The Kremlin Strike

Eleven

NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory occupied the core of a large white warehouse-like building, the Sonny Carter Training Facility, located about ten miles southeast of Houston and right on the edge of Ellington Airport. Essentially, the NBL was an enormous indoor swimming pool. More than two hundred feet long, a hundred feet wide, and four stories deep, the tank held over six million gallons of water. Full-scale mock-ups of old International Space Station modules and newer spacecraft were submerged at different points below the surface.

While it was not a perfect simulation of the microgravity experienced in Earth orbit, training in the giant pool had allowed NASA astronauts to practice complex EVA maneuvers and tasks before flying missions aboard its now-retired space shuttles or aboard the ISS. Now it was being leased by Sky Masters, both to train its own spaceplane crews and for what Jason Richter, the company’s CEO and chief inventor, euphemistically called “special technology development research.”

Today two of Sky Masters’ best customers were here to view Richter’s most recent invention.

Awkwardly, Patrick McLanahan climbed down from a black Cadillac Escalade and into the sweltering heat of a southeast Texas afternoon. With Kevin Martindale at his elbow, he headed into the large, air-conditioned building. Two of the former president’s bodyguards trailed along close behind.

Patrick walked rather stiffly, like an elderly man afflicted with osteoarthritis. The motor-driven LEAF exoskeleton and attached life-support pack he wore could keep him alive, but they would never make him graceful. Not that he would ever have been mistaken for Gene Kelly before he’d been hurt, he thought wryly.

Inside the massive NASA facility, they climbed a staircase up to the main pool deck and stopped to get their bearings. All around them, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab was a hive of activity. Small groups of technicians in jeans and short-sleeved polo shirts were busy at various places throughout the huge building — working on different types of equipment or helping trainees into cumbersome EVA suits. Divers wearing wet suits bobbed at the water’s edge, ready to submerge and assist them at a moment’s notice. In skybox-like control rooms fixed above the pool, teams of scientists and engineers monitored each practice session.

“Where, oh where, is Dr. Richter?” Martindale said quietly in his ear. “I do hope he remembers that he asked us to come here today.”

Patrick smiled. Jason Richter had a deserved reputation as both a brilliant cybernetics engineer and a superb high-technology project manager. He had an equally well-earned reputation for occasionally losing all track of time while ironing out the bugs in pieces of prototype hardware. Working with and, from all accounts, sleeping with the elegant, highly focused Helen Kaddiri, Sky Masters’ president, had rubbed off some of his rougher edges… but there were still moments when Jason was more of the geeky tech wizard than the buttoned-down corporate executive.

“General McLanahan! Mr. President,” he heard, and turned to see the tall, fit-looking Richter headed their way at a fast clip. The other man looked ready to burst with enthusiasm.

“Brace yourself,” Patrick murmured to Martindale. “My guess is that we’re about to be shown the world’s Eighth Great Wonder.”

“And offered the chance to buy it, no doubt,” Martindale agreed dryly.

“Hey! Glad you guys could make it,” Richter told them with a broad grin when he joined them. He looked Patrick up and down. “It looks like that LEAF we designed and built for you is ticking over okay.”

“I’m still breathing,” Patrick acknowledged gratefully. He chuckled. “Even if I don’t get asked to dance very often.”

Richter nodded seriously. “Sorry about that. I know the software interface between the exoskeleton’s servos and the other hardware is a little rough.” He pulled at his chin. “You know, we might be able to tweak that some. If you could set aside just a day or two to come to the lab, we could run a few tests and—”

“Excuse me, Dr. Richter,” Martindale interrupted politely, though with the faintest hint of an edge to his voice. “But I believe you wanted to demonstrate some sort of revolutionary new space hardware for us?”

The other man visibly dragged his mind away from the complex problem of improving the LEAF’s mobility and back to the present. “That I do, Mr. President,” he agreed, grinning again. He guided them over to the edge of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab tank. “You came at the perfect time. We’re right in the middle of an operational systems test. And I’m betting a huge portion of the Sky Masters R&D budget that you’ll be mightily impressed by what you see.”

