“They think what’s an act of war, sir …?”
Flaherty realized no one had bothered to tell this Coast Guard recruit what the New Hope launch facility was, anyway.
“Son, this facility is sending up parts for the Victory. We’re building a new ship in orbit, so we can send the Spirit of Destiny the shi—the stuff they need to get home. Four launches just to get the pieces of the engine up. This’s the last one.”
“I kinda thought this was …”
“What?” Flaherty’s secret weapon was his unthreatening appearance. Just a middle-aged black guy, overweight, sweating in the sun. Caesar wasn’t no Hollywood action star, either.
“Star Wars. Y’know. Nukes in space, to stop the Lightbringer.”
Flaherty took the hysterical guffaw that rose up in his throat and he turned it into a knowing smile. “We’re doing what we can.” And that was the truth.
None of the Coast Guard officers laughed out loud at the very idea of ‘nukes in space.’ In fact the same idea got thrown around all the time by hawkish pundits. It was completely futile but people couldn’t help their ignorance. You had to have a top-level security clearance to know the hard upper limits on Earth’s capabilities—so many tons per launch, so many launches per month, so many highly-skilled engineers, so many factories. And even if you had those numbers at your fingertips, you would not grasp the utter futility of Earth’s position unless you also knew that a majority of the launch sites, skilled technicians, IT geniuses, et fucking cetera, had gone over to the other side.
“Look out!” The senior officer jostled Flaherty, yelling, “Lady’s got a gun!”
A motor dinghy had pulled out of the flotilla. In the prow stood a human being of possibly female gender, dressed in blue and green robes like some Greek goddess. On her head, a wig of the type Flaherty had begun to see more often. Silicone snakes down to her waist. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. “That ain’t no lady,” Flaherty said. “And that ain’t no gun.”
The alien cosplayer raised her ‘rifle’—just a big water pistol—and shot a red stream up at them. It splashed Flaherty’s jeans. Dyed water? Pig’s blood.
The Coast Guard officers, nerves frayed to the limit, shouted at the cosplayer to go back to California.
“Sometimes I think America’s not worth saving,” Flaherty muttered.
And those were the worst times of all.
CHAPTER 14
After dark, floodlights lit up the pure white stalk of the Falcon Heavy.
T-00:02:00.
The hoses, leads, and pumps had been disconnected. The Strongback cradles had opened, and the support scaffold had retracted, leaving the rocket standing proud on the launch platform.
A light breeze licked Flaherty’s face. 3 mph, nothing to worry about. He had other things to worry about. He and Kuldeep stood on the deck of a Coast Guard utility boat, half a mile from the launch platform. One more UTB and an 80-foot cutter had arrived from New Orleans to help clear the blast area. But they were simply outnumbered by the Earth Party flotilla. The Coast Guard vessels dashed back and forth, slewing their spotlights over the sea. “Clear the blast area! Clear the blast area NOW!” The civilian boats just snuck between them, flocking back towards New Hope. Already there had been one collision. The cutter had had to stop and rescue disconsolate boaters in silicone wigs.
Flaherty laughed out loud— “Worse than herding cats! At least cats got a sense of self-preservation.”
Kuldeep, life-vest up around his ears, looked at him sadly. Kuldeep was a fine young man with a lot going for him, but he was no Lance Garner. He didn’t get Flaherty’s sense of humor. Few did.
“Clear the blast area!” bawled the Coast Guard officers.
T-00:01:30. Flaherty had the launch countdown loaded on his wristwatch. Getting close to the point of no return. The clattering and rumbling from the launch platform mingled with the noise of all the boat engines. Sound travels well on a calm night at sea. Partier voices sang, a capella, “We will overcome.” A recording from the launch platform droned, “Clear the area! Clear the area RIGHT NOW!” Burke and his team were under cover in the VAB, watching their computers.
T-00:00:45.
Flaherty’s earpiece beeped. Burke said desperately, “The blast area is not clear. We are going to have to abort.”
“No! No, you will NOT abort.” But Flaherty could see they were not going to clear the blast area in time. “I’m gonna get the Navy to help us out,” he said. “Those Marine reserves at Belle Chasse are just sitting on their asses. We need some of their Super-Hueys out here.”
