9
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
Cheyenne Mountain, CO
“Let’s back up, General,” Hammond said as he glared at Kruger and Quinn. “Your people knew the rest of our ship was up there, and you’re only telling us this now?”
“Mr. Hammond, your escorts had orders to hold that information close. There are extremely sensitive security issues at play…”
“Which we’re reminded of every time we do business with the Pentagon,” Hammond said. “We sold you an entire squadron of Block I Clippers outfitted to your specs. I think we’ve earned the right to be treated as equals.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re here,” the General reminded him. “But this had to wait until we could bring you to a secure location. Gateway and everything associated with it is part of a larger project codenamed FIREWALL, a word which is not to be repeated in this context. Ever.”
“Let’s get on with it, Sam,” the Defense Secretary interrupted. “I think they’ll figure it out soon enough.”
“Yes, Mister Secretary.” Nichols turned back to his briefing notes, obviously used to being cut off by impatient higher-ups. “Space Guard received the first report that S.S. Shepard was missing at 1303 Zulu time the day before yesterday. Approximately sixteen hours later Gateway made contact with its command and service module, which was broadcasting in the blind and declaring an emergency. It was a weak signal, VHF line-of-sight. We thought it damned lucky that our people heard them in the first place. They reported a catastrophic failure with their habitation module, which took out their primary O2 tanks and disabled their long-range comm.”
Penny suspected that no one here any longer believed luck had anything to do with it. “Which we could’ve told you was probably a load of crap,” she said. “When you get right down to it, the hab is for comfort. The flight module carries enough O2 to sustain everyone for an emergency burn back to Earth.”
“We certainly know that now,” Nichols said. “The situation deteriorated quickly from there. Hell, our crew didn’t even let us know what they were doing until your module was already inside the hazard zone. By the time we knew about it, they’d berthed it with the station’s grappling arm and reported a successful hard dock. That was the last we heard from them.”
“Any more EVAs since the last pass?” someone asked from the White House feed.
“Negative, sir,” Nichols said. “No one has emerged from the outpost since yesterday’s activity.” The image blurred out of focus briefly as he changed views. It reappeared in the infrared spectrum. “However, these increased heat signatures are recent developments,” he said, pointing to the heat exchangers and their radiators which fanned out atop the complex. “It suggests a substantial increase in power output.”
“And the reflectors?” someone asked from the Situation Room. It sounded like Donald Abbot, the new NASA administrator. Already apprehensive, Penny got a sinking feeling in her gut. The farther away he was from them, the better.
“What about the capacitors?” another urgent voice asked, before Nichols could answer. “Are they building up a charge?”
“That would be a valid assumption, gentlemen. Judging by the heat signature, they’re running at full output. All that energy has to go somewhere.”
“They’re charging the laser,” the Secretary opined, then turned to Abbot. “So to answer your question, we can at least presume they didn’t destroy the emitter.”
She thought Ryan was going to choke on his coffee. Laser?
“That would be my first conclusion, sir,” Nichols said. “Or they’re intentionally burning out the capacitors.”
SecDef frowned and drummed his fingers. “Not likely. There are much easier ways to disable the outpost if that’s their play. So far they’ve taken great care to keep everything else working.”
A more familiar voice cut in. “So have any shots gone off as scheduled since yesterday?”
Nichols’ normally sober countenance turned sour. “Negative, Madam President.”
Groans erupted both on-screen and around the room. Whatever that news meant, it had hit them like a punch in the gut. “We’ve tasked two KH-12 satellites on this and neither of them have detected any new emissions.”
The grim silence that followed told her a great deal: something vitally important had been interrupted and it had the brass scared, all the way up to and including the White House. That it seemed to involve their company’s missing ship was of secondary concern to them.
The President broke the silence. “Next steps, General? Assuming there’s still time.”
Nichols turned to one of the officers seated behind him. “Colonel Flagg?”
The Marine colonel stood and tugged smartly at the bottom of his olive-drab dress tunic before taking the podium. “A warning order from Joint Special Operations Command was issued to our Trans-Atmospheric Combat unit at 1900 yesterday, ma’am. Gunnery Sergeant Quinn’s alert team is now in pre-deployment lockdown at Camp Lejeune.”
Trans-Atmospheric Combat…what the hell was that? So at least she knew they were military operators and not undercover spooks, which gave Penny some small comfort. Nevertheless, her teeth clenched in frustration. They’d really been played this time: their ship hijacked so the bad guys could gain access to some top-secret facility which in turn was part of some equally top-secret weapons program.
