Freefall: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 1)

by Felix R. Savage

“I make thirty-five bucks an hour, Senator. How much did Edgar Ho pay you to betray your country?”

  Amidst his humiliation, Colbert straightened his back. “I would never stoop to take money for doing the right thing.”

  The man’s mouth twisted in disgust. “So you’re not only a traitor, you’re also a sucker.”

  “Is it true,” Colbert asked, “that the Spirit of Humanity will carry guns?”

  The man crossed the room and peeked out of the curtains. Colbert glimpsed East Cabrillo Boulevard and the beach beyond. More people than usual for eight in the morning were outside, wandering along the beach, or just standing there, looking out to sea. The man let the curtain fall.

  “Homicide arrests nationwide are up 300%,” he said. “Burglaries, muggings … the police are overwhelmed. Yes, the ship will carry guns.”

  “Not for the aliens,” Colbert realized. “For us.” He could smell his own excrement.

  “The only thing that will save humanity from tearing itself to pieces over this,” the man said, “is retrieving that alien spaceship, so people can see for themselves that it is not a threat. The United States has committed to the Spirit of Humanity project. Putin’s in for a price. The Europeans will do as they’re told. The only power that could prevent a successful launch is China … and you’ve just given them the wherewithal to stop the project dead in its tracks. Still think you did the right thing?”

  He shot Colbert in the neck. The silenced Sig Sauer made a sound like someone clapping their hands.

  In his dying moments, Colbert did not think about justice, humanity, or world peace. He thought of Xue Hua. He regretted nothing he’d done. His only regret was that he’d never get to say goodbye to her.

  CHAPTER 19

  At JPL in Pasadena, champagne flowed. Hannah smilingly put her hand over her glass when Richard Burke attempted to pour for her. “I have to drive later,” she said, ignoring the pang of deprivation she felt.

  She hadn’t had a drink since the first contact event. Things had been moving so fast! First, the Night of the Living Fed—as Hannah had dubbed the surreal hours when the FBI descended on JPL and made everyone sign miles of non-disclosure agreements. That had been crazy, and not good crazy. “Martial law is here,” Ralf Lyons had said. But then, like a bright dawn following a dark and stormy night, the announcement of the Spirit of Humanity project had lifted everyone’s mood.

  Hannah would have preferred it if RADAR-guided thermonuclear weapons were to be sent to Europa, rather than a manned spacecraft. The good news was that the Spirit of Humanity would be a manned spacecraft, and a weapon. The rumor was that kinetic bombardment weapons would be mounted on the ship.

  Mustn’t say a word about that, of course. The NDAs covered everything. But the Feds couldn’t stop the staff of JPL talking to one another. So Hannah knew about the weapons, and she also knew about the data which suggested that the alien spacecraft was a hulk. Whatever destroyed Juno had most likely been an automated point defence system.

  And the good news kept on coming. Today—July 15th, one week after the Juno observations—President Obama had announced that the Spirit of Humanity project would be spearheaded right here in the USA, at Johnson Space Center.

  The project leader? None other than their own Richard Burke.

  Hence the champagne, the silly hats, and the cheesy europop filling the office.

  Burke was carrying the magnum of Brut around, filling everyone’s glasses, even though the party was in his honor. That was the kind of guy he was.

  “Go on, Hannah-banana. You deserve it,” he said.

  He had absolutely zero idea about her drinking problem. In the last week—the longest dry stretch she’d managed since, oh, college graduation—Hannah had gained enough perspective to accept the three little words she’d been avoiding for years: high-functioning alcoholic.

  She was a high-functioning alcoholic.

  She probably always would be.

  But she didn’t have to be an alcoholic who drank, and so she shook her head again, privately resolved that Burke would never know about the interior struggle this renunciation cost her. “I’m fine, Rich, seriously.” Someone bumped into her from behind. Everyone who’d ever worked with Burke had crowded into their office to say goodbye to him. “Guess you won’t miss this luxurious workspace,” she quipped, moving the ficus plant that was threatening to topple off Ralf Lyons’s desk.

