THE CAMBRIDGE ANNEX: THE TRILOGY

by Peter Damon

  Freedom One was silhouetted by Saturn, and Saturn filled the screen, an image that was pin-sharp having 50 million pixels in it.

  There was not a sound or movement within the hall, and yet Glen could feel the change in the room. “I was there,” he said into the thick silence.

  Another tap of his tablet, and the image was from the surface of an asteroid, Jupiter in the background, a drilling team and equipment in the foreground, their SUV just beyond them. Arc lights lit the miners with a cold, bright light. “I was there,” he nodded.

  Another tap, another iconic image from Freedom One’s exploits in the Asteroid Belt. They were mundane images as far as Freedom One was concerned, images of day-to-day life on board the ship as they went about their jobs, or relaxed, or played. He had been there, and his images had the 100 men and women in front of him enraptured.

  “And I’m here to tell you,” he said, leaving an image of Frankie up on the screen, laughing with Juliet in the lounge as they relaxed just after sending the second asteroid towards earth, “America may rate you the best, but from a spaceman’s perspective, you’re babes, novices, ignorant in even the basics of space-living.”

  Frankie’s image seemed to nod in agreement. He was tall and lean, his upper body hardened by work and exercise, his physique visible in the skin-tight suit he wore. His laughter, his demeanour, told the audience he was proud of who he was and what he had done. Glen hadn’t realised it when he had prepared his speech, but he could have used just that one image, and he would have had his audience in the palm of his hand.

  “Because you’re not here to become astronauts,” he continued, “making the odd trip into space to then return home; you’re here to become spacemen, learning to live in outer-space, begrudging the time when you have to visit earth, only feeling at home when you can wake up and look outside at a planet or moon, only happy when you’re working in outer-space, repairing satellites, or cleaning up the mess your forefathers created and left behind.

  “You think you’re good because some of you have spent a few hours in space, orbiting earth? My daughter has spent longer in space on one uninterrupted program than any US astronaut in the history of space-flight,” he pointed out. “My wife has gone further from earth than any American astronaut in the history of space-flight,” he told them. “My daughter has spent longer walking in space, than any American in the history of space-flight,” and he showed a picture of her in outer-space, working with one of the small satellites while, in the background and probably missed by many of those in the audience, the earth was a very small sphere, little more than a star. “And they’ve gone faster than any American, any human, ever.” he concluded.

  He watched them, gauging them and letting them weigh themselves against a 14 year-old child.

  “If you want to become true spacemen, then you’re going to be measured against the standards that the Freedom One spacemen have set. There will be a new regime here at the Edwards base, and you will follow it willingly, or get out of the way for someone who will,” he told them, and brought up the first slide to show them the beginning of his list of requirements.

  “No more alcohol, no more non-prescription drugs, no more smoking,” he told them, beginning to tick them off. It would take the rest of the hour; it was a long list.

  +++++++++++++

  Brendan piloted the SUV slowly towards the side of the large space-station module, one of the SUVs spotlights illuminating the large and empty hanger space that would be the docking bay once power, lighting and air were provided. For the moment, it only had gravity, a gravity they had yet to feel, cocooned as they were in the SUVs own gravity field.

  “A bit big, isn’t it?” Allan murmured, craning his head to look at the high ceiling.

  “We anticipated a lot of movement, and from a lot of possibly strange vehicles,” Tony told him. “This will do,” he told Brendan, reaching for his facemask.

  The others donned their masks too, and once the heads-up display confirmed they were safe, the air was exhausted from the cabin and the doors unlocked.

  Allan saw the others turn their torches on and did the same to his own before following them to the inner wall of the huge docking area, where a passage led into the depths of the module.

  “You could get lost in here,” he reflected, looking about him.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Tony told him, opening a door to begin climbing a set of emergency stairs, everything pitch black but for the circles of light from their torches.

  “I’m remembering Alien,” Allan said.

  “The film?” Tony asked, checking the stencilled level number on the wall before taking a door to another passage.

  “I think it was 2, or 3,” Allan said, thinking himself a fool for turning, just to check nothing was following him.

  “It sure looks different, pitch black,” Tony confessed, stopping for a moment to get his bearings. He then moved forward again, stopping confidently beside double doors to open them and step in.

  Allan followed him to find the room they had stepped into was already lit with a soft but eerie glow. It emanated from the large oval table-top that dominated the large room.

  Tony moved towards it and Allan followed, his excitement building as he recognised it as the control-centre for the space-station.

  “One for each module?” Allan asked as Tony drilled down to begin providing power.

  “No. But for a backup unit that can be placed anywhere, this is the only one,” he explained.

  “How long does it take to add the new feeds?” Allan asked.

  Tony shook his head. “It doesn’t. No cables, all wireless,” he explained, continuing to tap.

  Lights came on, illuminating the large control-room. Then air arrived, softening the lighting, and the far wall seemed to flutter as the surface flickered, then turned a dark grey, waiting for a feed to be selected for viewing.

