“Stop playback.” Ellen shivered. “I can’t watch that again. I’m sure you get the idea, and you’ll have no problem finding coverage if you want to see more.”
With a tap on the datasheet Phil banished the frozen image. “Once was plenty for me, too.”
“Cooked,” Bethany said. “Microwaves?”
“Uh-huh,” Phil said.
Marcus felt ill. “I remember reading something about beamed microwaves for nonlethal crowd control. The Army tried it in Iraq, I think, years ago, with truck-mounted transmitters. The microwaves induced painful heating in the skin, chasing people away before any permanent damage could occur.” And the parboiled-looking woman on that report? And two—husband and granddaughter?—dead? That seemed permanent. “That was the theory, anyway.”
Phil shook his head. “Not the Army. It comes out later in the report that some alternate-energy project in the Santa Barbara Channel was beaming power. Only a few megawatts, but short range. I’d wondered at first if extremists had hacked into the software that aimed the beam, but apparently not. The best guess is that vibrations on the platform loosened mounting bolts on the transmitting antenna.”
Marcus had been wondering about Resetters, too, but carelessness was no more acceptable as an explanation.
“A horrible tragedy.” Bethany shuddered. “This will sound terrible, but I’d bet we’re all thinking it. The Resetters will pound us with this accident. If a few megawatts did this, they’ll ask, what harm might PS-1 do with a gigawatt?”
Marcus had been thinking that, and Bethany’s admission made him feel just a bit less callous. “And not only Resetter groups. The oil cartel will be all over this, too.”
“Agreed on all counts.” Phil sighed. “Nor will it be long until someone at our review finds out, whether surfing or getting a call. We need to think about how to break the news—”
The sudden clamor in the auditorium suggested they were already too late.
Wednesday evening, August 2
“Sushi?” Marcus said. “Sure.”
He did not care for sushi—the Japanese word for bait?—but he liked even less the idea of eating dinner alone. Ellen had an urgent conference call to take that evening with the NASA administrator. Marcus figured he could guess the topic.
“Excellent,” Savannah Morgan said. “A girlfriend told me about a great sushi place nearby. Follow me, gentlemen.”
Marcus had met her and Carlos Ortiz the first day of the review, at which both were observers. She was a civilian cyber-security expert at Space Command headquarters at Peterson AFB in Colorado. Everything about Savannah was exuberant, from bright eyes to grand hand gestures. She wore her hair in a bun pulled so tight Marcus wondered if her forehead ached. Colonel Carlos Ortiz, her uniformed colleague, was short, barrel-chested, and very dark, with a gravelly voice. He was stationed nearby at Vandenberg AFB.
“Lead on,” Carlos said.
They ducked out a back door to avoid Resetter picketers and the media circus at the Kendricks main entrance. Leaving air conditioning felt like stepping into a blast furnace. At a nearby cabstand they grabbed a ride. Savannah keyed in the restaurant’s name and the autocab pulled away.
Carlos peered out at the boisterous crowd. “This is not a good turn of events.”
“What happened near Santa Cruz seems to have been a freak accident,” Marcus said. “The Resetters already hated PS-1. Won’t this blow over?”
Carlos shook his head. “I don’t see Resetters as your real problem. The Russians and their lackeys will have a field day with this. Powersats as WMDs.”
“But powersats aren’t!” Marcus snapped.
“But they could be,” Savannah said. “Yeah, I heard yesterday’s briefing about the interlocks and safeties. It’s all very multilayered and sophisticated—and, hence, hard to get across to the public. The black hats only have to convey, ‘Think how many pieces have to work right. Because when one of those pieces doesn’t work or some safety mechanism gets turned off: death rays. Broiled while you sleep.’”
No one had anything to add to that.
Kendricks Aerospace employed thousands, most on government contracts. That made upkeep of the headquarters campus a reimbursable overhead expense, and the management did not skimp. A block away from the immaculately groomed office campus, though, the neighborhood turned seedy. Piles of uncollected trash. Panhandlers at every bus stop. Store doors wedged open, the whirring box fans glimpsed inside the entrances surely unequal to the task. Storefronts boarded up and spray-painted with graffiti.
