Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (36 page)

“Hi,
Askel.  Very smooth this end.  Seems like a nice morning for a trip,
huh?”

“Roger that.”

Askel left them
to it, but kept her eyes on the data feeds.  Everything was well within
the normal parameters, just like a simulation.

When the
clock had counted down to T minus eleven minutes Askel heard Parks take to the
com.

“Men and
women of
Otus
, this is Commodore Parks
speaking.  We are about to embark on an important mission and I want to
say a few words to you before we set off.  First, I would like to say that
I am proud to have you all under my command.  I have met you all, and read
through your records, and I have to say that you are one of the finest
collections of fighting personnel it has ever been my privilege to work
with.  The task ahead of us appears to be a simple one, but it is also a
momentous one for this simple reason.  This will be the first time in
human history that an offensive force has been sent to another planet.  We
have the honour of being the first fighting force to represent our country in
this way.  We have all trained for this mission, and we are all aware that
good soldiering means expecting the unexpected, adapting and using initiative
to overcome any obstacle.  I expect no less from you.

“We leave in
less than ten minutes, so you still have time to contact loved ones and family
if you want to be able to talk in real time.  In five minutes there will
be a data curfew.  Five minutes after that, we leave.  Parks out.”

Askel scanned
the readings.  They were all good.  She spoke to her com.  “Good
luck, Speight.”

“Thanks,
Askel.  Won’t need it.”

Askel listened
as the ground station at Dallas handed over primary control of
Otus
to Parks.  They would jointly oversee the
initial burn that would kick
Otus
out of Earth
orbit.  There were seconds left on the clock.

“Dallas,
Otus
here, we have control.”

“Confirmed,
Otus
.”

“T minus
thirteen seconds to primary burn.”

“Confirmed.”

Askel
listened to the countdown finish and followed the data flowing into her console
as the great engine fired up.  She had seen this a thousand times before,
but it had always been simulated data.  There was something intoxicating
about knowing this data was real.  This had all come from ideas that she
had had, and now here it was, a real thing, happening right now.

She heard the
chief flight engineer from
Otus
over the com.
“Dallas, looking good.  We have good acceleration and a stable burn.”

“
Otus
, we’re looking good here too, enjoy the ride.”

Askel looked
at the data for the mirror magnets containing the plasma chamber in
Otus
’
engine.  They were well within
normal parameters.

She heard the
flight engineer again.  “Ah, Dallas we are experiencing -”
  The
communication ended mid-sentence as all of
Askel’s
data feeds froze.

“
Otus
, this is Dallas, do you read?”

-

“
Otus
, this is Dallas, do you read?”

-

“
Otus
, this is Dallas, do you read?”

-

“
Ephialtes
,
this is Dallas, do you have a visual on
Otus
?”

“Ah,
negative, Dallas, not from where we are,” the
Ephialtes
flight engineer
replied.

“
Ephialtes
,
please stand by, we have a suspected communications malfunction with
Otus
, if there’s anything you can give us in the
meanwhile go ahead.”

“Understood,
Dallas.  We don’t have the transponder for
Otus
at this time, we will continue to hail across all frequencies.”

“Go ahead,
Ephialtes
,
same here.  We’ll get back to you when we have something.”

Askel quickly
reran the last seconds of data she had from
Otus
. 
It was normal, right up to the moment it stopped.  Instinctively she
raised her hand to cover her mouth.  As a scientist and engineer she
relied on cold hard data.  The data was all good, as far as it went. 
What the absence of data was telling her was too big for her to take in. 
She knew that there was an abundance of redundant systems on
Otus
.  Independent power supplies, independent
coms, independent life-support.  Multiple systems could fail
simultaneously and the ship would still function.  It was designed that
way.  She had contributed to that design.  There could only be one
possible explanation for thirty or more independent systems to fail at the same
time.  She stared at the data on her screen.  It resolutely refused
to update.  It sat there on the screen, a frozen record of the last moment
of
Otus
’
life.

Ground
control called out plaintively from her terminal.

“
Otus
, this is Dallas, do you read?”

“As soon as it
became clear what had happened I looked at our software on
Ephialtes
. 
It’s a very,
very
sophisticated insertion.”

