Axis of Evil

Chapter Seven: The Final Frontier

Churchill Space Centre

French Guiana, South America

1^st April 1941

The Trident missile, a multi-million pound dealer of megadeath under normal circumstances, was mounted neatly on its pad in the centre of what would have been the European launch site in the future. For the moment, the twenty square miles of jungle had been sealed off after the French colonial troops had been evicted back to POW camps in the desert. Wooden shacks and stone blockhouses housed the two thousand Royal Marines charged with defending the launch centre, as well as its famous staff.

Major John Dashwood, supervisor and Base Commander, looked across his domain from the watchtower and smiled to himself. He would have preferred somewhere not so… French, or with such a grim history, but there weren’t many excellent launch locations on Earth, particularly ones in reasonably safe areas. The plans to use Kenya had been brushed aside when the native revolt had broken out, and Britain itself was out of the question.

He chuckled aloud. The Churchill Space Centre, such a grand name for it at the moment, would become Britain’s gateway to the stars. He’d been one of the cabal within the MOD demanding that Britain put forward its own space program, after the ESA had collapsed and the Russians had outdone NASA with their commercial program, but until the Transition no one was interested. Britain simply couldn’t match American investment, but in 1940 there was no one in space… unless aliens had been responsible for the Transition. Britain had nearly a twenty years lead… and Dashwood had no intention of seeing it wasted.

“Bloody stupid nonsense,” he said, as he finished examining the intelligence reports. The RAF had been confident that the Germans had managed to build a spaceplane, but Dashwood was certain that it was a bluff; the Germans would never have been able to make everything required to launch a manned spaceplane. It was either a high-attitude bomber or reconnaissance plane, or a bluff. He supposed that they could, just, place a payload into orbit, but what could they do with it?

“I beg your pardon?” Commander Tempest said. The officer on loan from the Royal Navy knew everything about Tridents; it had astonished Dashwood to learn that even 1960s-era rockets needed considerable work before they could be reproduced. Whole generations of knowledge and experience had been lost; the people who knew how to build an Apollo rocket had died between 1970 and the Transition, and those who lived had been in America. The Royal Navy, he’d heard, would need years to build a battleship from scratch, even though they had all of the plans.

“The German spaceplane,” Dashwood said absently, and returned to the military digest. The Navy wanted to build more Type-45 destroyers, but armed with better anti-aircraft systems, and develop several new carriers from oil tankers.

“They don’t have a chance,” Tempest assured him. Dashwood glowered at him; Navy man or not, his experience with matters space was no more or less than Dashwood’s own. The flight simulations had confirmed that the satellite could be launched; now all they had to do was see if theory matched reality.

“Let’s hope so,” Dashwood said. The Germans were working hard on their rockets; the AWACS aircraft had tracked a V2 being launched from isolated woodland, although they hadn’t started to throw them at Britain yet. PJHQ thought that the Germans were trying to get their targeting down precisely, although it was hard to track German progress.

“Ah, Doctor Goddard,” Tempest said. Dashwood turned and nodded politely to the older man, the famous American rocket scientist. Recruiting him had been depressingly easy, once the Americans had jailed the Abwehr source recruited by Nikolaus Ritter. Goddard had been invited to work in Nazi Germany; Dashwood had made him a better offer. The Americans hadn’t been interested.

“A fine day for a launch,” Goddard said. Physically, he was short, bald and had a moustache, but his eyes gleamed with brilliant curiosity. He was brilliant, Dashwood acknowledged; for the moment he might be working on recreating old/new knowledge, but Dashwood expected him to make many more fundamental breakthroughs in the future. “These computers are remarkable.”

Dashwood had to grin. The computer, one of Britain’s finest, wasn’t that brilliant by 2015 standards. Both NASA and the Russians had developed more complex computers for the race to Mars, but Britain hadn’t taken an interest. Still, the Trident was a well-understood piece of technology, and if it had once been done with abacuses, it could be done with the system he’d brought.

