Orbit

Chapter 21

Satisfied that his parentals have quieted down at long last, Alastair Wood slides out of bed and quietly pads across the cold floor of his room. He pulls on a thick robe before sitting at his desk and firing up his most prized possession—a computer with a flat screen monitor and the high-speed Internet connection that was his main gift for his just-celebrated twelfth birthday.

The sleepy look and deep circles under his eyes he carries to school these days are worth it for the midnight hours he usually spends at the keyboard, but tonight has been a disappointment. It was shaping up at first to be a bonus with his father and mother doing their lock-the-door intimate thing at ten, but two hours have gone by. Now all he’ll have is three uninterrupted hours before having to hit the sack as usual at three to be up by seven.

While so many of his school chums have their heads buried in video games, he’s touring the world real time every night. And it is the whole world that pours into his personal portal, filled with information on just about anything he would ever want to know.

His father will never understand of course, and he’s tired of being called a geek whenever he’s discovered hunched over the keyboard at some ungodly hour. He loves his dad, even though he knows he’s a hopeless dinosaur when it comes to computers and communication, thinking his GSM cell phone is cutting edge. Alastair can’t bring himself to tell him that they’ve had the same phones in Africa for over a decade.

The operating system goes through its start-up routine and he waits it out, reviewing his surfing plan for the next few hours. A new bulletin board from England, a number of Web sites in the U.S.—including one featuring bikini shots of famous actresses—and an attempt to hack into a poorly protected Internet e-mail provider are all on the agenda.

The house is quiet as a tomb, and he double checks to make sure the volume is zeroed before running the risk of a burst of noise—a big mistake he made a few weeks ago that brought his father flying up the stairs.

There’s a parcel of e-mails from friends, including one with a link he’s never seen before, some sort of Internet router service.

Oh what the heck, he decides, clicking on the address and waiting for the screen to stabilize.

A long list of active e-mail accounts parades by, and he selects a few at random, watching a stream of 1’s and zeros without being able to discern their meaning.

Right! A challenge!

He selects a translation program and tries it with no effect, then pulls in another, and on the third try someone’s real-time transmission is crawling across his screen, some teenage girl complaining about a feckless boyfriend.

Boring.

He pulls back a level and scrolls down to the very bottom, finding a message in progress without a coherent address.

Hm-m-m. Let’s look at this private, personal communique.

He triggers the translation program again, and the words assemble themselves in English, the transmission apparently still in progress and scrolling across his screen.

…record, I suppose I should yell Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! ( At least I think that’s the right phrase.) I’m a passenger on the private spaceship Intrepid, which launched from Mojave, California, and we were hit by some sort of small object which came right through the cabin and right through my pilot’s head, killing him instantly. No one can hear me on the radios, and apparently I only have only five days of air left.

And this isn’t fun anymore.

Alastair sits back, scratching his head. The syntax and tone don’t match any of the hackers he knows who might try to pull such a stunt, but then he can hardly know all the tricksters on the planet. Someone, however, is trying a sophisticated scam, and he triggers a save program to record whatever comes and sits back to watch what the trickster will try next.

Private spaceship. Yeah, sure.

Just to be certain, he triggers the Google search engine and throws the words private spaceship and Intrepid into the search box, expecting a cascade of gobbledygook.

Instead sixteen thousand hits come back with the starting point the official Web site of American Space Adventures. Alastair sits forward slowly as he pages past the home page and reads about—the launch one day before—the name of the craft: Intrepid.

What the hell?

A smile spreads across his face. Buggers almost got me! Whoever the hacker is pulling the stunt, he’s cleverly used the right names and references.

Can’t fool me! he thinks, watching the evolving message once again. After ten minutes, he decides, he’ll run the whole thing through a matching program and see where in reality it came from.

Help, I’m trapped in a Chinese fortune cookie factory! Yeah right. A new twist on the oldest scam in the book!

The chief master sergeant toggles another command and turns to the NORAD commander. “Sixty-seven minutes left before impact, General, and thirteen minutes to target intercept.”

The special liquid crystal display he’s been controlling in a closed conference room changes views.

Chris Risen nods at the duty controller as he scans the orbital threat to ASA’s Intrepid, now displayed on the screen. The effort he set in motion is now approaching the critical moment, and with the Situation Room maintaining an open line for the President, it’s eating at him that there’s nothing NORAD can do but watch and hope.

“What will they see in the main control room?” Chris asks.

“They would see a launch, sir, but we’ve nulled it out of the computer, so it will not show.”

“And if it impacts the target?”

“They’ll see the debris with no explanation.”

“What’s the status of the ASAT launch?” He’s very aware of the serious fuel mistake.

“Bluebird Two-Three has elected to continue, sir, despite the… ah… problem. He’s positioning now for the run.”

