Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (58 page)

“They blew up a control valve for an oxidizer fueling system in the Assembly Building where they mate the orbiter to the carrier. Several people were injured, and three died. They haven’t determined it to be the result of fatigue, but it was serious. Fortunately the vehicles weren’t in the building when it exploded.”

“Why is NASA still pushing so hard?” Secretary Herman asked.

“Because Roscosmos hasn’t stepped up to the plate yet,” Al said. “We’re hauling our own consumables up in the shuttles.”

“Do we know when they’ll start launching?” the President asked. “We cut them their check more than a month ago.”

“It should be soon.” He shrugged. “Possibly within the week.”

“At least that’s good news,” John said. “I wish the rest of the international situation was as close to contained.”

“Where do we stand on that front?” she asked.

“The Japanese got their resolution pushed through the Security Council, and we had to use a veto to kill it,” he said. “We’re stalling the suit they brought in the World Court. It won’t be heard for a few weeks, so we’ve got some time to prepare a defense.”

“The foreign media is covering the UN resolution,” Worthington said. “Fortunately, our internal safeguards are working and there’s been no mention of either of these events by the United States press. Less than one percent of the US public has even heard a rumor about it.”

“The truth is Japan is rallying a lot of support and doesn’t need to have the sanction of any court to strike a hard blow to our economy,” John said. “They’re still totally behind their stated intent to pull out of all their US holdings if we don’t capitulate to their demands over Stormhaven."

“I put
Stormhaven
Down
on hold,” she said. “What more do they want?”

***

New Hope Colony Site, Plato, Luna:

Susan Winslow awoke to the glow of sunlight reflecting off the top of the crater rim above her. It still wasn’t sunrise down on the floor where she’d parked the MPL, but it wasn’t more than a half-day away. Rolling out of her bunk, she walked to the front and stared up at the bright summit. It was spectacular in its blinding glare, like the snow cover on the top of Mount Fuji. Or, at least what she imagined it to be. She’d never actually been there.

She looked down at the power meters for the batteries and fuel cells. Still almost thirty-percent. She’d done better than she’d expected, but soon enough would be getting a charge on the solar arrays and she’d be able to head out.

She was hoping the harsh light of day would confirm what she already suspected. That this site would be the one and only stop she’d have to make. Without bothering to dress, she headed back to the geology lab, the one place she had the most work to do before she could get moving. There were a dozen instruments to retract, from seismographs to gas spectrometers. Most of them extended from the lab on telescoping arms, but there were three remote units she was going to have to suit up to get. An EVA would have to wait till after breakfast, she wasn’t that anxious to head back to the LRS. She punched in the commands to start pulling in the sensors, and then headed to the galley to cook some cardboard bacon and plastic eggs.

She’d just opened the container of eggs and put it in the re-hydrator when she heard a voice over the radio. “Good morning out there in the MPL,” he said. “Are you awake?”

She hit the intercom button above the oven. “Yep, I’m cooking breakfast. What’s up?”

“Commander Winslow, this is Greg Olson. We’ve got something we want you to confirm if you’ve still got your seismographs deployed,” he said. Olson was the geophysicist that had been her understudy for this mission. She registered from the lack of transmission delay that he was at the LRS. She didn’t know he’d been sent up, but it made sense.

“Yeah, I’ve still got the remotes out. I wasn’t going to bring them in until I’m ready to haul anchor,” she said. “Hang on and let me run back to the lab and check the readout.”

“Roger, standing by,” he said.

“What am I looking for?” she said, sitting down on the stool and logging into the data archive.

“At 06:32:25 GMT we had an anomalous shockwave on all our local readouts,"

“Anomalous?” she said, scrolling down to the time he’d indicated.

“Yeah, just take a look at it and let me know what you think,” he said.

She found what he was in reference to and shook her head. “What the hell is that?” she said. Her record of the event was at 06:31:18.

“That’s what we were wondering too,” he said. “The small impacts we’ve caught in the past were nothing like this. Whatever it was, it was huge.”

“It’s not right for a meteor though,” she said. “It has a slow rise and a long trailing wave. You’d expect an impact to spike early, and then there’d be lots of secondary shocks as the ejecta comes down.”

“I agree,” he said.

“There’s no direct wave either,” she said. seismology on the moon wasn’t like it was on Earth. The moon had no viscous inner structure. Sound waves traveled directly through the core as fast as they did around the surface rock. A large impact would have two very distinct spikes. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe it was a dome collapsing?” he said. “We’ve never confirmed any of consequence, especially something the size that this’d have to be, but that might explain the odd signature.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, not sure about his explanation. Hollow bubbles under the lunar regolith were mostly the product of the overactive imaginations of science fiction writers. She was interested in facts, and not wild-assed theories. “Have we got a triangulation on it yet?"

“Negative. All our units are too close together to give us any differentiation. You’re the only other base we have to work with,” he said.

“What about the Chinese?” she asked. “As big as this was, I’m sure they’d have seen it.”

“We called them first,” he said. “They deny having any record of a seismic event at all.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “Obviously they don’t want to share,” she said, scratching her head in confusion. In her mind that only left one conclusion, and it didn’t make much sense either. “You think they’ve got something to hide?”

“Oh, by the way,” he said, clearing his throat pointedly. “Lange said your survey mission is over and you’re supposed to return to the LRS for additional instructions."

“Roger, message received,” she said, understanding that he was telling her to watch what she said over an open com channel. “I’ll be pulling up stakes and rolling for home as soon as I’ve got sunlight on the panels.”

