by T I WADE
“So we need to keep an eye out for the Chinese. They are pretty close, currently 150 miles below us and their current orbit doesn’t get within a 100 miles of us. However, I noticed something yesterday,” advised Captain Pete. “They are orbiting higher and higher very slowly. I got this very weird Spock-like feeling that the Klingons might attack the ISS. Their orbits are changing slightly every day. NASA certainly pissed them off enough to take revenge, and maybe enough to invade international ‘soil’ in space and take over the ISS as payment for what they lost.”
“Is the ISS of any value to us in any way?” Ryan asked.
“Yes, most certainly,” answered Martha. “Currently Petra Bloem, Professor Petra Bloem, is aboard. She is acknowledged as Germany’s top expert educated in astrophysics and astrobiology; better than anybody here. I know her well, so does Suzi, and I would love to work with her. Also she has spent over ten years studying future human habitation of Mars, Titan and Callisto, planets we might visit.”
“Also Doctor Nancy Martin, Director of Micro-neurosurgery at John Hopkins,” Suzi added. “She was launched up there a few months ago, and is conducting surgical experiments. I’m sure the medical unit would benefit from her knowledge.”
“Commander Jack Philips, one of only two males aboard, is one of the best space pilots in the world. He would sure be a loss to the world of space travel if he was just left there,” added Captain Pete. “I served with him at NASA years go. And Cosmonaut Popov, the other male astronaut is one of the best of theirs,” he continued, looking at Igor and Boris, who both nodded.
“Who are the other two newbies aboard?”
“Two Chinese female professors of biology,” continued Captain Pete.
As far as the ISS was concerned, Captain Pete was the most knowledgeable crewmember. He was one of the first to visit the ship years earlier while he was still employed by NASA.
“They are the first Chinese ever invited aboard. As you know, the Chinese showed interest in joining the ISS group of countries in 2010. In 2013 they were allowed to have their first two visitors, who arrived with Dr. Nancy Martin on the most recent crew-turnover launch out of Plesetsk. The offer of joining the ISS program was sent by NASA days before Bill Withers left. Hal McNealy stupidly rescinded the offer on his second day in office, a day after the two professors had left for space. Stupid move!”
“One of the two ladies is a world-renown expert in the field of space biology,” added Suzi. “I attended a couple of her lectures in Europe years ago and I know her well. The other, I never heard of before she left for space.”
“Maybe that’s why the Chinese space station will soon gain enough altitude to take over the ISS,” added Captain Pete. “I think that any craft in space, especially the ISS with all its modern research equipment, is worth salvaging; and since NASA is the major shareholder and has signed the ship’s, or at least the crew’s, death warrant, then the first one there, gets the right of salvage.” Everybody nodded.
“Maybe that’s why the Chinese are launching so fast?” added Jonesy. “Surely, they will think it retaliation for what they lost, and they won’t be happy with us if we get there first.”
“Remember, the Chinese astronauts are new to space,” added Captain Pete. “The ISS is currently at an altitude they haven’t trained for. When we supplied them, VIN was not allowed to enter, but gave the commander a message from me that they should climb to a 400-mile altitude, which has the least debris. When they did so, they inadvertently flew the station higher than the Chinese astronauts, were probably trained for, and that put them out of their safety zone trying to dock with it.
“Did you meet the crew, Mr. Noble?” Ryan asked.
“Negative, we were not allowed into the ISS. It was rather weird. When we got into radio range, both astronauts didn’t really want to talk to us, except to say thank you for the supplies.”
“We were not invited in. All we did was float the supplies through the docking port,” added Suzi. “We tried to chat while we were in range, they seemed friendly enough. I think something is going on in the ISS.”
“OK, let’s go and get them. We can always transfer the two Chinese ladies to their space station with one of our shuttles if the Chinese wish,” Ryan decided. “And we can dock the ISS to Ivan, or vice versa. America One is going to start looking really ugly with all these hangers on. Captain Pete, set course for the ISS. The Chinese space invaders are beginning to worry me. Do we have any actual weapons aboard to repel boarders? I never thought of needing any.”
