group of volunteers for the hazardous mission. Unlike Mendenhall, Ryan, and herself, these men had the confident look of people who followed orders and yet were capable of quick thinking and fast reactions in difficult situations. Sarah knew they were just like Jack. She also knew that these men were going into a hostile environment that was just as deadly as any human foe they could ever face.
“Okay, people, give me a thumbs-up when you’re called,” said the ground supervisor and environmental specialist, “STS Atlantis Commander Johnson?”
The commander pointed his thumb in the air.
“STS pilot Walker?”
Sarah watched each man as they went down the line.
She watched the eyes of Will and Ryan as they waited their turn. Their stiffness in their suits made Sarah love them even more as it reminded her of two small boys in oversized suit and ties awaiting their turn at their first day of school.
“Mission specialist Mendenhall?”
Will raised his right thumb into the air almost too fast, but held it steady as he smiled back at Sarah.
“Lunar lander copilot and mission specialist Ryan?” the technician called, shaking his head as Ryan held up not one but both thumbs, and Sarah could have sworn she heard the muffled words, “We’re all going to die.”
“Gentlemen and lady,” the ground specialist said. “The ground crew wishes you luck and prays you have a safe journey.”
As they waited, the circle broke up. Men from the old days of the Apollo program, people who had done the preparation of astronauts in those heady days, swarmed the group of twelve and started shaking their hands and patting them on the back of their oxygen tanks. From the look in their eyes, Sarah could see that each of them would have traded places with anyone of the crew. She felt proud to have been trained by them in their environmental classes and she was happy to have known the men of the old school.
“Crew of Atlantis, crew of Dark Star 3, man the transport, please.”
As the group lined up to leave the prep building, Sarah paused a moment and looked at Will and Ryan.
“Don’t say it,” Will said. “I wish the colonel and the captain were here too. I would feel safer about having our asses lit on fire and shot off to God-knows-what fate if they were. But-”
“They aren’t here,” Sarah finished for her friend.
The three Event Group lieutenants smiled and Ryan gestured for Sarah to take the lead toward the end of the twelve-man group.
“Ladies first.”
Hugh Evans stood as the ten-second countdown for Dark Star 1 commenced. He closed his eyes for five of those seconds, thinking about Stan Nathan, the man who had been ruthlessly murdered in his own driveway just a week earlier. He opened his eyes and saw the giant Ares V. Then he looked at Ares I in the next monitor. Both platforms were brimming with the mechanics who would send Americans back to the Moon. In the distance he could see Discovery and Endeavour as they waited like NFL lineman itching to get into the game. The Dark Star mission was about to commence.
“Six, five, we have main engine start, four, three, two, one, we have solid booster start.”
Evans watched as the tremendous burst of gases erupted from the giant vent port of the launcher. Through all the trial and error of the now reliable system, Evans still cringed every time an Ares erupted into flame. As he watched he saw the tower stabilizers fall free of the 308-foot-tall Ares I, the lighter of the two systems. The main engine thrust sent a solid plume of white hot gases free of the platform as Ares I started to lift away against the forces of Earth’s gravity. Hugh clenched his fist and pounded on his console as the smaller of the two rockets started to accelerate from zero to eight hundred feet a second.
“ Dark Star 1 has cleared the tower, Houston. She’s all yours!” came the voice from the controller at Vandenberg.
Evans didn’t have to say anything to his people as the engineers started calling out their status and it began appearing across their screens. Hugh Evans calmed himself with some difficulty and then found he was scanning the blue skies around the Ares as it lifted into the sky.
“Stay away, you sons of bitches,” he mumbled, expecting at any minute a radar blip that would tell him that the launch was under attack.
Ares I kept climbing, as if daring anyone or anything to interfere with her. She rose majestically, as though propelled by the sheer faith of every man, woman, and child watching. The chase cameras watched the roll of the large Ares as she pointed her nose cone in the right direction for orbit. Then they all cringed as the first stage separated from the second.
Down below, the engineer and representative of Alliant Techsystems, the first stage manufacturer, jumped from his station and threw his fist in the air.
“Yeah!” he yelled. “Was that a perfect performance or what?”
Hugh Evans, instead of telling the man to take his seat, had to smile. How can you reprimand someone whose company had done exactly what you wanted it to do?
As the second stage engines ignited, there was a calm but solid release of tension. Hugh knew that Dark Star 1 was on the way with lander and orbiter to meet its crew at the International Space Station.
All eyes that were not involved with the telemetry of Dark Star 1 turned toward launch pad 6-A as the larger, two-booster systems of the Ares V commenced its ten-second countdown. Hugh winced as the main engines of the giant Ares burst to life, straining at the arms that held her at bay. Then the solid boosters ignited. Evans again closed his eyes as the Ares V started its climb.
“Houston, the clock is running.” Then, a moment later, “ Dark Star 2 has cleared the tower. Okay, Texas, she’s all yours!”
Again, technicians stood and urged the much larger Dark Star 2 into the sky. She rolled and then started hitting her stride. The plume of exhaust gases could be seen as far away as Los Angeles as she reached altitude, and the million sets of eyes on her watching from the city of San Francisco were glued to the amazing sight as more than a dozen of the old and young pumped their fists in an attempt to get the Ares V into its element.
Hugh and his two teams were watching the first stage fall free of the Ares V when he realized that both remote systems were free of earth’s gravity. Hugh sat and calmly informed everyone that they had work to do to get the platforms where they needed to be for rendezvous with the space station. He smiled when he realized how crowded the sky was going to be in just a few more minutes.
While Jack, Sebastian, and Pete Golding worked on the plan to get Captain Everett out of jail, Charlie Ellenshaw, the two Air Force pilots, and the nine German commandos watched the live launches from California. Charlie stepped into the 727’s communications station and nodded his head at Jack, indicating that the two Ares rockets and their payloads had achieved orbit. Collins nodded his head only slightly.
They had been on the ground for three hours. They had a close call when Ecuadorian customs officials came to check out the United States Air Force jet and its personnel, but Europa’s forged flight plan and emergency layover due to a faulty relay held up nicely, which was not to say that the empty electronics cabinet didn’t get a little cramped down in the avionics compartment for Collins, Golding, and Ellenshaw as they hid from the officials.
“Europa has successfully infiltrated the seventh precinct headquarters, home of not only the Ecuadorian chief of all security forces but also the chief prosecutor’s offices. Their computer systems are all tied together. Ecuador is lagging behind somewhat in their prison system and they still do everything by written order. Only the jail in the basement of the building has a closed-loop computer system and it’s only linked to the prosecutor’s offices above, not to the chief of their security forces. So we can order Captain Everett out of his cell and no one will be the wiser.”
“What does that give us?” Sebastian asked.
“Sir, our baby can do many things, but to physically break someone out of jail is not one of them. At some
