Starfire Page 30

  Sandeep stayed quiet, fingers knitted together. He dared to hope.

  “Okay, I’ll fly when this ship lifts off. But I’ll let you in on a little secret of my own, Sandeep.”

  “What is it, Dr. Linscott?”

  She smiled grimly. “I would have flown even if you’d refused to answer my questions. Even if you’d refused to tell me this story that Perez and I were suspecting was true.”

  “Really? What then, if I may ask, is your core motivation?”

  “I want to see the stars for myself. I want to see what’s out there.” She stood up as if to go but turned back. “So now you know what will make me do crazy things.”

  Sandeep nodded and watched them walk out. He closed his eyes and massaged them. Sandeep was proud of his diplomatic skills. He had to wonder if Clark himself could have pulled that one off.

  Chapter 49

  Area 51, Gamma Level

  Underground

  Preparations had proceeded at a desperate pace. The team had planned for contingencies for decades, but planning to fly an alien ship and doing it were two different things.

  They had to prep the interior of the ship itself first. It had been filled with scientific equipment, devices to measure and test responses of the control systems and to remove samples and take careful recordings of design and form. They’d treated the entire ship with almost sacred respect for years, the way a science team might handle an archeological find of fantastic importance and antiquity. Everything was touched with sterile gloves, fine brushes and sample bags for the tiniest particles of material. It’d been done that way since the beginning, as whatever they didn’t comprehend today they knew they might well have a better grasp of tomorrow. Preservation had been the watch word from the start.

  But now, all that was out the window. The ship was no longer akin to an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. It was a vehicle, and it had to fly within days.

  They ripped out all the festooning measurement and recording equipment first. What they needed, they packed away for later. In the newly uncovered decking they placed rows of seats, facilities such as toilets and medical equipment. The lower deck was packed with water tanks, oxygen tanks, food and a waste-processing plant.

  “How many people can we get out there and back in this thing, Dr. Goody?” Sandeep asked.

  “Alive or dead?” Edwin asked in return, grinning. “I’m just asking, ‘cause you can stack them a lot higher when they’re dead.”

  Sandeep eyed him. He’d never gotten this man’s odd sense of humor, nor his entirely off sense of timing when it came to applying humor to a situation.

  “Doctor,” he said, “you’re my chief medical person aboard this ship. I need a more coherent reply.”

  “I didn’t exactly volunteer for this job.”

  A commotion outside the main hatch caught Sandeep’s attention. He walked through it, ducking. Standing on the ramp, he was surprised by the scene outside. Edwin came up to stand next to him.

  “Quite an excited crowd,” he said. “You don’t suppose that Brandt fellow clocked someone again, do you?”

  Sandeep gave him a sour glance and hurried up the ramp. In the main meeting area, a clump of people had gathered.

  It was the center of their attention that stunned him. None other than Major Clark himself was there, in a wheelchair.

  He rolled forward, being pushed by a nurse. His hands weren’t moving, and his head lolled slightly to one side. Could he be a quadriplegic? The very thought made Sandeep feel a little sick inside. The man was a bastard, but who would wish this upon another human being?

  “Hello,” Clark said, smiling at everyone. He couldn’t turn his neck in its stiff brace. “I’m not supposed to be out of bed, but I wanted to see you all off.”

  The crowd, who’d been greeting him with a mix of faux well-wishes and sounds of sympathy, quieted. Sandeep pushed his way to the front.

  “Major?” he asked. “Did you say, see us off?”

  “That’s right. You’re all about to fly. The word has come in. The flight crew—that was the final piece of the puzzle. Sandeep, you’ll have to trim the herd a little. You can’t put thirty people onboard. I’d say no more than a dozen.”

  Sandeep had been focused on the man’s condition, but now he was listening intently to the words as well.

  “Sir—we’re just not ready.”