Flagg called up a diagram of the Gateway outpost and its position relative to the Moon, more than fifty thousand kilometers above the far side. “Madam President,” he said, “Given these recent developments we now believe direct action is required. We only need your order to execute.”
The President gave her defense secretary a curt nod. “Operation VALIANT ARROW is approved,” he said on her behalf. “Please summarize your latest operational plan for our new team members.”
She exchanged uneasy glances with Ryan. New team members?
“Very well, sir.” The colonel lifted a remote from the podium and began walking the stage, pausing by each screen as new information appeared. He remained focused on Hammond, which suggested the gathered brass already knew the big picture and that this was for the civilian’s benefit. The President wouldn’t have so readily given it her thumbs-up otherwise. “The TAC alert team will arrive at your Cape facility tomorrow evening for transport up to your spacecraft Grissom the following morning. A full itinerary will be provided after this briefing. Our intent is for your ship to depart Earth orbit at the earliest opportunity and execute a maximum-energy translunar burn, allowing for payload of course.”
They hadn’t counted on this becoming a military operation, and the news dropped like a bomb. It would be cute to hear what they had in mind for payload…
Flagg continued. “…entering a low-stability halo orbit at L2. Once the team has the objective in sight, they’ll advance on Gateway along its X axis to minimize exposure.” A crude animation showed Grissom sneaking up on Gateway, hidden from view behind the complex’s massive insulating umbrella.
Penny was ready to jump out of her seat and climb the stage. “Pardon my manners, gentlemen, but since I’ll be flying this thing I have a few pertinent questions.” They’d already budgeted propellant for a crew of spacewalkers with a couple metric tons of rescue equipment. How the Marines thought they could just throw on more crap was the least of her concerns. “Namely, what about that laser?”
“That’s why you’ll keep station behind the sunshield. Once we’re in close proximity, you’ll maintain position while we conduct an EVA to board the complex. Your number one job is to remain undetected.”
“Excuse me,” she said tartly, “but our number one job is to rescue our missing people.”
“Not anymore, ma’am.”
. . .
Audrey barely listened to the erupting squabble, instead scribbling on a notepad while struggling to remember her undergrad optical physics classes. She’d found the subject mildly interesting, though it had largely gotten lost among the plethora of other difficult concepts she’d had to master along the way.
A free-electron laser, undoubtedly a weapon, parked way out beyond the moon and safe from any prying eyes. Besides the massive photovoltaic panels, she’d counted at least a half-dozen nuclear-thermal generators mounted around a hexagonal truss. So what was their combined output? The size of the radiator panels suggested it was quite high. It all depended on the isotopes and whatever materials they’d used for the thermocouples that turned nuclear heat into electricity. They worked a lot like solar cells: that is, not terribly efficient. The best she’d heard of had been around 30% and that was with the heat really cranked up. Out of those six generators, she figured the beam could transmit the energy of maybe two running at full tilt. More than enough if you’re just roasting a turkey, but so what?
She’d have to dig up old notebooks out of her attic, maybe look up some professors back in Alabama if she could figure out how to frame the questions without bringing down the FBI on their heads. So scratch that – besides, they might tell her how but the real mystery was why. A secret crash program to orbit a weaponized space station on the other side of the Moon was no small feat. A directed-energy weapon from out there wouldn’t be very effective against targets in Earth orbit. They’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to build something that could’ve easily been placed in geostationary orbit. Or even at L1, permanently between Earth and Moon instead of being hidden on the opposite side. For that matter, build it all on the ground.
So again: why go to all that trouble?
Lasers and telescopes were famously sensitive to atmospheric distortion. Adaptive optics had advanced to the point where atmospheric disturbances could be compensated for well enough that newer ground-based telescopes now rivaled the Hubble. But that for was passively gathering light over a long period to create an image of something light-years away. Projecting energy through a focused beam of light over a few seconds was different. It was one thing to build a ground station that could blind a spysat in orbit; they’d been doing that since the Eighties. Zapping them out of existence entirely was still the domain of science fiction. Maybe.
From Gateway’s point of view any spy birds would’ve had their sensor packages pointed towards Earth, not the Moon. And that was when they weren’t masked entirely by either body. So dazzling them wasn’t the point, since they wouldn’t have direct line of sight. And that worked both ways, thus the need for having people aboard. Besides needing the ability to precisely focus a lot of energy over a significant distance, they needed positive control. Power, range, control…what else would the military care about?
Stealth, she realized. Second law of thermodynamics dictated that nothing giving off heat could be hidden in space. And everything gave off heat, especially big-ass lasers powered by nuclear generators.
L2 made sense as a fuel depot, not a military base. Again, why put it way out there behind the far side? Audrey could have smacked herself for avoiding the obvious answer: because they didn’t want it to be found.
