by Peter Damon
Don Graves stopped to look at the long limbed woman in her tight spacesuit, then grunted. “Come along. We’re wasting time!” he told her, adjusting his grip on the laptop case as he made to get into the oversized SUV.
She smiled and prepared the SUV for the next task. “One more place to visit,” she warned the grumpy professor, and rose from the ship to begin heading north, north east.
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The app on Mickey’s SUV brought him into Hong Kong from the south, low along the South China Sea in order to miss the busy air-lanes that crossed the island, and onto land below the Shek Pik reservoir dam, its top wall lit by lights while below, the prison compound was enclosed within its own brilliant circle of lighting.
Tony Wood saw the humour in being dropped off beside the Shek Pik prison compound and happily strolled away to make himself known while behind him, Mickey rose and headed back the way he’d come, only turning the vehicle north once he had risen to 60,000 metres, well above the air-lanes and with more than enough time to evade any missiles that might be shot off in his direction.
A new app took him to his new location on the eastern coast of Russia, to a small holiday resort where Pavel Chaichenko had already packed and was waiting for him on the porch of Chalet 12, a bottle of vodka still in its wooden presentation box.
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Maddy’s app brought her down just to the west of Mexico, and she crossed land at its narrowest part to enter the Gulf of Mexico and head north, then east, all the while touching the wave crests, staying low, well aware of how closely the USA scrutinised the area.
Don was silent, for which she was thankful. Her eyes slid regularly from her monitors to check that her stealth mode was on. Without it, at her speed, the USA would think a cruise missile was heading towards them and take protective action, which would mean incredibly fast rockets suddenly firing at her from points across the full length of the gulf coast, some from the USA coastal batteries, and yet more from the navy who constantly patrolled those waters.
She had wanted to do this at night, but lost out to Mickey, whose route needed the extra benefit that darkness would bring. So she sat tensely in her seat, chewing on her bottom lip and watching as much as she could, waiting for an alarm to sound to tell her someone had seen her.
The 20 minute trip felt three times as long before the Keys, the islands off the southern tip of Florida, were suddenly in front of her, the SUV slowing to a near normal speed as her destination reared up out of the still waters in front of her.
Looe Key Reef Resort & Dive Centre was a well structured holiday resort making the best of limited space. Maddy tried pretending she was just another vehicle on the road as she drove along the narrow, well maintained private road down to number 56, drawing into the drive to dwarf a smart ‘A’ class Mercedes that was already parked there, and to wish she still had a horn she could press.
She didn’t need one. Glen Schroder appeared at the door with a large suitcase just as soon as she arrived, his daughter trailing after him with a slightly smaller case while his wife took up the rear, dark glasses perched in her hair as she turned to make sure the door to their cabin was locked before she hurried over to join them.
“I don’t believe this is actually working,” Glen said, anxiety making him breathless as he stowed their bags in the back, then helped his wife and daughter climb the side of the high, overly large vehicle.
“That makes two of us,” Maddy told him, directing a smile of encouragement at the lanky teenager whose nervous pallor showed through her All-American tan.
“For those of you who’ve never been in an inertia-less vehicle, you’re not going to feel anything,” she warned the two women, and confirmed an airtight seal in the SUV before she pressed the ‘home’ app.
The black SUV leapt from the ground with just the sound of the air swirling into the space it had vacated. Two dark-suited men from the Special Protection Group were still running towards the cabin as the women inside the vehicle stopped their screaming to notice that, indeed, they felt nothing. Only the views from the monitors were startling, two showing the land beneath them rapidly dwindling, while another showed the earth’s horizon, the line slowly beginning to curve as the SUV pushed at the limits of the sound barrier in its haste to leave American soil.
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“We’ve got everyone,” Allan remarked calmly, grinning when Michael sighed with relief and performed a little jig.
“You’ll bring them straight here?” he asked, hesitating in his rush to the door of the control-room.
“Of course,” Allan said, shaking his head at the thought that there may be somewhere else that he could send them.
“And have Oliver publish the names of our latest recruits. I’m hoping it will help stay the hands of those on the firing buttons. It’s one thing to kill hated foreigners, quite another to do so while some of their own are on board,” he pointed out, somewhat needlessly.
“Heather,” Michael said, keying his communications open and selecting her number with his voice as he moved down the corridor towards the front of the converted ferry. “Heather, we’ve got them all,” he told her.
“I know. Allan’s posted it on all screens,” she explained from within his ear, no doubt making her own way to the ferry’s docking-bay.
“How long?” Michael asked Samuel, meeting the man at the large doors to the docking-bay.
“Frankie will be first in,” Samuel told him, watching the monitor beside the door where he could take local control of the docking-bay area if need be. At that moment he was happy to just run an enquiry to see how the SUVs were lining up for entry, and notice that Allan had selected one of the larger docking modules, suggesting he would have all three of them dock before providing life support to them.
Heather appeared, to squeal as Michael lifted her up and twirled her around. Then Matt was there, and Leanne, Thomas and David, all crowding into the corridor to wait for their friends to re-join them.