More curious than ever, Patrick peered down into the blue-tinted depths. There, near the bottom of the enormous pool, he saw three strange machines maneuvering slowly around what appeared to be a space station module. They were egg-shaped spheroids — about nine feet tall and a little under eight feet in diameter at their widest point. The spheroids were equipped with several mechanical limbs ending in flexible appendages that resembled large, articulated metal fingers. Dozens of tiny thruster nozzles studded surfaces covered in advanced composite materials.

“Dr. Richter?” Martindale asked slowly. “Just what the devil are those machines?”

“They’re a newly developed variant of CIDs, our Cybernetic Infantry Devices,” the other man said proudly.

Patrick raised an eyebrow in disbelief. CIDs were combat robots — twelve-foot-tall human-piloted machines with two arms, two legs, and a six-sided head equipped with a wide range of advanced sensors. Covered in highly resistant composite armor, their powered exoskeletons were faster and stronger than any ten men combined. Feedback from haptic interfaces translated their pilots’ smallest gestures into exoskeleton motion, allowing them to move with extraordinary precision and agility. In battle, they employed a wide range of deadly weaponry, everything from 20mm autocannons to electromagnetic rail guns. In conflicts over the past several years, CIDs had shown themselves to be lethal killing machines — as had Russia’s own marginally less capable war robots.

Frankly, though, the egg-shaped spheroids he saw leisurely gliding through the depths of the NBL tank bore about as much resemblance to one of the Iron Wolf Squadron’s manned combat robots as an octopus did to a grizzly bear.

“We’ve optimized this new design for zero-G operations and orbital construction work,” Richter explained. “When it comes to maneuver and combat, a CID’s humanlike arms and legs make sense in Earth-normal gravity. Not so much in space. Those multipurpose limbs attached at various points all around each spheroid are a lot more practical in an environment where there’s essentially no ‘up’ or ‘down.’ That’s also why their thrusters are oriented to fire in all directions. Right now they’re fighting a lot of drag from the water in that tank. But out in space, in a vacuum, they should be extraordinarily maneuverable.”

Martindale nodded pensively. He looked up at Richter. “Do these marvelous new machines of yours have a name?”

The other man hesitated. Selecting equipment names and acronyms had never been his forte. No matter how hard he tried to come up with something that was both descriptive and memorable, people usually told him his choices were awful — like the CIDs themselves and that LEAF he’d built for General McLanahan. “Well,” he said nervously, “I was going to call them Cybernetic Orbital Construction Systems—”

“Oh God, no,” Patrick said hastily, knowing exactly how any red-blooded pilot and astronaut like Hunter Noble or his own son would pronounce COCS. “Please tell me you did not stick that label on those things.”

Richter winced. “There was some pushback,” he admitted.

“So what are they called?” Martindale wondered. From the pained look on his face, he was prepared for something even worse.

“Cybernetic Orbital Maneuvering Systems, or COMS for short.”

Martindale relaxed. “Well, at least COMS has the virtue of being a relatively safe choice,” he said carefully. “Which I suppose is a blessing in these troubled times.”

Relieved, Richter turned back to Patrick. “If you’re interested, General, I can transmit copies of the technical specs for the COMS to you.”

Patrick nodded. “I’m definitely interested.” He frowned. “But one thing bothers me right off the bat. Those machines are way too big to fit through any standard airlock. How are we supposed to deploy a COMS from one of our spaceplanes?”

Richter shrugged. “You could retrofit a larger airlock into the S-19 and S-29s.”

“That sounds rather expensive… and time-consuming,” Martindale said. His mouth creased in a thin, dry smile. “There are limits to our resources, even with access to the federal government’s top secret black-ops budget.”

“The trade-offs would be worth it,” Richter said persuasively. “Our data show that a single COMS can do the EVA work of any five conventionally suited astronauts… and in half the time.”

Patrick whistled. “Okay, that’s pretty damned impressive.” He turned to Martindale. “One of the things we learned in building the ISS and Armstrong Station is that EVAs are incredibly demanding — both physically and mentally. Mechanical tasks that require only minor exertion on Earth take a lot more effort and time in orbit. The simple becomes hard. And the hard is almost impossible. If these space-rated robots are as good as Dr. Richter claims, they could be a real game changer.”

