by Taiyo Fujii
After giving over the stage to Kazumi, Chris took her seat. As Kazumi followed her with his eyes, he was showered with light from atop the table. It was from a small projector that Akari had set up. Akari, who was now wearing display glasses and a special ops keyboard on her left arm, was beaming the presentation onto the whiteboard.
“The materials available to me are limited,” Kazumi began. “The only facts we have so far are Mr. Cunningham’s observational data. Everything else I’m about to tell you still needs to be verified. That task is what I’d like to ask for everyone’s help with.” A schematic diagram of the tethercraft was overlaid on Kazumi’s body. “The tethercraft is a never-before-seen spacecraft conceptualized by an astronautical engineer in Tehran, Dr. Jamshed Jahanshah.”
Kazumi began with simple English but a commanding presence. Chris admired how he could describe an unprecedented technology as though he had held it in his very hand. She was now convinced that they had found a mind that would be as useful for their analysis as Daryl’s, if not more so.
Mon, 14 Dec 2020, 21:50 -0800 (2020-12-15T05:50 GMT)
Pier 37 Warehouse, Seattle
Shiraishi’s pure-white breath rose into the air as he flung himself into bed. Then, taking off his glasses, he massaged the space between his eyebrows.
“It’s over,” he said.
“It’s great that our proposal was accepted,” said Chance.
“You never know what you can get by asking, huh? You have to give dictatorships credit. They sure make decisions fast.”
They were in the Pier 37 warehouse control room. On the television screen, lines of digits were displayed. Chance couldn’t parse what they signified, but she knew that all their arrangements for the “implementation” they had approached the North Korean military officer about and the mission to bring the second stage of SAFIR 3 close to the orbital hotel were now complete.
Shiraishi removed his fingers from his brow and looked at the television.
“So it took ten hours,” he said. “Can you draw up the anticipated questions and answers?”
“Yes, no problem. They’ll no doubt respond like a broken tape recorder anyways.”
“It would be good to coach UN ambassador Young Nam on his part. Tell him to say it with his usual sulky face.”
Shiraishi reached for Chance’s breasts. Now that one task was complete, he was in a jovial mood.
Chance brushed away his hands. “What about Japan?” she said. “I mean Kazumi and the rest.”
Shiraishi pointed to a small map that floated on the edge of the television and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve been watching them the whole time. The smartphones of those bureaucrats, Kurosaki and Sekiguchi, are still in the Nippon Grand Hotel. They haven’t sent any messages or made any calls. I bet they’re in there cowering in fear.” Shiraishi sat up and put on his glasses. “I expected Kurosaki and co. to have more backbone than that though.”
Shiraishi regularly accessed the JAXA MDM system with his old account, still active long after he had quit—you couldn’t get any more careless than that—but there were no indications that anyone was onto him yet.
“I checked the advertisements, and none of the other space experts have figured out about the tethercraft,” said Shiraishi. “What about Afro?”
Chance shrugged. She still hadn’t pinned down the identity of the person with the Afro who had been with Kazumi. They had posted three agents near Fool’s Launchpad and had them check the vicinity, but none of them had spotted anyone who fit that description. Most likely she was with Kazumi in the Nippon Grand Hotel.
“I see.” Shiraishi reached into the pocket where he kept his cigarettes.
“That’s not allowed.”
“But we just wrapped up a big job.”
“This place is nonsmoking to begin with. Also, no fire as of today. Our move is on Thursday.”
Shiraishi let out a big sigh and pointed to some piping squirming against the wall of the room. “Is there gasoline in there already?”
“Of course not. I only put it in the tank of the fire cistern. I’ll get a smoke detector tomorrow.”
“Sterilization” of the hideout they had prepared downtown was finally finished. On Thursday, they would be able to move out of the warehouse room that Shiraishi had been living in for five long years. The plan was to leave with only their basic personal belongings and then burn down the entire warehouse.
