by T I WADE
The lower the height, the more of its lifespan was eroded away. The poor Navistar-P was not meant to be operating anymore, but it was, and he knew that the lower the altitude, the lower the life span the old test satellite had.
Navistar-P had only a year or two left in her and she wasn’t designed to sit at the optimal altitude; 22,300 miles above the planet. At exactly 22,300 miles above the equator, Carlos and every other satellite expert knew that the force of gravity was cancelled by the centrifugal force of the rotating universe. This is the ideal spot to park a geostationary satellite instead of orbital satellites like the old military GPS system used. Also there was less space junk to worry about. Unfortunately, the pictures of earth from Navistar-P at the higher altitude would be beautiful, but of absolutely no use to anybody.
Carlos was itching to get back to China and help get the Russian missile launched with the three addition satellites. He had spent two days over there with the best men from various NASA locations around the country who had survived the catastrophe. He located them in the several Air Force bases and after hours of pure mathematics and calculations, realized that with a little luck and a few changes they could have a 20 to 30 year simple GPS/communication system above the United States for satellite phone and defense purposes.
Since there was no electricity, the old Internet, television and other communication systems were all unnecessary. Also, he knew that by the time the power across the country came on again, a couple of decades in the future, his simple satellite system might have already expired; the modern junk satellites in space had a ten to thirty year lifespan.
Early the next morning, after a breakfast of fresh ham and eggs, and admiring the newly-caught wild rooster the men had rounded up in jeeps, and with a C-130 to ferry Carlos’ team, the three Mustangs headed towards California.
The Cube was surrounded by a mass of aircraft. The Onizuka Air Force Station was certainly a busy place. A couple of the 747s were on final approach, still moving electronics in from Harbin. Three 747s were being unloaded and the 747 transporter had arrived in from a flight to Alaska and was taking off for China, via Hawaii.
Three of the Z-10 helicopters were in a pattern for air protection, and an F-4 Phantom and a dozen more of the Chinese Z-10s were on the aprons and ready for action. An AC-130 gunship was in front of them as they were allocated landing numbers on final approach and the 747s slotted in behind them. Preston felt like it was the good old days with all this traffic going on.
Michael Roebels was happy to see their arrival. His daughter looked well and had seemed to have gotten over her crash landing down in Texas. He had been told of their imminent arrival and had gone out to meet them. He offered a grand tour which they eagerly accepted to see how the country’s new electronics were getting on.
“As you know we have the first nuclear power station up and running, although it was a small test station,” he began, walking into a separate warehouse from The Cube itself. “Here, we have 300 electrical engineers going through the daily cargo from Harbin, China and looking for parts for the grid. We have this base and twenty square miles of grid operational; that includes seven large hospital complexes in the surrounding area where any injured people from across the country are flown in for emergency operations. We are overstaffed with surgeons begging me daily to get electricity to more hospitals. These fine people are doing about 300 major surgeries daily, and the operating theatres are booked up for two weeks in advance, 24/7. Of course, when we get emergency injured in, as we did a couple of days ago from Medford, Oregon, they take preference and the wait list lengthens.”
“When are you going to get more electricity? Surely the small power station can handle more than you are using,” Preston asked.
“Yes, ten times more power, but it’s taking time for the parts to be modified to fit our existing system. I think we will have a second grid, about thirty square miles, operational in a few weeks, and that will add another four major hospitals with operating rooms and Intensive Care Units.”
“And the whole country?” Martie asked.
“From what we’ve been told by Mo Wang and a couple of my specialists in China who are looking through the massive stocks over there for the parts we need in, there could be enough to get the whole of the San Francisco area, as well as the whole of Washington, D.C. up and running before we have to produce our own. We have several hundred men looking at the electrical manufacturing machinery coming in from that helicopter factory in Harbin, and, of course, what we can scrape together with new parts over here, I believe we can start adding to the grid within twenty-four months.”
“Still, won’t that take decades?” Carlos asked. “At least my satellites don’t have to worry about Internet traffic for a while.”
“No, for a long time,” smiled Michael. “I doubt that Internet, Facebook, Twitter and any other forms of social media will ever work again, and by the time they do, our younger generations will have thought out a far better system. To answer your question, Carlos, now that the population has been compressed into a smaller land size, only a third of the whole country’s land area, it will take about a decade to power the mid-swath of land; and, as I said at an earlier meetings, two more decades to get the whole country up and running.”
“That means that cities like Houston, New York, and Chicago could be ruins by the time power is back on?” asked Preston.
“I think you could be right, Preston. The weather and lack of dry air because all of the millions of old air conditioners and winter heating systems are not working will cause rot, damp and mold to run riot. I cannot think of anything to prevent these problems. In some places it will be a couple of years before anybody is allowed back in. Disease is rampant in many cities and we have several aircraft, mostly old crop sprayers like yours, Preston, flying in chemicals to try to sterilize the areas, and I mean really powerful chemicals. No human illegally living in those areas will survive the disease and especially the bacteria-killing toxins the Air Force is spraying into those areas. I don’t believe they have any choice, as emergencies are rising with people now contracting plague and other deadly diseases. We have dozens of new quarantined areas where anybody who is believed to have a contagious and deadly disease is placed, and these places are mostly full. I was told at a meeting last week that there are dozens of deaths a day of these infected people across the country. Now that we had the attack in Medford, over a 100,000 more troops are being deployed to the northern boundaries of the new population areas to set up road blocks and with these roadblocks go more and more quarantine and food stations.”
