The Spiral Road, page 65
part #1 of The Spiral Roads Series
“Yes, but we haven’t exactly asked the boy to do anything like what you’re asking. I don’t even know if it’s possible.” Markley responded, questioning the plan.
“Of course it is. I’ve read the reports. You’ve been too soft on him, he’s snowing you.” The General seemed to have no qualms at using the newfound power the Tool had granted Marius.
“I’ll talk to Jaquan, and Susannah. Then, if they don’t object, I’ll ask Marius.” Markley watched a tech plug a diagnostic tablet into a port in the large cargo, which brought up an array of graphics. He shook his head.
“You can ask, or I can tell him. I don’t believe for a minute that device ‘wants’ to stay with him. I think it more likely that the boy just wants to remain special, and in possession of it. I doubt your ability to see this clearly. He can work with us, or we will work without him. This will just make things...easier.” Burke growled, trying to drive these silly scientists back into some form of investigative mode. They had all but given up, it appeared to him.
“General, we have done all we can do with the equipment we have. And while it’s been a couple of weeks for you, we’ve been struggling to make headway here for months. Please don’t belittle our efforts until you see the obstacles for yourself.” Cynthia chastised him. Perhaps it was justified, but he was still adapting to the knowledge they had already imparted to him. His frustration was driving him now, as it had driven them.
“I plan to do just that. And you’ve done well with what you’ve had, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes, the military has resources you just don’t have. I’m about to provide us with a badly needed perspective.” He would say no more on the subject, until they had spoken with Marius.
Jaquan agreed to let him try, and Susannah agreed that Marius could decide for himself. When they asked him, he had shrugged his typical disinterest, and let them prepare their efforts. Two days later, the most interesting procession yet passed the village of Riverview, which Lucy and all the children saw. Along with many of the adults, who looked on in awe. First a series of troops trotted by in exo-suits, with special lifting and assembly gear attached to their limbs. Following these men came wagons, and troops packing supplies for setting up a small camp. Then more wagons with scaffolding, boxy equipment, antennas and dishes strapped in here and there. After these came a long white cylinder, with strange symbols and warnings affixed to the nylon cover. Then a small electric trolley, assembled from lightweight struts and small motors and batteries, carrying a the General and a driver, Markley and Cynthia, and Jaquan and Marius. Susannah had stayed back at the complex, leaving Marius to his care.
Most odd of all was what floated along behind the cart. A huge, flat stone, nearly as wide as the road and square, several meters thick, balanced a load of smaller blocks, mismatched megaliths from the quarry. When asked how many trips it would take to move the nine rocks the General’s team had scouted and marked, Marius had affixed his disc to each of them in turn, stacking them one atop another like a 3D jigsaw. The bottom layer, the largest granite stone, he used as a flatbed hauler for the remainder. His disc sat quietly along the leading edge, and he rode facing it, in the rear of the cart, his back to the direction of travel. Soldiers walked around it, their hands pushing it along as though it had no mass, not just levitated on a cushion. Their numbers were more for control than horsepower. The skinny black teen wore only a white t-shirt and slightly ragged khaki shorts, and flip-flops. His legs dangled from the rear of the moving vehicle, kicking slightly as they went. He didn’t appear to have to concentrate, but the General required him to keep his attention on the massive pile of levitated mass. In this manner, they traversed the five miles away from the cliff the technicians required.
Once on site, a clearing cut the previous day by the work gangs, they all came to a halt. As his team laid out the site, the General conversed with his aides and non-coms, directing the action like a Hollywood professional. Soon, they were ready for Marius to do his thing. He walked over to the stack of stone, and had the men tow it into place. There, he slowly lowered it to the ground. Removing the disc, he had one of the soldiers carry it up to the highest block, and he caused that one to rise, floating overhead to land where they indicated. His control was relatively good, but engineers nudged it into exact alignment in their prepared area. He helped them move the other blocks until they had a series of eight large stones in a square ring. Raising the final, square platform stone, he helped them locate it exactly over the center. Once it lowered, they had a complete platform raised a few meters off of the jungle floor. There was room underneath for a man to walk upright, and each of the support stones extended just to the edge. The engineers immediately began using the recently cut logs to quickly build a ramp up to the wide, flat stone surface.
