“I’ll wait up, ‘Leese,” he finally gasped, and fell silent.
Ryan tore the headset from his ear and flung it across the cluttered airlock with a bitter curse. He tucked his legs up tightly and buried his face between his knees.
…
Denver
Penny slumped, wheezing, against her chair. She had lost many friends throughout her career and had developed a thick skin to cope. Staring at the image of Austral Clipper on the big screen, she began crying softly. Not only for her good friend, but for all the others she had lost over the years...for her husband, over whom she had once choked back the tears while repeating the “we know the risks” mantra that had been so thoroughly bred into them.
And for Elise, who had become a greater source of strength for her than she’d ever imagined.
“We have to bring them all home,” she announced to the team, “whatever it takes.”
68
Denver
Taggart sat in his darkened office. “You’ve heard the news, Walter?” he said quietly into the phone. It had become another late night for him; they were all certain to be so for some time.
“Yeah, I did,” Donner answered gruffly. “Captain’s dead and a passenger almost offed himself. Everyone else is on the space station?”
“That’s correct,” he said. “Which lends even more urgency to our task. NTSB will officially declare this an accident with a death onboard.”
“Yeah, I get it. But let the Feds worry about that, we’ve still got an airline to run.”
“For now,” Taggart said. “If this turns out badly, there may be nothing left of us,” he said dourly.
“What about Gentry? We can’t just leave his body up there.”
“No, of course not,” Taggart assured him. “He was an honorable man, and will be treated honorably. We do not leave anyone behind,” he said with practiced sincerity. “Now, I have a question about those QC records you brought,” he said, changing the subject. “You did go through the copies you made for us, correct? I’m having trouble finding the relevant documents.”
“Everything’s there,” Donner said with evident satisfaction, and went on to explain exactly how they were organized. Taggart found it was a struggle to sound interested, but it was useful information.
With that conversation finished, he pulled out his cell phone. “It’s Leo. Here’s what you’re looking for,” he said brusquely. “Our man has his hands on the records. Yes, all over them,” he said confidently. “You’re certain the computer files will match?”
“Of course. It was easy. I did it while we were talking.”
Taggart hung up then checked the status of his private bank account. His contacts might be pains in the ass, but he had to admit they did pay quite well. He moved on to his broker’s account page and evaluated his options for tomorrow morning’s opening. As he checked the company’s current stock price, his face twisted into a satisfied smile. The time to move had arrived.
…
Penny was collecting her own notes from the improvised CapCom station as her computer backed up everything she’d done since arriving at the Emergency Operations Center.
With everyone safely aboard Station, there was precious little they could do now. Other team members were likewise gathering up their materials. All of them worked in silence, with Grant the only exception. He carried on a quiet conversation with Houston about stores, housekeeping, and other arrangements until the crew transfer capsule’s scheduled arrival next month.
Arthur Hammond finally walked in, looking bone-tired, having just returned from the Gentry’s home.
“How’s everyone in here holding up?” he asked, and was greeted by careless shrugs and empty stares. “About as expected,” he muttered, flopping into an empty chair as fatigue visibly washed over him. “Sorry folks, I deserved that.”
“How’s Elise?” Penny asked on behalf of the group.
“Handling it okay, believe it or not,” he said. Penny did believe that, in fact. “But she needs company—lots of it. Neighbors are staying with her right now, and I’ve got one of Posey’s men down there keeping an eye on the place. She will be well taken care of, I’ll see to that,” he said with conviction.
“What about his…remains?” she asked. “I’ve been with them both a lot for the past few months…Elise is planning to be buried when her time comes.”
“You mention this in context of what’s going to happen to our spaceplane,” Hammond observed cautiously.
Penny and Charlie exchanged glances. “The thought occurred to us,” she said. “It’s our job to make sure all the loose ends are tied up, so to speak.”
“She actually mentioned that,” Hammond said. “She’s okay with letting him go…I mean, staying with the ship. For however long it’s up there.” He quickly surveyed the room. “Now, if the rest of you could excuse us, I need to speak with these two.”
He sat quietly at the conference table as the remaining team members trailed out of the room.
“What’s up, Arthur?” Charlie finally asked.
Hammond stretched with a yawning sigh. “It’s been a hell of a week,” he said. “And we’re not done yet. I do not want to leave him up there to just burn up in the atmosphere, understand? We need to work out a plan to get him home.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Penny thought. “There would be room on the crew capsule. And we, well, keep the necessary equipment on board,” she said hesitantly.
“You mean body bags?”
“Yes,” Grant interjected, “if Station’s willing to do another EVA, that is.”
“Work it out,” Hammond instructed after a moment’s thought. “But I don’t just want him brought home in that capsule. I want the plane back, too.”
They stared at him, stunned.
“You can do it?” he pressed.
“It’s possible,” Grant said carefully. “Ratio of mass over surface area is in the ballpark. We looked at it as an option in case the ISS transfer didn’t work.”