“I stacked our inventory of the D-Fis that Sound Technica returned on the first floor of the warehouse,” said Chance. “I’ll burn them all together.”
“I think I’d like to watch. Those cables give off the fragrance of roses when you heat them up.”
“Quit joking around. It makes me want to leave Seattle altogether.”
Shiraishi reached for his thermos. “I never want to leave a city where you can drink coffee this good,” he said. “Why don’t you have a cup yourself? Then we can watch the video of Earth taken by the tethers together.”
Video, by tethers? Chance was confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I took a recording with the cameras on the space tethers.”
“… You never told me about that.”
“Don’t get mad. I was just rolling with what was already there.” Shiraishi winked at Chance as white steam rose from the coffee he was pouring. “I reappropriated the substrate of a smartphone to use as the sensor for the tethers—actually, they are smartphones. They have a radio, compass, gyro sensor, GPS, and a powerful CPU that operates on minimal energy with a high-performance battery. These days, they even contain atomic clocks. Jahanshah used smartphones for his paper, so I decided to borrow his idea.”
“Of course, Professor Analog may have thought it up, but he never actually realized it,” Shiraishi added with a smirk. “Obviously smartphones are equipped with cameras too, so there was no way I could resist.” Shiraishi’s sinuous finger stroked his tablet. “I just finished making a program that stitches together all the recordings. I’m talking about an orbital video taken by the world’s biggest camera. Behold!”
Chance caught her breath. An image of Earth against the blackness of space appeared on the screen. The POV appeared to be straight above the continent of Africa. Sunlight beaming down diagonally into a great valley cast sharp shadows. Far back along the shoreline visible on the far right were rows of thunderheads swelling up from the Indian Ocean. Looking closely, Chance could see the clouds moving. But that meant—
“It’s real-time,” said Shiraishi. “So beautiful.”
“But this … video is—”
“Incredible isn’t it? This goes far beyond even what I myself was imagining.”
Shiraishi spoke with feverish intensity as he stared fixedly at the screen. Apparently, the video taken by the cameras installed in the terminal apparatus pair of each space tether was being transmitted continuously to the Earth’s surface along with coordinates, attitude, and other telemetric variables. The feed from each camera was low quality, but by synthesizing the data sent down by a cloud of forty thousand tethers spread over an area three hundred kilometers long and twenty kilometers wide and coloring in space, a high-resolution 3-D model was created. Shiraishi had divided the structural units of the video-stitching program and contracted them out to freelancers around the world.
“It cost less than $1,000 in total. I was able to make this with my own pocket money.” Shiraishi stroked his tablet and rotated the Earth on the screen for Chance. “Do you see the spot in the middle? It’s still rough, but that’s the Wyvern Orbital Hotel.”
“Hold on a second,” said Chance. “You’re sending video from the tethers? All that extra data from orbit in addition to the telemetry … What are you going to do if it’s exposed?”
“It’ll be fine.” With the tablet on his lap, Shiraishi grabbed his right arm in his left hand. With all his strength, he squee
zed the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation tattooed on his arm through his jacket sleeve. “I wanted to see it! I wanted to see the Earth!”
Hearing Shiraishi speak in this tone for the first time, Chance looked closely at him. In his expression at that moment, absorbed with sparkling eyes as he was in the video of the Earth, the disdainful sneer he always wore was gone.
“Isn’t the view marvelous?” he said.
Tue, 15 Dec 2020, 01:56 -0700 (2020-12-15T08:56 GMT)
Buffalo Café, Colorado Springs
“To the stratosphere! Cheers!” shouted Ricky, feeling strange to be making such an odd toast, and tipped back his mug of India pale ale. Apparently, it was a local beer brewed in the back of the bar, and the piercing bitterness was like nothing else. Second Lieutenant Madu Abbot, who piloted the F-22 Raptor that would serve alongside Ricky as an observation aircraft in Operation Seed Pod, was at the counter with him taking a shot of tequila.
