Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (65 page)

“Inbound, nineteen hours, twenty minutes.” The Lunar Project Coordinator said from the back of the room. “About six hours too long.”

“Shit,” he groaned, feeling the spark of hope washing out again. “How do we get them enough air to last?”

“Sometimes physics is our friend, sometimes it’s our enemy. Today the universe wins.” The Air Force officer that started out with a bad attitude found himself reeling, with a split lip. Joshua hated being told there was no way to win, even if it was true.

***

Stormhaven:

“God damn it, Marquez,” Cole bellowed, “We can save those people and you can’t. Don’t let them die for no reason.”

“I have not yet confirmed your allegations that the crew of Alpha is in danger, and you expect me to allow you to launch?” the General said. “I have my orders, sir. Even if what you say is true, people often die in the line of duty. It’s in the nature of military service.”

“Tell that to the world, General.” Tom joined in. “Before the day is over, this is going to be all over the news, and you’re going to have a lot of questions to answer. Questions your superiors don’t want to have to deal with.”

“I sincerely doubt it,” Marquez said. “We’ve taken steps to assure the media does not present news that’s contrary to our national interests."

“We’ll see about that,” Cole said.

“I have very specific orders, and cannot circumvent them, even if I wished to. Which I do not,” the General said. “The deadline for your surrender stands. You have one hour and thirty-five minutes to decide, Mr. Taylor."

Cole turned away from the windows and looked back into the room. “Nikki, I want you out in the fabrication barn, with a camera and a microphone. Brad, you stay here with Viki and do an interview. Make sure you go for the humanitarian angle. Talk about how we’re risking everything to rescue those valiant astronauts. You know your job better than I do. Just do it.” They all looked at him like he’d blown another circuit.

“Who’s going to carry it?” Brad said. “They’ve shut us down, and the other big nets have all sucked it up. We’ve got no outlet.”

Cole grinned. “Leave that to me. I want you ready to go live in five minutes."

***

Camp Kryptonite:

“Who the hell does he think he is?” Marquez fumed. Not so much because he really hadn’t expected another stab at running over him, but because he hadn’t expected to feel like he was defending. All the tools at his disposal, and he still felt out-maneuvered.

“Taylor knows exactly who he is,” DeMarko said quietly. “Our disadvantage is that we don’t know him, or what he really wants.”

“Does anyone know him?” the General asked, shaking his head.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I really doubt he wants this to end in a confrontation. He’s always relied on cunning, never brute force. I’m sure he’s got a complex and well-defined set of moral values, even if we haven’t figured them out."

“He’s the richest man on Earth, and he’s trying to hold the world for ransom. All of civilization. Where’s the morality in that?” Marquez stood up, fingering his satphone, debating a call to the President.

“Have you ever thought that we’re holding him in a similar place?” the agent said. “He knows what’s coming, all he’s asking for is a fighting chance to protect civilization. The only difference between what he wants and what we want is methodology.”

“Are you saying that he wants to stop the asteroid?” Shapiro sat forward, considering the possibility for the first time.

“I don’t know, but with the technical prowess at his fingertips, is it beyond possibility?”

“I doubt it,” Marquez disagreed. “Rich men seldom have altruistic hearts.”

***

Washington:

“Colton Taylor is on the line, Mr. Secretary,” Amanda said, startling him from a deep concentration.

“Excuse me, did you say Colton Taylor?” he asked, scratching an ear.

“Yes sir. He says it’s urgent. Something about the ISS.”

“Put him through.” He cleared his throat, watching the videophone clear up. “Good afternoon Mr. Taylor. This is a bit of a surprise.”

“Thank you for taking my call, Secretary Herman.” The face on the other end of the line seemed focused and confident. And disarmingly genuine. Not the usual deferring posture so many of the world’s elite afforded the world’s powerful.

“I assume this isn’t a social call, Mr. Taylor.” He punched the icon that started recording his vidphone.

“Are you aware of the situation developing at the ISS?” Colton asked, a small feed appeared on the bottom of his screen. It looked like a radar image. He stared at it for several seconds and then realized he hadn’t authorized the upload.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Exactly what it looks like: a radar image of the ISS. You can see that it’s no longer intact. There was some sort of collision up there, and an explosion that appears to have destroyed the station.”

“Impossible,” he snorted. “I’d have been told about it.”

“Yes, I know. You are part of the Hammerthrow Administration.” Colton dropped names in a blatant effort to get a reaction. The Secretary knew the trick and held his face immobile. Too immobile. “Lack of response is a giveaway, Mr. Secretary. But for the record, it only happened thirty minutes ago.”

“Why are you talking to me about this?”

“Because General Marquez is about to bomb the only facility in the world that can rescue the survivors,” Colton said, his expression icy. “We’ve offered to fly a rescue mission and intend to launch in one hour.”

“He’s been ordered to shoot you down if you attempt another launch,” the Secretary said.

“Then we’ll die heroes in the eyes of the world. On every news cast on the planet.” Colton sat back and steepled his fingers in front of his face.

“Unfortunately for you, that’s no longer true, Mr. Taylor.” Secretary Herman tried to match the apparent composure of the man who stared at him through the screen.

“You think so?” he asked. “Here, see what you think about this feed. It’s live as we speak."

The screen switched to an image of a huge hangar facility, where a woman stood in front of the camera, reporting. “We are standing in the hangar facilities of Stormhaven, where preparations are under way to launch two of their mighty carrier vehicles. We are expecting Colton Taylor to join us momentarily to announce that the blockade of their facilities has been lifted.

