The control center took a moment for applause, but returned to work. There was always another target to track.
***
Garth was finally released from the prison hospital some thirteen months after his encounter with John and Celine. He was restricted to the sick bay ward of the South Carolina State prison system for another four months after that, so that he could build up strength in order to survive his release into general population of the prison.
General population sounded scary to most people. Garth took it as a challenge despite his obvious limp. He had been practicing his forms and katas religiously, and felt that he could hold his own with these animals.
His roommate was the first test. He was a short, wiry individual with a laconic attitude and a small vocabulary.
“Garth.”
The wiry man looked at him, then down, refusing the gambit.
“I said my name is Garth,” said the fresh meat, putting the bedroll on the empty slab. He turned his back on the cellmate to unroll his gear and put it away.
He found himself looking at the ceiling. Pain was not too long in arriving.
“I don't do friends,” said the man, before releasing Garth's uniform shirt and sliding back onto his own slab.
Garth looked at him, nodded, got to his feet, and continued squaring his gear away. The wiry man watched him minutely. Garth showed how much he cared by continuing to keep his back to the criminal.
He returned to the slab and sat down on his bedroll. He looked at the man, nodded, then lay back, massaging his hip where he had hit the concrete.
The hours passed. Then the loudspeaker sounded for dinner and the cell doors opened. Both of the men shuffled to the edges of their slab and waited for the other one to move. The guard came up to their cell and smirked.
“Mexican standoff, eh? Well, one of you has three seconds to move or I'll lock you both in there ‘til morning. Three, two…”
Garth got up and moved to the doorway.
The guard poked him in the shoulder with his shockstik. “Smart man, and dumb. Don't turn your back on Sanchez, or you'll regret it.”
Sanchez walked out of the cell and sneered at the guard.
Dinner proceeded without incident. Nobody was pissed off that night.
Later, Garth walked around the common area, watching the other inmates playing cards, chatting, or sitting on the benches, staring at nothing. He picked out the ones who seemed to be the leaders of the wing, and gave them respectful nods. He had learned in the hospital how the prison pecking order worked, and was determined to remain free and unmolested.
Sanchez moseyed up to him as he made the rounds. “Doing good so far,” he said.
“I thought you didn't do friends.”
“I ain't your friend,” Sanchez said. “I ain't nobody's friend. Last friend I had, I hadda pop cuz he was going to rat me out to the screws. Happened anyway. Since then, no friends.”
“What's the word on escapes?”
“Don't.”
“Don't escape, or don't ask?”
“Just don't. The screws will put us on lockdown until you're found or dead, and they’ll rake me over the coals. Then I'll be your enemy. You wouldn't want that.”
“Because?”
“You really don't know?”
“Man without a clue,” said Garth.
“I own the south side of town,” said Sanchez, matter of factly. “All of it. Drugs, hookers, numbers, protection. The whole thing. Cross me, and you'll wish you were dead. My boys will be coming after you even after you're dead.”
“Noted.”
“Besides, I could be ratting for the Warden.”
“I thought snitches got stitches,” said Garth.
“Snitches get buried. Rats get stuffed in the boiler, then get buried. Sometimes alive, too.”
“You're chummy all of a sudden,” Garth noted. “Even if you don't do friends.”
“You've got that look in your eyes,” said Sanchez. “The look of escape. I don't want that. Only reason I'm talking with you. Otherwise, I'd be hanging with my south side boys and let you patrol the commons by your lonesome. See? Here's one of yours already.”
“Spic,” said a large white man with tattoos running up the side of his neck.
“Ofay,” said Sanchez, trading insult for insult.
“I'm not even faintly bothered by that,” said the large man. “But I am bothered when you're talking to one of mine.”
“I'm not one of yours, or one of his,” said Garth, watching the big man carefully.
The swing came so slowly that Garth could have done his taxes while waiting for it to come into his range. He swayed back as it passed, missing by millimeters, then put all of his weight behind a flat punch to the bottom part of the man's ribcage. A wet snap showed he had scored at least one broken rib.
“Let's not do this again,” said Garth. “I don't need to be punching out every clown that wants a swing at me.”
The large man roared and came at Garth, looking for revenge. He was a power puncher, and meant to close with Garth and pound the life out of him. Garth tucked and rolled, tripping up the large man. On the way down, Garth donkey-kicked the man in the head with both feet. The large man was in dreamland before he hit the ground.
Sanchez backed away from the unconscious man. “You've done it now, ex-cellie. The screws are gonna put you away. Too bad—I kinda liked you. You kept quiet. I never get a quiet cellie. Good luck with the screws. If I were you, I'd keep messing up—if you ever get back to gen pop, this guy or the other Nazis will pound your ass.”
The guards took Garth away while he was still alive, and stuck him in solitary confinement.
Garth smiled. At least now I can work on escape without pissing off Sanchez.
