Orbital Cloud

  Akari look toward Chris and said, “Does this count as proof that the tethercraft exists?”

  “Almost there.”

  Kazumi tried to get up, but Daryl stopped him. “Kazumi,” he said. “This is still just unofficial data. We need some observations made using government radars from at least one more location. Don’t you think, Chris?”

  Chris gave a wry smile and said, “To the United States, this team’s conclusions are still just one opinion among many about what’s going on up there. However, we’ve taken the first step toward credibility with Akari’s analysis. So I’d like us to keep operating under the assumption that the tethercraft and the orbital cloud exist. Does that sound good, Daryl?”

  “Yes. I’ll make a request to Colonel Lintz to verify the existence of these Clouds using NORAD’s air defense radar. It would be great if the CIA gave him a little nudge too.”

  “Okay. Will do.”

  Kazumi sunk into his chair and watched the Clouds float around the globe. It was inevitable, he thought, that the team would prove the existence of the tethercraft. Clearly those three Clouds were being operated for some distinct purpose.

  “Akari, can you throw up some numbers? Like altitude and so on … Whatever you have.” Sticking out his index finger, Kazumi imagined the movements of the Clouds, entering into his visualization ritual.

  Cloud streak number one. Stretching in an east-westerly direction, it was kicking along the second stage of SAFIR 3, thought to be the Rod from God, to bring it into rendezvous with the Wyvern Orbital Hotel. The two Smarks and their associates probably felt like a weapon was at their throats. There was no guarantee that this diversion to hide the presence of the Clouds would not serve some other purpose as well.

  Cloud streak number two. Raising its altitude as it headed in a north-southerly direction, it was trying to enter a sun-synchronous orbit passing vertically across the Earth. Countless Earth-observation satellites followed such orbits. Half-closing his eyes, Kazumi picked out several candidates from the TLEs in his memory and overlaid his visualization on the projected Earth and predicted path of the Clouds. If this streak continued to change its path as expected, it would rendezvous with a satellite Kazumi knew all too well.

  The third orbit was vaguely familiar. Was it the ISS? No. An object he’d mentioned recently on Meteor News. Enveloped by the Clouds he imagined. That’s it, he—

  “… umi? Kazumi?”

  Hearing someone calling him, Kazumi opened his eyes. Chris was in front of him with her hands on his desk. “The two remaining Clouds,” she said. “Have you figured out what they’re headed for?”

  Kazumi was about to reflexively preface his answer with “This could be wrong, but …” but stopped himself. If he held himself to such high standards of proof, they’d have to investigate thousands of orbital objects, which would make it impossible to keep up with the movements of the Clouds. Kazumi took a deep breath and opened his mouth. “Japan’s Information Gathering Satellites and the Wyvern’s return vehicle.”

  Bruce raised an eyebrow, smiled at Kazumi, and said, “Whoa. How thrilling. I’d better warn the ISS while we’re—”

  “Quiet a second,” said Chris, interrupting Bruce’s wisecracking. “Daryl, verification.”

  Daryl’s hands went at his keyboard in a flurry of movement. Akari and Kazumi peered at the screen of his console.

  “What’s the matter, y’all?” said Bruce in a silly tone of voice, apparently confused by the sudden shift in the room. “Orbital calculations can’t be that easy. Chris, remember when we asked those NASA guys where the Rod from God was going, and they kept us waiting for hours? There’s no way his guess is going to hit the mark just like—”

  Saying nothing, Daryl pulled up the globe on the screen. The predicted orbit of the Wyvern’s return craft overlapped with the orbit of the third Cloud.

  “Come on …” muttered Bruce, half-standing with his butt hovering above his seat. “How’d you guess that?”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Kazumi. “I just know.”

  “Kazumi. There’s no need to apologize,” said Chris, taking out her BlackBerry and dialing a number.