“We have radar on him?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll bring it up.”

The track of the F-106 appears to be moving in slow motion relative to the track of the oncoming piece of Soviet space junk streaking south on its polar orbit. The Delta Dart is flying at just under six hundred miles per hour now while the target approaches at seventeen thousand. A digital readout next to the F-106’s target depiction shows his heading changing and his speed increasing as Chris settles into one of the command chairs to watch. It will be up to him to call ASA if the attempt fails, and it’s a call he does not want to make.

“He’s starting his run, sir.”

Owen Larrabe tries to ignore the persistent itching on the side of his face in a place he has no hope of reaching. Sealed inside his pressure suit, it will just have to itch, he decides. But the damned itch is leaching away his attention at a critical moment, and he summons up the willpower to combat the distraction as he nudges the throttle into afterburner. He’s level at thirty-five thousand and keeping the flight director target dead center as he lets the Delta Dart accelerate smoothly through the speed of sound, the airspeed indicator winding up toward the needed airspeed of 1.22 Mach. He sees the Mach-meter already at 1.2 and accelerating and pulls back the throttle, holding constant at 1.22 as he mentally counts down to the pull-up point, now just five miles and less than twenty-five seconds ahead. He checks his lateral flight path, reconfirms that the missile arming sequence is complete and precisely on target, pulls the F-106 into a sharp 3.8-g climb until reaching sixty-five degrees nose up, holding the attitude as the airspeed remains constant with full burner, the fighter climbing at more than forty-six thousand feet per minute, the altimeter more or less a blur as he shoots up through fifty thousand, then sixty and seventy, slowing slightly as the engine gulps for air and fuel and flames-out.

Oh, shit! Too soon! I hope the missile can compensate.

He’s coasting now up through eighty-five thousand feet, gravity slowing him rapidly. He feels the F-106 jump slightly and hears the whoosh of the missile’s rocket motor as it releases itself and starts its climb, its silicon brain aware that the launch speed is slower than it should be, the altitude more than five thousand feet shy of the mark.

He’s got worries now beyond the missile’s fate, and he tunnels in on the task of getting down safely. Bailout is always an option, but one he doesn’t want to use.

Owen pushes the stick forward and lets the F-106’s nose fall through the horizon and steeply downward as the speed builds again. He flicks open the speed brakes as he tries to restart the engine, but one glance at the fuel indicators confirms that there won’t be a restart. The engine has sucked down the last drop of fuel in the full afterburner climb, and he’s now flying a delta-wing glider with one solitary chance at a safe landing.

Only a few thin cumulus clouds dot the landscape below as the Delta Dart plunges earthward, the speed stabilizing at just under Mach 1, a small Ram Air Turbine providing the only hydraulic pressure to the flight controls. He punches up Carlsbad Muni as his destination and does a quick calculation.

Okay, the runway is twenty-eight miles east, so plan to enter a high key down the runway at eight thousand feet.

He swings the fighter’s nose to the appropriate heading, watching carefully as the altitude unwinds through forty thousand.

A bit high and fast, he decides, banking the jet into one back and forth S turn, and then resuming the course. He dials in the VHF frequency for Cavern City Unicom, the common radio channel for the airport in the absence of a control tower, and rechecks his energy profile as he triggers his transmitter.

“Pan, pan, pan, Cavern City Unicom, Carlsbad Airport traffic, this is Bluebird Two-Three, I’m a flamed-out Air Force F-106 making an emergency approach to Runway Zero-Three, Carlsbad. All traffic please stay clear. Pan, pan, pan.”

A puzzled voice with a heavy West Texas accent comes back almost instantly.

“Air Force F-106, this is Cavern City Unicom. Sir, your winds are two two zero at eighteen knots, gusting twenty-two, so I suggest you use Runway Two-One.”

“Roger, Cavern City. Thanks. Bluebird Two-Three changing to a high-key left traffic downwind for Runway Two-One, Carlsbad.”

A flurry of quick mental recalculations leads to the sudden realization that he’s no longer too high and too fast.

Okay, enter a high downwind and meter the turn to final at two miles, ah, northeast at four thousand. Gotta turn at four.

He’s dropping under ten thousand now, worrying about pulling the nose up and stretching his flight path as the Delta Dart slows below four hundred knots on the way to three hundred, which he’ll use as his maneuvering speed. But that speed is coming off too fast, and he can’t figure it out. The airport is just ahead by four miles and he turns to parallel Runway Zero-Three on his left, letting the jet slow to two ninety before continuing the descent, dropping through eight thousand as the field passes his left shoulder. At this rate, he thinks, he’ll have to turn inside one mile and delay the landing gear.

What the hell? Why am I slowing this fast?

The answer comes in a flash of embarrassment.

Oh, jeez, the boards!

