11
Denver
The simulator cabin was illuminated by little more than the glow of multifunction instrument screens. A three-dimensional image of the lunar surface hovered just beyond the windows. Penny and Ryan sat in the pilot’s seats with Audrey buckled up behind them in the instructor’s chair. “Everybody set?” Penny asked.
Audrey turned to the instructor’s panel. “Sim is locked down, walkway’s retracted.” They were isolated inside of an exact replica of the Cycler’s flight deck, itself supported by a complex arrangement of hydraulic pistons underneath. An amber warning beacon began flashing outside, signaling anyone in the sim bay that the beast could start lurching unpredictably at any minute. Not far away a Clipper simulator bucked atop its own hissing hydraulics.
“Let’s go dark.”
Audrey reached above the console and opened the voice and video recorder’s circuit breakers, blinding any potential outside observers. It was the most isolated place they could find on company property. “We’re secure.”
“So what do ya’ll think we’re getting ourselves into now?” Ryan drawled. “I still haven’t figured out how to tell Marcy I’ve been drafted back into the Corps.”
Penny realized she hadn’t even talked to her husband yet. “A big fat hairy mess is what we’ve gotten into,” she griped, with a nod toward the computer-generated moon outside. “Anyone else almost forget what we were supposed to be going up there for in the first place?”
“They made it easy enough to forget, what with all that secret mission talk,” Audrey agreed. Which had been quite a feat, considering they still hadn’t heard from Shepard since yesterday. “Soon as we find out our ship’s been hijacked, the Pentagon hijacks us. And here’s what really worries me: have you seen anything about us on the news?”
What should have been irresistible round-the-clock news bait hadn’t been mentioned at all on any outlet. Not a missing spacecraft, certainly not a hijacking. It was clear that the government had been leaning on newsrooms all over the country, no doubt feeding the networks some carefully crafted misinformation.
“Good point, not that we want the attention,” Penny said. She turned to Ryan. “What’s your gut tell you about our new friends?”
Ryan was uncharacteristically quiet. He fiddled with the pitch control, shifting the image of the moon outside. He eventually stretched back, folded his arms behind his head, and blew out a sigh. “There you go again,” he said. “Just because I wore the same uniform, I’m supposed to be all up in their business.”
“Exactly right. You know their world better than we do and you were Art’s liaison for our Pentagon sale. That leads me to believe you have some insight as to what they’re about.”
“Funny thing about the Corps was they really meant that ‘every Marine an infantryman’ stuff. So we were expected to spend a tour with the grunts, coordinating air support and stuff like that. When my number came up, dummy me volunteered to go with Recon battalion. I wanted something high speed, low drag…adventurous.”
“That’s what, Special Forces?” Audrey asked. “Like the SEALs?”
“Special Operations. Different purpose.” It was a minor but important distinction. “But yeah, something like that. Let’s just say they gave me what I signed up for in spades,” he said acerbically. “Even back then there were some forward thinkers figuring out ways to take advantage of all these newfangled suborbital spacecraft.”
“I remember that – global rapid response,” Penny said. “Space drop a squad of Marines anywhere in the world on a couple hours’ notice. They were on to something, but it nearly got them laughed out of the Pentagon.” She wondered if the men who’d advocated for it even knew that their ideas had been put into practice. Something told her probably not.
“Just like Billy Mitchell,” Ryan said. The legendary pilot had nearly been drummed out of the service after demonstrating that it was possible to sink a capital ship with only aerial bombardment. In an ironic twist, the Army Air Corps had eventually named a bomber after him.
“At least these guys didn’t get court-martialed for their trouble,” Penny said. Now, it was much easier to wreck a troublesome officer’s career through innuendo and a few carefully-worded comments in an annual fitness report. “So they actually went ahead with the ‘Space Marine’ idea?”
“Sure looks like it. But I didn’t hear a peep about it when I was delivering those Clippers to the Air Force. I figured they wanted them for rapid transport but they didn’t say a thing about troop drops.” The idea was perhaps too crazy for him to have taken seriously: leaping out of a suborbital vehicle over hostile territory, diving from space and hitting the atmosphere as a supersonic projectile. The concept had been proven from high-altitude balloons, but the thought of doing it in an armored spacesuit with a combat load? Nuts.
“Actually it’s not that surprising,” Audrey interposed. “Why else would they have wanted a separate airlock system for the pax cabin?”
The pilots stared at her silently until Ryan broke the silence. “Leave it to her to figure it all out before the rest of us.”
“That still doesn’t tell us anything about our present situation,” Penny reminded them. “They’re awfully interested in that outpost.”
Ryan tapped impatiently on the glare shield. “That’s what I can’t get my head around. What’s that contraption for in the first place? There have to be easier ways to get the job done.”