***
The rock was too small to waste a nuclear device on. A mere fifty meters across, it was on an unusual trajectory that brought it around from the far backside of the Moon on a maria-skimming ten-kilometer perilune behind the lunar orbital path and straight towards the mother planet. This path caused it to pick up another five kilometers per second, straight at the blue patch called the Pacific. It blew through L-1, the point at which gravitational pulls from the Moon and the Earth neutralized each other, at forty-five kilometers per second, and from then on, piled on the speed. When it encountered the first fringes of air, at some one hundred twenty kilometers above sea level, it was going fifty kps and still increasing in a nearly vertical dive.
It flashed through the atmosphere in almost three seconds, and buried itself in the mud of the deepest Pacific before the five kilometers of water had a chance to splash outward from the hole the rock had drilled through it. The meteor was still traveling some thirty kps when it touched the mud, so it continued delivering energy to the mud, rock, and bedrock of that particular piece of seabed. Unfortunately, it was one of the thinner pieces of seabed, and the shock wave induced by the meteor was enough to shatter the rest of the oceanic crust floating atop the liquid mantle.
The water above the impact hole barely had time to pass the shock wave of the initial impact before the superheated shaft of steam from the depths of the ocean blasted it into the sky.
The shock wave, when it arrived at the islands of Hawaii, shoved the ocean twenty meters high all along the shoreline. Japan and California suffered similar fates, with structures built on reclaimed land the first ones to slide beneath the waves, taking their screaming populations with them to the bottom of the bay.
The death toll reached nearly one million.
***
“We blew it,” said John as he watched the images in Lisa's office. “We should not have blindly accepted the criteria for the upper size of meteors.”
Lisa turned off the images. “We can't help those people now,” she said. “Neither can we blast every rock that comes this way. Dammit, that rock should have just broken up and shattered. All the scientists said so.”
“Well, this one didn't. Besides, that data assum
es that we're dealing with chrondite asteroids, whereas these are much more like nickel-iron ones, aren't they?”
“True. There's the trajectory to consider. This one was straight down. It was shorter, more direct, less time for the meteor to shatter.
John nodded unhappily. “That does nothing for those dead people. They want to hang someone, Lisa. That someone is all of us.”
“Let me worry about that, John. So far, people have been willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. I'll tell vanDeHoog that we need a better set of criteria. Let's see what they come up with.”
***
The rules that required a nuclear launch, known as criteria, were reevaluated and came back far more stringent. The maximum size of a meteor without interception was reduced to twenty meters. The trajectory formed criteria for the first time, with vertical paths subject to more intercepts than long, slanted ones. More intercepts were of the 'shatter' kind, to destroy the rock or fragment it into less destructive pieces. Interceptions were to occur further out in space as well.
It meant an increased workload in Bavaria. Sometimes, the center had more than one target under consideration at the same time. Missiles launched more and more often. Interception rates remained near one hundred percent. The technology was fully up to the task, as long as the interception occurred before the Karmán line, some one hundred kilometers up. Beyond that, the chances of a missile being disabled by a piece of debris rose dramatically.
“Target,” called Steinman. The familiar litany of acquisition, missile selection and launch, and countdown to detonation proceeded smoothly.
“D-30,” called Fred Palowicz. The former UNSOC ground control teams were back in their accustomed seats, though in a different country.
“Bird is good,” called the vehicle controller.
“Weapon is good,” chimed in the weapon controller.
“D-15, enhancement is being fed into the weapon package.”
“Glitch!” called the vehicle controller. “Comms lost with vehicle.”
“Weapon offline,” agreed the weapon controller. “We have a dead bird.”
“Detonation?” asked Fred.
“No idea,” said the weapon controller. “Stored commands should fire it.”
“Call Kuntsevo,” said Fred. “I need confirmation.”
“Negative confirm,” said the weapons controller. “No detonation noted by ground observers.”
“Dammit,” said Fred. “Go to failure mode, Team. Archive all data, ready to clear boards for second shot.”
“Second shot launch required in three minutes, seven seconds,” said the astrogation controller.
“Understood. Signal when green board,” said Fred. “Hurry it up, people, this is a priority B target.”
“Clean, Astro.”
“Clean, Vehicle.”
Fred ticked them off in his mind. He turned to the FAS controller. “Ready? Load the second bird.”
“Running. Loaded. T-28 seconds to firing solution.”
“Go, people, go.” Fred was openly sweating now.
“Vehicle go.”
“Guidance reports vehicle accepts solution.”
“Weapon accepts unlock sequence, ready to launch.
“T-15,” said Fred. “Comms?”
“Go.”
“Vehicle?”
“Go.”
“Weapon?”
“Go.”
“That's all we need. Range, Safety, Government, they better all keep their heads down on this one. Where from?”
“Pakistan,” said vehicle.
Fred stopped dead. “You're shitting me.”
“T-five. Go for launch?”
“Go,” said Fred, “and they better not be screwing with us.”
“Vehicle away. No deviation.”
Fred held his breath. Was this the nuke to start the final India-Pakistan war?
“Status on all birds?” asked Fred.
“Silo covers on, no alerts beyond standard superpower watches.”
“Come on, come on,” he said, unaware of the ‘hot mic’, feeding his words throughout the world.
“Fly, baby, fly,” intoned the vehicle controller. “Detonation minus one hundred twenty.”