“Did you have to keep it so secret?” Leanne asked.
“It could have come to nothing,” Michael shrugged. Sometimes his plays didn’t work out the way he thought they would, and people died, friends and family inevitably. He pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the monitor and the feel of Heather beside him, warm and comforting, a flat hand on her belly feeling their baby gently kick.
They felt the movement of the docking modules beneath their feet as they moved, re-arranging themselves to present the loaded bay to the doorway while warm air was delivered. Then the door opened, and Michael beamed, watching the professors climb down from the SUVs, welcoming each other with deep-felt embraces, Don wiping at his eyes while the other two laughed and clapped him on the back.
“You really have no idea how bad it was, stuck on that ruddy boat for nearly four weeks, surrounded by people who only wanted to talk about bloody animals!” he told the others.
Glen was there, helping his wife step down while their daughter gazed about her in complete awe, the glasses of her PET, her brand new Personal Entertainment Terminal, hung from around her neck. She was going to be terribly disappointed when she realised that Freedom One didn’t receive any signal that supported them, Michael thought.
“This is so cool!” Michael heard her say, eliciting a laugh from her father.
“Don’t go strolling off,” her mother told her sharply. “You don’t begin to know what’s dangerous and what isn’t,” she warned, she herself staying close to Glen’s side.
“Daddy, can I have a spacesuit like hers,” she asked her father, watching Maddy stroll over to Mickey and Frank, their body shapes on open display through the tight material of their spacesuits.
“Ask your mother,” came the bland response.
Then Michael was in the fray of welcomes, beaming happily and shaking hands, helping to guide the newcomers to the meeting room where the short induction film could be shown, before they were led to the surgery for a quick medical, and the ins
ertion or re-insertion of their chips. The rest would follow later on, when they had settled down a little.
December 1st.
Michael wiped his face with his hands and let out a deep breath. He turned the video screen in front of him off for the last time, after having spoken with innumerable people, each of whom thought themselves the one to talk to. They had assumed that Michael meant to pass them the keys to the ARC, thought that they would be the ones to announce to the world that the ARC had surrendered to them.
They had misjudged him, and upon realising the gravity of his message, had abruptly passed him to another, rather than be the one to take responsibility.
Not that his message was very long or complex.
“The moment I see one single plume of exhaust from an intercontinental missile, I release my own weapon and 25 square kilometres of your capital city will just disappear,” he vowed.
“You saw the test we did in space a few weeks ago,” he reminded them.
What new source of power did he have that enabled him to make a container vanish while in space? And in the weeks that had intervened, how much development had been done? If they judged him against the same measure they used upon themselves, then they could quickly conclude his threat was real.
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“What now?” Allan asked, stopping by to update Michael on the closure of the missile silo doors in both Russia and USA. There were still a lot of planes in the air and ships actively moving on the oceans, but compared to an hour previously, everything was calm.
“Still trying to drum up support for yours truly,” Michael smiled. He had averted a disaster of one kind, and created a disaster of another as the media tore into the ARC with a new vengeance; accusing them of repeatedly sermonising on earth’s wish to use the new technology for weaponry, and doing so themselves the moment a real threat presented itself.
“There are now suggestions that the UN can freeze our assets,” Oliver warned.
“What assets?” Allan laughed, watching one man taking a new vide-call while another worked out-of-view, putting up relevant details on one of the other monitors.
“They’re referring to the 85 billion dollars China is paying for the asteroid,” Michael pointed out, sipping his tea as he finished responding to one query via email.
“But you don’t seem very concerned,” Allan noted.
Michael shrugged. “I’m not. The Chinese deal is rather complicated, but they effectively act as our banker, only releasing funds as we need and ask for them,” Michael explained.”There is nothing there for Russia, or anyone else for that matter, to seize.”
“That sounds like a good deal. I wish I could have bought a house that way. But doesn’t that give them an 85 billion dollar reason to see us all die up here?” Allan asked.
“Only if you take a very short-term view of the relationship,” Michael agreed. “Russia would no doubt see it that way, and the USA might also be tempted to. China, however, have always looked at the longer term. Just look at some of the engineering projects they’ve undertaken, like moving a river over 1000 kilometres to provide another region with much needed water.
“They’re hoping to build a relationship with us that will give them far more than just one asteroid.”
“They want HYPORT,” Oliver agreed, finishing with his video-call.
“They want what HYPORT can give them,” Michael corrected him. “They want us to go off and bring back a dozen more asteroids, and they want us to sell to them and only them, so that they can continue to control the earth’s market for metals.”
“Is that what we’re going to do?” Allan asked.
“That would be only looking at the short term,” Michael smiled, and pressed the enter key to accept a new call.
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Matt sat at the control table, monitoring the asteroid as it continued to move steadily downward, the seven controlling units of HYPORT holding it against the progressively increasing pull from the earth’s gravitational field.
Leanne, at a further table in the control-room, kept a watchful eye on the status of the Russian and American missile silos hoping she wouldn’t be necessary, while next door Michael and Oliver continued to talk to people on earth via the video feeds.
