by Peter Damon
“Alexandria, Egypt,” Michael explained.
“Alright. It will take about a week to get it to the Clyde. I’ll have the added security all sorted by the time it arrives,” he promised. “Just ensure you don’t have any of the crew from the ARC set foot on the ship until it’s safely in our naval dockyard,” he stressed.
+++++++++++
Gary caught the phone just a moment after it rang, and grinned victoriously towards Cheryl who had also lunged for it, before putting it to his ear to give his name.
“Hello Mr Clarke,” Dan Braxted said as Cheryl pressed the speaker button on the phone.
“Hello Mr Braxted. How’s things?” Gary asked.
“Very good, thank you. Is Miss Hall with you?” he asked.
“She is,” she told him.
“I have some good news,” Dan told them. “We’ve taken your request all the way up to the White House, and we have authority to get rid of anything we wish,” he explained.
“Well that’s marvellous news,” Gary told him.
“Sure is. We’ve put an initial list together; just a couple of hundred items whose decaying orbits are either dangerously close to that of the International Space Station, or close to expensive communication satellites.
“I’ve put the details in an email to you both, but in addition to that, we’ve been authorised to have the Haystack and HAX radars in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, provide you with any further details you may need. If you time your capture right, then they can track your vehicle as it approaches the junk and confirm a correct match,” he pointed out. “I’ve put their number in the email.”
“Great!” Gary proclaimed. “We’ll start straight away.”
+++++++++++
Michael entered the lounge area on the first floor and waved acceptance to a small group who, seeing him, called for him to join them. He waved them off long enough to get himself a cup of tea, then strolled over to nod at the group that was predominately made up of gypsies who were smiling and laughing, clearly pleased with the latest news regarding junk.
“You’re going to be busy soon, I hear,” he said, looking about him. For the first time in many days he was seeing them without their spacesuits on, and was then able to see their shaved heads. Frankie, he knew, had shaved his head shortly after getting into space, but now the others had taken up the style, including the long-legged Maddy.
More startling, half a dozen of them, Frank and Maddy included, had a pattern of lines tattooed across their shaven skulls.
“Good news, eh?” Maddy said, the lines, all of different lengths and thicknesses, moving slightly with the movement of her brow.
Michael nodded and looked towards Frank, seated beside Juliet Rogers. “What’s with the tattoos?” he asked out of interest. “Some sort of Romany glyph?” He wondered out loud.
Frank looked both surprised and shocked for a moment, then burst out laughing, shaking his head while the others of his family smiled.
“Something I said?” Michael asked.
“You really know nothing of English Travellers, do you?” Frank asked.
“Frank, I was a journalist for ten years. Of course I know nothing of English Travellers. So why the tattoos?” he asked.
Maddy swept her hands back, over her tattoos and explained. “The ink is metallic and has been prepared in some way,” she told him. “It reacts slightly when close to other metallic or electronic bodies.”
Frank nodded. “In an environment where we can’t use hearing to know when someone, or something is coming up behind us, this,” and he tapped his head, “is perfect.”
“Each individual line reacts differently. The less ink, the bigger the item has to be to get a reaction,” Maddy explained
“And its location on your head gives you direction,” Michael calculated. He nodded, impressed. “Why the different patterns?”
Frank shrugged. “Their direction helps us ‘feel’ in which direction they’re moving. No one has ever done this before, so no one knows what’s best, but if we do it right, we should also ‘feel’ if the item is moving towards or away from us,” he explained.
“And does it work?” Michael asked.
“Not so far,” Frankie admitted with a sigh, his expression shared by Madeleine. For a moment Michael was struck by the similarity in their faces, but it departed with their frowns as each of them turned to those near them to continue other conversations.
+++++++++++
Heather was surprised by how much she missed blue sky and clouds. She slowed the Range Rover’s descent to admire how bright the sky was, and how well defined each cloud. She took a delight in diving through each one, until the emerging ground patterns attracted and held her attention.
Cambridge had begun below her, but as she descended it moved slightly west, her path taking her toward the airport, dropping directly onto the south eastern corner of the perimeter road and off to one side of the flight path for the light aircraft, the main users of the airport.
On the other side of the runway, she could see the continuing development of their ground-based reception area, with scaffolding obscuring the eastern side as the out-dated façade was replaced with something more suitable.
She turned off the ‘space’ controls to return the car to its original purpose, and pressed the button to lower the electric window, the glass three times as thick as its original. She then drove slowly towards the exit where a security gate should sense the car and open to allow her out, onto the main road.
As she approached the gate she noticed a small group of men in overalls. Because they all wore the same overalls, she thought they were maintenance men, either doing work on the secure gate, or perhaps just gardeners making sure the grass was cut. If she thought it strange that all of them were oriental, she did so only after the event.
As she drew nearer to the barrier, one of the men held up his hand and moved towards her. For a moment she thought he wanted to ask her a question, but then his arm was inside the car through the open window. It swept round, his elbow banging her head as the owner of it reached down to open the door. He then reached up to grab for her, pulling her off her seat.