  “I know. That’s how it’s always been when a new, intrepid set of adventurers launch on a history-making mission. Do you think that Columbus felt ready? That Cook, Magellan or even Armstrong didn’t have a little hesitancy in those final moments?”

  “That’s not exactly what I mean. The provisions are in place now, and we’re pressurizing the cabin. But the flight crew hasn’t been able to train on the system for more than a few days.”

  “Caution. Always caution. That’s your watchword, isn’t it, Sandeep?

  Sandeep narrowed his eyes in annoyance. “I don’t want to blow up on takeoff, if that’s what you mean. We have to have a flight trial, at the very least.”

  “Request denied. It was denied a month ago, if that makes you feel better. The military absolutely refuses to consider it. Your test flight will be the real deal.”

  Sandeep was floored. All his planning was predicated on fully loading the vehicle, with supplies, not crewmembers—then allowing the flight crew and a few essential personnel to hover around the base for a few days, getting the hang of the new systems.

  “But sir, they’ve never flown something like this before. No one has.”

  “Of course not. That’s the beauty of it. But, don’t let the pilots fool you. The controls have been precisely built to mimic the shuttle layout as best we could.”

  “This craft has a thousand times the power and—”

  “Sandeep,” Clark said, locking eyes with him. “We’re out of time, and we can’t afford to reveal this ship before we launch. You do recall that our satellites were knocked out mysteriously?”

  “Yes, of course—oh, I see.” He got what the Major was hinting at. If the Russians had found and destroyed so many of their orbitals, they might well be tracking this ship, waiting for it to launch. Who could say if they could intercept it and put it down? It would be an act of war, certainly. But these days all bets seemed to be off in that area.

  The political will wasn’t there to face down old rivals. Even the news reports of the attacks had been slanted toward blaming anyone other than the obvious enemy. It was strange to Sandeep, who’d come from a nation that didn’t mind naming its enemies and working directly to defeat them. People here preferred to think of everyone on Earth as a friend, and they seemed to believe that by being friendly, they could engage the best behavior in others. It was foolishness at best, in his opinion.

  Unnamed terrorists had attacked Lab 126, and Blue-Sky had been a “workplace incident”. Everyone was assured that an investigation was underway. Both events had already faded from the news cycle on television.

  “I understand, sir,” he heard himself saying to the injured man. “Tell me of your own condition. Will you fully recover?”

  “Naturally,” Clark said, his smile twitching upward a fraction higher.

  Sandeep almost believed him.

  It was then, studying Clark's face, that he noticed an odd jumping under the skin beneath his jaw. Sandeep tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help himself. It had to be Clark’s implant. As Clark’s neck was unnaturally angled and tightly wrapped in the brace, the implant had shifted upward.

  Sandeep knew the implant was recording his face right now, tracking the input of nerves from Clark’s eyes. He wondered how close the implant had come to recording Clark’s moment of death when Brandt had struck him. It seemed it had been a close thing indeed.

  “I have another action item for your team,” Clark rasped. “We need an official name for this ship now that she’s going to fly. Instruct your team to make the selection. They’ve earned the privilege.”

  “Thank you, sir
,” Sandeep said, and he meant it. Major Clark always seemed to know how other people thought, even if he didn’t agree with it. Sandeep was beginning to understand his wily, manipulative ways.

  Sandeep briefed the group, focusing on the name of the ship. Rather than panicking about having to fly an alien deathtrap, they enjoyed themselves coming up with interesting names. Likewise, seeing Clark in the flesh had seemingly pulled them all together. Brandt himself came to Sandeep and spoke to him privately while the rest focused on the name and the accelerated schedule.

  “Sandeep?” Brandt asked. “You got a second?”

  “Certainly, Captain Brandt.”

  “Everyone’s looking at me funny—after seeing Clark, I mean.”

  Sandeep nodded, unsurprised.

  “Do you think I should be in a jail cell for what I did?”

  “Effectively, you already are.”

