Descent (30 page)

‘We’re daein the live feed as well, obvs,’ Calum added.

I hadn’t noticed, but now that I looked again at the display – a barely changing view of the darkening sky, the balloon and the suspended payload, whose central shaft and paired side pods had drawn an online flurry of schoolboy sniggers – I saw the SkEye logo in the lower corner. The view was from directly below, from a camera on the end of a needle-thin carbon-fibre boom extending from the payload’s nose-cone.

‘Ah, right,’ I said.

Calum stepped aside; I lurched for the kettle, then had to stand politely aside myself as Josie from the
Herald
made an entrance. Like a Dr Who companion striding from the 1850s to the 1890s between one footfall and the next she deftly shrivelled her modish metafabric meringue to a crinkled column of pleats, but even so there wasn’t enough space in the galley for all of us. I delicately edged my hips past her now-bustled butt, and let her in to take care of her tea. There was a triangular exchange of pleasantries. I got back to the kettle as Josie shimmied out. Coffee at last. Calum was standing just outside the doorway.

‘Kindae funny looking at that thing,’ he said, gazing apparently at nothing but actually at the SkEye feed of the steadily ascending silver sphere. He glanced round, and dropped his voice. ‘Given, you know. Our previous.’

‘Arr,’ I said, in that generic Scottish imitation of an English rural accent from some phantom shire between the Dales and Devon, all straw-chewing yokels and soot-smeared cloth-capped barefoot dole-fed blacklisted miners’ waifs, ‘when we were lads, like, we called them tharr shiny flying things Yow Eff Ows, we did.’

‘And if owt sayed ’e’d seen inside ’un,’ Calum fell in, ‘we’d string t’bugger oop fer a witch.’

This didn’t release the tension between us, but it cracked us up. It was close to the bone. Things got closer to the bone a moment later, as we both shifted from the kitchen doorway and saw the Shadow Minister for Technology arrive with a researcher and an adviser. Baxter noticed us noticing, then looked quickly away.

‘Fuck me,’ Calum muttered, still staring, ‘the gang’s all here.’

Anyone overhearing might think this referred to the politician and his retinue, but I knew it didn’t. We’re the close-encountered and he’s the Man in Black, is what it meant.

‘You know Sophie’s company supplied the metafabric?’ I remarked, by way of swerving from the subject.

‘Yeah, course I know,’ Calum said. He looked around. ‘Fuck me, she’s no here too, is she?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Why? Oh, I see. Then the gang really would be all here.’

‘Aye,’ said Calum. ‘Think ae all ae us being involved, eh?’

At this I had a moment of panic that he was on to me, then I realised he meant us old school pals all having different involvements in the Rammie. Or was this all he meant? Luckily for me, the actual Minister for Technology arrived flanked by the Rammie project director, Hayley Walters, and her PA, so I didn’t have time to wrap this particular rope any more turns around the bollard as I joined the crush for quotes and pics.

The Technology Minister, Simon Nardini, held up his hands and called out, ‘OK, OK, everyone, plenty of time for questions when we get started. Ten minutes!’ He disappeared into the press conference hall with Walters and the PA. I spent the ten minutes trying not to catch Baxter’s eye, which wasn’t too difficult because he was deep in conversation with the Indonesian lassies, and avoiding Calum, which again was easy because Calum was minding the StrathSpace table. Nobody else but Karl and Josie knew me anyway, and they were chatting to Baxter’s adviser. Just as I finished my coffee and was looking for a place to dispose of the empty cup the doors opened and we were all invited in. I hung back as everyone trooped through. The drones whirred into the air and followed, leaving a vacant shelf and solving en passant my problem about where to leave the cup.

The Holyrood press conference room has a few disorderly rows of plastic chairs in front of a stage with a podium in front and a 3D HD screen behind. The screen isn’t strictly necessary but it’s dramatic and kind of traditional. Here and there in the room, like misplaced coat trees, are perches for drones. Most drones these days can hover unobtrusively and silently for hours, but the ones available to hire in the Media Tower aren’t among them. The logos of their current users were flagged in my glasses, and this morning they were (rather aptly considering the hardware) heavyweight: Popolare, al-Jazeera, Xinhua, Frente, Zeit.

