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Fire in the Sky

MICHAEL Z. WILLIAMSON & STEPHANIE OSBORN

The zombies were dying out.

They weren’t really zombies, of course, but the infected people acted pretty much like them. The Kennedy Space Center village hadn’t had a sighting in two weeks. The surrounding enclaves reported similar results. The catastrophic collapse seemed to finally have hit a trough.

The workers, including the NASA civil servants and contractors, and the SpaceX people, had survived by being surrounded by water and swamp, judicious use of barricades, and some gunfire. Their stock in trade was technical knowledge. Their neighboring survivors got help with power and equipment, and in turn, they got food to supplement the fish they traded from off the coast and from the Banana and Indian Rivers, and the fresh water they made from a large still in a support building just off the beach.

At heart, though, they were space scientists, and habits persist.

Pete Adams was the newly made mayor. He’d been a senior engineer at KSC on the Flow Team, responsible for spacecraft prep for launch. But the virus pretty much put paid to the upper management. Now he was mayor. The council decision was a mixed election/appointment. He had the technical chops to handle the engineering side, and they decided based on past experience in the field that he could coordinate with the locals.

Today he was meeting with the boatmen who brought in seafood, and transported stuff from the mainland. It was often easier to use water, and had been a lot safer with the infected about. Now they were a bit less necessary, but it wouldn’t do to just brush them off.

The boats were everything from pontoons to a small trawler. The crews mostly lived on them these days.

“There are still supplies and transport we’ll need,” he reassured them. “We’re not ending our professional relationship. It’s going to be different, though, as more road traffic resumes.”

One of them, bald-headed under his bandana and slightly creased from the sun said, “Until the other bridges are repaired. Then what?”

“Then we hope to have other work lined up. We don’t want to piss off our neighbors who’ve done this much for us. Also, we like to have a balance. A couple of the villages want exclusives and to toll the roads. If we all negotiate, we all come out ahead.”

“Fair enough. But we’re not going to slash rates, either. Diesel costs money, and so do repairs.”

“We can keep helping with both.”

It was almost colonial-era barter, in the twenty-first century. That’s how far they’d fallen.

“Good enough. Thanks for meeting with us, Mr. Mayor.”


After that meeting, back in Launch Control, which was as good a place as any to use as headquarters, he got paged.

“Hey, Pete,” Assistant Manager Melanie Carter called. “We got a response.”

“Huh?” Pete wondered, looking up from the console. When someone had suggested they pick one of the missions in the VAB and actually launch it, he’d ended up on the top of the totem pole, hence his position now. And of the spacecraft in the VAB, the one closest to launch readiness turned out to be the Hina mission. But that didn’t mean Adams was on top of things as launch director yet, so he was face-down in the old training documentation. “Stepped in what, now?”

“JPL, dufus,” Carter said with a slight snort. “They responded to our ping. They think it’s a great idea. They’re a little, uh, down in terms of staff right now, but the critical people—at least, for our purposes—seem to have survived.”

“Good!” Adams decided. “What can they give us?”

Carter glanced at her clipboard.

“Well, it turns out that their orbital mechanics people have been keeping up with the . . . what the hell do I call it, Pete? Is this thing an asteroid, or a planet, or what?”

“Kinda half baby planet, half super comet,” Adams said. “As near as I understood it, like a lot of KBOs, it’s a little of both. The astronomy types call it a dwarf planet. It’s just an exobody of some kind. Like, interstellar, coming through for a visit. That’s the important part.”

She nodded. “Okay. So anyway, their orbits guys have been keeping up with it, because they’ve been cooped up, and bored stiff when they weren’t scared to death, I guess. Which means they have the current location of this . . . ” She glanced at her clipboard to get the nomenclature right, “8I/(845982) Hina—I’m not even gonna ask what all that means—as of right now, and they have a better, current trajectory for it.”

“Where is it?”

“Right out there,” Carter pointed up. “It’s just passing Earth’s orbit now, and it’s as close to Earth as it’s gonna get right now.”

“Whoa,” Adams wondered. “Headed inbound?”

Carter shook her head. “Nope. It’s already passed perihelion. It’s on the way outbound. Waaaaay the hell outbound, it sounds like.”

“Shit. That wasn’t what I was hoping for,” Adams grumbled. “I was hoping it would still be inbound, and we could fly our probe out to meet it. Instead, we’re gonna be playing catch-up.”

“Yup. In fact, according to the JPL peeps, we’re looking at doing some additional slingshot stuff.”

“In addition to the slingshot stuff we were already doing?” he asked.

She said, “Now we’re doing different and more slingshot stuff. And we’re gonna need to adjust the oomph of the bird.”