  “Yeah,” Brandt said, frowning intensely at the ground. “You know, I hate that guy, wheelchair or not. I always will. I would have gladly killed him to get my daughter out of here. I’d have killed you too, even if you didn’t deserve it.”

  “Good to know.”

  Brandt made a sweeping gesture, as if erasing words from the air. Sandeep tried not to flinch at the sudden movement and almost succeeded.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Brandt said. “I’ve changed my mind. This mission—it’s changed everything. This is real. What I feared most was being trapped down here with Jenna for decades, but that’s not going to happen now. We’ll all be dead or flying in a few days.”

  “You’ve had a change of heart then?”

  Brandt looked pained. “You have to understand, I’ve spent years down here already. I was down here as a kid before you knew this place existed. And my father was a prisoner here as well, and his father before that.”

  “Your ancestors were willing participants,” Sandeep argued. “Your father did his duty, and he accepted his fate in his final years.”

  “I know. That was how we were different. I fought against it. I couldn’t do to Jenna what he did to me. I had to let her taste the real world.”

  Sandeep nodded. He decided it was best not to say too much. He was happy to let Brandt talk. If this admission was real and not another of this man’s clever ruses to escape, it was a good sign. Having him aboard as a willing crewmember was infinitely preferable to having a dangerous unknown in their midst. Originally, the plan had been to put Brandt in wrist and ankle chains just before takeoff. Sandeep was reconsidering that idea now.

  “You’ve helped me come around too, Sandeep,” Brandt continued. “I know you didn’t choose these events. You’d rather be anywhere else than squatting in this hole, planning an insane flight in an alien ship that will probably kill us all. It’s plain on your face every day, every meeting.”

  Sandeep tried not to react. He didn’t nod or shake his head in denial. They both knew Brandt spoke the truth, but Sandeep couldn’t afford to say it aloud.

  “Well brother,” Brandt said, “that’s all I had to say. Welcome to my version of Hell. We’re all in for quite a ride, I bet.”

  Sandeep watched him walk away. He didn’t know what to think, but he turned back to the naming committee. They’d held a vote and come up with a name.

  “Starfire,” Dr. Tanaka said, “that’s the new name. We hope this ship will take us to the stars.”

  “Starfire it is,” Sandeep said. “Excellent.”

  Chapter 50

  Nevada Desert

  Day

  The ground shook. Something big puffed up into the sky.

  Old-timers around the base and even out on highway 395 looked at the horizon and saw the plume rise up and up. They hadn’t seen anything like this since the nuclear tests of the distant past.

  Inside the ship, Jackie was wrapped up in webbing. She felt an exertion of force upon her body such as she’d never experienced before. It was a shock. She could hardly breathe.

  She couldn’t believe they’d leapt into motion so quickly. She couldn’t believe they were doing so with untested alien technology. But most of all, she couldn’t believe she’d personally engaged the EM-Drive and launched them all into space.

  Even the NASA people, the supposed professionals, were as shell-shocked and overwhelmed as the rest of the crew. Their preparations had been minimal on every front. They’d needed more time for everything—but in order to have a chance to beat the Russians, they’d taken off as quickly as they could.

  There should have been a long period of careful planning and training—months at least— preferably years. In retrospect, even the composition of the final roster now looked absurd to Jackie. Dr. Jackie Linscott serving as the chief engineer on a spaceship? Impossible. Granted, she was something of an expert on engine design, but that didn’t mean she should be exploring the heavens. She’d never even broken the sound barrier before.

  That all changed within the first ten seconds of the journey. The hangar above Gamma Level had always been empty, or nearly empty. The hangar had been camouflage, constructed for a day like today.

  Except for the crew aboard Starfire, the great chamber had been evacuated hours before the launch. When it was go-time, the pit transformed into a blast-pan. The earth above the great chamber was porous and designed to melt away, sliding to the sides and collapsing into cisterns between the various sub-chambers that scientists such as herself had occupied for years.

