Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (34 page)

In a chair beside Meryl, Johnny began typing on his wrist computer and said, “If we have JD’s orbit, we can predict where
Haven
’s going to surface.”

Mei Ling nodded and advanced the slide. On the screen, the earth was enveloped within a particulate haze—every satellite, whether military, weather, communications, or any other kind, under NORAD’s watch. Gradually, the dots and orbits winked out until only one remained.

JD.

Adding the locations of
Missouri
and
Haven
to the simulated globe, Mei Ling said, “JD is in a synchronous elliptical orbit. So its next perigee should be in …”

“Got it!” Johnny read the results from his wearable computer. “Fifteen hours, six minutes, and twelve seconds.”

At that time, the satellite would be closest to sea level.

“Right,” Mei Ling said. “In fifteen hours, JD is going to be over the Bering Sea, 494 nautical miles from the Bering Strait.
Haven
will be in holding position in that area.”

Meryl asked, “Do they really have to get that close to launch?”

REX’s railgun could launch a nuclear warhead to any location on Earth. So why did Liquid need to wait for the satellite’s perigee? I stood and approached the screen to explain not just to Meryl but to the rest of the team.

“REX may be armed with nuclear ordnance, but JD floats in an orbit high enough to be called outer space. Why is this important? Because up there, there’s virtually no air, and without air, there’s no stuff to envelop the fission event, absorb the massive output of energy, and turn into plasma.

“In terrestrial nuclear explosions, whether fissile or fusional, a certain amount of the destructive power comes from forces external to the initial blast, including shock waves, fragmentation, and thermal waves. Even assuming that all of the energy will radiate, between the distance of the satellite’s orbit and the yield of REX’s nukes, the effective damage radius won’t be much larger than a thousand feet, or approximately three hundred meters.

“Some of you may be thinking that a two-thousand-foot blast radius sounds impressive. But your typical satellite is always moving forward, so as not to be pulled down by Earth’s gravity, and maintains an orbit traveling at a relative velocity that can exceed ten kilometers per second.

“Down on Earth, in the presence of air resistance, producing such a ludicrous speed is impossible. An object moving that fast wouldn’t even be captured by a twenty-four frame-per-second movie camera, passing by entirely in that instant between frames. To put it another way, without sufficient acceleration, the satellite would be pulled down by gravity and crash.

“Say REX’s nuke manages to explode precisely on JD’s orbital path. The satellite, moving at ten kilometers per second, will pass through the six-hundred-meter blast diameter within six hundredths of a second. That’s barely the blink of an eye. Even with the Arsenal-class targeting computer, the only chance of shooting down such a high-speed object is to reduce the range as much as possible. Though the elliptical orbit means that JD will be at peak velocity at its perigee, the possibility of a close or direct hit is maximized at relatively short range.

“So even when Liquid reaches the firing location, he’ll have to wait to launch his nuke until he has the highest probability of success, when JD is at its perigee. Time enough for
Missouri
to catch up.”

Mei Ling made sure everyone understood my explanation before moving on to our battle plan.

“
Haven
will need to open the outer cover to launch the nuke via the railgun. That’s our one and only chance to board.”

The next slide was a photograph of
Missouri
firing upon
Haven
’s exposed bridge back on Shadow Moses. The two electromagnetic rails of REX’s stolen weapon looked like a pair of chopsticks.

“To board?” Meryl asked. “Why can’t we attack it from the outside?”

Missouri
didn’t have digital guidance systems, but the ship did have large caliber cannons. She was a relic from the last century, but new or old was inconsequential: a giant mass of metal and explosives would punch a hole in even the newest of vessels.

Meryl’s question was reasonable, but the problem rested in the source of Liquid’s power.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” I said, then stood and again made my way to the front of the room. “As long as Liquid has control of the System, physically destroying GW would still leave supreme authority over SOP in his hands. We can’t simply blow
Haven
apart when she surfaces.”

Mei Ling nodded. “Yes. Dr. Emmerich is right. That’s why we need to destroy GW from the inside before attacking
Haven
itself.”

Snake, who was leaning against the wall at the back of the room, removed the oxygen mask from his mouth to joke, “Liquid’s very own Death Star.”

In the nine years I’d known Snake, this was the first time I’d heard him reference
Star Wars
. If he had been hoping for a reaction from the room he was disappointed, for as soon as he had made the remark, he began to cough painfully and reaffixed the mask.

When his coughing quieted, Mei Ling continued. “We know
Haven
will have to surface in order to fire the railgun. When it does, we’ll know, and
Missouri
will make a quick approach and deliver our strike team. Our goal is twofold: prevent that nuke from launching and wipe out GW’s programming. The enemy relies entirely on electronic means of threat detection, so they won’t be able to see the
Missouri
until they surface.”

Mei Ling gazed across the dark room at the faces illuminated by the projector’s light. All thought this talk preposterous at least to some degree. Liquid’s elite guard of
Haven
troopers were a death trap in waiting. This wasn’t a plan but a suicide mission—that much was as clear as day.

But they all knew there was no other way.

Mei Ling explained the plan. “We’ll launch the strike team from catapults at the exact moment
Haven
’s armored cover opens. They’ll then penetrate GW’s physical server room and infect it with Dr. Emmerich’s worm cluster.”

Johnny, watching a simulation on the display of his wrist computer, asked, “But what if Liquid turns off GW before we get in there?”