Allan entered with a fresh cup of tea and glanced towards Leanne, then towards Matt. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“Steady,” Matt answered. “Orbit of 170 kilometres and reducing,” he murmured.
The Chinese had asked for the asteroid to be dropped on an old open-cast coal mine in the Shannxi province, in north east China, a mountainous region where coal mines predominated.
Dropping the asteroid onto an existing open-cast mine made a lot of sense. There would be a pre-existing skilled work force, and the infrastructure already in place for handling ore and distributing it. The disadvantages were all related to the delivery of the asteroid, and what would happen if it went wrong. Matt would have preferred a drop somewhere in Outer Mongolia, far away from any towns or villages.
The asteroid continued its slow descent, and yet quickened its pace as it prepared to enter the atmosphere. They wanted to burn off all the remaining ice so, by the time it landed, it was just rock. To do that would require entering the atmosphere with enough forward velocity to allow the friction of entry to boil off the remaining water.
As it grew nearer the planet, it began to shake, buffeted by the upper atmosphere. Matt watched it with a critical eye as the HYPORT ‘tugs’ maintained its position relative to earth. It was akin to pressing an object up against a polishing wheel, with the wheel’s energy capable of spinning the object away, if it were allowed to.
“Ablation has commenced,” Matt murmured, cameras from the accompanying SUVs showing the vapour as it was drawn away from the leading and lower edges of the asteroid.
The asteroid began to turn, rotating on all three planes as it presented all surfaces to the atmosphere in order to allow the vaporisation of the remaining water-ice by the friction of the air passing over it.
“Ablation completed,” Matt noted as the asteroid finished its rotation and began to slow.
“China coming up on the horizon,” Brendan noted from his SUV. The SUVs had remained with the asteroid, but at a higher orbit, waiting for ablation to finish and the forward speed of the asteroid to reduce before they too entered the thicker atmosphere of earth. The SUVs had no heat-shield and therefore had to wait, or be burnt up by entering the atmosphere too quickly.
“Just in time,” Matt muttered, now fully engrossed in the asteroid as its tugs, having reduced its forward speed, pushed it further into the earth’s atmosphere, taking it to below 100 kilometres in altitude.
“On the green,” he murmured, his eyes scanning the asteroid’s speed as it continued to descend, and move towards China.
“Everyone else remains quiet,” Leanne noted as she continued to monitor military installations in neighbouring countries. If Russia were out to destroy the asteroid, then this was the time to do it. Pulling it up and back out of the earth’s upper atmosphere as it dropped and decelerated would take an awful lot of energy. The large rock was now a sitting duck, poised above earth, a mouth-watering target for anyone who took sufficient umbrage to want to destroy it.
“We’re at 80 kilometres and now in Chinese airspace,” Matt informed everyone, relaxing a little. There were still 2,000 kilometres to travel to get to the mine site, but other countries were far less likely to attack now that it was within China’s borders. Any aggressive move now would not just be against the ARC, but against China too.
“Chinese confirm airspace is clear,” Allan told him from his table. That was good.
“Confirmed,” Brendon said, flying his SUV in front of the asteroid and using his radar to identify any object in the air that might cause them a problem.
“Everything looks green,” Mickey confirmed from his own SUV, following the asteroid downward from above and behind it.
Matt watched the nu
mbers as the asteroid continued to fly over China, turning slightly to angle further north than east, now it was in China’s own airspace and not prone to attack from others.
The meeting room was filling up, he noticed, as others came to watch the final steps of the asteroid’s flight. “We’re green,” he mentioned for their benefit, the forward speed of the asteroid continuing to reduce as it flew north, towards its new home.
“Final 1,000 kilometres,” Matt told anyone listening. The asteroid would descend more sharply now, curving downwards and slowing, loosing energy before it was placed in the broadened valley previous mining had created in the area of the drop.
“Chinese are saying it’s visible from the ground,” Allan told him as the journey continued.
He nodded. They were nearly there and only 20,000 metres high. “Forward motion slowing,” he mentioned as he monitored its deceleration, nodding as it fell to zero. “We’re now directly above the mine site,” he confirmed.
“Chinese officials confirm; you are green,” Allan told him.
There was a final app to press, and when pressed, a large red button appeared on the screen, an option to stop its descent should anything go wrong.
“Tugs 1 and 4 departing,” Allan noted.
Matt nodded. He’d seen them move away. Now, as the asteroid descended steadily towards its new home, it turned on its long axis and tugs 6 and 7 moved away from what had been the asteroid’s underside.
“We’re now below 1,000 metres,” Matt murmured.
Freedom One seemed to hold its collective breath as the asteroid moved downward, then slowed and stopped, held along its lower side at the edge of its new home.
“Final release coming up in five, for, three, two, one,” Matt intoned.
A tug pushed, toppling the asteroid forward and the remaining three slowed its descent as it fell into the broadened valley.
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The dropping of the asteroid caused a minor earthquake that was felt up to three kilometres away. It wasn’t serious enough to cause damage, and before the SUV and tugs had got back to Freedom One, the Chinese government had sent a congratulatory message on the success and accuracy of their drop.