Everybody looked around, waiting for someone else to go first. “Crew, we need to be truthful up here. My main reasoning for my dream was to get away from lies, greed, and shallow Earth thinking. Now you guys are bringing these diseases on board. Let’s make a deal right here and now: while in space it is pure teamwork, no lies, no hidden agendas, and no bullshit.”
Slowly everybody nodded and slowly the weapons tally was listed.
“I brought up my old Marine Glock. I know it was a stupid idea, as any bullet holes could be the end of us, but it was only a keepsake,” VIN volunteered.
“How many rounds?” asked Ryan.
“Twenty rounds; it was all I had at the time,” VIN responded.
“Pepper spray, no girl should be without it,” Maggie contributed.
“Me, too,” stated Suzi.
“Nothing,” said Jonesy. He did speak up for his friend who had headed off to the bathroom. “Although, Allen Saunders told me that he brought one pistol he dearly loved, an old revolver; a Magnum long barrel 44. He has six rounds in the chambers, no more.”
“Igor, Fritz and Boris all looked guilty, and once Captain Pete stated that he was clean, as were Martha and the rest, it was their turn. Everybody noticed their serious faces and all eyes turned to them, as the coffee arrived.
“Fritz and I, when we met a few years ago, found out that we both had the same interest in laser technology,” began Boris sheepishly. Fritz showed me my first Taser gun. He had purchased one of the latest models just before he arrived at the airfield. I had never seen one close up before. We took it apart and over months played with it. This was one of the models that didn’t shoot out a dart, but sent an electrical current into the body, shocking the muscles.”
“Don’t tell me, you guys have a Picatinny Arsenal Electrolaser from New Jersey?” Ryan asked.
“What the hell is an Electrolaser?” both VIN and Jonesy asked.
“No,” replied Boris shocked at what Ryan actually knew.
“Unfortunately we have something better, far better than theirs, but our ideas came from Russian friends sneaking peeks at what Picatinney were developing for the military,” added Igor. “I got involved once Boris and Fritz told me about their new hobby. The Taser system fascinated me, and since I was working on our laser project at the time, it gave me ideas. It was just a fun extra project and we only really got this new weapon of ours to work a few weeks before the second laser was launched.”
Warily and with everyone else looking on in wonderment, Igor continued. “Our design works the same as the latest Picatinny designs, except our laser beam spreads 360 degrees around the weapon and will shock everybody in an enclosed room within about 30 feet of the weapon going off, like a mini-neutron blast.”
“Including the weapon holder?” asked VIN, shocked.
“No, he is grounded to the actual weapon like a grounding wire, in a way that he and the weapon are one, and the weapon doesn’t affect the holder, just any other wet dense animal matter around it.”
So it is an EMP device?” asked Ryan.
“Sort of more mini-neutron device, it doesn’t affect metal, or any electrical objects, only soft wet body matter,” added Boris getting excited. “It is quite amazing; it doesn’t kill, not even at full power. It just paralyzes muscles like a Taser, and forces every creature, including birds—and funny enough, flies—to fall to the ground.”
“How long does the shock last?” asked Ryan unprepared to
learn what his team had achieved behind his back.
“On half power, 10 seconds, on full power about 20 seconds before the victim can begin to move and, my own ‘Plasma Gun’ I call it, is the same as Igor’s and Fritz’s.”
“So you have three of these so-called Plasma Guns, Igor?” VIN interrupted.
“Yes, we tested them just before we left. We tested them again on each other in one of the empty accommodation cylinders once we all got up here. They hurt like hell and your muscles just go limp. You can’t talk, breathe, open your mouth, even stand. Your whole body just drops as if you’ve been shot by a normal Taser, except that everybody in the room drops, even any people standing behind, below or even above you. The Plasma Guns do not work in space. Fritz suited up and tried it out there on half power, and he went totally limp in his space suit, a sort of reverse shock. He was aiming it at Boris, who was ten feet away, but the target didn’t react, and Fritz didn’t want to try it again.”
