by Peter Damon
“And will continue to remind you of it, unless you settle with them, and get preferred trade agreements with them,” Sir Arthur pressed.
“Trade agreements? What, you think they’re independent now?” the Prime Minister scoffed.
“That was part of the deal struck with the Australians, Prime Minister. Australia will deal with Freedom One as if it were a sovereign state. It will mean collaborative work on improving the spacemen’s mining expertise, as well as manufacture of space vehicles for outer-space ore extraction,” he explained.
“Are you sure?” Brian asked, sufficiently shocked to have to sit down.
“Sir, Australia has already stolen a march on us, and America is going to steal another march on us, and leave Britain high and dry. Their New Space Station isn’t an attempt to go it alone, it’s a pedestal from which they can show-case their own breed of spacemen and begin a process of amalgamation that will end with space being dominated by Americans once more.”
Brian was shaking his head. “We have an agreement,” he muttered, just as the pot of coffee arrived. He waved the night-man away to pour the coffee himself, offering a cup to Sir Arthur.
“Sir, we have good intelligence coming from all sectors of the American space industry, from NASA, from universities, from within Edwards Air Force Base itself, and we know precisely what their goals are, and it’s not teamwork with the British, French, Germans, or any other nation,” he told the Prime Minister coldly.
“The USA may or may not sit by and watch Russia destroy Freedom One. But their tactics are self-interested. You can guarantee that, if the Russians are successful in destroying the spaceship, then the USA will be the first at the site to gather whatever wreckage they can and store it in their new space station,” Sir Arthur stressed.
Brian considered, sipping the coffee and screwing his face up in distaste. “We can’t allow these spacemen to go independent,” he told the intelligence officer.
“We need them to be independent, and staffed by British citizens,” Sir Arthur stressed. “They are far too exposed to this type of threatening behaviour with anything less than full and equal status in the United Nations.”
“Then we need assurances,” Brian told him, still shaking his head.
Sir Arthur sighed and turned away. “Sir, please listen to what history has to tell us. The American War of Independence, in contrast to that of Canada and Australia, who to this day remain members of the Commonwealth and subjects of his Majesty, the King,” he pointed out.
“This is nothing like the War of Independence,” Brian snorted.
“Foreign powers helping a British enclave to break away from its parent?” Sir Arthur reminded him.
The Prime Minister considered the statement, a mix of worry and dislike on his features, the conflict quite clear in his facial expressions.
“Great decisions are seldom the easy ones, Prime Minister, but if we want to regain our position as the natural father to this new nation, then we need to show parental wrath at what Russia is attempting.”
Brian mulled on that and put his cup down. “I assume you can communicate with these people?” he asked with sullen acceptance of the situation.
“First call will be to Pimenov in Russia. We’ll then talk to Bennett,” Sir Arthur said, moving towards the telephone.
+++++++++++++
Michael signed the last of the papers and smiled with relief. Their first sale, and their second agreement with a significant presence in the United Nations. Not, of course, one of the five sitting members, but one sufficiently large enough to worry the remaining four hostile members. Perhaps it was enough to cause anxiety about their dominance. He hoped so.
Oliver rose to extend his hand and Michael shook it. Professor Lovell took the signed agreement and chuckled.
“The finances for this are going to be very interesting,” he admitted, clearly excited at the prospect.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked, suddenly worried that the deal might not be as good as he had first considered.
“Well, the Australian government is acting as a guarantor on the sale, which is between Freedom One and a consortium of Australian mining companies, hereafter to be referred to as Geo-A” Professor Lovell explained.
“Sounds quite straight forward to me,” Michael cautiously admitted.
“Ah yes, but you see, we own the controlling interest in most of those mining companies,” he chuckled. “Our right hand has just sold a capital item to our left hand, and made a profit in doing so,” he chuckled.
Michael grinned and shook his head. “Thank God we don’t have a tax department yet.”
+++++++++++++
The atmosphere in the meeting room in the basement of the Manege building in Moscow was heavy with unspoken threats, and two of the seven seats were empty, and that could only mean one thing. What was more worrying for the remaining four members of the committee, was that none of their informants had told them of this. It had either been conducted in complete secrecy, or their informants were not as reliable as they had thought, a worry all in itself.
“What news?” the president asked sharply.
There was a long moment of silence before one of the remaining four spoke. “None of us wish to bring you bad news, but that is the only news we have for you.”
“Incompetent, all of you!” the president cried, rising to his feet to stare at each of his committee in turn.
“How many missiles have you fired, and how many reached their target?” he asked.
One of the four coughed to clear his throat and the act caught the president’s attention. “You, Pimenov; what do you intend to do next, eh? What marvellous trick do you intend to recommend, that will recover our lost satellites, give our natural resources their value once again, and give us our jobs back?”
There was another soft cough, a series of them, one after another as the small and specially manufactured GRAU 6P28 emptied its cartridge of bespoke bullets into the chest of the standing man.
For a moment the president remained standing, a look of surprise on his face, before he toppled to the floor behind the meeting table.
