Orbital Maneuvers

by R Davison

  “Bird’s Eye…will do,” Nicholas answered, wondering just what that storm cell had in store for them.

  Paul did not like the advisory they just heard and felt even more uneasy with the tone of Nicholas’ reply. “Just what does that mean? Direct intercept with a storm…or something like that.”

  “Paul, it may mean that we are going to have a rough ride in a few minutes, if we enter this storm cell as they are warning us,” Nicholas answered.

  “Alright, why is it going to be rough?”

  Alexander jumped in. “My friend, have you ever gone on a roller coaster ride at an amusement park?”

  “Yes, many years ago. Are you saying that we are going to get tossed about?” Paul wasn’t playing dumb, he was only hoping that what he thought was going to happen, wasn’t.

  “Well, take your worst roller coaster ride and multiply it by, say one hundred—”

  “No, I would say two or three hundred,” Nicholas interjected.

  Alexander sighed. “When you get over a hundred it does not much matter any more.” He said.

  Nicholas continued, “You see, Paul, the CRV is being slowed by a parachute. If we enter a thunderstorm, with its huge updrafts and downdrafts, with the parachute open we will be pulled up and dropped—”

  Paul could feel his stomach turning with just the thought of it. “Okay, I get the idea,” he said. “So we get jerked around, the CRV should be able to handle that. Right? I mean, they must have designed it for that, right?”

  Nicholas shook his head while he stared at the display. “It is not the CRV I am worried about,” he said, “it is the parachute. It may have not been designed for such loading. As I understand it, the CRV was designed for emergency deorbit, with ground support and the choice of several landing sites. In addition, they could stay in orbit for six hours or more if needed, to wait for the weather to clear. It was not intended to pass through severe weather.”

  “Well, gee, I feel better already!” Paul said. “Do you have anything more to say that is going to put me at ease?”

  Nicholas blushed. “I am sorry, Paul, I was only trying to help,” he said.

  “No, that’s okay. I know you were. What if the parafoil opens before we enter the storm? Will we be any better off?” Paul asked.

  “Only if we can steer away from the storm,” Nicholas said. “I do not think the parafoil is going to be any better. In fact, it will probably be worse, because it is much larger than the drogue chute, so the shear forces could do more damage. I do not know how this little ship is going to handle under the parafoil. Maybe, we will have enough time to miss it.”

  Alpha Rescue Two, alerted that the CRV was on course and would be passing by them, had all available hands looking out of the portholes to get a visual on the ship. By the time the CRV had caught up with them, it was actually below the flight path of the Hercules, which made seeing the strobe more difficult. All they could see was the light reflecting off the cloud tops below the ship. The big transport rocked as the turbulence rippled out from the super cell, which was dead ahead of them, cloaked in the darkness. A fortuitous flash of lightening at the right moment gave the crew of Alpha Rescue Two a clear snapshot of a large red and white parachute canopy being absorbed into the cloud layer below them, part of the trailing edge of the monster storm that was about to receive a toy to play with.

  “Bird’s Eye…Bird’s Eye…we have a visual on a chute. They are at about twenty thousand feet and heading into the cell. We are diverting around the storm.”

  “We copy you,” the AWACS’ controller replied. “Alpha Rescue Two, turn on heading one…eight…zero and descend to angels eight thousand. Resume patrol pattern once there. Copy?”

  “Bird’s Eye, we copy. Course one…eight…zero, angels eight thousand.”

  “Alpha Rescue One…Alpha Rescue One…take heading zero…two…five…angels seven thousand and resume search pattern…copy?”

  Jazzy keyed the mic. “Bird’s Eye, we copy. Turning on heading zero…two…five…angels seven thousand and resuming search pattern. Over.” Turning off the mic she looked over to Andrew. “Those poor blokes are in for a rough ride! I don’t envy them at this moment,” she said. “So, we patrol downwind of the storm and wait for them to fall out of it, right?”

