying to escape,” he said, quietly.
Zara's Flight: Book One of the Kato's War series Page 8