Rawls was
listening to
Askel’s
words and she could see he was
scanning through the documentation she had sent him.

“As you can
see, it’s deliberate, and almost impossible to catch.  It has been
designed to fail, and disguise the fact that it’s failing.  And to resist
detection.”

Rawls
nodded.  “How did it get there?”

“I don’t
know.  The change records show no updates other than those I personally
oversaw.  I have the latest versions of the control software here - my
versions - and this was written over them, somehow, without
leaving a record that it had done so.”

“You’re
saying it was deliberate?”

“I’m
absolutely saying it was deliberate.  Someone fixed the software so that
it would allow the magnetic field cage around the fission reaction to fail at
the same time as the fusion reaction ran away with itself.  The engine is
a bomb; it’s exploding in as controlled a way as possible in the direction we
need it to.  The altered software not only told the explosion to run way
beyond safe limits, it fed us false data while it was doing it.  And then
it removed the cage, and -”

“You’re
absolutely sure?”

“The data
from
Otus
is not consistent with what happened
to
Otus
.  And the hacked software that
caused it has been inserted here too, on
Ephialtes
.  If we were to
go to a full burn now the exact same thing would happen to us.  They were
murdered, Rawls.  Someone set out to kill them all.”

“What do I
tell Andrews?”

Askel
thought.  “Tell her the truth.  We were sabotaged.  It won’t
happen again. 
Ephialtes
will launch, and it will work.  I’ll
make sure of that.”

“Askel, I
don’t want to take any risks on this, however small.  Let’s take some
time -”

“There is no
time.  That’s why we’re being paid so much, to deliver this thing on
time.  And we have.  We have been attacked and I will not let that
happen again. 
Ephialtes
is safe, I put my life on it.”

“Let’s not be
hasty, Askel.  Let’s take a few days and really think this through. 
Come over to my house at the weekend and we’ll put our heads together.”

“What? 
I’m not coming back, not now. 
Ephialtes
needs a senior Helios
engineer for this trip.  I’m going with them.”

“Askel, I
really don’t think that’s wise.”

“Why
not?  I’m the best person for the job.  I know this ship inside
out.  And I know there’s someone on board trying to sab us.  If I’m
here I can protect us against that and I can route that bastard out.”

“We have
plenty of great engineers who are familiar with this project.  Come
home.  You’re stressed, you’re overworked and you need a break.  The
last thing you need to be doing is six months additional work.”

“I’m going,
Rawls.  I owe it to the people here.  They’ve taken down one of my
ships.  They’re not going to get the other.”

“Askel, the
Aloadae
belong to the USAN government.  Counter-terrorism is their game, not
ours.  We’ve delivered the best systems we could, it’s up to them to use
them.”

“I’m sorry,
Rawls, I’m going with them.  It’s in the contract.  We promised them
a senior Helios engineer to oversee the maiden voyage.  It was supposed to
be Speight.  Now it’s going to be me.”

Rawls shook
his head.  He knew it was no use arguing.

“Listen, I
don’t know if Andrews is going to call this off, anyway, in light of what
happened.  They’ll want additional safety checks on
Ephialtes
at
least, and there’ll need to be a major investigation.”

“They don’t
need any of that.  I’ve already told you exactly what happened; they
injected martial software to deliberately destroy the ship.  It’s not a
safety issue.  
Otus
was a casualty of
war.  It was attacked.”

“So how do we
know they’re not going to do the same to
Ephialtes
!?”

“That’s what
I’m trying to tell you.  Because I will be here to defend it.  I’ve
purged the phony software, I’ve put additional fail-safes in place. 
I will be here to make it work.  Tell that to Andrews.  This ship is
leaving to carry out the mission and it will be successful.  I will
personally see to it.”

Rawls threw his
hands in the air.  “I don’t know what to say.  How do you know
they’re not just going to inject the malware again?”