Audrey was eager to finally give voice to the thought experiments that had consumed her all day. “Depends on what you think the job is,” she said. “Think about it: deep space, and on the wrong side of the Moon. No consistent line of sight with Earth, so it’s next to useless as an anti-satellite weapon and worthless against ballistic missiles.”
“Could be a proof of concept,” Ryan mused. “Keep it out of sight so they can blast away without attracting attention. Because I’m pretty sure this thing violates about a half dozen treaties.”
“Speaking of line of sight,” Penny said, “we’ll be in blackout for a good portion of the flight. And they’re installing encrypted radios, which is going to seriously limit bandwidth. Any open comm is going to have to go through some kind of code, which we won’t have time for.”
“We’ll be out of contact right about the time you guys will need the most help,” Audrey agreed.
Penny exchanged a knowing look with Ryan. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s why you’re going with us.”
. . .
Melbourne
“What’s that?”
Marshall Hunter had pulled his mother by her hand into the back yard, which was becoming a habit of late. The night sky above their home exploded with stars and while they’d always encouraged his natural inquisitiveness, this latest fixation had a suspicious way of interfering with bedtime. He was beginning to recognize patterns and was immediately drawn to anything new or out of place. What his mother didn’t yet realize was that he’d also begun to connect it with his daddy’s work and was intently searching for him up there. He was particularly eager tonight, since they’d just learned Ryan would be home tomorrow.
“It’s a comet, dear,” Marcy said patiently. She wondered if he actually expected Ryan to leap down from the sky.
“What’s a comet?”
Marcy carefully considered his question, searching for an explanation that would fit a toddler’s understanding. She thought of their trip to see Aunt Penny in Colorado last winter. “It’s like a big snowball,” she said. “A really big snowball.”
“Big as me?”
“Much bigger,” she smiled.
He was getting excited now. “Big as daddy’s planes?”
“Even bigger.”
His eyes grew wide. “Big as our house?”
“No, hon,” she said gently. “Big as the whole town.”
He stared at the white smudge hovering above the ocean, then looked back past their neighborhood as he considered his mother’s words. “Is it going to land here?”
“No, baby,” she said. “But it is going to fly right by us in a few weeks.” The networks had been chattering about it breathlessly, in fact. And to be fair, it was hard to overstate. The closest pass by any comet in known history promised to be spectacular.
He sounded disappointed. “Okay.” The boy took one last look and turned back to their house. He was satisfied with his mother’s explanation, as the big flying snowball had been steadily getting bigger.
. . .
Denver
Audrey sat by her bedroom window, staring in disbelief at the crescent moon as it rose into the orange sky above the eastern plains. She tried to imagine what it was going to be like spending almost a month up there, completely confined to their spacecraft and utterly dependent on it functioning properly. Being confronted so personally with the inherent risks sharpened her outlook in ways she hadn’t counted on. This should have been exciting, after all.
Trying to imagine what whomever up there might be enduring at this moment made her shudder. There’d been no signal from the hab in two days. If anyone held out hope that somebody might still be alive up there, they’d not had the courage to say so.
But still. Simon was the most tenacious person she’d ever known, which was the word she used when she was feeling kind. He could also be exceptionally bullheaded. He always kept things light, but in the end the man had a talent for getting things done his way.
Audrey had pushed aside any thoughts of his probable fate as she struggled to comprehend this latest turn. She was about to finally embark on a childhood fantasy. You’re going to the Moon, girl. So what’s your problem?
Reality was the problem: a good friend was missing, his passengers were probably terrorists, and the President of the freaking United States has decided it’s serious enough to send in the Marines. Yes, that about covers it.
It had already been a brutally long couple of days. With plans changing, her team would be in for another all-nighter creating mission rules and running simulations, now with Charlie personally at the helm. She’d rapidly been crushed by competing demands, but being tapped for the crew had made one thing easier: she’d had no choice but to go home and pack.
And what a joke that had been. How does one pack for the trip of a lifetime when the circumstances are so grim? All she’d been able to think of were workout clothes, of which she had plenty: running shoes, pullovers, zip-off pants…she’d tossed in a quarter-zip fleece and a pair of jeans just for good measure and reconsidered it twice. Too much, she thought. Gotta keep the weight down. Her bag sat atop the bathroom scale while she debated over the last gram. Out went the jeans, but she’d kept the fleece as she’d have no control over the temperature aboard Gus.
A whimper drew her attention to her feet, where a small dachshund bounced up and down by her knee. “Wernher, here.” She held out her hands and the dog happily jumped into her lap. “Gotta leave soon. Wish I could take you with me,” she said haltingly. “I’d probably feel a lot better about this.”
He looked at her in that quizzical way dogs have, before indulging his nightly habit of licking her hand until he fell asleep.
“Quit looking at me like that.”