  Chaharshanbe, 26 Azar 1399, 03:53 +0330 (2020-12-16T00:23 GMT)

  Imam Khomeini International Airport, Tehran

  “I’m going to pick up our bags. Just hold on a second.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Sekiguchi rushed straight for the blue counter. Kurosaki could make neither heads nor tails of its bilingual Arabic and Persian sign, but Sekiguchi seemed to have deciphered it immediately.

  Watching him arrive at the counter and begin to gesticulate energetically as he spoke to the attendant, Kurosaki thought how well the man blended in with the environment. Sekiguchi could speak Persian. Very well, apparently. The woman at the counter casually brushed off Sekiguchi’s jokes. All in black, with a hijab covering her hair, the sight of her keenly reminded Kurosaki of the fact that he had arrived in a foreign country. He hadn’t seen anyone like her at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul that they had departed just three hours ago. Across the counter, Sekiguchi accepted luggage wrapped in white plastic.

  Kurosaki noticed that an error message had appeared on all the liquid crystal displays placed here and there throughout the lounge. Though he couldn’t read the words, he could tell what kind of error it was by the shape of the dialogue box: a server could not be found notification. Apparently, Internet connections to foreign countries had been cut off, and Kurosaki supposed it had had an impact on domestic service as well. Sekiguchi had told him that foreigners could use the Internet as usual on their smartphones, but Kurosaki had lost all desire to even check his emails when he’d heard they were being censored.

  “So this is Tehran.” Kurosaki cast his gaze around and looked up at the ceiling supported by thin trusses curving gently like wings in profile, a design seen in airports around the world. Such massive spaces lit up with white LED lights said nothing of religion or country. Remembering the cramped hallways of Narita Airport, Kurosaki smiled bitterly. There was something so definitively Japanese about it.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Sekiguchi.

  “What the heck is that?”

  On the cart Sekiguchi was pushing was a pile of small duralumin cases so high it looked ready to topple. Scraps of the plastic sheet covering the cases dangled off the edges of the cart.

  “These are Iridiums. I had twenty-one of them delivered.”

  “Satellite phones?”

  “Yes. I also had them send data-transmission modules to connect to the Internet,” Sekiguchi said, patting the cases with the flat of his hand. He explained that he would hand out Iridiums to students seeking unimpeded Internet access and give the campus network an uncensored connection to the Internet. Before leaving Japan, he’d arranged to have them sent from Singapore.

  “… We’re not meeting Jahanshah?”

  “That’s the plan, but we might not be able to get into the campus.”

  “What’s this?”

  “There’s a demonstration happening at the institute tomorrow.”

  Sekiguchi explained that his friend at the NSC had told him about it. The demonstration in support of azadi interanet, Internet freedom, was being organized mainly by students of the Tehran Institute of Technology.

  “So you knew about the demonstration already?”

  “Yes. Which is exactly why I decided to come to Tehran. Oh, the receipt—” Sekiguchi peeled a strip of paper with a red mark printed on it from the plastic sheet and tucked it in his pocket.

  “Make sure not to lose it if you’re going to keep it in there.”

  “Don’t lump me in with you,” said Sekiguchi, stroking his smooth, stubble-free chin with a laugh. Kurosaki was tongue-tied, having rummaged through his pockets numerous times in search of his ticket on the way here from Narita. He felt utterly outmatc
hed by Sekiguchi, not just in terms of his language ability and initiative, but also with little things like the way he organized his belongings.

  “Let’s go,” said Sekiguchi. “I’ve hired a car with a driver. Once we’ve had a nap, we’re heading off to the institute.”

  Tue, 15 Dec 2020, 16:53 -0800 (2020-12-16T00:53 GMT)

  Pike Place Market, Seattle

  Sliding off the upper crust of the French bread, Chance smelled shellfish and potatoes as steam rose from inside the bread bowl. Though the clam chowder was technically Boston-style, it was a popular dish in Seattle as well.

  Chance had brought Shiraishi here to Pike Street to eat out. Though nothing fancy, this soup was made with plenty of fresh ingredients and would give them more energy than the meals Chance had always brought to the warehouse—just “dead calories,” as Shiraishi called them.

