Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"Petra, report countdown status."

“All preflight sequences nominal.” The eerie, mechanical sound of a woman's voice, speaking Russian, filled the space. “Do you acknowledge?”

"Affirmative," he answered back. "You will now initiate ignition sequence. Bypass remaining countdown procedure."

“That is an override command. Please give authorization code.”

"Code P-18. Systems emergency."

“The countdown is now T minus nineteen minutes twenty-eight seconds. All systems are nominal. Therefore Code P-18 is not a valid command.”

"Shit," he whispered under his breath. "Petra, verify P-18 with Flight Control." He paused for a split second, then pushed a button on the console and commanded, "Abort instruction." Another pause, then, "Repeat verify abort command for N equals one over zero."

"What was that?" Eva was wedging her laptop under the left-hand G-seat.

"I think, I hope I just put her command-monitor function into an infinite loop. She'll just continuously start and stop the verification procedure. Maybe it'll render that subroutine incapable of blocking the other system functions."

"You're going to confuse her head? Good luck."

He settled himself in the central seat, then reached up and began unlatching the huge flight helmet. As he did, his eyes were suddenly flooded with grief.

"They killed him." He paused for a moment and just stared. Vance thought he'd finally become befuddled from the shock. But then he choked back his emotion and continued. "We're going on the deck. Under their goddam radar."

"What did you say?" Vance strained to catch his words. The English was slurred.

He seemed to grow faint, his consciousness wane, but he finally revived as he finished yanking the giant helmet down over his head.

Vance's headphones came alive as he heard the Russian. "Daedalus I to Control. Do you read? I am now bringing up core rpm for starboard cluster, outboard trident." A second later, he continued, "We have S-O ignition."

"Yuri," came a startled radio voice, "what in hell is going on! You can't-"

"Portside cluster, outboard. Rpm up," he continued in Russian, his voice halting. "We have P-O ignition."

"Yuri, you can't-?"

"Starboard cluster, inboard. Bringing up. Portside cluster, inboard-"

"Androv, for godsake, have you gone mad?"

"Sergei, I told them to clear the hangar. I'm taking her to full power."

"The liquid hydrogen tanks are in there. You could blow the whole hangar to hell if you use afterburners. You must be crazy!"

"The bastards gunned him down, Sergei." He caught a sob. "It was my fault. I should have warned-"

"What are you talking about? Gunned who down?"

But Yuri Androv's mind was already elsewhere, drifting into a grief-obsessed dream state.

"Engine start complete," he continued. "Beginning pre-takeoff sequence."

Will he be able to get this thing off the ground? Vance was wondering. He's shot up and now he's falling apart.

Guess we're about to find out. The fuselage cameras are showing an empty hangar. Everybody's run for cover.

"Eva, want to take that seat? I'll take this one. No free drinks in this forward cabin section." He was speaking through his upraised helmet visor as he eased himself into the right-hand G-seat.

"And buckle up for safety." She settled herself in the left. "Let's just hope he can still manage this monster. It's a Saturn V with wings."

"He's got his talking computer, if she'll still cooperate. Do me a favor and translate now and then."

"Machines are supposed to translate for people, not the other way around. We're in space warp."

"I believe it."

As he pulled down the overhead seat straps, he found himself wondering what Daedalus would feel like in full afterburner mode. Those turboramjets made a Boeing 747's massive JT-9Ds look like prime movers for a medium-sized lawnmower.

"Power to military thrust." Androv was easing forward the twin throttles, spooling them up past three-quarters power. Daedalus had begun to quiver, shaking like a mighty mountain in tectonic upheaval.

"Prepare for brake release."

The screens on the wall above reported fuel consumption edging toward three hundred pounds of JP-7 a second.

"Yuri," the radio crackled, "don't-"

"Pavel's got his men out of the hangar, Sergei. I can see on my screen. I'm going cold mike now. No distractions. Just wish me luck."

There was a click as he switched off the communications in his helmet. He missed a new radio voice by only a second. It was speaking in English.

"Dr. Vance, what is going on? He's just cut his radio link with Flight Control. He's deranged. I order you to halt the flight sequence. He could destroy both planes by going to afterburners in the hangar. I demand this be stopped."

Vance glanced up at the TV monitors. An auxiliary screen showed Tanzan Mino standing at the main Flight Control console, surrounded by more kobun, who had muscled aside the Russian technicians. He also noticed that a lot of Soviet brass were there too.

"Looks like you've got a problem."

"I'm warning you I will shut you down. I can activate the automatic AI override three minutes after takeoff. The plane will return and land automatically."

"Three minutes is a long time." Vance wondered if it was true, or a bluff. "We'll take our chances."

"You'd leave me no choice."

"May the best man win."

"Petra, brake release." Yuri Androv's voice sounded from beneath his helmet.

“Acknowledged.”

Vance looked across to see his left hand signal a thumbs-up sign, then reach down for the throttle quadrant. The vehicle was already rolling through the wide doors of the hangar, so if there were an explosion now, at least they'd be in the clear.

Androv paused a second, mumbled something in Russian, then shoved the heavy handles forward to Lock, commanding all twelve engines to max afterburner. The JP-7 fuel reading whirled from a feed of three hundred pounds a second to twenty-one hundred, and an instant thereafter the cockpit was slammed by the hammer of God as the monitor image of the hangar dissolved in orange.

Friday 9:31 A.M.

"One small step for man."

Vance felt his lungs curve around his backbone, his face melt into his skull. He didn't know how many G's of acceleration they were experiencing, but it felt like a shuttle launch. He gripped the straps of the G-seat and watched the video feed from the landing-gear cameras, which showed the tarmac flashing by in a stream of gray. The screen above him had clicked up to 200 knots, and in what seemed only a second the Daedalus was a full kilometer down the runway. Then the monitors confirmed they were rotating to takeoff attitude, seven degrees.

They were airborne.

Next the screens reported a hard right-hand bank, five G's. The altimeter had become a whirling blur as attitude increased to twenty degrees, held just below stall-out by Petra's augmented control system.

When the airspeed captured 400 knots, the landing gear cameras showed the wheels begin to fold forward, then rotate to lie flat in the fuselage. Next the doors snapped closed behind them, swallowing them in the underbelly and leaving the nose cameras as their only visual link to the outside. The screens displayed nothing but gray storm clouds.

Landing gear up and locked, came Petra's disembodied voice.

"Acknowledge gear secure," Androv said, quieting a flashing message on one of the screens.

No abort so far, Vance thought. Maybe we're about to get away with this.

The airspeed had already passed 600 knots, accelerating a tenth of a Mach number, about 60 knots, every five seconds.

That's when he noticed they were still receiving wideband video transmissions from the Flight Center. The screen showing Tanzan Mino remained clear and crisp. Surely not for much longer, but now at least the uplink was intact. And the CEO was returning the favor, monitoring their lift-off via a screen of his own. Vance watched as he turned to some of the Soviet brass standing next to him and barked orders. What was that about?