Too much of the country, of the world, was this way, and the downward spiral could not be reversed without cheap, plentiful energy.
Someone was responsible for the Santa Cruz accident. Whoever it was, Marcus silently cursed them.
Their autocab passed a news kiosk scrolling teasers. Between bankruptcies and box scores, blackout reports and brownout schedules, something flashed by about sabotage at the Bay of Fundy tidal power plant. Like every energy disruption, the incident meant more money to the Russian cartel. Before Marcus could retrieve his datasheet and buy the download file, they were out of range.
The cab’s console chimed to announce their imminent arrival. “Sushi!” Savannah enthused. “That’s not something you want to order in Colorado.”
“So at home for seafood you go with the Rocky Mountain oysters?” Marcus asked.
He took her mimed gagging as a no.
Sushirama was three-fourths empty. Marcus told himself it was Wednesday night and unfashionably early, knowing neither was the reason. Washing down every mouthful with beer, unable to shake the day’s awful news, Marcus mostly avoided noticing what he ate.
His new friends swapped stories about mutual acquaintances.
“So what do we do about this mess?” Marcus interrupted. “The PS-1 project, I mean, and Santa Cruz, and public opinion.”
Savannah shrugged. “What you are doing. Test, test, test, then test some more. Make damn sure the safety interlocks work. Involve people like Carlos and me to make sure the system can’t be hacked.”
“Because you think it can?”
“You never know,” she said. “Nothing Kendricks presented so far came across as problematical, but that proves nothing. The smallest oversight in implementation can be a security hole. You can be certain unfriendly hackers are looking.”
“Last week’s defacing of the White House website?” Marcus asked. “Russians?”
Carlos shook his head. “Too trivial for a hack sanctioned by a foreign government. You want my guess? The Chinese this time. Kids, trainees showing off for the props. But where an attack starts, let alone who’s behind it, is nigh unto impossible to prove. When you know what you’re doing, and the pros do, you work through long chains of anonymous relays.”
“How often…?” Marcus wondered.
“Don’t ask,” Carlos said. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.
“The good news is I didn’t see any gaping security holes in the PS-1 design. And kudos on one feature: I approve that core powersat functions like authorizing downlink sites aren’t network-accessible. What you can’t net into, you can’t hack.”
“Any other advice, guys?” Marcus asked.
Savannah laughed. “Yeah. Illegitimi non carborundum.”
Don’t let the bastards wear you down? Easier said than done when geopolitics—or was it the excellent beer?—had Marcus’s head spinning. “Is that it for the Russians?”
Carlos nibbled on maki, considering. “They’ll pressure us to abort the project. They won’t do anything.”
“Because they can’t?” Marcus said. It didn’t seem plausible.
“Because militarizing space is expensive, with too much bad press for whoever goes first. And WMDs in space are illegal by international treaty. No, the Russians will keep claiming we’re the ones taking that first, illegal step.
“And because the Russian space forces do understand your safeties and interlocks. PS-1 isn’t a we
apon, not as built. After today, my feeling is they don’t even need to convince anyone PS-1 is a disguised weapon. It’ll suffice to call PS-1 an accident waiting to happen.”
“There has to be a way to make powersats more acceptable.” Marcus picked at his food, wishing he believed himself. In all those town meetings, had he changed any minds?
“Cheap, reliable electricity. That’s what people will understand.” Savannah shook her head. “If we don’t lose our nerve first.”
* * *
Fish scraps swallowed whole did not a meal make, and if the Japanese had any concept of dessert, Marcus had yet to encounter it. Somewhere in Los Angeles a Snickers had his name on it. He was begging off an evening of barhopping when a call from Ellen made excuses moot.
“How’d your call go?” he asked her. She looked drained.
“Interesting,” was all she would admit. “How soon can you get back to the hotel?”