He flicks the speed brake closed and feels the jet’s aerodynamics improve instantly from those of a boulder to something more resembling a flying machine.

The field is a mile back to his left now, the altitude at five thousand, and he calculates the wind and decides to make an early turn, sliding the F-106 around to the left with his eyes on the end of the runway and lining up, checking his speed before committing the landing gear, which will slow him even more.

The speed is just above target, the end of the runway moving beneath his nose less than a mile out as he aligns with the concrete ribbon and drops the gear. The runway numbers stop moving forward in his windscreen, and he meters the jet over the threshold fifty feet high at a hundred and seventy, using the speed brake to help him settle onto the concrete, which is disappearing fast.

He’s on the wheel brakes, metering the pressure, wondering if he should have used aerobraking, the craft slowing through a hundred with less than two thousand feet of runway left. He presses harder on the pedals, worried about blowing the tires but slowing as the far end of the runway hurtles toward him.

And just as quickly he’s at the end, rolling the jet off on a taxiway at twenty knots and bringing her safely to a complete stop clear of the runway.

Owen powers open the canopy, runs the shutdown checklist, and starts removing his helmet—aware of a flurry of vehicles approaching from the southeast part of the field. He pulls the helmet free just as several Air Force cars pull into view and turns quick attention to scratching the place on the right side of his face that’s been bugging him since takeoff.

A crew chief is placing a ladder now to his left.

“Did we make it?”

“Sir?”

“The shot. Was it successful?”

Chris Risen doesn’t feel like a four-star general at the moment. More like a green lieutenant watching something momentous but completely out of his control as lines and vectors merge on the small screen. Outwardly his image is as secure and professional as ever. Inside he’s on edge, his heart in his throat.

“Status, Chief?” he asks quietly of the chief master sergeant.

“Missile at one hundred seventy-five miles and climbing, sir. It’s… a little off profile, but closing.”

“Show me the intercept solution, please.”

New lines appear on the display, one red, one blue.

“General, the blue line is the missile, the red, as you know, the proton shroud.”

“Am I seeing that right? Are they going to miss?” He hates to believe it, but the computer is projecting the missile to pass behind the oncoming shroud.

“That dot is the current projection… I mean, without the missile speeding up. That’s where the missile will be along the shroud’s orbital path as it crosses. But the missile should speed up.”

“God, I hope so.”

“The corrections are real time.”

As they speak the display shifts, the intersect point moving closer to the shroud, overtaking it slowly from behind, the digital readout of the missile’s speed indicating a steady acceleration.

“The second stage has a thirty percent reserve boost capacity, sir.”

Another jump in the missile’s speed registers as the altitude continues upward.

Come on, come on! Chris thinks. Less than five hundred miles separate the two objects, the missile racing to close at a forty-eight-degree angle.

Once more the computer updates, moving the intercept dot within a mile of the shroud, still to the rear. The speed of the missile is over seventeen thousand nine hundred miles per hour, and as he watches, the display upgrades it to eighteen thousand.

“Almost, sir.”

“Time to impact?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Jesus, I’m too old for this.”

“Yes, sir. I am, too.”

“Like waiting to find out if your girlfriend’s pregnant.”

The chief turns with a smile and a puzzled look, unsure how to take this. Just as quickly he returns his gaze to the closing race.

“Twenty seconds.”

The red intersecting projection dot is less than a quarter mile behind the shroud as the two objects close within seventy miles of each other.

“Fifteen.”

The predictor dot moves to a tenth of mile behind the target, the missile’s speed still increasing.

“Ten seconds.”

Goddammit, FLY, you bastard! Come ON!

The gap between dot and shroud closes a bit more, but still not colocated. The speed readout on the missile is now eighteen thousand five hundred.

There’s no margin for failure here! God, please help us make this happen, Chris thinks, his teeth clenched as the two icons converge in real time on the screen.

“Five, four, three…” the chief intones.

The predictor red dot is almost on top of the shroud’s icon now.

“Two, one…”

The dots merge and the computer-generated picture freezes.

“Now.”

“Now what? What happened?” Chris demands.

“Stand by, sir. Switching to real-time radar.”

The screen flashes black and then to a two-dimensional display of NORAD’s radar, which is tracking an exploding spray of objects that seem to be at an angle to the original track of the proton shroud.

“We got it, sir! Direct hit! Damn, that’s a beauty!”

“Direct hit?”

“All the debris is flying off at a twenty-degree angle.”

“Everything?”

“I’m looking, General. Yes, sir! We freakin’ did it! Everything!”

“Holy Moly.”

“Yes, sir! Woo-hoo!”

“I’ll second that, Chief. That was too close without a defibrillator standing by. And if you’re sure, tell the Sit Room while I call ASA.”

“They’ll make it, sir. No impact. Not even a bolt.”