Test Pilot's Daughter II: Dead Reckoning (6 page)

* * *

Every day was a beautiful day in space. Daytime was short, less than two hours, but beautiful none-the-less. Christina was in her spacesuit along with Rhani in the cargo bay of New Hope. The huge container was quite crowded. Besides their Man Maneuvering Units --MMUs--there was a large target cylinder called ZERO and the DROID robot. The robot was an odd looking contraption shaped like a huge disk with four arms extending from the periphery. A third unit was similar to DROID but extended in the rear, packed with enough explosives to flatten a large building. There was no official name for it, but they referred to the Top Secret attack
vehicle as
The Monster
.

MMUs had come a long way since first tested in the ‘80s. They were much smaller and more reliable. Astronauts used them with confidence to scuttle around on EVAs without a safety harness or tether. It was just a matter of operating two joysticks, like a video game. The left stick controlled forward and reverse thrusters, the right one pitch and yaw. Christina marveled at the incredible feeling of floating free outside the shuttle. The physics was mind boggling to think a human body could travel at 25,000 miles per hour around the Earth and survive.

She struggled with her straps thinking,
Weightlessness would seem to make work easy, but it’s just the opposite.
Trying to get enough leverage to do anything was a real chore. She grasped the MMU handhold with a tinge of fear as she climbed aboard. The idea of floating away from the mother ship by mistake was petrifying. If she just pushed free with the force of her arms, she would quickly drift into the blackness of space, like someone jumping overboard from a cruise liner. She would simply be absorbed by the vastness of the universe. Death would come when the oxygen ran dry, death by asphyxiation. Cremation would come later as her spacesuit slowed toward reentry.
A sobering thought,
she shuddered. Her mind continued to wander. It occurred to her that once floating free in the MMU, her body would be traveling at Mach 35.

Wow, the fastest bitch alive,
she giggled.
C’mon, girl, get back on task.

She abandoned the daydreaming and tried to concentrate on getting strapped to her MMU. The unit was attached to the wall of the cargo bay, and she had all the straps snapped but one. It was always hard to handle small items with bulky gloves. Her heart raced and sweat was building on her forehead, so she stopped, took a deep breath and tried to relax.

There was so much visual stimulation, with the colorful Earth below and the black space above, it was hard to focus. The vivid contrast between space and planet and the infinitesimal layer of atmosphere visible on the horizon were eye-popping.
Gee, that’s all that protects us from asteroids?
The black abyss was jam-packed with so many stars it was hard to believe it was the same sky she had seen as a child. Above the hazy dome, the heavens were both awesome and humbling.
Such a huge universe,
she thought.
Is anyone out there looking back at me?

“Hey Stick, what’s taking you so long? We’re already behind schedule.” Rhani was jetting around the bay.

“Rhani, my boy, I can see you’re mounted up. Would you please zip over here and help me with this strap?”

He didn’t answer, but she could see him moving her way. It was 10:30 a.m. eastern daylight time, but of course, that meant nothing in orbit. Night and day flashed by every few hours. She could see the Baja peninsula directly below as they crossed northern Mexico.

“Roger that Stick,” said Virginia Roberts, called Sandy because of her dishwater-blonde hair. I’ve got the arm in position. It’ll hold DROID in place for initialization. Will you head over and release it from the bay?”

“Roger.”

Christina and Rhani flew to the center of the cargo bay side by side to loosen the restraint latches. There were eight latches on each side, and it took a few minutes to clear them all.

“Okay, I’ve switched her on full power, and she’s free.” She knew her voice gave her away. She was clearly thrilled. She even sounded a little dopey when she started singing, “Yes sir, that’s my baby. . .no sir, don’t mean maybe. . .”

Sandy lifted the robot out of the bay and released it about ten meters below, flying in formation with the shuttle. In its typical orientation, the spacecraft was inverted with the bay doors facing Earth. Christina activated her remote control and started maneuvering the DROID.

