Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) (3 page)

“But?”

“Do you know how exacting standards
have been for this project? Nuclear weapons don’t have this tight a tolerance. It’s
not like the LHC where you just have to replace a few magnets when something
goes wrong. I could destroy the world, and no one else would see it coming.”

“Do you
want
to destroy the
world some days?”

Mercy ignored the question. “About
three-quarters of unmanned space missions blew up on the pad. In 2003, we lost
every mission. Even more can go wrong now. Do you agree?”

“I’m not a technician.”

Mercy glared at the other woman. “I
thought you Ethics-page people had to tell the truth.”

Yvette sighed. “You’re correct on
all accounts, but you’ve made adjustments. Why not proceed?”

Clenching a fist, Mercy said, “The
test is tricky because we can’t remote-control it. The larger Icarus force
field blocks signals.”

“What about a preprogrammed burst
for the engines?”

“If the direction is off, the drive
could graze the L1 shipyard.”

“That’s a very slim chance.”

Mercy leaned over the desk and
hissed, “When you combine all of the
miniscule
chances that could hit
some populated target, or the field igniting water in the Earth’s atmosphere,
the odds rise to about 5 percent.”

“Only 4 percent of people sent into
space have ever died, and those are horror stories. One chance in twenty for global
destruction is, I admit, uncomfortably high.”

Mercy’s face lit up. Finally,
someone understood. “I can’t throw those dice. A human has to be at the stick.”

“That’s what we wanted in three
months.”

“It’s not safe enough for humans.
The calibration on those drive pods drifts after a few hours. To get even that
close, I had to design firmware to check the bug a hundred times a second.”

“So you have a workaround.”

“Money is not time. The hardware that
we rushed to the prototype is nothing like the final product; whole layers of
safety have been disabled. It would be like trusting your bank account to that Intel
chip that did division wrong.”

“But
you
could keep it under
control for the duration of the test?”

“Maybe,” Mercy said, spinning her
MIT class ring.

“With your special senses?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I know blue isn’t the only thing
you see more of. Could you detect the field drift early?” Yvette asked.

“Yes . . . that’s how I’ve caught
the problems so far.”

“And if you’re not there, the test
won’t happen?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then you’re going. You can match
Commander Zeiss for safe science and stand up to Red when it’s important. We
need both to succeed. The others entrusted me to make the final decision—you’re
on the team for
Ascension
.”

“Wh-o-a! I didn’t ask to join. You
only have to wait six months for a hardware respin.”

“This is sort of like the Secret
Service—we ask you to sign on, not the other way around. Your father approved
the bugging because he thought you were the most qualified candidate in your
field. Having met the others, I concur. We can’t wait any longer. Global situations
are becoming more difficult to manage. We need this experiment
now
. Admit
it: you’ll learn more in the first minute of live testing than we have in
thirty years of ground simulation.”

“That’s a quote from one of my
memos. Not fair.”

“Astronauts don’t whine,” Yvette
said, mimicking Mercy’s mother. “What’s your answer?”

“If I have to be there to prevent Red
from killing herself, I will. I should be there for final assembly anyway. No
one will raise an eyebrow if I have to slip aboard the test flight due to some
last-minute quirk.”

Yvette sent a one-word text to PJ
Smith, ‘In.’ Then she opened her briefcase and pulled out a stack of
nondisclosure documents the size of a phone book.

While Mercy was signing, PJ sent
his daughter’s badge the text message, ‘I’m so proud. Your mother is crying
already.’

“Why would my mother be crying?”

When Yvette hit a button on her
briefcase, Mercy’s badge and phone made a
bloop
sound as they went
offline. This was a heavy-duty media scrambler, used for discussing matters of
the highest secrecy. Dad had an older model on his desk.

The psychological evaluator asked,
“How long could you stay on moon base in an emergency?”

Mercy shrugged. “After the
prototype test, they might need a report from me, but this has been the only
project on my schedule since Ambassador Hollis’ funeral. Technically, my
schedule is wide open after this.” She paused, letting the ramifications sink
in. “Tell me Red isn’t going to make a run for the artifact.”

“I can’t lie.”

Sitting on the desk, Mercy swore.
“You’re okay with her breaking a UN edict?”