Even if the team made it inside the server room, the computer terminal needed to be powered on and functioning in order to receive the virus. Of course, Mei Ling and I had already thought of all the potential problems and contingencies, so she was ready with an answer.

“Liquid is already entrenched within the Patriots’ network. He needs to maintain his link with the SOP, or destroying JD won’t serve any purpose. They can’t afford to shut GW down.”

Meryl, sharing Johnny’s concerns, bleakly said, “Liquid will throw everything he’s got at stopping the strike team.”

She was right, of course. It was easy for us to propose the infiltration, but the strike team—Meryl, Snake, and Akiba—would be the ones facing the gunfire. Mei Ling and I hadn’t been able to think of anything we could do to help them once the mission began.

Now Mei Ling broached the biggest danger facing Meryl’s team. “Exactly,” she said. “The corridor leading to GW is defended by directed-energy weapons that emit a type of microwaves.”

Johnny leaned forward. “Did you say microwaves?”

Mei Ling’s report seemed to have unsettled the other soldiers in the room too, including Snake, who lowered his oxygen mask and sent his eyes to me.

Disregarding her audience’s unease, Mei Ling calmly continued. “The waves will immediately begin to vaporize any living person within range.”

Snake started to say something but coughed instead, and kept on coughing until he finally regained himself.

“A giant microwave oven,” he said. “You’d have to have a death wish to go in there.” His lips twitched into a ghastly smile. “Sounds like the perfect job for me.”

“Snake,” Meryl scolded, her voice tinged with sadness, “this isn’t time for your stupid jokes.”

Within three months, this man whom she had loved would have to end his own life, perhaps with a gun to his head, or with a can of gasoline and a match.

The grim reality was that some situations required the risk of life and limb for any chance of making it through.

Only natural for the task to go to the one man who had already accepted death.

But Snake’s resolve came not from some passive acquiescence to circumstance but rather an outraged rejection of forcing someone younger—Johnny or Meryl—to take on his ills and die for it.

“If somebody has to die today,” he said, “it has to be me. No one else.” Everything about this briefing grated on him. “Why bother with all this when I should be going in alone?”

Meryl and I could read his emotions all too well. I was pained to see him like this, intent on finishing everything unaided. I wondered if Mei Ling felt intimidated by his heroic determination. Not knowing how to respond, she proceeded with her briefing.

“Outside the corridor, Liquid’s soldiers will be out in full force. Inside, unmanned weapons will wait.”

A new slide revealed a detailed schematic of
Haven
. Under the Patriots’ control, the Arsenal-class ship was supposed to be a highly guarded state secret. Few even knew of their existence, yet this was an incredibly detailed report.

Snake’s eyes tightened. “Where are you getting this information? You really think there’s a way to destroy GW?”

Mei Ling tossed me a glance. I had shared with her all the intel so she could develop a battle plan. She knew the identity of the source, but her eyes told me Snake needed to hear the name from me.

I took a moment, then said, “Naomi had been making preparations.”

Naomi’s original reason for boarding
Nomad
had been none other than me. She needed someone to whom she could entrust her plans, who had the ability to fulfill her hopes.

But in the end, that person wasn’t me.

Naomi chose a little girl, not yet ten years old.

Naomi had nearly completed the program to destroy GW. But she knew that she couldn’t grant herself enough time to finish—that her life, extended artificially by nanomachines, would soon end; that death would shatter time’s icy prison, and she had to accept it; that she might pass from this world without seeing the worm cluster finished.

And she had chosen Sunny as the one who could realize her wishes. The child’s message, delivered by Raiden at Shadow Moses:
I cooked them right
, her words a message to Naomi. Sunny had finished the worm.

Naomi left us more than source code. She had provided accurate and precise internal data on
Haven
, upon which we based our plan of attack.

Snake asked, “Whose side was she on, anyway?”

He stared me straight in the eyes. Maybe he thought I would know the answer because I’d had feelings for her. I might have found the inquiry offensive coming from anyone but Snake.

Our friendship had long since crossed any such barriers, and I would have happily told him—had I known the answer myself.

But sadly, despite what I felt for Naomi, I hadn’t the slightest idea. If she wanted to defeat Liquid’s plans—by giving us the unfinished code to a program that could electronically destroy GW—then her actions in Eastern Europe were inexplicable.

“I don’t know,” I said, “what her true intentions were. But …”

If Naomi had wanted to stop Liquid, she wouldn’t have needed to escape
Nomad
and help him take over the SOP. In doing so, she gave him control over the world’s armies—a terrible power—and then told us to stop him. Neither Snake nor I had a cohesive explanation to resolve the clear contradiction in her behavior.

And now, neither of us could know what Naomi had truly wanted.

I made myself recall her fleeting expression of relief when she heard Sunny’s message.
I cooked them right.
I tried to feel what Naomi must have felt.

What purpose for living had she found after learning of her cancer, as the fear of death threatened to break her each night? What had she needed to accomplish before passing on? What would be her penitence? Her sins—among them Vamp, Snake, and Liquid—had brought irrevocable change to the world.

Naomi knew her borrowed time would be far too short to settle her debts. And so she imposed on herself the artificial life she had given to Vamp, and she made contact with me and Snake—and Sunny.

As she died, Naomi said to Snake,
Your life has been prolonged so that you may fulfill your purpose.
She had been tied to the same fate. Snake wanted to know whose side she was on, yet I sensed that she had long since passed any notion of allegiances.