“Rumor has it, although it has not yet been confirmed, an urgent development in Earth orbit is the motivation behind this unannounced launch. NASA has not denied this story, but we will keep you up to the minute, and will cut in live with Mr. Taylor as soon as he arrives.”

The screen faded back to Colton smiling placidly, the face of a man in control. “Or if you’d prefer you can watch the same broadcast on SNN, or CNN or—“ John punched in to his news service and saw the face of Nichole Thompson once again.

“So do what you can for us Mr. Secretary,” Taylor said. “Those survivors up there don’t have a prayer unless we can get to them in the next couple hours. It would really be bad form to let another bad decision on your part play out on national TV. We mustn’t keep the press waiting.”

The call ended, and before the screen was completely dark he’d punched in the code for the White House.

***

CNN Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia:

Carla Blackstone sat staring at her screen. A moment before, she’d had Dan Russell doing a live story about a kid and his three legged dog. That was still what the webcast servers were running.

But the active domain showed a completely different picture. Bradford Stone was interviewing a spokeswoman for Stormhaven. She checked the IP addresses. They were right. She looked up the DNS reports and found a redirect subroutine.
There it is.
She smiled, deleting the file and correcting it. She reloaded her browser and saw Red the three-legged dog playing Frisbee. Good, problem fixed.

She turned to grab her coffee and the browser reloaded the interview again. “Shit,” she hissed, punching into the DNS files again. The program was back. She hit the delete button, but this time it reloaded before she got her fingers away from the keyboard. She did it again. Same thing. As she was punching the command in for a third time, her phone rang. It’d be the boss.

“I’m on it, Gayle,” she said, tapping the stud on her earpiece.

“I sure as hell hope so,” he said, sounding panicked. “Our DHS Liaison just left here and he’s on his way to you now. Get it fixed or they’re going to pull the plug on our servers.”

“It won’t matter,” she said. “The DNS servers have been updated worldwide. Try logging in to SNN and I bet you get the same webcast.” She hadn’t checked herself, but she was sure it’d be the same everywhere.

As she was talking she’d kept trying to cut around the program’s defenses. On the fifth time it locked her out of the system. The 405 forbidden screen flashed up on her browser.

“Well, that’s it,” she said. “We might as well sit back and enjoy the show.”

***

Coming Out of the Box

Outside Stormhaven:

The Lightning screamed low around the end of the valley, its engine howling. Since the incident with the unexplained beam, they’d pulled back to what they hoped was a safe distance. They’d also learned to quit relying on their SA readouts, so instead Captain Noah “Chainsaw” McIverson stared at another screen, one attached to a telephoto camera looking out the left window over the reeling horizon.

“Watchdog One to Base, we’ve got some activity out here,” the pilot drawled into his mic. “It looks like they’re opening the hangar doors.”

“Copy, Watchdog One,” the Flight Ops Officer replied. “Drop out of pattern and maintain visual. Stand by for instructions.”

“Roger Base. Maintaining visual range. Do you want me to heat up the birds?” he asked, thumbing the arming stud while he pulled around in an abrupt bank back to the right.

“Negative Watchdog, wait for orders from CiC.”

“Copy that, Base,” he said, easing back on the stick and rolling around to a heading that should pass between two low hills. He’d been in the air when the first Lightning exploded and wanted nothing to do with the idea of being the next.

He’d seen it with his own eyes, or he’d never have been willing to believe it. One minute, the plane was flying, and then next it looked like it’d hit a wall. Even the explosion looked like it was pressed against an impenetrable sheet of glass. Exactly a half-sphere. A bug vanishing onto an invisible windshield.

Without any direct evidence there’d been a weapon used, the pilots had been theorizing about the potential for instant death. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to think about at 500 knots, fifty feet in the air.

“Watchdog Two to Base, we’ve got action too,” the second pilot reported in. He’d been about ninety-degrees behind McIverson in his patrol circuit. “One of the small doors on the east end is rolling back. It looks like they’re wheeling out some kind of ...” The voice cut off for a second. “Stand by. It looks like a laser. I’m rolling out."

Looking over the horizon toward the southeast he could see Patrol Two leap nearly vertical as the pilot turned tail and ran. Thinking about it, he decided that he might be getting too close and pulled into a steep climb, twisting in a fast roll to scan the horizon for the other two patrol jets.

“Base to Watchdog Flight. We copy your change of orbit profile. Maintain visual, but keep your distance.” After another short pause the Flight Ops Officer came back on with, “CiC says you’re clear to go hot.”

“Copy Base, Watchdog One is hot,” Chainsaw said, flipping the toggle and confirming the armed status of his missile pods. Banking to the right at about 2,500 feet, he listened to the other three pilots confirm their status. Feeling a little more comfortable at the higher altitude, he craned his neck around to look back at the hangar. Nothing yet, but there were doors opening up in several places around the community.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” one of the pilots said, echoing the feelings that had started to boil acid in the bottom of his stomach.

***

Stormhaven:

The
Dancing Star
still lay in a heap, holes in the hull patched, but otherwise looking like a bandaged patient in a huge recovery room. Colton sat in the bridge of the
Aquila
talking to Dave, who held the same position in the
Draco
. Neither of them felt ready to make the first rush toward the refugees hanging in orbit. This was the moment when they called the government’s bluff.

Or died trying.

“Do we have word, yet?” Colton asked, easing up on the throttle controls and feeling the ship slowly rise from the floor. The view of the gear retracting was visible on the screens around him.