“Sending a message is my guess. This is why it pays to know your adversary,” Poole growled. “First rule of space combat is whoever can take the first shot wins. And they don’t care who’s in the way.”
28
“I appreciate your confidence, but I’m just a midlevel nobody,” the senior lieutenant tried to explain. “The provost officer might politely listen to my theories, but in the end he’s going to do what he wants.”
Roberta sat calmly in the government-issue metal chair in front of the intelligence officer’s government-issue metal desk, an Air Force hand-me-down like so much else of the Group HQ’s offices. It was one more thing that made her grateful to work in the control center. “This is why Ops doesn’t trust intel, Mike. If they took that attitude, spacecraft would get lost. People could get killed.”
“Tell me about it.” The young officer grew tired of pacing and sat behind his desk, instead drumming his fingers in frustration. “When are you going to figure out squadron- and group-level intel isn’t that exciting, Roboto? It’s not like they’re out running ops in the field, deciphering secret messages and banging hot enemy agents. It’s one way. You take the stuff that gets pushed down to us from the Wing and Pentagon and filter it for the unit COs. We don’t generate intel, we interpret it.”
“And the base provost doesn’t have any illuminating thoughts on our new guest over in the hospital?”
“He’s keeping them close if they do. Not that he’d tell us, even though the guy’s in our house. Compartmentalization,” he explained.
“Somebody’s got to be interested in him because the whole ‘medical observation’ excuse is pretty thin,” Roberta said. “If he’s not already losing hair and skin from radiation poisoning, then he doesn’t have it.”
“Agreed,” he said. “Poole’s crew pushed to keep him in isolation but that’s only going to hold up for so long. What’s your angle?”
“You know about the op we’re running in GEO, right?”
“The one where you lost the satellite and that Stardust spacecraft?”
“Somebody lost it,” she said angrily, “but it wasn’t us. We were on station, right where we were told to be. So how do two vehicles that big just disappear without us noticing?”
“Probably a gap in the radar fence,” he groused. “It’s great for anything that crosses its field of view, which is just about everything below eighty degrees inclination. Objects in GEO aren’t moving relative to one another enough for a collision risk.”
“Which is fine, until a GEO bird does something unexpected. Don’t you find it odd that after everything that happened up there, they disappeared not long after we brought the only survivor home?”
“Lots of weird stuff happening up in geosynch these days,” he agreed. “Seems like another satellite goes dark every day. Everything’s going tits-up at once.”
“Maybe their warranties all ran out,” Roberta said, “or something else is going on. Those birds have high fault tolerances, multiple redundancies, and they’re tested end-to-end several times over. They. Don’t. Break. Not at this rate.” She sucked on her bottom lip, suddenly hesitant to go further. “I don't believe in that many coincidences. Not after that Free Space Manifesto bullshit hit the networks. And I think this Lesko guy has something to do with it.” It sounded ridiculous now that she said it. She was beginning to understand how hard it might be to share such theories with the brass.
The lieutenant’s eyes darted back and forth as he considered his next words. “It gets better,” he said, and pushed a tablet across the desk to her. “This just came across the industry news feed, hasn’t even hit our message boards yet. Two helium-3 shipments didn’t make their South Pacific drop zones.”
Roberta took the tablet and skimmed the story. “Those things are like clockwork,” she said. “Both launched from the Aristarchus catapult three days ago by TranSolar Mineral & Gas.” Her brow wrinkled. “Isn’t that owned by . . .”
“Max and Jasmine Jiang,” he finished for her. “They’re having a bad week.”
* * *
With reception still limited, the Jiangs didn’t learn of it until several hours later with the daily data packet of news from Earth. Marshall wasn’t surprised they were upset, though their reactions were still not what he expected.
Max’s agitation grew as he thought through the problem. “This doesn’t strike me as a simple equipment malfunction,” he explained. “There are multiple fail-safes built into the catapult system. It’s completely automated and runs a full diagnostic and calibration routine before every launch.”
