Chapter 37: Kings of the High Frontier



CHAPTER 37

Any system of entrusting the government to judge and correct its own abuses is the same as
appointing the accused criminal as his own judge and jury: Don't expect many
convictions.
-- Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle

3 July
Milton mentally debated about informing Barron of Reis's contact with the subnationals.
Stark Fist, though, was Barron's baby and would undoubtedly be employed if more
standard procedures failed.
He shook his head. The National Security Agency began in much the same way as had the
Central Intelligence Agency. Chartered only to intercept and decrypt foreign messages, it
quickly evolved -- as had the CIA -- from an intelligence gathering and analysis agency into an
activist agency, performing sabotage and wet jobs abroad and at home. Downing subnational
spacecraft and destroying all traces of their existence constituted just one task of many.
Barron sat across the desk from him, a smug expression plastered across his beefy brow.
"Tammy Reis, eh?"
"The signal's been stuck in Kisdmayu, Somalia, for over a week now. Our section agent says
the location is some sort of construction site inland. Some futuristic-looking hotel."
"Futuristic?" Barron tapped a finger to his smiling lips. "Close to equatorial. Pacific to the
east. A good launch site. Less fuel, safe trajectory."
"It could just be a hotel."
Barron shook his head. "You drafted her to find spaceships. She's not going into the resort
business. She's in training over there. Do we hany satellite images?"
"Probably. But Photo Interpretation is backed up so much that rush jobs take a week.
Forget trying to push them about something aso low priority. I'm going to contact Stahl, the new
NASA administrator, about this and we can--"
"No!"
Milton leaned forward, miffed at Barron's commanding tone. "What did you say?"
"NASA is irrelevant at this point. Space Command has already laid claim to
Atlantis and nothing's going to fly out of Kennedy for years. Leave them out of this.
There's more at stake than their useless shuttle and any overpriced joyrides they may
someday get around to. We're dealing with an event that would do more to undermine
the security of the United States than anything a foreign power could hope to do. It would open
up Space to anyone who had the guts to go. The British Empire suffered and ultimately
collapsed because of migration to the New World. I don't want the same to happen to us. Any
subnationals that leave Earth will be forever beyond our reach. The destabilizing effect on
world affairs would be catastrophic. We must be the only ones to hold the high
ground."
"There is evidence that the people contacting Reis are Americans."
"When I say 'we,' Steve, I don't mean Americans. I mean the United States.
An American subnational in orbit is a far greater threat than anyone else. We can denounce
foreign citizens as tools of their own governments. Denouncing an American is much more
complex."
"I've seen the figures from NASA. I know how difficult and expensive it is to get into orbit.
That's our protection. And if it were dirt cheap, do you think you could stop
anyone from getting up there?"
"All I want," Barron said in a level tone, "is to slow them down until we've
established a firm foothold. If that costs a few lives, well, a nation is glued together by the blood
of its enemies."
When Barron left the office, Milton sunk back into the soft confines of his swivel chair. The
wetboys retained by the agency always gave him the willies with their snake-eyed willingness to
kill not so much for abstract ideals, but for the sheer joy of homicide. Barron left him with a far
more ominous feeling -- the stomach-churning sensation of being in the same room with an
ideologue whose capacity to kill was driven and controlled by his far-reaching vision of a world
transformed.
***
The 747 arched over. An instant later, the three support pylons released their grip upon
Nomad and the spaceplane -- lacking its hypersonic drop tanks, but with interior fuel
tanks fully loaded -- lifted swiftly up and over the modified twin-tailed empennage.
"We have a clean release," Chemar D'Asaro said breathlessly into her helmet
microphone.
Larry Poubelle, in the forward pilot's seat, said nothing as he worked the controls.
High over the Mojave desert, a deep blue sky hung above them like a second sea, while
below lay the chocolatey mist overlying the Los Angeles metropolis. An icy wind whistled past
them at seven miles altitude, almost overpowering the whine of the auxiliary power units. They
both wore pressure suits consisting of precisely fitted Spandex covered with outer layers of
puncture-proof Kevlar III and fire-resistant Nomex. Locked on to the neck rings were their
dual-purpose helmets. Not only did they provide the standard head protection, they also
contained sophisticated electronics.
"All right," Poubelle said. "She handles like a drive shaft with wings. Let's put the spurs to
her."
