Eagle Station

Seven

President John Dalton Farrell looked up at the sharp rap on his open door. “Yes?”

A short, pert woman with shoulder-length, silver-blond hair poked her head inside the Oval Office. “Well, J.D., those fellas you’ve been waitin’ on finally drifted in,” she said brusquely, with more than a hint of a West Texas twang. “That old hipster fart and the spaceman, I mean. You want to see ’em now?”

Farrell hid a grin. In her own words, Maisie Harrigan had been his “personal go-fer, bottle washer, and all-around ass-kicker” for decades — going back to a time when his entire oil and gas business consisted of one leased drilling rig and a couple of broken-down pickup trucks. Now, as executive assistant to the president, she ran Oval Office operations with an iron fist. It was also no secret that she saw one of her main jobs as making sure her boss and those around him didn’t get too big for their britches. “Sure thing, Maisie. Show them in, please.”

He worked even harder to keep the smile off his face when she ushered his two visitors in, lectured them not to “waste too much of J.D.’s time, you hear?” and then departed with an audible sniff.

Kevin Martindale looked after her with a hint of awe. “My God, but that woman scares me, Mr. President,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got ex — Navy SEAL bodyguards I wouldn’t bet a dime on if they went up against her.”

“She is a force of nature,” Farrell agreed.

Martindale’s long gray hair, neatly trimmed beard, and fondness for very expensive, open-necked suits did make him look a bit like some aging and dissolute playboy, Farrell decided. But that was only if you ignored his shrewd, penetrating gaze… and didn’t know that he’d occupied this same office as president of the United States.

Since leaving the White House, the other man had thrown his energies into Scion, the private military and intelligence company he’d created. For the past several years, Martindale had recruited, organized, and equipped the ultra high-tech air and ground units and covert operatives who had helped defend Poland and its smaller Eastern European allies against Russian aggression. Now, working mostly behind the scenes, Scion was coaching America’s regular armed forces in the advanced equipment and new war-fighting techniques it had so successfully pioneered.

Farrell’s other visitor, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan, had played his own vital part in Scion’s successes — both on and off the battlefield. Unfortunately, the terrible price he had paid for those victories was immediately apparent. Years ago, he’d been critically injured on a mission over the People’s Republic of China. He was alive now only thanks to a remarkably advanced piece of medical hardware, the LEAF, or Life Enhancing Assistive Facility. Without its carbon-fiber-and-metal exoskeleton, life-support backpack, and clear, spacesuit-like helmet, he would die within hours — killed by wounds that were far beyond the ability of modern medicine to heal.

“Maybe we’d better move on expeditiously through our business today, Mr. President,” Patrick suggested, with a crooked smile visible through his helmet. “Yon dragon lady out there is right about the value of your time… and I’d sure hate to piss her off. For one thing, there’s no way I can outrun her in this Mechanical Man rig.” Servo motors whined softly when he shrugged his shoulders.

Farrell laughed. “It does make you wonder who’s running this outfit, doesn’t it? Me or Maisie?”

“Well, ‘you’ve gotta dance with those that brung ya,’” Martindale quoted Ronald Reagan with a thin smile of his own.

Farrell nodded. Of course, the classic reminder to stay loyal to your supporters applied just as much to the two men seated before him as it did to Maisie Harrigan. Together with the general’s son Brad, Nadia Rozek, and a handful of others, they’d risked their lives to save his miserable hide. Now they were among his most trusted national security and intelligence policy advisers — a fact that he knew irritated many in Washington, D.C.’s status-conscious establishment. The fact that neither man held an official position in his administration made their obvious preeminence even more galling to some in the Pentagon and at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters.

Which said more about their critics than anything else, he decided. Washington was full of “experts” who’d failed upward, attaining higher and higher government positions despite repeated mistakes and blunders. To people like that, Kevin Martindale and Patrick McLanahan — and Farrell himself, he knew — were a threat, because they cared more about results than prestige.

He waved the two men into chairs and then leaned back against the corner of his desk. “Okay, shoot. What’s first on the agenda?”

“The Paracel Island freedom-of-navigation exercise,” Martindale told him.

Farrell snorted. “More like the Paracel Island turkey shoot, at least from what I’ve read.”