“When compared to saving the lives
of billions of people? Yes.”

“We’ll all be arrested.”

“Probably, but not before we
achieve our goals. Z has this timed to the second.”

Her mother had known about this
possibility for months, and she had probably arranged things to spend as much
time as possible with her oldest daughter. “If we don’t succeed, I won’t make
it back. That’s why Mom is crying.”

“We might be gone for several years
even if we do reach the alien artifact. Are you still in?”

This landing would unlock untold
technological marvels. More importantly, her father had recommended her, and
she didn’t want to disappoint him. “Yes.”

“Good.” Then Yvette told her things
about the artifact that only a handful of humans had ever heard. After that,
there was no going back.

That afternoon, Mercy put her
affairs in order. As with each member of the conspiracy, she wrote a letter
claiming full responsibility for her own actions, asserting that her friends
and family knew nothing of her plans.

At lunar Mission Control, while most scientists were
toasting the success of the four-engine test, the media spokesperson, Professor
Nena Horvath, took over. The platinum blonde with her soft, Dutch accent was
Red’s aunt and surrogate mother. Her sole goal had been for the
Ascension
team to reach the artifact without anyone noticing or interfering. What the
former beauty queen couldn’t accomplish with charm, she managed with a loyal
cadre of armed personnel from the now-defunct Sirius Academy. With help from
the security teams on the orbiting construction platform that had launched
Ascension
on its maiden voyage, that part turned out to be trivial.

Stopping the fallout afterward
would be difficult.

“Deploy defensive-missile
batteries. Bring up the Blasteroids tracking program,” Horvath ordered. Alarms
sounded throughout the base.

The moment she saw the prototype disappear
from radar, Professor Horvath reset the mission clock. She’d seen the Iranian
contingency plan, wherein a single push of a button triggered five days of
automated bombardment. They weren’t the only players. NASA’s database had held
a catalogue of over twenty thousand space objects to avoid. Sirius Academy had added to the list and filtered it. The program on her screen tracked every
known satellite and piece of space debris large enough to launch a weapon of
mass destruction—over six thousand potential threats.

They were in the hands of the
angels now, the three Fortune Aerospace shuttles. Their positions after the
test were no accident. “
Cherub
, you support the L1 platform.
Ophan
,
fly cover on our moon base.
Seraph
, stand by to rescue survivors from
Ascension
.”

Over Academy channels her right-arm
man at L1, Lieutenant Alistair, asked, “I’m watching on the telescopes. Where’s
your fourth antimissile battery?”

“Hydraulics are frozen,” Horvath replied
calmly.

“Sabotage?”

“No
eyes or ears yet.”

“You’ll
need every missile. Should I send you
Cherub
?”

“Negative.
That would take hours. I just dispatched a repair crew. How are your defenses?”

“
I’ve
already sent the civilians to the life pods. The rest of us have on vac suits,
but that’s just a precaution.
All of our
industrial cutting lasers have been upgraded to military strength. We can take
out any missile that gets within twenty klicks. Outside that range, we have the
zap guns.”

High-speed processor chips
manufactured by Mori Electronics in the last seven years had an intentional
defect. A chip that received a certain signal would melt itself down. Cameras,
beam weapons, launchers, and even missiles could be disabled by a sustained
burst. The L1 platform was now home to a small army of video gamers, each armed
with a long-barreled ‘zap’ gun tied to the Blasteroids tracking program.

Nena watched a countdown on her
screen. “Argos Observation Net reboot complete in three . . . two . . . one.”

Everyone in the control room held
their breath.

Launch flares appeared on every
screen, too numerous for a human to count.

“I guess we underestimated the
number of guns in this corral,” Alistair said with a sigh.

Nena listened in horror as damage
reports rolled in on both sides. “Several of the North Korean missiles blew up
on the pad. The first Iranian salvo hit an old MTV satellite. Zap is 70 percent
successful.” It wouldn’t be enough.

Reading her messages, she
announced, “We’ve been disavowed.”

“Who?”

“US, UN, everyone in the coalition.
They don’t want a world war.”

“But they’ll be first in line with
their hands out when Red succeeds.”