Ruslan Pimenov put the gun on the table and let the others see its carbon manufacture, the only way he could have brought it to the meeting room past the building’s security.
“I suggest the president has died of a heart attack, brought on by the misery of the position he has placed our homeland in,” he told the others, and watched them all slowly nod. “I then suggest we contact the spacemen to request they consider us as purchasers of one of their remaining asteroids, in return for our wholehearted support at the United Nations.”
“Perhaps they would consider leasing us space on their satellites, when they return them to orbit,” one of the others nodded.
“We can provide many of the electrical parts they would need,” another of the four agreed, eager to show his approval for the new course of action.
“Perhaps provide a manufacturing base of new satellites for their use?” the last one added with a spark of hope, the dead president already forgotten.
December 1st.
Michael rushed through the control-room for a brief word with Oliver, leaving Heather to continue to talk to Sir Arthur and Stanley in a soft voice, all too conscious of Wez having just got off to sleep, and stopped as the view from the forward monitor arrested him.
The feed was from one of the SUVs that had just left the new space-station, and whose rear-facing camera was showing the scale of the building it was leaving. With the two modules linked together, it was now 100 metres deep, 50 metres tall and 400 long. It was over twice the size of the ARC, and because of its purpose-build, far more spacious inside.
“How’s it coming along?” he asked Allan.
Allan pointed to the coach approaching the cavernous loading bay in the building’s side. “That’s the Chinese fitters arriving, come to begin fitting the final details, furnishings, etc, that we couldn’t install beforehand,” he expl
ained.
“And the boxcar?” Michael asked, pointing towards it as it followed the coach towards the cavernous opening in the side of the new space station.
“New equipment for the Howards. More testing equipment I believe,” Allan remarked, his attention diverted by an alarm from an incoming asteroid, the third to begin entering into earth’s high, outer orbit.
“We’re green on our boards,” Matt called, turning off the alarm, a reminder that the asteroid’s course needed checking.
“Have a team go out and drill it for more core samples,” Allan called back. The Chinese had options on this and the next asteroid but wanted further details as to their composition before making their preference known.
The twins hurried in, and seeing the boxcar disappear into the new space station, hurried out again. Allan smiled, knowing Samuel and Maddy were about to be pressed into getting them a ride over to the new station so they could check out, install, and begin playing with their new piece of equipment. Maddy wouldn’t like the added task; she was busy trying to coordinate an induction program for the new batch of travellers who had been approved for spacemen training, and they had still to finish repairs on all the damaged SUVs. The vehicles were undergoing another upgrade, each receiving a new set of much more sturdy skids.
“A busy day,” Oliver reflected from his desk, busily typing, switching to sliding his fingers across his desktop to select images to go with his text. He formatted and structured them to his satisfaction before posting the article to the relevant media group.
“Exciting times,” Allan agreed, his eyes returning to the radar image of the area above the Russian mainland. He had software monitors ready to give alarms should anything rise above 40 kilometres, and yet he checked the screen every few minutes. The others were doing the same, he knew.
“Well, France has just given assurances that they back our move for independence,” Michael explained, smiling at the look of relief on Allan’s face. “My money was on Russia being the last. Goes to show how much I know, eh?” he asked the room in general.
“Yes, strange that; how quickly Russia changed its stance on everything” Allan murmured, preoccupied with the volume of movement in and around Freedom One.
“New broom, I wouldn’t wonder,” Michael suggested with a bland expression.
“By the way,” Allan said as Michael made to move off. “That thing needs a name,” he pointed out, nodding to the image of the large modular station, the camera now sufficiently distant to show all of it.
“Well, let’s make a competition of it,” Michael said, and turned towards Oliver. “Offer it up to the media; what should we call it? You can put my money on Earth Station One,” he laughed.
+++++++++++++
The observatory on the upper deck of Freedom One was in darkness, but for reflected light from the image of the earth on the facing wall. For those reluctant to go out into space, this was the nearest they could get to that experience; turning off gravity to float in the darkened room, looking at the real-time image of earth as Freedom One orbited the planet at a height of 600 kilometres.
“Are we safe now?” one of the twins asked of Michael as he floated alongside them.
“Safer now than a year ago,” he nodded, reaching out to alter Wendy-Claire’s slow rotation so she could see the image again. She squealed and waved her arms, a look of delight on her young face.
“What does that mean?” the other asked him.
“We’re now an independent country. We can have our own army, our own defences. We can make agreements with other countries and have the United Nations arbitrate disagreements,” he explained.
“And that helps us?” they asked.
Michael chuckled. “Not on its own,” he admitted. “But we have something no one else has; cheap access to outer-space. Now they can no longer go over us to get at it. They have to go through us, on our terms. They have to work with us or not at all,” he summarised.
The twins were silent and returned to watching the image of the earth and helping correct Wez’s spin.
“And we’re investing heavily in earth industry, in particular technology and research,” Michael confided. “We haven’t flexed that muscle yet, but when we do,” he murmured, his own voice falling quiet as he began to imagine the future.