“Not the most diplomatic way of putting it,” Patrick said with a quick laugh. “But accurate nonetheless. We pulled in a treasure trove of intel on some of the PRC’s most advanced ballistic missiles—”

“And gave Comrade Li Jun a well-deserved black eye,” Martindale finished, with intense satisfaction. “With luck, our little show of nonlethal force should discourage Beijing from further escalating tensions in the South China Sea for some time to come.”

Farrell nodded somberly. “Amen to that.” China’s expansionist and aggressive moves among the reefs and islands that dotted the South China Sea had already sparked a number of international crises and even open naval and air clashes with its neighbors and the United States. Puncturing Beijing’s confidence that its armed forces could take on America’s military and win had been one of the primary objectives of last week’s combined Navy and Scion operation.

And the very fact that it had been a successful combined operation should achieve another of his objectives — demonstrating the value of using Sky Masters and Scion weapons, aircraft, and electronic warfare systems as a force multiplier for America’s regular armed forces. Like most bureaucracies, the Defense Department had a serious case of “not invented here” syndrome. For too many generals and admirals, weapons, equipment, and software that didn’t emerge from the Pentagon’s labyrinthine procurement processes were automatically suspect. But after they studied the awestruck after-action reports from McCampbell’s captain and her officers, Farrell was willing to bet that a lot of folks in both the Navy and the Air Force would be desperate to get their hands on ALQ-293 SPEAR systems of their own and the Sky Masters — designed MQ-77 Ghost Wolf unmanned attack aircraft.

The same thing went for the S-29B Shadow… but he’d already allocated control over all armed spaceplanes to the newly formed U.S. Space Force. After last year’s battles with the Russians in low Earth orbit, his push to create a sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces had sailed through Congress. Fully uniting the separate space-related programs and commands previously split between the Air Force, Navy, and even the Army was a long-overdue reform.

Right now, standing up the Space Force as a fully functioning outfit was still very much a work in progress. The other services weren’t happy about losing big chunks of budgetary authority and seeing many of their best young space-minded officers and enlisted personnel reassigned… and they were dragging their feet wherever possible. Fortunately for Farrell, Martindale and Patrick McLanahan were both old hands at circumventing bureaucratic resistance to new ideas. Their advice made it easy for him to distinguish between reasonable objections to his directives and purely parochial, empire-building bullshit.

“We’re not quite where we need to be yet,” Patrick told him bluntly when Farrell asked how things were going. “At least when it comes to getting the Space Force full control over its own procurement and logistics. That’s where the dead-enders in the various services are putting up a real bitch of a fight.”

Farrell nodded. Although procurement and supply functions weren’t seen as especially glamorous, they always absorbed a huge fraction of the budget in any big organization. They also tended to attract men and women who were very good at operating within clearly defined limits… but who were often leery of the whole idea of change. “What about the operations side of the Space Force?”

“That’s running considerably more smoothly,” Martindale replied. “For example, Eagle Station is now fully crewed by active-duty Space Force personnel. I just got the word from orbit on the way over here. Our Scion team finished its formal handover of all systems about half an hour ago.”

“Now that is some seriously good news,” Farrell said enthusiastically. They’d needed Scion technicians and mission specialists to run Eagle Station’s sensors, weapons, and fusion power generator after its capture from the Russians. But there was no denying that the company’s continued control over the space station had been a huge public relations headache. Typically over-the-top Russian propaganda blamed Scion’s “homicidal space pirates” for the deaths of Gryzlov and hundreds of others when the center of the Kremlin got blown to smithereens. Nobody who counted bought that line of bull, although it had been judged expedient to disarm the remaining Rapira missiles aboard the station as part of the ensuing cease-fire agreement with Moscow. What mattered more were those in Congress and in the media who hadn’t been happy about a for-profit private corporation running a strategic military asset like the armed orbital station. He made a mental note to have his press secretary make an announcement, preferably with a live television feed from Colonel Reynolds, Eagle’s new commander.

“The first active-duty spaceplane squadron is working up pretty fast, too,” Patrick reported. “We’ve been running likely candidates through intensive training out at Battle Mountain, using the simulators there. As you’d expect, the washout rate is pretty high, but Hunter Noble and his instructor team have already certified a full crew as flight-ready. In fact, they’re taking the new S-29B Sky Masters just delivered into orbit tomorrow for its final test flight and systems checks.”

