“Now, when the crew returns and lands at Andrews Air Force Base, she sure as hell would like to show the world more than one dinky spaceplane. And since she can’t present the big, impressive destroyer, it sure would be nice if she could at least show off a light squadron of spaceplanes!” Edwards pointed behind the SGT to the two Single Stage To Orbit Shuttles sitting side by side within the Windward Tech hangar. The two SSTOS were identical to the one the Sword of Liberty carried in her dorsal hangar.
The SGT glanced back at the two sleek, lifting body aerospace craft in the cavernous hangar behind him and shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. Nothing was mentioned about this at watch turnover.”
Edwards threw his hands up, exasperated. “Hence the definition of a clusterfuck! Listen here, Sergeant. I’m an old enlisted man myself, and I don’t have to tell you how screwed up and anxious officer types can get when someone changes plans at the eleventh hour, but that’s just what’s happening now. Some PR flunkies decided the Commander-in-Chief needed to present something tangible to the press corps in order to justify all the damn money they’ve spent on a destroyer no one’s ever going to see. And they decided who better to show it off than the original crew and the ones who designed the damn thing. So now I’ve got 26 civilians and two spaceplanes to fly to Washington DC and get in place before the Sword of Liberty regains orbit.
“If you go contacting the watch commander, he’s gonna think something funny is up—just like you were, don’t deny it—and he’s going to call his boss. And his boss is going to wonder why a watch commander is calling him for an authorized and fully legitimate flight, and he’s going to call his boss. And so on and so on until the White House and the freakin’ SECDEF are wondering where their damn planes are! Now I’m just a civilian nowadays, but I don’t ever recall anything good coming from the brass wondering why some mid-grade enlisted man was obstructing their grand, FUBAR planning. Do you?”
The SGT looked worried but determined to stand his ground. “Sir?”
Edwards relented. “Okay, Sergeant, you’re making this more complicated than it needs to be. Despite the fact that this whole joint’s been nationalized, and you got stuck over here to guard these here planes, do they or do they not still belong to Windward?”
The SGT opened and closed his mouth, uncomfortably trying to decide on an answer. “I really don’t know, sir, only that we’re supposed to guard this facility and everything on it.”
Edwards nodded, commiserating. “Yep. I spent plenty of years as a mushroom too. The answer is yes, they do, and these are still our planes. The government only owns the one on the ship. Now, do we or do we not have a properly filed flight plan?”
The soldier glanced down at the paperwork in his hand that Edwards had given him earlier. “It would appear so.”
“And are we on restriction? Are you under any guidance to interfere with our work here? Are we perhaps Chinese spies in disguise? Terrorists?”
The SGT smiled for the first time and looked at the assembled Windward employees and their stacks of luggage and equipment, sparing a lingering glance at Edwards’ own wheelchair. “No, sir, no restrictions. We, in fact, have orders to restrict you as little as possible.”
Edwards sighed and slumped in his seat. “Well, if I’m not a secret legless hijacker spy, and you’ve got no orders stating otherwise, how about you give us a break and let us just do our damn jobs?”
The SGT cinched his assault rifle up closer to his shoulder. He looked at the group, then back at the SSTOS in the hangar, and eventually just shook his head. “You win, sir. I’ve got rounds to do.”
The crew all smiled in relief and grabbed up their luggage. As they filed into the hangar, Edwards popped a quick wheelie and turned to face the sergeant as he began to walk away. “Many thanks to you, Sarge. I promise to take back at least half the bad things I ever said about the Air Force!”
The receding guard waved a hand and continued on, soon passing the hangar door and disappearing around a corner. The genial smile immediately dropped from Edwards’ lips and he spun about, just as Christopher Wright, the crew-training lead from the original team and another member of the conspiracy, came up behind him to push him at a run toward the shuttle. The former Army colonel asked, “Are we good, Edwards?”
Edwards shook his head. “I’d like to begin our little adventure with a prayer. Here’s mine: Please, Lord, let us get outta here before my web of bullshit flies apart and they shoot us all for treason. Amen.”
March 7, 2045; White House Situation Room; Washington DC
Secretary of Defense Carl Sykes stood straight under the baleful glare of his President and revealed nothing of the mixed anger, embarrassment, and inexplicable sense of vindication that he actually felt. He was silent, allowing the Commander-in-Chief to process what he had just said.
President Annabel Tomlinson sat primly at the center of the room’s long conference table, surrounded by the anxious expressions of her staffers and military advisors, chewing the inside of her cheek and regarding Sykes as if he were a bug. “What do you mean, ‘It’s been hijacked’?”
Sykes smiled tightly. He could feel Gordon Lee laughing at him from beyond the grave. “Precisely that, Madame President. The timeline we’ve established thus far would indicate no other possibility.”
“Perhaps you should let me decide whether or not we have another possibility, Carl. Your experience, while valuable, sometimes has a tendency to limit rather than expand your outlook.” Her features were stone still, betraying not a whit of emotion.
While he could detect no malice or disdain in her voice or the cast of her eyes, he knew it was there, an undercurrent that pulled along all of their interactions. It was an unfortunate confluence. Sykes was the best possible person for his job, the rare, wise Beltway Bandit who had worked his way up to his position through patience, politicking, and unarguable professional competence. President Tomlinson was the outsider who had swept to a landslide victory, in part, on a platform of dismantling the usual Washington machine—more or less a “throw the bums out” policy.
In Sykes’ case, he was the only competent bum she had to choose from, so he alone of all his compatriots in the previous administration had remained. Many days, she regretted her decision to advance him from Under-Secretary to SECDEF. They were fire and ice, matter and antimatter, and the day was not far off when the two would finally clash with cataclysmic results.
The last fifteen months had been more than a little strained.
Sykes sighed. “Very well, Ma’am. Here’s what we know for certain—I’ll let you be the judge. Approximately two and a half hours ago, immediately after the successful strike on asteroid 2006 UA22, all telemetry from the Sword of Liberty ceased. We queried the ship without success and telemetry did not return. Imaging radar and direct telescopic visuals showed the ship was intact, though resolution at that range prevents us from assessing directly any hull or radiator damage. One hour and twenty minutes after going offline, we witnessed a track split.”
“Track split?” she asked.
“Her radar return split into two distinct returns. Imaging showed that the destroyer had launched its single-stage-to-orbit-shuttle, or SSTOS. There are any number of reasons for this—they could have been sending the shuttle out as a staging platform for repair work, they could have been investigating some of the asteroid debris, or they could have been abandoning ship in response to damage incurred during the asteroid strike. Without comms or further visuals, we could not determine the actual reason. However, when the Sword itself got underway, heading back to Earth at a higher acceleration and a half hour before the shuttle started moving, effectively abandoning the smaller vessel, it left few other reasonable possibilities other than hijacking.”