Everyone was silent. Ryan didn’t know what to say, but how could he ever stop his scientists from inventing new things or modifying old ones? It was in their blood. Now Ryan’s team consisted of not only the best and most talented, but also the most dangerous group of people in the world.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” was the only question Ryan could summon.
“You were in a foul mood towards the end, and we didn’t want you to get even angrier. You might have tried it out on Bishop or Mortimer, or even the president. We knew that the time would come to tell you, and that time is now.”
“Since I’m head of security up here, I’m more interested in the weapon itself,” interjected VIN. “How long does it remain powered up? Does it need to be charged?”
“Yes,” replied Boris, glad to have the story finally out. “It can be fired once only on one of the two power settings. It is a thirsty weapon, and needs eight hours to recharge after that. Think of it as an electric car’s lithium batteries being used up in a millisecond all at once. Our total Plasma Gun arsenal of three weapons can each fire once every eight hours. Not a very good defense model.”
“But excellent as an attack weapon,” suggested VIN. “Enter a room and everybody drops, helpless. The Seals would have fallen in love with it immediately. I could have saved lives back in Iraq with it. Can all weapons be fired together? What would happen if there are three guys holding three weapons in a warehouse, and they all fire at the same time?”
“We don’t know, but since each of the men is sort of grounded to a weapon, I believe that they might feel the pulse from another weapon, but it won’t send them to the ground. Maybe it will feel like a shock from an electric fence or something. We hadn’t got that far in testing yet.”
“Does the shock go through walls?” VIN asked.
“Sheet rock and wood, yes, but we did one test through a hangar wall, when we were testing the laser on the runway, and it seems that any sealed, metal enclosed room contains the shock; a metal table or a computer bank won’t. The pulse goes around any corners up to about 30 feet.”
“So if there is one door open in a metal room, like the round one coming into the Bridge, then people in range in the corridor will be affected?”
“Yes,” replied Boris. “Even if there is a small opening, the blast directs itself through it. The room must be totally secure to prevent the pulse from going further.”
“Well, we can now arm ourselves and defend against boarders,” Ryan commented. “I suppose it’s too late to do any more tests. Hell, guys, we are here, we have something to defend ourselves with and, I suppose, everything is fair in love and war. Maybe I was not thinking about defense once we got up here. Who, apart from extraterrestrials would be in a position to attack us a million miles from Earth?” Igor and Boris were relieved that their secret was now out.
“It could help us if there is a hostage situation aboard the ISS,” suggested Captain Pete, dialing in new directional changes on his computer console.
“I was just thinking of that. Any more surprises?” Ryan asked. There were none.
It was an interesting meeting. Jonesy, VIN and Boris were to prepare to fly over to the ISS in SB-III within twelve hours. All three would be armed with the new weapons.
He hadn’t yet set foot in the accommodations cylinder. Ryan was beginning to understand that in space, it didn’t matter in which direction they stood, it depended on where the magnets were, until the rotation began. This new way of life was mind blowing, just as it had been to each one of the crew trying to get used to this new life in space.
America One had been designed so that the Bridge cylinder was in front and bonded just in front of the upper roof corner of Cube One. When the space station rotated, the Bridge was separate and remained stationary. Opposite of a radar device turning above a ship, in this design the radar would be the part that was still, and the ship would turn around the radar. The door between the Bridge and the outer corridor could only open when they were exactly aligned, once every 30 seconds.
The round door swished open into a second long cylinder with a corridor heading towards the rear of the ship behind the tube elevator in the middle. There were three elevators exiting up the cylinders in three directions: the second set of three exited out of Cube Four and the third set out of Cube Seven. All the elevators began in the middle of the cubes they were built into.
It was a simple and easy design to get about the ship as more than one elevator could be used in any direction at the same time by just walking to the next set.