Seraph
announced, “We
splashed what we could on the way in, but enemy missiles turned the
Ascension’s
drive pods into glowing blobs. The second wave—the big guns—are warming in
their silos. We’re going closer to the lens to guard
Ascension’s
exit
zone.”

Unable to slow down enough to use
beam weapons effectively,
Cherub
had invented something they called ‘Puff,
the Space Dragon.’ Maximizing their force fields, and firing antimissile, flak-like
shotguns, they plowed through a forest of solar panels at L1, shredding and
spinning everything away regardless of its country of origin. When they brushed
too close to a rocket, the Icarus field would accelerate the hydrogen in the
fuel away from the
Cherub
at relativistic velocities. This caused
further chain reactions through the dense cluster of satellites.

However, the impacts caused the
Cherub
to careen out of control, like a jeep roaring down a jungle hillside.
Eventually the shuttle bumped something that tore open its cargo section.
Cherub
was moving too slowly, too far from the action to stop what happened next.

At ten minutes past the vanishing
act, Alistair transmitted images from his control console as he announced,
“COIL two has stopped firing! God, there are little insect robots swarming over
the portside. MRVs are overwhelming starboard defenses. Someone’s trying to
take us alive.”

On the screen, Nena watched
Alistair press the button found in so many supervillain lairs. Twenty years of
Fortune technology would self-destruct rather than fall into the wrong hands.

She never had the chance to say
good-bye.

****

By T plus 20 minutes, the operation
was no longer exclusive to the Academy team. UN lunar crews were tracking
inbound missiles from several origins, as well as wreckage from the L1 construction
platform.

Horvath sat in the center of the
chaos, barking orders. “
Cherub
, report. We think object EV295 may be a
survivor from the construction platform. Confirm.”

“We pulled one stray in from the
cold, but rescues are taking too long. Life Pod A took shrapnel. We need to
patch it ASAP.”

“Roger,
Cherub
. Jettison
your own cargo section, and clip on to the rings on top of the life boat.”

“The clamps will fit?”

“There may be a little space at the
back, but the clamps and airlocks are standard for all ships.”

“God bless Fortune Aerospace. This
will make our job a lot easier. Who do we line up to kiss?”

Horvath chuckled. “Thank PJ Smith.
The board gave him hell for the policy at the time.”

“How about you,
Seraph
?”

Static laced the reply as the pilot
said, “Second volley . . . incoming . . . most . . . Cockpit intact, but they’re
using odd warheads—all metal.”

“Shuttle killers. Avoid!” Horvath
urged. The all-metal missiles wouldn’t be repelled by the force field and
couldn’t be burned away by lasers. That was UN space-alliance tech. Either one
of the allies had changed sides, or someone was selling secrets.

“A little late for that. They took
out our rear field. I’ll have to crawl in reverse and flip over to stop.”

“Perform a density scan on the rest
of the fleet on the ‘dark side’ of the moon. Find any other ship killers, and
disable their propulsion before they launch.”

“Friend and foe alike?”

“I’m not sure what those words mean
anymore,
Seraph
. There can’t be more than a few, as expensive as they
are.”

“Long live capitalism.”

“Stay safe.”

Ophan
reported, “More
missiles from the dark side estimated to hit UN moon base at T plus 28.”

Meteor drills had already been
announced for civilians, and control was already working in space suits. They
were as safe as they could be under the circumstances.

“Any from the Chinese moon base?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Use two interceptor missiles per
incoming—sort by first arrival,” Colonel Francis said from the door. The UN
leadership had wanted a general, but no country could find one under the age of
fifty, or any who could pass the stringent requirements of long-term space
duty. Francis was fit because of his incessant training for Ironman triathlons.
He was the only straight man Horvath had ever met who shaved his legs—for the
reduction in resistance and weight during the race. Even the recent fad of
Ping-Pong in the common room fueled his competitive nature, which is how she
had lured him off the bridge. Someone had finally unlocked the door to the game
room.

The moment Horvath had been
dreading arrived when the real base commander walked into the room shaking his
head. Half the workers stopped to salute. The others were too busy. When the
colonel stepped up to her, she handed him a confession, absolving him of all
guilt. “I’m ready for arrest, sir.”

The colonel snorted. “Not a chance.
I don’t have spare men to take you to the brig. This is
your
mess, so
you’re getting us out of it. Status?”