“Because they
don’t know I’ve removed it.  It can’t be injected remotely - that’s
one of our cyberwarfare security measures - it has to be
manually copied right here on the ship.  A few days ago we received the
commanders for the dropships and a few additional crew members as part of the
standard rotation.  All of them had been aboard
Otus
. 
You remember that faulty HLV shuttle?  It was hobbled in exactly the same
way, manually uploaded hacked software.  Someone on that shuttle hacked
the shuttle.  They hacked
Otus
, then they
hacked us.  One - at least one - of those
thirty is an enemy agent and I’m going to stay here to defend us against them
and take them down.”

Rawls knew he
had been talked into a corner.  Askel was brilliant, and part of that
brilliance was her indefatigable drive and her absolute refusal to be
beaten.  What made her great also made her infuriating to deal
with.
  He didn’t have a choice.

“Okay, Lund,
you’re on the trip as our senior engineer.  But be careful, you hear me?”

Askel smiled,
“I hear you.”

“You know,
Helios, as a company, has a lot at stake with this mission.  That ship is
one of the most expensive things we’ve ever made.  And the importance of
the mission to our client, well, that just ramps it up again.  I wish you
weren’t going Askel.  We’ve just lost Speight.  That’s a massive loss
to us, and not just on a business level.  You’re the most important person
we have.  You have to make this work and you have to come back to
us.  You understand?”

“I think
so.  You’re saying you care about the bottom line and people too, right?”

“I care about
you
, Askel.  Be safe.”

Askel was
taken aback.  Rawls was never this open.  Maybe it was the shock of
the disaster.  That sort of thing could disorient people.

“I’ll be
safe, Rawls, and I’ll bring this big lump of metal back to you.”

“Make sure
you do.”

The launches
for the orbiting missile system went without a hitch.  Kostovich’s AI had
predicted the probability of one or more launches failing at two thousand to
one.  Assembly, as per design, was fast and efficient in accordance with
the many computer models Kostovich had run for it.

The system
was now ready.

The main
Martian conurbation of Marineris was defended by the four missile batteries on
the surface of the planet, with further coverage given now by the off-planet
platform in geostationary orbit above them.  The
planetside
systems had been tested on inexpensive aerial drones.  Kostovich wanted to
do live tests for the orbiting platform and needed something to test it
against.  There were many artificial satellites in Martian orbit. 
Kostovich need one that was live but expendable.

He had
designed the system to be as flexible as possible.  To that end each
battery’s missiles were armed with a number of different payloads, from nukes
to tactical battlefield warheads.  The idea was to limit destruction to the
minimum required in a given situation.  Venkdt thought their most likely
enemy was their erstwhile compatriots, the USAN.  He hoped that, if push
came to shove, it would be possible to repulse any attack with minimum
aggression.

The
batteries’ missile of choice was the battlefield EMP.  The powerful
electromagnetic pulse of these weapons was enough to fry any nearby
electronics, rendering such systems inoperable.  Rather than destroy the
enemy they would disarm him.

The second line
was standard chemical explosive warheads, necessary for situations where a
precise strike was needed.  Lastly, for cases where all subtlety was lost,
were tactical nukes.

Kostovich
needed to test all three systems.  He wanted to disable a working satellite
with an EMP, cripple it with a standard chemical explosive missile,
then
annihilate it with a nuke.  A working, perhaps
soon to be decommissioned, satellite would be the ideal candidate.  He set
to scanning the records of the satellites available to him.  Quickly he
settled on
Ares-H 17
, a coms satellite commissioned by S-Com,
an Earth based
telecoms company
, and leased to the
USAN Army. 
Ares-H 17
had been superseded five years
previously by
Hera-3
.  For three years thereafter
Ares-H 17
had been kept online as a failover option for
Hera-3
. 
Hera-3
had proved to be every bit as resilient as the manufacturers said she would
be.  Her internal failovers had never been used once.  The additional
cost of supporting
Ares-H 17
was therefore seen as unnecessary,
and was struck from the budgets.  Since then it had been doing nothing
necessary and was due to be permanently decommissioned in two months’ time.