  Tony took off his mask and Allan followed suit, sniffing the air and grinning.

  “Ok, we have this room habitable,” Tony explained, “and the linking sensors are on,” he explained. “The second module needs to be within 2 metres of this module for the sensors to begin telling you their alignment. At that point, the link options will appear, allowing you to get everything aligned before invoking a full link.”

  Allan nodded, glancing across the screen. Tony had followed Allan’s basic principles when creating the new interface. The specific details of the modules were new to him, but the process of obtaining information, or being alerted to errors or malfunctions, was exactly the same.

  “Maddy?” he asked, keying his communications open.

  “We’re here,” she acknowledged.

  Allan opened a section of the table with radar and found her SUV seated atop the second module some 500 metres off the port side.

  “Slide it forward to stop 10 metres off our side please,” he asked.

  Tony went across to one of the smaller tables and brought a camera feed alive on the facing wall. It was too close to show the entire second module, but enough to show it begin to move towards them, coming closer and closer before, almost on top of the camera, stopping.

  “Nice one,” Allan told Maddy, licking his lips and calming his beating heart. “Now, nice and slow, bring it down to just 2 metres,” he begged.

  They waited, watching their screens waiting for the workings of the second module to appear on it.

  “Two metres,” Maddy told him.

  “A centimetre more, please,” he begged.

  “Yes!” he told her, the additional data lighting the board like a Christmas tree before settling down.

  Tony returned to his side to point out the various linking points and they invoked an app to check them, with various points showing red and yellow on his board.

  “The reds mean that the linking points are too far apart for the gravitational link to work. It’s very localised. So we need to use an SUV to nudge the module until red turns to yellow or green,” Tony explained.


  “Too much mass to use thrusters,” Allan nodded his understanding.

  “They would have had to be enormous,” Tony nodded.

  “Right then,” Allan grinned. “Maddy, I need you at the earth side, push downwards gently with your skids,” he begged.

  “You damage my skids and your name is going to be mud!” she warned him, remembering all the flack she, and Frankie before her, had given any spaceman who returned with bent or buckled skids.

  Allan waited pensively, calling out as the indicators at that end turned from red to yellow, green and to yellow again before holding steady.

  He had her push three more times against different parts of the module, until he and Tony were satisfied that the two modules were near enough to their respective anchor points for the final app to be pressed. Allan did so, and felt his breath expelled from him as the module around them juddered under the force of mating with the second module.

  “We don’t want to do that when the cooks are working,” he grinned, his table and the display on the facing wall all showing greens.

  “I’ll see what I can do to make that a tad smoother,” Tony promised, wincing for a moment before returning Allan’s grin.

  +++++++++++++

  “I’ve got another missile launch,” Sally cried on an open channel.

  “Russian?” Allan asked. The communication had caught him while walking back towards the SUV. He began to run along the passage.

  “Don’t know. It’s risen from the Atlantic. Might not even be for us, but it’s definitely heading into space,” she told him.

  “And you’re sure?” he asked.

  “Sure, I’m sure!” she told him, her voice rising an octave.

  “Don and the twins are on their way to the control-room,” Leanne interrupted.

  Allan chewed his lip for a moment. “Don’t wait. Launch our sling,” he told her.

  There was a moment’s silence, long enough for Tony and Allan to reach the SUV and climb into the back. The monitors came awake as they squirmed to dock their suits with the seating. “Launched,” Sally told them breathlessly, and not because she’d done any running.

  Allan dropped through the logic of the control software on the SUV monitors, looking for meaningful data, reading off the numbers. He was grateful to see that it appeared to be working the way they had anticipated.

  “Thomas, David and Don are here,” Leanne murmured.

  “David, Thomas; do the numbers look good to you?” Allan asked.

  “Shit!” Tony muttered beside him as Brendan made to return to Freedom One in the shortest time possible. Tony wasn’t used to seeing images of the surrounding area shrink so quickly.

  “They do,” one of them confirmed.

  “Michael’s here with Heather and Wez,” Leanne murmured.

  “ETA one minute,” Allan saw from his screen, grateful that they were still stationary above China. It gave them an extra couple of minutes before anything launched from western Asia or the Atlantic reached them.

  They reached Freedom One, Maddy’s SUV directly in front of them. Allan knew he wouldn’t make the control-room inside the half minute he had left, and stayed in the SUV, watching as many feeds as he could manage through the three monitors at his disposal.

  “Four, three, two, one,” Matt murmured across the open channel, always liking a count-down where one presented itself.

  For a moment the two dots on the radar merged together and were still. Then, as if lobbed by a slingshot, the missile flew off at a new angle, accelerated beyond its own capacity towards outer-space, propelled by a force too great for its limited directional thrusters to correct.

  “About now,” Allan murmured to himself, imagining the controllers of the missile coming to terms with its refusal to obey them and taking the decision to destroy it.

  “Sledgehammer invoked,” Leanne told him.

