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  “I know, I know.” Boomer looked around the module. “The things we can do on board this station are amazing, Sergeant, really amazing—we should be allowed to do them. We need to convince the powers that be that we can turn the Air Force on its ear. We can’t do that if we pull our planes out when a little kid ten thousand miles away gets caught in the crossfire. Can’t believe the general got all misty-eyed like that.”

  Master Sergeant Lukas looked at Boomer sternly. “Do you mind if I say something, sir?” she finally asked.

  “Go right ahead, Seeker…or is it ‘Master Sergeant’ now?”

  “I haven’t been working at HAWC that long—not as long as you,” Lukas said, ignoring the sarcastic remark, “and I don’t know General McLanahan that well, but the guy is a friggin’ hero in my book. He’s spent almost twenty years laying his ass on the line fighting battles all over the world. He’s been kicked out of the Air Force twice, but he came back because he’s dedicated to his country and the service.”

  “Hey, I’m not bad-mouthing the guy—”

  “The ‘guy’ you’re referring to, sir, is a three-star general in the U.S. Air Force and commands the largest and most highly classified aerospace research facility in the U.S. armed forces,” Lukas interrupted hotly. “General McLanahan is nothing short of a legend. He’s been shot up, shot down, blown up, beat up, ridiculed, busted, demoted, and called every name in the book. He’s lost his wife, a close friend, and dozens of crewmembers under his command. You, sir, on the other hand, have been in the force now…seven years? Eight? You’re a talented engineer and a skillful pilot and astronaut—”

  “But?”

  “—but you’re not in the general’s league, sir—far, far from it,” Lukas went on. “You don’t have the experience and haven’t shown the same level of commitment and dedication as the general. You’re not qualified to pass judgment on the general—in fact, in my opinion, sir, you haven’t earned the right to be talking about him the way you are.”

  “Like you’re talking to me now?”

  “Write me up if you want, sir, but I don’t appreciate you second-guessing the general like that,” Lukas said flatly. She logged herself off from her console and detached herself from the bulkhead with a perturbed jerk and a loud riip! of Velcro. “I’ll help you download the sensor data and prepare your debrief for the general, and then I’ll be happy to help you prepare the Black Stallion for undocking…so you can go home as soon as possible, sir.” She said the word “sir” more like the word “cur,” and that jab wasn’t lost on Boomer.

  With Seeker’s exasperated and irate help—not to mention they didn’t do very much chatting as they worked—Boomer was indeed done quickly. He uploaded his data and findings to the general. “Thanks, Boomer,” McLanahan radioed back. “We’re scheduled to do the videoconference in about ninety minutes. I found out the Joint Chiefs chairman and National Security Adviser are going to sit in. Kick back for a while and get some rest.”

  “I’m fine, sir,” Boomer responded. “I’ll go hide out in Skybolt, get my e-mail, and check in on my girlfriends.”

  “‘Girlfriends’…plural?”

  “I don’t know—we’ll see what the e-mails say,” Boomer said. “None of them like me disappearing for days and weeks, and I certainly can’t tell them I’ve been blasting terrorists to hell from space.”

  “They probably wouldn’t believe you if you did tell them.”

  “The ladies I hang out with don’t know a space station from a gas station—and that’s the way I like it,” Boomer admitted. “They don’t know, or care, what I do for a living. All they want is attention and a good time on the town, and if they don’t get it, they split.”

  “Sounds lonely.”

  “That’s why I always like to have more than one on the hook, sir,” Boomer said.

  “Could be fireworks if they ever run into each other, eh?”

  “We hook up together all the time, sir,” Boomer said. “No brag, just fact. Like I said, all they want is attention, and they get even more attention if folks see them arm in arm with another hot babe. Besides, if there’s ever any conversation—”

  “Wait, wait, I know this one, Boomer: ‘If there’s any conversation, you don’t have to get involved,’” Patrick interjected with a laugh. “Okay, go say hi to your girlfriends, and don’t tell me how many you got waiting for you to get back. Meet me in the command module in sixty minutes so we can rehearse our dog and pony show.”