“Go ahead,” he sighed. First they wanted to launch a rocket, now they needed to launch a modified rocket.

“They need to swap out, or otherwise beef up, the third stage,” Carter explained. “They think that’ll make it a little more likely to actually catch this Planet Hina. What does Hina mean, anyway?”

He squinted in thought and said, “I think it’s a Polynesian god—or maybe goddess; I don’t remember the briefing two years ago—of travelers, or something like that,” Adams said. “The, uh, the International Astronomical Union, thought it would be an appropriate name for an interstellar dwarf planet popping through.”

“I guess. Anyhow, we got the stack halfway complete, but now we need to modify the third stage before we install the Hina Probe.”

In the Post Apocalypse, they had a mission halfway ready to go, only now they wanted to change it, and he was the chief wrenchbender.

“Lovely. Just great. How the hell do they think we’re gonna be able to do that?”

“Well, don’t get bent out of shape here, Pete,” Carter soothed. “We have options. We got other birds in the Vehicle Assembly Building, in various stages of assembly, and at least one of ’em George says ain’t gonna go anywhere because it’s been OBE. And it’s essentially the same launch system—the SHRUGS vehicle—just a little modified for the payload . . . and a bigger third stage.”

Adams thought for a moment. The Standardized Hybrid Reusable Utility—Global System was a cross between the ULA’s Atlas V rocket and the SpaceX Falcon 9. Both were medium-lift launch vehicles with strap-on reusable boosters, and the third stage could be adapted to need, with the fairings and connectors expressly designed for swap-outs.

“Right, the Pegasus mission?” Adams verified.

“Exactly. It was a comet rendezvous, and that comet’s long gone now, back to the nether regions of the solar system. It’ll be back around in about another sixty years, by which time that rocket is gonna be a bucket o’ rust. So there’s that. We can look at what we got there, and maybe we can kitbash from it to ours. Plus, the SpaceX people were always part of this, and you know they got the rapid prototype ability. And we’ve stayed on good terms with the Air Force flyboys and gals, and Patrick and Canaveral are right down the way from us. You know they got fabbers and machinists out the wazoo.”

“Huh. Yeah, good points, all. But do we have time to get that done before the thing is too far gone for us to reach?”

“JPL seems to think so. They’ve even ginned up the trajectory they want the probe to take. Launch, couple times around Earth, whip around the Moon, slingshot to Venus, then out to this Hina.”

“Venus? But if it’s going past us right now, don’t they want to use Mars?”

“Not in the right place, they said.” Carter shook her head and shrugged. “Look, they’re gonna pop us a file if we can get the e-mails all cleaned up.”

“Okay, that might just work,” Adams said. “Let’s go down to my office and see if we can’t drag in the file, and have a look.”

“Done.”

He asked, “And the probe is ready?”

“The probe is also put together from its base design modified with whatever sensors we can scavenge.”

That actually seemed reasonable under the circumstances.

“Good,” he said. “So it’s ready?”

“It will be in time for assembly.”

“And all I have to do is administrate,” he said with a roll of his eyes.


At Adams’ next meeting, with a neighboring civic leader, Mayor Binney of Port St. John didn’t seem very interested in the update.

Binney asked, “So you’re not sending a crew on the irrigation and flood pumps?”

They sat in what had been a diner near the Indian River. It had been cleaned out, but still stank of wet sea and fish rot. The air was clammy. There was beer, though, and some fresh fruit.

Adams said, “We will, but you’ll need to provide people we can train up on some of the basics. We’re resuming our original mission. This is possibly Earth’s only space launch facility. We’ve got to get back to it.” He took a swig of something homebrewed in a Heineken bottle. It wasn’t bad.

Binney sounded at least somewhat sincere as he said, “I’d love to see a rocket launch, man. I grew up watching them.” His expression was wistful. “But in the meantime, we’ve got a bunch of pumps that need cleaned and tuned. If you want food to eat, that is.”

“Don’t you have mechanics we can train?” Adams asked.

Binney shook his head. “Not enough. They’re working on vehicles and construction equipment. And your people put these together. We need power, irrigation, and lights. An entire town is depending on you.”

“The world is depending on us,” Adams said with a shake of his head.

“We have more important concerns first.”

“This is the old, ‘What about problems here on Earth?’ argument that’s always been used against space development. We have a chance to do this now. We won’t get another on this, and there may never be another before humanity is gone.”

“If we die out from lack of resources, that second part is assured.”

Adams tried to be politely reassuring. “We’re not going to die out. We’ve got air, fish, sunlight. We got a shit-ton of water if we distill it to get rid of the salt, and that’s not hard. Paleolithic people survived with that. We have tremendously more knowledge, materials and support. We’re running cryogenics and power already.”