They had come to the Buffalo Café to celebrate their transfer to USNORTHCOM, and although it was the middle of the night the place was full of life.
“We’ll be seeing stars during the daytime,” said Ricky. “Isn’t that incredible?”
“You can see the same thing without going all the way to the stratosphere if the atmospheric conditions are right,” said Madu, with just as much cheek as she showed when sober, and took another shot. Ricky had been planning to drink her under the table, but that wasn’t looking likely at this point.
“I told you already! Quit getting so hung up on the details,” said Ricky. “Instead, let’s celebrate our transfer and the new record we’re going to set.”
The mission had been placed in the hands of Major Sylvester Fernandez, and USNORTHCOM was now fully aware of Ricky’s plan to try for a new altitude record. Ricky’s new superior was Colonel Daniel Waabboy, and when Ricky went to report his transfer to the colonel, the first thing Waabboy had said to him was, “Going to top seventy thousand feet, are you? Best of luck, Captain!”
Waabboy had also been informed that Ricky wasn’t the only one aiming to break an in-mission record: Madu would try for the same with the F-22 Raptor. Since this jet was no longer being procured, if she managed to rise into the stratosphere as planned, it would probably be a long while before anyone topped her. Nonetheless, while Madu listened to Waabboy’s advice and instructions, Ricky had watched as she shrugged her shoulders in annoyance.
“You can have the record all to yourself,” said Madu. “I’ll be sticking to my observations.”
“Show at least a bit of excitement,” said Ricky. “Your name is going to go down in history.”
The F-15 Eagle was in the process of being decommissioned and would never set a new record after this. Such military records would undoubtedly appear on the websites of fans of the Eagle and most likely on Wikipedia as well. This meant that the name of Captain Ricky McGillis would survive forever beside that of the twentieth century’s strongest fighter jet.
“So, Madu. Want to know the Eagle’s kill ratio? It’s one hundred to nothing,” said Ricky, unable to contain himself in his excitement. “How about the Raptor’s?”
“It shot down a number of Anjians in the Middle East,” she replied. “You didn’t hear about that?”
“You idiot! Don’t try to put drones on the same level. Anjians are just tools for killing farmers, right? That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about kills on fighter planes flown by pilots trying to kill one of us— Hey! What are you looking at?”
“You! Drunkard!” Madu shouted to someone in back of the counter. “Don’t change the channel!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Ricky.
“It’s game time,” said Madu. “They’ve made their move.”
Ricky followed Madu’s gaze to the television above the counter. On the screen appeared the white room that had been all over the media the past few days. Inside, two people were hovering just above the floor: the two Smarks. In the top right was a “Live” icon and in the bottom-right corner a video of what appeared to be a studio.
When Ricky read the caption at the bottom of the screen, he clenched his fists. “Rod from God? Mysterious Orbital Weapon in Range of Wyvern Orbital Hotel!” Damn terrorist nation! he thought. So that’s their plan! Ricky had never suspected that he would come to learn the Rod from God’s movements off base. On the program, the Smarks were about to be interviewed now that they were targets in orbit, and Ricky was determined not to miss a single moment of it.
“A report has come in from an amateur astronomer that a mysterious object is closing in on the orbital hotel where you two are staying,” said the voice of the interviewer. “Were you aware of the situation?”
“We had no idea,” said Ronnie with a shrug. “Can you please provide the details?”
As the station’s narration explained, an object thought to be a Rod from God was about to enter a rendezvous orbit with the orbital hotel. Ronnie and Judy nodded with apparent fascination as they listened, and Ricky found the way their bodies shook with the motion intriguing. At the same time, he deplored the fact that the report had come from amateurs. What had happened to NORAD?
“There’s also a rumor that the object approaching your hotel is an orbital weapon referred to as the Rod from God. What are your thoughts on the situation?”
Ronnie gave the stubble covering his cheeks a stroke with his hand and his handsome, round eyes twinkled like those of a mischievous child.
