Confrontation

by William Hayashi

  GST was going to use the retrieval launches to bring up more construction personnel on Uncle Sam’s dime. With estimated revenues of a million dollars or more for each tourist, GST was going to do quite well. Not only was the next big project the construction of the new lunar lander series; GST was also looking into developing exotic pharmaceuticals and other manufactured goods that would benefit from construction, growth or manufacture in a micro-gravity environment.

  GST’s board of directors regretted that John hadn’t managed to retrieve any of the separatists’ technologies, but were ecstatic that he did make direct contact with his former lover. They were still taking the long view on obtaining the advanced tech.

  When John had a few minutes to spare, he made a call from orbit to Seneca who, seeing who the video call was from, was very excited. Because of her position as Weston’s admin, she had been in on the deception GST put in place to insert him into the crew under an assumed name. She began peppering him with questions about being in orbit, the trip out and seeing the colony. She also told him how much she and Tom had missed him.

  “Tom’s been putting in eighteen-hour days ever since you left for training,” she informed him. “It’s not been much fun around here without you.”

  “That’s good to hear. You think I might be able to get my old job back once I’m earth side and cut loose? By the way, did they remodel the office? It looks different.”

  “We’re both back in New York for the time being. Hang on a second,” she said, getting up and moving off camera.

  Moments later Tom Weston slid into her seat, grinning broadly and said, “It’s about fucking time! You don’t write, you don’t call, you just run off and join the circus leaving everyone high and dry!”

  “Tom! If I’d known you were in the office I would have called you first! And out there they had me running ragged learning all that astronaut stuff! So, did you miss me?” John asked.

  “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months. I hate to say it but we definitely missed your ugly mug around here. Any idea when you’ll be back?”

  “You mean I still have a job?” asked John.

  “Of course, it’s yours for the taking. Tell you what, when you get back to Houston I’ll stop by and we can talk, or we can wait until you get back to Atlanta. Sound all right to you?”

  “It’ll be great to see you Tom. And tell Seneca I miss her too. Gotta run!”

  “She heard. See you soon.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “He looked pretty good, maybe gained a little weight,” Weston said as he got up from Seneca’s chair.

  “They say that being weightless does that, bloats the head. I can’t wait until he gets back, I’m dying to know what really happened out there,” she said.

  “Me too. I guess I should make sure the powers that be still want him in our department.”

  “You don’t think they’ll fire him, do you?” Seneca said, a worried look on her face.

  “I have no idea. In this case, I’m definitely just labor and they’re management. I’d love to have him back though, he’s a good man.”

  The rest of the Jove crew was also taking time out to contact family and close friends whenever they had a break. NASA had a strict “no media interviews” policy until they returned to Houston, but private calls were allowed. Susan and Bianca were constantly dealing with an endless stream of correspondence requesting clarification of every detail of their initial reports on the attack on the Jove spacecraft and John’s successes.

  The higher-ups at the Russian space agency and their counterparts at the European Union’s headquarters in South America were firing off messages to Jove demanding to speak to Svoboda’s crew. All such demands were redirected to Dr. Milton’s people and summarily rejected. The standard answer to the two agencies and to the world’s media was that the Svoboda crew was being held incommunicado pending the filing of charges against Colonel Levkov and the rest of the crew for the attack. Similarly, the United States authorities and United Nations Security Council were drawing up charges to be brought against those responsible for the attack.

  Colonel Levkov was spending more and more time alone in his cubby and not leaving it except to eat and take care of personal needs. Xavier had kept the fact that he knew about the secret missiles to himself, hoping that whatever lay ahead as far as accountability for the attack would pass him by. The others had no reason for remorse, but were quite happy that their return trip, even though they were confined to the construction shack, was essentially over. They fantasized about how they were going to be able to turn their adventure into lives of relative luxury or better employment, ignoring for the moment that they too could be charged as co-conspirators in the attack on the Americans. What went unsaid was the fact that each one of them was prepared to throw Levkov under the bus when the time came.

  Both crews were waiting to see what would come next. The Jove crew members were fairly upbeat. Other than the lost experiments due to the abbreviated transit time, they were elated to be home as quickly as the separatists’ ships had brought them, although the novelty of weightlessness had completely worn off.

  The armed forces were on high alert around locations like the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Pentagon and the White House. Dr. Harris’ gravitational anomaly detectors were fully manned and all data on the separatists’ spacecraft was being transmitted directly to the nation’s AWACS flying command centers coordinating the protective fighter coverage over all possible strategic targets of interest. The president also arranged to deploy protective fighter coverage to the Chicago area. The entire U.S. military apparatus was relying on their gravity-detector advantage to keep their people on the ground as safe as possible, although the widely circulated security camera video from Russia had seriously spooked the U.S. fighter pilots.

  Chapter 35

  RIDERS ON THE STORM

  When morning finally came, it was time for Christopher to initiate his plan. He’d had a restless night, as had Andrea, who took it upon herself to lightly doze and watch over him.