  Allan waited a few moments to see if the sudden increase of gravity had caused the warhead to ignite, relaxing after a couple of seconds, relieved that their response to missiles seemed to work. He got out of the SUV and walked to the control-room to find it full of crew, some showing relief, others grinning, hyped up with adrenaline. Leanne and Sally were at their tables, scouring earth for signs of more missile activity.

  “Russian silos are opening right across their area,” Sally told them, her fingers working to put the displays up on the far wall.

  “Are we certain that missile was Russian, or are they responding to a perceived threat?” he asked the room.

  “I recognised it. It was of Russian manufacture,” Pavel told him, looking apologetic.

  “The Sling is returning,” Matt advised.

  Allan nodded. “Heather; inform the Secretary General of the UN. Following a second attack on our property, we are making a controlled response, as published following the last attack.

  “Matt; use the Dustbin. Target all GEO satellites under the control of Russian organisations. Let me know when complete,” he told him, well aware of the stares from the others.

  “Oliver; inform Russia via the Moscow Times. They have acted violently towards us and we are making a controlled response. However, any further acts of violence towards us will be considered an act of war, and we will retaliate with everything at our disposal to ensure the threat is removed. Copy that to the United Nations.”

  He looked towards Michael, but Michael just nodded and turned to leave the room, following Heather back to their suite.

  November 30th.

  Despite the early hour, the president and her advisors looked fresh and alert, phones continually ringing as the leaders of the various states continued to talk to each other.

  The president finished one call, to take another, providing assurances that they were on the side of peace and there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be sorted out, without some discussion.

  She put the phone down and rubbed her brow, sighing with the effort of maintaining a neutral voice to the various heads of state in and around Russia.

  “Just what do they think they’re doing?” she asked, her eyes settling on Glen, only hours in Washington after returning from California.

  “Protecting themselves, Ma’am,” he told her with a shrug.

  “They should have gone to Britain, or the United Nations,” she told him.

  “I don’t know that they haven’t, Ma’am, but to have what done, exactly?” he asked.

  The president looked towards her Chief of Staff. “He’s got a point, Ma’am,” the woman told her. “In international disputes, companies are often stuck between a rock and a hard place. At best, the government takes over the negotiation and tells the corporations what will be,” she pointed out. “And it’s all down to what’s expedient for the nation, not for the company involved.”

  “Well, in this case, as the only outer-space trade agreement is between the US and Russia, Russia is saying that the spacemen are poaching on their territory, having been in space for longer,” the president told Glen, looking at him from over her glasses reproachfully. “Don’t tell me that this further serves their case for becoming an independent state.”

  “We’re on the verge of war, Ma’am,” Joanna stressed. “If the Russians think they can overwhelm the spacemen, say by using multiple missiles from multiple locations, and believe the rest of earth will not intercede, then they’ll do that. The risk is negligible, put against what they might gain by rushing up there immediately after their attack and recovering what they can of the wreckage.”

  “But they won’t do that if they see that the spacemen have allies; sufficient allies to make any of their activities or claims too costly,” Glen pointed out.

  “You’re trying to rush me,” the president accused, pushing back from the table.

  “The west coast is reporting a meteor shower, Ma’am,” an aide reported.

  “On the monitor,” the president requested, and watched the short flashes of light as falling satellites hit the upper atmosphere and rapid
ly burnt up. The beauty of the event was lost on her, all too aware of the cost of each of those satellites, and the horrendous impact their loss would have on Russia as a whole.

  “Ma’am?” Glen murmured, breaking into the president’s attention. “You’re aware that Australian mining concerns have made agreement with Freedom One for one of those asteroids?” he asked.

  “Of course I am,” she spat. The media were full of the story, with financial analysts predicting dire consequences for America as a result of not having won the sale themselves.

  “Clearly money was not the only thing traded, even if the details are being kept from the media,” he told her, watching her expression.

  “I don’t like being threatened, Mr Schroder,” she told him sharply.

  “They are not threatening you, Madam President; they are ignoring you, and will continue to do so until they see you as a possible ally.”

  The president scowled and looked across to her Chief of Staff.

  “At least tell the Russians to back off,” she urged. “Spreading contaminated wreckage across low earth orbit is not going to get them what they want,” Joanna suggested.

  The president nodded. “Put me through to the Russian President,” she told the room.

  +++++++++++++

  The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom looked completely different from his usual self, dressed in an old dressing gown and worn slippers, his hair still dishevelled. “This had better be good,” he told Sir Arthur, stepping into the formal sitting room at the back of number 10 in the early hours of the morning.

  “Is Russia at war serious enough for you?” Sir Arthur asked.

  “Not our concern. I’ve spoken to the Foreign Secretary and we are agreed on this,” he told his senior intelligence officer. “Can I have a pot of tea or coffee, someone?” he called.

  “But it is our concern, Prime Minister. If Britain ever wants to obtain a foothold in outer-space, then we need those people currently up there.”

  “They embarrassed me, Arthur,” Brian spat, his eyes suddenly ablaze. “That ruddy French president, whatever his name, is constantly reminding me of it!”