“Okay, here we go. I’m moving her aft one-thousand meters on the spiral axis,” Christina reported. The big remote control unit was specially designed for her gloves. “Wow, she looks a lot smaller out there. Now, let’s get the target in place.”

“Gotcha, Stick.” Sandy maneuvered the arm to grasp the target cylinder, pull it out of the bay and release it just below. “There ya go. ZERO is clear, stabilized and ready for docking.”

“Yeehaaw, here goes nothin’,”
not exactly proper jargon, but Christina was feeling giddy and having fun. She pushed the docking sequence button on her remote and announced, “
Holy shit!
We already got acquisition. DROID is on the move.” She could see the tiny thrusters firing on the robot as it moved forward. She was nervous with the fact that a small error in target tracking could result in a collision with the shuttle. Her thumb was poised over the red button ready to abort.

“Looking good, she’s comin’ in. Right on line,” Rhani reported from his position behind the target.

“Switching to CW laser tracking at 500 meters.” The robot was moving briskly forward, its image expanding with the closing range. As it appeared to grow larger, Christina’s heart pounded with excitement,
Come on baby, you can do it.
Within 100 meters, thrusters automatically slowed its progress and the range closed. “We have TV track at 50 meters, velocity down to two meters per second. Okay, optical recognition of the docking port, dead center.
Yippeee!
Oh boy, look at that. Closing at one meter per second.”

“Yeah, we can see the video,” said Sandy. “Looks just like manual docking only a lot faster. You sure that thing’s going to stop?”

“I hope so,” she replied.

“Still looking good,” Rhani said.

Reverse thrusters fired again, and DROID slowed to one-half meter per second, then to zero-point-one. A probe popped out from the center of the robot, and it entered the docking port on ZERO dead center. Lightly bumping into the target, the latches snapped into place and the green docking light illuminated.

“Docking, full lock. Holy mother of. . .that was too beautiful,” Christina said. She could hear cheering and clapping from the crew.

Sandy was known for a weird sense of humor. “Congrats Stick; looks like your fella just found his man thingy. Or should I say, looks like robot love has been consummated?”

“Ha, ha, very funny. Got anymore of those?”

“Sure,” she replied. “I think Miss Zero has one big smile on her face.”

Christina laughed in delight, “Would you just shut up and enjoy the moment, you pervert? I knew it would work. No sweat.” She was beside herself. All those years of research had finally paid off big time, and she was there to see it. “A small step for mankind,” she proclaimed, remembering the first Lunar landing back in the ‘60s. “By the way Sandy, I wonder how the hell they did that Lunar landing with such archaic technology? That LEM computer had less memory than my wristwatch.”

“Beats me.”

Both Christina and Rhani took their places in the cargo bay while Arrow elevated the shuttle far enough away to allow DROID more room to maneuver. The docking sequence was repeated fifteen times with various starting positions and offset angles. The robot found the centerline and docked perfectly every time. Rhani seemed to be bored with the whole mess as he really had nothing to do. Christina chuckled as she saw him doing loops and spins with his MMU in the mostly empty cargo bay. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed him maneuver to the
The Monster
. He disappeared on the opposite side and stayed there out of sight for some minutes while she continued testing.

“Rhani, watcha doin’ over there?” Christina asked. “You’re supposed to be observing.” There was a pregnant pause, and suddenly she was concerned he might be in trouble. She halted testing and jetted his way. As she approached, she noticed he seemed to be fiddling with something on the front of the Top Secret vehicle. He jerked his hand back and quickly jetted toward her.

“I’m just looking this thing over,” he said. “It is weird, Stick. Looks like DROID with a backpack.”

“Sandy, that’s it, all trials perfect. We’re done. You wanna put your packages back under the tree? We’re ready to come in for lunch.” Christina was ecstatic. Years of hard work found fruition before her eyes, and in orbit no less. History had been made, the first unmanned docking, ever. It was the grand highlight of her life, and she couldn’t wait to get inside to replay the videos.

No doubt about it,
she thought,
DROID’s a winner.

