by Peter Damon
Frankie nodded, looking at it and wondering how they were going to stop its spin without damaging it. Lisa Hart had been adamant; she wanted no further damage to it.
“Frank?” Michael called, his voice loud in his ear-piece.
“Yes Michael?” Frank answered, still watching the remains of the ISS spiral through space, the earth a big brown, white and blue ball behind it, in this case, intimidating them with its size.
“Forget about picking up the space station,” he said. “The US has just placed a restraining order on us. We’re no longer permitted to capture or hold any items of the International Space Station,” he told them, his tone reflecting his resentment.
+++++++++++++
On the side of the Clyde, in the protection of a secured dry dock, stood a vessel that could still be called a ferry, but could no longer be called sea-going. Its keel had changed shape in order to flatten its underside, and it no longer had a prow. The large doors had been altered to create an air tight seal when closed. At its rear there were no rudders, nor propellers. The promenade decks had gone, now shrouded beneath steel, and there were no portholes. What had once been the bridge, spanning the width of the ship was now an observatory, while the true control room nestled amid-ships, at the heart of the new vessel.
Members of the ARC had gathered in the control-room as they heard rumours, and a large monitor that filled the farthest wall was showing a news channel that was repeating the latest news concerning the loss of the International Space Station.
In stunned silence, the team watched Paddy give his speech, and then answer just enough questions to accuse both Frankie and Michael of murder.
“I’d like five minutes with that little weasel,” Leanne murmured, her hands clenched for battle.
“What do you think will happen next?” the twins asked.
Allan shrugged. “Michael is certainly going to be put in custody. As for Frankie, I’m not sure. Someone is pulling Paddy’s strings, that’s for sure. My guess is, whoever it is, they’re more interested in Michael than in Frankie.”
The twins looked towards each other, their shared concern etched deep into their single but doubled expression.
Whatever it is, we can’t let it stop us,” Cheryl said, getting up from one of the control desks to glare at the others. “We’ve been through this before; people attacking our team. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, we don’t know what will happen. But we kept on and did our jobs. It got us through. And that’s what we need to do now too,” she told them.
The twins nodded and headed away to continue their work, and Leanne nodded to herself as she picked up her small electric screwdriver to wander off on her own work.
Allan smiled and, going across to Cheryl, bent to kiss her gently on the cheek before he strolled away towards his small office and his computer.
Cheryl took a deep breath and tried believing in what she had just told the others.
+++++++++++++
Heather answered the incoming call, wondering which of the possible reasons for the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police to call her would be the true reason.
“Hello Heather,” Ken Birch told her, appearing a little awkward.
“Ken,” Heather answered with an element of cautiousness, wondering why she was suddenly on first name terms with the head of Cambridge Constabulary. Whatever the reasons, she doubted any would be friendly or positive.
“We need you to come down here so we can send a couple of officers back with you,” he told her.
“Sure,” she told him. They’d done this before, when they had needed to arrest the Reverend Martin Giles. “Who do you plan to arrest this time?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light and jocular.
He sighed and searched her face. “Michael Bennett,” he told her.
“Michael?” she gasped. “You’re joking, right?” she tried to laugh it off.
“Heather, we have no choice,” he told her. “There is a European warrant for his arrest on charges of terrorism and murder. We have to comply.”
Heather reached into her hair to pull at it, the pain diverting her thoughts from what was being asked of her.
“Heather. Refuse this, and the whole college, the whole project, the ship, everything. It all comes to an end,” he warned her.
Heather took a breath and tried to think. And on the screen, Ken Birch watched her and waited.
“I’ve got a compromise,” she told him, the idea growing in her head, lighting up and making her smile.
+++++++++++++
“You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?” Michael accused his fiancée as she led him down the corridor and into one of the meeting rooms that stood between the rear dock and garages, and the control-room and the rest of the ship. The table and chairs had been removed and a narrow cot erected in the corner. A chemical toilet sat in another corner.
“This is far better than you going into a cell on earth, or have you forgotten what it was like?” she asked of him.
“No, I remember.”
She kissed him deeply, gave him the flask holding at least three cups of tea, and softly closed the door behind her.
Michael sighed, wishing he’d thought to ask for a book of crossword puzzles. “You know this will delay our wedding?” he cautioned loudly.
There was no response through the thick door, and silence settled within the room. Michael would have liked to concentrate on just one thing and ignore the others, but the sheer volume of issues weighing down upon him would not allow him any peace. He was running full pelt from one problem to another, suffering the glee with which the tabloids were ridiculing the spacemen and their exploits, to the accusations of sabotage and murder. There seemed to be no let-up in the earth’s wish to bring the ARC down, figuratively as well as physically, and Michael just couldn’t find a way to reverse the trend.
He put an arm over his eyes and tried to concentrate on just one problem at a time.
September 13th.
The SUV, painted black but for the three large white letters rising across its bonnet and cabin, slid into the atmosphere as sharply and quickly as it was able, the growing volume of air buffeting the vehicle, hardly designed for racing through the air at over the speed of sound.