Poubelle flicked the ignition switch. For an instant, nothing happened. Then the APU's
whined louder, powering the turbines that pumped the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into
the J-2 engine. Within a second, the rocket throttled up to full power, crushing them in their
seats with three gravities of acceleration.
Neither of them spoke. The simulator had failed to prepare them for such pressure.
Poubelle knew what to expect, having pulled upward of seven gees in his flight career, but he
could hear Cheamr's strained breathing in his headset. Saying nothing, he glanced at the HUD
numbers monitoring the programmed flight plan.
The engine burned for a long two minutes, during which the rocket plane climbed two
hundred thousand feet at speeds up to Mach six.
The engine throttled down and the pressure lifted from them. Now came the hard part.
Momentum carried Nomad upward along a ballistic trajectory. To beat Bob White's
altitude record by 3 per cent, the upgraded X-15 had to achieve an altitude of 324,000 feet
without straying any higher. If the black thunderbolt climbed a mere 4,000 feet higher, it would
enter Space and lose FAI certification of an æronautical record.
Achieving such accuracy, given the nature of ærodynamics involved, depended more
on luck than on science. Flights of the original X-15 routinely deviated from their projected
altitude by as much as five per cent. Poubelle could not afford to miss by a mile. Not even
four-fifths of a mile. He watched the plane's altimeter numbers closely. The FAI altimeter
sealed in the cargo compartment recorded the official altitude. He prayed that they would match
up.
The plane continued to soar upward through 300,000 feet. At 318,000, he used the reaction
motors to ease Nomad level. This created some small degree of drag in the thin
atmosphere, but did not significantly alter the rocket plane's trajectory. It still ascended, now
passing through 325,000 feet.
"Come on, baby," he muttered. "Slow down." He rotated the plane further, now into a
nose-down position.
"Dorsal skin temp's climbing," Chemar noted.
At 326,500 feet, Poubelle realized that they would overshoot their mark unless he took
drastic action. "Diving!" he called out, igniting the engine to 10% power.
Nomad creaked and popped like a cast-iron stove, then shuddered with a frightening
vibration.
"Pushover!" Poubelle radioed. "Over the top at three hundred twenty-seven thousand one
hundred feet! We're coming in!"
In a mild power dive, Nomad picked up speed, punching through Mach numbers as
if through paper. Poubelle cut off the engine and activated the energy management system for
landing.
"Switching to VR," he said.
He touched a button and suddenly the spaceplane around them disappeared. Merging the
video images from a dozen cameras -- each no larger than a roll of dimes -- placed strategically
around the fuselage, the main computer displayed on the mini-HUD inside their helmets a
360° view of the outside world as if they flew in an aircraft made entirely of glass.
Poubelle looked down between his feet to see the golden-brown, rumpled Tehachapi mountains
far ahead and way down, their ridges dotted with the remains of bankrupt wind-farm turbines.
He turned his head up toward the control panel -- visible as if suspended by a magician's illusion
-- and checked some instruments that did not appear on his helmet screen. The programmers
had offered him a completely virtual instrument panel, but he had no desire to be elegant to the
point of self-endangerment. If he lost the entire VR system, he could still pilot Nomad
to a safe landing using standard seat-of-the-pants techniques learned flying taildraggers in his
teens.
"Okay, babe," he said. "You take it for a while. Give us a thirty degree right banking
turn."
"Larry," a man's voice said in his helmet. "Advise that Nomad not land at
Rogers Lake, over."
"Why in hell not, Jeff, over?"
"Advise you not land anywhere in Charlie MOA. Return to Mojave, over."
"Jeff, you're playing hell with my energy management. And the runway will play hell with
the skids. What's up, over?"
"Nothing but a military greeting committee ready to seize your little black arrow.
Over."
"Mojave is inside Alpha Military Operations Area, Jeff. Over."
"Not under twelve hundred feet AGL, Larr. You'll be landing on non-military pavement.
Over."
Poubelle said, "Chemar, we'll come out of the turn at heading three hundred. Set the Loran
for Mojave and establish a glide slope. And Jeff?"
"Roger."
"Get the bloodsucking lawyers on the horn. Find out why--"
"They're here. It seems your friend in the Senate's been putting pressure on the Air Force
in addition to a nicely typed subpoena inviting you to appear before a Select Committee
investigating space commercialization companies."