As he spoke, the tech guy’s superyacht heaved into range of the UTB’s searchlight. A banner stretched along its rail said ONE GALAXY UNDER KEK.
“It’s not safe!” Burke said.
Another buzz cut into their conversation. “Sir,” said the cool voice of an NXC sniper on top of the VAB, “I have acquired a drone.”
A drone.
This was what Flaherty had been afraid of all day.
A drone.
That was how they’d lost the July launch that carried the turbine for the Victory’s engine. A fast-moving drone had zipped into the blast area and shot a bullet into a tank full of rocket-grade kerosene. The resulting explosion had destroyed the rocket and damaged the scaffold. You could still see the scorch marks on the VAB. Payload had been a write-off. It had set the orbital construction schedule back by 40 days.
Tell Burke to abort?
They’d built another turbine. They couldn’t build another engine exhaust assembly. There wasn’t time.
“Go,” Flaherty said. “Just go!”
Tracer rounds sizzled from the top of the VAB.
“Go!”
Flaherty plunged into the pilot house of the UTB. He shouldered the pilot aside and swung the helm over, pointing the bows straight at the superyacht.
The drone’s operator had to be aboard this floating temple to the power of technology.
“Go!”
T-00:00:03
The Falcon Heavy’s first-stage engines ignited. Fire bloomed over the launch platform. Toxic clouds of exhaust rolled down to the sea, engulfing the flotilla.
The UTB rammed the superyacht. Its prow crashed into the larger boat’s hull with a shuddering boom. Flaherty pitched face first over the wheel.
T-00:00:00
The Falcon Heavy lifted off, rising into the night sky on a pillar of smoke as straight and perfect as the column that the Israelites followed, believing it was God.
*
48 hours later, Skyler decrypted the first AES-512 transmission from Earth. The other three men hovered behind him. As the progress bar crawled across his laptop screen, the tension ratcheted up until Skyler felt like his skin no longer fit his body.
“OK, let’s see what they’ve sent us.” Click.
A wall of text met his eyes. The crypto had stripped out the formatting.
HOUSTON / STAR CITY MISSION CONTROL to SOD
At the bottom of the screen were numbers and tables. Jack stuck his arm over Skyler’s shoulder, reaching for the trackpad. “Let me see what that says—”
“Wait, let me read it!”
“It’s about the Victory!”
For a second, long-repressed hopes escaped from control. Jack actually tried to grab the laptop from Skyler. Then he apologized. All four of them read through the file at the same time, shoulder to shoulder, huddled around the screen like cavemen around a fire. Alexei, the slowest reader in English, complained every time Skyler tried to scroll down.
At last they got to the good bit.
The huddle exploded. The men flew backwards across the bridge until they rebounded from the walls. They high-fived, bounced off each other, and spun around, cheering. If the rriksti in the main hab could hear in the human-audible range, they would have thought the men had lost their minds.
At last, Jack returned to the laptop. Pink with happiness, he crooned, “Fast unmanned ship. A mini-SoD. It’ll l
aunch in December, do a parabolic slingshot around Mars, and catch up with us a couple of weeks after we pass Mars, in November 2022.”
“You’re kidding,” Skyler said, his elation crushed.
November 2022.
They wouldn’t be getting the Shit We Need until the end of next year.
Jack shrugged, undaunted. “This is as good as it gets. The December launch window is the only one left. There was one in May, but they missed that one, obviously.”
“And now we know why,” Alexei said, sobering. “This is unbelievable! I thought NASA would contract with California and Florida to continue using their facilities.”
“That’s what we all thought,” Jack said.
“Not me,” Giles said. “You can’t negotiate with the Earth Party. There is no leadership to negotiate with. And anyway, they want Cape Canaveral and the California launch facilities for themselves.”
“For their moon base,” Alexei grunted.
Camp Eternal Light Limited (CELL), the two-year-old moon base established by Earth Party-affiliated entrepreneurs, got glowing TV coverage. The fawning reports seldom mentioned any technical facts or figures. But CELL definitely received regular supply flights.