  “That’s about all we can do at this time,” said Andrew. “Hopefully, they will exit with their chute intact and in one piece. If they go into the water under this storm it is going to be very difficult for the rescue teams to get to them.”

  The CRV entered the storm’s clutches by a sudden updraft, which quickly pushed its altitude up a thousand feet higher. Paul groaned as the sudden acceleration pressed him into his seat.

  “Here we go!” Alexander shouted above the seemingly continuous explosions of thunder.

  Nicholas could see the lightning flashes on the front display, but Paul and Alexander could only make out a muted flash in the compartment as the display responded to the overloaded digital camera. The video system took several seconds to recover from the onslaught of the lightning, just about as long as it took for the thunderclap to die away.

  The ship began swinging and rotating as the winds played with the large drogue chute, pulling and pushing it one way while the CRV itself was buffeted from a different direction. It was as if the winds were playing tug-of-war with the ship, and no one was winning.

  Paul closed his eyes tight and grabbed the side of his seat for security. He listened to the heavy rain and occasional hail stones that bounced off the CRV’s heat tiles, eroding and chipping away at them like some mad sculptor trying to reveal the true identity of the ship that lay underneath the fragile layer of ceramic.

  Inside the CRV the rain created a fluctuating, low-pitched hiss that varied in intensity as the ship passed through bands of precipitation inside the cell. The hail sounded more like gunshots as it pounded the ship. Sometimes there were only single shots and other times it sounded as if there was a war going on outside the CRV. The chorus of hisses and pops was frequently accented by the tremendously loud claps of thunder that seemed to be trying to dominate the performance.

  Nicholas kept watching the display and contemplated what the computer was thinking at this time. He wondered if the engineers who wrote the software to control the ship ever considered if the CRV would be in such a situation. Nicholas watched the altimeter climb with the CRV’s ascent, wondering just how high they were going to climb this time. But, his curiosity turned to fear as he noticed that the altimeter readout was no longer changing. In fact, nothing was changing on the display!

  He could feel the CRV rising and falling, and he could also feel a knot tightening in his stomach; he knew it made no sense that they would maintain a constant altitude in this storm. The reality that nothing was changing on the display drove him to conclude that there was a major computer failure.

  “Uh oh,” slipped from Nicholas’ lips before he realized it, and Paul’s ears picked it up immediately.

  “What’s the matter?” Paul asked, as he strained to raise his head high enough to see Nicholas.

  “I am not sure…but the display is frozen. It looks like maybe the computer crashed.”

  Alexander stirred at Nicholas’ last comment. “That does not sound good. What do you see on the display?” he asked.

  “Nothing…well, no, there is something there, but it is not changing. The display is locked up.”

  “This thing should have redundant computers! Everything NASA does is with redundant systems…right?” Paul asked, not sure of anything at the moment except his rising nausea.

  “Yes, I would think they would have a backup system to take over. Maybe it is not the hardware, but the new software.”

  “You may be right, Captain Zuyev,” Alexander said. “We have no idea what changes were made and how well they were tested when the new program was uploaded into the CRV.”

  “Great,” Paul cut in, “we come all this way to get wiped out by a bug in some piece of computer cod
e! I—” Paul’s tirade was interrupted by a direct lightning strike on the CRV! The entire electrical system shut down with the overload and the deafening thunderclap left them all stunned in the dark for the moment. “Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?” Paul finally mustered.

  The men lay in their seats in total darkness with their ears ringing, accompanied with the hiss of rain, rumbles of thunder and continuous jostling of the CRV by the wind for company. A small moan escaped from Ivan as he reacted to the thunderclap, but it was not enough to pull him out of his unconscious state. The lightning bolt had vaporized the port side support anchor for the cables to the drogue chute, causing the CRV to suddenly list to port. Nicholas felt the ship leaning to the left, but before he could mention it to Paul and Alexander a series of mechanical clicks echoed from deep inside the control panel and the cabin lights flickered on.

  “We have lights!” Nicholas shouted.

  “What about the computer?” Alexander asked. “Lights, we can do without. The computer is a little bit more important.”