By the end of the day, they were ready to move the giant cylinder up onto the platform, and into the web of scaffolding already partially completed. Markley and Cynthia watched in awe as the launch pad took shape over the course of two days, an effort that would have required weeks back home.
“It’s not strictly a rocket, as NASA uses them.” one of the techs told Markley, ever the nosey dilettante. The man had been slinging bundles of cable and connectors as fast as he could go, but paused to show him the control systems. “What they’re unwrapping over there is a next generation missile, though she’s a fat bird. Her core is a ring of six solid-fueled boosters around a seventh, the latest derivatives. With no payload, she could make orbit, back on Earth. Nothing for guidance but simple gyros, no gimballed rocket motors, no liquid cryo-fuel tanks, just pure firecracker. Less to fuck up on the battlefield, ya know?”
“No payload? Then what the hell are we launching it for?” Markley asked, confused as usual. The General had indicated that this would help, but what were they launching?
“Oh, she has a payload for this trip. This is just the launch control, guidance for the missile stage. You need to go talk to Lieutenant Collins.” The man grinned at him, then went back to plugging in cable runs and making wireless connections, even setting up some solar panels. Markley went in search of the lieutenant, finding her by a small hand crane, delicately removing something strange from a heavily insulated wagon, drawn by two of the precious horses. Two men helped her, checking connections and removing tie-down bolts and fittings.
“What’s that? Some kind of satellite?” he asked, trying to break the cool military ice they all exuded. She looked at him like he was a security threat, before suddenly seeming to recognize him.
“Oh, right, you were on the news.”
“That’s right, Professor Markley. I’m told you were the person to talk to about the payload?” She appeared to consider, then set her tablet down, and walked him around the object, which was hanging now from the crane. It looked to him like a Doctor Who prop, a pair of meter-wide rounded shells attached with a collar, various hatches and antenna retracted into each. Each shell was three quarters of a sphere, the remaining portions buried in the complex collar mechanism, the shells protruding horizontally from either side. The collar mechanism stood under them like a ring, on a giant salt shaker, widening towards the bottom, smoothly conical with a flare at the base, like a trumpet. It looked vaguely like an oversized Dalek with big, insectoid fly-eyes. They gave it an almost comical appearance, and there was no protruding death-ray. It was perhaps two meters tall, in all, silver and titanium metallic in color, with black and grey parts. The base had no hatches or rivets, and appeared to be one solid piece of metal.
“This is the payload we will be launching tomorrow. It is a field-combat and intelligence resource, deployable from the theater, with look-down and link-up capabilities. We call them Hot Stuff, and Wendy.” He looked at her, not sure if she had really named this payload.
“I know, I had to Google them, they’re from something called a ‘comic book’, like pre-anime. Old guys name this shit, not me.” She went on with her lecture. Markley refrained from admitting that he was familiar with comic books. At all.
“Hot Stuff acts as a second stage to the missile, placing the payload in exactly the orbit we want. But he’s more than that, he has sophisticated gravimetric sensors, an on board computer to rival anything flying, and the ability to make adjustments to his course for optimal fuel usage. He is as close to point and shoot as a grunt can get. If we can launch him, he can do the rest on his own. His mission is to place Wendy” She stroked the double globes as she indicated them, lovingly. “in geosynchronous orbit over a specified point, either designated from the ground by radio beacon, or programmed into the mission profile. To do that, he has to be smart enough to figure out where he is, what velocities to achieve to meet his orbital dynamic models, etcetera. All without input from the ground, which it was assumed would have no ability to control the flight from within battlefield conditions.” Markley nodded, having spent some time at JPL and NASA in his younger days. None of this was Greek to him.
