Orbital

Fourteen Infiltrator

Despite my noble intentions, there were only ever two deal breakers to me saying “yes” to this mission. The first was it involving any kind of combat. I’ve had enough for more than one lifetime. The second one is probably equally as important to me.

“This operation, I assume I’ll be using something like the DarkStar to gain access to the CS626?” I ask.

“Yes,” replies Saul. “Jessup will have the operational specifics. But we can’t have you observed as you approach the satellite.”

“Every 80 hours the CS626 goes into a reserve mode,” says Victor. “It stays that way for five hours as all the systems reset. It can’t transmit during that period. That would be when you’ll do your insertion.”

“Okay. Fine. More importantly, how would I be coming back down to Earth?”

If it’s the air mattress of death, I’m out of here. I’ll sit on the bottom of the sinkhole battling it out with Mighty Matilda until my old age before I ride another rubber raft down from space. It’s not just the fact that it should have killed me, that was the roughest, most painful ride of my life.

If you told me I had a choice between doing that again or letting Western civilization fall, I’d start reading up on making stone flints and moccasins.

“We have a better reentry plan for you this time.” Saul presses a button and an image of a satellite appears on the screen. “This is a Naval observation satellite that launched a week ago. It looks just like the other Ulysses-class birds, but it’s had all of the interior systems removed. We call it Night Bird”

A cross-section appears showing the inside. There’s a capsule that resembles the Unicorn-class I’m familiar with on one end and the bullet-shape of the DarkStar at the other — except this one is longer.

“Rather than design a habitat from the ground up, we put a spaceship inside a Ulysses-class satellite shell along with a DarkStar variant. You’ll take an iCosmos flight up on a Unicorn where it will dock with the satellite. From there, you’ll transfer to the DarkStar and use it to travel to the CS636. After you’ve made measurement of the laser onboard, you’ll take the DarkStar back to the Night Bird and return to Earth in the Unicorn. To any observers, it will appear that you’re doing a service mission on a Ulysses satellite.”

“And the Night Bird stays up there?”

“Yes. It’s a temporary fix until we can make something more permanent for Space Ops to function from.”

“Wait? Space Ops is going to be in space?”

“Eventually. We’re looking at building our own platform. We could shave our response time to under an hour to any point between low and geosynchronous orbit with the right spacecraft stationed there.”

“Holy cow, you guys are taking this seriously…”

Saul replies, “The K1 Incident was a wake-up call. Government is slow to move, but the reaction is serious.”

“Okay. So when are you looking to send me up?”

I start thinking of all the things I’ll have to do before I start training for a new mission. I’ll have to tell Nicole that I’ll be gone for a couple weeks at least and her robots are on their own.

“We have a charter jet waiting at the executive airport ready to take you to Canaveral,” says Saul.

“The next window for the CS626 is in twenty hours,” adds Victor. “We need to hit that or risk the Chinese sending a repair ship to there.”

“Seriously? You brought me up here to tell me that I don’t even have time to pack? What if I’d said ‘no’?”

“We’d start talking about financial inducement,” says Flavor.

“You’d try to buy me? Jesus, next time I’m not going to agree so easily. In any case, given the accelerated time frame, I have a support crew request.”

“You have Jessup as well as Captain Baylor,” says Saul. “They seemed to work well last time.”

“True. But I need one more person if you want me to pull this off.”

“And who is that?” asks Saul.

“Laney Washburn.”

“The civilian?”

“Yes. The civilian. Like me. She knows more about this hardware than anybody I’ve ever met.”

“I’ll be assisting,” says Victor.

“Me too,” Russel adds.

“Great. Glad to have you onboard. But I’ll also need the person who saved my ass in orbit and talked me down during Satan’s Whitewater Hell Ride.”

“Is this amenable to the CIA?” Saul asks Flavor.

“Washburn was a risky factor last time. She’s a professional journalist and not our ideal team member.”

“Hold up. She blogs about space from her bedroom because she hasn’t had a shot at going up herself. She’s kept her mouth shut about the K1 Incident out of patriotism. I was dragged kicking and screaming into doing my duty for country, while she jumped in willingly and was indispensable.”

“There are other factors…” Flavor’s voice trails off.

“Wait? Is this because she called out some pork barrel projects and caused someone’s funding to get pulled?”

“Some of the contractors we’re depending on to make Space Ops viable are a little frustrated.”

“Why the hell should they know who any of us are? And more importantly, why are you letting the greedy corporate snouts you’re feeding dictate personnel in a way that could adversely effect the mission?”

“Space Ops is going to be a multi billion-dollar endeavor. We need a lot of people to sign off on it. Sometimes that involves the art of compromise.”

“Fuck your art. How about the science of integrity? She kept her mouth shut despite her instincts to tell the world what happened.”

“David, is this a deal-breaker for you?” asks Saul.

I hadn’t thought of it that way until she said it. There’s something about how she inserted the suggestion that makes me think there might already be a conflict between her agency and the CIA.

“Yes. Yes it is. I have zero faith in the success of this operation or Space Ops if it starts out with such bullshit compromises.”

“Fine,” says Flavor. “She can be part of this operation. But I’m expecting full NDAs from the both of you.”

“No problem. Just send them to my Russian attorney.”

The look I get in return is priceless.