  “They’ve already assigned me a corner office in Building 13 at JSC,” Burke said gloomily. “I’ll miss you guys.”

  “We’ll miss you, too. But we’ll still be here.” Hannah assumed the Juno team would be split up and reassigned to tasks related to the Spirit of Humanity project. “I wonder where Ralf is, anyway? I would have expected him to be here today.”

  Burke hesitated. He moved his head, indicating that she should step closer. “Hannah, Ralf doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “He violated the NDA, apparently.”

  “He was pissed about the rumors about the rail guns,” Hannah said in sudden anger. “He thought it would be a provocation. Excuse me, Ralf, the ship’s automated defences killed our probe without any provocation whatsoever! And you want to send an unarmed ship out there? He would not listen to reason. What did he do, tweet about it?”

  “Something like that.” The crows-feet at the corners of Burke’s eyes deepened. “It’s a real loss. He was the best navigation specialist we had.”

  “Oh well,” Hannah said. “I expect we’ll get a replacement. A Russian, maybe. Or a European. I hope they speak English.”

  “We’re all going to have to work together,” Burke cautioned her.

  “I know, I know. I’m excited about the international cooperation aspect, honestly. Who was it that said nothing brings people together like an external threat? So I guess that’s the silver lining.”

  “The reason I’m telling you this, Hannah, is I don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “Don’t worry. These lips are sealed,” Hannah sighed.

  “You’re the best propulsion tech in this goddamn outfit,” Burke said. His eyes were slightly glazed with the effects of the champagne.

  “Why, thank you kindly, sir.”

  “I’d put you up against anyone ESA or Roscosmos has got. But fortunately I don’t have to justify my decisions. To accelerate the ramp-up, they’ve given me authority to fill certain key positions in-house. So … welcome to the Spirit of Humanity project, Hannah. If you accept, I’d like you to take the lead in propulsion systems development.”

  Hannah stared at him, thunderstruck. She did not underestimate her own abilities. But she had less experience than many of her counterparts in Russia, not to mention a lack of familiarity with nuclear propulsion systems. “Rich, are you drunk?”

  “Is that a refusal?”

  “N-n-no, it’s a huge honor. I’m just not sure I’m ready.”

  Burke’s focus on her sharpened. “It is not an honor. It is a huge fucking responsibility. The estimated budget for this project is $300 billion. The Spirit of Humanity will be massive in every sense of the word. The only vehicles that humanity has constructed on this scale before are ocean-going ships. It’s several orders of magnitude bigger than anything we've done in space before, and the only reason it's being done now, instead of the fifty years it should have taken us to reach this stage, is because the whole world is shitting themselves that aliens just turned up on our doorstep. Yes, all the evidence we have suggests the alien ship is a hulk. But we don’t know for sure.”

  Hannah bit her lip. “No, we don’t,” she agreed. “And if there are real, live aliens on board … if they’re hostile …”

  Burke lowered his voice. “The Spirit of Humanity is our only chance to preemptively strike at them. This ship may be all that stands between us and annihilation.”

  Hannah shivered. “You have a very reassuring way of putting things.”

  “It’s the truth. You know it and I know it. Eit
her we get this right, first time, or we may not have a second chance.” Burke resumed speaking at a normal pitch. “So do you want the job?”

  A huge responsibility. The words resonated in Hannah’s mind. Could she handle it?

  High-functioning alcoholic Hannah, who spent most of her evenings getting wasted, and her weekends in a stupor, could not handle it. No way.

  But maybe high-functioning alcoholic Hannah, who stood here now, in the midst of a drunken celebration, with a glass of sparkling water in her hand, could do what was asked of her.

  Either we get this right, FIRST TIME, or we may not have a second chance.

  Burke’s summation of the Spirit of Humanity project rang true.

  But people were not spaceships.

  This is my second chance, Hannah thought. Right now, right here.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  Without giving her time to reconsider, Burke climbed onto a desk, shouted for quiet, and announced Hannah’s appointment as head of propulsion systems.

