“Here we go.” Patrick pressed the voice-command button: “Computer, orbital burn.”
“Ready for orbital burn, stop orbital burn,” the computer responded. “LPDRS engines reporting ready… engines firing in three, two, one, now.”
Patrick had steeled himself for the push, but he never expected the punch he received as the high-tech rocket engines fired off. Because there was less atmosphere to let airspeed build up more gradually as before, the shove was ten times worse than takeoff. Patrick used every ounce of strength he possessed to keep his legs and stomach taut, forcing every milliliter of blood to stay in the upper part of his body. Soon he found doing the H-maneuver wasn’t that necessary, because soon he had to pressure-breathe against the regulators forcing oxygen into his helmet — in a reversal of the normal breathing mechanism, he had to carefully sip the high-pressure oxygen into his lungs, then forcibly push carbon dioxide out. If he tried to breathe normally, the high-pressure oxygen would pop his lungs like overfilled balloons.
“General McLanahan.”
“I’m…okay…Boomer,” Patrick grunted. He strained to look out the side of the canopy toward Earth, but he couldn’t see anything, and the G-forces pressed painfully on his neck and vertebrae.
“Keep your head and back still, sir. The boost isn’t a good time for sight-seeing.”
“I figured that out real quick, Boomer.”
“Ninety seconds left. How are you doing?”
“O…kay.” Even saying one letter was difficult, like talking while facing into a hurricane. “No sw…” And then Patrick felt his chest shudder, and his vision tunneled and spun. He grunted out the bad air even harder, then had to fight to keep the pain down as he slowly, carefully let the high-pressure oxygen refill his lungs.
“General! Can you hear me?”
“R…og…er…”
“I’m going to cutoff…”
“No…no…keep…go…ing.” Patrick wasn’t sure if he meant it, but he did hear the words come out of his gritted teeth…and the pressure and the pain remained, so Noble must’ve heard him.
It seemed to take an hour, but in fact it was over in less than sixty seconds. Patrick barked out a breath, forgot to reverse-breathe, and was surprised when he took a deep breath and the pain didn’t come back. “Sta… station check,” he snapped.
“MC’s in the green, sir,” Boomer replied.
“AC’s in the green,” Patrick said before checking his oxygen, cockpit pressurization, and mission displays.
“That was a hairy one, sir,” Boomer said. “I hope it was worth it. Take a look.”
He looked…and he gasped in surprise despite himself. The horizon was no longer flat in any direction — it was all curvature now. Out the right side he could see all of the New England states and beyond almost to Nova Scotia, and out the left he thought he could see all of the Great Lakes to the very western tip of Lake Superior. The ground was sliding under them at an amazing speed. “Are we…?”
“Seventeen thousand one hundred miles an hour…Mach twenty-six point zero-two-one, altitude crept up a little to eighty-seven point eight-nine miles,” Boomer said. “Welcome to low Earth orbit. You’ve really earned your astronaut’s wings now.”
“How did I do?”
“A little worse than last time, although you kept on pressure-breathing — instead of screaming, you were grunting like Atlas lifting the weight of the world onto his shoulders,” Boomer said. Patrick silently thanked the aerospace medical and life support technicians for repeatedly drilling the pressure-breathing routine into him while preparing for this mission — he doubted he was lucid enough to consciously do the drill. “The G-forces hit hardest going from Mach fifteen to Mach twenty-six. Sit back and relax for a few minutes, sir, and then I’ll brief the re-entry procedures.”
The coast of Canada slid underneath them, and minutes later Greenland came into view. The scenery changed with amazing speed. It seemed every time Patrick did a computer check or read a procedure, then looked up again, he was in a completely new corner of the globe. He could see the southern coast of Ireland, with the British islands and the coast of Europe already in view on the horizon. He could see London, Brussels, Paris, and all the way to Hamburg to the north. Soon they were over Eastern Europe, with Moscow on the very horizon to the east and the Black Sea stretching out before them. “I’ll bet the Russkies don’t appreciate us flying over their territory like this,” Boomer said.
“Ask me if I care,” Patrick said. He motioned toward the horizon. “Ever get shot at, Boomer?”
“The Russians have a pretty good anti-ballistic missile base on the Kola Peninsula that has the capability of reaching us,” Patrick said. “The SA-21 ‘Boa’ missile is Russia’s version of our Ground-Based Interceptor — the ‘Star Wars’ missile defense anti-missile system. It’s supposed to be in initial deployment testing right…there.” He pointed at a spot on the ground. “It has a max altitude range of one hundred and twenty miles.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“You guys in Dreamland need to get more intelligence briefings before you take these things for a ride,” Patrick said. He pointed at the threat display on their computer screens. “Your software needs to be updated too — because I’ll bet that’s their ABM tracking radar we’re picking up. They’re tracking us and probably the Meteor as well.”
“I’ve flown this track at least three times and no one’s ever said anything to me!”
“That’s because no one officially knows what you’re doing,” Patrick said. “NORAD can see and track you of course, and they may even suspect you’re a Dreamland bird, but they’ll never start an inquiry except at the very highest levels, and it’ll stop right away once they confirm who you are. It’s up to you to get the intel you need.”
“Yes, sir,” Boomer said. “You get to feel pretty safe up here.”
“You can’t afford to — not in this day and age,” Patrick said. “I’ll start sending you a daily file on global threats, and I’ll get the techs at Air Intelligence Agency to get you the software to update your threat receiver. You may have to replan your missions accordingly, depending on the geopolitical situation.”
“We don’t need to get permission to fly in space over Russia — do we?”
“Legally space is open to all nations,” Patrick said. “Russia usually doesn’t squawk when a new spacecraft flies overhead — they would certainly like nothing more than to bring down an XR-A9, or at least study it — but since we can go in and out of orbit so easily, they may complain. If they complain loud enough, we’ll stop. Maybe.” Both crewmembers were on high alert for any sign of danger until they were well past the area.
Things were quiet for several minutes; soon, Patrick heard through his subcutaneous transceiver: “Luger to McLanahan.”
“Go ahead, Dave.”
“You received a ‘go.’”
“Roger that.” On intercom, McLanahan said, “Give me payload command, Boomer.”
Noble hit a key: “Transferring payload command, now. I’ve got flight command.”
“Thank you.” McLanahan’s multifunction displays now showed the status of the BDU-58 Meteor device. He hit a few keys, then casually announced, “I’m having a problem with the Meteor. It’s not responding to commands. Everything looks normal — relay network, datalink, orbital control computers — but it’s not responding.”
“Want me to look at it, General?” Boomer asked.
“I’ll give my command override one more try, then turn it over to you.” But a few moments later: “Still no good. I’ll take flight control, Boomer, and you take payload control. I’ve got the spacecraft.”
“You’ve got the spacecraft.” Noble checked the payload control displays. Sure enough, the Meteor was just completing its deorbit push burn and was quickly losing altitude. He tried to command the device to stop its burn, translate around, and boost itself back to its correct orbit, but nothing happened. “No response,” he said dejectedly. “It almost looks like your command override is locking out any other attempts to change trajectory.”
“I know, but I never entered my override code,” Patrick said. “It already locked me out, and my code can’t override it.”
“I can try to recycle the payload control computers…”