I grabbed a seat beside Karl and behind Josie, both of whom gave me the quick dismissive glance that’s more or less a contractual obligation for staff to give freelance, at least in public. Chairs scraped, gear clicked, everyone settled down.

The screen lit up with the same view of the ascent we’d all been keeping track of in glasses or phones. A column at the edge gave the package’s altitude and location, which a map app on my glasses translated to safely over the Atlantic, off the coast of Donegal. Now and then the view from the tiny nose-cone boom camera cut to a downward view. You could see the curve of the Earth and the white cloud layer far below. Then it cut again to the silver sphere and the blue-black sky, and stayed there. From the wings Nardini bounded to the podium, while his shadow and Walters took up flanking seats on stage.

‘Good morning,’ Nardini said, ‘and welcome to this final stage of a great Scottish project, a giant step towards a bold and visionary method of affordable access to space, achieved by partnership between the Scottish Government and Scotland’s engineers and entrepreneurs. I now turn you over to one of them, an engineer as well as an entrepreneur, Ms Hayley Walters.’

He stepped back from the podium as Walters stepped up. She tweaked her glasses, wiggled her fingers, grasped the sides of the lectern, and leaned forward.

‘Thank you, Mr Nardini, and thank you all for coming. I know you’re here to ask questions, and I’m ready to answer, but to tell you the truth we’ve answered a lot of questions over the past few weeks. Ground control at Machrihanish have just confirmed that the Rammie has reached its test altitude, the air and shipping lanes below are clear and everything is good to go. So, without further ado …’ She turned to the screen, and – no doubt in synch with her own feed from ground control – called out: ‘Five … four … three … two … one …’ Dramatic downward sweep of the arm, then, ‘Release!’

The silver sphere shot upward as if snatched away. The camera stayed trained on the central rocket and the ramjet pods to which it was attached until the sphere had dwindled to a bright speck, then cut to the downward view. The screen showed white cloud. The altitude and air pressure numbers were a blur, the latitude and longitude stable but for a flicker to the right of the decimal points. Back to the package.

‘Any second now for the ramjets,’ said Walters, voice steady.

Paired flares erupted above and merged. The view became one of three black overlapping solid circles – one large, two small – and the two projecting straight lines of the wings on a background of orange and red fire.

I added my, ‘Yay!’ to the general spontaneous cheer.

Cut to the downward view. The white cloud had become ragged, leaving black by contrast gaps here and there.

‘Flaps deployed,’ said Walters. ‘Thrust vector reversal sequence initiated.’

The view didn’t change, except that the texture of the cloud layer became more evident.

‘Any moment now.’

Nothing happened. The dark gaps became visibly larger. I heard everyone breathe in at the same moment.

‘Mission abort,’ said Walters, still calm. ‘Cut fuel to ramjets, repeat, cut fuel to ramjets.’

The view flicked upward. The orange fire still bloomed.

‘Ramjet fuel supply control malfunction,’ said Walters. Her voice steadied. ‘On course for fail-safe sea-level failure mode.’

Cut again to the downward view. The colour in the gaps was now brown and green. There was the sound of everyone leaning forward at once.

‘What the fuck!’ said Walters, not calmly. The sentiment appeared general. Her voice steadied again. ‘Automatic fuel dumping initiated.’

Quick cut upward – no change – and back down. A shape familiar from maps and satellite-pic apps filled the screen. My glasses reinterpreted what was in front of my eyes at the moment my brain did the same. Right in front of us, right below the rocket, was Edinburgh. Meanwhile the telemetry rolled on, reporting a location far to the west. This was impossible, but we were seeing it.

Someone screamed. Hands went to heads. I thought to do what no one else did: I wrenched my gaze from the screen, and looked up, blinking to EyeFly. The floors and roof became transparent. In a patch of clear blue directly overhead I saw the flare, brightening. The Rammie was coming down right on top of us. I needed no technological enhancement to hear that people outside had noticed too and were making their feelings known. The noise of pandemonium battered through the walls of the Media Tower like royal cannon fire through a baronial castle. When I looked back at the screen I fancied I could see the upturned open-mouthed faces as tiny spots of white.

At the last second the looming mass of the city, its main roads and great basalt outcrops already distinct, swung away. My quick upward glance took in a fireworks display, like a skidding turn in a shower of sparks. The screen went white, then blue. Everyone breathed out.

