by Dale Brown
Farrell pondered that for a moment and then shrugged his own big shoulders. “Fair enough. On the other hand, that rabid son of a bitch Gryzlov is dead and gone.”
“And currently burning in hell, I earnestly trust and hope,” Martindale agreed. He frowned. “Unfortunately, Marshal Mikhail Ivanovich Leonov is still very much alive. And much as I regret to say it, I suspect he may be an even more dangerous opponent than the late and utterly unlamented Gennadiy Gryzlov.”
Patrick nodded. “Leonov is certainly cagier. Nominally, he’s just Russia’s defense minister, one of a cabinet full of equals. But considering how powerful the military is in the political system over there, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’s calling the shots when it counts.”
“You think this Leonov character may be planning a new move against us?” Farrell asked bluntly.
“We do,” Martindale said. “Russia’s a declining geopolitical power at the moment, especially with its economy under serious pressure from our rapidly increasing oil and gas production. Add in the fact that its political stability took a serious hit with Gryzlov’s assassination—”
“Assassination?” Farrell interrupted sharply.
Martindale nodded. “Somebody deliberately aimed and fired that missile from orbit,” he pointed out. “And it sure as hell wasn’t us.” He sighed. “Not that we can prove anything now.”
“More’s the pity,” Farrell agreed. He motioned for the other man to go on.
“My point is that the Russians—especially their ruling elites—have every incentive to take risks just now. Unless they can somehow tilt the global balance of forces back into their favor, they’re ultimately screwed. And while a few of the current government’s ministers might hope they can ride things down to a soft landing as a second-rate power, most of them probably know that’s not a safe bet.”
“Especially not someone like Leonov,” Patrick added. “I’ve studied his record. The man’s certainly brutal and ruthless. But he’s also a Russian patriot. He won’t settle for watching his country slide peacefully into oblivion.”
Farrell frowned. “So what are you suggesting we do? Preemptively strike Moscow . . . just in case?” His tone made clear how little he thought of that option.
Martindale shook his head. “Even setting aside the probability of unwinnable nuclear escalation, that isn’t really an option.” He smiled thinly. “After all, we are the good guys.”
“Well, I’d argue for a targeted hit on Leonov himself,” Patrick said, not mincing words. “If I saw a way we could pull it off.” His exoskeleton whirred quietly again as he sat up straighter. “Killing an enemy commander might not seem very sporting, but it can be extremely effective. It sure worked out pretty well when our P-38 fighters shot down Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto during World War Two.”
“During a declared war,” Martindale noted.
Patrick shrugged again. “War’s war, declared or not.”
Farrell shook his head. “I take your point, General.” His face tightened. He’d only narrowly escaped the Russian effort to murder him. Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to get sucked into a game of tit-for-tat with human lives on the line. That was the kind of game you lost simply by playing. “But we are not going down that road on my watch. Comprende?”
“Completely, Mr. President.”
“So, setting aside the thought of going to all-out war or operating my own little version of Murder Inc., what are my choices here?”
“First, we keep our eyes wide open,” Martindale said flatly. “My intelligence operatives inside Russia already have instructions to poke into every nook, cranny, and corner they can find.”
Farrell nodded his approval. Over the past several years, Scion’s espionage operations had proven far more effective than any of those run by the CIA or other official U.S. intelligence agencies, which had been too caught up in political correctness and partisanship to focus on their primary mission. “And second?”
“That we keep pushing hard—both in space itself and by rapidly exploiting the incredible technological breakthroughs we captured aboard Mars One,” Patrick said.
“Like that ten-megawatt fusion power generator the Russians built?”
“Yes, sir.”
Farrell shook his head. “Y’all are forgetting I’m an old hand in the energy business,” he said bluntly. “And I’ve read the Department of Energy’s report on that reactor. There’s no doubt the damned thing’s a technological and engineering marvel, but it ain’t a game changer . . . not in domestic energy production nor for our defense programs.”
