Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 39

Near Nellis AFB, Nevada

Davidson Aerospace

Tuesday

2:38 a.m. Turkey Time (TRT)

Monday

7:38 p.m. Eastern Time


The DSIHM was more than just a hotel for future space tourist idiots. Talbot, Schwab, Dorman, Ingersol, Sing, and Stinson had designed it with excruciating detail and had taken years of modeling and simulation, scaled model designing, building and testing, and then testing a full-sized working model in a secret lab in order to perfect its exact design and purpose. Just like their overall plan for the world, the DSIHM served multiple purposes, but with one sinister one most specifically.

The large cylindrical hull of the hotel consisted of an exterior conductive mix of an epoxy and various metal compounds. There was then an internal layer of purely nonconductive epoxy followed by another layer of the conductive epoxy system. This process was repeated over a mandrel in a geometry that had allowed the module to be folded into a smaller cylinder of only about a meter in height. Once it was deployed and attached to the ISS the year prior, it was brought to full ISS pressure, which inflated and expanded it to full size. Once the DSIHM reached full stable inflation, a curing agent was injected into the layers. That agent was sunlight. After a year in orbit the epoxies and compounds had solidified, creating the now very large and solidified cylindrical hotel module. But the key to its true purpose was in the layers and how they were constructed and connected.

The multilayers of conductor then insulator then conductor and so on made for a very good high-voltage storage capacitor. Davidson Aerospace had taken major painstaking efforts to isolate the DSIHM from the rest of the ISS power systems, clandestinely, so that NASA wouldn’t be able to tell that the DSIHM had been slowly building up a high voltage charge over several months. And once the hidden “bus bar” was thrown—basically a very large switch—all of that electrical charge that had been stored there would go rushing backward into the ISS power grid, blowing out junctions, boxes, and wires like power lines during an electric storm. The current indicators showed Talbot that there were over three million volts stored in the DSIHM module currently. Once released, there would be thousands of amps bursting through the circuits throughout the ISS.

The magnetic induction boxes Karl had put in place would be the icing on the cake. While there were breakers and filters along the path to prevent just such an electrical discharging accident, the ISS grid design wasn’t designed to prevent an actual high voltage attack from within, specifically designed to burn through those preventative measures.

Talbot watched as the power system lines from the Main Bus Switching Units started showing a ripple on top of the voltage waveforms feeding back through to the DDCUs. There was also a slight ripple beginning to appear on top of the power systems on the other side of the PDBs feeding through to the entire ISS. The magnetic induction systems Karl had placed strategically were creating a positive feedback of overvoltage on both sides of the protection system and confusing them as to what actions to take. Soon they would be chaotic enough that the system would lose its mind. Once that happened, the system’s filters most certainly couldn’t manage the three-megavolt overvoltage spike that was coming.

The red lines on the virtual wireframe ISS floating in front of him were showing surges and alerts being triggered. That’s where the wireless dongles came in. It was a three-pronged attack. Prong one consisted of the magnetic induction attack on the voltage and power conditioning system filters. Prong two was a computer attack. The code that he and Ingersol had uploaded into the ISS main computers through the Huntsville contact was now taking all of its information from the dongles Schwab had placed in strategic locations. Those dongles were telling the computers on the ISS and on the ground in Huntsville that everything was “A-okay” to use the astronaut lingo. Talbot watched as the power unit in the DSIHM began to overload and then the message from Karl came.


T,

All systems are in place. Throwing the bus bar on DSIHM now.

K


Prong three of the attack would be the knockout blow. Prong three was the giant voltage and current spike released by the DSIHM. And Karl Schwab had just thrown the final knockout punch. Before any of the filtering units and safety systems of the ISS had a chance to do a thing, a major spike of over three million volts with over several thousand amps of current poured through the power grid all within a tiny fraction of a second. Within seconds, every single system onboard the International Space Station had been burned out aggressively. Talbot imagined there were showers of sparks and some flames starting up in places. Whether that was the case or not, most certainly all the lights, computers, and communications equipment on the ISS had just been shut off.

“Score!” Talbot shouted. He reached over to the desk drawer and placed his thumb on the scanner. The main desk cover moved back into place. In his virtual view he pulled down a menu marked DUMPSTER FIRE and activated it. A ten-minute countdown clock appeared in his view and started. He walked over to his liquor cabinet and grabbed the $250,000 fifth of Macallan Anniversary 1928 Single Vintage Malt he’d been keeping for this moment and cracked the top. He took a long draw from the bottle and waved goodbye to the office space as he walked out the door.


M,

It is done!

T


Back | Next
Framed