“One rookie crew and one spaceplane fresh off the factory floor doesn’t exactly add up to much of a squadron,” Martindale commented dryly.

“Maybe not yet,” Patrick allowed. “But there are two more Shadows nearing completion. By the time Sky Masters rolls them out, we’ll have enough trained pilots and crew specialists to fly and fight them.”

Farrell considered that. While the S-29B was only an armed version of the original S-29 spaceplane, intended to carry passengers and cargo into orbit, it was still a remarkably complex and expensive machine. Plus, the design had already proved itself in action, both inside the atmosphere and in orbit. So watching the United States put three fully operational Shadows out on the flight line in less than a year should definitely send a chill up certain spines in Moscow and Beijing — and firmly signal America’s resolve to maintain its current edge in space combat capability. He looked at both men. “Basically, cutting to the chase, it sounds like y’all agree that we’re in pretty good shape militarily.”

Martindale glanced quickly at Patrick and then back at the president. “In general, I guess that’s a fair assessment,” he said. “The lack of real-time satellite intelligence is still a problem, but that should diminish as we launch new recon birds into Earth orbit. Plus, as we move additional S-29s to operational status, we can use them for directed space reconnaissance against high-value targets.”

Farrell eyed him closely. “Seems to me I’m hearing a mighty big unspoken ‘yes, but’ hanging out there, Kevin.”

“True,” Martindale said with a rueful smile. “Based on what we know, our current strategic situation seems mostly satisfactory.” He hesitated. “It’s what we don’t know that I find worrying.”

Farrell frowned. “Anything in particular?”

Patrick leaned forward. “What neither Kevin nor I can forget is how completely the Russians blindsided us last year.” Through his clear helmet, his lined face now looked grim. “We never expected Moscow to beat us to the punch with the world’s first long-range energy weapon and with its first honest-to-God compact nuclear fusion generator.”

“Both of which were based on original research they stole from American labs,” Farrell reminded him.

“Sure, but what matters is that the Russians took concepts our government stuck in a drawer and forgot about — or never adequately funded — and they made them damn well work,” the other man said stubbornly. “Plus, those bastards did it without letting us get so much as a whiff of what they were planning until it was almost too late.”

Farrell pondered that for a moment and then shrugged his own big shoulders. “Fair enough. On the other hand, that rabid son of a bitch Gryzlov is dead and gone.”

“And currently burning in hell, I earnestly trust and hope,” Martindale agreed. He frowned. “Unfortunately, Marshal Mikhail Ivanovich Leonov is still very much alive. And much as I regret to say it, I suspect he may be an even more dangerous opponent than the late and utterly unlamented Gennadiy Gryzlov.”

Patrick nodded. “Leonov is certainly cagier. Nominally, he’s just Russia’s defense minister, one of a cabinet full of equals. But considering how powerful the military is in the political system over there, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’s calling the shots when it counts.”

“You think this Leonov character may be planning a new move against us?” Farrell asked bluntly.

“We do,” Martindale said. “Russia’s a declining geopolitical power at the moment, especially with its economy under serious pressure from our rapidly increasing oil and gas production. Add in the fact that its political stability took a serious hit with Gryzlov’s assassination—”

“Assassination?” Farrell interrupted sharply.

Martindale nodded. “Somebody deliberately aimed and fired that missile from orbit,” he pointed out. “And it sure as hell wasn’t us.” He sighed. “Not that we can prove anything now.”

“More’s the pity,” Farrell agreed. He motioned for the other man to go on.

“My point is that the Russians — especially their ruling elites — have every incentive to take risks just now. Unless they can somehow tilt the global balance of forces back into their favor, they’re ultimately screwed. And while a few of the current government’s ministers might hope they can ride things down to a soft landing as a second-rate power, most of them probably know that’s not a safe bet.”

“Especially not someone like Leonov,” Patrick added. “I’ve studied his record. The man’s certainly brutal and ruthless. But he’s also a Russian patriot. He won’t settle for watching his country slide peacefully into oblivion.”

