Eagle Station

Thirty-One

Brad McLanahan watched the solid black Scion executive jet touch down. Slowing quickly, the Gulfstream G600 came to the end of the runway, turned, and taxied on toward Hangar Two. High overhead, its two Texas Air National Guard F-16C Falcon fighter escorts peeled away, rolling south as they flew off toward Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off their clear bubble canopies.

For a moment, Brad stayed outside, watching the agile F-16s dart across the sky. At one point in his life, and not so long ago, either, flying high-performance aircraft like those Falcons for the U.S. Air Force would have been his dream job. He shook his head. Things sure had changed over the past few years. Silently, he turned and walked back inside the hangar to join the little group waiting there. He slipped into place between his father and Nadia.

Kevin Martindale checked his watch. “Well, at least they’re right on time.” He looked tense. “And a good thing, too. The turnaround on this visit is tight. Which is why I told that Gulfstream’s flight crew not to screw around.”

Next to him, Hunter Noble half turned with a quizzical look. “So what would have happened to your guys if they had run late? This time of year, that’s not so unlikely, you know — between normal bad weather and air traffic control delays, I mean.”

Martindale gave him a thin smile. “Bad things, Dr. Noble. Very bad things.”

“Oh,” Boomer said. He mimed a pistol pointed at his head. “As in bang.”

The former president snorted. “Of course not. I can’t just have people killed on a whim.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Boomer said, winking quickly at Brad and Nadia, who were trying hard not to laugh out loud.

“Not legally, anyway,” Martindale continued darkly.

Perhaps fortunately, the shrill, earsplitting whine of the executive jet’s twin turbofans made any further conversation impossible. Slowly, the Gulfstream rolled in through the hangar’s big open doors. With its engines spooling down, the midnight-black aircraft swung toward them and then braked to a stop just a few yards away.

Its forward cabin door opened. Several serious-looking men and women in dark suits hurried down the Gulfstream’s cabin steps and spread out into a semicircle. Slight bulges marked the holstered weapons concealed under their jackets. After a few moments, during which they carefully scrutinized their surroundings, one of them turned back toward the jet and nodded.

Brad and the others straightened to attention as a tall, broad-shouldered man emerged. Buttoning up his own suit coat against the cold, he trotted down the steps and came toward them with a friendly grin on his face. His security detail closed in around him, parting only when Martindale stepped forward with an outstretched hand.

“Welcome to Battle Mountain, Mr. President,” the head of Scion said quietly.

A few minutes later, they gathered in a small, windowless room at the far end of the hangar. Ordinarily, Sky Masters used it to brief pilots before test flights aboard new experimental aircraft. Now the president’s Secret Service detail was stationed outside the briefing room’s closed door. Corporate security personnel, all former military, held a discreet perimeter around the hangar itself.

“I wish we had time to give you a real tour,” Brad told Farrell as they sat down. “From the air, Sky Masters is just a bunch of industrial-looking buildings. The really cool stuff goes on inside.”

Farrell nodded regretfully. “I surely would have enjoyed that, Major. Maybe I’ll get the chance someday when I’m not pretending to be somewhere else.”

Right now, as far as the press, public, and, with luck, Russia and China were all concerned, J. D. Farrell was only on a quick working vacation at his private ranch in Texas’s Hill Country — with no plans to go anywhere but back to Washington, D.C., in a couple of days. Arranging the logistics for this secret visit to Battle Mountain had taken a lot of doing. Overruling the Secret Service’s objections to the president going anywhere without the usual army of White House staff, bodyguards, medical teams, helicopters, and armored limousines had finally required direct intervention by Farrell himself.

It would have been much simpler, Brad knew, to hold this meeting by secure video link. But the president had made it clear he was tired of “dealing with y’all mostly through some damned television screen. Maybe it’s old-fashioned, but I sort of appreciate seeing the folks working for me in person every so often.”

Meaningfully, Martindale laid his smartphone faceup on the table. He’d set it to display the time remaining before they needed to hustle Farrell back aboard his plane for its return flight to Texas. “The clock’s ticking here,” he reminded them all.

“That’s for sure,” Farrell agreed. His mouth tightened. “So I’ll get right down to it. Right now, we’re getting our asses kicked by the Chinese and the Russians in deep space and on the moon… and all I hear from NASA are a lot of high-sounding explanations about why we can’t do anything to change that. At least not in time for it to matter a damn.”

Patrick McLanahan looked him in the eye. “That’s a self-inflicted problem, Mr. President. This country’s manned space efforts have focused almost entirely on operations in low Earth orbit for decades — ever since the end of the Apollo program.”

Martindale nodded. “There were various plans for longer-ranged manned missions, but every administration’s priorities kept shifting. So no one ever succeeded in setting clear, achievable goals for NASA.” He looked dour. “Not even me.”

“And now a lot of the best people have left the agency,” Boomer volunteered from his end of the table. “Eventually, just about anyone who’s seriously interested in doing real things in space ends up signing on with SpaceX, or Blue Origin, or one of the other innovative private aerospace companies.”

“Like Sky Masters?” Farrell said with a wry smile.