“You mean for automated re-entry in another month or so.” By then, their orbit would have naturally decayed well after everyone aboard had long since suffocated.
“Correct,” he answered grimly. “Thankfully it wasn’t necessary. But it’s an awful risk, Art, with not much benefit…” he paused. “You need that bird down here, don’t you?” he asked pointedly.
Hammond sighed. “I’ll get right to it—the sharks smell blood in the water and they’re circling tight. We need that plane back in one piece so we can go through every nook and cranny.”
“You’re even more right than you know, boss,” Penny said. “Due to the onboard fatality, NTSB has declared this an accident and is demanding the spaceplane be secured. They’ll allow us to recover remains, but otherwise no one gets on or off.”
He’d expected an accident declaration, but this was absurd. “They’re serious?” he laughed. “What are we supposed to do, send up a go-team? Have the cops tape off the crash site?”
“None of the Feds are exactly being rational,” she said. “NASA wants it as far away from the station as we can get it. They’ve got to de-orbit the ATV anyway, and were thinking they could just kill two birds with one stone.”
Hammond shook his head. “Like I said…blood in the water. Don Abbot would love to see us go down in flames. Bet he’d never counted on that being literal.”
“Taggart was in here earlier, looking for you.” Grant added, changing the subject. “The press is really lighting him up.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Hammond grumbled. “There’s any number of cretins out there who’d love to take us down hard. And they don’t care how many lives they wreck in the bargain.” He could be notoriously gruff, but did not lightly tolerate threats to his people’s livelihoods.
“This isn’t enough?” Grant asked in amazement. “How badly could someone want us to fail?” He noticed Penny shift uncomfortably in her seat. She clearly knew more than she was allowed to let on.
<
br /> “Badly enough to commit sabotage, for starters,” he answered coldly.
69
Denver
Hammond’s ad-hoc investigative team waited patiently in his office and watched the distant mountains emerge from night’s shadow, turning purple in the new morning sun. The last few days had thoroughly consumed the energy of every person close to the minute-by-minute events. In that interval, Posey and Davis had been doggedly turning over every detail of Austral Clipper’s history up until its last launch.
Their task was alternately fascinating and mind-numbing, suffused with the realization that they were in a race against time. Yesterday’s tragedy in orbit had made it all the more urgent. They’d had to work quickly before every piece of paper and electronic record related to spaceplane number 501 was locked down tight. A team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators was already on its way to Denver, dispatched from DC instead of a regional office. It was a barely-concealed signal of how the company was about to be openly raked over the coals.
“So,” Hammond began as he strode quickly into his office, “where do we stand right now?”
Davis spoke up first. “Arthur, we sure enough found a big gap in the maintenance records. Big enough to drive a truck through. A work card is missing from six days ago, when the master engine controls were supposedly removed, tested, and reinstalled.”
Hammond cocked an eyebrow. “Really?” he asked, his interest piqued. “Please go on.”
“That’s the problem…we can’t. Without the records, the work officially didn’t happen.”
“I get that part,” he said with exasperation. “What’s the unofficial line on this?”
“Walt Donner said he removed the module on the night of the incident. He took it down to Avionics, had it bench tested and reinstalled when the component checked out,” he said, looking at his notes. “We really need that part. It would be easy to see if anyone’s been fooling with it…we’d expect to find minor impedance deviations in the processor chips.”
“But there’s no record of anything?”
Posey cleared his throat, joining the discussion. “We spoke with the night supervisor in QC, and he says that Donner approached him in the office three nights ago. They were having a conversation, and he left Donner alone so he could take a smoke break.”
Hammond was going to question why when Davis broke in. “We don’t allow the master records office to stay unoccupied,” he explained. “And this was right after you first called me up here, so I left him there alone. After we started asking questions, he realized Donner had probably played him.”
“So who’s dirty here?” Hammond asked impatiently.
“Donner’s the obvious target,” Posey hesitated to say.
“But you’re not sure…”
“I still need to run down some other theories,” he explained, “before I get all hot and bothered over the obvious one.”
“Allow me to make it more obvious,” Hammond said. “There’s more. Our engineer on the Block II flight found some interesting glitches in the control software…” he continued, and explained Will Gardner’s discovery. “Somebody really knew what they were doing. We could be looking at industrial espionage on a scale I’ve never seen. That means the FBI gets involved, which turns this into a three-way pissing match between them, the NTSB, and the FAA. I do not want us to be caught up in that family feud, gentlemen.”
“This also means there’s another common thread,” Davis said. “Avionics.”
Hammond watched as Posey quickly made note of that, and lowered his voice as he looked at them both. “I don’t have to tell you both how sensitive this is. Something nasty is going on here, so keep your offices locked and your computers off the network. The only other people who know what you’re doing are Gardner, Stratton, and Grant. Keep it that way.”
