Crescendo Of Fire

by Marc Stiegler

  CRESCENDO OF FIRE

  THE BRAINTRUST BOOK TWO

  MARC STIEGLER

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  1. Fireworks

  2. Counting Down

  3. First Launch

  4. Endings and Beginnings

  5. Snatched

  6. Easy Cruising

  7. Complex Allies

  8. How to Build A Rocket at Home

  9. Fuxing Rising

  10. Radioactive

  11. Princelings of the Blood

  12. Jewel in the Sky

  Author's Notes

  Books by Marc Stiegler

  Connect

  CRESCENDO OF FIRE (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2018 Marc Stiegler

  Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact info@kurtherianbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US Edition, August 2018

  ISBN: 978-1-64202-038-0

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people contribute to make facts behind a story true; one person, the author, is responsible for all the errors. Special thanks go to the following people for helping me right some of the wrongs in this story: Katharine McEwan, who introduced me to Jack Ainsworth and Hart Baddeley; Terry Stanley, who lent her intelligence to the birth of Dark Alpha 42; and Judith Anderle, who made the girls resplendent.

  DEDICATION

  For Nancy

  A Crescendo Of Fire Team Includes

  JIT Beta Readers - My deepest gratitude!

  Dr. James Caplan

  Erika Everest

  John Ashmore

  Mary Morris

  Paul Westman

  If I missed anyone, please let me know!

  Fashion Consultant

  Judith Anderle

  Editor

  Lynne Stiegler

  FIREWORKS

  People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences.

  —Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, SuperFreakonomics

  The clear, peaceful sky made the perfect backdrop for a beautiful explosion. The Kestrel Heavy rocket—three skyscraper-tall white cylinders strapped together, poised to launch another habitat module—gleamed in the morning sun.

  The first explosions began so majestically. Huge fireballs from twenty-seven rocket engines appeared simultaneously below the craft, pushing it gracefully yet relentlessly upward. Controlled explosions these were, and all five of the people in the control room sighed with relief as she accelerated and began to tilt away to the south, over the ocean.

  Then a small warning light flickered on one of the boards in the control room. A shout went up. Everyone rushed to figure out what was wrong, what to do. Too late. The computer chip dynamically controlling the fuel and oxygen flow on the port booster compensated for a thrust fluctuation a moment too late. The consequent small imbalance caused a slight twisting, which accelerated the lengthening of a microscopic fracture in one of the couplers holding the booster to the core. An instability in the airflow around the rocket wrenched the fracture into a complete break. The booster deformed from the asymmetric forces now at play along its length. The deformity ruptured the methane tank to unleash the next inferno. The fire instantly transformed into a new explosion, quite uncontrolled, that ripped through the entirety of the first stage. The whole ship flared in a blast enough to make the sun look dim.

  Among the people watching from the crowds below silence reigned. Was this fireball intentional, somehow? Was it simply the separation of the second stage? Or had something terrible happened? Surely not.

  But one person in the crowd, an ancient gentleman so old he remembered the death of the Challenger space shuttle, knew what had happened. He pulled out his phone and called an old friend. "Colin. SpaceR just lost a ship launching from Vandenberg," he said. "They'll probably want to talk to you now. It'll probably take forty-eight hours or so, but they're going to be frantic when the fallout comes to earth. You'll be looking at a crash project, like nothing you've seen since the startup effort twenty years ago. But, why am I still talking? You already know what you should do."

  As he spoke, the first fallout was already making its impact felt. A helium bottle, whose contents normally regulated pressure flow from the LOX tank, hurtled free, intact and on a near optimal trajectory to fly as far as possible. Spinning on its axis with hardly a wobble, more a bullet than a tumbling piece of debris, it sailed into Los Angeles and plummeted straight into the cat's water bowl at 9080 Minerva Avenue.

  The perfection of the bull’s eye would have been remarked on by neighborhood residents under any circumstances. But as it happened the young cat, a tabby with orange blotches named Marmalade, was lapping up a drink at the time. While the helium tank did not explode, its effect as it struck Marmalade was indescribably horrific. The effect on the four year old owner of the excessively cute fluffball was almost as bad, as she recorded the historic water-drinking event on the vidcam of her cell phone.

  While she stood far enough from the event to avoid physical harm, the little girl ceased speaking. Within the hour, the parents had decided to enter her into therapy. Long before her first session however, her video went viral. Seventeen million views and three hours after the first round of explosions, the next series of explosions went off. These secondary blasts, political in nature, occurred in Sacramento, the capital of the Great Blue State of California.

  The Governor forced his drumming fingers to halt. A great opportunity had arisen here. Governors made their bones by leading forcefully in a crisis, getting out ahead of the media wave, guiding it to the desired conclusions. But risk lurked in these opportunities as well. He had this sinking feeling that it would be too easy, this time, to push too hard. He'd seen more than one golden goose killed in his beloved state. Worse, the memories of how GPlex and FB had responded when Federal Deportation Phase Two expelled all their immigrant engineers still sent shudders through the hierarchies of governmental power even now, decades later. The governor couldn't afford to lose any more multi-billion dollar businesses from his tax and employment base.