They toured three more large warehouses full of people in white coats, and Michael explained what they were doing. Some were trying to get more modern electronic farming equipment working; one group was working on hundreds of electric cars which had been sourced from the San Francisco area; another group was only working on modern hospital equipment, including dental chairs. The largest group, over a thousand men and women in white coats, were unpacking the daily shipments coming in and sending the parts to the different areas, as well as loading dozens of trucks of all sorts to send necessary parts to the main and larger operation in Silicon Valley.
At last count we have 10,000 men and women wearing white coats, another 2,000 personnel in transportation, and we are growing by dozens a day. We have scouts in all the new container towns and the original towns looking for engineers to re-house them in this area; hence 1,000 builders in the suburbs are refurbishing all the living accommodations around here, getting thousands of broken and empty houses and apartments ready for occupancy with all the old luxuries, electricity, sewer, and running water. This is the first area of the United States of America to be under normal conditions again, and we will work outwards from here until the whole country is back to normal.”
“What about the people still living around here?” asked Martie.
“About 50 percent of the housing units are still occupied. Where the other people went, I don
’t know. There were a lot of malicious killings around here before we arrived, and I believe many others went to look for family and friends living somewhere else. We are fixing occupied houses as well and, if there is a spare bedroom or bed anywhere in any house, the deal is that we fix up the house for the owners as long as they give a roof to our incoming engineers. We have up to a dozen people living in the larger houses around here, and there is absolutely no crime.”
“And the electronic vehicles I see running around here?” Preston asked.
“We have 900 newly-refitted electric cars running, and they are becoming the new rush hour traffic around here. We are offering each person working for us food, shelter, and transportation. There is an electric vehicle recharge station at the entrance to the airbase where we have installed 500 electric connections for these vehicles, and our new team here at the base is completing a dozen vehicles a day. Yes, we are far behind the numbers needed, but we have 8,000 vehicles ready for the work to be done and should have one per worker by the end of the year. Here, at The Cube, we are at maximum employment capacity, and it is nearly that at Silicon Valley; and, with our second vehicle plant putting out three to four dozen vehicles a day, we will soon be able to give each of our workers a vehicle. We are achieving great strides in a short time, and what we do and succeed in here will be the base of operations to produce the billions of parts we need for the whole country.
“By the way, Carlos, you must thank Mo Wang for me. These parts are the real advancement of this new country; if he had not told us about the storage depots in northern China, we would be years behind where we are today.”
“How much is left over there?” Carlos asked.
“I spoke to Mo yesterday. He and a Colonel Rhu are doing a great job over there. I think he said we are about 90 percent done on the airport warehouse parts and only 10 percent done on the helicopter factory parts in a massive second storage warehouse; we want those parts and the factory’s machinery here. Only the 747 transporter can carry the larger machinery over here from China, and our aircraft is always getting emergency orders to go somewhere else. Yesterday, General Patterson and I discussed turning Beale Air Force Base into the third engineering unit and, then maybe Camp Pendleton and its large area into the fourth depot early next year.”
They travelled over to the Silicon Valley operations area in one of the electric cars. It was extremely weird for Preston, used to his old and noisy Ford truck, to travel in such a quiet vehicle. It was like a fancy golf cart and the car, a Japanese model with four adults aboard, headed down the empty roads at a good 60 miles an hour, Michael ignoring all the old 45 mile-an-hour speed signs.
“Here, we have 7,000 of the 10,000 white coats, I call them, working. This area is three times the size of the air base and has electricity, sewer, and running water. We don’t really need heat and air here, but to practice on all the needs the country faces, I have a dozen people working to get those systems up and running here. Other parts of the country will require those systems as necessities, not luxuries, and I have a building of twenty engineers designing the necessary parts for future use. First we must design the parts, and then we must design and configure the machines to build the parts.”
“So what about helping those corporate drug guys getting the whole banking infrastructure working?” asked Preston.
“Totally impossible,” replied Michael pulling silently into a parking lot. “It won’t happen in twenty years, even if we let everybody in this country die and only worked on what those twits wanted. It’s the electricity they need and that is what is going to take the time. We give all the electricity to them, and we won’t have any here. You understand the complexity of getting a nuclear plant under power, and powering a working grid, but they don’t. One doesn’t work without the other. You saw the dozens of guards and jeeps with machine guns. My two working facilities are the most heavily guarded places in this country. That is to stop these guys from trying to get in the way. We have dozens of Chinese ground-to-air missiles set up here; same with the airbase. The only dozen 80s-era working Abrams tanks the country owns are here, ready for action. The F-4 is stationed here and so are a dozen of the Chinese Z-10 attack helicopters to stop any interested parties. The rest are ready for transportation to other areas. I hear six more Z-10s are heading up to Elmendorf later today.”