  The ceiling had collapsed as designed, and the hangar had yawned open like a massive clam shell, spreading its jaws skyward. From this pit, the ship had risen like its namesake, a fiery star burning in the atmosphere with an almost uncontrollable velocity right from the start.

  Her first task had been to engage the engines and apply thrust. The flight crew had been given the power of steering and course adjustment.

  Unfortunately, the lowest power setting on her board had proven to be too much. She’d applied more thrust than four Saturn V rockets could produce and shot the heavy ship into the sky with alarming speed. Screens from ground control showed the scene they’d left behind. Some parts of the hangar had been damaged, and the rocky exterior of the ship was gouged with claw-marks.

  Despite the mishaps, they’d all survived the initial launch. Shaking with a combination of fear and vibration from the power under her, Jackie reached for the boards to tone it down, to relieve the crushing force, but she couldn’t lift a finger.

  “Engineering!” shouted Colonel Dyson in a strained voice. “Cut the engines, we’re out of control.”

  “I can’t reach the boards, commander,” Jackie replied through gritted teeth.

  “You have to ease off, engineer. I don’t know if the ship can take this much stress. We could blow up.”

  “Roger that,” Jackie said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Jackie unbuckled herself. She forced one hand to worm its way across her midsection. Grabbing her right wrist with her left hand, she was able to reach the console.

  “Asking for confirmation,” she said. “If I cut this engine, I’m not sure I can get it going again. The core will be unshielded, and the reaction will dissipate.”

  “Are you saying we’ll blow up if we slow down?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But we’ll lose power. We could fall back to Earth.”

  There was a moment of static. Jackie could faintly hear others on various channels, some were shouting. A few chanted data from one group to another. She gathered there were injuries, but she couldn’t do anything about that now. All her attention had to stay riveted on the engines, or she could kill them all.

  “I don’t think there’s any danger of falling back to Earth,” Dyson said. “We’re already hitting the mesosphere. My God, I don’t believe it. Only that outer shield of rock and ice is keeping us from burning up. Maybe that’s why they built up the ship’s hull into a cold rock in the first place.”

  “Commander,” Jackie said, “Do you want me to cut power or not?”

 
; “Will the G forces ease off on their own?”

  “As Earth’s pull lessens, we’ll just speed up. The vibration should cut out when we leave the atmosphere behind, but the acceleration will remain constant. That’s the whole beauty of the EM-Drive.”

  “I’m not feeling the love here, engineer. Your specs are way off. We can’t function long term at anything like three Gs. When we’re out of the atmosphere, cut back. If we have to restart, we’ll restart.”

  Jackie let her arms slide back down to her sides in relief. They already ached. The vibration subsided over the next few minutes as did the roaring sound. They were in space and powering right out of Earth’s reach, having exceeded escape velocity in less than ten minutes.

  Someone crawled close to Jackie. The squatting figure moved in a crouch. She levered her head to one side and saw Perez. She forced her slack lips to smile.

  “It’s hard to breathe,” she told him. “I should be working on the software to ease the thrust, but I can’t type on the console.”

  “I thought we would be weightless in space,” Perez said from his crouched position.

  She marveled at how he’d adapted to being twice his normal weight so quickly. He kept his head low so the blood didn’t pool up. She realized how strong he had to be. In comparison, she had a hard time getting out of her chair.

  “That’s a mistake,” Perez said, looking up at her. “Don’t stand and walk. Just scuttle around like a crab. It’s easier. Think about it this way, you just put a hundred and twenty pound weight on your back. That’s tiring. Worse, the blood pumping to your brain—”

  “Don’t talk about that,” she said, letting herself down onto the floor as gently as she could. “You’re making me dizzy just thinking about it.”

  She followed his lead despite the stares from others strapped in their chairs. Those who were moving around were going from one hand-hold to the next. Heavier built people had the hardest time of it. They were crippled by the centrifugal force.