Storm Killer (21 page)

44

The remaining onboard management team had decided to begin clean up of the more perilous crystal knife shards in anticipation that they would shortly regain station control and the evacuated crewmembers would return.

Reginald O’Donnell had his small team of lab techs and two volunteer senior staff members completing the initial cleanup of the crystal laboratory crash site. They had carefully gathered and stored the larger pieces of broken crystal that were strewn over the interior of Storm Killer.

We should have another six or seven techs covering the crash site, O’Donnell noted, but the remaining techs had evacuated the station already. We’ll just have to do with what we have. 

He had decided that the remaining clean up of the smaller shards of crystal would have to wait until they could obtain a reinforced vacuum from groundside. The vacuum looked like a regular shop vacuum, but the canister was specially built to withstand the sharp edge of the crystal. One was currently scheduled for shipment to the station on one of the shuttles next week.
Until then, the best thing to do would be to cordon off the crash area,
Reginald decided. 

He went looking for Greg Ballard to explain the situation. He found him sitting is his cart talking on the phone. As he approached, he heard him say, “I gotta go, too. Thanks! Bye.” Greg disconnected and put his cell in his belt holder. 

“How goes the shards clean up?” Greg asked O’Donnell as he walked up.

“We’re done for now. We got the big pieces, but the small ones will be a bugger to cleanup. We need to cordon off the area until the right vacuum cleaner arrives from groundside next week.”  

Gregg replied, “Okay, Reggie. I’d run to the station stores and get some of our do-not-enter paper tape and it put up around the area, but I don’t think it matters much any more. Why don’t y’all head for the evacuation staging area? The Russians are about ready to launch a missile at us.”

O’Donnell’s eyes widened, “The Russians? How in the world did they get involved?”

“Our President asked them to.”

O’Donnell shook his head and turned to leave. Greg yelled after him, “Y’all have maybe forty minutes to EVA to the shuttle and get away from the station.”

Greg watched him return to his small crew and speak with them. He pointed to Greg once as he continued to talk and then he pointed to his watch. The crew, with O’Donnell and the other senior staff members in the lead, hurriedly headed for the elevators to go to the hub evacuation area.

Greg glanced around and, seeing no one left in the area, started his cart and headed toward the control center. He pulled his cell phone from his belt and speed dialed a number. “Listen, I got the word the Russians are going to launch a missile and blow this thing to smithereens. No, they haven’t launched – yet. So, if this station remains out of control for ten or fifteen more minutes, it’s all over. We should think about getting our butts out of here.”

The voice at the other end seemed to be asking a question.

Greg replied, “Who told me? Why, our mutual friend told me no more than five minutes ago.”

“Yes,” Greg went on, “I’d say that it came from a reliable source, won’t ya? Y’all know what y’all have to do, right?”

Greg listened for a few seconds and drawled, “Okay. We’ll meet in fifteen minutes at the evacuation area. See ya there.”

45

Thanks to massive amount of heat that had been introduced at the wrong places in the storm, Edna was increasing strength quickly to a category five storm. In Miami, the scientists at the National Hurricane Center were amazed at how quickly the additional heat at the sea’s surface had caused the storm to strengthen. They were issuing the strongest possible warnings to the entire east coast of the United States to evacuate the beaches and as far as fifteen miles inland.   

The hurricane force winds now extended over two hundred miles from the eye. Rain fell at the rate of five inches an hour for almost three hundred miles from the eye in almost every direction.

Storm Killer’s misplaced heat effect was best seen by the concentric eye wall cycle changes being observed.

Normally as a storm intensified, some of the outer
rainbands strengthened and organized into a ring of thunderstorms—an outer eyewall. This outer eyewall slowly moves inward and robs the inner eyewall of its needed moisture and wall rotation. Since the strongest winds were located in a hurricane’s eyewall, the storm usually weakens during this eyewall replacement phase, as the inner wall is "choked" by the outer wall. Over time, the new outer eyewall replaces the inner one completely, and the storm re-intensifies.

This process was not happening in Edna. The inner wall still existed and there were now two outer walls spiraling in to merge with the existing inner wall. Edna’s strength continued to increase. Hurricane chaser aircraft reported gusts of over four hundred kilometers per hour.

Edna was fast approaching something unprecedented – a storm over four hundred kilometers across with tornado strength winds extending eighty kilometers from the center.

Edna was now pointed right at Palm Beach, Florida. The entire state would be covered by category four and five level winds in less than twenty hours.

The storm was a monster and still growing. Luckily, the Storm Killer beam was now moving slowly to the west away from the eye wall and vicinity. With time, the storm would diminish slightly with the extra heating removed from the storm’s weather engine.   

Now, the most urgent problem was the cone of heat that would start marching widely across the surface of the Earth as all steering control onboard the station was lost. No point on the Earth below twenty-six degrees north of the equator would be safe.

What was to be a triumph of science was now an agent of disaster. A disaster of such truly biblical proportions that millions could die and whole regions of the Earth be inundated.   