After all, the program had been funded for a game, with all the attendant detail to realism, not a government project done on the cheap.

“Yes, sir,” Dashwood said. As always, he felt a mixture of awe and annoyance when dealing with Goddard’s bubbly personality. His gratitude for the treatment for throat cancer, which would have killed him back in the original timeline, had altered his personality. He’d once been a loaner; now he was more outgoing than Dashwood himself.

“And we’ll be launching bigger and bigger rockets soon,” Goddard continued. “Imagine, one large enough to put an entire space station into orbit. We can continue to farm out the components and put them together here, once we get a proper factory set up.”

He waved a hand around the site. Thousands of men and women, and a great deal of equipment, had been flooded into the compound, working to set up a proper compound. It would take at least three years, they’d estimated, but it could be done soon.

“And then we can just keep building and building,” Goddard said. “Imagine, we could see the first interstellar rocket before we die!”

Dashwood grinned. “Yes,” he said. “We might see that. The important matter, Doctor, is to develop the industry and commercial benefits first, you see. We can’t afford for people to start making cuts in the money.”

And we have to make this self-funding, he thought coldly. “We have to put the spy satellites in orbit soon, along with the communication relay systems,” he said aloud. Inside, he hoped that the new systems would work; Britain didn’t have that many spare Trident missiles, and they were almost irreplaceable. Once the first desperate battles were over, the Government had started a number of programs to replace some of the technology that had been largely made abroad.

“Yes, call me Robert,” Goddard said firmly. “Don’t worry; no one will ever claim that a rocket won’t function in a vacuum again.”

Dashwood chuckled. The New York Times had printed a grovelling apology to Goddard after he’d threatened them with legal action. Dashwood had rather hoped that the whole affair would have blown over – he’d wanted to get Goddard and as many other rocket scientists out of America before the Yanks realised what they had on their hands – but he had to admit that it had had its funny side.

Time went by, too slowly for Dashwood’s liking. Goddard bounced up and down, waiting for the test results, and endlessly designing new ways to break down the rockets into mass-producible components for the American factories. Apart from the guidance systems, the factories could crank out every component, without knowing how the entire system went together.

“The engineers report that the system is totally ready,” Tempest said finally. Dashwood stared down at the telemetry display; months of work were leading up to this moment. A network of relay stations across the globe would relay transmissions from the rocket to the base, as well as copying the data to Britain and Australia. If anything went wrong, their successors would have some idea of what went wrong.

Not that I plan to have any, of course, Dashwood thought wryly. He was confident of the missile; if he hadn’t been he wouldn’t have asked the BBC to send a team to record the entire launch. Like many serving officers, he disliked the BBC, which had sent a reporter into the heart of Nazi Germany, but he understood the need for public relations. Public support for the space program was essential.

“Excellent,” he said finally. “Sound the launch alert.”

Tempest pushed a yellow button on the console. A throbbing drumbeat arose; the constructors scrambled for the shelters and the watchtowers, hiding from the blast of the launch. Dashwood shook his head; normally the rocket would have been blasted out of the submarine by gas, before the rocket ignited, but there was no need for that now. Anyone more than ten or so meters away would be perfectly safe.

“Let them play,” Tempest muttered. Goddard was watching, his eyes wide. “Launch commit?”

Dashwood took a moment to pretend to consider. The cameras were rolling; some of the Government’s friends in the BBC would make a documentary out of the entire incident. It was vital that he seemed to consider, even if there was no need to do so; any problems would have appeared in the tests. After all, hadn’t the Tridents been tested only six months ago?

“I confirm launch commit,” he said, when he could wait no more. “I confirm launch commit.”

Tempest smiled wryly. Dashwood wondered if future watchers would understand. “I confirm Trident-1 loaded with Load-1,” Tempest said. “I confirm course and instructions loaded into computer core. I confirm flight simulations report success ten out of ten. Confirm; launch commit?”