  “Yes, sir,” Boomer replied. Before McLanahan clicked off, he asked, “Uh, General?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m sorry if I got out of line earlier.”

  “I expect you to give me your professional opinion and point of view anytime, Boomer, especially on a mission,” Patrick said. “If you were out of line, I wouldn’t hesitate to let you know.”

  “It got me pretty steamed, watching those bastards setting up a rocket with a damned chemical warhead on it. All I wanted to do was blast a few more.”

  “I hear you. But it’s more important we get this program off and running. We both know we’re going to catch some flak for what happened in Tehran—shooting more missiles wouldn’t have helped us.”

  “Maybe offing a few more terrorists would compel them to keep their heads down and hide in their ratholes for a few days more.”

  “We have some incredible weapons at our disposal, Boomer—let’s not let the power go to our heads,” Patrick said patiently. “It was an operational test, not an actual mission. I know the temptation to play Zeus with a few SkySTREAK missiles is powerful, but that’s not what we’re here for. Meet back here in sixty.”

  “Yes, sir,” he responded. Just before the general logged off, Boomer remarked to himself that the general looked even wearier than any other time since embarking on this sortie to the space station—maybe the combination of witnessing the chemical weapon release and the monthly trips into space were starting to get to him. Boomer was half his age, and sometimes the stress of the trips, especially the recent quick-turn, high-G re-entry profiles, and multiple sorties they had been flying, wore him down fast.

  Boomer floated back to the crew quarters module, retrieved his wireless headphones and video goggles, and floated to the Skybolt laser module at the “bottom” of the station. Skybolt was the station’s most powerful and so most controversial piece of technology, a multi-gigawatt free-electron laser powerful enough to shoot through Earth’s atmosphere and melt steel in seconds. Tied to Silver Tower’s radars and other sensors, Skybolt could attack targets as small as an automobile and burn through the top armor of all but the most modern main battle tanks. Classified as a “weapon of mass destruction” by all of America’s adversaries, the United Nations had been calling for the weapon’s deactivation for many years, and only America’s veto power in the Security Council kept it alive.

  Ann Page, Skybolt’s designer, operator, and chief advocate, was on Earth preparing to testify to Congress on why funding for the weapon should be continued, and Boomer knew that very few others on the station ever went near the thing—Skybolt was powered by an MHDG, or magnetohydrodynamic generator, which used two small nuclear reactors to rapidly shoot a slug of molten metal back and forth through a magnetic field to produce the enormous amount of power required by the laser, and no amount of shielding and assurances by Ann could assuage anyone’s fears—so he often went into the module to get some peace and quiet. The Skybolt module was about a fourth of the size of the main modules on the station, so it was relatively cramped inside, and it was crammed with pipes, wire conduits, and a myriad of computers and other components, but the gentle hum of the MHDG drive’s circulating pumps and the excellent computers and communications gear there made it Boomer’s favorite place to get away from the others for a while.

  Boomer connected his headphones and video goggles to the module’s computers, logged in, and began downloading e-mail. Even though the headphones and goggles were a pain, there was precious little
privacy on Silver Tower, even in the huge modules, so the only semblance of privacy had to come down to the space between one’s ears. Everyone assumed that if personnel from the super-secret High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center were on board the space station that all incoming and outgoing transmissions of any kind were being recorded and monitored, so “privacy” was a vacuous idea at best.

  It was a good thing he had bothered to put on the gear, because the video e-mails from his girlfriends were definitely not for public viewing. Chloe’s video was typical: “Boomer, where the hell are you?” it began, with Chloe sitting in front of her videophone photographing herself. “I’m getting tired of you disappearing like this. Nobody at your unit would tell me a goddamned thing. That sergeant that answers the phone should be booted out of the service, the fag.” Chloe called any man who didn’t immediately hit on her a “fag,” believing being gay was the only reason that any normal male wouldn’t want to screw her right away.

