A Grey Moon Over China (16 page)

“Forgive me, Charlie” said Chan, “but how did you get to be the size you are by eating little pieces of bread for breakfast?”

“Young Miss,” he said, “you are truly a delight and a wonder, but you’d do better to ask if I came to be eating little pieces of bread by being the size I am.”

Shouts from across the mess. A tiny spider drone had flown in with a message tube clipped to its back, and the inevitable target practice had begun. A buttered roll finally slapped into its side to send it sluing off course, to the accompaniment of much cheering.

Chan clapped her hands sharply. The spider drone—which despite its name had no legs at all—dove down and stopped in front of her. Chan nursed it closer and spoke to it, too quietly for us to hear.

The drone leapt back into the air with a chirp and began bobbing and weaving along its course. Boos from across the room.

“I keep telling them that,” said Chan. “I don’t understand why they forget.”

“My Lord,” said Peters. He watched the drone go and ran a hand across his balding head. “So! How are you this morning, Eddie? I’m told you want that little fellow’s frozen kin taken up on the lifts to the airport. You don’t think that’s asking a bit much? Four hundred ships in nine days?”

“Six days. Be glad they fit in the elevators at all, Charlie. Small miracles are all we get.”

“My word! ‘Miracles,’ he says! Have you
seen
them fit in the elevators? No, you haven’t, and neither have I. You are one of these godless drudges who believes the little numbers he writes on the backs of envelopes. Ah, there she is. Tuyet! Come and sit. I’ve got something for you.”

Pham dumped her tray, and with only the briefest glance at Peters picked up a piece of fish in her hand.

Peters pushed the parcel across. “I couldn’t help but hear you say to Katherine the other day that you liked to read poems—though I’m sure you didn’t think anyone was listening.” Pham paid him no attention.

“And so I thought to myself, ‘Now there’s a fine thing—here we are just
filled
with machines, but no poems at all.’ So I sent for this little book. I’m sure you’ll find it delightful.”

Pham paused in her eating and blinked at the book, then turned to Chan.

“So, China-Girl. What for you want baby, hah?”

Chan glanced at Peters, who seemed completely unoffended.

“I don’t think life would mean much without children, Tuyet. What about you?”

“Nah. Everybody grow up, get dead. Someday kids get dead, too. So what good this meaning do for you then, hah? More important have a good time, I think.” She took another bite. “But I think you lucky lady, maybe. Sometimes I wish, me too.”

“Why? Have you spent time with children?”

“Nah. I tell you about shithead father. No mother. Father got junk he treat like kid, not me.”

She dropped the fish, then turned to me as she reached for Peters’ napkin.

“So, Mr. Torres, how much time we got before we shoot up Ice-Lady’s drones, hah?”

“Nine days.”

“Ah—no good. They not ready. Everybody get killed up there.”

“Why?”

“Nobody practice. Pretty-Boy Bolton say no time, too dangerous. I say if too dangerous now, too dangerous later when everybody got cold foot. Pretty-Boy got weakness like that. He take big risk himself easy, but don’t let other people take risk so they find out if they okay, too.”

A chair scraped and laughter came from across the room, followed by David Rosler’s voice and a plate banging against the table. Pham whipped around to look, then immediately turned back just as I spoke.

“Have you told Priscilla that?” I said. “She’s launch safety officer.”

“Hah! Shit no, Torres. I do you favor. I let you tell Miss Priscilla yourself. She pretty girl, and you got hard-on I bet, now China-Girl here all fat, hah? I know you pretty good.”

I stared at her. Peters started to get up.

“What’s gotten into you?” I said.

“Not you get into me, hah, Torres? I think maybe you like to sometime, but you too chickenshit. You afraid I break it off, hah?”

She shoved her chair back and knocked her plate aside so that the fish slid across the table.

“Piece of shit food!” She pushed past Peters and hurried out of the mess. But not, I noticed as I looked down at the table, before picking up the book of poems.

N
ine days later the drones’ launch window arrived.

I glanced for a last time at Anne Miller, then nodded to Rosler across the operations room. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth and flipped down his microphone.

“All stations, final checkpoint clear, no holds. Systems have timing. Personnel clear the rails now. Fire crews, start your engines. Tanker crews, mark your pressure, recheck on decouple. Airlifters, respond—rails one through four.”

“One through four.”

Forty-ton airlifters moved into position on the screen, dangling grappling clamps like fists. Below them, eight pairs of rails ran the length of the airfield. The drone ships on their acceleration sleds filled the mile and a half closest to the elevators, while the helicopters moved into position over the empty mile and a half beyond, down which the sleds would race for the opening.

“Rails five through eight.”

A pause.

“Five through eight.”

“Too slow to respond, crew. When the time comes, you’re only going to have ninety-six seconds to clear a bad launch before the next one comes down that rail.

“ExComm, advise PRC Air Defense we have a commit on six minutes.” Our deal with the Chinese—they would protect the island during launch, and the drones on their way up. “Mr. Bolton, launch-override is local.”

Instrumentation monitors changed from green to amber. Bolton’s crews on the runways had control of the overrides.