Martindale sighed. “Because of the fuel mixture it uses.”
“Bingo,” Farrell said. “That Russian fusion generator relies on a deuterium-helium-3 mix to operate. To produce those ten megawatts it needs a supply of two and a half kilograms of helium-3. On the face of things, that doesn’t sound like much . . . feed in less than six pounds of this helium isotope and hey, presto, you get enough electricity to run ten thousand American homes for five whole years.”
“The catch being that helium-3 is an incredibly rare substance, sir,” Patrick said wryly.
“Rare is one serious piece of understatement, General.” Farrell shook his head. “You can’t just go mine this stuff anywhere on Earth. It doesn’t exist. Most of what we do produce comes from refurbishing deteriorating H-bombs. The Energy Department points out that even at the height of the Cold War, our total national production of helium-3 came to only about eight kilograms per year. And after all our weapons cuts, we’re down to under a kilogram.”
He held up a hand with a slight smile. “Now before y’all start pushing, I am not going to order a huge expansion of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal as a means of boosting domestic helium-3 generation.”
“I suppose that might send the wrong diplomatic signal to the rest of the world,” Martindale agreed with an equally humorless smile.
“So there you go,” Farrell went on. “Our existing stockpiles and production can keep Eagle Station’s own fusion generator fueled up, but that’s about the limit. Breakthrough or not, the technology’s basically a dead end.”
Patrick shook his head. “You’re overlooking other possibilities, Mr. President.” He leaned forward in his chair again, wholly intent on making his point. “You’re right that there aren’t any significant natural deposits of helium-3 on Earth. But there’s a lot out there elsewhere in the rest of the solar system, just waiting for the taking. Heck, the gas giants of the outer system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are practically awash in the stuff.”
“All of which are a hellaciously long way from here.” Farrell folded his arms. “I mean, NASA hasn’t even built a rocket that can put astronauts back on the moon yet . . . and that’s practically spitting distance compared to going to Jupiter and beyond.” He chuckled. “I know people expect folks from Texas to think mighty big, but there’s a pretty bright line between being naturally ambitious and just plain loco. And I’d just as soon stay on the right side of that divide.”
“The company the Russians stole the original fusion reactor tech from had plans for direct fusion drives,” Patrick pointed out. “Build one of those drives and put it on a spacecraft and you can get out farther a lot faster.”
“How much faster?” Farrell asked, intrigued in spite of himself.
“Some of our robotic probes took more than six years to reach Jupiter,” Patrick told him. “A fusion-powered spaceship could cover the same distance in less than a year.”
Farrell reined himself back in. “That’d be something, all right,” he agreed slowly. “But we’re going round in circles here, like trying to figure out which came first: the chicken or the egg. The way I see it, we need more helium-3 to seriously exploit this fusion power breakthrough. But we can’t round up enough helium-3 without developing these fusion drives you’re talking about . . . and we can’t build those drives without the helium-3 resources we don’t have.” He shook his head regretfully. “Like I said b
efore, it’s a dead end.”
“Not quite,” Martindale said quietly. “There are large reserves of this isotope much closer than the outer planets.”
Farrell raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“The solar wind’s been bombarding the moon with helium-3 for billions of years,” Martindale explained. “And since the moon doesn’t have a magnetic field like Earth, there’s nothing to deflect it away. Soil studies of material collected by the Apollo missions and other probes have found significant amounts of the isotope trapped in the lunar regolith.”
“How significant?” Farrell prodded.
“Concentrations as high as twenty parts per billion.”
Farrell snorted again. Those were the kinds of numbers he had a lot of experience wrestling with. “For crying out loud, Kevin . . . that’s almost as bad as saying we could strain the gold out of seawater and all get rich. You’re talking about processing upwards of fifty thousand tons of this lunar regolith just to extract one lousy kilogram of helium-3. There’s no way that’ll ever be a paying proposition.”