Heather gasped with the pain, even as she was aware of the others running forward, most looking strangely nervous and worried for a group who were clearly out to harm her.
She blindly pressed the button to close the window and fended off one carelessly aimed blow, only to cry out as another took her on the side of the head. Then she was falling and her hands flew out to protect her as she dropped to the road beside the car.
“No!” she screamed, kicking out blindly as she tried to stop them getting into the Range Rover.
The front door was closing on her foot and she screamed in pain, doubling up in agony as the door released her foot, then slammed shut.
“Bastards!” she cried, her anger overcoming her pain, and she flung her feet out to kick against the side of the door, before she realised that the vehicle just stood there, unmoving. The Asian man behind the wheel was looking about him as he tried to fathom out how to start it, clearly agitated and growing more so with each passing second. They were shouting at each other, but Heather could only see their mouths move, hearing nothing through the seal of the closed doors.
Heather stood, wincing as her left foot complained when she put any weight on it. Now the three in the back were trying to get out, but the doors were locked. She noticed one trying to lower his window, without success. In moments she could hear the wail of a police siren, and the certain knowledge that it was coming for her made her smile.
“You’re under arrest!” she told them, ignoring the little voice inside of her that told her they wouldn’t hear her. The satisfaction it gave her far outweighed such small and inconsequential inconveniences.
+++++++++++++
Gary dropped the SUV directly onto the patch of grass just beside the main entrance to Addenbrooke’s hospital to let Michael out, then lifted straight away to return to the ARC where
everyone was on alert, just in case the attack on Heather was to be part of a larger attack that would involve the ARC too.
Meanwhile, Michael sprinted in to find three security personnel in the lobby, one talking into his mike while the other two watched him with unblinking eyes.
“Heather?” he asked of anyone.
“This way, Sir,” said the man with the mike, and he was pushed into a lift and the second floor button pressed for him.
Stan was outside the lift doors when they opened, smiling comfortingly and reaching out to guide him towards Heather’s private room. There were armed police personnel in the corridor, their MP7-SF submachine gun singling them out as Ministry of Defence staff, and not normal armed police personnel.
“She’s alright. Her foot took a bang from the car door, but it’s just bruised and swollen and will be fine in a few days,” he quickly explained.
“Thank God!” Michael gasped, and saw Heather sitting up in bed and laughing with one of the nurses as they finished bandaging her foot. “Heather!” he cried, and rushed over to hug her.
“Ouch! Easy Michael. I’ve got bruises all over, no idea why,” she complained, hugging him nonetheless.
“But you’re alright?” he asked her.
“Sure. The doctor said he’d be coming back as soon as you were here, save him repeating it all, but that there was nothing to fuss over,” she told him.
“What happened?” he asked.
Heather shrugged. “Five Chinese-looking men were waiting for me at the perimeter gate. They dragged me from the car and tried to get away in it, only of course they couldn’t.” she related. Leanne and Allan had used the latest security techniques when the vehicles had first been assembled, and they wouldn’t work unless the tablets authorised to use the vehicles were inside it.
The doctor arrived and gave them all an assured smile. “Nothing to worry about, just the odd scrape, bruise and bump,” he confirmed. “Keep your weight off that foot for a couple of days, then you’ll be fine,” he explained. “If I can just have a moment of privacy with the patient,” he requested, opening the door to herd them out into the hall.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Michael sighed, leaning up against the far wall and looking towards the ceiling, his mind already turning to the repercussions of the event. Oliver would no doubt make much of it, if only to get it in front of the many editors who were quietly growing tired of him. He’d have a chat with Oliver to help make sure the right message got across. They were a small band of pioneers beleaguered by forces whose methods gave some hint as to what they’d do with HYPORT were they to gain access to it.
The door opened and Heather called out to him, the smiling face of the doctor putting his momentary concern to sleep.
“What is it?” he asked, stepping into the room to see Heather timidly smiling, moist eyes examining his face with just a hint of nervousness. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she told him, and broke into a sob, at odds with her growing smile. “I’m pregnant!” she cried.
+++++++++++++++
Michael left Heather on the phone talking to each of the crew on the ARC, one after the other, and went off to find himself a decent cup of tea, by chance also finding Stan in the second floor cafeteria, his stoop even more pronounced as he sat gazing into his half drunk cup of tea.
“Do we know why your security blanket didn’t work?” he asked, bringing over a fresh cup of tea and taking a seat at the cafeteria table facing the British Intelligence man.
Stan gratefully acknowledged the fresh tea and sighed. “Because all the attackers are long-time and model citizens of Cambridge,” Stan explained. “They were all born and bred in Cambridge. Take Robert Hwang for example, the man who tried to drive the Range Rover. His family have lived in Cambridge since the 1920s. The family own three Chinese Restaurants in town. But he has relatives in China, and he received a letter over a month ago telling him what to do, warning him what would happen if he didn’t.”