“It’s timed with the Moon’s orbital period, right?” Marshall asked. “So you only launch a few shipments a month?”
“Yes, timed so the pods all enter east of American Samoa. We have recovery barges rotating into the drop zone every month.”
“You’ve never had a malfunction?”
“With the entry pods? Certainly. Early on, we had a number of problems with heat shields cracking from the launch acceleration. We still have the occasional parachute failure. But the catapult?” He shook his head emphatically. “Never. We can’t risk having it miss and accidentally bombard Hawaii. It either works perfectly or not at all.” He stared at the news story, thinking through the possibilities. “According to this, the catapult was within tolerance. I need to speak with our team in Samoa.”
Marshall was apologetic. “I understand, sir, but our bandwidth is limited right now. We only have a few windows each day for nonoperational traffic.”
“You may find the information useful, too,” Jiang said, handing the tablet back to Marshall. “Those delivery pods all have transponder beacons, so we’d have known if it was a simple parachute failure. Likewise if they failed during entry interface. No, the shipments just disappeared somewhere between Aristarchus crater and Earth.”
Something had to affect their trajectory, then. And the delivery pods didn’t have any kind of independent maneuvering ability—once launched from the Moon, they followed an unflinching trajectory to their landing zone in the South Pacific. “They had to be diverted somehow,” Marshall thought aloud. “How would that happen? Who would do that?”
“Who else in the world is experimenting with helium-3 fusion?” Jiang asked. “I believe you’ll find it’s a short list.”
Marshall’s eyes narrowed. “It’s just us. The Chinese haven’t been able to make it work, far as I know. Neither have the Europeans. The Russians can’t afford it.”
Jiang nodded slowly. “I’m no conspiracist, Mr. Hunter, but I’m also no Pollyanna. Today, helium-3 is valuable for experimentation. We mine it because we believe it will be a game changer someday. If I’m right, it could upset the entire world’s energy industry.”
“You’re suggesting someone wants to prevent you from doing that?”
“If I sound paranoid,” Jiang allowed, “recall we just survived two weeks inside of a cave we clawed out of an asteroid after our spacecraft exploded for no apparent reason. I’m entitled to sound paranoid.”
“I’m not suggesting you are,” Marshall said, backtracking. “But there are so many ways for machinery to fail unexpectedly out here. You’re suggesting some unknown, outside actor interfered with your delivery pods.”
“Perhaps more than that,” Jiang said ominously. “Some previously unknown terrorist group is taking credit for damaging both our ships and claiming jurisdiction over solar system resources. There’s entirely too much coincidence. Do you believe they’re unrelated?”
“No one does,” he admitted. “The question is who’s financing it. One way or another, we’ll find out.”
“If that takes long enough, it will have become a moot question.” Jiang pointed at RQ39 in the distance. “Asteroids like that are pots of gold in the sky just waiting to be exploited. They’re brimming with rare-earth minerals, not to mention water ice. If we could find a way to put one in close reach, it would be like opening up a trillion-dollar mine overnight. Nobody’s had t
hose kinds of resources before.”
“Of all the billionaires in the world,” Marshall said, “you’ve been one of the few to see it that way. How many others do you think are coming around?”
Jiang’s eyes darkened, as if confronting a threat. “Billionaires are nothing—imagine what you could do with a trillion. You could move entire markets just by adjusting your investment portfolio. Cripple whole industries with the right choice of words in a news broadcast.”
“You could control entire countries by financing their debt,” Marshall said.
Jiang nodded. “Or just buy the small ones outright.”
“Economics is simply war by other means.” Simon Poole sighed as he rubbed at his eyes, wiping out the sleep that beckoned him. He’d hardly left his place in the control module and couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the inside of his own quarters for anything more than a change of clothes and a quick nap. He was going to have do something to change that equation soon, he realized, especially with this latest insight from the Jiangs relayed via Ensign Marshall Hunter. “If your end goal is to dominate, there’s lots more ways to do it these days than by overwhelming force.”