Stupid technobabble, Dashwood thought coldly. Dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘T’ seemed like a waste of time. “I confirm launch commit,” he said. “T-minus… thirty seconds, and counting.”

“Wow,” Goddard breathed. Dashwood watched; Tempest’s countdown was loud and irritating.

“You may launch the rocket,” Dashwood muttered. “At zero, hit the big red button.”

“Thanks,” Goddard said, a little sharply. He could still tell when he was being condescended to. “Push at zero.”

Dashwood nodded. Someone with a sense of humour had created a red button as large as a soup plate. “Launch at zero,” he said, just to make certain.

“Ten… nine… eight… seven,” Tempest said aloud. “Three… two… one… zero! We have launch, I repeat, we have launch!”

Goddard pushed the button. The Trident seemed to hang in the air for a long moment, then a plume of yellow fire and smoke appeared from its behind. There was a long pause, and the noise grew louder, and then the rocket started to climb from the pad, reaching up into the sky. It picked up speed as it rose up on a pillar of fire, heading upwards into the atmosphere.

“T-plus twenty seconds,” Tempest said, as the rocket climbed. “Everything is looking good from down here.”

“My god,” Goddard breathed. “We have to build more of these rockets.”

“We’ll try,” Dashwood said. An unearthly silence fell upon the watchtower. For a long moment, the dank steaming complex that might be a real gleaming launch centre one day was united in awe. Not even the birds were making a noise.

“Rocket now at separation-one,” Tempest said. “Destroyer Churchill reports that it has the rocket on its sensors; everything looks optimal… rocket has separated.”

“That’s the first stage,” Dashwood muttered into his throat mike, for the benefit of future watchers. “Second stage separation coming up…”

The rocket started to alter course slightly, heading for orbit. “Final stage separation coming up,” Tempest said. “Injection into low Earth orbit coming up… five minutes and counting.”

Dashwood took a breath. This was the most dangerous part of the mission. The Tridents hadn’t been designed for trans-LEO injection; rather they had been intended to launch an object into a re-entry trajectory. The orbit was a little more slanted than Dashwood would have liked; the satellite would orbit over the Axis powers, rather than directly following the equator.

“Injection successful,” Tempest said. “Satellite now being released from covering sheathes.” There was a long pregnant pause. “HMS Churchill reports receiving the signals from the satellite!”

The room broke into cheers. “Check the telemetry,” Dashwood ordered. “I want everything checked before we celebrate too much.”

“Working,” Tempest said. Down on the platform, an impromptu party was going on; the workmen taking the opportunity to have a break. “Telemetry reports total success; we have a direct communications link to PJHQ now… and we’re receiving imagery!”

“I think that we have had a success,” Dashwood said mildly. “Tell everyone I said that we’ll have a half-holiday, I think.”

There were more cheers as Tempest announced it over the loudspeaker. “As for me, I think I’ll talk to the Prime Minister… and use our new relay system to do it.”

Hanover’s voice wasn’t coming through perfectly, although as the technicians aligned the system it improved. Dashwood allowed himself a smile; after this, the PM would be a big space booster. It would need a full global network – the satellite would move out of position for the relay in half an hour – but now they knew how to do it… space was the limit.

“A splendid success,” Hanover said, after Dashwood had finished the report. “How long will it be until you can complete the network?”

“It depends upon production of new rockets,” Dashwood said, honestly. “For the moment, we’re building them on contract, using American factories to do everything that their science can handle, and supplying the guidance and control systems ourselves. Unfortunately, safety standards are not what they could be in this era… they’re not such wimps.”

Hanover could be heard to chuckle. The Americans had damaged their own progress with organisations like OSHA and EPA. Of course, with 2015 technology, almost all of the environmental pollution could be avoided – without the need for the green fascists. Dashwood smiled; he’d never liked them.

“And we’ll lose some of the satellites?” Hanover enquired. “How much delay would that cause?”

“We won’t be launching anything irreplaceable,” Dashwood assured him. “We could use the remaining stock of Tridents, but I understand that to be politically impossible.”