Poubelle sighed. "Bastards."
"Roger that, over."
The hypersonic glide back to Mojave passed with nominal performance on the part of the
EMS. The oval-shaped footprint it displayed on the screen always included the airport inside --
a sure indication that they would reach it without relighting the rocket.
At two thousand feet over Mojave Airport, Poubelle attempted to cycle the landing gear.
Where he thought he reached with his robotic arm, however, was not where it went.
"Chemar!" he shouted. "Drop the gear!"
Without asking why or hesitating an instant, Chemar's hand darted to the redundant control
and activated the blow-down devices. Immediately, skids and nose wheel bit air, the drag
causing a notable decrease in airspeed and an increase in rate-of-descent.
"RF interference with the arm," he said tersely to inform both his co-pilot and the flight
recorder. The disturbing glitch in Poubelle's arm subsided and he established the best glide ratio
while gazing down at the runway below. The VR system proved its worth in the landing
sequence. In Nomad, as in the original X-15, the runway lay well below the cockpit's
field of view. Without the VR, he would have had to perform a series of left and right rolls in
order to catch glimpses of the approach. With the HUD operating correctly, he simply gazed at
the horizon over the instrument panel as if possessed of X-ray eyes and kept the centerline of the
runway pinned in his peripheral vision.
Chemar said nothing during the final approach. Poubelle handled the fly-by-light
instruments with the skill expected of a pilot with nearly 8,000 hours flight experience. Even for
him, though, the sensation of flying Nomad was new, thrilling, and intensely demanding.
The breathable Spandex pressure garment allowed his perspiration to be wicked off by the outer
layers of fabric into the cool, nitrogen-filled atmosphere of the pressurized cabin.
At eighty feet off the runway and an airspeed of 170, he prepared for touchdown. He did not
perform the landing flare normal for most aircraft. He held it steady until the skids touched,
then forced the nose wheel down to avoid the aircraft's characteristic rebound into the air. The
flight simulator in which he had practiced had benefited both from one hundred ninety-nine
X-15 flights and from the speed of modern parallel processing computers. He had learned well;
the nose wheel touched the centerline of the runway and stayed there. He opened the air brake
on the rudder to little effect. Nothing was left to do but skid to a stop -- Nomad had no
other brakes.
"Welcome back, Nomad!" the tower controller said. "Do you plan on stopping at
any point?"
"Roger, tower. What's your overrun? Over."
"Two hundred feet. Why?"
"I'm going to need it!"
The crew in the tower -- and dozens of people on the ground who had come out when they
heard what was landing -- watched as the sleek black arrow darted down the airport's longest
runway, twin rooster-tails of dusty smoke erupting behind the skids. Down and down the
runway it slid like a skater with blades locked forward. Hearts caught and breaths seized as the
spaceplane approached the broad yellow lines marking the end of the usable runway, crossed
them -- leaving twin scrape marks -- and headed toward the abrupt end of the pavement. Beyond
lay desert dirt, scrub brush, and Joshua trees.
Poubelle gritted his teeth and said, "Hang on, sweetheart!"
Chemar shook her head in cynical amusement. "Does a drag chute seem like such a luxury
n--"
They rolled off the runway at thirty miles per hour. The nose wheel caught dirt, dug in, and
snapped off, permitting the nose to slam down firmly and bury itself in the desert. The sudden
stop threw both of them against their harnesses, knocking their breath out.
Poubelle labored to inhale deeply when he was finally able and reached over to cycle the
hatch. The electrical system still operated, so he had no need to blow it manually. Pulling off
his helmet, he watched as the virtual image faded, replaced by the confining reality of the
cockpit.
"Chemar?"
"I'm fine. How's the plane?"
He unstrapped and climbed out, sliding down the side of the aircraft into the soft, hot earth.
It was silent but for the whir of a cicada off in the bushes and the distant, hollow wail of the
crash truck siren.
"Nose is dented up pretty well," he shouted up to her. "Skids are bent. Ventral fin's lying
about ten feet behind the rear. Nothing that can't be fixed. Cheated death again."
"I wish you'd stop saying that," she said, sliding down to join him. "What do we do
now?"
He waved casually to the people in the crash truck as it pulled up beside them, then glanced
at Chemar with a rougish grin.
"Now we make it go higher."

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