“I think I follow you, sir,” Marshall said. “That’s what I can’t figure out yet—is it all about money, or just for the sake of creating chaos? Because making other people’s assets disappear doesn’t do anything but hurt them.”
“Sowing chaos among your adversaries can be a benefit all its own,” Poole said. “Throw ’em off their game, get inside their decision loop—pick your cliché. Get them thinking about anything except what you’re really up to.”
“So all you need to do sometimes is just hurt the other guy?”
“Sometimes that’s all you can do. Slow them down. They’re not going to stop TranSolar from dominating the space-resource market; that ship sailed a long time ago. They’re just the latest in a rash of vehicles going screwy. Have you seen the daily message boards on what’s happening in GEO?”
Marshall recognized this was something of a test as to how well he was keeping up with the daily intel traffic from Fleet Ops. “Lots of comsats going dark, sir, and they can’t all be attributed to last month’s CME. And apparently there’s now a hole in space where that Stardust we evac’ed used to be.”
Poole continued to press him. “Do you think these events could be related?”
“It’s a big sky,” Marshall said. “But that they’re all happening within days of each other? Hard to see that as coincidence, sir.”
“There’s a fine line between connecting the dots and joining the Tin Foil Hat Club,” Poole said. “So to answer your question: I think it’s about sowing chaos, and I don’t think it’s aimed specifically at the Jiangs. They just happened to be in the line of fire. Now the question becomes, who benefits from this?”
“I don’t see how it benefits anyone. Why disrupt GEO?” Marshall wondered. “Why steal helium-3 shipments if you can’t resell them?”
“Cislunar space was becoming the next great economic zone, and it just turned into the Wild West,” Poole said, and made a sweeping gesture. “Nobody is going to do business there if they can’t be assured their assets won’t get swiped. And we—the US Marshals—just got taken out of the picture.”
Marshall’s eyes widened. “You think we were led into an ambush, sir?”
“Targets of opportunity at least,” Poole said. “There’s too many coincidences piling up. This is not the Bermuda Triangle of space. But tell me—who benefits from us not keeping space open?”
Marshall followed that line of thought and didn’t like where it took him. Is this how wars started—when the people who could prevent it were barely able to discern what was unfolding around them? All he wanted to do was come up here and fly spacecraft, not have a front-row seat to the opening act of a global conflagration . . .
“You mentioned getting inside their decision loop, sir. Throwing something unexpected at them.”
“I’m listening.”
Marshall hesitated, but then it was the only card they could play right now. “We test the waters: ask the Peng Fei for the food and technical assistance we need to bring our ship home. How they respond could tell us a lot.”
“I like the way you think,” Poole said with a nod. “Do it.”
The hushed atmosphere of Peng Fei’s control module abruptly ended with the blare of an unexpected alert message. Annoyed with having his concentration broken, Liu turned to Zhou at the flight engineer’s station. “What is that alarm?”
The lieutenant reached over for the communications panel and muted the alarm. Of the six pack of digital radio dials in front of him, one was blinking steadily in amber. “Incoming transmission, sir. Unencrypted, on the universal emergency frequency.”
That explained the alarm, Liu thought to himself. He made a mental note to have Zhou change its tone in the future. “Identifier?”
Zhou turned to him, eyes wide. “It’s the Americans, sir. The Borman.”
Liu arched an eyebrow. “How is your English, Lieutenant?”
Zhou waved his hand with an uncertain back-and-forth. “My academy grades were superior, sir. But I have not had the opportunity to exercise it in practice.”
“Then there is no time like the present,” Liu said, nodding at the blinking radio screen. “We are bound by international treaty to respond to any emergency call we may receive.” His overtly formal tone was belied by the sardonic glint in his eyes. He gestured for Zhou to remove his headset. “Put it on speaker.”