  This was the way they’d be doing things from now on, Hannah realized. Seat of the pants, on the fly, making crucial decisions at office parties, racing to meet deadlines. She wasn’t going to have time to drink. The thought made her smile.

  “Will I get a corner office at JSC, too?” she called up to Burke. “Because I’m going to need peace and quiet to bone up on nuclear electric propulsion technology!”

  *

  Hannah got her own office at Johnson Space Center. It wasn’t a corner, but it was nice and big. Pretty soon it no longer felt big because every surface was hidden by piles of paper, 3D printed models, and coffee mugs.

  Her first month on the job got eaten up by hiring decisions.

  Other people’s decisions, that is.

  Burke had rushed through her own appointment, and several others, before organizational structures had time to rigidify. But now they had, hiring was being handled by Human Resources. Even at Hannah’s level, she didn’t get to decide who would be working with her on the daunting task of building a new spacecraft engine.

  She just had to work with whoever they sent her.

  On August 15th, they sent her Inga Pitzke.

  Skyler Taft shepherded the German woman into Hannah’s office. Skyler was one of the vaguely mysterious ‘Feds’ who hung around JSC nowadays, watching, listening, and occasionally offering a hand with bureaucratic difficulties. If you needed strings pulled, you could butter up one of the Feds. That was how it worked now. Hannah didn’t like the open politicization of the Spirit of Humanity, but she recognized that it was inevitable with a project this high-profile. Anyway, Skyler was one of the nicer Feds. He wore a peace symbol around his neck and a raggedy friendship bracelet on one ankle. He reminded Hannah of her college boyfriend. He had found her a plasma dynamicist last week.

  And now he’d found her a metallurgist.

  “Great,” Hannah said. “We need someone to work on the composition of the sintering powder to 3D-print the engine components.”

  “Inga’s got a lot of experience in that area,” Skyler said. “And I think she might also be able to help clarify the engine selection issue.”

  Hannah stretched her arms over her head and screamed at the ceiling. No one jumped. Around the clock, seven days a week, people were screaming and shouting and throwing tantrums at Johnson Space Center. It was a combination of stress, and blowing off stress.

  “The freaking engine selection issue,” Hannah moaned.

  “This is a fraught topic,” Skyler said to Inga.

  Hannah rocked forward in her chair. “Inga, I’m assuming you have project-level clearance?” The German woman nodded. Since Skyler had brought her in, it was a given that she had all the clearances she needed. Hannah just had to ask, because security around the project was tighter than ever. A bunch of technicians and analysts had been let go last week, for no other reason than that they were of Chinese heritage. That was bullshit, in Hannah’s opinion. But she had to work within the system.

  “Inga spent three years working at the company that developed the water plasma engine,” Skyler said.

  “Aha,” Hannah said. She pointed at the German woman. “You’re here to try to convince me that piece of crap will fly.”

  Inga said, startled, “Why do you say it is a piece of crap?”

  Skyler laughed. “We’re kind of informal around here, Inga. Don’t take offense.”

  “None meant,” Hannah clarified. “But let me explain where we’re at with this. There are three competing engine design proposals. Well, there are actually about twenty. But these are the big three.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “TEM. This is the Russians’ experimental nuclear drive. It uses a gas-cooled nuclear reactor to produce electricity, which is in turn used to run a xenon-based electrical propulsion system, probably magnetoplasmadynamic. They have a workable reactor design, but haven’t yet managed to produce a propulsor unit with sufficient thrust. Then in this corner we’ve got NASA’s preferred propulsion system: chemical rockets. Big, big chemical rockets. They’re huge, and their fuel is unthinkably heavy, but we already have good, reliable vacuum-rated designs that we can start to scale up. And lastly, the underdog challenger, the magnetoplasmadynamic engine developed by some little startup that folded before they could even build a prototype, right, Skyler?”

  Skyler nodded, playing with his peace symbol necklace. He had strong-looking, beautiful hands.

  “That’s the one the NXC is pushing.”