“
Ascension
is inside the
artifact. We received a few minutes of broadcast from the craft, which we
relayed to Brazil for analysis.”

“The first humans on alien soil.
They did it. Welcome to history.” He looked at the image on the screen. “According
to Operation Quarterback Sneak, if they die, your rescue shuttle should
retrieve their flight recorder?” Crandall had leaked some of the conspiracy
plans, and US leaders had looked the other way.

“Specialist Oleander Dahlstrom should
rendezvous Out of Body with
Seraph
at the one-hour mark.”

“If we survive that long. Where are
my other shuttles?”

“
Ophan’s
flying cover for
us.
Cherub
is involved in rescue efforts at L1.”

Interceptor missile racks fired
constantly, shaking the ground.

“Two bogeys evaded, and we ran out
of welcome for the last few. Five missiles are going to impact,” announced a
technician.

Over the international
communication channel, they heard, “Surrender the pages or die.”

The base commander deferred to Horvath.

Pushing the transmit button, she
replied, “Suck my left nut.”

“Everyone to the bunker,” the
colonel said. The shelter was far enough underground that the command structure
should survive. Technicians scrambled. First a few people had to drop down the
tubes to activate the backup control nexus. Then the bank of elevators could be
fed by the standby generators. Once weapons control transitioned, everyone else
could follow.

“I’ll head out with a team to fix
the last launcher, or every civilian in this place is dead. Anyone who goes
with me will probably be vilified—painted as an insurrection leader trying to
escape. No one but us will know what really happened. Volunteers?” she asked.

Several men raised their hands.

The colonel warned, “Once you fix
the launcher, you won’t have time enough to get back here before the bunker
seals.”

She smiled. “There’s never been any
scenario where I come out of this alive. My husband, Daniel, is on life-support
equipment too big to fit in the bomb shelters. When he goes, I go.”

****

Horvath and three volunteers made
it through the airlock into the hall before the pressure shifted, and dust
swirled lazily from the fissures in the ceiling. Lights flickered as power
transitioned to emergency. All the voices on the command channel meshed into a
mélange of woe. “Main power has been disrupted. All three launchers are down.
Main satellite dish is trash. That’s how we were aiming the Mori signal.”

The colonel grumbled, “We’re
officially defenseless.”

Then the biggest explosion of all
shook the control room.
Seraph
shouted, “Oh God, the cafeteria’s hit. Those
people didn’t have pressure suits. Why kill them?”

“The enemy doesn’t want us to see
the next act coming,” whispered Horvath, bounding down the hall in an effort to
match the young men with her. She was not going to be accused of running like a
girl.

At T plus 30, the Chinese-Muslim
alliance declared war against Fortune Enterprises, the first such pronouncement
against a corporation.

Realizing that, for all their
experience and bravado, they were about to become irrelevant in the battle,
Horvath announced, “
Seraph
, you have the football. The IPBMs are next.”

Interplanetary ballistic missiles
had been just a theory until now. She tried to remember the summary Zeiss had
written for her. If the long-range missiles took four hours to launch from
Earth, and traveled at the same speed as conventional missiles, the UN moon
base had as long as 136 hours. If the attack came from L1, moon base had only
twenty-one hours. The warheads would represent the worst hell imagined and
refined by science over seventy years. If even one reached the lens, it could
tear the artifact’s space pocket open and eradicate everything inside.

When they reached the airlock to
the final launcher, she said over the radio, “
Ophan
, watch Asia and East Africa for launch flares. We timed the test so only our allies were facing the moon.”
She pushed a file symbol from her helmet toward the link icon. “I count six
Chinese bases, Iran, Indonesia, and Kenya. That’s right by Somalia, and this is the perfect opportunity for them to get revenge. The other twenty-five space
ports are neutral or friendly.”

Static filled the air before the
shuttles could acknowledge.

Once in the silo for the fourth
launcher, the lead tech gave her the first good piece of news that day. “One of
the surface explosions unjammed the launcher mechanism. If we can feed power to
the lift, we might be able to get it up.”

The marine in the rear guarded the
area with a rifle while the techs worked out a plan to run cables. Her job was
to pull chunks of rubble out of the delicate mechanisms that could crush a limb
if they moved.