“As you wish, sir,” Zhou said. He switched over to the still-blinking emergency channel and reached for a microphone. He spoke haltingly, keeping eye contact with his commander. “Borman, this is Peng Fei. We acknowledge your transmission. Over.”
Still two days out, the light delay was a few seconds. The open frequency hissed and popped in the background before being replaced with a sharp crackle. “Good to hear you, Peng Fei. We understand you are inbound to our position, and we sure do appreciate the help. Be nice to have some company out here.”
“Keeping it light,” as the Americans liked to say, Liu thought. Nobody in their position should sound that damned happy. He motioned for Zhou to hand him the microphone as the rest of the command crew watched. “This is Colonel Liu Wang Shu. With whom am I speaking?”
Another handful of seconds, another crackle, and a relaxed drawl emerged from the static. “This is Captain Simon Poole. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel Liu.”
So he understood their naming conventions, at least. A surprising number of Westerners remained ignorant of that. How many times had he been called “Colonel Shu” by some overbearing American stooge? Should he play that game with them?
“Likewise, Captain Simon,” he said, intentionally flubbing it. “What is your status? Over.”
“We’ve seen better days to be honest, Colonel. We lost most of our comm suite with that drop-tank explosion. That’s why we’re stuck on the S-band. We’re looking at a long trip back to Earth, longer than we made plans for. My crew was mighty happy to hear there’s help on the way. Over.”
“It is our pleasure to assist,” Liu said coolly.
“Your offer to provide rations and other consumables is much appreciated, Colonel. The straight Hohmann orbit back to Earth will be a long trip but we should be able to manage it with your help.”
Liu clicked the mic to acknowledge. “Stand by, Borman.” He then left the frequency silent, turning the microphone over in his hand as he thought. Simon Poole had been an astronaut, but more importantly he’d been a nuclear-missile submarine commander before that. Which meant he was, as the Americans would say, “cagey.” What would his motive be for reaching out to them now? Would being marooned this far from Earth make a man go against his nature? Did it mess with his psyche to such a degree that he would abandon good tactical sense? Or had their strategic plan succeeded, lulling even their most formidable adversaries into complacency? We were all one big, happy, spa
cefaring world now. The universe was more immense than any ocean on Earth, and we were all just as vulnerable. Or at least that was the image they’d worked to craft.
No, he decided. Poole was not the captain of a pleasure cruise. “Clever. He’s probing us,” Lie announced to the command crew. “This is why it is important to study your adversary, including his language. Simon Poole is from California, yet he is adopting an exaggerated ‘country boy’ accent. I suspect he wants us to believe he is relaxed. Unsuspecting.” He eyed each of his officers. “We must never assume that.”
As each nodded his understanding, Major Wu spoke for them. “What is our answer, Colonel?”
“Think he bought it?”
“Hell no, sir,” Marshall said.
The chronometer ticked well past the time their signal would’ve taken to return. That meant Liu was thinking about it. Poole tapped his thumb on the microphone as he waited for a reply.
Liu’s voice finally returned. “Borman, we believe there is a misunderstanding of our mission. We have been instructed to offer assistance by taking you and your crew aboard to provide a safe and swift return to Earth. We are not equipped to transfer any consumables. Over.”
Poole eyed Marshall. “Note how they didn’t say anything about our passengers? I don’t think that was an oversight.” He thought about his response and thumbed the mic. “This is Borman Actual,” he said, reverting to terse military vernacular. It was time to lay out at least some of his cards, just to see how the other guy reacted. “Be advised, we have two evacuees from the US survey vessel Prospector aboard who require ongoing medical attention. Over.” A bit of an exaggeration, but their reaction would tell him a lot.
There was a shorter pause before Liu came back. “We can arrange for appropriate medical attention pending our assessment of their condition. They will enjoy a standard of care commensurate with their status as Chinese nationals.”
Frontier Page 30