“Once I get a cab, maybe twenty minutes.”
“I’ll be in my room.”
He was at her door in twenty-five minutes, after a short cab ride spent surfing news sites. The death-from-the-skies narrative had already begun.
In person Ellen looked even worse than over the phone.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’ve had easier days.” She waved him inside. “Sit. I’ll fill you in.”
Marcus took a chair. Ellen sat on the foot of the bed. She said, “Not to keep you in suspense, PS-1 testing can proceed. If we get through this week’s review without showstoppers. If we redouble our efforts at test and inspection before going live. If we, government and contractor alike, prove we take our responsibilities seriously.”
“What’s a showstopper? Who decides?”
“Our blue-ribbon review panel, for starters. And the administrator will review their findings. And behind the scenes, so will someone from the White House.”
Marcus thought back to his unsettling dinner conversation. “And Resetter pressure? Foreign propaganda?”
“The official guidance is: Prove them wrong.”
“Redouble our efforts.” Marcus gazed out the window, trying to imagine what redoubling would entail. His imagination failed him.
“The administrator and I had a long talk after the conference call. He wants to send an independent inspection team. I’d been considering one anyway.”
“An onsite—on orbit inspection?”
“Right.”
“And Phil agreed,” Marcus said dubiously.
“It’s not his decision.” Ellen sighed. “I’ll miss having you around every day.”
Huh? “You’re firing me?”
He had immersed himself in this project. He had devoted three years of his life to PS-1. To become some sort of public sacrifice to show NASA was serious?
In his mind’s eye, Sean leered. You’re a sucker, bro.
“Fired?” For an instant, Ellen just stared. “Marcus! Of course not! I need a personal representative up there with the inspection team. Someone who knows the system inside and out. Someone I know I can trust.
“Who do you imagine I’d send?”
Saturday, August 12
“Then the lobbyist says…” “The old goat doesn’t have interns, he has a harem.” “Lost their budget so fast they still don’t know what hit them.” “So the deputy undersecretary called over to Interior…”
Ah, Washington gossip.
Soaking it all in—the good, the bad, and mostly the banal—Yakov took his turn manning the grill. Earl Vaughn, friend, neighbor, and host, held court at the bar. People thronged the patio and deck and spilled onto the lawn. Someplace in the press of neighbors and other guests, wherever the conversation was liveliest, Yakov knew his charming wife would be found.
“Oh, crap. It’s you.”
A hell of a greeting. Yakov turned. “Good to see you, too.”
They had a bit of playacting to go through. Tyler Pope, an analyst at the CIA, would pretend not to know Yakov was Federal Security Service. Yakov would pretend not to know he knew Tyler knew. An open question: whether Tyler knew Yakov knew.
Tyler said, “Every time I see a foreign national, it means filing another pain-in-the-ass contact report.” His Texas drawl grated—if not as much as when he chose to practice his Russian.
“I am sorry to be such a burden.” Yakov flipped a row of burgers. “Let me make it up to you. Have some barbecue. Grab a bun.”
“Have you seen the form? My fingers will be bloody stumps before I’m done typing. Give me something to report.”
“You can say I buy corn. But, Tyler…” Yakov leaned forward conspiratorially.
“Yes?”
“I think maybe I will continue to buy corn.”
“Thanks a bunch, neighbor. Or should I say, a bushel?”
They exchanged a bit more such nonsense before Tyler went off with a burger. It was all comfortable and familiar. Safe and predictable, if you were logical and thought ahead.
Yakov thought far ahead.
As a boy, to be a chess grandmaster had been the limit of his ambition. He could have achieved it, too—of that he was certain. Instead, the Federal Security Service (in its Russian acronym, the FSB) recruited him first. It turned out they recruited many chess prodigies, especially those, like Yakov, also skilled with languages. Nations played their own games, with the entire world as their game board.
Nations had neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests. But not even nations were permanent: Yakov had watched the Warsaw Bloc come unglued, the Soviet Union break apart, and America’s own jetliners turned against her.
