Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (42 page)

           
The world
knew that the
Arkhangel
was coming to
break the blockade, once and for all.

           
HEADQUARTERS,
FALCON SPACE COMMAND BASE,
COLORADO

 
          
The meeting of Space Command officers
and crewmen was called to attention as General Martin Stuart, commander of the
Space Command, entered the small conference room. Under more normal
circumstances, Stuart would have told everyone to be seated immediately, but
this time he was silent. He took his seat at the head of the oval conference
table, and motioned for the others to do likewise, remaining silent as the room
quieted down.

           
Jason
Saint-Michael sat alone, on the left side of the table from Stuart, as if he
represented some sort of contagion. Dr. Matsui, his flight surgeon, sat behind
him, almost as if disassociating himself from his patient.

           
Across from
Saint-Michael sat a small group of Space Command officers. Ann Page was among
them, seated alongside shuttle mission specialist Captain Marty Schultz.
Schultz’s customary youthful grin was gone. Ann looked uneasily, almost
furtively, from General Stuart and back to Saint-Michael.

           
“All
right,” Stuart began, “we’re here to select a crew to return to Armstrong
Station on the spaceplane
America
, recover the bodies of
the dead crewmen, then detach the Skybolt module from the station and attach a
PAM payload booster to it and send it to a higher storage orbit until it can be
retrieved via shuttle. This sortie must be accomplished within the next eight
days, before Armstrong reenters earth’s atmosphere. Let’s get started.” Stuart
opened four folders on the desk in front of him, scanned them, but returned his
attention to Jason Saint-Michael. “You’re recommending these crewmen for the
rescue sortie, General?”

           
“Yes, sir.”
Saint-Michael nodded to the most senior officer
across the table from him. “Colonel Jonathan Hampton is the only choice as
pilot. He’s the senior hypersonic transportation system pilot in the command
besides myself.” He even spelled out HTS for them. “Only two sorties aboard
America
and one station docking, but one
year as operations officer of the HTS cadre and one year as a simulator
instructor at Little Rock.. .Major Ken Horvath as first officer was a choice
among many qualified people. He topped out best in examination and simulator scores
of all recent HTS-school graduates.... Captain Schultz was again the only real
choice of all volunteers for this trip. He’s qualified both as an HTS and
shuttle-flight engineer and payload specialist. He also had a special claim for
being included on this flight: he crewed with Colonels Will and Sontag aboard
Enterprise
for
most of his career....”

           
“Can you
give me your assurance, Captain Schultz,” General Stuart said, “that the...
personal nature of this duty won’t affect your performance?”

           
“I’ll tell
you what I told General Saint-Michael, sir. I feel like I have a duty to
Colonel Will and Colonel Sontag to fly this mission. I demand the opportunity
to do it.”

           
Stuart
nodded, looked again to Saint-Michael.

           
“Of course,
General, Dr. Ann Page here is the best qualified for the... other task on this
sortie.”

           
Stuart
folded his hands on Ann’s personnel file and shook his head. “I disagree,
Jason. Dr. Page has gone through enough already. I don’t see any need to put
her through—”

           
“Excuse me,
sir,”
Ann said, “you’re talking about
me as if I weren’t here. The fact is, you have no alternative. I happen to be
best qualified to handle Skybolt, and I’m the
only
person familiar with the laser who is qualified for space
flight. I’m also a volunteer—”

           
“I question
that
more than anything else,” Stuart
broke in. “Do you think it’s wise to cause your family more worry after what
they went through two months ago? The Armstrong attack, your father’s
death....”

           
“General, I
don’t want to be a bore, and I think you know I’m no radical feminist or
whatever, but such considerations really are no more relevant for me than for
any of the men. But I should tell you, my only family is my mother, and she’s
in full agreement with me.” Feeling warmed up, Ann kept going. “The thing both
of us have a hard time accepting is the way this country is being affected by
threats from the Soviets. How can
they
tell
us
when to retrieve our own
dead? How can they tell us we can only use an HTS spaceplane instead of a
shuttle to approach Armstrong Station?”

           
“They have
the capability to intercept any spacecraft they feel is hostile,” Stuart said.
‘That’s a fact. A shuttle sortie to Armstrong could be seen as an attempt by us
to rearm the station, for all they know with offensive nuclear weapons. A
spaceplane doesn’t have the cargo capacity to—”

           
“So why
don’t we tell them that if they shoot down any more unarmed American spacecraft
we’ll... retaliate
?...
Why are we being pushed around
by—”

           
“Ann”
Saint-Michael said, giving her a
look. She turned to him, asking with her eyes why he was silencing her. He
tried to signal back that the argument was going to be made, and soon.

           
“The
decision has already been made,” Stuart said, stifling his irritation and
surprise. Dr. Page was obviously more than a lady scientist. “Our government
has decided it is not going to risk a nuclear confrontation over Armstrong
Space Station. I’m sorry. There are three other private commercial and
government research space stations in orbit that need servicing. If we
challenge the Soviets on Armstrong, which as you know is badly damaged, and
only a few days from reentering the atmosphere, they could shut off
all
sorties to the other stations.”

           
Ann was
about to respond by pointing out that it never paid to give in to blackmailers
but thought better of it. The real issue here was her involvement in the
flight. “All right, General. So we use the HTS. We play the game by the
Russians’ rules. But please... no one touches Skybolt but me. It may sound
arrogant to say so, but there’s no other mission payload specialist qualified
to detach Skybolt from the station and attach the payload assist module to it.
Remember, Skybolt is a free-electron laser. It uses a controlled nuclear
reaction to create the electron-particle stream necessary for lasing. There’s
just too much to know about fissionable materials and triggering devices to
make it safe for anyone but me to do it.”