“So why can’t you do both?”

“Because we’re doing the launch with five percent of a normal crew. Everyone is maxed out. We’re running long hours, multiple shifts.”

“We need the support you promised.”

“And you’ll get it. Just not on the schedule you want. Be patient, and it’ll happen.”

Binney shook his head in what had to be practiced, feigned sadness.

“I wish it didn’t come to this. But if we’re not getting support from you, we’ll have to get it elsewhere.”

There was only one response to that. “If you can, that’s great.”

“Good. So we’ll open the bridge again, once we’re sure we’re safe from incursion. We’ll talk to Titusville and see what resources they can swap. We’ll have to pay them in food, of course. If you change your mind, just let us know.”

It was a game of chicken. Binney was betting Kennedy would run out of food and resources before he ran out of tech support. Unless he actually did have help from elsewhere. In which case, why would he care?

In the meantime, Pete realized, it was a good thing he’d warmed up the watermen first. They were going to be the supply line for food and a lot of other things.


Adams woke up in his apartment, basically a cubby in what had been administrative space near the VAB, but it was functional. Lots of singles lived here. The families were in other buildings with better walls, and even in some of the visitor center space.

He had a bike for short trips between buildings, and could call a car for longer ones, fuel being an issue. They were still trying to scavenge electric vehicles, hindered by having to break the security systems in some. The ride gave him fresh air and made him hot and sweaty. In Florida this time of year, though, that was expected.

He had questions for the Monday morning meeting-slash-breakfast; during the outbreak, certain gatherings had become somewhat traditional, and others had merged. He was glad they had coffee, and orange juice. What he really wanted was bacon, but there was some sausage. Good enough.

“How is the fairing coming?” he asked.

“We called in a bodyman,” Greg Crooks, head of pad operations, replied.

“A what?”

“An automotive bodyman. He was able to weld, rivet, epoxy, and otherwise make the standard SpaceX fairing fit the SHRUGS second stage.”

Redneck engineering. “That sounds . . . questionable.”

Crooks said, “Given the interchangeable stuff, it wasn’t really hard, he said. Besides, he’s former USAF airframe repair and says he’s comfortable through high supersonic, and he’s worked on dragsters. We’re lucky in that the SpaceX guys say they had the connections pretty well standardized before they built the Pegasus LV. I guess it works or we get a great fireworks display.”

Eyebrows raised, he said, “We’ll work with what we’ve got. Engines?”

“They seem sound. We already looked at them from a structural standpoint. The VAB protected ’em pretty well, so there’s no rust or corrosion in the wrong places. I got a team going over ’em to make sure they’re still up to launch stress requirements.”

They were really doing it. They had most of a launch vehicle kitbashed together from three different launch sets. It was taking a bit of work to make everything fit, given there were different models involved as a result of the different original missions, but between the bodywork and the 3D printing and welding of custom parts the SpaceX guys were doing, it was coming together. And a lot faster than Adams had expected, too, given the angle of the fairing had to be adjusted due to the different diameters of the stages. But the CAD designers and their modeling systems had survived the outbreak, and had done wonders in terms of designing custom pieces-parts, then sending them to the 3D printer/fabber people.

Provided everything worked, and didn’t blow up during launch, they might actually have a space mission. It wasn’t manned, but it was spaceflight. They were a spacefaring species if only an embryonic one. They had to retain that.

“How’s the probe?”

Someone from that department, he hadn’t caught the guy’s name said, “It will be ready for stack assembly.”

“We’re doing stack assembly now,” he noted.

“Yes, we’ll be right at the end of our window.”

That was a running theme here.

“Okay. I do want to get some sort of technical support out to PSJ to make them happy.”

“I’ve got two pump guys who we don’t need for a few days, until we do launch prep testing,” Lee Jones suggested. “We can send them and a couple of good mechanics.”

He nodded. “Let’s do that. Send them down by boat. That should make it clear we’re not as dependent on them, but willing to continue our agreement. It’s frustrating. They knew the reason we were staying here from the beginning of the outbreak was tech and hopefully relaunching.”

“They’re scared, Pete.”

“Yup. Everyone loves the idea of being independent, until they realize what it means. Then they want someone else to manage things. No wonder there’s so many gang lords.”

Right then, Carter ran in and said, “Pete, we have a security issue right now!”

He was supposed to engineer, and administrate, and be exec, all at the same time. He stifled a sigh of frustration.

“What is it?”

“Port St. John has a contingent at our end of the causeway and is demanding we furnish mechanical support or they’ll come and take it. I gather they mean kidnap people until they get what they want.”