  She paused for a moment, her features softening a bit, and Boomer knew the show was about to begin: “You’d better not be with that blond spiky-haired bitch, Tammy or Teresa or whatever the hell her name is. You’re over at her place, aren’t you, or you two have jetted off to Mexico or Hawaii, haven’t you? You two just fucked and you’re checking mail while she takes a shower, right?” Chloe set the videophone down on her desk, unbuttoned her blouse, and slipped her large, firm breasts out from under her brassiere. “Let me just remind you what you’re missing here, Boomer.” She put a finger sensuously in her mouth, then circled her nipples with it. “Get your ass back here and stop screwing around with those skanky bottle-blond hos.” She smiled seductively, then hung up.

  “Crazy bitch,” Boomer muttered as he continued to scroll through the messages, but resolved to look her up as soon as he got back. After previewing more messages he stopped and immediately entered the code to access the satellite Internet server. Another benefit of the new American space initiative, of which Armstrong Space Station was the hub, was the coming availability of almost universal Internet access via a constellation of over a hundred low-Earth-orbit satellites that provided global low-speed Internet access, plus ten geostationary satellites that provided high-speed broadband Internet access to most of the Northern Hemisphere.

  “No IP address, no extensions, no open active server identification code—this has got to be a call from outer space,” came the reply from Jon Masters a few moments later after establishing a videophone connection to the designated secure address. Jon Masters was the vice president of a small high-tech research and development company called Sky Masters Inc. that designed and licensed many different emerging aerospace technologies, from microsatellites to space boosters. Masters, a multidegree, multidoctorate scientist and engineer regarded as one of the world’s most innovative aerospace designers and thinkers, had formed his company at the ripe old age of twenty-five, and he still looked and acted the part of the geeky, eccentric, and flippant child prodigy. “Thanks for returning my call, Boomer.”

  “No problem, Jon.”

  “How are things up there?”

  “Fine. Good.”

  “I know you can’t talk about it on a satellite server, even if it is encrypted. Just wanted to be sure you’re okay.”

  “Thanks. I’m fine.”

  There was a slight pause; then: “You sound a little down, my friend.”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Another pause. “So. What do you think of my offer?”

  “It’s extremely generous, Jon,” Boomer said. “I’m not sure if I deserve it.”

  “I wouldn’t offer it if I didn’t think you did.”

  “And I get to work on whatever I want?”

  “Well, we hope we can entice you to help out on other projects,” Masters said, “but I want you to do what you do best: think outside the box and come up with fresh, innovative, and kick-ass designs. I don’t try to game or anticipate the aerospace market, Boomer—I try to shape it. That’s what I want you to do. You won’t answer to anyone else but me, and you get to pick your team, your protocols, your design approach, and your timelines—within reason, of course. You knock my socks off with your ideas, and I’ll back you all the way.”

  “And this estimated budget figure for my lab…?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is this for real, Jon?”

  “That’s just the starting point, Boomer—that’s the minimum,” Masters chuckled. “You want that in writing, just say so, but I’m guaranteeing you that you’ll have a generous budget to build the team to research and evaluate your designs.”

  “Even so, it’s not enough for the entire division. I’ll need—”

  “You don’t understand, Boomer,” Masters interjected excitedly. “That money is just for you and your team, not split up between everyone in your division, existing projects, or specific company-mandated programs or technology.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I’m serious as a heart attack, brother,” Masters said. “And it’s not for stuff like company-wide expenses, compliance mandates, or security, but for your team- and project-specific costs. I believe in giving our top engineers the tools they need to do their job.”

  “I can’t believe it. I’ve never even heard of that kind of money being invested by a small company like this.”

  “Believe it, Boomer,” Masters said. “We may be small, but we’ve got investors and a board of directors who think big and expect big things to happen.”

  “Investors? A board of directors…?”

