Semper Mars (23 page)
What no one seemed to have considered so far, though, was what would happen if something went wrong with the ISS.
Colonel Paul Gresham was not particularly worried about structure failure at the moment… though the ISS carried an uncomfortably long list of things on its maintenance log that needed to be checked, replaced, or repaired. He was concerned, however, about the human components under his command. The political situation was getting damned dicey.
Gresham carried the rank of colonel in the US Aerospace Force, but he was currently assigned to NASA, had been, in fact, ever since he’d been accepted for the astronaut program eight years before. He was the commander of the ISS, a position that, by international agreement, was rotated among the senior members of the current station staff on a monthly basis. It was a cumbersome system, and one that never worked entirely to perfection. Last month, the CO had been LeClerc, with the ESA contingent. Next month, the position was due to rotate to Zhang Shu, of Manchuria… unless the scuttlebutt he’d heard was accurate and Zhang got recalled early. If that happened, chances were that his Russian counterpart, Kulagin, would get the job.
It was annoying having necessary work, tight schedules, convenience, and even safety all twisted out of shape by politics, but that seemed to be the price for running a truly international space station in the uncertain political situation of the day. The irony was that most of the people on ISS duty couldn’t care less about politics. There was something about being able to float over to a nearby port and see the entire expanse of the glorious, blue-white Earth that tended to bring the people inside this little string of pressurized tin cans closer together, in a way that just wasn’t possible on the ground.
Sometimes, he thought, it would be nice to just sever all ties with Earth. “Come talk to us when you have your problems worked out…”
“ISS, I did not copy that.”
Gresham blinked. Damn, he’d been up too long—almost three months now on this tour. He was starting to talk to himself and not even realize it.
“Ah… Hermes One-zero-one, you are clear for final approach and docking, over.”
He was floating in the ISS command center, a somewhat larger than normal tin can mounted behind the station’s primary docking module. With his feet slipped into the deck restraints, his head was positioned behind the two main windows that looked out across the DM and beyond, to the Hermes shuttle silhouetted against the spectacular, cloud-brushed turquoise glory of Earth.
Hermes was a European design, a smaller version of the old US shuttle orbiter. Launched from any of several spaceports, from Guiana to Zanzibar to the South Pacific on an Energiya-III booster—the Russians still made the biggest, most powerful, and most reliable heavy-lift boosters anywhere—the Hermes was the workhorse of the European space program, shuttling personnel and cargo to and from LEO with near clockwork regularity.
“Copy, ISS,” the voice in his headset told him. “On final approach. Range four-five meters, approach one mps.”
Gresham checked his own readouts. They matched those of the Hermes pilot. “Roger, I copy that four-five meters at one mps.”
In fact, rather more Hermes flights were made to the ISS each month than were American Shuttle II or Star Raker flights. For a time, US involvement in space had been on the decline.
Of course, the discoveries on Mars had changed all that. Hell, in another few years, if things kept going the way they were now and the international situation didn’t turn into a war, the ISS would be a true city in space, and Gresham would be thinking about retiring to the Moon or Mars.
Hermes 101 was slated to bring up a load of fresh water, half a ton of other consumables—food, mostly—and a set of replacement solar panels for main arrays worn out by the constant sandblasting that years of circling the Earth brought it.
There were also four people on board, replacements for four of the six ESA scientists currently on the station. The ISS complement currently numbered six Europeans, two Japanese, two Manchurians, three Russians, and five Americans.
“ISS, Hermes One-zero-one. Range two-one meters, closing at point four mps.”
“Copy, Hermes. Two-one meters at point four mps. Suggest you yaw one degree starboard and slow to point two mps.”
“Roger, ISS. I comply. Yaw, one degree starboard. Range now one-seven meters, closing at point two mps.”
Slowly, the blunt face of the Hermes grew larger in the window, its gently sloped hull white above and black below, a white acquisition strobe pulsing brilliantly above and behind its cockpit. Beyond, the blue Pacific was growing masked by clouds… the ocean vanishing beneath the vast, counterclockwise spiral of Hurricane Julio.
“Ten meters. Point two mps in approach.”