  Skyler and his hench-Feds belonged to the National Xenoaffairs Council, a formerly unknown agency that had gotten in on the ground floor of Spirit of Humanity, Inc—the world’s fastest-growing boom sector. The NXC had become an indispensable partner to NASA in terms of procuring resources for the project. But they weren’t scientists. Skyler was the rare exception. He had a Ph.D in astrophysics. That didn’t make him a propulsion expert.

  “It’s just office politics to you, isn’t it, Skyler?” she needled him. “If we go with your system, you get bragging rights and presidential pats on the head.”

  Skyler bowed his head and twirled one of those beautiful hands in the air. “Pay no attention to me. I’m just here to take the abuse.”

  “Everyone needs a hobby,” Hannah said. “My hobby is tormenting federal agents.”

  “I was human once, you know.”

  “So you bring in Ms. Pitzke here to sell me the system, because what, the plural of anecdote is data?”

  Inga Pitzke looked from Hannah to Skyler and back again with a horrified expression on her face.

  Hannah laughed. She stood up and grabbed her bag. “Let’s blow this joint, Fraulein Pitzke. Come for a coffee and convince me that your piece of crap actually works.”

  CHAPTER 20

  They went to Fuddrucker’s, on the far side of E. NASA Parkway. It took half an hour just to extricate themselves from JSC. “This is why I sleep under my desk most nights,” said Hannah. They had to queue up at a security chicane of concrete crash barriers. Security guards inspected Hannah’s car, and both women had to get out and walk through body scanners. That’s the way it was now.

  National Guardsmen patrolled the six-mile perimeter of JSC, leading muzzled Dobermans that panted in the August heat. Hannah drove cautiously behind a flatbed loaded with enormous pipe segments.

  JSC was expanding at breakneck speed. The park south of Space Center Boulevard had transformed into a giant construction zone, tainting the hot, heavy air with dust. Floodlights lit the gantries. The clangor of heavy machinery assaulted Hannah’s ears as they crossed the Fuddrucker’s parking lot. Work on this new truss assembly building continued around the clock. Some local residents had complained—and had been shamed on social media for it. The entire population of America, give or take a few fussbudgets, had lined up solidly behind the Spirit of Humanity project. The knowledge of this broad support invigorated Hannah. What a change from the old days when politicians used to berate NASA for ‘wasting’
money!

  She spun a menu across the table to Inga. “What are you having?”

  “I like American food,” Inga said. “American beer, no.” She ordered a half-pounder hamburger and a premium beer.

  Hannah had honestly been planning just to have a coffee. Too many suppers consisting of snacks from the JSC vending machines had taken their toll on her waistline. But after all, that was a good reason to eat a real meal for a change. She ordered a salad, nachos—and a coffee.

  “So,” she said. “Why is the water-based magnetoplasmadynamic engine the best choice for the Spirit of Humanity?”

  Inga nodded. “It is the only concept that will allow the ship to return to Earth.”

  Hannah sat back and considered the other woman. Inga fulfilled her expectations of German womanhood: tall, blonde, unapproachable. She even wore her hair in two braids pinned up behind her head. Hannah wondered whether she was subconsciously prejudiced against her for being German. Her grandfather had died in the camps. She resolved to be absolutely even-handed in her assessment.

  “Where did you hear that the Spirit of Humanity is a one-way mission?” she asked.

  “I did not hear it from anyone. But it makes sense that it would be considered.”

  Hannah shook her head. “It’s not being considered.” She hoped she was right.

  “OK,” Inga said. “But if we go with the chemical propulsion system, for instance, every gramme of fuel that the ship needs to get back has to be hauled out there. It makes the return journey close to mathematically impossible.”

  “That’s my main objection to that system,” Hannah admitted. “Actually, I’m one hundred percent in favor of nuclear propulsion. But you have to understand I’m not the ultimate decision-maker on this. That’s the design committee.”

  “I know, but they will accept your recommendation. Skyler said so.”

  Hannah suppressed a smile. “Skyler has way too much confidence in my powers.”

  She stopped talking as the waitress brought their food. Foam dribbled down the side of Inga’s beer glass.