  Watching snow blow against the window, she felt relieved that they had managed to get out of the warehouse. The weather report called for the snowfall to get heavier. Chance wondered if they would move from the warehouse control room to their hideout in the city during a blizzard. Disappearing under cover of snow would be perfect.

  “A hit,” said Shiraishi, extending his smartphone upside down to Chance.

  “What?”

  “I took out Information Gathering Satellite 2 of group 1. The recording’s right here.” Shiraishi pointed to the screen where a video on repeat showed a cylindrical satellite approaching rapidly before the screen blacked out. Chance guessed that this was the moment of impact recorded by a tether.

  “That’s another hard hit. You don’t think there will be debris?”

  “Don’t worry. When the tether struck, it was moving at five hundred meters per second, about equivalent to a full swing from a metal bat. Now the satellite is just scrap metal.”

  The impact might have torn off a solar panel, but it had not added to the satellite’s orbital velocity, so it would likely continue following the same orbit for some time, Shiraishi explained with a laugh. Now that the satellite had suddenly become inoperative, the team that managed it would likely be in a panic. Even if they were lucky enough to receive its telemetric data when its antenna pointed toward the base station, all they would record was senseless spinning. According to Shiraishi, the remaining six Information Gathering Satellites would be rendered useless as soon as that very day. Since the Japanese government had no backups, this would leave it blind.

  “Our second objective, hitting the Wyvern’s return craft, will be complete in two hours. This one I’m planning to strike at high velocity to open up a hole.”

  “You’re sure no one will suspect the North in either case?”

  “There’s no way the Japanese government will publicly announce that there was an ‘accident’ with their military satellites. As long as the Supreme Leader doesn’t let anything slip, no one will ever guess what caused it. That girl will probably blog about the Wyvern’s return craft, but that won’t cast any light on why it happened. All nine targets will become orbital debris, though, so we should probably change our method in future.”

  On the screen, a notification popped up that read takanori hashimoto: nagatacho.

  “The head of the Satellite Intelligence Center has been summoned to Nagatacho,” said Shiraishi, flicking the notification to the side to make it disappear. “Poor guy’s been working his butt off since bright and early.”

  Shiraishi’s expression showed none of his usual disdain. Chance wondered if he was feeling nostalgic about JAXA. She knew that his first post after entering JAXA was head of the Satellite Intelligence Center. Afterwards he’d been demoted to busywork for fouling up his duties, and in the end he’d decided to leave Japan.

  Seeing the notification from the MDM system pop up, Chance remembered one of her concerns. Kazumi and the JAXA staff holed up in the Nippon Grand Hotel. “What’s happening in Iidabashi?” she asked.

  “Can’t you remember anything? JAXA is in Ochanomizu, not Iidabashi. I bet they’re having a fit. Their pride and joy, a bunch of spy satellites that eat up a third of their budget, are all dead!”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Chance, pointing to his smartphone. “I’m talking about the man under JAXA’s protection, Kazumi Kimura. He hasn’t gone anywhere yet? It’s been two whole days since they went into hiding at the Nippon Grand.”

  Shiraishi was about to say something, but then he took a breath, took back his smartphone, and moved his fingers quickly over the screen.

  “… They haven’t moved at all.”

  “You mean they’re still hunkered down there?”

  Glowering at the screen, Shiraishi pushed back his glasses as he raised his head. Then he looked down at the smartphone again and said in a pinched voice, “We’ve been had. That bastard Sekiguchi fooled us. His phone kept transmitting messages, so I thought he was contacting people, but the screen hasn’t been unlocked once this whole time.”

  What was more, Shiraishi explained, none of the apps on Kurosaki’s phone had been activated, the battery level hadn’t changed, and there were no signs that he had checked his email or social media. Sekiguchi’s smartphone had been equipped with a utility that made it appear to be constantly in use.

  “They left their MDM-controlled devices behind at the Nippon Grand. So most likely … they’re not there.”

  “Are you serious? You don’t know where they went?”

  “I’ll track them down.”

  “So you don’t know, then.”