. . .
General Nichols interrupted Penny’s interrogation. “When your missing vessel report first popped, it was flagged by a junior signals analyst who connected the dots immediately,” he said with a hint of amusement. “I’m told the kid’s a bit of a space nerd and couldn’t help himself. Turned out he was on to something.”
“Glad to know someone in the Puzzle Palace is paying attention,” she said caustically.
Nichols ignored the barb. “More than you know.” He motioned to his aide, who opened a sealed envelope and stepped offstage, giving the contents to Hammond. “By the direction of National Command Authority,” he said, meaning the President, “Polaris Aerospace Lines’ Civil Reserve Air Fleet agreement is hereby activated.”
Hammond looked up in disbelief. CRAF allowed the military to essentially commandeer airliners in the event of war or some other national emergency.
“None of your suborbital routes will be affected,” Nichols explained, “but we will need you to commit at least one orbit-capable Clipper to this operation along with the lunar vehicle Grissom. We’ll provide whatever additional support you require, including a Vulcan upper stage which can be docked with Grissom for additional delta-v.”
Perhaps Art had to take it with a smile, but he counted on Penny to be his bulldog when necessary. “We appreciate the help, but something isn’t adding up,” she said. “If you were able to set up an outpost way out there at L2, then what exactly do you need us for? Can’t NASA get you there?”
“Not in enough time.” Nichols pointed to the image of Gateway Station and its attached crew capsules. “What you see here is the sum total of our nation’s lunar architecture,” he said with barely-concealed frustration. “It took almost eighteen months just to set up a four-man outpost. Even if another crew vehicle was available, those heavy boosters attract way too much attention. Half the damned state of Florida shows up whenever we launch one.”
On the White House monitor, Don Abbot’s porcine face flushed at the general’s pointed critique. Maybe she could get along with this three-star after all. “We, on the other hand, have Clippers taking off from that location almost daily,” she observed. “Except when the Eastern Range is closed for a short-notice military launch. This project really played hell with our route system, you know that?”
General Nichols smiled in a way that she found vaguely unsettling, like he still knew something she didn’t. “We understand your frustration. But your instincts are correct, Colonel Stratton.” Now why would he use her old Air Force rank?
He looked at Ryan next. “This situation presents a thorny dilemma: we need to regain control of our station, and you need to reclaim your spacecraft.” There was a telling failure to mention anything about the people aboard it. “We don’t have any pilots qualified on your Block II Clippers and we know even less about your moonliner. There’s no time to get our people properly trained, yet this operation must remain under military control. And you require access to information we can’t give to civilians.”
Penny’s heart raced as she realized where he was going, just as the President spoke: “Getting our TAC team up there takes precedence over your search and rescue mission, for reasons which will be made clear soon enough. I am sorry, but you’ll have to trust us.”
Ryan rose to stand beside her in nervous anticipation. “You don’t just need us for transportation,” he said. “You need us for cover. No one will think twice about us heading moonward after one of our own ships.”
“Also correct,” Nichols said, stepping down from the podium. “Though I’m doing it anyway, I’m certain you don’t need reminding that your commissions as regular officers in the Air Force and Marine Corps are held in reserve status and can be reactivated in times of national emergency by the President or Secretary of Defense.”
He handed each of them a leather document holder. “Penelope Lynn Stratton, Ryan David Hunter: by authority of the Commander in Chief, you are hereby reactivated for assignment to the US Special Operations Command at your rank last held on active duty. Your commissions will return to inactive status upon completion of this operation.” He shook their hands. “Lieutenant Colonel Stratton, Captain Hunter…welcome back.”
Penny felt as if she’d been swept up in a whirlwind and was grasping for a way out. “General, I can’t…” She caught herself and looked up at the monitor. “Madam President, we’re going there whatever the circumstances. Putting us back in uniform doesn’t do anything but complicate matters.”
“On the contrary,” she replied, “I think you’ll find SOCOM to be pretty nimble. They’ve certainly surprised me at times. When they need something, they get it.”
Like right now, Penny thought.
“Captain Hunter was right,” the President continued. “You need information and we need cover. This is the best way to get you fully briefed in and to get our men to Gateway. This operation is as black as it gets: no uniforms, no haircuts, and no talking about it.”
Ryan studied his fresh orders and eyed Penny dubiously. “This doesn’t mean I’m calling you ‘ma’am’…”
She cut him off quickly. “Stow it, jarhead.”
A satisfied grin finally cracked the General’s face as he clapped them each on the shoulder. “See? It didn’t take long for you two to get back in the groove.”