46

The Boss was sweating. He had received a call from his superior telling him that the station’s destruction was imminent and to take any and all measures necessary to block the crew from regaining control of the station.  

Now, his superior’s orders were echoing through his head.

Early on in Storm Killer’s construction, he had installed a special snooper program into the phone system’s phone switching array. He could intercept messages from any of the crew and, by simply setting up keywords, have the snooper notify him when any of the trigger words were used in a phone conversation between people he had listed as “people of interest.”

The system had just notified him by a special ring tone that such an event had occurred. He pushed the speed connect button and listened to the snooper-intercepted conversation. He heard the conversation between Lt. James and the doctor as she began walking him through removing Rafael’s stomach to get to the chip.

Shit, it’ll only be minutes before they get the chip! How can I stop the control systems reactivation? We’re so close to success! he screamed to himself. Just a few more minutes and the Russians would launch their missiles and it would be all over.

Damn! They’ll have the chip back. That damned Rafael! The Boss thought, I should’ve waited another hour before killing him, but the security people were getting too close to catching him. At least I was able to buy some time when I had Rafael take that bitch, Danby, out of action for a while in the safety closet. He snickered as he thought about how helpless she must have been.   

How to stop them regaining control? His brain churned. If I can keep the station uncontrolled, then the Russians will launch the missiles. So Storm Killer will be destroyed. So what now? You’ve got advanced academic degrees, for Christ’s sake! Think of something! 

It came to him in flash. He needed to divert the security team’s focus on the chip recovery. This would mean one of them would have to probably die. Which one and how?
Okay, one of the higher ups needs to be taken hostage and one of the security team will have to die tying to free the hostage. Who better to take hostage than the station director?
The Boss thought as he brewed and stirred the plot in his head. The rest of the plan fell into line very quickly in his mind. Since Danby and Lt. James seemed to be tied at the hip, there was only one logical choice to be the sacrificial lamb. 

Yes, Hoch must be sacrificed! Now, to execute it!
The Boss thought as he moved to put his plan in motion.

47

The motor launches had returned. The crews had boarded the Lincoln and left the small boats adrift. There was no time to lift and stow them.

The Lincoln had dispatched a small, jet powered, all-weather reconnaissance drone and it had covered the distance to the scene of destruction of approximately three hundred kilometers in twenty minutes. They did not send it in a straight line, but rather a slightly curved route that avoided most of Storm Killer’s cone of destruction.

They had almost lost contact with the drone as it passed through the edge of Storm Killer cone of light and heat. The internal temperature of the drone had risen in less than a minute to over five hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Several thermal cutoffs had tripped. They had lost the camera feed and the remote control and telemetry circuits. Luckily, the drone was moving fast enough to be inside the edge of the cone for only ninety seconds. Almost as soon as the drone passed through the cone, the thermals reset and all functions returned.

Upon arriving in visual sight range of the Albatross, the drone rotated its wings by five degrees to increase the wings lifting factors so the drone could fly slower. It decreased it’s speed to just enough to keep it airborne and under control in the heavy storm turbulence.

Visual and infrared cameras activated, as well as fine grain bounce-back radar system. The data captured by these components was fed back at broadband speed via a real-time satellite communications session. The strength and frequency of the satellite signal ensured it could blast its way through the roughest weather and ground interference. It had successfully operated in a major sunspot cycle that had managed to knock out most of the commercial satellite communications.  

The visual images stunned the observers on the Lincoln.

The larger vessel, the Albatross, had no paint left on its whole structure. All of the paint was burnt off. Where ropes had laid coiled, only a black ash shadowy image now existed. The openings that had contained windows or portholes appeared to have had the glass completely melted away and the glass now lay in a frozen waterfall below each opening. The glass slump indicated that, for at least a brief period, the air temperature had to have risen to over twenty-four hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

The dead bodies of the crew were clearly visible. They looked shriveled and burnt as if in an intense fire. 

As the drone flew over the Gordon Gunter, the same scene played out.

Also visible was thousands of bodies of sea life surrounding the two dead ships. The boiling of the ocean had killed any sea creatures living in the first one hundred feet of the ocean’s surface.

The infrared camera was worthless since the hulks of the ships still radiated heat from the blast they had received earlier.

Admiral Olsen stared at the drone monitor and when he saw the glass slump, he knew his idea of using the refrigerator lockers at the bottom of the ship as harbors of safety was frivolous. They’d all die in the moments of that intense heat. Glancing at his watch, the admiral saw they had less than thirty minutes until the front edge of the beam touched them.
After that, who cares?
he thought,
better I keep this to myself. After all, there’s nothing we can do about it now. May our deaths be quick!

48

Brad Bolino keyed his phone and called Security Officer Hoch. Hoch was still in the doctor’s quarters listening as she walked Lt. James through the surgical procedure.

“Hoch”, the security officer answered.

“Hoch, listen carefully. This is Bolino. There is a man here in my quarters. He has a gun on me and says he will kill me unless Danby and Lt. James stop their efforts to recover the chip. He is deadly serious and highly agitated.” Bolino excitedly detailed the situation.