“If we were talking about a conventional earthbound mining operation, that would be true,” Martindale responded calmly. “But automation is the solution to this problem. The European Space Agency and a number of universities and corporations have already worked through what it would take to extract the helium-3 and the other valuable materials—nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, for example—trapped in the moon’s surface soils. They’ve drawn up plans for systems of robotic bulldozers, automated conveyer belts, and solar-powered furnaces. My people have vetted their numbers, and we estimate a carefully designed automated lunar mining operation could produce up to fifty kilograms of helium-3 per year.”
“Which would be more than enough to power a vast array of advanced space systems and fusion drive development programs,” Patrick added. He looked in dead earnest. “We’re talking about the key that could eventually unlock the whole solar system, Mr. President. Conventional chemical rockets like those we use now can only take us so far. Mastering fusion, both for power generation and as a means of propulsion, could put the United States and our allies in a position of overwhelming economic and military advantage for decades to come.”
Slowly, the president nodded. “I take your point, General.” But then his face clouded over. “Which is too damned bad, because right now the NASA slugocracy isn’t able to put so much as one doggone pound down on the lunar surface.”
“Probably not,” Patrick said. “But I bet there are private space companies who can—Sky Masters, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a bunch of others.”
Martindale nodded. “Offer to buy helium-3 at the right price and I guarantee you the private sector will find ways to meet the demand.”
“Maybe so,” Farrell agreed judiciously. When it came to solving problems, there was almost no one better than a sharp-eyed businessman backed by a solid engineering team—so long as there was a real potential for a serious profit. There was certainly no doubt that the reusable rockets pioneered by a number of companies were already cutting per-pound launch costs far below what they’d been in the Apollo era. What would once have been unaffordable, at least at any cost U.S. taxpayers would swallow, might now be within reach.
He let his breath out. “Hell’s bells, but it sure would be nice to give this country of ours something big to shoot for—something that could really change the world for the better. We’ve been playing small ball for too long, piddling around with penny ante projects like electric cars and windmills.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick agreed. Somberly, he looked across the desk at the president. “And if we don’t do it and do it soon, I’m pretty sure others will.”
“Meaning what?” Farrell asked.
“The Russians and the Chinese aren’t blind to the potential of mining the moon,” Patrick told him quietly. “In fact, a Chinese geologist was one of the first scientists to seriously push the idea of extracting helium-3 and other valuable resources from the lunar surface.”
“So?”
“That man is now the chief scientist for China’s lunar exploration program,” Patrick said. “If we really are in a race for the moon again, we might be starting out behind.”
Eight
Aboard Eagle Station, in Orbit
The Next Day
Eagle Station slid silently through space high above the North Atlantic, heading toward Africa’s western coast at close to seventeen thousand miles per hour. Behind it, a curving line of darkness, the solar terminator, obscured South America. Patches of bright yellowish light dotted the blackened landmass, each marking the presence of a major city still waiting for the oncoming dawn.
The large space station was made up of four, linked 115-foot-long cylinders. Three—two dedicated weapons and sensor modules with a command node connecting them—formed a vertical shape that looked very much like a capital I turned on its side. Like their Russian predecessors, its U.S. Space Force crew often compared this basic silhouette to that of a TIE fighter from Star Wars. The fourth section, containing the station’s fusion power generator, extended horizontally off the central command module.
Antennas of various sizes and shapes studded Eagle’s radar-absorbent outer skin. Two long clear tubes—Sky Masters–designed combat-grade lasers replacing lower-powered Russian systems destroyed when the station was captured—were fixed in swivel mounts at the bottom of the two weapons modules. The mount for the orbital platform’s primary armament, its Thunderbolt plasma rail gun, rose above the command node. It was an odd-looking device, with a stubby rod at its center surrounded by an array of electronic components in a six-armed starfish pattern.