Frankie grinned, ignoring the buffeting the vehicle was suffering as his descent took him directly towards Washington DC, a move designed to get the USA into immediate defence mode.
“US Air Force has just been put on alert,” Leanne told him.
Sitting in the control-room of the ARC, Leanne was monitoring their communication, a Key-Word filter bringing particular traffic to her attention. “You have three F16-Eagles heading your way,” she warned him just minutes later. She smiled too; other US air defences were having trouble finding the SUV. It had no thermal image on which to lock a target. RADAR was also having difficulty. The SUV would be there one moment, and somewhere else the next, as if it were capable of transmitting an echo of itself from other objects, like clouds and other aircraft.
Frankie spread his own RADAR imagery across one of his screens and picked out the three aircraft as they raced in to intercept him. His grin grew manic as he turned the wheel, changing direction on a pinhead while doing over 900 kilometres an hour. Nothing could change direction that quickly. Nothing but an SUV using HYCOMP to neutralise the effects of inertia.
He shot past the oncoming group of jets, laughing as all three pilots yelled their surprise.
More was in store. With no inertia, the SUV could change direction almost immediately without harm to itself, or its occupants. Frankie proved this by turning the SUV to follow the three American forces aircraft.
The Americans were anticipating a turning circle of at least thirty kilometres, so were shocked into yelling as they saw the SUV move immediately onto their tails.
“This is so easy,” Frankie crowed, leaving the channel open to allow anyone who cared to listen, to do just that.
He could have made it easier and selected one of the ic
on that represented the F16-Eagles, told the SUV to go to it, less a particular distance, and the SUV would have tracked the F16 with no problem. But Frankie was enjoying himself using the manual controls.
The American jets opened their throttles to move away from him, and Frankie responded by invoking Leanne’s own version of a weapon fixing software to have the Americans think they had just been locked-on and targeted.
The three American pilots swerved away from each other. And while Frankie could only follow one, which he did extremely closely, the target fix remained on all three aircraft, keeping them dodging back and forth in an effort to lose their fix, pilots screaming down at their Control at their inability to escape the RADAR lock, nor do anything positive to the elusive SUV.
While Frankie played with the US Air Force, Heather sat in the relative tranquillity of the control-room meeting room dialling the phone number Glen had provided her with. She waited patiently in her seat, smiling pleasantly towards the live video camera while the woman at the other end made her decision and answered the call.
The screen woke and the President of the United States peered at her from over her reading glasses, her face appearing calm, even if her sharp blue eyes shone with hostility.
“What are you doing?” the President asked.
“I’m making a point,” Heather told her. “There is a technology out there that can undermine the defences of every nation on earth, including yours. It can run circles around the very best, any time it chooses to. Thankfully, that technology is not in the hands of anyone who would do such a thing. Currently, it’s in the hands of a bunch of students who’d like nothing more than to go further and further out into space, and a bunch of Travellers who want to become spacemen and the iconic model for every boy and girl for generations to come.
“If you want to change that, if you want to go to bed every night seriously worried about who might have it, and what they might do with it, then just continue to play the game you’re playing.”
“Are you threatening me?” the President asked.
Heather shrugged. “I am giving you the facts. The Rolle College is about to fall in on itself. The secret of how we move, how we defy gravity so easily, will get into the hands of others shortly after. And if we fall, then I will personally ensure that the USA is the last nation to get any of the pickings.”
“I see,” the President murmured, the hostility back behind her eyes.
“I hope that you do, Madam President. We need allies, and we thought our offer to take you to Mars was a building block towards that. The next building block must come from you, otherwise our house is not so much going to be destroyed, as totally obliterated.”
Heather closed the call and nodded towards Leanne in the other room. Leanne smiled and spoke to Frankie. “Alright Frank. One low pass over the White House please, then return to the ARC,” she told them.
Frankie did that, circling over the building, practically landing on its roof to make sure those watching from the railings would get good photographs for the press, and then shot into the air to race towards space, bonnet shaking with the buffeting of air pressure against it as they broke the sound barrier.
+++++++++++++
The fading of the sonic boom left a silence in the Oval Office, the type where a pin would have been heard were one to drop, the type no one wanted to be the first to break.
Despite the number of people in the office, the people the president really wanted were not there. Top of the list was Brad Hawker, her Chief of Staff. “Get Brad for me,” she told the room. “I don’t care what he’s doing, or where he is,” she told them, seeing one or two about to make his excuses. “I want him here, and I want him now!” she demanded.
+++++++++++++
“What is it about tea and incarceration?” Michael asked, tasting the first cup from a fresh thermos and screwing up his face in distaste. “Did you make this on purpose, to make sure I would feel appropriately penitent?”
“Sorry. I was busy. I had other things on my mind,” Heather told him, seated beside him on the cot and looking worriedly towards her lover.