Epilogue
Earth Station One was not the largest of the orbiting space stations. That distinction fell to Earth Station Three where the hotel and entertainment complex had provided it with an additional module. But it was the oldest operational station, having just completed 2 decades of service.
The arrival hall of Earth Station One was large, over 100 metres long and nearly as deep, tour operators hawking their wares from along the far wall as people came and went. Most visitors were only there for the few minutes it took to enter the hall from one shuttle, to stride across to exit on their way to another shuttle. Most wore normal earth attire. Some, still nervous of outer-space, wore safety-suits beneath their clothes, suits sold by various earth manufacturers with the promise that it would extend life support for long enough to be recovered alive. Quite a few lied. And a fair number of people wore full space-suits, a small proportion of those moving with a languid grace that only time spent working in outer-space would give to an individual.
Wendy-Claire knew most of these spacemen and waved or nodded towards them as they passed, smiling thinly, wishing she didn’t have to be there, but if she did, that no one would know why she was there.
Out of necessity she looked towards every young man who came into the hall via Gate Four. Her attention on each face woke her sub-retinal implant, feeding additional information to her directly from their RFIDs. Her brain perceived these to be coming from her eye and added the text so it appeared over-laid beside that of whoever she was watching. Unfortunately, the long glance was sometimes viewed as interest in them, so Wendy-Claire had to scowl deeply to stop them from wandering over to start up a conversation with her.
The man she wanted appeared and her scowl deepened. Not that Luke Barn was any more or less than described, just that the reality was everything she had hoped he’d not be.
The man was young, perhaps slightly younger than her, an oddity given his Doctorate degree in Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics from Oxford University. He was handsome too, annoyingly Wendy-Claire thought, the cowl of his spacesuit drawn back to show fair hair cut to his skull, a long nose and a thin mouth, his straight jaw giving it some weight. Bright and piercingly brown eyes gazed about him as he took in one of the new wonders of the world. It was clearly his first time on Earth Station One.
Her groan was not for his youth or his looks, but for the way he walked and held himself. For, although he wore a Prime suite, one of the better ones on the earth market, he wore and moved in it like a novice. He was going to be an embarrassment, Wendy-Claire just knew it, and she hurriedly glanced about her, worried that some of her close friends might be near enough to see her in his company.
“Hello Luke,” she said, striding over to shake his hand. “I’m Wendy-Claire, but my friends call me Wez,” she explained.
The boy looked down from his height, and stared open mouthed at her, his eyes fixed on her face.
“Miss Bennett. Wez, it’s really an honour,” he told her hurriedly, folding in on himself with all the awkwardness of someone unused to wearing just a spacesuit in the company of a pretty woman similarly clad. Spacesuits could be very awkward for a male in some circumstances.
“Come along,” she told him. “Mum and Dad are really sorry they couldn’t meet you themselves,” she told him, striding towards the service area of the space station, long slender legs moving to get her out of the public areas as quickly as possible.
“I really,,, I didn’t expect them to meet me,” he explained hurriedly, pulling his eyes up from her tightly rotating buttocks as he followed her through the teeming hall.
Wendy-Claire slowed as she approached the nearest service door. On a technical l
evel she knew she didn’t need to; that all the security checks it did, it could do even if she had been running towards it. On an intuitive level though, she slowed to give it plenty of time, in case it was busy with something of more importance than just checking on who she was, and what she carried.
“Here,” she told Luke, taking his arm so the door would sense him as something belonging to her and, as such, allow him to also enter. The door opened and she released his arm to stride forward again. The less time spent in the service area, the less chance of stumbling on a close acquaintance, someone who might share their meeting with her other close friends.
“I thought I was to take another shuttle,” Luke explained, catching up with Wendy-Claire to walk alongside her down a nondescript corridor. The ordinariness of it belittled the achievement of it residing in outer-space, a full 600 kilometres above earth.
He was finally in outer-space, and but for the super-fit young woman walking in front of him in a suit that could have been painted onto her nude body, everything seemed quite bland and ordinary. Not like in the past, he considered, remembering Frankie Hall and his exploits. He must have read Frank Hall’s biography at least a dozen times in his youth, dreaming of following the man one day and becoming a spaceman.
Luke remembered the action figures his parents had bought him as a child. Frankie and Mickey, and his friend had the Maddy figure. The hours spent playing with them, carrying them through the air and imagining it to be outer-space.
“The shuttles don’t go where we’re going,” Wendy-Claire explained, bringing him back to the present.
“Wow, are we going in an SUV?” he asked, thrilled with the thought of riding in one of the iconic vehicles. Perhaps he could take a picture of himself in it on his tablet and send it to his friends back in Oxford.
Wendy-Claire shook her head. “SUVs are too busy,” she explained. “It doesn’t matter how many of the things we make, they’re always busy,” she told him. She took his arm again to move through another security door, and strode down another corridor, the walls painted a lurid orange to warn the occupants that they were now within three doors of outer-space.