by Tom Grace
Tao rolled over, her left arm numb and tingling. Through the window, she saw that the sky outside was dark, but the glow of the ship’s lights obliterated all but the brightest stars. She detected only the faintest roll, but was unsure if it was the ship or her degraded sense of balance.
She flexed her arm as best she could, felt the blood coursing through it and the feeling return. Then she tilted her head up off the pillow and held it. The room didn’t spin around on her. She sighed and rolled back over.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice hoarse and dry.
The guard ignored her.
“I said excuse me.” This time loud enough to be heard over the movie’s pulsing soundtrack.
“What do you want?” the man answered.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“Why, you haven’t had anything to drink since yesterday?” the guard snapped, annoyed at the interruption.
“Just the same, nature is calling and I’d like to answer. Could you please untie me.”
“All right.” The guard picked a two-way radio off his belt. “Yeah, Bobby, it’s Jim down in the stateroom. She wants to use the can.”
“I’ll send somebody down,” a voice crackled over the radio in response.
“Thanks.”
A minute later, the guard let another man into the room. This one stood by the door with pistol in hand, watching as the guard approached the bed.
“Sit up,” he ordered.
Tao slid her legs over the edge of the bed and struggled upright.
“Whoa,” she said weakly.
“You gonna puke?”
“No, just a head rush.”
The guard bent on one knee and clipped the zip-ties around her ankles. The plastic straps left a deep groove in her skin.
“Stand up,” the guard demanded.
Tao rose and turned her back toward him. He grabbed her joined wrists and cut the ties. Her hands tingled with the increased blood flow.
“Do your business, then get back out here.”
Tao stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. The windowless room had been stripped of towel rods, toilet paper roll holders—anything that could easily be torn out and used as a weapon. She turned on the water faucet and sat down, massaging her wrists and ankles. Starting with her neck, she carefully stretched and rotated her limbs and back, warming the muscles.
The door rumbled as the guard pounded the meaty side of his fist against the flush surface.
“You ’bout done in there?” he demanded.
“Just finishing up.”
Tao ran her hands through the water, then turned off the faucet. Hands dripping, she opened the door.
“There are no towels in here.”
The guard rolled his eyes, grabbed a hand towel off the stack on the bureau, and handed it to her.
As she reached for the towel, Tao balled her hand into a fist and rammed the first two knuckles into the guard’s throat. Driving forward, she pressed her fist deep in the soft neck tissues, collapsing his airway.
Shocked at the sudden loss of breath, the guard staggered backward. Tao grabbed his crotch and pushed—he was going wherever she aimed him.
The man at the door had just raised his pistol when the bulk of Tao’s guard rammed into him. His arm twisted back against his chest, and the impact caused his weapon to discharge. Most of the pistol’s report was muffled by the bodies that surrounded it. The bullet caught the man under the chin, fragmenting into shards inside his skull.
Both men went wide-eyed, their stares glassy and distant. Slowly, their legs gave way and Tao let them slide to the floor. She collected pistols from both men and her guard’s two-way radio. Checking the window, she saw nothing but dark water reflecting the lights of the ship.
Unless shore is on the other side, Tao realized, I’m somewhere out at sea.
Tao slipped one of the pistols into her coat pocket and hid the other beneath a towel draped over her forearm. Beside the stateroom door, she noticed a sign depicting emergency egress from her room. From it, she learned that she was on one of the upper levels of a very large vessel called Aequatus, and that exit stairways were located at both ends of the passageway outside her door.
The radio was quiet and she heard no sound of approaching footsteps. Slowly, Tao opened the door. The wide passageway was empty, the lights dimmed for the night.
She stepped out and eased the door closed behind her. The electronic lock made a dull metallic click. Framed photographs mounted to the walls depicted the ship from a variety of angles—some in port and others at sea. Most were of the ship paired with a large floating platform and a rocket with the word SKYE in bold letters up the side. A few of the pictures were artists’ renderings of satellites in orbit—all with the same name on their outer skin.
She descended a few floors before encountering a couple of women in the stairwell. They were dressed in running shorts and T-shirts with towels draped around their necks and each glistened with a sheen of sweat from a vigorous workout. Tao made sure her pistol was still concealed before they turned at the landing.
“Excuse me,” Tao said. “I seem to be a bit lost.”
“Oh, where are you headed?” one of the women asked.
“I’m looking for a place where I can send a message.”
“E-mail room, level two. Go down another flight, then take a right. First time aboard?”
“Yes.” Tao smiled meekly.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve been out a half-dozen times now and didn’t really get my bearings until my third launch.”
“Thanks.”
Tao descended to level two and stepped out into the passageway. It was empty, but she heard voices down the way. Following the woman’s directions, she found the e-mail room. It was unoccupied. She went in and locked the door behind her.
The computer displayed a blank e-mail screen, ready to go. Her fingers flew as fast as she could form the words in her mind, tersely describing the sinking of the Sea Lion, Kilkenny’s murder, her abduction, and what she knew of her present situation.
The radio by her side squawked—the bodies of her guards had been discovered. Tao continued typing, racing to report as much as she could.