“You’re looking very good, Hermes. Bring her on in.”
The shuttle’s nose vanished behind the blunt projection of the station’s docking module. The shuttle’s airlock and docking tunnel were mounted vertically behind the cabin, in the cargo bay. Gresham now directed his full attention to one of the television monitors on his console, the one showing a camera angle looking straight down the docking collar, a view already blocked by the immense bulk of the Hermes orbiter. Slowly, slowly, the shuttle’s docking collar slid into view, slowed… steadied… then grew larger as the Hermes began snuggling up closer to the far larger ISS. Gresham gave the final countdown. “Three meters… two… one point five… one meter. Point five meter… contact light! I have contact. I have five green lights on the capture latches. Hermes One-zero-one, you are hard-docked. Welcome to the International Space Station!”
“Merci beaucoup, ISS. It is very good to be here.”
“I’m reading equalized pressures on both sides of the lock. You may come aboard when ready.”
“We come.”
Gresham shut down the console, removed his headset, and prepared to go and greet the newcomers. Visitors were always a high point at the station. “Hey, Colonel? Smitty.” It was Wesley Smith, one of the NASA engineers on board, calling over his coverall’s electronics. “I’m at the docking module. I, ah, think you’d—”
The transmission cut off. Puzzled, Gresham began pulling himself hand over hand across the control center. Nakamura and Taylor, the other two on duty in the control center, looked up.
“Probably a com failure. I’ll be right back.” Head-first, he dove through the deck hatch and entered the spine passageway, the main highway that extended from one end of the station to the other. Twisting left, he pulled himself with three months’ practice toward the docking module…
… grabbed a handhold and yanked himself to an abrupt and bobbing halt. Four men in black armor with light blue helmets spilled into the corridor in front of him, moving clumsily in microgravity and with the burden of the assault rifles they carried strapped to their sides. A fifth armored man appeared, propelling Smitty—who looked terribly vulnerable and scrawny in his NASA blue coveralls—ahead of him.
“Colonel Gresham?” a voice said, slightly distorted through a suit’s external speaker.
“I’m Gresham. What is the meaning of this?” Later he would realize how terribly trite that sounded, but at the time he could think of nothing more inventive.
“I am Colonel Cuvier, of the European Space Command. This facility is now under my control, and you and your people are my prisoners.”
“What the fuck do you think—”
“Please, Colonel,” the figure said, gesturing with an assault rifle. “It is war, and we have just… how is it you American military people put it? We have just taken the high ground.”
More UN troops were clambering through the hatch from the Hermes shuttle now, and Gresham’s mind leaped to the absurd image of boarders in a ship-to-ship action in the days of sail.
And there was not a damned thing he could do about it. No one on the ISS was armed, except for these armored troopers pouring through from what was supposed to have been a routine supply shuttle.
“Playing pirate, Cuvier?”
“No, Colonel. We are winning a war before it starts.” The way he said it sent a chill down Gresham’s spine.
Tuesday, 5 June: 1615 Hours GMT
The Pentagon
1215 hours EDT
Kaitlin Garroway was beginning at last to recover from her jet lag. It had been a week since she’d returned to the US to be greeted by a whirlwind of meetings and conferences, first with Commandant Warhurst himself, then with various military officers and civilians who’d debriefed her on what she’d seen in Japan, whom she’d talked to, and what the more cryptic portions of her father’s message might mean. She’d been as helpful as she could… and thank God that she hadn’t seen much in the way of military preparations. She didn’t want to be in the position of an American spy when the information she provided might be used against Yukio.
Fortunately, all she could tell them was that the base at Tanegashima had been closed to all outside communications, which they would have been able to verify other ways… and that the mood of the people, in particular, the people of the Ishiwara household, had not been notably belligerent or anti-American. She still found it hard to believe that Japan would join the UN crusade against the United States.
For the past week, she’d been staying at the Warhurst house out in Warrenton, Virginia, a twenty-five-minute maglev commute from the Pentagon. She’d protested that he didn’t need to do that, that she could take a hotel or even return to Pittsburgh, but Warhurst had insisted.