‘Main engine firing,’ said Walters.

The blue blackened by the second. Minutes passed in tense silence. I could feel my palms sweat.

‘Full detonation abort,’ said Walters.

The screen went black.

‘Downrange confirms safe detonation abort,’ said Walters. ‘Debris falling clear of coasts and shipping.’

There was a moment of shaking silence. Walters took a deep breath, pulled her shoulders back, and faced forward.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid there’s no getting around the fact that what we’ve just seen is a catastrophic mission failure. However, I should say even at this point that the thrust reversal worked albeit with some delay and that the mission failed safely without casualties or significant property damage, and … and …’

‘I think perhaps you should sit down,’ said Nardini, taking her elbow and guiding her to one of the bucket seats on the stage. She sat, glasses on, staring straight ahead, mouth working silently.

Nardini sighed and took the podium. ‘Questions?’

Clamour followed. Nardini cut through it with a pointed finger.

‘Yes – BBC?’

Josie stood up.

‘Mr Nardini, I’ve just received confirmation from ground control at Machrihanish that as well as continuous downlink telemetry they had full radar tracking of the Rammie’s location at least until the drop. How do you account for the project’s being so far off course that it dropped its payload above Edinburgh?’

As I listened to the question I had a flash of what felt like sheer inspiration as the answer clicked into place. I shot my hand up at once.

‘Ms Thompson,’ Nardini said, ‘we’re all a little shaken and trying to get our heads round what we’ve just witnessed. But my first response is to say that I have full confidence in the competence of the project director and her team, as well as in the Scottish Government’s scientific and technical advisers. There is no question in my mind that we’re faced here not with mere miscommunication, accident or malfunction but something altogether more deliberate and sinister.’

‘Do you mean sabotage? Surely that would imply a shocking lapse of security and dereliction of duty?’

‘I think it would be premature at this stage to say sabotage, precisely, but …’ He spread his hands.

‘Anyone else wish to comment?’

Baxter, who’d been as transfixed as the rest of us by the unfolding catastrophe and had sat jabbing at his phone in smouldering silence since, sprang to his feet.

‘Excuse me, Simon. I wouldn’t think it premature at all to call this sabotage. In fact, I would go further. We all saw where the payload was headed. We all felt it was headed directly at us, did we not? I’ve just run a sim of its precise trajectory, and can say with some confidence that had it not pulled out of its dive at the last moment it would have crashed on the main building of the Scottish Parliament.’ He paused, and flashed a smile. ‘Quite possibly, everyone here in the Media Tower would have survived.’ Another pause, then a lower pitch and more solemn tone, ‘In the main building, not so many. What we have just seen was an attempted terrorist attack on the government and people of Scotland.’

‘Terrorist?’ Josie sounded incredulous. ‘We haven’t had terrorist attacks in a generation. Who do you imagine could be responsible?’

Baxter’s smile was thin, his voice suave. ‘Ms Thompson, even someone of
your
generation may recall, if only from childhood, the many, many outrages – power cuts, traffic disruptions, net collapses, fires and explosions, to mention but a few – that the revolutionaries inflicted on us during the troubles. What was that but terrorism? To be sure, the media called it sabotage, but that was because the word “terrorism” was too closely associated with, ah, issues arising from the Middle East conflicts and of course with the war. But terrorism it was, by definition. I suggest this may be the first shot – perhaps a warning shot, perhaps a merciful failure in execution – in its return, and from the same source.’

By now he was in command of the press conference, and therefore at the front of a sensational story that was topping more and more news agendas by the second all round the world. I had to admire his despatch and panache, his ability to think on his feet. He’d planted terrorism and the revolutionaries at the forefront of speculation; out of the corner of my eye which I was keeping on the less respectable strands of the net I could see the hare he’d started up running, and an army of hitherto torpid conspiracy theorists bestirring themselves in their basements to shamble in its trail, all windmilling arms and wheezing halloos.

I waved my hand and stood up, but the attention was – sensibly enough – all on the big hitters.

‘Gentleman from Xinhua?’ Nardini indicated, trying to wrest the joystick back from his shadow, evidently so rattled he couldn’t read Leung Yi’s name on his glasses.