“How many do we have in total?” asked Carlos.
“Seventeen in the first group, a dozen more from the nuclear base over there; three arrived from the Harbin factory last week, and the last two yesterday. Carlos you are good at math!”
The factories tour was a real eye-opener. All three had degrees in engineering and understood the mammoth task the Unites States placed on one man’s shoulders, Michael Roebels. And he was just breaking stride.
Martie was extremely proud of her father, and he was really enjoying himself, working at full speed.
They stayed overnight in a small cozy motel by the air base; there wasn’t time to visit Michael’s wine farm, and they left at dawn the next morning for the flight to Elmendorf. They didn’t have the range and refueled at McCord Air Force Base, just outside Tacoma.
* * *
Buck and Barbara were taking off in Lady Dandy a day late. The D-3 had an engine problem and needed the Elmendorf air forces techs to put her right. The problem had been minor, a dirty fuel line, and the two gunships had decided to wait for her. Their plan was to be around if she needed backup. The air force major didn’t want Lady Dandy to fly at all. If the enemy had fighter aircraft, the DC-3 was a sitting duck, but against modern fighter jets, the two AC-130 gunships would not fare much better.
Buck had to head towards Dillingham first. The long flight from Elmendorf to False Pass was close to a thousand miles and he would be short of fuel if there was no fuel at Cold Bay. He agreed to refuel, check on False Pass first, and then head back to Cold Bay, the overnight stop.
“There are supposed to be 60-odd people in False Pass, and the major hasn’t done his homework for the first time since we met him,” stated Barbara in the right seat. Buck switched the aircraft, now leveled out at 10,000 feet, to auto-pilot after taking off from Dillingham six hours earlier. “Runway is gravel and only 2,100 feet long, 600 feet shorter than Preston’s. We are going to just scrape in and out of there.”
“And Cold Bay?” asked Buck. They had done this a couple of dozen times in the last week. In and out of long tarred runways and shorter dirt ones. All the runways were too short for the gunships.
“A grand total of 108 people at last count,” Barbara replied sipping a cup of warm coffee. “Twenty-odd buildings in town, one or two large hangars at the runway, maybe an office building and I would assume a couple of single aircraft hangars dotted around. The runway is long enough for a 747 and tarred. Remember the guys told us that it was a backup for NASA or something?”
Buck nodded. “We might as well fly over Cold Bay on our outward leg and give it a once over before we return later today.”
It was still a three hour flight into False Pass from Dillingham and then another hour back to Cold Bay. Luckily the days were long. They would be in and out of radio contact with the two gunships once they spread out, but that was usual in this vast and rural area; most aircraft radios worked up to about a 500-mile distance.
Buck flew south, southwest to get over Cold Bay, slightly south on a direct line from Dillingham to his first port of call.
Slowly and still at a cold 10,000 feet they saw the piece of land the small town of Cold Bay stood on facing eastwards. At that altitude they could just see the town ten miles ahead of them. The runway was easily visible, a long line of black stretching east to west across the bleak ground far below them.
“Town looks normal,” suggested Buck looking out of his forward windshield at the town now a few miles ahead of them. He directed the nose of the aircraft slightly to the south so that Barbara on the right side could get a better view as they passed overhead and the autopilot did its job. �
�Airport looks much more built up than what you described earlier, Barb.”
“Looks like it,” she replied checking back through the notes handed to her at Elmendorf. “This report, dated about eighteen months ago, states two larger hangars and half a dozen smaller hangars, a small terminal/office building, a fuel point on the port side of the second much shorter runway and one windsock. That doesn’t look like the report to me down there. I’m counting nearly thirty long buildings, three extremely large hangars, several mid-sized hangars and the half dozen single aircraft hangars.”
Buck got out of the left seat to walk back and view the airport now below them and just under their starboard wing. “That’s about it, and I’m sure I saw an aircraft on the apron a couple of minutes ago, but it’s not there now. It seems that either the report is old and outdated, or just plain wrong, or Cold Bay had one of those television makeovers before the networks went down,” Barbara laughed. They would check it out on the way back.
False Pass was the opposite of what they had seen over Cold Bay. The landscape was empty of anything moving, the town looked desolate and lonely and after a couple of circles, Buck put her down on the short runway using every inch of gravel. There was cleared space at either end of the runway and he gauged that under full power he had more than enough room to get airborne again.
The afternoon was cloudless and even though the sun was still high in the sky, the wind was getting icy cold. Winter was certainly only a few weeks away.
There was nobody about and so they decided to walk the fifty yards or so into what would be the center of town.
It was desolate and empty, except for seagulls everywhere and the odd prowling dog or fox.
“Weird!” stated Buck. “It looks like everybody locked up shop and just left town. How could that be if the ferry didn’t come this far?”
“Maybe they were airlifted out of here and that’s why Cold Bay has more buildings than it was supposed to have?” Barbara surmised.