Dale Brown - Executive Intent

Soon, the chase would be on.

ARMSTRONG S PACE STATION

THAT SAME MOMENT

“Nuts to that, General Greene,” Kai said half aloud after he broke the connection to AFRICOM. “Seeker…?”

“A warning has gone out to Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command with all the pics, sir,” Seeker said, “and a general alert has gone out via secure instant message to all major commands’ ops centers on our list, including AFRICOM. The alert reports detection of a convoy of Chinese ships apparently bound for Mogadishu, Somalia, escorted by four Chinese warships, detected by TacSat-3 but not backed up by any other electronic or visual data.”

“Good enough for now,” Kai said. “How’s our sensor coverage of the area around that convoy?”

“Stand by, sir.” Seeker entered numerous requests into her console; then: “Averages only eleven minutes per hour, sir. High of eighteen minutes. Look angles are no better than nominal.”

“That’s better than anyone else, but still pretty poor,” Kai said. “Weapon-status report?”

“Stand by.” A few moments later: “Self-defense interceptors on all garages and Armstrong are all reporting green except for Kingfisher-Eight, which is reporting a launcher continuity failure,” Seeker said. “ABM interceptors are reporting in the green except for Eight and Four, whose ABMs were downloaded for routine maintenance. All Mjollnirs are reporting in the green on Kingfishers Two, Four, Six, and Ten, still down on Eight until we can restore continuity. That’ll take an EVA.”

“I want Eight back up and running right away,” Kai said. “Boomer…”

“My Stud can be ready to go in one hour once I swap out the payload, General,” Boomer said.

“Seeker…?”

“I’m getting it now, sir,” Seeker said, again typing furiously on her console. This took a bit longer than the other calculations, but soon: “If we can position in thirty minutes, we can rendezvous with the fuel load already on the Black Stallion. It’ll take three orbits in the transfer to catch up with Kingfisher-Eight. If we miss it, it’ll take another twenty hours to get into position from Armstrong.”

“Boomer…?”

“We can leave the payload in the bay, suit up, and do an EVA from the Stud’s cockpit,” Boomer said. “As long as the tech can fit his tools in the cockpit, we can do it. He might have to strap them on his lap.”

“Get on it. I’ll have a tech meet you in the locker room.”

“On the way.” Boomer detached himself from his anchor position and propelled himself toward the spaceplane service module.

“Seeker…”

“Already got Lieutenant McCallum on his way to spaceplane servicing, sir.” A moment later: “Sir, SBIRS reports a large thermal event in south-central Myanmar.”

“Any tracking data yet?”

“None, sir. Signature is still very hot and not moving. Could be a ground fire.”

“Any launch sites nearby?”

“The only known ones are considerably farther south: a Chinese antiship site at Henzada and Mergui, and a suspected Chinese antisatellite site under construction north of Rangoon.”

“They could have built a new site and we haven’t spotted it,” Kai said. “Let’s report it to STRATCOM and SPACECOM, keep an eye on it ourselves, and start surveillance of that area for any signs of new construction.” He thought for a moment. A little voice in his head reminded him that he did not believe in coincidences-but Myanmar and Somalia…? “Are we going to pass over that area soon, Seeker?”

“Negative, sir, not for another…” She entered commands into the computer, then: “…fourteen hours.”

Kai nodded, but something was still nagging at him. “Still no track data on that event?”

“None, sir. Still large and stationary. Looks like an industrial fire-it’s just as hot as it was when it was first detected.”

“Did SBIRS-Low pick anything up?”

“No SBIRS-Low spacecraft are in range.”

“How about our sensors?”

“The closest one is Eight, and it’s shut down. Six will be in range in four hours.”

“Let’s get some good images of that area when Six flies by,” Kai said. The little voice in his head was still bugging him, but preparing to launch the Black Stallion spaceplane, get his fleet of satellites as fully operational as possible, and be prepared to participate in whatever response the United States was going to make to the unexpected Chinese move in Somalia occupied his mind for the time being.

When Boomer arrived at the spaceplane servicing module, Air Force spacecraft technician First Lieutenant Jeffrey McCallum was already there. He was donning a Compact Moonsuit-style space suit, specially designed for working during space walks with added micrometeorite and radiation protection but compact enough to allow him to squeeze into the Black Stallion’s rather tight cockpit. He was already on an oxygen mask, prebreathing pure oxygen to begin flushing nitrogen out of his system in preparation for working in space-although the entire space station was set on a lower atmospheric pressure to help purge nitrogen from the system, for safety’s sake all astronauts preparing to do an EVA were required to prebreathe oxygen before suiting up.

“How you doing there, McCallum?” Boomer asked. McCallum gave him a thumbs-up and a muffled “Good, Boomer” as he continued to suit up.

Since Boomer wasn’t planning to do a space walk, his suit was of totally different design. While prebreathing oxygen, he donned a suit of thick elastic material, resembling a full-body leotard, with wires leading to a small control device. The material covered his entire body except for his head. When he nodded to the tech that he was ready, the tech flipped a switch. Fine computer-controlled elastomeric filaments in the suit contracted, compressing the material. Boomer let out a little grunt as the material pulled skintight.

Boomer’s suit, called an Electronic Elastomeric Activity Suit, or EEAS (which most wearers say resembles the sound they make when the filaments tighten up), was a simple but very effective alternative to a heavy, bulky pressurized space suit. Humans can actually survive in the vacuum of space, because the skin and vascular system is already pressure-tight-as long as the human has oxygen at the right pressure, no space suit is really needed. But in a vacuum, human tissue expands because the absence of air pressure causes gases in the tissues to painfully expand, like a balloon in an airliner. So a way was needed to keep pressure on the body to prevent the tissues from expanding.

Most space suits, like McCallum’s, used a compressor to pressurize the breathing oxygen inside the suit to keep pressure on the entire body. A skintight rubber suit would work, but it was almost impossible to don such a suit in zero-g, and any folds in the suit would cause muscle deformation. So the EEAS was developed to allow the suit to be easily donned and then re-formed so it became skintight. The electronic control system would keep pressure on the entire body even when moving but allow the limbs to move as necessary. For spaceplane pilots, the EEAS was a great alternative to bulky pressurized suits because it was easier to move around in, easier to manipulate controls, and didn’t require a tech to help strap the pilot into the cockpit.

With the EEAS on and tight, Boomer put on a special flight suit that had a locking collar for his helmet, and continued prebreathing pure oxygen. The space-suit technician then helped him into the standard flight vest, which contained pouches for survival equipment such as portable lights, carbon-dioxide scrubbers, location beacons, backup batteries, a knife, and a suit-repair kit, along with a control panel on his left wrist that showed oxygen saturation, carbon-dioxide levels, suit power, backup battery level, and EEAS control status. “How do you hear, Jeff?” he spoke into the intercom.