Isn’t he scared? wondered Ricky, gripping his stool and adjusting his position on it. Suddenly a nightmare came back to him. A warning sound rang continuously in the cockpit as he flew through the skies above Kosovo in 1999. The scope of the Tactical Electronic Warfare System displayed a radar source in a location so close it almost overlapped with his aircraft and warned him that a gun had sighted him. I’m going to be killed! Ricky had thought. It was the first time he had felt the intent to kill directed at him, and he was so afraid that he wet his pilot suit. The alarm turned out to be nothing more than a phantom produced by a glitch in the TEWS. But even assuming that a real MiG-29 had locked on to him, there was still a chance, however small, that he could have survived. The Smarks appearing on the television at that moment were in a far worse predicament. How could Ronnie be smiling like that?
“It’s not that I have nothing to say, but we’ve brought our PR person all the way from Earth, so I’d rather she spoke on our behalf. Over to you, Judy,” said Ronnie with a wink.
He pushed Judy, who was still attached to the floor or the wall or whatever it was, gently on the back, and she was sent floating off to the side of the screen by the recoil. They were in a place free from the reign of gravity. Outside the wall that Ronnie clung to, there was no atmosphere. If even a tiny hole opened up in it, their lives would likely be over. There was no way they could be unaware of this fact, and yet they took it all in stride. After Ronnie had pushed her, Judy had straightened up as she approached the camera, and Ricky thought he saw her lips tremble for a moment, but she maintained an expression of grim composure. He had heard that the two Smarks had lived together up until she was ten, but clearly a remarkable woman such as her could only be the daughter of Ronnie Smark.
The hubbub at the Buffalo Café had settled into quiet. All of the patrons were gathered around the bar waiting to hear what Judy had to say. With their glasses on the tables, they all faced the TV.
“We aren’t going to let unconfirmed reports disturb us,” said Judy. “Project Wyvern will continue to facilitate our orbital stay according to schedule. The day after tomorrow, we expect to rendezvous and dock with the ISS.”
“Good for you!” Over Judy’s subdued voice, the patrons at the bar began to call out their praise for her.
On the screen, Judy took a breath and was about to continue when Ronnie shouted, “Cut!” and crossed his arms into an X in the corner of the screen. “Judy, say it in your own words! Thi
s is a live broadcast, after all. This sort of thing just won’t get across unless you speak from the gut.”
Apparently this had not been part of their preplanned script because Judy went wide-eyed and said, “Quit joking around, Dad,” with a dismissive wave of her hand before turning back toward the camera. Her eyes were sparkling as the tension slipped from her face. As Ricky watched Ronnie nod to his daughter in approval, he suddenly realized something: Ronnie was trying to show the world watching them that they were just a father and daughter in orbit and that this was no big deal at all.
Judy spread her hands out in front of her chest and took another breath. No longer was she just someone handling PR but a human being standing there in the air before them with the trust of her father.
“Beyond this one foot of wall is the vacuum of space. If even the smallest hole were to open up, we would be in big trouble. So to be perfectly honest, having some unknown object approaching us is … scary. But let me tell you something.”
Silence fell on the bar again and only the voice of Judy could be heard as if she were right there with them. Slowly, Judy raised her index finger to point it at the camera.
“I don’t know who or what is behind this ridiculous scheme, but stop it. Let the world know who you are. Drop that metal piece of trash out of orbit immediately. If there’s an accident because of this, you’ll make all of humankind your enemy.”
Judy’s body began to glow from around her feet as a bright light shone into the room straight from her right side. Immediately it illuminated her from head to toe. The sun beaming in through the hotel window. Not even squinting in the glare, Judy reached her hand out toward the camera and said, “Did you really think such despicable intimidation would make us compromise our ambition? Did you really think we’d come down from orbit just like that? That we’d say ‘Space is no place for civilians, please forgive us for trying’ and just give up in tears? As if! I’ll never forgive you for spreading terror through space!”