Orders were barked. Men were now combing the ship, searching for her. Some were moving to level two.
In mid-sentence, she hit SEND, then fled the room, locking the door behind her. As she descended the forward stair, she heard pounding footsteps on the treads above her.
“There she is,” a voice called—she’d been spotted from an upper landing.
Tao rushed out onto the main deck, the white superstructure towering over her. Just off Aequatus’s port side floated a man-made island illuminated in the harsh white glow of metal halide work lights. At the stern of the launch platform, a tall, slender rocket was slowly being raised to the vertical platform. A number of people were on the platform, watching the procedure.
She darted for the steel truss bridge that spanned the broad gap between the two vessels. The pair from the stairway were right behind her, one with a radio pressed against his face.
“She’s heading for the bridge,” the man reported.
Tao stepped onto the cantilevered truss and began moving across. The man who had interrogated her aboard Sea Lion stepped onto the far end and began walking toward her, his eyes fixed on her. He approached with both hands visible. As far as she could tell, he was unarmed. Tao stopped at midspan and removed the towel from her forearm, revealing the pistol.
“You can’t get off the ship,” Moug said. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“I know.”
“And shooting me won’t change that.”
“But it would make me feel so much better.”
Moug took a step closer. Tao raised the pistol to eye level, aiming at his head. She then pulled out the second pistol, which she pointed toward the men on the opposite side of the span. Moug stopped and motioned for the men from Aequatus to halt as well.
&n
bsp; Tao pointed the two weapons just long enough to see a glint of uncertainty in Moug’s eyes. Then she tossed them over the side and surrendered. Whatever sound the pistols made when they struck the water was lost in the din of activity aboard Argo.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
AUGUST 21
Upon her surrender, Tao offered no resistance and returned quietly to the stateroom where she’d been held. She’d done what she needed to; anything else would have been counterproductive. Her objective now was simply to stay alive.
The bodies of the two she’d killed were gone and a foul-smelling chemical agent had been applied to the stains on the carpet. Both Unger and Moug watched as she was bound once again and placed on the bed. Two guards were left to watch over her with orders that her restraints, now including a gag over her mouth, were not to be removed unless a weapon was trained on her. She was not to be fed or catered to, simply watched.
In the hours since her brief escape, Tao had done her best to sleep, conserving her strength and resting her mind. She heard a helicopter circle the ship, then approach to land. Thirty minutes later, she was taken by Moug, Unger and two guards from her room to a large suite atop the ship’s superstructure.
She was escorted through an elegant salon with commanding views off both sides of the ship into a private office. The room was painted in subtle grays and whites, sculpted more than equipped, with fixtures and furnishings that could only have been designed with this space in mind. It struck Tao as the kind of space where she would find a modern-day Captain Nemo: stylish, high-tech, and nautical.
In the black leather chair behind the desk sat a woman in her midto-late forties with a long mane of brown hair flecked with gray.
“I’m C. J. Skye. Please, have a seat.”
Tao remained standing. The two guards who accompanied her forced the issue, unceremoniously depositing her in the one chair positioned directly in front of Skye’s desk.
“I’d like to know why someone running a small venture capital firm would be interested in a collection of failed satellites,” Skye began. “The fact that your firm’s primary financial backer is the Central Intelligence Agency further spurs my curiosity. And your search for that old Russian space station has made this mystery quite irresistible, which is why I asked my associate to bring you here so we can talk. Unfortunately, I’m on a tight schedule right now and I don’t have the time to do this politely.”
Unger nodded and the two guards each took a side and held Tao down. He then rolled up her sleeve and wiped Tao’s arm with an alcohol swab. Tao tensed as he tightened a rubber tube just above her elbow and tapped the skin lightly to raise a vein. The guards held her arm steady.
Tao felt the needle slip beneath her skin. The prick was followed by a hot sensation, like liquid fire burning inside her arm. The warmth crept into her shoulder, her neck, and then blanketed her brain. She sagged in the chair, head lolling against the back. Unger checked her eyes; both were dilated. Her pulse was up—a combination of adrenaline and the narcotic.
“She’s ready,” Unger said.
Skye rose and moved around to the front of her desk, sitting back against the edge while looking down on Tao’s slackened form.
“Can you hear me?” Skye asked.
“Uhhh … huhh,” Tao answered softly.
“What are you looking for?”
“Weapon.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Sspace … lasser,” Tao hissed.
“Why do you think there’s a laser in space?”
“Liberty.”
“The space shuttle Liberty?”
“Uh huh.”
“But Liberty was hit by a meteoroid.”
“No,” Tao’s head lolled from side to side. “Lassser.”
“Why do you think Liberty was attacked by a laser?”
“Oculusss.”
Skye looked to Moug, who shrugged his shoulders. Tao’s answer meant nothing to him.
“What is Oculus?”
“Ssspy sssatellite. Hit by lassser. Liberty ssent … retrieve.”
“Liberty went after a ZetaComm satellite,” Skye protested. “Oculusss.”
“How do you know a laser hit Liberty?”
“Asstronaut … saw.”
Skye stared at the drugged woman. “The astronauts are dead.”
“One … still … alive.”