It was time for Ryan to see his and Kathy’s accommodations. He and Kathy laughed through the elevator trick on their way to the accommodations cylinder. Theirs was the first “door in the floor” out of the elevator. There was an aluminum railing next to the door to help the occupants step onto a spiral staircase when the door slid open. There were three railings leading to three apartments in this cylinder. The 40-foot cylinder corridor had a closed door at the other end. He was actually surprised to find his apartment so spacious.
“We have the Owner’s State Rooms, twice as spacious as the other family apartments,” Kathy explained. “I suppose you designed all this?” she asked, walking down the spiral staircase to the first apartment level.
“Actually,” replied Ryan, “I didn’t take any real interest in the final accommodation designs; I got too busy in company survival mode, and let Captain Pete, Vitaliy, Fritz Warner, Suzi, and their teams complete the corridor-level projects. This is all new to me, and exciting.”
“We each have a chip implanted in our right forefinger; the doc will insert yours tomorrow. Kathy placed her thumb over a small screen next to the staircase, which like any hotel room, turned green and the door slid shut. He had seen her do the same on the wall above the outer door.
Ryan followed her, and she verbally ordered the door to open and then told it to close from the first level below.
“As you know, this apartment has two levels,” continued Kathy. This upper level, like the inside of a large RV, is our day-to-day living area which includes your office, through that door.” She pointed toward the front of the ship. “Office door, open,” she ordered, and the internal door slid open on her command.
Inside Ryan could see that it was much like his larger office in Hangar One, and all his knick-knacks from that office had been moved into it. Even the picture of his beloved Audi, was on the wall behind the chair.
“Gravity is 35 percent of Earth’s in our apartment only, thanks to some magnetic batteries they placed under the floor,” Kathy informed him. “It sort of holds everything in place, and there are absolutely no vibrations up here, but things do move around and float slightly, so don’t think that somebody has gone through your stuff. Captain Pete said that once we begin to rotate, the gravity up here will be much like Earth. Until then we need the magnetic shoes.”
His office was perfect and he wondered if he would actually spend any time in it.
Across the hallway there was an open-plan mini-kitchen
, an eating area, a separate seating area, a separate pressurized toilet, and a full bathroom. A large flat screen television was on one wall, and Kathy ordered it to turn on. Within seconds, a television personality in Los Angeles was predicting the day’s weather.
“As we pass over Earth, we pick up other stations. Sometimes it has German, sometimes British, and I’ve seen the weather in several other languages,” Kathy told him. “I even watched a French movie the other night.”
The room wasn’t large, but the design optimized every inch of space. Kathy held his hand down the continuing spiral staircase to the lower level and there, below the living area, were two bedrooms. The ceiling of this level was low, only five feet high, an area to sleep only. The master bedroom took up most of the room. It had a standard height queen-sized bed, side tables, lamps and even a small low cosmetic table for Kathy.
“Its basic, but I’ve lived in here, sleeping upside-down for a whole month now. It is no larger than what we could expect in the air force, but there is so much else to do on board ship. This whole ship reminds me of a cruise ship, and you want to spend about the same limited amount of time you would in your cruise ship’s cabin.”
“What is below, or above the office?” asked Ryan forgetting what he had planned so many months earlier.
“One of the six escape supply pods,” Kathy reminded him.
“Oh! That’s right,” replied Ryan. “Stores bolted to the other side of this outer wall, to be picked up by the shuttles if ever we are marooned and need long term supplies.”
“Are they already full of supplies?” Kathy asked.
“Long term supplies yes, but fresh supplies will be transferred from the cubes once every few months and put into freezer storage. Each of the supply pods has a docking port which can only be entered from one of the craft outside. I wouldn’t have bothered designing them if I had known then that we would have all these European and Russian pods attached to us.”
“How many supplies do they hold?” Kathy asked.
“We decided to stock them with enough supplies to last for a journey from Saturn, our furthest destination, to home, which would take two years using our three shuttles and three Astermine craft.