The men on the SoD had assumed that if two launches a month were winging towards the moon, there must be plenty of spare capacity for Victory construction launches.
Not so. The rest of Mission Control’s transmission summarized the difficulties that NASA and to a lesser extent Roscosmos and JAXA had been having. They’d kept the truth out of previous, unsecure transmissions as a counter-reconnaissance measure against the Lightbringer. Now, in unvarnished English, Richard Burke revealed that NASA was down to a single launch platform on an off-shore oil rig, and the Coast Guard had just fought a running battle with a bunch of crazies trying to sabotage their launch schedule.
“Hippies gone wild!” Jack said.
“You make the same mistake as everyone else,” Giles said. “You underestimate the Earth Party.” Skyler knew that Giles had identified with the Earth Party himself, before he was abused and mutilated by the very aliens he had hoped to welcome to Earth. Hatred for his former ideological peers hardened his voice. “The combination of cutting-edge technology and primitive religious impulses is very powerful.”
“Religious impulses?” Jack scoffed.
“Of course,” Giles said. “Look what they are doing. They are sacrificing rockets to the Lightbringer.”
Twelve people drowned. Two killed by sniper fire, Burke wrote. Dozens more in hospital. Tom Flaherty, remember him? Our favorite Fed. He rammed a Coast Guard tug into a yacht the size of the Flatiron! Wound up in hospital with broken ribs. Man’s a hero.
Skyler had trouble processing the idea of Director Flaherty in hospital. Flaherty was supposed to be invulnerable. Lance was dead, but Flaherty was Teflon.
Then again, a wounded-hero rep could be an ace in the game of inter-agency politics …
The events of two nights ago had finally pushed the president to declare martial law, Burke wrote, lapsing into a bureaucratic mode that carefully obfuscated who had done the pushing. From now on, a USN detachment and a Marine Corps air squadron would enforce a cordon around New Hope. Good news for NASA.
But the bigger story here, Skyler thought, was that the NXC had finally got its dirty hands on the prize of prizes: the US military. His sympathy for Flaherty evaporated. A couple of busted ribs weren’t much to pay for that.
There was a moment’s silence after they reached the end of the file. Then Jack scrolled back up and studied the Victory’s flight parameters.
“So,” Skyler summed up. “We’re getting our resupply flight. This is good. On the other hand, American democracy is dead.” He made a performance of knuckling his eyes. “Excuse me while I cry for my country. I know it’s not a big deal to you guys.”
“Good thing I only burnt down to 60% of reaction mass,” Jack said. “We’ll need to burn more water at Mars to make this rendezvous than I’d originally budgeted. It’s going to slow us down, too. Bugger.”
“Skyler?” Giles said, plucking at his sleeve with one small, seven-fingered hand.
“Yeah, what?” Skyler said.
“Am I correct that this file came packaged inside a video?”
“Yeah. It’s called steganography. This file, the payload, was encrypted using AES-512, and then hidden inside another video, the carrier file. That’s all the Lightbringer would see.” Despite himself, Skyler snorted at the thought of the Krijistal decrypting and watching this particular video. Not much use for language learning …
“And what was the title of this video, mon ami?”
Skyler cleared his throat. “Well …” He dragged it out until the other two were paying attention.
“Busty blonde Russian chicks?” Alexei said.
“Sexy librarians,” Jack speculated, eyes gleaming.
“Hot interracial gay sex,” Giles said.
Skyler let out a howl of laughter. He clicked on the video and sent his laptop spinning across the bridge like a frisbee. Startled, Jack caught it. “No!” Skyler shouted. “None of the above! Do you think the NXC actually gives a fuck about your wants and needs? Think again, suckers!”
Jack looked down at the screen. “Our Wild Planet. Oh, David Attenborough. I used to watch his stuff when I couldn’t sleep.”
Skyler folded his lips between his teeth. The news from America had shaken him more than he wanted to acknowledge.
Jack passed the laptop to Alexei, flew to Skyler, and took hold of his shoulders. “C’mon, Sky,” he said, giving him a gentle shake. “It’s not the end of the world. Er, not until year after next, anyway.”