The game of nations was more challenging by far than chess, more interesting, and—unlike chess—still far beyond the capabilities of any computer.
Bureaucratic maneuvering was also a game, one at which Yakov excelled. He had climbed rapidly in the ranks of the FSB. With influence at home came his choice of postings abroad. Less patriotic master players chose Stockholm or Paris. He had chosen the hellhole that was the Restored Caliphate.
“Allowing” a few old Soviet nukes—rendered subtly unstable—to fall into the hands of the fanatics had been his boldest gambit.
A very successful gambit, too, after which Russia dominated world petroleum markets. Bolivia and Chile controlled the lithium essential for electric car batteries—and Russia could, as needed, coerce Bolivia and Chile. If America was not yet quite prostrate, time was on Russia’s side. The game of nations should have ended with the Crudetastrophe—
Only the game of nations, unlike chess, dealt the occasional wildcard.
Phoebe was a wildcard. The dormant comet had come hurtling, quite literally, out of nowhere. For as long as the Americans controlled Phoebe and its resources, an escape from their dilemma existed for the Western powers.
The powersat project had to fail, and fail so spectacularly that no one would attempt it again. Not until the last drop of petroleum was under contract, and Russia was without rival, and it suited her to reintroduce the technology.
And so, for a little while longer, the game of nations would continue. Russia would still win. He would still win. Very soon now.
Allowing a neighbor to relieve him at the grill, Yakov headed for the bar. He felt like celebrating.
* * *
Dillon sat in his parked car, windows open for the nonexistent cross breeze, sweating buckets. Only principle kept him from raising the windows and blasting the air conditioner.
Damn Yakov, anyway.
From a house down the street from where Dillon waited, fuming, happy chatter rose. A neighborhood get-together? He ached to crash the party looking for Yakov, but resisted. What he had to say to the bastard must be said in private.
Dillon turned on the radio. He watched and waited until, finally, singly and in pairs, people began emerging from the backyard gathering. A man and woman came Dillon’s way. The woman was blond and fair, entirely ordinary. The man was dark and stocky, his features br
oad, his salt-and-pepper hair thick and unruly—almost like fur. Everything about him hinted at ancestors from the Eurasian steppes. Yakov, damn him, Brodsky.
Dillon got out of his car.
Yakov said something in Russian to the woman, presumably his wife, who nodded and went into a house. “I am surprised to see you here,” Yakov said. “McLean is off your beaten path, I should think.”
“I’ve been leaving messages for more than a week. You didn’t return my calls.” You bastard.
“I have been busy.” Yakov gestured at his front walk. “Very well, come inside. I trust you had a pleasant drive from New York?”
Nothing about today could be pleasant. Giving no response, Dillon followed Yakov up the front walk, inside the house, and into a dark, book-lined study. A magnificent chessboard, black onyx and white marble inlaid into a mahogany tabletop, stood beside the desk. The wooden chess pieces, intricately carved, were lustrous.
With a flick of the wrist, Dillon disdained offers of a drink and a seat.
“As you wish.” Yakov poured vodka for himself. “What is so urgent?”
“I thought we had a partnership.”
“We do. A very productive one, to my way of thinking.”
“Did, Yakov. We did have a partnership. Past tense.”
The picture of nonchalance, Yakov settled into the leather wing chair behind the desk. His drink sat untouched. “My sources identify interesting start-up ventures. Your company gets my experts inside those ventures for a closer look at new technologies. Together we discourage … unfortunate … new infrastructure. The arrangement serves us both.”
Amazing! The bastard dared to imply a moral equivalence.
They had—had had—a marriage of convenience. When they met, long ago, at a glitzy Manhattan high-tech expo, Dillon had thought himself so clever to have enlisted the resources of a Russian trade representative.
Too late Dillon understood who had recruited whom.
He said, “You want high energy prices out of pure greed. I want high prices to save the planet. Someone has to force people to reduce their impact on Mother Earth.”
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