“Once Wendy is in geosync, she goes into observation mode, with all the benefits of a high-definition, military grade camera that can read the texts on your forearm display. She has relay and broadcast capabilities, carries some on board encryption routines, has a hardened processor, and as an added bonus a small automated observatory on her outward-facing sphere. That one carries backups, and her power supply. She even has limited ability to recharge from solar.” The woman was obviously very proud of Hot Stuff and Wendy. He was very interested to hear about the cameras and observatory. Suddenly he had an inkling of why this launch had been rushed into occurring.
“What happens to Hot Stuff, once Wendy is in place? Falls back and burns up, or does it just keep going? Seems like a lot of computing power going to waste.”
“Oh no, we would use a dumb vehicle for something like that. No, he goes into a rapid counter-rotating orbit, running a mapping program. His cameras are almost as good as Wendy’s. He goes so fast, it doesn’t take long to start building an image map, and he uses thermal too. Not much tee-oh-tee though.” Markley correctly translated that mentally as Time Over Target. She preened a bit, polishing imaginary smudges from her baby with a soft cloth, while the other two men wrestled pieces of a canard out of some packaging. Markley was terribly confused, at this point. The delta-vee the girl was discussing would require massive amounts of fuel, and there wasn’t even a tank on the little unit.
“What the hell are you using for fuel, dilithium?” he asked, jokingly.
“Close,” she replied, dead serious. “Uranium.” He blanched.
“You mean this thing is nuclear fueled? Are you out of your mind?” he cried, wondering if the General had indeed become some stranger overnight. The poor Lieutenant recoiled, making placating motions with her hands.
“It’s perfectly safe, really! We wouldn’t risk this if it wasn’t something we had every confidence in. These units were built to be used in an emergency, back on Earth, if our satellites were ever knocked out. They could replace them from anywhere on the planet, without need for complex launch facilities. The fuel isn’t what you’re thinking.” He gaped at her, waiting for her to continue. “This operates on the same principle as the old Project Orion designs; it expels tiny atomic bombs, microscopic really, compared to Hiroshima. The instant they leave the holding magazine they explode, right at the edge of the bell, see?” She pointed at the heavily reinforced base, and he looked, not believing this could be safe.
“That’s why we have a first stage, to get Hot Stuff up into the upper stratosphere, where he can operate with peak efficiency and little risk to the environment.”
“How little?” he demanded to know.
“Less radiation from the exhausted explosions makes it to the surface than the equivalent to a couple of standard X-ray exposures in the ER, Professor. We’ve run the math; we know what we’re doing.” She smiled at him, and moved off to help her men prepare to dock the satellites to the giant missile, once it was installed upright in the scaffold. Markley stalked off to find Cynthia, and tell her what monumental fools they were being. He understood the principles behind the satellite’s propulsion. He just wasn’t sure it was wise to be tossing strings of tiny nuclear explosions across the skies of their hosts. Even if none of them had turned up yet. What if they were just watching to see what they would do next?
It took the rest of the afternoon to mate the satellites with the portable launch vehicle, and fit the aeroshell. Then the techs plugged everything into their laptops and consoles, powered by battery, generator, and even solar charging stations. The engineers continued to clear away the sparse growth around the flat clearing they had already created, making a large firebreak. Marius watched the techs with interest, interacting with a couple of them on a distant level, his understanding of their work disturbingly clear. The team ate a field meal, then retired to their tents, thoughtfully set up by their military escorts. The night was a short one, for most, and noisy, since some techs remained at work throughout the clear, humid evening.
The next morning, Markley cornered the general outside of his tent, as he drank his morning coffee, and listened to some of his officers make their reports. He nodded to Lieutenant Collins as she passed, giving him a sunny smile. Her uniform was as crisp this day as when he had first seen her arrive. He looked with chagrin at his own somewhat threadbare appearance, his clothing six months older. He accosted the dour military leader as he turned from his men.