“Reports. Insertion.”

“Winds aloft and pressures down range, no change. Icing negative. I have four hundred orbital insertions active. Looks good.”

“Translation.”

“Kerr projector systems report launch and tunnel motion synchronized. 2,006 hours plus and counting.”

“Engines and Boosters.”

“Induction engines idling across the board. Fan-booster spin-up on number eighty-three is below the curve but recovering. All others are go.”

“Mr. Elliot, get a paint bomb on number eighty-three. Airlifter north, keep an eye on that hull. It’ll be number eleven on rail three. Defense.”

“All weapons, full release.” Pham’s voice, out by the opening.

“Range officer.”

“Go.”

“DataComm.”

“Scanning data-links on all drones. Ms. Miller has function switch-over on loss.”

Rosler hesitated. “InComm, take reports on the ground systems for a moment. Off.”

He glanced at me and gestured toward Miller.

“Anne,” I said, “I have to say this again. We’re going lose ships—maybe a lot of them. You’re going to need help reloading their missions to the survivors.”

Silver earrings glittered.

“Thank you, Mr. Torres, but it will be quite simple.”

I sighed. We’d had this discussion before, and there wasn’t time to have it again. “All right, fine.”

Rosler stuffed his shirt into his pants. “Three minutes now with shit to do.”

“The checklist was well done,” I said.

He ignored me.

Charlie Peters squinted at the screens. As logistics chief he’d had to get the ships up to the airfield, then off their cradles and onto the sleds. He was biting the nails of one hand and gripping a telephone in the other.

“I still say they’ll fall off the edge,” he said. “No wings. You people should know that. And space is
up
. Why do you insist on shooting things out sideways when you mean them to go up?”

Rosler blew his nose.

“Near-Earth orbit isn’t up,” I said. “It’s out. In this case you’re right, though—these things are so un-streamlined we’re going to run them straight up on the boosters till the air’s thin enough, and only then tip them over and blow the fans off. The induction engines will throw them into orbit. As for falling off the edge—they will. See that screen there? It’s the range officer’s, a
side-view of the launch area after the ships come off the rails. Watch it. Here we go.”

Another view showed on the main screen, from above the elevators looking toward the opening. The airfield cavern looked like a train station, with eight rows of fifty cars each, all eight tracks leading out into the sky.

“One released.”

The first ship on the left-hand rails slid forward with deceptive grace—a closer look showed its giant fan buffeting the ship behind it, hammering it against the next sled back. The first ship accelerated at two thirds of a G, from zero to sixty in four seconds; twelve seconds later it had covered a fifth of the distance to the opening.

The first ship on track six moved.

“Two released.”

They were released in a staggered sequence to provide the greatest lateral spacing among them. Twelve more seconds and track three released a ship.

“Three released.”

Like a bullet from a gun, Number One burst from the ledge at over four hundred miles per hour. Its sled tumbled away furiously in the wind, to be caught by a parachute. The ship itself nosed gracefully over toward the shelf below and fell for a second, then for another—and then it was replaced by a searing white cloud.

“Number One rotation failure, manual destruct.” The range officer’s voice, calm.

“Four released.”

Three more seconds and Number Two burst from the ledge. It sank toward the shelf and began to rotate nose-up, then twisted sharply and tumbled. It, too, disappeared in a flash of white.

“Number Two rotation failure, manual destruct.”

“Data on Number One, steering vane coupling failure.”

“Five released.”

I felt sick.

Anne Miller was out of her seat.

“Prepare to abort sequence,” said the launch controller.

“No!” I said. “Keep it going.”

“That’s right, sir.” A different controller, now.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s right?’ ”

“Mr. Polaski said there were to be no aborts.” She glanced backward over her shoulder. Polaski was standing by the door.

Number Three burst from the ledge. It hesitated, then rotated and arced gracefully into the sky.

“Three on profile.”

“Hold abort.”

“Data on Number Two, steering vane coupling failure.”

“Six released.”

Number Four dropped and rotated, then climbed into the sky behind Number Three. Controllers let out their breath. Charlie Peters looked down at the crushed phone in his hand.

“Seven released.”

T
hree-forty-two released.”

“Three-three-niner on profile.”

“Two-seven-seven insertion and close.”

“Three-one-eight fan separation failure, auto destruct.”

Miller frowned. We were inserting better than ninety percent into orbit, but she wasn’t accustomed to a kind of hardware that failed.

“Are they still okay?” I said.

“Oh, yes, of course. You lost both ships carrying agricultural programs, and both ships carrying history and the arts, but all the mission-critical groups are still redundant.”

There had been more permanent loses on the airfield, however. The huge fan bearings on one of the ships had oscillated when at full power and the blades had shattered, killing six of Elliot’s people in the hail of shrapnel. An airlifter crew had gotten the coasting ship off the rails just in time for the next one.

The same airlifter crew had then tried to pull the troublesome Eighty-Three out of line, but the sled had caught on a pylon. The lifter crashed between the rails and burned, killing all eleven of the crew.