Storm Killer (6 page)

The airlock was suddenly filled with a deafening sound of air rushing out into space as the outer door slid open even when the outer door lamp flashed to green.

Something was amiss. The computer was designed to detect when the inner door was ajar and not allow the outer door to open. Two green lights meant the computer thought the doors were closed.

Storm killer’s designers had taken no chances with possibilities of computer or door sensor failures in the air lock system. They had built in a decompression sensor that alerted a backup computer system when the airlock was malfunctioning. This backup system performed as it was designed.

An emergency icon displayed and began blinking on the engineering console at the control center. The icon blinked on the screen over the picture of the airlock. Banner text ran beneath the icon reading,
“Airlock failure – Northern Hub.”
Simultaneously, the computer activated the station’s emergency condition sirens.

The engineering duty officer read the banner. He pulled up a live picture of the airlock on his computer monitor. His eyes widened as he saw both airlock doors open. Loose objects were being sucked out the airlock. Papers and debris were swirling through the airlock into the emptiness of space. The station’s precious oxygen supply was bleeding away!

He keyed the communications pad on his desk and raised Greg Ballard on his cell.

Greg answered, “Ballard! What the heck are the sirens about?”

The duty officer replied, “Northern hub airlock is open on both sides. The alarm is the decompression alert.”

Ballard responded, “The airlock is open on both sides? That can’t happen! What the hell kind of SNAFU is this?”

He made a snap decision and order the engineering duty officer, “Get the meteor strike repair crew up there. We may have to seal off the inner door.”

He jumped in his cart and raced to the hub elevator access point for this quadrant. He would be first on the scene unless some poor SOB was accidentally caught near that airlock.
Anyone near there could be dead from lack of oxygen by now. God, I hope no one’s hurt
,
he thought, as he leaped on the elevator and pushed the ‘up’ button.

12

Kim Danby had taken a hot shower. Her short bowl-cut brown hair was towel dried. She combed through the tangled hair as she looked in the mirror and wondered.
Why am I here? Nothing ever happens up here and I’m a physical and emotional wreck
.
With that thought, she grabbed her lower back and winced.

The old injuries from the Los Angeles riot just would not heal completely. Not only had her physical injuries not healed, neither had her mental ones.

She sighed and reached into the drawer of her washstand. She pulled out a small black leather case. She sat on the edge of the bed, unzipped the case and laid the contents out next to her.

She lifted a small vial and looked at it. About twenty CCs of cocaine hydrochloride and water mixture were left in the vial.
I’ll have to mix a new batch soon,
she thought.

She pulled a syringe from the bag, affixed a needle, and carefully filled it from the vial. She grabbed the large rubber tubing from the bag and using her mouth and right hand tied it tightly around her left arm. Slapping her arm a few times to raise the vein, she quickly plunged the needle in and injected herself.

She lay back on the bed and sighed again.
Only a few minutes now. Only a few minutes and I’ll get some relief,
she thought as she waited for the euphoric feeling from the drug to kick in.

She’d become hooked on cocaine during her recovery from the life threatening injuries sustained from the madmen who had killed her family and abused her in the riot. Whole groups of disenfranchised rioters from various ethnic backgrounds had, en mass, rioted across the country when the INS began a serious effort to deport the millions of illegal immigrants. Some riots had ended quickly with only property damage. Other riots had become extremely violent, as the one in Los Angeles, where she had lived with her family.

During her hospital stay, she had become dependent on morphine. Her doctors had weaned her from the drug and thought she was free of its effects. She hid from them that she had started regularly visiting a local drug dealer buying drugs of ever-increasing potency.

She’d tried several common drugs plus several designer drugs before settling on cocaine. Cocaine gave her a euphoric feeling and deadened the pain from her old injuries. She also seemed to get a jolt of fresh energy after using the drug. She was careful not to abuse it. She only used it when the physical pain or life’s pressures became too great.

Today’s one of those painful days,
she convinced herself as the solution had disappeared into her vein.

She did without the support the drugs gave her for several months twice in her life, the first time was when she joined the police department and had to pass a drug test. The second was when she had joined CORDEX security and had to pass yet another drug test. Neither organization did random testing after hire. Nor did NASA require random testing. So once she passed the hiring phase, she felt it was safe to go back to using.

She sighed again as the wonderful euphoric feeling descended over her very soul. She lay quietly for a few minutes appreciating the warm feeling and the rush of energy.

She jumped up, put the paraphernalia in its leather case and placed the case back in her drawer.

She wasn’t worried about needing another fix today. If and when that happened, she had another small black bag in her office desk. Just a quick trip to the lady’s room and she would be good to go again.

She hummed a tune as she exited her quarters and headed back to work.

13

NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center buoy number 41040 was moored in the Atlantic Ocean one thousand kilometers east of island of Martinique.  

The buoy was a six by twelve meter aluminum platform with two carbon-steel masts of weather sensors and transmission antennas projecting six meters into the air.

It was a bright yellow object easily seen by ships. It was easily seen in good weather, but, today, the buoy was invisible from only two hundred meters distance.

Hurricane Edna raged around buoy 41040.  Wave crests approaching thirty meters were straining the tether, threatening the connection of the buoy to the anchor resting on the sea floor. 

The waves were freaks caused by combination of factors. Edna was moving very slowly westward and had one hundred and twenty KPH winds that caused a long buildup of wave action. An ocean current moving eastward was opposing the storm’s fetch. These factors were causing the monster waves pounding buoy 41040.  