  However concerned the governor might be, his Attorney General couldn’t contain his glee. He'd been champing at the bit for years to take these money-grubbing rocketeers down, to harness them to the needs of the state. "We could never tax them as aggressively as we should have because the CEO was too damn popular," he growled.

  "He is the last best example of the innovative spirit of California," the governor said dryly. "You might say he's earned it."

  "Well, the kitty cat took care of that," the Attorney General replied with delight. "We can do what we want."

  "What do you propose?"

  "A four-billion-dollar civil forfeiture suit for public endangerment." He paused for a moment. "We can spend it immediately filling the holes in our educational and healthcare budgets."

  While the amo
unt was large enough to surprise the governor, he’d expected the Attorney General to invoke civil forfeiture. In civil forfeiture, no person or corporate entity was accused of a crime. Rather, the house, yacht, twenty dollar bill, or in this case the multi-billion-dollar financial account was held accountable for illegal activity. The government never took the case to court, they just took the property regardless of the guilt or innocence of the nominal owners.

  Back in the 90s civil forfeiture had been abused so blatantly that many states had enforced limitations to keep injustice low enough to avoid headlines. But in 2017 the Federal Attorney General had announced that an inadequate number of people of unproven guilt were being targeted. He had created mechanisms to allow local law enforcement to bypass state limits.

  After an initial period of slow acceptance, the states transformed into eager adopters. Civil forfeiture became the go-to legal justification for governors of both Red and Blue states. The Red governors used it simply to ruin their enemies. The Blue states used it for the more prosaic purpose of balancing their budgets.

  Still, the amount of money to be taken in this forfeiture was certainly a national record. "Four billion? Can SpaceR really survive if we take that much?" the governor asked in amazement.

  "You bet they can," the Attorney General answered with a vicious undertone. "They have it now, stashed away as a rainy day fund for future R&D."

  "But don't they need it for R&D? If we want them to innovate, they sort of have to continue that, you know."

  The Attorney General shrugged. "I'll negotiate with them to let them keep a couple hundred mil. They can fund the rest with future profits. It'll hardly slow them down at all."

  "Well, it sounds like we’re finally about to get our fair share, at least. A very fair, fair share." The governor gave it some thought. It certainly sounded reasonable. "We need to pass some new regulations too, so people can feel safe again." Get ahead of the media and stay ahead, he repeated his mantra to himself.

  "Oh sure." The Attorney General waved his hands and relaxed now that the governor had accepted the important part of the decision. "We'll require them to have twenty people in the control center in the future to watch for problems -- did you know they'd winnowed it down to just five? And we'll require them to retire the first stage rockets after five uses. One of those boosters was on its twenty-first launch. Talk about a safety hazard. Damned greedy profiteers." The Attorney General knew that the mechanical part that had actually failed was on its fourth launch, and on the far side of the ship from the old booster, but factual relevance had ceased to be a consideration in governmental decision-making generations earlier. "If they have to make four times as many rockets, they'll have to open another assembly line in Hawthorne. Lots of jobs there."

  The governor smiled. "That does sound good." He snorted. "The Feds will even like it. SpaceR launches will get more expensive, it might even let the SLS folks win a launch or two." The Space Launch System was an enormously expensive rocket project started in ancient times, back in 2011. Grossly over schedule and over budget, it had continued for decades with the support of powerful senators. It had been far too expensive to win a launch mission, but the senators had justified it “to maintain the expertise.” The governor continued, "With the Feds supporting the new regulations along with us, I don't see any way it can go wrong."

  A long silence ensued as the Attorney General savored the moment, and the governor thought up new things to worry about. The governor spoke hesitantly. "Still ... is there anything SpaceR can do about it?"

  The Attorney General stared at him. "Like what?"

  "Could they...move their operations?"

  "To where, Canada? You know the Canadians would put even more restrictions on them than we do. And there isn’t another reasonable place in the USA to launch to polar orbit. Anyplace else and the rocket would fly over land. That would be seriously dangerous."

  "I suppose. But..." The governor’s voice fell to a frightened whisper. "What about the BrainTrust?"

  The Attorney General slapped his hand on his knee and laughed loudly—perhaps too loudly. "The BrainTrust? You think they can launch from the middle of the ocean with waves ripping by all the time? Let's be real. We have a monopoly on polar orbit launch capabilities in North America. It's about time we took advantage of it."

  One of the merits of living in the digital age was that government could move very swiftly to protect the needs of the people. So less than twenty-four hours later the California Assembly passed the new laws. The little girl who had lost her kitty was only just entering therapy when the next media storm broke, carrying the word of the record-breaking civil forfeiture.