  “We all answer to someone, Boomer,” Masters said. “I ran my company by myself with a handpicked board of directors, which was okay until the projects got smaller and the money got tight. There were a lot of investors out there who wanted to be part of what we were doing here, but no one wants to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into a one-man show. We’re public, and I’m not president anymore, but everyone knows I’m the guy who makes the magic.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “You don’t worry about the board, Boomer. You report to me. Be advised, I’m going to make you work for every dime. I’m going to expect big things from you, and I’ll be putting bugs in your ear about what I know or discover about government requests for proposals, but like I said, I don’t want you waiting around for some weenie in the Pentagon to tell us what they might want—I want us to tell them what they want. So, what do you say? Are you in?”

  “I’m thinking about it, Jon.”

  “Okay. No problem. I know your commitments to the Air Force are up in eight months, correct?” Boomer guessed that Jon Masters knew to the day when his educational commitments to the Air Force for pilot training were up. “I guarantee they’ll offer you a regular commission before that, along with a big fat bonus. They might try to stop-loss you, claiming you’re in a critical specialty, but we’ll deal with that when and if we have to. I have enough contracts with the Air Force, and enough buddies in the Pentagon, to put a little pressure on them to respect your decisions. After all, you’re not getting out to go work for the airlines or be a consultant or lobbyist—you’ll be working for the company that builds them the next generation of hardware.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “You bet it does, Boomer,” Jon Masters said. “Don’t worry about a thing. One more thing, buddy. I know I’m older than you, probably old enough to be your dad if I started real early, so I get to give you a little heads-up.”

  “What’s that, Jon?”

  “I know trying to tell you to take it easy, be safe, and maybe don’t fly so many missions is like trying to tell my golden retriever to stay out of the lake, but I wouldn’t want to have the company’s future vice president of R&D become a shooting star, so take it easy, okay?”

  “Vice president?”

  “Oh, did I say that out loud?” Masters deadpanned. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. Forget I said that. Forget the board was considering it but didn’t want me to reveal th
at. Gotta go before I tell you about the other thing the board was kicking around…oops, almost did it again. Later, Boomer.”

  OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  The room was loudly called to attention as Russian Federation president Leonid Zevitin quickly strode into the conference room, followed by his chief of staff Peter Orlev, the secretary of the security council, Anatoli Vlasov; the minister of foreign affairs, Alexandra Hedrov; and the chief of the Federal Security Bureau, Igor Truznyev. “Take seats,” Zevitin ordered, and the officers already in the room—General Kuzma Furzyenko, the chief of staff; General Nikolai Ostanko, chief of staff of the army; and General Andrei Darzov, the chief of staff of the air force—shuffled to their chairs. “So. I gave the command for our fighter to attack the unmanned American bomber if it fired a missile, and since we’re meeting like this so quickly, I assume it did, and we did. What happened?”

  “The American B-1 bomber successfully launched a missile from over the Caspian Sea that reportedly destroyed a Hezbollah squad preparing to launch a rocket from an apartment complex in southeast Tehran,” General Darzov replied. “The missile made a direct hit on the launch squad’s location, killing the entire crew…” He paused, then added, “including our Special Forces adviser. The bomber then—”

  “Hold on, General, hold on a sec,” Zevitin said impatiently, holding up a hand. “They launched a missile from over the Caspian Sea? You mean a cruise missile, and not a laser-guided bomb or TV-guided missile?” Many of those around the table narrowed their eyes, not because they disliked Zevitin’s tone or question but because they were unaccustomed to someone with such a distinct Western accent at a classified meeting in the Kremlin.

  Leonid Zevitin, one of Russia’s youngest leaders since the fall of the czars, was born outside St. Petersburg but was educated and had spent most of his life in Europe and the United States, and so had almost no Russian accent unless he wanted or needed one, such as when speaking before Russian citizens at a political rally. Frequently seen all over the world with starlets and royalty, Zevitin came from the world of international banking and finance, not from politics or the military. After decades of old, stodgy political bosses or bureaucratic henchmen as president, the election of Leonid Zevitin was seen by most Russians as a breath of fresh air.