Where was she now? Kimberly wondered. Surely there must be one researcher who would at least visit her equipment and discover the anomalous data.
She decided to give the data links one last try. Then she had to move on. After all, what could NASA do for her on the ground now that they couldn’t have done immediately after seeing the murders? Knowing that she was still alive might give them hope that not everyone aboard the ISS had been killed.
But even with all NASA’s collective creativity, could they really whip up some miracle solution to keep the ISS from deorbiting and for her to survive? Nothing short of launching a rescue mission would do the trick, but the next Soyuz resupply capsule wasn’t due for another month, and that was the only vehicle that might be swapped out to carry humans to the ISS. And even then, with the terrorists waiting for them, there was no way the Soyuz crew could gain access to the ISS’s interior, no way they could live to help her.
Kimberly knew that an unmanned U.S. SpaceX Dragon capsule was scheduled to launch in a few weeks, but that commercial resupply ship was not a human-rated vehicle that could carry astronauts into orbit. And even if it could, it wasn’t like the old Apollo capsule where the astronauts wore spacesuits and could go EVA to enter the station. The unmanned Dragon had been designed to dock with a berthing port, not open up to the cold vacuum of space.
So what did that leave her?
The reality was that NASA might possibly pull a rabbit out of a hat if they knew that she was still alive, and were thus motivated to come up with some creative solution to thwart the terrorists. She couldn’t imagine what they would whip up, but they had hundreds, thousands, of people on the ground they’d be able to utilize. So Kimberly decided to give the data links one more try.
But as she pushed back toward the experiments, she knew that she couldn’t wait around for someone else to solve her problems. She kept remembering that she had been trained to anticipate and direct the solution, not to react.
That meant that she had to figure out how she could possibly stop Farid and Bakhet by herself.
She floated over to the laptop and started modulating the data links with everything from Morse code to prime numbers to Fibonacci sequences, anything to make someone on the ground do a double take and revisit the information she was sending. Surely no one would think that these modulated data streams are natural. Somebody must be inquisitive enough to look at them!
After setting up the links to jump from one modulated stream to another, Kimberly turned back to the Portable Computer System’s graphical interface, called up the administrative controls, and once again started trying to take back command of the station.
NASA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Restlessly, Scott Robinson paced back and forth across the office of NASA’s Chief of Staff, still dressed in his astronaut’s blue bunny uniform. He’d brought only the one blue flight suit with him, and since the uniform instantly identified him as an astronaut he now wished he’d packed every one he had—it opened doors and allowed him access not only to the higher-ups in NASA but throughout the entire government.
His old friend Chief of Staff “Mini” Mott was hunched over his phone, elbows on his desk, his left hand massaging his forehead. The stubby ex-Marine nodded vigorously and attempted to break into the monologue pouring through his earpiece, but only managed to blurt out quick objections to whatever excuses were being thrown at him.
Whomever Mini was talking to reminded Scott of lots of general officers in the military. Take-charge, Type-A individuals. When you tried to speak with them they told you what they were thinking and you couldn’t get a word in edgewise. And when they thought the conversation was finished, they told you that as well.
“Yes, sir … yes, sir,” Mini was saying.
Three bags full, Scott finished sourly. From Mini’s tone and the expression on his perspiring face, it didn’t look good. But he had to keep trying. Just because some bureaucrat was trying to save money, or thought the risks were too high, Mini would still keep going.
It was one thing for the President to order that the ISS be shot down with the antisatellite weapons if the station posed a real threat. But as yet they’d seen no indication that the station was descending in altitude. And if it wasn’t getting closer to the ground, then it wasn’t deorbiting; and if it was staying in orbit then it certainly wasn’t a threat and it shouldn’t be blown out of the sky.
Scott’s idea of attempting a rescue mission had been summarily dismissed at the National Security Council meeting. So the government was lumbering ahead, preparing to blow up a million-pound, $150 billion target flying 250 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour.
And they weren’t even going to do it alone.
He’d sat in the conference room when the Secretary of State confirmed that both China and Russia had secretly agreed to use their own ASAT weapons to join in the effort to destroy the ISS. Scott fumed inwardly. They weren’t really concerned that the ISS might come down on their soil and kill some of their citizens. Rather, they saw this as a way to show off their own military capability against a mostly American target, and demonstrate to the world that although the Americans couldn’t stop the threat, they certainly could.
The Chinese briefed the National Security Council that they would use their direct-ascent SC-19, a variation of their Dong-Feng 21 ballistic missile, carrying a Dong Neng-3 non-explosive, kinetic-kill warhead, launched out of their site in the Spratly Islands. The kill would be achieved by intercepting the ISS at 17,500 miles per hour in an orbit head-on to the station, resulting in a direct hit at 35,000 miles per hour, more than enough kinetic energy to pulverize the station. That is, if it hit one of the station’s modules and not one of the solar panels. If it hit a solar panel the warhead would fly through the flimsy solar cells, ripping through the station’s power source like a hypersonic bullet whizzing through Kleenex.
The Russian ASAT capability was less certain: their kinetic-kill vehicle had yet to be publicly demonstrated. American intelligence sources indicated that they might try to use an old high-power laser system they had developed five decades ago as a counter to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative. The CIA reported that the Russians might even use one of their mothballed, explosively powered iodine lasers that they had originally developed to power a laser-driven nuclear fusion system. The massive iodine laser was a relic compared to today’s more efficient solid-state devices, but it still might be powerful enough to rip the ISS to shreds.
In any case, Scott thought, the National Security Council considered the Russian and Chinese options as fail-safe backups, which motivated Scott even further to push his proposed rescue mission.
Scott flinched as Mini slammed down his phone. It looked as though the conversation hadn’t ended well.
“So Congress won’t step in to help?” Scott asked.
Mini’s expression could have boiled water. “Not only will they not come up with funding for a rescue mission, but they won’t even guarantee emergency funding to purchase a replacement launcher to resupply the ISS, if the mission fails. Which throws the decision back in NASA’s court.”
“But they didn’t say they wouldn’t support it, right?”
Mini snorted. “Two negatives don’t prove acceptance, Basher. They just hinted that they wouldn’t try to stop us if we moved ahead and mounted a rescue mission. So it’s in our hands; it’s NASA’s decision.”