  Shiraishi pounded the table with the hand holding the smartphone. “I told you! I’m going to track them down!” he shouted.

  Chance felt regret well up in her chest. Entrusting intelligence to Shiraishi while his hands were already full operating the Clouds had been a mistake.

  “I’ll sic the Cyber Front on them. Give me all your accounts that can break into JAXA. I’m going to dig up information about Sekiguchi and Kurosaki.”

  “No. I’ll take care of that. I’m the one who kept these accounts going, after all.”

  “Give them to me! I’m going to turn JAXA upside down and ransack it from top to bottom!” Chance snapped. She held out her hand toward him with the palm facing up.

  With Shiraishi’s accounts, she would use the globally dispersed Sleeping Gun computers to infiltrate JAXA’s servers and dredge up all of its data. In the process, the JAXA IT system would take devastating damage. There was a good chance that everything would crash, from their websites to their office system. However incompetent JAXA might be, they would know immediately that Shiraishi’s accounts left on the servers, whether out of kindness or negligence, had been used for the attack.

  “There’s no time. Give them to me now!”

  With forty-eight hours, they could be anywhere on earth by now. Looking at her own palm as she held it in front of her, she felt the flesh of her ring finger and pinky that had been sanded off when she was tortured twitching along with the resinous cover around them. This was an indelible mark of her failure.

  “Shiraishi. There’s no place for you at JAXA anymore. You threw all that away.” Chance was surprised at how cold her own voice sounded and immediately regretted it. Still, she couldn’t think of any other way to deal with her irritation. “You’ll never be on center stage again. You know that. So please give over the JAXA accounts.”

  Shiraishi pushed his tilted glasses back up into place and let out a deep sigh that disturbed the steam rising from his soup-filled bread.

  Chance squeezed her outstretched hand until the resin covers rubbed together and made a creaking sound.

  The steam settled, and Shiraishi raised his head. “Do whatever you like.”

  Tue, 15 Dec 2020, 21:29 -0800 (2020-12-16T05:29 GMT)

  Western Days Hotel

  Daryl ran the meeting, which was interrupted by several breaks and meals. Bruce had ordered a pizza, claimi
ng it was Seattle’s best, and Kazumi watched as it cooled and congealed before his eyes.

  On the whiteboard was a diagram of a space tether. Illustrated there were the two terminating apparatuses, the cable that joined them, and the moving ballast in the middle that Dr. Jahanshah (Bruce had looked into it and confirmed that he had indeed earned his PhD) had conceived. It had been a simple diagram when Daryl had first sketched it that evening, but now, after three hours, it was scrawled all over with notes.

  “Can I ask something?” said Bruce, pointing at the whiteboard. Throughout the meeting, he had assumed the role of questioner. “How long can the Clouds remain in orbit?”

  “Unlike objects in LEO, those space tethers are not going to fall down naturally due to air resistance,” said Daryl. “Even one of Dr. Jahanshah’s rather primitive models can maintain its orbit with a thrust of 0.2 newtons per minute.”

  Without missing a beat, Bruce moved on to his next question. “Where does it get its energy from?”

  “Inside a magnetic field—in other words, while in orbit, it can produce energy with its tether alone, which means it can remain up there indefinitely.”

  “I see.”

  “A perpetual motion machine?” chimed in Chris.

  “It relies on the magnetic field of the Earth,” said Daryl. “Also, the battery will eventually wear out.”

  “I hope we’re not talking about atomic batteries or something here,” said Bruce. “Those last for decades.”

  “Isn’t the question of whether they could have gathered forty thousand tethers’ worth of atomic fuels like plutonium or polonium a matter for the CIA?”

  Kazumi grunted in admiration at Daryl’s reply. Even if I knew what atomic batteries were made of, Kazumi thought, there’s no way I’d have the nerve to make such a deft retort.

  “That’s enough about batteries,” said Chris. “So, to summarize, these things won’t fall out of orbit for years. Daryl, please add ‘Cannot be left in orbit’ to our list of actions.”