“I’m afraid so,” Hanover said. “The German nuclear program remains a dangerous unknown, and both the Soviets and the Japanese seem to have used biological weapons in Central Asia and China. People want to be certain that we can punish them several-fold over.”

“I understand,” Dashwood said. “Give us three to four months and we should be able to deploy a basic communications and reconnaissance network. Fortunately, we have BAE’s contribution to the American ABM system still; the ‘Brilliant Eyes’ can be duplicated fairly easily. And, of course, there is the other use for them…”

“Keep that to yourself,” Hanover advised. “Still, make all haste John; all of the reports suggest that all hell is going to break loose here, sooner or later.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Dashwood said.

“I also want you to look to your security,” Hanover continued. “I may have to send you reinforcements; your base is perhaps the most critical outside of Britain itself.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Dashwood said. “You do realise that Brazil will have seen the launch?”

“And they’re not too happy with us, are they?” Hanover said absently. The government of Brazil had had designs – and a full set of blueprints – on the formerly French territory. The arrival of the Royal Marines hadn’t pleased them, particularly when French Guiana was given the beginnings of democratic government. Still, the political situation in Latin and South America was confusing enough to cause them to hesitate, and Hanover had offered them trade links.

“No, Prime Minister,” Dashwood said. “They might decide to assist the Germans on the sly.”

“Perhaps,” Hanover said. “Still, I cannot tell you enough; don’t let anything from the base fall into anyone’s hands, including everyone.”

Dashwood nodded to himself. “Yes, Prime Minister,” he said, understanding the hidden message. “Sir, Doctor Goddard has plans to scale up the boosters to place the components of a space station in orbit.”

“High-orbit kill-devices would be rather useful, would they not,” Hanover mused. “Something else to keep out of everyone else’s hands.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Dashwood said. “Still, I’m not certain that we can get a safe personnel launcher out of the boosters.”

“This is wartime,” Hanover said dismissingly. “Still, aren’t there designs for a Bernard-class or a Graham-class SSTO around in the BSC?”

“Yes, sir,” Dashwood said. “We have been besieged by people suggesting their designs, dozens of them.”

“Have some of them offered the contract to build their particular designs,” Hanover said. “I don’t think that we could copy one of the Russian spaceplanes; we want something simpler, less spectacular. We’ll let them absorb the starting costs; we want commercial British activity in space if we can get it.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Dashwood said. A thought struck him. “What about their materials?”

“I’ll talk to the Ministry of Production and Supply,” Hanover said, referring to yet another newcomer from the Transition’s ever-expanding circle of effects. “Bureaucrats do hate being leaned on; they grow awfully tight-fisted. Still, I dare say that I can convince them to make some materials available.”

He chuckled. “At this rate, we’re on our way to developing a Ministry of Space,” he said. “I don’t suppose that you have a Dan Dare in your team?”

“I’m afraid not,” Dashwood said. “We might be able to convince someone to change their name by deed poll.”

Hanover laughed. “I think that would be beyond the call of duty,” he said. “I think we’ll see how things develop; once everyone realises that the test was a success the military will be leaning on me to get more satellites in orbit. Everyone is going to want one; we’ve got teams in places that radios don’t find it easy to reach.”

Dashwood nodded. He knew where Hanover meant. “We’ll push it forward as fast as possible,” he assured Hanover. “However, unless further Tridents are released, we’ll be very lucky to have a second launch before July.”

“Understood,” Hanover said. Dashwood sighed in relief; unlike some Prime Ministers, Hanover didn’t demand the impossible. “Still, push it as hard as you can.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Dashwood said. The signal started to fade. “Sir, we’re losing connection.”

“We’ll chat later,” Hanover said. “Good evening.”

“Good evening sir,” Dashwood said, before the connection broke for the final time. It could have been re-routed, but neither man wanted to talk on. Chuckling, Dashwood picked up his PDA to write his report… and decided to join the party instead. The report could be written tomorrow.