Michael tried another mouthful and grimaced. “Well, it’s passable,” he allowed. “What’s happening out there?” he asked.
“Sorry, I can’t tell you,” she told him.
“Heather!” he cried.
“Here,” she said, and passed him a book of crossword puzzles. “Frank got it for you the last time he was down there,” she explained.
“Thank you,” he muttered. “It’s American,” he noticed. He had a dislike of American crosswords. In his experience they tended to use both American and English spelling, changing whenever it suited them to.
“I love you,” she told him, kissing him fiercely, and marched resolutely out of the room.
“I need a pencil!” he screamed at the four walls, and sat there watching them close in upon him.
September 14th.
Jake turned over in a half drowsy state and reached out towards his partner, coming awake as he realised he was on his own.
Eyes open and surveying the long length of featureless sheet in front of him, he listened for Matt and heard nothing.
Jake jumped up with the thought that Matt may have left his tablet behind and rushed into the open-plan common area, grinning as he saw the beaten up tablet sitting on the round table, just where Matt so often left it when travelling about with the gypsies.
Unsure of how long he would have, Jake hurriedly bent over the tablet to tap in Matt’s password before accessing the spy-satellite’s systems and view the current image from the ground.
All seemed quiet, too quiet. He looked for tanks or other armoured vehicles and found nothing. He swore under his breath and wondered where they would have gone. Matt might return at any moment, or be away for hours, but he had to find where the fighting was taking place in order to record it.
His heart racing, Jake used both hands to draw the image back to view the surrounding area, then dragged it east and west along the border between Turkey and Syria, checking each village and town while the dangers of Matt’s untimely return blew claxons in his brain.
“Jake,” Matt murmured, but the sound was like a bullet shot to Jake, who jerked upwards and spun, his genitals shrinking into his loins as he saw Matt watching him from across the room, leaning against the wall that had hidden him.
“Matt! I was wondering where you were. I was using your RFID to find you,” Jake told him, trying to grin and laugh while fingers yearned to touch the screen and force it closed.
“Is that what the log is going to find?” Matt asked.
Jake bit his lip and blinked back hot tears. “You’ve got to help me Matt. Nato and Syria are as bad as each other. Someone has to stand up and show the world what a farce the whole thing is. That’s what we’re here for. No one else can do it. We have to!” he cried.
Matt also had tears in his eyes as he came forward and retrieved his tablet. “I’ll pick up my other stuff later,” he murmured.
“No Matt. Don’t do this, please,” Jake gasped. “Help me Matt, please,” He begged.
+++++++++++++
Kevin Law sat in their designated laboratory and turned the digital model of the damaged ISS module on the screen. Lisa Hart stood by his side, watching him rotate the mathematical model, built upon the details gathered by his Laser Mapping conducted three days previously. Jon looked on from the other side, only mildly interested.
“That’s very impressive for such a short time. How did you get it done so quickly,” she asked, admiring the image. “Allan been helping you?” she wondered.
The Laser Mapping had created a detailed framework on which the photographs he had taken could be over-laid, the software making adjustments for visuals that could be turned off to enable detailed forensic analysis off un-altered photographic images if it were needed.
Kevin shook his head. “Allan’s got his hands full doing some work for the college down on earth, no-one is meant
to know anything about it,” he told her.
“Glasgow,” the three of them chorused, and laughed.
“No, this was Tony Wood and Peter Bridge. Between the two of them, they had it mapped in just hours,” he confessed.
“And?” Lisa asked.
Kevin pressed a key to have the image of the two broken halves of the module resolve the break around its circumference, the surface returning to an unbroken, undamaged cylinder but for the hole created earlier by the initial explosion.
“That’s very good,” Lisa murmured, leaning in, towards the screen.
Kevin then used his fingers to enlarge and turn the image until the hole was towards them, details of the hole beginning to stand out, no longer lost by the tear that had ripped the module in two.
“Is this a true representation?” Lisa asked, pointing to one particular point where the surface appeared bent outwards.
Kevin pressed a key before touching the area she referred to, and the monitor revealed the three photographs on which it had created the image. The result was far less apparent on the photographs, and why the telling direction of bent metal had not been noted originally. But now that their attention had been drawn to it, they could see it quite clearly and nodded.
“That’s not caused by air pressure,” Kevin told her, pointing towards one of the photographs.
“So, internal explosion,” Lisa nodded, continuing to analyse the visual clues on the photographs.
“Oh yes,” Kevin nodded. “We might be able to calculate an angle of strike too, although there’s not a lot to go on,” he admitted.
“Do we have any chemical analysis?”
“Not yet,” Jon admitted. “I’ve been busy with all the swabs and stuff I’ve taken from that SUV, but now we know it’s a third party, I’ll do the analysis of that part of the module and see if we can determine cause,” he agreed. “By the by, have you photographs of the inner surface?” he asked. “I don’t see any there,” he nodded towards the screen.
“We only loaded the external images,” Kevin explained.