Chapter Five

At 2:30 p.m. Tehran time, it was scorching hot for early September in the Middle East. Waves of scintillation arose from every horizontal surface casting images of Iranian people like drunken hula dancers. Those who had a choice stayed off the streets in the afternoon, lest they become slowly broiled. It was a wonder any human could survive such a climate in the summer, but people had been doing just that for tens of thousands of years. Iran was, in fact, an arid strip of sand right beside the Garden of Eden, the cradle of civilization, where man invented the wheel and learned to write. The Tigris-Euphrates river basin, once given the ancient name of Mesopotamia--Greek for
land between the rivers
--was just next-door. In recent years drought had been record-breaking and the heat dreadful. Tehran was slowly baking under a relentless sun, and only crude oil and air conditioning allowed the population to thrive.

Iran was a nation caught between the ancient traditions of Islam and the modern science of nuclear physics. The entire economy was financed by natural resources, and oil had become the new currency. For the first time in the Arab world, a Muslim country had completely tamed atomic energy for the production of power. Iran had some of the largest nuclear power plants in existence. A side benefit to cheap electricity was the ability to produce nuclear weapons and missiles big enough to reach the United States. Combined with such awesome technology was a growing partnership with Russia and a passionate desire to advance Islam around the globe. After years of moderation, Iran had become a den of extremists, terrorists of the worst kind, those with an undying zeal for religion. The Quran was clear:
The Infidels must either surrender to Islam or die.
Israel was only a secondary concern. The new leaders of Iran were more interested in the sources of worldwide perversion: Judaism, Christianity and the United States of America. If Islam could conquer the Far West and the Far East, the prophet Mohammad would reign true over all the Earth.

Muztata al-Bolani, the new President of Iran, walked confidently into his secret coven. The conference room could aptly be described as a den of killers. After many years of independent operations with shoddy results, Hezbolah, Hamas, Taliban and al-Qaida had come together for the first time to fight the Americans in a final Jihad. Al-Bolani was the first leader with sufficient charisma and brute strength to bring all the nastiest factions together for a common cause. His thoughts were of religion and power, and he hoped to go down in history as the Great Crusader, the one mighty Imam who spread Islam across the world. Whatever the means, the ends were holy, the holy will of Allah, the one and only God of all mankind. Those heathen pigs who believed in the Holy Trinity or the biblical
Yahweh
were infidels, enemies of the one true Creator. In al-Bolani’s mind, the Quran had to be advanced to dominate world law. Nothing short of total victory was tolerable.

Iranian Jihadists were so pleased with al-Bolani running the United States out of Iraq, they made sure he was on the ballot and commanded a 72% majority in the presidential election. Oh, you would prefer 82%? No problem, it was the simple stroke of one key on a computer. True democracy was a joke in the Middle East. Although there was an affection for the Americans among some of the Iranian public, those with power were determined to keep it for the sake of Islam. Western modernization clearly equated to moral decay, and the clerics would have none of it. Chief al-Qaida cleric, Almanar Bahadar often joked, “The next thing you know, our women will want the vote.”

Al-Bolani had made himself known almost daily on CBN, a popular news channel headquartered in New York, condemning “those Zionist pigs” in Israel and America. He had learned over the years that growing tensions were good for business. Every time oil prices began to lag, he would go on the air with inflammatory rhetoric and prices would climb. Lord only knew why the news agency was so hell bent to give him airtime. They had fallen into the trap of an Iranian propaganda machine which sprayed lies, fueled hatred of Americans and kept oil prices at $200 a barrel. Gasoline in the U.S. was $7 a gallon and “Peak Oil” had long been surpassed. Oil production was on the wane worldwide with the last remaining reserves lying undisturbed in North America. The U.S. economy was in shambles with unemployment exceeding 10%. Alternate energy sources such as solar, wind and hydrogen had been developed to some extent, but none had panned out in a big way. The U.S. was still the largest oil burner in the world. Because of its decadence and inability to adapt, America was losing its grip as a major super-power, and the Gleason administration was unwilling to take bold steps against the decline. It was a written invitation for terrorism.