over the dedicated circuit. The bottom tied into either SpyNet or whatever was on the main screen at the Art Room; a simple toggle switch chose the view.
Malachi set his music player on the small shelf at the left side of the seat, then slid his headset over the player’s ear buds, fiddling with the arrangement for a moment to get the proper alignment. When he thought he had it, he reached beneath his T-shirt and took the small metal key from the string around his neck, placing it into the inset below the keyboard. The key, which had a chip-based random number generator in its small cylinder, allowed him to enter his two passwords into the keyboard. Given the elaborate security procedures required to get in here, the system designers had decided only a few modest protocols would be required to operate the controlling unit; the screen flashed immediately with the main feed from Orbital Platform Three, which the twenty-one-year-old had come to operate.
At the same time, the other screens popped to life. Marie Telach, who was in charge of the operation, popped onto the Art Room video screen.
“Hey,” said Malachi to Telach.
“Hey yourself. You’re late.”
“Yeah, my shirt set off one of the alarms upstairs. Too much bleach — sniffer thought it was C-4.”
“There is a dress code, you know.”
Malachi grinned. She was undoubtedly referring to his jeans and T-shirt, which were a bit scruffy even for the NSA. Malachi relished his role as a bit of a rebel, albeit one with a patriotic cause. He could play the rebel because he was undeniably one of the best Ree-Vee ops on the planet, able to handle not only the complicated satellite platforms and their Vessels but also the high-speed F-47C and naval assets as well. (
“Our team is almost in place,” Telach told him. “We need those sensors down. Now.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Malachi popped the 3-D “sit-grid” supplied by the Art Room onto the screen in the center of his workstation. The grid was a computerized map showing his target. Based on satellite images, it could in theory be only a few minutes old. In this case, however, it had been constructed from the image library and was nearly a year old. There were not enough satellites and, frankly, not enough need, to have high-quality images of every corner of the Earth available 24/7. Malachi studied the view for a moment — it looked like a junkyard with some outer buildings — then keyed in the target destination.
The Vessels were essentially space-borne dump trucks, preloaded with different payloads. Three basic configurations were stored at the satellite platforms. All looked and operated the same. One held three dozen small sound sensors, bugs about the size of a quarter that could transmit back to the satellites for about four hours. Another held two dozen slightly larger motion sensors with roughly the same endurance. The last held a combination of both. The Vessels looked like small pipes with a sharp nose cone and blisters halfway down the side. The boosters had steering fins similar to those found on a standard air-to-air missile.
As the computer made its launch calculations, Malachi brought up the smaller panels on the left side of his console. He punched up a weather radar in screen one, updating himself on the progress of a storm he’d been briefed on earlier. Screens two and three had radar images of both the target area and a wasteland nearly a thousand miles to the northwest where the Vessel’s parts would scatter after destruct. Neither of the images was particularly fine; objects less than two meters in length, such as the Vessel he would be piloting, were essentially invisible. But they were enough to give Mal-achi a decent idea of what was going on.
At least one of the previous Vessels had refused to blow itself up, and the operators had been instructed to make sure they landed in as remote an area as possible if, in the irreverent slang favored by the tiny coterie charged with controlling the space weapons, they didn’t “go jihad.” It was therefore important to know that he wasn’t flying his self-destruct pattern into Army maneuvers. By the same token, he’d need to know if anything dramatic happened at the target area before making his drop.
By the time he returned his attention to the forward screens, the computer had calculated its launch, wing inflation, and ignition points, showing them in color-coded symbols on the main screen.
“Ready or what?” asked Telach.
“Almost,” he said, picking up his MP3 player. He slipped the RCA plug into his console and togged the number three preset. G*ngs*rfx’s “Buzz” ripped up and down his back, the bass good enough to set off a hum in the NSA earphones. “Ready to fly,” he said. “I need a target time.”
“Yesterday,” said Telach.
“Can’t you play some classical music?” asked Jeff Rock-man. Rockman was in the front row of the Art Room, running the agents on the ground. “Springsteen or something?”
“Baby, we were born to run,” said Malachi, typing in his command password to unlock the platform.
“How’s the Civic?” asked Rockman.
“Chip’s supposed to come today. We’ll see how we do,” said Malachi. “I got the Monsoon speakers in, though. Sounds awesome. Whole town shakes.”
“Cool.”
The computer queried for his mission authorization number; Malachi pounded it in, starting to catch the hard beat of the rap-metal song he’d dished into his buds. Malachi did a quick inventory check of the platform’s available bugs — it was due to be restocked by Shuttle next week — then selected one of the Mixed Bag Vessels as his entry vehicle. The main screen morphed to a video view of the interior chamber — the top of the platform was covered by a solar array, as much to avoid observation by other space vehicles as for power. He turned to screen two and toggled a preset to put the 3-D mission profile there. The computer was suggesting a class one fuse — actually, a solid-propellant rocket motor — but Malachi, working from experience and still worried about the weather, chose class two. He had to confirm his suggestion twice with the computer — an annoying nudge installed by designers who basically didn’t trust human pilots. Finally he watched on the main screen as the stubby motor rode down a track to the back of the selected Vessel.
The satellite platform’s parts were not unlike those in the sophisticated plastic-and-electronic Lego sets Malachi’s father had bought the prodigy when he was three, and if Malachi had been the nostalgic type he might have flashed on a scene or two of his dad, who had died in a traffic accident when Malachi was nine. But he wasn’t particularly nostalgic; he popped off his headset, grabbed the MP3 player, and got up, walking to the back of the Chamber, where the small galley included a large refrigerator. He bent to the bottom and took out a Nestle?’s strawberry drink (stocked here at his request), then took a straw from the counter and went back to his station.
“Today?” asked Telach.
“I was thinking today.” Malachi slipped back into his seat. The engine had been strapped to the Vessel. The computer indicated it was ready to launch and, in fact, had started to count down for him, albeit at ten minutes.
“Move countdown to sixty seconds,” he said, opening the bottle. He poked the straw through, still watching the screen. The computer ferried the missile from its assembly point, extending the long arm that held it until it was twelve feet from the bay. It then swiveled the missile slightly to obtain the proper launch angle. Platform Three was roughly twenty-four hundred miles to the southeast of the Vessel’s target and, in fact, was closer to Tehran than Moscow. The rocket would propel it toward Earth at speeds approaching Mach 6; it would hit the target area in just about an hour.
Or two and a half strawberry drinks.
When the countdown hit twenty seconds, the computer paused to ask Malachi for the go/no-go command. He quickly typed “GO”—it had to be capital letters, or the computer would freeze, yet another safety feature.
At fifteen seconds, the computer again asked if it was allowed to launch. This time, Malachi gave verbal authorization, as did Telach from the Art Room.
The frame jostled up and down as the main screen filled with pure white tinged by red and yellow. By the time the video camera adjusted its aperture, the rocket was gone. Malachi left the image on the screen long enough to confirm that the launch had gone smoothly; the rail was intact, with no visible scorching. He then thumbed exterior camera two into the screen. The yellow diamond of the burning motor dominated the bottom left-hand