She liked the Warhursts. She had the feeling that they were struggling to pull their lives together after the tragedy that had just overwhelmed them. Stephanie, Warhurst’s wife, went out of her way to make Kaitlin feel at home. Over the course of the week, she found herself growing closer both to Stephanie and to Janet, their daughter-in-law, who was also staying in Warrenton, and even young Jeff was glad to have found a new chess partner. The Warhursts’ sincere welcome warmed her, all the more once she became aware of the grief they all suffered. She’d known that an American had been killed during the embassy takeover in Mexico City… but not that he’d been the son of the commandant of the Marine Corps.
Montgomery Warhurst seemed to be carrying the loss well, though he did wear an air of quiet sorrow. Maybe that was why she’d finally agreed to stay in Warrenton for a while; she found it hard to refuse anyone who was hurting so. In any case, the commandant seemed to feel that she could yet be useful in communicating with her father, and if there was any chance at all of finding out what was going on on Mars, she was determined to grab it.
After a week, though, she’d begun wondering when she could get back to Pittsburgh. Not that it was urgent—her job didn’t start for another month—but she was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel at the Warrenton place. She was surprised, then, when Warhurst called her early one morning and asked her to meet him at the Pentagon… for lunch.
All of her security clearances had been handled the week before. An Army lieutenant met her at the maglev station in the basement of the “five-sided squirrel cage,” as her father liked to call the place, and escorted her to the office of the commandant. A Marine major received them in Warhurst’s outer office.
“Kaitlin Garroway for the commandant,” the lieutenant said, saluting.
“Very good, Lieutenant,” the major replied—not saluting because Marines did not salute uncovered indoors. “Good afternoon, Ms. Garroway. Please be seated for a moment. The commandant is anxious to see you.”
She ignored the hard seats he indicated and remained standing, while he touched a PAD screen on his desk. In less than twenty seconds, a door opened and General Warhurst strode out. Automatically, she stood at attention, sternly suppressing an urge to salute this man who commanded respect not because of what he did, but just because of who he was.
“Kaitlin,” he said warmly, grasping her hand. “I’m glad you managed to slip past those bastards downstairs this time.”
He was referring to the Intel people who’d grilled her last week. His irreverence drew a reluctant grin from her. “It hasn’t been too bad, sir,” she admitted.
“Good, good.” He led her into his office before saying any more. “Well, the worst of it should be over now,” he said as he waved her toward one of two comfortable-looking chairs in front of his desk. “I just heard from Brentlow. Intel’s finally decided that you’re not a spy for the Japanese after all.”
She took a deep breath and expelled it forcibly. “I was wondering, sir. Some of them were getting, well, pretty intense.”
“Hmm.” He sounded distracted. “Is something the matter, sir?”
“Well, it’s not good. You know about the ISS, of course.”
She nodded. Even if she hadn’t been a newshound, she couldn’t have avoided learning about the UN’s takeover of the ISS. Jeff had been talking about little else since Saturday, that and what was happening on Mars.
“In a way, the UN action was good,” he said. “It verified that what your dad told us was true, which might get some of the fence-sitters around here off their asses and off to work. Anyway, at 0225 hours this morning, our time, there was a launch from Guiana Space Center. Thirty-one minutes later, there was a SCRAMjet launch from San Marco Equatorial. Both of them rendezvoused with the ISS a few hours later.”
“Two SCRAMjets? What… oh!” Her eyes widened. “They’re getting ready to meet the next incoming cycler!”
“No.” He shook his head. “We thought so too, at first. But now we believe that the first launch was a Mars Direct.”
Kaitlin knew a little about Mars Direct flights. The first three manned Mars missions had used the technique, in the years before the first cycler had been deployed.
“We’re fairly certain that the new ship is a modified Faucon 1B, with a Proton booster second stage. It appears to be refueling at the ISS now. When fueling is complete, it will be able to launch for Mars on a trajectory that will get it there in about five months.”
“And the SCRAMjet was carrying more troops?”
He nodded. “Almost certainly. Intelligence guesses another thirty UN troops, probably Foreign Legion from the Second Demibrigade. The same unit that already has a detachment on Mars.”