Farrell frowned. “So what are you suggesting we do? Preemptively strike Moscow… just in case?” His tone made clear how little he thought of that option.

Martindale shook his head. “Even setting aside the probability of unwinnable nuclear escalation, that isn’t really an option.” He smiled thinly. “After all, we are the good guys.”

“Well, I’d argue for a targeted hit on Leonov himself,” Patrick said, not mincing words. “If I saw a way we could pull it off.” His exoskeleton whirred quietly again as he sat up straighter. “Killing an enemy commander might not seem very sporting, but it can be extremely effective. It sure worked out pretty well when our P-38 fighters shot down Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto during World War Two.”

“During a declared war,” Martindale noted.

Patrick shrugged again. “War’s war, declared or not.”

Farrell shook his head. “I take your point, General.” His face tightened. He’d only narrowly escaped the Russian effort to murder him. Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to get sucked into a game of tit-for-tat with human lives on the line. That was the kind of game you lost simply by playing. “But we are not going down that road on my watch. Comprende?”

“Completely, Mr. President.”

“So, setting aside the thought of going to all-out war or operating my own little version of Murder Inc., what are my choices here?”

“First, we keep our eyes wide open,” Martindale said flatly. “My intelligence operatives inside Russia already have instructions to poke into every nook, cranny, and corner they can find.”

Farrell nodded his approval. Over the past several years, Scion’s espionage operations had proven far more effective than any of those run by the CIA or other official U.S. intelligence agencies, which had been too caught up in political correctness and partisanship to focus on their primary mission. “And second?”

“That we keep pushing hard — both in space itself and by rapidly exploiting the incredible technological breakthroughs we captured aboard Mars One,” Patrick said.

“Like that ten-megawatt fusion power generator the Russians built?”

“Yes, sir.”

Farrell shook his head. “Y’all are forgetting I’m an old hand in the energy business,” he said bluntly. “And I’ve read the Department of Energy’s report on that reactor. There’s no doubt the damned thing’s a technological and engineering marvel, but it ain’t a game changer… not in domestic energy production nor for our defense programs.”

Martindale sighed. “Because of the fuel mixture it uses.”

“Bingo,” Farrell said. “That Russian fusion generator relies on a deuterium-helium-3 mix to operate. To produce those ten megawatts it needs a supply of two and a half kilograms of helium-3. On the face of things, that doesn’t sound like much… feed in less than six pounds of this helium isotope and hey, presto, you get enough electricity to run ten thousand American homes for five whole years.”

“The catch being that helium-3 is an incredibly rare substance, sir,” Patrick said wryly.

“Rare is one serious piece of understatement, General.” Farrell shook his head. “You can’t just go mine this stuff anywhere on Earth. It doesn’t exist. Most of what we do produce comes from refurbishing deteriorating H-bombs. The Energy Department points out that even at the height of the Cold War, our total national production of helium-3 came to only about eight kilograms per year. And after all our weapons cuts, we’re down to under a kilogram.”

He held up a hand with a slight smile. “Now before y’all start pushing, I am not going to order a huge expansion of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal as a means of boosting domestic helium-3 generation.”

“I suppose that might send the wrong diplomatic signal to the rest of the world,” Martindale agreed with an equally humorless smile.

“So there you go,” Farrell went on. “Our existing stockpiles and production can keep Eagle Station’s own fusion generator fueled up, but that’s about the limit. Breakthrough or not, the technology’s basically a dead end.”

Patrick shook his head. “You’re overlooking other possibilities, Mr. President.” He leaned forward in his chair again, wholly intent on making his point. “You’re right that there aren’t any significant natural deposits of helium-3 on Earth. But there’s a lot out there elsewhere in the rest of the solar system, just waiting for the taking. Heck, the gas giants of the outer system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — are practically awash in the stuff.”

“All of which are a hellaciously long way from here.” Farrell folded his arms. “I mean, NASA hasn’t even built a rocket that can put astronauts back on the moon yet… and that’s practically spitting distance compared to going to Jupiter and beyond.” He chuckled. “I know people expect folks from Texas to think mighty big, but there’s a pretty bright line between being naturally ambitious and just plain loco. And I’d just as soon stay on the right side of that divide.”