  Mixed reactions greeted the news. Traditional Blues celebrated the governor’s decision to get California’s fair share. Stalwart believers in the human mission to space may have opposed the confiscation, but political correctness muted their response. Defending a big corporation would incur a wrathstorm on social media.

  The union that controlled the workers at the SpaceR manufacturing plant in Hawthorne was ecstatic with the five launch limit. Of course, the new regulation did not surprise them; they had lobbied for such regulations for years. Now that they had finally won, they eagerly anticipated the opening of more production lines. More union members, more power.

  No one would have been surprised to hear that less enthusiasm energized the reactions in the SpaceR boardroom. Everyone outside SpaceR figured that the fat cats would be licking their wounds and watching morosely as the state’s coffers slurped up their pile of cash.

  Oddly, the actual conversation at SpaceR headquarters would have surprised the general consensus. It would have astonished the governor and the Attorney General. The loss of their entire four billion dollar R&D fund was difficult to accept. But in the end, it was just money. They could make more.

  The restriction to five launches for each rocket would impose an ongoing frightening cost, but SpaceR might have swallowed that too. The CEO, who passionately believed in California as an operational base, certainly would have gritted his teeth and lived with the cost. But a greater problem accompanied the five launch restriction.

  Far worse than the cost was the launch capacity shortfall. They would need lots more first-stage boosters, but they could not ramp up production fast enough to replace the existing rockets before forced retirement left them dead on the launch pad. SpaceR simply could not meet their schedule with the boosters they had if rockets could not be reused as many times as they had proven safe. They would have to renege on their contracts with their customers. And that was intolerable.

  The SpaceR board of directors had had a contingency in place for many years in case something terrible happened to the CEO, such as death or an intransigent refusal to face a changing reality. So the Board moved swiftly, with much personal regret but great business determination, to remove the now-not-quite-so-popular CEO and replaced him with someone considerably younger and almost as dynamic. Twenty-four hours later the new CEO’s helicopter landed on the Argus, the ship-manufacturing vessel of the BrainTrust.

  A smiling young woman escorted Matthew Toscano, the new CEO of SpaceR, and his Chief Engineer, Werner Halstead, through the ship to their meeting place. The Argus, like most of the isle ships, rendered the passageways of each deck with a different theme. Matt felt like hunching down when he first stepped onto the Banzai Pipeline deck. A wave off the North Shore of Oahu was rendered on the passage’s walls and ceilings, apparently curling over his group as they walked along. The wave and a pair of surfers hanging ten as they slid through the pipe contrasted oddly with the large workspaces they passed where the latest in 3D printers hummed on diverse projects.

  Eventually, Matt and company entered a small conference room with a rosewood table circled by Aeron chairs. There the Argus Chief Engineer, Alex Turner greeted them. Alex, in turn, introduced Matt and Werner to Dr. Dash, a medical research scientist, and Colin Wheeler, who had no title.

  Matt had been a wide r
eceiver for Notre Dame while getting his degree in aerospace engineering. Fast starts off the mark and quick hands, both on and off the field, had been his trademarks. At least that was what his wife had said when he asked her to marry him, during her brief vacation between college cheerleading and modeling for Vogue.

  Matt had thrived as an engineer, plucked from school by SpaceR when he graduated. But he found that he had an even greater talent for management than for engineering. He had hoped to do both. He could still remember the last time he had put an engineering task on the schedule for himself to complete. As time passed and the project progressed, his own task remained untouched. So the Friday before the Monday when his part of the project would become the critical failure in the schedule, he took a sleeping bag into the office, had his assistant manager teach him to use the current versions of the CAD and simulator software, and went to work. On Monday morning he delivered his completed task. Miraculously he had not harmed his team or his project, but…

  He never assigned himself a task again. Instead, he rose through the ranks to his present place, depending now on Werner for technical expertise. He appraised the people; Werner appraised the tech.

  At this moment, attempting to appraise the people, Matt was puzzled indeed. Alex, the Chief Engineer for the Argus, was a sensible person to meet. But why was a medical researcher here? And who was Colin Wheeler? He studied the tall, silver-haired gentleman—clearly quite old, but remarkably fit—as dim memories started to come back. "Colin Wheeler? The original project director for the development of the BrainTrust?" He would have sworn that Colin Wheeler had passed away years ago.

  Colin smiled. "That's me." He sighed. "That was a long time ago." He leaned forward. "But it was much like the problem you face now. The feds were assembling the 101st Airborne to drop into Silicon Valley and round up all the immigrant engineers. To make those jobs available for Americans, you know. But GPlex and FB didn't want to hire a whole bunch of people who were not quite as qualified and way behind the learning curve. And they sure didn’t want to fire loyal employees of proven worth. So we had to rush the first couple isle ships to completion and out into international waters before the troops landed. It was a close thing."