Buoy 41040 was sending a signal to National Data Buoy Center saying “I’ve got something interesting here!” The NDBC acknowledge the alert and sent a request to collect real time data from the little buoy’s sensor array.

41040 began sending the data when the tether snapped. Power for the little buoy came from three sources. The first was its internal battery. This battery was charged and the systems run by solar energy when the sun was out and by a special power generation feature of the tether. The temperature difference between the deep ocean and the surface was sufficient to generate a sizable electric current using an ammonia vaporization process. Cold ocean floor water was brought to the surface to cool the ammonia. This power generation plumbing system was integral to the tether and when the tether snapped, the system failed. Since there was no sun for solar support because of Edna’s deep cloud cover, 41040’s battery had to supply the entire electrical demand of the buoy’s various systems.

NOAA was another government agency running on a less than an adequate budget. Maintenance of the buoys was months behind schedule. 41040’s battery was at the end of its useful life. It should have been able to supply power for thirty hours, but the power reserve was less than one hour.

41040’s onboard computer detected the system failures, noted that the battery life was falling quickly and made a programmed decision to shutdown. This would leave power for the locator beacon signal that would allow NOAA to find the now helpless, drifting buoy after the storm passed.   

During its brief exchange of weather data, 41040 had reported that, indeed, Edna was now a strong Category Three hurricane with some uniquely large waves. 41040 had accomplished its mission before it went to sleep.

14

At 0415 hours, Brad Bolino began his first senior staff meeting since assuming authority of the station. His southern drawl was in some ways a welcome change to Adam’s terse New York accent. Brad scanned the conference table and saw a senior staff whose most senior member was only forty years old. Brad himself was only forty-two, which was the upper limit by current NASA standards for long-term orbital crew.

Brad sneezed and stopped to wipe his nose with a tissue. One of the assembled staff members volunteered, “Damn bad time to come down with a cold. You’d best ask Dr. Cruz for one of her snakebite remedies.”

Brad nodded his head in reply and he again wiped his nose.

The assembled senior staff averaged thirty-three years of age. None had been in orbit prior to this mission. Based on existing regulations, they would have to rotate to ground duty every twelve months to avoid long term damage caused by hard radiation received while in orbit. Brad had only arrived the previous month and still had eleven months before his forced rotation. Others of the staff would be rotating Earth-side starting in about four months time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, y’all are now formally on notice that I’ve accepted command and administrative control of this gadget,” stated Bolino, swinging his arm around the room to emphasize the ‘gadget’ was the entire Storm Killer station. “For now, as per the documented plan, y’all now report to me through Adam. Over the next forty-five days, the full transition to my hands will occur.”

The staff nodded their heads in agreement. The senior staff present at the table included all department heads save one, and Bolino and Sands. Greg Ballard had been at the table but had received an urgent request to come to the environmental control center about some problem they were having.

Doctor Francine Cruz, the station’s attractive, auburn-haired physician from Mexico laughed, “Bradley, the entire medical department is at your service.” This brought laughs from the assembled staff members since Francine’s ‘department’ consisted of only herself and her RN nursing assistant.

Brad smiled at her and asked, “What have you got in your bag of tricks for a cold?”

Francine placed her hand on his brow and after a moment said, “I don’t think you have a fever. Stop by the infirmary and I’ll check you out and give you one of my witches brews.”

Reginald O’Donnell, the elected head of the sixty man science team, stood up and called for attention. He raised his Styrofoam coffee cup and, in his best attempt at a Scottish brogue, requested of the assembled personnel, “Lads and Lassies, allow me to offer a proper toast to our defunct project manager, Mr. Adam Sand, for his devotion, professionalism, and personal drive that brought Storm Killer to operational status one month early.” He took a sip of the tepid coffee as the audience clapped for Adam who appeared slightly embarrassed by the praise.

Layne Bartlett, the head of Storm Killer’s Command And Control Center, raised his own cup of warm tea and stated, “Yes, let’s thank Adam for bringing Storm Killer online just in time to assault Hurricane Edna. I was concerned we would come online and have to wait around for a storm to kill. Now we get to tackle one within a few hours of going to operational status! As my mama used to say,
“
Y’all are sittin’ in the catbird seat
.”
”

Layne was another of those southern gentlemen. He had been born close to Brad’s home and had been friends with him since grade school days. They had attended the University of Alabama together as undergraduates and then Clemson for their PhDs in physics. Bartlett had beaten Brad in overall grades. Now Brad was to be his superior on Storm Killer. They were old friends and Layne was ecstatic about his childhood friend’s success.

The other department heads nodded concurrence and again applauded Adam. At that moment, a quavering wailing sound filled the room. It was the environmental alert siren signaling a life support emergency to all Storm Killer inhabitants.

Storm Killer had been operational for only two hours when this first serious glitch surfaced. At the instant the siren sounded, Greg Ballard paged Adam. “Adam Sand, pick up on channel three. Emergency, pick up!”

Adam pulled his cell from his pocket and toggled to channel 3. He could barely make out what Ballard was shouting. The video feed was turned off on Ballard’s cell so Adam was forced to rely entirely on Greg’s voice. “Air lock…(hiss)... Problem… (squeal)... Oxygen…(static)...Forty minutes,” was all Adam could make out from the overdriven audio circuit caused by Ballard’s shouting into the cell phone.