Martindale nodded. “Acquiring this capability is extremely tempting,” he agreed. Then he frowned. “But I worry that we may not be able to afford the time we’d need to retrofit our spaceplanes. Further flight delays could put us fatally behind the Russians.”

“You know, come to think of it, you might not even need to change out the airlocks in the first place,” Richter said suddenly.

Both men turned to stare at him. “Come again?” Patrick said slowly.

“Each COMS is effectively a miniature spacecraft, with its own life support,” Richter pointed out. “So their operators should be able to ride them safely to orbit inside the cargo bay of any Sky Masters spaceplane. All each COMS would need is some bracing against acceleration and hard maneuvering. Plus, the haptic interfaces we use to control each machine should be a fantastic cushion against G-forces.” His eyes lit up. “Once the S-plane reaches orbit, it just opens its cargo bay docks, the robots unlatch, and out they fly — ready to perform their tasks.”

“Are you sure about this, Dr. Richter?” Martindale asked seriously.

The other man nodded. “We’ll run some more tests and simulations to confirm that it’s feasible, but figuring out if this will work or not isn’t really rocket science.” He saw their pained expressions and hurried on. “Okay, yeah, it actually is rocket science. Trust me, though, it’s not the complicated kind. We can do this.”

Patrick nodded slightly to Martindale. From an engineering and flight safety perspective, Richter’s proposal sounded plausible enough. Sending COMS operators to orbit inside a cargo bay was probably somewhat riskier than he made it sound, but there were always risks involved in any spaceflight. Space was an incredibly hostile environment. You could improve your odds of survival with careful planning, rigorous training, and reliable equipment — but you could never entirely guarantee it.

“Very well,” Martindale told Richter. “I think we have a deal, assuming your numbers pan out.”

“They will,” the other man said confidently. “In the meantime, I’ve got a couple more things to show you.” He signaled one of Sky Masters technicians monitoring the robots at the bottom of the tank. “Tell COMS One to cut it short and return to the surface, Mike.”

Patrick and Martindale watched with interest while one of the robots broke off from its work on the space station module. The machine rose slowly — cloaked in a cloud of bubbles from its maneuvering thrusters. Once it bobbed to the surface, a crane carefully lifted the COMS out of the water and set it down gently in a specially constructed cradle that kept it upright.

“So Humpty-Dumpty is safely back in the nest,” Martindale murmured irreverently.

Patrick grinned. Seen out of the water, the spheroid-shaped robot did look a hell of a lot like a big metal egg. He leaned forward, watching closely as a tight-fitting hatch on one of its flanks unsealed and then whined open.

“Meet my star COMS pupil,” Richter said smugly.

A figure wearing a helmet and a silvery carbon-fiber space suit wriggled out through the opening and dropped lithely to the ground. The suit, which used electronically controlled fibers to compress the skin instead of pressurized oxygen, showed off every one of her curves.

“I’ll be damned,” Patrick muttered, seeing Nadia Rozek’s triumphant face beaming back at him through the visor of her helmet. “That woman certainly gets around.”

“Major Rozek is wearing a space suit as protection against vacuum if the COMS’ outer shell is breached,” he heard Richter explaining to Martindale.

“So who are the other two guinea pigs running the robots down there in the pool today?” Patrick asked. “Brad and Boomer?”

“No.” Richter laughed. “That’s my last surprise, General. Nadia was the only astronaut inside a COMS today. Between data links, the power of each machine’s haptic interface and computer, and the advanced autonomous systems we’ve built into these robots, a skilled operator can pilot up to three machines simultaneously — using one for intricate tasks while the others handle easier or more repetitive work.”

Patrick stared at him. “You’re not bullshitting me?”

“Not in the slightest,” Richter replied.

Astounded, Patrick looked back at the strange-looking machine resting quietly on its cradle. Calling the Cybernetic Orbital Maneuvering System revolutionary was almost an understatement, he decided. Sooner or later, humans were bound to rebuild permanent structures in Earth orbit. And when they did, this new technology would give Sky Masters and the United States and all their other allies an enormous competitive advantage.