“The company the Russians stole the original fusion reactor tech from had plans for direct fusion drives,” Patrick pointed out. “Build one of those drives and put it on a spacecraft and you can get out farther a lot faster.”

“How much faster?” Farrell asked, intrigued in spite of himself.

“Some of our robotic probes took more than six years to reach Jupiter,” Patrick told him. “A fusion-powered spaceship could cover the same distance in less than a year.”

Farrell reined himself back in. “That’d be something, all right,” he agreed slowly. “But we’re going round in circles here, like trying to figure out which came first: the chicken or the egg. The way I see it, we need more helium-3 to seriously exploit this fusion power breakthrough. But we can’t round up enough helium-3 without developing these fusion drives you’re talking about… and we can’t build those drives without the helium-3 resources we don’t have.” He shook his head regretfully. “Like I said before, it’s a dead end.”

“Not quite,” Martindale said quietly. “There are large reserves of this isotope much closer than the outer planets.”

Farrell raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“The solar wind’s been bombarding the moon with helium-3 for billions of years,” Martindale explained. “And since the moon doesn’t have a magnetic field like Earth, there’s nothing to deflect it away. Soil studies of material collected by the Apollo missions and other probes have found significant amounts of the isotope trapped in the lunar regolith.”

“How significant?” Farrell prodded.

“Concentrations as high as twenty parts per billion.”

Farrell snorted again. Those were the kinds of numbers he had a lot of experience wrestling with. “For crying out loud, Kevin… that’s almost as bad as saying we could strain the gold out of seawater and all get rich. You’re talking about processing upwards of fifty thousand tons of this lunar regolith just to extract one lousy kilogram of helium-3. There’s no way that’ll ever be a paying proposition.”

“If we were talking about a conventional earthbound mining operation, that would be true,” Martindale responded calmly. “But automation is the solution to this problem. The European Space Agency and a number of universities and corporations have already worked through what it would take to extract the helium-3 and the other valuable materials — nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, for example — trapped in the moon’s surface soils. They’ve drawn up plans for systems of robotic bulldozers, automated conveyer belts, and solar-powered furnaces. My people have vetted their numbers, and we estimate a carefully designed automated lunar mining operation could produce up to fifty kilograms of helium-3 per year.”

“Which would be more than enough to power a vast array of advanced space systems and fusion drive development programs,” Patrick added. He looked in dead earnest. “We’re talking about the key that could eventually unlock the whole solar system, Mr. President. Conventional chemical rockets like those we use now can only take us so far. Mastering fusion, both for power generation and as a means of propulsion, could put the United States and our allies in a position of overwhelming economic and military advantage for decades to come.”

Slowly, the president nodded. “I take your point, General.” But then his face clouded over. “Which is too damned bad, because right now the NASA slugocracy isn’t able to put so much as one doggone pound down on the lunar surface.”

“Probably not,” Patrick said. “But I bet there are private space companies who can — Sky Masters, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a bunch of others.”

Martindale nodded. “Offer to buy helium-3 at the right price and I guarantee you the private sector will find ways to meet the demand.”

“Maybe so,” Farrell agreed judiciously. When it came to solving problems, there was almost no one better than a sharp-eyed businessman backed by a solid engineering team — so long as there was a real potential for a serious profit. There was certainly no doubt that the reusable rockets pioneered by a number of companies were already cutting per-pound launch costs far below what they’d been in the Apollo era. What would once have been unaffordable, at least at any cost U.S. taxpayers would swallow, might now be within reach.

He let his breath out. “Hell’s bells, but it sure would be nice to give this country of ours something big to shoot for — something that could really change the world for the better. We’ve been playing small ball for too long, piddling around with penny ante projects like electric cars and windmills.”

“Yes, sir,” Patrick agreed. Somberly, he looked across the desk at the president. “And if we don’t do it and do it soon, I’m pretty sure others will.”

“Meaning what?” Farrell asked.

“The Russians and the Chinese aren’t blind to the potential of mining the moon,” Patrick told him quietly. “In fact, a Chinese geologist was one of the first scientists to seriously push the idea of extracting helium-3 and other valuable resources from the lunar surface.”

“So?”

“That man is now the chief scientist for China’s lunar exploration program,” Patrick said. “If we really are in a race for the moon again, we might be starting out behind.”