  “The display is blank—wait…No, it is showing something…it looks like it is rebooting,” said Nicholas.

  “That sounds like some good news,” Paul said, wiping the sweat from his eyes on his sleeve.

  “Yes, it is rebooting. Let us hope it knows what it should be doing now.”

  Nicholas held his breath as he watched the display flash words and numbers that were meaningless to him. He was not sure whether the computer was rebooting at all or just randomly writing characters to the display. He let his breath out when the altimeter readout appeared and indicated numbers that seemed to make sense to what his body was telling him. As Nicholas was about to pass the good news on to Paul and Alexander, they were all startled by a loud bang that seemed to come from the left side of the CRV. It was more mechanical and less explosive, than the blast of noise they had heard with the lightening strike.

  “What the hell was that?” Paul shouted. He was beginning to think that they would never make it down in one piece, and his hopes of seeing Celia began to fade.

  “It sounded like it was on the port side,” Alexander offered.

  BANG! The sound came again jarring them once more.

  “I know it came from the port side, but what is it? Are we coming apart?” Paul asked, his voice growing more frantic.

  Nicholas answered, “I don’t think we are breaking up, but I wonder if the drogue chute is coming apart. Can you feel the ship tilting to port?”

  Paul and Alexander stopped talking for a moment to let their inner ear give them guidance as to the orientation of the ship. Alexander acknowledged that he could feel the CRV listing to the port side, but Paul was not sure if he could feel it. The sensation he was feeling right now could be as much from the power of suggestion as it could be real. He couldn’t decide and it really didn’t matter what he felt. They were in deep trouble, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “I wonder if there is a cable from the drogue flopping around in the wind?” Alexander asked.

  BANG! BANG! The ship resonated with the impact from the cables, shattering tiles every time it struck the CRV.

  “Damn it! I wish it would stop that!” Paul shouted above the racket. As if to answer Paul’s request, the errant cables twisted in a wind shear the CRV was moving through and wrapped around the remaining cables supporting the CRV, pulling the chute closed like a purse. The CRV responded to the smaller, less effective chute, by dropping like a wounded goose.

  The three conscious men in the CRV yelped in unison as they felt the craft fall from beneath them. The seat harnesses cut into their shoulders and thighs as they were pulled down along with the ship. Nicholas strained to focus on the display hoping to see something encouraging, but all that he could make out was the altimeter rapidly counting down. Nineteen thousand…eighteen thousand…

  DROGUE JETTISON IN FIVE SECONDS…the display flashed.

  Nicholas blinked as he read the message again. It made no sense, they are falling and the drogue is going to be jettisoned! Maybe the computer is really damaged, he thought. Before he could relay the message to the others, a loud thud emanated from the back of the CRV as the explosive bolts that held the drogue chute in place were blown apart setting it free.

  “The dro…” Nicholas paused as a new message flashed up on the display:

  PARAFOIL DEPLOYMENT IN THREE…TWO…ONE

  Another thud echoed through the tiny ship as the parafoil was ejected into the storm. The raging winds grabbed at the parafoil, quickly whisked it away from the CRV and began to pull it open. The crew felt a tug on the ship as the first stage of the parafoil opened. Over the next sixty seconds, they felt four more jolts, as the parafoil deployed to its full size. The storm clawed at the huge parafoil, but it, along with the CRV dangling below, had escaped the storm’s clutches. The ship had finally slid outside the grasp of the high velocity winds that were circulating in the center of the storm cell. The collapse and eventual release of the drogue chute gave the CRV the opportunity to slide through the wall of the storm cell into the calmer cloudbank surrounding it.

  “What the—”

  Paul was cut off by Nicholas excitedly announcing the deployment of the parafoil. “The parafoil is out! We are at about fifteen thousand, six hundred feet and our rate of descent is slowing. I think we are okay, considering what we just went through.”

  “That’s good news,” Paul replied, “just get us down on the ground…please.”