“Target, distance and time?” asked Fred.
“Target actively painted by radar. Distance twenty-two hundred kilometers, closing. Time to detonation, one hundred ten seconds.”
“Vehicle status?” asked Fred.
“Vehicle is green across the board.”
“Weapon?”
“Weapon shows green. Unlocked, PAL locked, ready to receive final detonation point and unlock commands.”
“Trajectory analysis?”
“Vehicle is following a nominal trajectory.”
“Missile is in the groove, Fred. Stop jittering.”
Fred turned around to see Lisa standing behind him. “I wish you wouldn't do that, Commander.”
“Internet, Fred,” she murmured.
“Yup.” He straightened up. “Let's have a status countdown, people. Vehicle.”
“Green.”
“Trajectory?”
“Green.”
“Weapon?”
“Green. PAL locked. Awaiting transmission of PAL unlock sequence, and optimal detonation position.”
“Stand by.” Fred turned to Lisa, who gave him a go-ahead gesture.
“Transmit the detonation position and PAL unlock at T-40 seconds. This time, we've got to have a detonation.”
The seconds trickled by. The codes were transmitted, the countdown to detonation proceeded. Everything remained green.
“Detonation!”
Fred leaned on his desk. “Confirm!”
“Kuntsevo confirms detonation. Awaiting EMP dieoff to assess new orbit.”
Radar confirmed the new orbit. Fred waited until after he turned over his shift to Gaytri before he excused himself to the men’s room for some sudden weight reduction.
He emerged to find Lisa Daniels waiting for him.
“You often hang out around the men's room?” he asked. “Shep will be very disappointed in you.”
Lisa laughed. “You feeling better?”
“Some. That was a tight situation.”
Lisa shook her head. “Not really. Sure, we lost the first one to debris, probably. But the second one went off okay.”
“Did you see where it was from?” Fred asked.
“Yeah, Pakistan. So what?”
“So what?” Fred fairly exploded. “Do you know why they are building those missiles?”
“Yes, I know. Both Iran and India. I'm not worried.”
“You should be,” said Fred. “All we need is one to go dud, like the first one, and we're going to have a war on our hands.”
“Fred, you worry way too much. Sure, the missile was in a Pakistan silo, but what kind was it?”
“How should I know? Pakistani, right?”
Lisa laughed long and hard. “Oh, no, Fred, the Pakis would never make a missile with a five-thousand-kilometer range. That would make Mother Russia nervous as hell. Their missiles have just enough range to make it to the middle of India. A Pakistani missile could never get to orbit.”
“Then why...oh, damn.”
“Right.”
“They're housing ICBMs for Russia, aimed at, who?”
“Iraq, mostly, but other Sunni players, in case Iran starts feeling threatened.”
“My head hurts,” said Fred.
“Join the club. They're going to make diplomats out of us yet.”
Fred shook his head. “No way. I just want to get this done, train up my replacement, and get back to NYC while I still can.”
“You aren't the only one,” she said. “But it's our lot in life. Personally, I'm hoping to see my daughter graduate high school one of these days.”
“Well, it's dinner time, and I hear they've got sauerbraten and spätzle. I'll order a double.”
“Save me a seat.”
Armor
Aboard 'Eighty-Two', February 15 2084, 1732 GMT
“So, when do we start waking up more people?” asked Harlan. “We've been on our way for a few weeks now, and I'm aching for a new face.”
“Thank you so little,” said Duane Bebeau. “We've been staring at each other for a couple of years now, and we're doing fine.”
“The man brings up a good point,” said Commander Standish. “Here on the Bradbury, we're without the good Doctor, so we're going to have to wait for him before we can even think of thawing someone.”
“I was talking to Harel the other day,” said Ragesh. “He says the life support systems are within four people of the very limit right now. If we wake more than four, we'll be eating more than the hydroponics can produce, and drinking more water than...hey!” He turned to Commander Standish. “We've got the biggest ice cube ever out there. Why don't we top off our water tanks with some of Eighty-two?”
“We did,” said Mike Standish. “The problem is not one of storage, but one of throughput. Our recycling system can only handle the water used by twenty men. Any more, and we'll fall behind. The wastes will pile up in the holding tank. We can't afford to dump it overboard either, because the waste is loaded with nutrients that hydroponics needs. There's really no place for us to get more nitrogen, for instance. So, twenty is the limit. I like sixteen as a limit. Gives us a cushion in case something goes screwy with the waste processor.”
“Guess you're going to have to get used to us, Harlan. Besides, it's only another three months flight time.”
***
With six weeks to go before rendezvous with the iron and nickel asteroid, Benjamin Zabor carefully fired the attitude thrusters to flip Eighty-two head over heels. The maneuver took thirty-six hours, as there was no need for speed. When Eighty-two stabilized in flight, tail-first, the nuclear engine cleared its throat once more, and the pearly-white gas blasted forward, slowing their headlong flight through the Asteroid Belt.
“Uh, Commander,” said Mickey, tapping a screen with radar data on it. “I think we have a problem.”
Dead Men Flying Page 15