“They couldn’t have known Heather would be there that long ago,” Michael shook his head.
“It was all done on chance. They knew we were using that perimeter road to land on, so they were told to go there every day for one week and steal any vehicle that landed. Their bosses didn’t care which,” Stan explained.
“So what do we do now?”
Stan shrugged and sighed. “We will employ more security measures at the airport to begin with. Then the British Government will have words with the Chinese ambassador and they’ll quieten down a bit. Meanwhile, I shall obtain more Chinese informants, so we have a better chance of being alerted before they try something like this again.”
“Which is doubtful,” Michael pointed out. You only repeated successful game plays. The unsuccessful ones you learnt from, and moved on.
“True, but look at it from their point of view; if something this simple didn’t work, what will?” he asked.
“Well, I think we can do more than that. I’ll have a chat with Oliver, see what we can put together as a press release,” he told Stan.
Stan nodded. “We have another problem, potentially more serious,” he murmured.
Michael waited, conscious of a male nurse walking past on his way to an empty table beside the long window.
“Pictures of Syrian and Nato ground movements have been offered to a number of media groups. They brought them to the attention of the Commander in Chief, who brought it to the attention of the Prime Minister, who sought the advice of Sir Arthur.”
“And you think these images came from the ARC?” Michael asked.
“We don’t know,” Stan admitted with a shrug. “We don’t know where they came from. Media groups must inform Nato if they receive any information regarding Turkey and Syria that doesn’t come from their respective governments, Nato or United Nations, but they don’t have to divulge their sources.”
“But you think it came from the ARC,” Michael pressed.
“I think some bright spark on the ARC has a hand in it, either using ARC resources, or somehow breaking in to one of the many ‘dark’ satellites that continually monitor that area of the planet.”
“OK. I’ll ask around,” Michael agreed.
“Quietly,” Stan stressed. “If it is the ARC, then you don’t want any of us knowing it, me included,” Stan emphasised.
They returned to Heather’s hospital room with a cup of tea for her too, and Stan shared another piece of information with them both.
“We reduced the long list of applicants for places on the ARC. After telling the selected few, and the chosen professors, that they had been short-listed to go onto the ARC, six of them made a very poor career decision and told someone they should not have,” he explained.
Michael and Heather looked towards one another worriedly.
“It’s all right. We’ve been following the communication trails to see where it leads us, and those six are not going to make it onto the bus!” he assured them.
“Russians, or Americans?” Heather asked.
“Both. Also Indian,” Stan told them. “We’ve been giving them false details regarding what they should plan for while on the ARC, and it’s been exceedingly interesting to see where such titbits come to light again. You could almost say that we in the secret services are delighted,” he smiled.
August 11th.
For all the modifications Matt and Frankie had made to the vehicle, there was no escaping the fact that it had not long before been a garbage truck. It lacked wheels and the windows of the cab were now steel, but the cab was intrinsically the same, as was the big container on the rear and the back panel that held a large steel scoop to help compact the garbage and make room for more.
Matt brought out the bedraggled teddy bear he had originally bought for Heather, and attached it to the front grill while those still in the garage adjoining the docking bay made comments about his abilities as a garbage collector.
He gave as good as he got and climbed into the ca
b with the other four members of the team, adjusting his shoulders until the backpack felt comfortable before strapping himself in, then turning on his instruments.
Frankie was already green, his fingers tapping for information from the various systems, manually verifying what Allan’s programs had already confirmed. He looked about him to confirm the others were comfortable, and pressed the app to seal the cab.
Outside, the audience was dwindling as they exited the garage, and when the last had gone, the siren blew and the warning lights rotated before the air was expelled and the garage doors opened onto the docking bay.
The main doors to the rear of the bay were already open, with space beyond inviting them to leave and go to work. Stars were sharp in the blackness, urging them to go and visit them while the moon hovered just above the massive ball of the earth, plain and grey compared to her large mother.
“You’re all green,” one of the twins told them from the control-room, their voices indistinguishable from one another.
“Thank you,” Frankie murmured as he brought Allan’s flight app up on the screen. “Everyone ready?” he asked.
There was a chorus of agreement and Frankie tapped the icon. As with the previous trip to the Moon, the small orb hanging in the distance started to rapidly swell while the earth, one moment a large sphere on their starboard side, quickly fell behind them, more and more of its overall geography appearing as the craft rapidly moved away from its close embrace.
“That’s something,” Jerry said from the back, entranced by the images on the multiple screens.
Matt agreed and wondered if he’d ever get used to seeing planets and moons grow close so quickly. “If you think this is fast, wait till you start heading out to places like the Asteroid Belt,” he told them. “Then you’ll be seriously fast!” he chuckled.
“We will be going then, will we Matt?” Jerry asked.
“Why? Do you want to go then, Jerry?” Frankie asked, swivelling slightly to look at the man in the back.