  He ate a good breakfast, with an unaccustomed two cups of coffee. Once he was finished, and everyone else on the team also signaled their readiness for the day, Christopher called Jove.

  “Jove, this is Christopher Wright calling for Dr. Roscoe, please respond.”

  “This is Dr. Roscoe. What can I do for you, Mr. Wright?”

  “I would like you to jettison the pod containing the Svoboda crew,” Christopher requested.

  “I’m sorry. You want us to do what?”

  “I want to have the emergency pod currently holding the Svoboda crew detached from your ship. Is there a problem in doing so that I am not aware of?”

  “One moment, please,” Roscoe replied, and the channel went quiet. Moments later the circuit was restored and another voice came on the line.

  “Mr. Wright, this is Ambassador Ortega. Before we comply with your request—”

  “This is not a request, Madam Ambassador, this is a demand,” Christopher said, interrupting.

  “Mr. Wright, what do you intend to do with the Svoboda crew?” Roscoe asked.

  “Dr. Roscoe, that is not your concern. I find it absurd that you have any concern for a crew that fired on your spacecraft intending to kill you. Now are you going to release the compartment?” Christopher asked, with no emotion in his voice.

  “I cannot allow you to take that crew and kill them, regardless of their transgressions. They deserve whatever justice will be meted out in a court of law. It is neither your job nor mine to commit vigilante justice. If you plan to harm them, I cannot allow you to take them.”

  “And just how will you stop me, Doctor?”

  “Please don’t let things get to that point, Mr. Wright. I understand your position, I even sympathize with your anger, but no one was hurt by
the attack.”

  “Dr. Roscoe, I promise I will not harm the Svoboda crew. Now please detach the compartment. Now is not the time to call my bluff. I assure you that I will not harm them.”

  “One moment, please.”

  “Christopher, I am monitoring radio traffic between Jove and mission control in Houston,” G3 reported.

  “Want to listen?” Christopher asked Andrea.

  “Not particularly, suit yourself. They can’t really deny you, we know it and they know it. Let them hash it out, you already know the outcome,” she replied.

  “I’m hoping they do what I tell them, it’s all going to be easier for them, for everyone,” Christopher said, reclining his seat and putting his feet up on the console before him.

  A few minutes later Roscoe came back on the line. “Mr. Wright, I regret to inform you that I cannot comply with your request, or demand, or whatever you want to call it. The Svoboda crew is going to be remanded into U.S. custody to face justice for their attack.”

  “And I presume that any request for extradition by me is not going to be respected by the United States government, even as it holds two of my people for absolutely no reason. Our people have broken no law, they represent no threat, and yet they have not been released as I requested eleven days ago. Dr. Roscoe, you and your government are in a very poor position to deny my simple request. Now I will ask one last time, will you release the Svoboda crew into my custody?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wright, I cannot release the Svoboda crew into your custody at this time.”

  “Then I suggest you and your crew strap in,” Christopher warned and then severed the connection.

  “Lenny?” Christopher called out.

  “Yes?”

  “I want you and Andrea to grab Jove in the same place you did on the way here. We’re going to set it down at the Johnson Space Center.”

  “What? You’re crazy!” Andrea protested. “The engineering of that craft was not designed for one-G. It’ll never be spaceworthy again.”

  “She’s right, Chris. If we take the thing down to the surface and land it, it’s going to be so much junk when we let it go,” Damien radioed. “You sure that’s what we want to do?”

  “You all heard me. I was never going to allow them to use that ship again in any case. Just hook up and let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Aye, aye, skipper,” said Lenny as he piloted the jumper to the far side of the Jove spacecraft. Andrea nudged her jumper to the near side. They activated the tractor emitters and clamped onto the larger spacecraft. When Andrea and Lenny reported ready, Christopher signaled to begin the descent into the atmosphere.

  The jumpers handled the load with ease, and they proceeded slowly so that there was no friction from the atmosphere to heat up the ships.

  “G3, please initiate phase one,” Christopher announced.

  “Phase one initiated,” G3 announced as it and G4, working in concert, blocked all data from the three gravity wave detectors to NORAD and the AWACS aircraft, essentially blinding the military to their location.

  “Take it easy, everyone, they won’t see us until too late,” said Christopher.

  The joined spacecraft descended into thicker and thicker air, then through the cloudy skies above Houston. As they passed through ten thousand feet Christopher directed their course toward an empty outlying parking lot. As they approached four thousand feet above ground level, two helicopters approached the center’s airspace, but kept their distance. As the ships descended lower it became easy to see they were traffic helicopters from local broadcast stations. Since they were well clear of the descending ships, Christopher paid no further attention to them, concentrating instead on watching the radar screen for any inbound military aircraft. Two hundred feet above ground, Andrea and Lenny maneuvered the bulk of Jove so it would only crush a few street lights and then let the ship settle to the surface of the parking lot.