“Would you mind telling me why we are about to launch a nuclear payload, not just a power plant but actual freaking BOMBS, into orbit around a planet we know nothing about?” he began without preamble, in a sarcastic tone.
“Good morning to you too, Professor.” Burke rumbled. “And I would say that you just answered your own question. Do you suggest we fly around the world in ultralights? Build balloons from hides? Boats? I have three inflatable dinghies in my inventory, Markley. You want to take one and tell me what’s over that horizon, be my guest.” He pointed at the distant seacoast. Somewhat mollified, Markley took it down a notch.
“Still, do you really think throwing this kind of power around is wise? What if there ARE people on the planet, dontcha think they might notice?”
“The goal has been to make contact since the Objects arrived, Markley. If this gets someone’s attention, all the better. Maybe they will finally show themselves. I’m not betting on that happening, though. This place has likely been abandoned for thousands of years. Possibly it was just a good place to dump us, or maybe there’s a purpose behind it. Either way, we won’t know what we’re dealing with until we get a good look at this planet. Hot Stuff will let us do just that, and Wendy gives us a satellite network in operation, albeit minimal bandwidth. It won’t be long until we know exactly who, or what else, shares this planet with us, if anyone.” He gazed off at the rising stack of technology, now poised for flight, undergoing final checks. Marius stood off to one side with Jaquan, for all the world like VIPs on a tour at the VAB. Cynthia had joined them, and was discussing some of the more lay aspects of the planned mission. Markley was pretty sure she could have given a technical dissertation and Marius wouldn’t have had a problem.
“The kid built a good launch platform, though, didn’t he? Right to spec. Helped them level it and everything.” Markley looked again at the giant stack of scaffolding, gantry cranes, and the ramps up to the large stone platform. “I still don’t understand why you needed all that stone, it looks to me as if you could have just launched from any old flat spot…” The General didn’t say a word, just stared straight ahead and sipped his coffee. Suddenly the light went on over Markley’s head. He followed the man’s gaze.
“You didn’t need him to build you a damned thing! Of course you could have launched from a field. That’s the purpose of the system. You wanted to see what Marius could do.” It wasn’t a question.
“He did build a good pad, and it will provide a stable launch. More importantly, he was willing to build it. And seems to be willing to let us launch the bird, as well. So, you are partially correct. I wanted to see what he could do, as well as what he would do.” Worthington took another sip.
“You say that like he had a choice. When a five-star general asks you to help build a launch pad, you don’t say ‘no’. And what do you mean ‘let’? You say that like you think he could prevent it.”
“What if that disc he found had corrupted him, made him in some way exposed to alien manipulation? What if he could stop the launch, somehow? I still can’t rule that out, and neither can your researchers, it seems, but at least this way I know who’s side he’s on. If our side and theirs happen to be the same one, so much the better. If he is under their influence, and they let this launch proceed, then they don’t object. If he’s not...well then, we still need as much information about our current situation as possible.” The gritty veteran didn’t mention the third possibility, and Markley didn’t point it out. No use buying trouble. Worthington nodded to a non-com as he ran up with a report, which he acknowledged.
“Looks like the show is about to get on the road, Professor. Why don’t you retrieve our other guests and head to the safe areas for the launch?” He hurried off to direct his people, while Markley did as he asked. Within the hour they were all gathered at the far side of the clearing, right next to the main road of ancient stone. A large wagon and generator sat there running consoles, manned by crisply uniformed techs, busily sweating in the hot air. Markley sat with Cynthia, after pulling her aside to tell her of his conversation with general. While she had been skeptical, she did see his point, and understood why they had brought Marius in the first place, now. She was so thrilled over the data they were about to have access to, she was willing to forgive the man. Soon, everything was in place, the techs gave their all-clear, and the General gave the final order.