Kostovich
gleaned this information from his backdoor into the USAN information
systems.  The true nature of
Ares-H 17
’s original
purpose was shrouded from public view.  The fact that S-Com rented
it out to the military was not public knowledge; in fact, S-Com
maintained some fairly mundane coms traffic through the satellite’s systems to
help maintain the cover of its military use.  Kostovich knew though, and
he was anxious about the possible sensitivity around taking out a piece of USAN
hardware, albeit one that was no longer used and was weeks away from being
scrapped.

Usually he
would have just ploughed ahead and done it.  He was well aware of the
inherent dangers in asking for people’s permission to do things. 
Generally, he preferred to apologise later, where necessary, rather than get
bogged down in discussion, argument and counterargument.  This time, however,
he wanted to get explicit permission from somewhere.  He was, after all,
going to be detonating a nuclear bomb.

He called
from his terminal and got through to
Venkdt’s
PA.

“Hey
there.  Is Mr Venkdt available?”

“Hello, Dr
Kostovich.  Please hold while I check.”  The image switched from the
PA to a Venkdt promotional video.  Seconds later the PA reappeared. 
“I’ll patch you through.”

Kostovich was
midway through his ‘Thank you’ when the screen switched and Venkdt
appeared.  “Hi, Dan,” he said, “how can I help?”

“Hello,
Charles,” said Kostovich, still feeling uncomfortable using the forename, “I
just want to run something by you.  For advice, you know?”

“Go ahead.”

“As I’m sure
you know the orbiting Parry system has now been successfully assembled.  I
want to test the weapons systems on an old satellite, but, well, it used to be
used by the USAN Army.”

“Used to be?”

“Yes. 
It’s weeks away from being permanently decommissioned.  They haven’t used
it for five years.”

“Okay.” 
Venkdt thought.  “But it’s a USAN satellite?”

“No, it’s
owned by S-Com, they rent it to them.  We’d be doing them a favour,
saving them the cost of
the decommission
.”

“It’s
privately owned junk, then?”

“Pretty
much.”

“So why are
you asking me?”

Kostovich
thought.  “Just because of the USAN connection, I suppose.  And I
guess you now have overall authority over Martian airspace.”

“Dan, if it’s
defunct just use it.”

“Yes, that’s
what I thought.”

Kostovich had
one of the old offices in his department refitted as the
comcon
for the missile batteries.  He decided that the room should be manned at
all times, and that the batteries should be constantly monitored.  This
was not strictly necessary as the systems were fully automated and capable of
making complex decisions independent of human input.  He could also tap
into the system from his terminal, should that be necessary.  But he
thought that such an important system, and one with such destructive potential,
should be seen to be being controlled by human beings.  This was despite
the fact that the human element, in reality, added a layer of uncertainty that
increased any potential unreliability.  Kostovich was canny enough to know
that appearances are everything, so here he found himself at the control site
flanked by two of his research assistants who had very recently been seconded
into the MSS as weapons engineers.

The overall
system had been christened “Parry.”  In a meeting explaining the
mechanics, goals and financing of the system Kostovich had presented the name
to a less than enthusiastic response.

“Why Parry?”
asked Christina Venkdt.

“Well,” said
Kostovich, “it’s a defensive system, so when the enemy tries to attack, we will
Parry.”

There were
some half-hearted nods.

“I did consider
The Sword of Ares,” said Kostovich, “but I thought that was a bit
melodramatic.  I have to admit I hesitated over Parry Missile System,
because of the acronym.”

“I don’t
know; massive retaliation to any perceived slight - PMS works
for me,” Foveaux had said.

“Anyway, I
think we’ve settled on Parry Missile System now.  Can we all agree on
that?”

Because there
was a pressing practical need to pursue the building of the system that had
been the full extent of the debate over its name.  Had a potential threat
not been imminent there may have still been a naming committee running even
now,
thought
Kostovich
.

The Parry
system was owned by Kostovich.  Venkdt, for now, and in time the Martian
administration, were picking up the bill, but it was Kostovich’s project. 
He had installed himself as Chief Operating Officer, arguing that for the
initial period the system could still be considered to be in development. 
As the Chief Operating Officer he could test the system in operation and tweak
it accordingly.  It would remove a layer of bureaucracy and potential
miscommunication, speeding things up.  Plus it was cool to be in charge of
a missile system.