Skyler managed a stiff smile. It embarrassed him that Jack had to tell him, in almost as many words, to man up. He resolved not to give Jack any further reason to think he was a wimp. He waited until Jack’s hands dropped from his shoulders, and then said, gesturing at Jack’s face, “What happened this time?”
Jack had a purple blossom on his jaw, balancing out the pink scar on the other side of his face. He brushed it with his fingers. “Oh, just Brbb again.”
Giles said, “The rules require reciprocity. I do not understand anything else about them, but I understand that much.”
“That much even I’ve figured out. You ought to see Brbb’s face.” Jack grinned.
“What was the problem, though?” Skyler said.
“Oh, the Krijistal keep going on about wanting shorter days. They’d turn this ship into Imf if we let them,” Jack said.
*
Six months later. Same place. Same time …
Good one! There is no time in space! We measure weeks in kale harvests, and months in corrosion damage.
Anyway, Skyler was alone on the bridge, so it was either Monday or Wednesday or Friday, although he couldn’t have told you off the top of his head if it was January, February, or March. He floated in the center seat, one bare foot thrust through a tether, wearing nothing except underpants. Too damn hot for clothes these days. Humidity coated his skin. He was reading Nuclear Reactors for Dummies on his laptop, and biting the peace symbol that floated from his neck on a thong. He checked the telescope when he remembered to.
He was meant to be scanning the sky ceaselessly for icebergs. The Lightbringer’s improvised missiles had gotten smaller but meaner, laced with explosives as well as debris. They sailed in at the rate of one every 16.1 days on average, although there was no regularity to it. Lulls could last a couple of days, or a month; either felt equally long.
Mercifully, the icebergs were more frightening than dangerous. They could be seen a long way out, and thus deflected. The SoD’s crew usually found out about them from the Cloudeater, in the form of coordinates and single-sentence reports on successful deflections. That’s the only way they knew Keelraiser was still alive over there.
Yet the cold war between Jack and Keelraiser, or whatever the hell was going on, continued, so Jack insisted on duplicating the Cloudeate
r’s scans with the SoD’s own inferior technology. Everyone was supposed to keep their eyes glued to the optical telescope when they were on bridge duty.
Skyler approved of vigilance, of course. But in practice, he wasn’t great at repetitive and mindless tasks. Boredom left him prey to dark impulses, such as: Why don’t I check YouTube and see if there’s a new episode of the Hannah Ginsburg Show?
He hated those videos and yet he couldn’t help watching them. They made him sad and mad and horny all at once—a terrible combination.
He tried to exercise willpower by focusing on his study materials, but Reactors for Dummies evoked Hannah’s memory, as well. Everything circled back to her.
All right. Time for some weapons-grade displacement activity.
He closed his laptop, checked the telescope once more, and went to take his guitar down from its bungee-cord cradle on the aft wall.
His guitar? Yeah man. We long-distance spacefarers groove, you dig?
The guitar was made of off-white bio-plastic, a tip-off that it came from the 3D fabber in the Cloudeater’s cargo hold. Awesome machine. Input your specs, and out pops whatever you need, as long as it’s made of bio-plastic.
The guitar sounded OK, though. He’d ended up using aluminum-alloy for the strings, printed on the other 3D fabber, which did metal parts.
He slipped the shoulder strap over his head. “The void waits, it’s ravenous,” he sang, fingerpicking chords. He used his right elbow to trap the guitar against his body in the absence of gravity. “How many corpses can it take? The vacuum wants to swallow you.” Am, Dm, G. “How long before you break?”
Skyler used to compose doggerel about his love for Hannah, using other people’s tunes. For a while her loss had put him off music. But now, for the first time in his life, he was taking the guitar seriously. His exposure to rriksti ballads had been an inspiration. They’d been a spacefaring people for long enough to develop a whole musical tradition around the ultimate frontier. Judging by their lyrics, the longer you messed around in space, the more you got to hate it. Surprise, surprise.
Shiplord: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 3) Page 10