***

Camp Kryptonite:

Marquez was still pissed. Still very pissed, but he was professional enough to keep it buried.

“She’s put the operation on hold,” he said to Shapiro as they sat in the mess tent eating breakfast. “That’s a far cry from canceling it.”

“I understand that,” he said, pushing his plate away and leaning back in his chair. “The question becomes, how long can you keep your troops at battle alert?”

“As long as I have to,” he said. “At this point I don’t think she’s intending to give them a pardon. I think this is more of a reprieve. We don’t know if Taylor’s aware of the change in status. There’s still a possibility he’ll capitulate if we don’t look like we’re backing down.”

“He knows,” Shapiro said. “I’d bet on that.”

“So maybe we can play a good-cop, bad-cop, scenario?” the General suggested, lowering his voice until it was substantially below the background conversations. “If he thinks you’re soft on his position, I’ll take the hardline. We can give him the idea that I’m about to go off."

“One thing I can say without a doubt, is that Taylor’s a shrewd negotiator,” he said. “I don’t think he’d bite on something like that.”

“So we firebomb his front yard,” Marquez said. “Lob a couple 105’s close enough to shake his fillings, and he’ll know I mean business.”

“You’ve got orders,” Douglas said.

“True, but they didn’t say I couldn’t rattle his chain,” he said.

“As much as I’d like to de-frame him for a change, I don’t know if it’s worth the risk,” Shapiro said, shaking his head. “It feels like we’re poking a cornered animal with a stick.”

“What would you suggest?” Marquez said, frustration boiling close to the surface again. “I didn’t come down here to sit around and do nothing.”

“We’ve got a while before the deadline comes,” the agent said. “Let’s do some systematic probing of their defenses. If we can determine how many of these beams they’ve got, and whatever other toys we can discover, then when the time does come, we can do it with a minimum of bloodshed.”

“Minimizing the bloodshed was not my goal,” he said. “I was sent here to expedite closure.” He sat back and thought about it for several seconds. “If we could focus on the mounting positions for their beams, then maybe we could make a first strike against them. That would make the rest of the mission more effective.”

“Makes sense,” Shapiro said, finishing the last swallow of his coffee.

“Have your tactical guy meet me in my office. I want to pick his brains.”

“I’ll have him there,” Doug said, getting up without letting Marquez see the look of relief on his face.

***

Chang Er Prefecture, Tycho:

The display showed the explosion, in slow motion. It hung like a nova against the starry black sky, growing until it overwhelmed the darkness and eventually, the camera itself. Prefect Czao sat watching while Dr. Chun provided narration.

“The detonation occurred at exactly 06:30:01 at 10,000 meters above Tsiolkovskiy Crater. The fission-fusion cycle took 2.17 seconds before we had helium cycle fusion. If you watch closely, you can actually see the point where the helium began fusing.” He backed the replay up and stopped it between frames. The fireball jumped from blindingly white to a color that was almost violet. The expansion rate of the explosion increased exponentially, and as they watched, the outer boundary of the blast hit the surface of the moon and reflected back creating visible cavitations in the expanding sphere.

“That is most impressive, Doctor,” Czao said. “I’m sure you’ve calculated the yield?"

“Of course,” Chun said, smiling like a proud parent. “122.36 gigatons. Twenty-two percent more than anticipated.”

“To what do you attribute the additional energy?” the Prefect asked, leaning back and watching the video loop play yet again.

“We must assume that in the core of the reaction a small amount of the material fused a third time. The spectroscopic analysis is thus far incomplete, but there appears to have been traces of beryllium, carbon, and oxygen produced as a byproduct,” he said. “We do not know if this is indeed a result of higher level fusion as there could have been traces of these elements in the fuel loaded into the reaction chamber. However, there are very little of these elements naturally occurring in the lunar environment.”

“That’s all very fascinating Doctor,” Czao said. “At this moment I am interested in the effect of the test and not the minute details of what happened within the explosion.”

“Yes, I understand that Prefect, but it is important to determine how much additional yield we will be able to generate with a given amount of fuel,” the scientist said. “If the third and fourth order fusion cycles can be accurately predicted, then it may be possible to build a much smaller warhead to ultimately achieve the same results against the asteroid.”

“What effect did the test have on the lunar surface?” Czao asked. “That is information I must report to Director General Jiang."

“To a radius of thirty-one kilometers the regolith and rock surfaces were vaporized to a maximum depth of twenty-eight meters. This penetration appears to be relative to material density, as we would have expected. Beyond the area of vaporization, extending out to a radius of 210 kilometers the surface shows indication of melting. Approximately 139,000 square kilometers. We measured a substantial ground shock by our seismic readings around the area, and here at Chang Er.”

“I understand that the Americans also detected the test,” Czao said.

“That is true,” the scientist acknowledged. “They asked us to confirm a seismic event this morning, right after the test. The geologist that talked with their person had been told to not disclose anything. Without any data from our seismic records, they will be unable to triangulate and determine the location of the test.”

“Will they be able to spot it from orbit?” he asked.

“It is possible, but we chose Tsiolkovskiy because it is well away from their normal Trans-Lunar Shuttle’s flight path. If they are not specifically looking, then they will most likely not see the burned area.”

“You have done well, Doctor” Prefect Czao said, standing. “Please take the day and enjoy the recreation center here in Chang Er. I am sure, once I have relayed your results to the Director General, he will wish to commence the preparations for the second test.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Chun said, standing to leave. “As always, I am available should you or General Jiang have questions."