“Can’t be,” Moug said. Turning to Unger, “You sure that stuff is working?”
“It’s not like a lie detector,” Unger replied. “She can’t fake out the drugs.”
“Enough,” Skye said, silencing the two men. “Roxanne, is one of Liberty’s astronauts alive?
“Yesss.”
“Where is this astronaut now?”
“Ssstation.”
“The International Space Station?”
“Uh huh.”
Skye stood and backed away from Tao, her face paler than before.
“Take her back to her room. Now!”
The two guards scooped Tao out of the chair and quickly retreated from the office.
“There’s no way she could be lying?” Skye demanded.
“None,” Unger replied. “The drug strips away all inhibition, all initiative for that matter. In that state, all she could do was answer your questions.”
“How could an astronaut get from Liberty to the space station?” Moug raged. “It’s incredible!”
“Evidently not,” Skye countered. “And he saw enough to convince some powerful people in Washington to investigate. I thought something wasn’t right when ZetaComm announced they’d hired NASA to retrieve that satellite—it would’ve been more cost effective to launch a replacement. A new-generation spy satellite, on the other hand, is a billion-dollar investment.”
“What was all that about a spy satellite?” Moug asked.
“The government did exactly what we did—switched payloads.” Skye glowered at Moug. “And your people missed it. All this trouble was for nothing.”
“What are we going to do?” Moug asked. “This surviving astronaut poses a huge threat to us.”
“I’m well aware of what he represents, and I’ll deal with that problem just as soon as the new satellite is in orbit.”
“We still have Zeus-1,” Moug reminded her.
“Too little fuel left to attack something like the ISS—the crew could easily seal off any breached areas, and a survey of the damage would eliminate a natural collision as the cause. The measures we’ve taken to compartmentalize the Zeus project will keep any hard evidence out of the government’s hands. Without that, statements made by any of our employees are just hearsay that’s easily deflected.”
Skye’s tone grew icy. “To kill any case the government may try to launch against us, the ISS must be destroyed and its wreckage scattered so widely that the pieces can never be reassembled.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
USS VIRGINIA
“Sir, we got a signal on the ELF,” the executive officer reported.
“Bring her up to communications depth,” Johnston commanded.
“Communications depth, aye, sir.”
“Make five degrees up angle on the bow planes.”
“Five degrees up, aye,” the pilot confirmed.
Activated by the boat’s digital fly-by-wire controls, Virginia’s bow planes silently rotated, pointing the submarine on an upward path toward the surface. Soon, the column of water atop the vessel diminished to sixty feet.
“Level the bow planes,” the XO called out.
“Zero degrees on the bow planes,” the pilot replied.
“Message coming in, sir.”
Johnston leaned over the communication station. The short-burst transmission was received, decrypted, and displayed as scrolling lines of text in seconds.
“That it?” Johnston asked as he finished the text.
“Aye, sir.”
Johnston straightened up. “XO, take her back down to two hundred and continue on previous heading at
flank speed. I’m heading down to the forward torpedo room. You have the communication.”
The sixteen SEALs aboard Virginia seemed to be everywhere, from running checks on the lockout trunk to exercising in any available space to, in the words of the cook, going through the galley like a plague of locusts. Johnston found himself reminding those under his command that Virginia had been designed with these merry marauders in mind and it was their job to take the SEALs wherever ordered and to unleash them on any poor dumb sonsofbitches who had gone and riled old Uncle Sam.
In the torpedo room, Johnston found Kilkenny and the two SEAL lieutenants huddled around a flat-screen monitor reviewing schematic drawings of the launch platform.
“Officer on deck,” a SEAL announced on sighting Johnston.
“Carry on,” Johnston said quickly, stifling the hard-wired response to snap to attention at the sight of polished brass on a man’s shirt collar. “Kilkenny, you got a minute?”
“Sure, Cap’n.”
Kilkenny joined Johnston by the hatchway.
“We just got a message off the bird. Seems a friend of yours has sent an e-mail from a most unlikely place.”
“Kelsey?”
“No, Roxanne Tao. Message I got says she’s onboard Aequatus.”
Kilkenny shook his head and smiled.
“Good news, I take it?”
“The best.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
AEQUATUS
AUGUST 22
Aequatus was holding station three miles upwind from Argo. The unmanned launch platform was now being run remotely by her crew from a virtual control room aboard Aequatus that was identical to the real one.
From her suite atop the ship’s superstructure, Skye studied the projected orbit for the satellite poised atop the 4GR rocket. Little more than an hour after launch, the spacecraft would separate from the upper stage of the rocket and move into high Earth orbit. At that point, the satellite would link in with the rest of the Skye constellation and control would be transferred from the launch crew aboard Aequatus to the satellite operations group back in the States.
In the moments following that exchange, the satellite would run through a post-insertion diagnostic and report a series of cascading failures in the transponder and other electronics. Unable to maintain stable communications with the satellite, and with other systems reporting failure, Skye engineers would make the painful decision to deorbit the useless craft and at least salvage the position in space for a replacement. As the spacecraft dipped into perigee, it would disappear from view of ground-based tracking stations and be presumed destroyed.