           
Stuart
looked steadily at her, finally nodded, more in grudging acceptance than
approval. “All right, the crew list is approved as presented. The sortie is
scheduled to depart in four days. That will give you three days to recover the
crewmen, detach the Skybolt module, attach the PAM, and boost it into its
storage orbit. Any difficulties with that rough itinerary?”

           
“I have a
problem with the setup, sir,” Saint-Michael said.

           
General
Stuart had been steeling himself for this. “I told you that I’d listen to your
arguments during this meeting, Jason. I don’t know what good it will do, but I’ll
take your recommendations to the Pentagon and even see to it that they get to
the president. But I don’t think—”

           
“Ann was
right, sir,” Saint-Michael began in a rush, trying to provoke Stuart into
listening. “We are giving in to blackmail—or, more accurately, to terrorism. We
can’t let
Silver
Tower
be destroyed. We have got to reactivate the station, put it back into its earth
surveillance orbit and repair its systems as soon as possible—”

           
“You’re
suggesting putting it back into the orbit over the
Persian Gulf
?”
Stuart asked. He shook his head as if he hadn’t heard Saint- Michael correctly.
“You want to put Armstrong over that laser again? Put it in an orbit where the
Soviets can accurately track it and send killer satellites to engage it? That’s
crazy, Jason. Why?” Privately Stuart thought he knew why: Jason was still far
from a well man. His doctor was with him and obviously didn’t approve his
getting involved. ...

           
“Because the station’s SBR and sensors will be needed in a few
days.
It will take the
Arkhangel
carrier battle group ten days to reach the
Arabian Sea
within striking distance of the
Nimitz
.
The SBR has to be up and running before
that. ”

           
“But the
Soviet’s laser—”

           
“The laser
at Sary Shegan was hardly effective against the station,” Saint-Michael
interrupted. “True, we suffered some damage, but the station was still
operational. If the laser had been any more powerful we would have been out of
business long before the spaceplane attack___ Sir, the SBR has proved its
value. It will be needed more than ever if the
Nimitz
carrier group is cornered in the
Gulf
of
Oman
. They’ll have their hands
full watching the
Arkhangel
and her
escorts, and if they get driven closer and closer to land the Soviets can
engage with land-based missiles. They’ll need our SBR to protect them.” He
paused for a moment.
“And Skybolt as well.”

           
“Skybolt?”
Stuart asked. “What has Skybolt got to do with
it?”

           
“Skybolt
is operational,
General
,” Ann put in quickly. As
Stuart’s face went from surprised to skeptical, she hurried on: “It’s working
again, sir. I managed to repair it just as the Gorgon missile attack was
beginning.” She paused for a moment, then added. “And I shot down the second
Soviet spaceplane with the laser.”

           
“What?”
Stuart turned on Saint-Michael,
who was studying Ann before meeting his commander’s surprised expression.

           
“I can’t
verify that, sir. I was in the command module during the attack, and all power
had been lost. We were getting nailed by those spaceplanes—I couldn’t tell if
the sounds were from the MHD reactor or from the Soviet missiles.”

           
“Well, damn
it, I showed a solid lock-on to one of the spaceplanes attacking us, and a
solid data link between Skybolt and SBR,” Ann said. “The Soviets reported
losing one of their spaceplanes during the attack—doesn’t that prove it works?”

           
“Not
necessarily,” Stuart said. “The Soviets claim we shot one of the Thor missiles
at the spaceplane.... That was the provocation for their attack. They said
nothing about the laser.”

           
“That
definitely is not true,”
Saint-Michael said. “All of the garaged Thor missiles were expended during the
Gorgon missile attacks. Baker and Yemana detached only two Thors from the ten
spares; one missed, the other was never fired. There are eight Thors still on
board.”

           
“And I tell
you, sir, with respect, Skybolt works,” Ann said. “It destroyed that
spaceplane. I believe that the laser can protect Armstrong Station from
spaceplane attack, and it can protect the
Nimitz
from any more of those AS-6 cruise-missile attacks too.”

           
“Impossible.
Shoot hundreds of miles through the atmosphere and destroy a cruise missile?
You’ve only had one operational test of Skybolt, and until shown otherwise, it
failed. Now you’re saying it can protect a fleet of ships hundreds of miles
away?” Stuart shook his head. “I know how committed you are to your project,
Dr. Page, but all this sounds too far-fetched—”

           
“If the SBR
can track it, Skybolt can hit it,” Ann pressed. “With the laser guided by the
SBR and the MHD running at full power, it has the power to shoot through a
thousand miles of atmosphere and destroy its target. I don’t believe an AS-6 is
armored well enough to take a laser burst, even attenuated by the atmosphere.”

           
General
Stuart stared at a coffee mug ring on his otherwise polished oak conference
table without really noticing it.

           
“Armstrong
Station
can
survive,” Saint-Michael
said .“
We don’t
have
to bum thirty billion dollars worth of hardware up in the atmosphere. If the
Russians decide to go all out,
Silver
Tower
’s SBR could be critical.”

           
Stuart
finally looked up. “All right, Jason, I’ll take your recommendation to the
Joint Chiefs tonight and ask that it be presented to the president tomorrow.
That’ll leave him three days to make his decision.”

           
“Thank you,
sir.” Saint-Michael knew he couldn’t count on Stuart to state his case as
strongly as he would want. He just hoped the president would see the logic of
reactivating the station. Well, one thing was sure: If the plan was approved,
he was going to be part of it. Better start pitching now.... “General, if we
get the green light I want to pilot
America
”