“Yes, sir,” Boomer acknowledged, matching the other man’s lopsided smile. “There are still talented engineers and astronauts and technical people at NASA, but they’re always fighting an uphill battle against the suits at headquarters to get anything done. And if there’s any serious risk involved?” He shook his head in disgust. “Shit. Calling NASA HQ risk-averse is like saying Ebenezer Scrooge was a little tight with his money.” He saw the suppressed grin on Brad’s face and spread his hands. “Okay, yeah, I’ve had my share of new engine designs blow up, so maybe I lean a little too far the other way. But, hell, rockets are inherently dangerous machines. Sure, you can make ’em safer… but there’s no way you can guarantee perfect safety, especially not with a new spacecraft. Well, not unless you don’t ever to plan to actually fly it.”

“Which just about sums up where we stand,” Farrell said with a frown. He sighed. “I keep looking at that fancy NASA logo during their presentations, and all I can hear is what my old grandad always used to tell me. ‘J.D., just because a chicken has wings don’t mean it can fly.’”

He looked around the table. “Which is why I’m here. I need better answers than I’ve been getting in D.C. Boiling all their bullshit down, NASA can’t send Americans back to the moon, not even on a flyby. Not anytime in the next twelve to eighteen months.”

“By which time, our enemies may well be in a position of tremendous advantage,” Nadia said grimly.

Farrell nodded. His frown deepened. “Let’s just say this is a comedy of errors, except without the laughs. NASA’s already built several of its brand-new Orion crew vehicles. And the European Space Agency’s done the same with the service module it’s building for the Orion program. Hell, everybody I talk to claims both of those spacecraft are flight-ready. So you’d think everything would be set to go for a manned lunar flyby—”

“Except we don’t have any rocket capable of lifting an Orion crew vehicle and its service module off the launchpad and boosting them into a translunar injection orbit,” Brad said quietly. “Because NASA’s heavy-lift SLS isn’t ready yet.”

“Yep,” Farrell agreed. “And none of the other private commercial rockets out there, not even a Falcon Heavy, can do the job.”

Brad took a deep breath. “Well, sir… we may have a fix for that. See, Boomer, Nadia, and I have been working the problem pretty hard ever since my dad figured out the Russians and Chinese had already landed on the moon.”

“No need to apologize, Major,” Farrell said with a hint of amusement. “I’d kind of bet on that being the case.” He looked at them more seriously. “Is this fix of yours something NASA’s going to approve of?”

“Not in a million years,” Boomer admitted.

“And why not?” Martindale wanted to know.

Brad shrugged. “Because we’re proposing to steal a page out of the Chinese and Russian playbook.”

“It’s our new definition of genius,” Boomer added smugly. “One percent perspiration. Ninety-nine percent sheer larceny.”

Patrick smiled as he saw what they were driving at. “You want to assemble that Orion crew vehicle, service module, and booster in space.”

“In Earth orbit,” Brad confirmed.

Farrell looked surprised. “I asked NASA about the idea of doing something similar and they told me it was flat-out impossible.”

“It is impossible… for NASA,” Brad said bluntly. The space agency’s reaction was perfectly understandable. Mating an Orion crew vehicle to the ESA-designed service module in orbit would be an intricate and complicated task. First, it meant checking, and if necessary, fixing the hundreds of bolts, power cables, and fuel and water pipes and conduits that tied the service module to its adapter ring. Then it required maneuvering the gumdrop-shaped crew vehicle into precise alignment with the adapter ring, all before carefully connecting an umbilical boom containing fluid, gas, electrical, and data lines. On Earth, at the Kennedy Space Center, the process took weeks of work by skilled technicians.

He saw the president eyeing him and walked through his reasoning. “So there’s no way astronauts wearing standard EVA suits could handle the job,” he finished.

“But you think Sky Masters can?” Farrell pressed.

“Yes, sir. We have the advanced equipment and we have the know-how,” Brad said firmly. “The plan’s not that complicated, although the execution’s definitely tricky. Basically what we have in mind is this: NASA launches the unmanned Orion crew vehicle aboard a Falcon 9 or some other rocket in that class and has it dock with Eagle Station. Then we send the ESA-built service module up aboard a Falcon Heavy. Once everything’s in orbit, a Sky Masters team will assemble the crew vehicle and service module — and then slot them onto the Falcon Heavy’s second-stage booster.”

He allowed his enthusiasm a little more free rein. “Then NASA’s astronauts come aboard, maneuver away from Eagle Station, and light off that Falcon’s Merlin-1D engine. And, zoom, our guys are on their way to lunar orbit.”

“Do you have the facts and figures to prove this space-based assembly concept of yours is workable?” Farrell asked seriously.

“Yes, sir,” Brad assured him.

“All right, then,” Farrell said in approval. “If your numbers pan out, I’ll get buy-in from the National Security Council and we’ll wrestle NASA into submission. The agency can bitch all it wants, but if necessary, I’ll damn well override them in the national interest.”

He stood up, a move followed by everyone else in the room. “Let’s get going, people. It’s high time we kicked this country’s manned lunar program into high gear.”