The surface
batteries had performed well in their testing, matching or surpassing the
computer models.  Testing the orbiting platform,
Parry 5,
would
be much more of a challenge.  The distance to the platform would make a
difference, and the targets would be smaller and faster, too.  Though
Parry 5
was free from the worst of Martian gravity, and as such had many advantages
compared to its surface based brethren, it had to cover a much wider
area.  It had a more advanced and sensitive detection system and its
longer range missiles were adapted to the space environment.

Kostovich had
run each test many times in simulated models before the day of the actual
tests.  He knew what to expect and how the tests should run in sequence,
one after the other, and he knew what the effects should be.  He had a
coms line to
Ares-H 17
and could monitor its output.  It
was mostly redundant data, but it was a steady stream and was useful just for
that.

He had
briefed his team extensively.  They all knew what to expect.  The
tests would be a straightforward drill,
A
followed by
B, followed by the gathering of data C.  It would be just another day at
the office.

Parry 5
was in
geostationary orbit over the Martian capital Marineris. 
Ares-H 17
was orbiting the planet once every hour and ten minutes.  Kostovich
aimed to run one test for the next three times
Ares-H 17
came
past.  The tests should last a little over two and a half hours in
total.  His team were well briefed.  Siena Walton was a senior
research assistant and Thomas Baldwin was a very promising postgraduate
student.  Kostovich had picked them himself and had given them a crash
course in overseeing his Parry missile command and control setup.

As it passed
by
Parry 5
on each orbit
Ares-H 17
would be five
hundred kilometres away at its nearest point, and moving at a speed of more
than seven kilometres per second.  As soon as it cleared the horizon
Parry 5
would be able to track it.  The Parry system made helpful suggestions,
informing the team that the satellite was unarmed, unmanned and safe to
ignore.  Kostovich instructed Walton to arm two EMP missiles and continue
tracking.  They had tracked
Ares-H 17
on its previous
flyby and knew there was nothing likely to be any different about this spin
around the planet.

Periodically,
Baldwin read out some data regarding the satellite.  It was entirely
unnecessary as all three of them were monitoring the tracking data on their
screens.  Kostovich let it go.  It sounded significant and serious.

“
Ares-H 17
is now at approximately fifteen hundred kilometres range, closing fast,”
said Baldwin.

“Prepare the
EMPs for launch,” said Kostovich.

“EMPs ready
for launch,” said Walton.

“Check the
distance for detonation is set for three hundred metres,” said Kostovich.

“Three
hundred metres, check,” said Walton.

“Where is she
now?” said Kostovich.

“Twelve
hundred kilometres,” said Baldwin.

“Okay,” said
Kostovich.  “We’ll launch at one thousand kilometres.”

“Launch at
one thousand kilometres, check,” said Walton.

“Eleven
hundred kilometres,” said Baldwin.

“Whenever
you’re ready, I guess,” said Kostovich.

Walton was
staring intensely at her screen.  She nodded almost imperceptibly at
Kostovich’s last command.  She watched the tracker’s numbers spinning down
from eleven hundred.  As they hit the magic thousand she pressed a button on
her terminal and with a release of breath she got out the words, “Missiles
away.”

Baldwin could
immediately track the EMPs as they streaked away from
Parry 5
. 
“Missiles away, confirmed,” he said.  “Readings for both missiles are good
at this time.  Forty seconds to detonation.”

“Confirmed,
forty seconds,” said Walton.

Kostovich
looked to his screen.  He could see a blip representing
Ares-H 17
,
alternating between green and blue, moving laterally from right to left, and to
two smaller red blips moving upwards.  The green-blue blip and the
red blips appeared to be converging on space in the centre of the screen. 
Although he had been through this many times he once again explained it to
Walton and Baldwin.  “Green is
Ares-H 17
,” he said,
“blue is
Ares-H 17
’s electrical activity.  This time
around we are aiming to take out blue and leave green.”

“Twenty five
seconds to go,” said Baldwin.

“Missiles
looking healthy, adjusting course for rendezvous with target,” said Walton.

“I’m liking
it so far,” said Kostovich.  “Just like the simulations.”