quarter of the screen; he knew from experience the launch was a good one. He tracked it from the camera for a few seconds, then took one last big sip of his drink and set it aside.
An old Beck song from
“Looking for an ETA,” said Rockman over sonic drone.
“On course and on time,” said Malachi. He clicked in the main flight screen — similar to a HUD that might be found in a fighter, it gave a crosshairs and artificial horizon against, in this instance, a simulated backdrop of space and Earth. The forward video camera wouldn’t transmit until much later in the flight.
“So you’re ready to put the new exhaust in?”
“Yeah. Gonna be wicked hot.”
“I’m thinking about buying a Camaro,” said Rockman.
“A Camaro?”
“Classic ’68. Has a rebored 302 in it. Engine is probably for shit, though. I’ve seen the driver and maybe I might trust him with a skateboard.”
“Can we have an all-around update, please?” asked Telach, who was addressing the entire team involved in the mission.
The chatter dissolved as the analysts tracking various developments gave terse briefings. Malachi fenced the updates off in a corner of his brain, concentrating on his space plane. He leaned toward the control screens, gradually falling into the zone. Once he was there, everything would be automatic. It was like typing; he wouldn’t have to look at the keyboard to know where his fingers were.
Five minutes from Hydra, the onboard computer did a series of system checks. They were all in the green.
He came over the Urals. Telach had to give the final okay to drop the sensors from the Vessel. He updated her regularly on the flight, even though she could track it from the Art Room.
“Preparing to deploy wings,” he told her, edging forward in his seat.
The blare of another new tune from G*ngs*rfx — a heavy metal — rap piece that found a way to incorporate a tuba — nearly drowned out Telach’s acknowledgment. Malachi got the view in his main screen; the computer helped out with a white box showing the Vessel. The streaking pipe was only forty-four inches long, counting the rocket motor. While theoretically detectable by three different Russian ground radars, the programming on all three would reject any returns from it as errors.
Malachi knew that for a fact, since he had helped develop the virus that placed the code into the systems.
The computer began counting down the seconds to Hydra. At H minus forty, Malachi cut the rocket motor but left it attached; the standard contingency plan called for using it to attempt to complete the mission if the winglets failed to deploy.
Not that they would. But you always had to have a backup.
At H minus three seconds, the computer flicked a small switch located nearly at the midpoint of the Vessel. This moved an actuator into position at the opening of four long tubes connected to the blisters on the pipe’s body. At precisely H zero, a small nanotrigger activated. A flood of hydrogen gas shot into the blisters. The thin metal around them, already partially burned and worn by the friction of the flight, burst away. Hydrogen, under somewhat less pressure, flowed into what looked like a compressed paper bag directly beneath the ellipses where the metal had blown away. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the pipe sprouted a set of composite wings and steering fins from the bulges. Malachi got a tone from the computer that indicated the winglets had been properly deployed, then glanced quickly at the instrument data on screen one. There wasn’t time to scan the numbers — he looked only to make sure they were all green, rather than yellow or red. He saw green, then quickly typed the command to lose the rocket motor. As he did, the Vessel began sending its video image back to the platforms above, which in turn gave them to Malachi, supplying a real-time image for his forward display.
The separation pushed the nose up and the Vessel began to jitter, not only making it difficult to steer but also hampering the pilot’s ability to stop its spin and fly it like a normal aircraft. Malachi’s fingers flew to the right side of his keyboard, thumbing the bat on the bottom and then poking the large red arrow at the right, initiating commands to deflate the rear fin and push out the leading edge on the starboard wing. His fingers flew back and forth for nearly thirty seconds, until the craft was completely stable and on course. At that point he began controlling it using the yoke, which operated like a standard pilot’s control stick. His left hand rested at the base of a pad that could control the limited maneuvering rockets as well as the attack angles and dimensions of the winglets.
“Sensor launch in ten minutes,” he said.
“Hallelujah,” said Telach. “I thought I’d be filing my retirement papers before we got there.”
“They let you retire from this outfit?” asked Rockman. “I thought they just took you out back and shot you.”
“That’d be too easy,” said Telach.
Malachi was too busy to joke. Stabilized, the Vessel was now gliding through 200,000 feet at about Mach 5. The optimum speed for dispensing the sensors in the Vessel’s belly was just under Mach 1, and the computer showed they’d be going at least three hundred knots too fast. Folding the middle and fourth fingers of his left hand into his palm, he hit the top triangular buttons on his control pad simultaneously, telling the computer to inflate the leading edge pieces two degrees, the standard way to slow down the probe’s descent.
Ninety-seven percent of the time, the procedure worked perfectly. This time belonged to the other 3 percent.
The inflatable membrane on the winglet was made from a sandwich of metal and thin plastic alloys. One layer of the sandwich was pure copper, and while it had a number of advantages over other materials that had been tried in its place, it also had a tendency toward hairline creases that caused problems under high-stress regimes. Pretty much by definition, the entire flight was a high-stress regime, and when the leading edge inflated now, the crease caused a dent in the winglet geometry. Within seconds, the dent created a strong vortex on that side of the Vessel; the new stress point made a hole in that part of the wing.
The hole was less than a millimeter, but it allowed a fair amount of hydrogen to escape. The winglet was constructed in small tubes or pockets, so structural integrity could be maintained, at least for a while. But even with the computer’s help, Malachi knew he was going to lose the battle to keep the Vessel from sliding into a spin.
“Problem?” asked Telach.
“I’m out of milk,” he told her, struggling with the controls.
Within a few more seconds, the control panel on the left went from yellow to red. Malachi opted for a trick he had practiced several weeks ago on the simulator — he jettisoned the winglets, guiding the probe entirely by the fins as if it were a missile. While doable, this complicated the sensor launch pattern.
“We’re going to be a little off-target,” he said.
“How much?” asked Telach.
“A little.”
In the simulations, he had managed to get about 75 percent of the sensors within five miles of the target.
Something moved behind him. Malachi jerked his head around, a shudder of shock running through him.