70
Denver
Hammond relaxed behind his desk as the morning sun streamed in, and put the previous day’s drama out of his mind. It was a beautiful day, a hot cup of tea sat next to him, and he clasped his hands lazily over his stomach in appreciation of it all.
The man standing before him was not nearly as carefree.
“Walter J. Donner,” Hammond pronounced, casually flipping through his personnel file. “Been here for twenty years, long before I came along and screwed up the place, right?”
He remained silent.
“You’re not being very smart about this, Donner.”
“Smart about what?” he finally blurted out. “I didn’t do anything wrong, but here I am, about to get my ass handed to me.”
Hammond remained silent, and finally tossed a thick file in front of him.
“Funny. That’s not what these records tell us,” he challenged. “You were the last man to work on 501 before it ended up, well, up there. And now one of our best captains is dead. A man I considered a personal friend for a long time before either one of us ever set foot here. I take this very seriously, Donner. And so do the Feds.”
That last remark got to him. No one relished the idea of being the central focus of an accident investigation. The best he could hope for would be to have his license suspended.
Donner’s famous temper finally revealed itself. “We bench-tested that damned module twice before installing it!” he bellowed. “I don’t just re-rack parts and sign ‘em off!”
“That’s the reputation you have. Maximum hours, minimum effort…makes it hard for a guy like me to do business.”
Donner muttered, cursing to himself. “He was right.”
“Who?”
“Leo Taggart. He warned me this would turn into a witch hunt.”
“Taggart was talking to you?” Hammond asked, hiding his surprise.
“Damn straight he was. He knew you guys would be looking for a patsy, that’s why he had me get copies of all those records from QC. So when something came up missing, we’d be able to prove it.”
Bingo, Hammond realized. “Just so I’m straight on this—humor me—you did have that FADEC module bench-tested?”
“You’d better believe it. Chen couldn’t duplicate the problem so I reinstalled it, ran an operational check with power on the plane, and signed it off. All per the maintenance manual,” he said proudly.
Yet there’s nothing about it in that pile of work logs, Hammond thought. “Okay, Walter…I believe you. Somehow we’ll find the records to back you up,” he said sympathetically. “We’ll get to the bottom of this one way or the other.”
“I hope so, Mr. Hammond…especially since you didn’t see fit to call in a union rep for a disciplinary meeting. I could grieve this in a heartbeat.”
And you certainly would, you bum, he realized. “Tell you what…this situation’s getting ugly and I need you to lay low for a while. You’re right about the union rep, so how about I give you a week off and we call it even?”
“It’s a deal,” Donner said triumphantly.
“Just hand your shop keys and ID badge to the security guard on your way out,” Hammond instructed while waving him to the door.
“What? You’re suspending me?”
Hammond stood and leaned over the desk. “You just admitted to screwing around with controlled documents, and now we have a gaping hole in official records for a spaceplane that’s the subject of a Federal investigation. If you wanted to avoid being fingered, that was one dumbass way to go about it.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?” Donner pleaded.
“Keep your mouth shut unless you want me to personally sic my lawyers on you,” Hammond said. “You can whine to the union when you get back, if we have a company left. Now get out of my office.”
…
Leo Taggart had been quietly waiting outside, and gave Donner a disinterested nod as he stormed out. He strode briskly into Hammond’s office and stood in front of his desk. He cleared his throat. “Arthur, I need a few minutes of your time. This is very unpleasant for me, so I’ll just get right to it.”
“Okay,” Hammond said suspiciously.
“You’ve been so absorbed with this rescue and the, well, tragic aftermath, that I doubt you’ve paid much attention to other business matters lately.”
“Our stock’s in the crapper, if that’s what you mean,” he replied. “Not a whole hell of a lot we can do about that right now. Deal with the immediate crisis, and the rest will have to work itself out. But it’s a good buying opportunity for somebody.”
“You’re correct, Arthur. It is. That’s what I needed to speak with you about.”
Hammond nodded. “Go on.”
“I only have the best interests of the company at heart,” Taggart said, “which is why I’ve been investing in our stock. Trust me, it would’ve gone much lower without my intervention. And the board knows it.”
“We never authorized a stock buyback,” Hammond said.
“You’re correct,” Taggart said calmly. “I’m talking about a personal investment.”
The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and he suspected what was coming next. “You bought controlling interest?”
“I did,” Taggart said. “And as of ten minutes ago, I’ve petitioned the board to remove you as President and CEO.”
Hammond glowered at him, saying nothing.
“Relax, Arthur,” he said soothingly. “It’s not immediate. They still have to vote on it. But they are very concerned about this NTSB investigation and the attendant bad press. You have to understand: no one else does what we do. If this ends badly, it’s not just one company that could collapse. It could kill an entire industry.”
An industry which Hammond was thoroughly invested in. It had been his life. He was barely able to hear the rest of Taggart’s speech.
“So you understand why I had to do this. I was in a position to keep us solvent and support the industry in the bargain.”
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