  Once the ship was down, emergency compartment facing up, Christopher directed Lenny and Damien to forcibly detach the compartment using the jumper’s tractors while Andrea steadied Jove, keeping it from rolling.

  Once Damien had carefully detached the compartment, Christopher sat up and announced to G3, “Phase two please, G3.”

  The jumpers altered their course eastward toward the Atlantic with Damien adjusting the jumper’s shields to protect the compartment. Once everything was ready, the two ships pushed their speed to just over Mach 3.

  In slightly over an hour the coast of Europe was visible, and in moments they were over land. The jumper’s course was toward the International Criminal Court building at The Hague. When G3 informed Christopher they were 30 minutes from arriving at their destination, Christopher was put through to the general number for the ICC and informed them that he would be dropping off the crew of the Svoboda and to have someone out front to take them into custody. He then asked to be put in touch with the Prosecutor’s Office. When he began to get the runaround, he then informed the functionary on the phone exactly who he was, and that although the colony was not a signatory to any treaty or agreement with the ICC, he was sure that the United States of America and the United Nations would likely be filing charges against the crew, most notably Colonel Levkov.

  Once Christopher was put through to the Prosecutor’s office, he stated that the way the ICC dealt with the criminals who launched the attack against the colony and the American spacecraft was going to be watched very carefully by the colony’s ruling council. And that the possibility of the colony’s future dialogue with Earth would be, in part, dependent on the kind of justice handed out by the ICC.

  When the jumpers arrived at the ICC building, Lenny descended to drop off the compartment while Andrea flew high cover. Either word of what had happened at the Russian launch facility had gotten out or the local military decided, in Chuck’s words, “Don’t start none, won’t be none!” and they were left alone.

  The members of the ground crew not in custody were monitoring the action through a running monologue by G2, as well as eavesdropping on Christopher’s conversation.

  Lenny soft-landed the slightly damaged compartment in front of the steps of the ICC headquarters, in the middle of a circle of police cars, then quickly rose a hundred feet into the air so the external cameras of the jumper could record the action. In less than a minute the hatch opened, and a woman climbed out to stand on slightly wobbly legs as a police officer came up behind her, pulled her hands behind her back and handcuffed her. As the rest of the crew exited, they too were taken into custody. Colonel Levkov was the last to leave the compartment and struggled so much when the officer tried to cuff him that two officers had to force him to the ground to subdue him. Once Christopher was satisfied that they were all in custody, he set the two jumpers flying back toward the United States. As they crossed Europe, they were escorted by NATO aircraft keeping a respectable distance from them. G3 was able to verify that no aggressive action was to take place as long as the jumpers were merely “passing through.”

  Christopher alerted Chuck and Todd to the possibility that they would be required to lend assistance to Sondra in retrieving the rest of the ground crew and getting safely back into orbit.

  The U.S. military was in an uproar. Those who knew about the secret gravity wave detectors were hard at work trying to determine why they all stopped transmitting data to NORAD. They couldn’t find any network problems, and consoles directly connected to the detectors appeared to be working just fine. But no tracking data was leaving the deep shelter facilities where they were housed.

  The personnel manning the detector consoles weren’t even able to report the locations of the separatists’ jumpers by phone as every time they tried to connect to any other military phone number all they got was a busy signal.

  When the detectors went down, Chuck and Todd surfaced from their underwater hiding places and set parabolic courses towa
rd upper Lake Michigan to minimize accidental visual detection. They would be splashing down shortly after Andrea and Lenny hit the East Coast and would rendezvous underwater with the whale off the shore of Chicago.

  The other ground crew members prepared to check out of the hotel. Albert had scoped out several boats in Monroe Street Harbor should the need arise. But with the two jumpers in the area, even if they had to swim out past the harbor’s breakwater, either jumper could be waiting underwater to pick them up out of sight. With the detectors essentially out of the picture, Christopher and the rest could operate freely.

  * * *

  In Houston the Jove crew exited the spacecraft and was immediately confined to medical quarantine for the duration. They were all very tired, but happy to be on earth. The spacecraft itself was slightly dented, but everyone knew that barring the separatists assistance getting the ship back into orbit, it was permanently grounded. Dr. Milton was sending hourly updates to the president on the crew’s condition and regretfully informed him that, other than recycling the components for another spacecraft or for scrap, Jove had made its last flight.

  President Laughlin had already directed the attorney general to draft and deliver charges to the ICC against the Svoboda crew and the Russian and European members of the mission planning authority when they were officially notified that the Svoboda crew was in custody at The Hague.

  Laughlin was also quite put out that their secret advantage over their allies and enemies, the ability to track the gravity-based technologies of the separatists, was unavailable. He told the chairman of the joint chiefs to straighten out whatever was preventing their use as his top priority. Otherwise, some changes might have to be made at the highest levels in the military chain of command.