“We’re not hiring you as a soldier, David. You know the DarkStar and the Space Ops gear. You’re an astronaut and that’s what we want you to be.”
“Understood. Am I right to assume the Penumbra Institute, or whatever you are, is actually going to be the strategic arm of Space Ops?”
There’s a lot of staring in the room as nobody leaps in to tell me if I’m right.
“That would be likely,” Saul says finally.
“Then I want you to consider something. Don’t make Space Ops just some dark secret spy operation that only functions to do the dirty work. Somebody needs to be ready to respond if there’s a civilian crisis in space. We’ve already had some near misses. Last month the Japanese science lab had a gas leak and had to wait in their service module for three days to get help.
“We could have had support there in six hours. Everyone offered to help, but nobody was willing to take the same kind of effort we did with the K1 — and that only happened because Admiral Jessup was willing to risk his career to make that operation happen. If he’d done the same for the Japanese crew, he’d probably have been court-martialed.”
“We understand your sentiment, David. But it’s been difficult enough just to get funding for Space Ops just for national security purposes.”
“I can only imagine. I wouldn’t begin to tell you how to convince Congress to fund you, but consider this; why am I here? Because I’m the only one with practical experience. Experience that came from blundering my way through the K1 Incident. I had extreme on-the-job training. Wouldn’t it be better the next time something like the K1 happens, and there will be, that the people you send up have had actual experience in real operations and not just simulations? The Japanese accident would have been a perfect practice run for Space Ops.
“And I get that some of our equipment and methods should be kept secret. We don’t need to send a stealth craft up for civilian emergencies. But I don’t see a problem in letting our enemies know that we can get a spacecraft anywhere we need in orbit or on the ground in an hour.”
Saul is making some notes on a pad. “These are good points, David.” She looks to Flavor. “What does the CIA have to say?”
“Obviously we have to keep certain capabilities secret. I can see a certain optical advantage to what he’s suggesting. We’ll need to run it by Jessup and ONI as well as NASIC. But, yes. I think it makes a certain amount of sense.”
I don’t know if my suggestion is going to leave the room. At least I said it. I’m not sure where it came from. Partially I suspect out of the guilt I still feel for what happened with the K1 Incident.
“So, do we have a yes?” asks Saul.
“I have one more request…”
Fourteen
Infiltrator
Despite my noble intentions, there were only ever two deal breakers to me saying “yes” to this mission. The first was it involving any kind of combat. I’ve had enough for more than one lifetime. The second one is probably equally as important to me.
“This operation, I assume I’ll be using something like the DarkStar to gain access to the CS626?” I ask.
“Yes,” replies Saul. “Jessup will have the operational specifics. But we can’t have you observed as you approach the satellite.”
“Every 80 hours the CS626 goes into a reserve mode,” says Victor. “It stays that way for five hours as all the systems reset. It can’t transmit during that period. That would be when you’ll do your insertion.”
“Okay. Fine. More importantly, how would I be coming back down to Earth?”
If it’s the air mattress of death, I’m out of here. I’ll sit on the bottom of the sinkhole battling it out with Mighty Matilda until my old age before I ride another rubber raft down from space. It’s not just the fact that it should have killed me, that was the roughest, most painful ride of my life.
If you told me I had a choice between doing that again or letting Western civilization fall, I’d start reading up on making stone flints and moccasins.
“We have a better reentry plan for you this time.” Saul presses a button and an image of a satellite appears on the screen. “This is a Naval observation satellite that launched a week ago. It looks just like the other Ulysses-class birds, but it’s had all of the interior systems removed. We call it Night Bird”
A cross-section appears showing the inside. There’s a capsule that resembles the Unicorn-class I’m familiar with on one end and the bullet-shape of the DarkStar at the other — except this one is longer.
“Rather than design a habitat from the ground up, we put a spaceship inside a Ulysses-class satellite shell along with a DarkStar variant. You’ll take an iCosmos flight up on a Unicorn where it will dock with the satellite. From there, you’ll transfer to the DarkStar and use it to travel to the CS636. After you’ve made measurement of the laser onboard, you’ll take the DarkStar back to the Night Bird and return to Earth in the Unicorn. To any observers, it will appear that you’re doing a service mission on a Ulysses satellite.”
“And the Night Bird stays up there?”
“Yes. It’s a temporary fix until we can make something more permanent for Space Ops to function from.”
“Wait? Space Ops is going to be in space?”
“Eventually. We’re looking at building our own platform. We could shave our response time to under an hour to any point between low and geosynchronous orbit with the right spacecraft stationed there.”
“Holy cow, you guys are taking this seriously…”
Saul replies, “The K1 Incident was a wake-up call. Government is slow to move, but the reaction is serious.”
“Okay. So when are you looking to send me up?”
I start thinking of all the things I’ll have to do before I start training for a new mission. I’ll have to tell Nicole that I’ll be gone for a couple weeks at least and her robots are on their own.
“We have a charter jet waiting at the executive airport ready to take you to Canaveral,” says Saul.
“The next window for the CS626 is in twenty hours,” adds Victor. “We need to hit that or risk the Chinese sending a repair ship to there.”
“Seriously? You brought me up here to tell me that I don’t even have time to pack? What if I’d said ‘no’?”
“We’d start talking about financial inducement,” says Flavor.
“You’d try to buy me? Jesus, next time I’m not going to agree so easily. In any case, given the accelerated time frame, I have a support crew request.”
“You have Jessup as well as Captain Baylor,” says Saul. “They seemed to work well last time.”
“True. But I need one more person if you want me to pull this off.”
“And who is that?” asks Saul.
“Laney Washburn.”
“The civilian?”
“Yes. The civilian. Like me. She knows more about this hardware than anybody I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll be assisting,” says Victor.
“Me too,” Russel adds.
“Great. Glad to have you onboard. But I’ll also need the person who saved my ass in orbit and talked me down during Satan’s Whitewater Hell Ride.”
“Is this amenable to the CIA?” Saul asks Flavor.
“Washburn was a risky factor last time. She’s a professional journalist and not our ideal team member.”
“Hold up. She blogs about space from her bedroom because she hasn’t had a shot at going up herself. She’s kept her mouth shut about the K1 Incident out of patriotism. I was dragged kicking and screaming into doing my duty for country, while she jumped in willingly and was indispensable.”
“There are other factors…” Flavor’s voice trails off.
“Wait? Is this because she called out some pork barrel projects and caused someone’s funding to get pulled?”