  “I will do what I can Paul, but I am afraid that most of it is up to the CRV and the laws of gravity. In fact, the ship is steering us back to our original heading. I just hope that we make dry land before we run out of altitude. I am not sure if this thing will float or sink.”

  “There you go again, cheer me up and then shoot me down! I believe that it will float until proven otherwise.”

  “I am with you, Paul,” Alexander added.

  “So what happened—” Paul cringed at another loud clap of thunder, “back there?”

  “I am not sure,” Nicholas answered. “I think maybe the drogue was damaged and we started to fall, which triggered the routine to deploy the parafoil. At least we have cleared the storm, for the moment anyway.”

  Paul lay back on his seat and tried to visualize just what they had gone through. He pictured the CRV floating in a black puffy cloud pierced with strokes of lightening and buffeted by ferocious winds. With that thought, he suddenly realized that the CRV was no longer being bounced and spun about, and the noise from the storm was getting quieter. He released the death grip he had on his seat, and after flexing his cramped hand a few times, used it to push his sweat-soaked hair off his forehead.

  “Alpha Rescue…Alpha Rescue…this is Bird’s Eye. The CRV is clear of the cell and is resuming its original heading. They are at angels…ten thousand…the cloud deck is eight thousand…you should be able to get a visual momentarily.”

  Jazzy switched on her mic. “Bird’s Eye…Alpha Rescue One…we copy…we’re looking sharp.”

  “I wonder if they are going to make it to the landing zone?” Andrew commented. He was not sure that the CRV would be anywhere near its projected flight path, having just passed through this monster storm. “Jazzy, see if Bird’s Eye can give us a heads-up on the CRV’s flight plan from here. It would be nice to know now if they are going to make it to dry land or not.”

  As Jasmine made the radio contact with the AWACS, Andrew finessed the large plane through the turbulent air, bringing it out of a steep banked turn and headed back toward the storm on the return leg of their patrol pattern. They were many miles from the edge of the super cell, but its effects were still being felt as the C130 bounced and rolled with the heavy winds. His hands gripped the yoke tighter as he struggled to combat a sudden crosswind that wanted to push the plane off course.

  He could feel the smoothness of the yoke where the plastic coating had been worn down to the metal revealing the age of the sturdy Hercules. He caught
himself wondering just how much longer they would be able to fly; if the dust clouds from the northern hemisphere would eventually find their way this far south. Thinking of the disaster brought to mind some friends he had made when he was in the United States on a cooperative training mission with the U.S. Air Force. He wondered if they had survived the impacts and how they were coping with the aftermath.

  He could feel himself being pulled into a whirlpool of despair and quickly pushed these thoughts out of his mind. No time for this now, he reminded himself, we have people here who need our help.

  Glancing up from the instruments, he quickly scanned out the windows hoping to see the strobe of the CRV, but only saw blackness punctuated with random strokes of lightening. He listened to the engines droning on and realized that with all of the plane’s years in service, and with all of the creaks and groans it spoke as it pushed through the turbulent air, he was still glad that he was on it and not on the CRV in this storm. Jazzy’s voice pulled him back to the task at hand, and he reprimanded himself for drifting off.

  “Bird’s Eye indicates that the CRV is still on course, and miraculously, still close enough to the flight plan to put down on the rocket range in Edinburgh!” she said. “Things could have been a lot worse coming through that storm. They were very lucky.”

  “Well, they’re not on the ground yet, so let’s not jinx them.” Andrew answered, being one prone to superstition.

  “Not me! I’ve got my fingers crossed till they’re on terra firma! By the way, Willie, what’s your estimated time for landing?”

  Willie’s voice echoed over the intercom. “I knew you were going to ask that. I am estimating another twenty minutes. That is, if they stay on the flight plan.”

  “Thanks, Willie. You can go back to sleep now,” Jazzy taunted.

  “What do you mean, go back to sleep? I haven’t woken up yet!” Willie quipped.

  “Alright, let’s get our eyeballs outside, and see if we can spot their ship again.” Andrew said. As they began to scan for the CRV, they heard Bird’s Eye trying to reestablish communications with it.