Inside the cylindrical command node, Colonel Keith “Mal” Reynolds glided down a narrow, dimly lit corridor lined with storage cabinets and conduits and on though an open hatch. He came out into a somewhat larger compartment crammed full of computer consoles and high-resolution displays. Moving with practiced ease, he grabbed a handhold and arrested his momentum. One more gentle fingertip push off the nearest wall sent him floating over to the nearest console. He hooked his feet beneath it to hold himself in place and plugged his headset into the panel.
The Space Force officer on sensor watch, Captain Allison Stewart, glanced away from her displays. “Good morning, sir.”
“Morning, Allie,” Reynolds said. It was one of those rare moments when station time coincided—however briefly—with the visual cue of the sun rising above the curve of the earth ahead of them. At this altitude, four hundred miles above the planet, they experienced fourteen or fifteen dawns and sunsets during any given twenty-four-hour period. “Anything to report?”
“No, sir. It’s been pretty quiet so far this shift.”
“Alert. SBIRS sensors have picked up a major heat bloom over the Aegean Sea,” Eagle’s threat-warning computer suddenly intoned calmly.
“Is that a missile?” Reynolds snapped.
“No, sir,” Stewart told him. “This looks like a nonballistic trajectory. My computer evaluates it as a spacecraft headed into orbit.”
Reynolds frowned. There were a couple of private U.S. space companies with air-launched rockets in their inventory. But why light one off just south of Greece?
“New data, sir,” Stewart said rapidly. “I evaluate that thermal signature as an S-29B Shadow spaceplane. SBIRS detected the Shadow when its engines transitioned to rocket mode and initiated an orbital burn.” She passed her revised data to his screen. “The S-29 is currently at an altitude of two hundred miles. It’s in a retrograde orbit inclined at 128.4 degrees.”
“So it’s headed our way,” Reynolds said. Eagle Station’s orbit took it from west to east around the world, with an inclination or tilt of 51.6 degrees. That Shadow was circling the earth from east to west along the opposite track.
She nodded. “Yes, sir. And fast. On its current orbital track, that spaceplane will cross two hundred miles directly below us—with a combined closing speed of more than thirty-four thousand mi
les per hour.”
The colonel raised an eyebrow. He was starting to get an itchy feeling on the back of his neck. It looked a whole lot like the Space Force’s new senior officers were running a snap readiness exercise to test Eagle Station’s commander and crew. He tapped an icon on his own console. Instantly, alarms blared in every compartment in all four connected modules. “Action stations,” he announced over the intercom. “All personnel report to their action stations. This is a drill. Repeat, this is a drill.”
Reynolds heard voices echoing through other open hatches as those crewmen who’d been off duty scrambled out of tiny sleeping cabins and skimmed through corridors to their assigned places.
One by one, readiness reports flowed through his headset. The station’s fusion power plant, environmental controls, and life-support systems were all functioning within their expected parameters.
“Lasers are fully charged. Firing status is green. Simulated controls operational. Primary control systems are temporarily locked down,” he heard from the forward weapons module. Good, he thought. Nobody wanted real weapons firing accidentally during a training exercise.
From the aft weapons module, Major Ike Ozawa, the officer in charge of Eagle’s Thunderbolt plasma rail gun, announced, “Thunderbolt’s supercapacitors are charged. I’m ready to fire. Awaiting handoff of radar tracking data.”
Reynolds glanced toward Stewart. The young captain was busy with her equipment.
“Our X-band radar is online,” she told him a moment later. She looked back over her shoulder with a hint of barely suppressed amusement. “Oh, how I love the smell of burnt plasma in the morning. It smells like—”
“An easy kill.” The colonel nodded. The plasma rail gun was Eagle Station’s main weapons system. Using energy stored in its starfish-shaped supercapacitor array, Thunderbolt created a ring of extremely dense plasma, essentially a form of ball lightning, and then accelerated it with a powerful magnetic pulse. Those glowing, meter-wide toroids of plasma flew through outer space at more than six thousand miles per second—destroying targets by a combination of kinetic impact, heat, powerful electromagnetic pulse effects, and high-energy X-rays.