Assholes. “Goddammit, we were just about to furnish some help. All they had to do was ask and send a truck. They assumed a hostile break.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hostile now.”

“Okay, I’ll come talk to them.”

She shook her head and said, “I really recommend not. You’re the primary target for a kidnapping.”

He hesitated. Was he really that important? Perhaps he was.

“Okay, then make sure I’m on radio and we’ll negotiate that way.”


Canaveral had the same security anyone else had—a few veterans with a few guns and limited ammo after shooting zombies. Good luck finding 9mm or 5.56mm anywhere other than a few precious hoarded rounds.

Off in the distance, Pete heard some pistol and hunting rifle fire, and a small amount of rapid fire. He didn’t know much detail about guns, but there were definitely at least four different reports. Apparently it really was possible to tell what was being shot by the sound. The rifles were supersonic and cracked even at this distance.

He got close enough to watch through some serious big-ass binoculars—setting up an observation post on top of the Visitor Center along the NASA Parkway—figuring if that wasn’t safe, it was all over anyway; it was a good three and a half miles away from the near end of the causeway. Everyone had been cooperative, all this time, through the worst of the outbreak. Now, as soon as the locals thought they might lose support, they got hostile, probably figuring to annex and dictate.

We’re supposed to be civilized, he thought. So much for that. And in only a few months.

It was a miniature historical battle. Each side had a dozen men at a distance on the causeway, and each had a handful of boats with shooters bobbing in the water. It quickly turned into a standstill and tapered off. Neither side wanted casualties or to waste ammo. It devolved into a show of force, and eventually the townies retreated.


The next day, Adams asked, “So the important question . . . who the hell is our new security detail? Because they’re . . . efficient, but crazy.”

His own security boss, James Lachlan, said, “Yeah, that’s from the guy claiming to be King of Florida.”

“That nutjob who was blaring on the radio from Miami?”

Lachlan nodded his bald head. “Yup. He runs most of the peninsula south of Palm Beach, and all the way over to Tampa.”

“And we’re trusting him why?”

“He heard we wanted to launch. He offered security services in exchange for getting to watch the launch from the old observation stands. And he ran off the rabble from Port St. John.”

“What’s this costing us?”

“Nothing. At least, as far as I can tell. He’s brilliant when he’s not stoned, and then he gets rather weirdly metaphysical, but he said something about, ‘Light that earth joint aboard the Mothership and share the smoke with the void.’ I gather he considers the ability to watch as payment or something. Anyway, you’ve seen the patrols. They showed up with six tricked out SUVs with machineguns, and they have entry control covered and a couple of overwatch locations. They’ve been very polite to all our people, and very effective at stopping visitors and referring them to our visitor center. He also arranged for some food shipments for us from his region, which takes some pressure off the locals.”

“Half the state wants this to work, the other half just wants us to rig generators and water pumps . . . and nothing else. And even if we can break that deal, we shouldn’t.”

“Yeah.”

“If this fails, we look like nerds in a really bad movie.” He thought for a moment and added, “If it works, though, we’re legends.”

That was a tingly thought.


“Hey, Pete!” Carter said, hurrying across the launch control room to the launch director’s position, where Adams sat, preparing and organizing what documentation he had for the launch—handbooks, checklists, standard procedures, emergency procedures, and the like. There were a lot of checklists. Most of the documentation was supposed to be electronic, but that had been when they had enough people to make it electronic. And you had to have all that documentation for the launch. Also for everything leading up to it. It wasn’t his favorite task, but it meant they were getting ever closer.

“Hey, Mel,” a cheerful Adams said, looking up from the paper-box full of notebooks and stud-bound documents. “What’s up? We did it! We have launch in four days, the bird’s on the pad, and we’re actually ready!”

Well, sort of. The probe was still having parts installed, on the pad, with mass corrections of grams being reported every few hours. Grams mattered for the distance involved.

He shook his head. “Honestly? I never thought we’d manage this . . . ”

“And we still may not,” Carter told him solemnly. “You need to talk to the meteorologists right away.”

“Oh shit,” Adams murmured, sobering and reaching for the console phone.

Much of the infrastructure of the region, such as telephone lines, didn’t work, simply because of the lack of people to maintain them. Storms, especially in Florida, tended to take down phone lines and break telephone poles. But the meteorologists were military, and they were at Patrick AFB. Those lines were dedicated and had been carefully buried, and they still worked.

So Adams got an answer on the third ring.

“Patrick Meteorological Division. Anita Jones here.”

“Dr. Jones, this is Peter Adams at KSC. I’m the launch director, chief engineer, and mission manager of the Hina Mission.”

“Right. We sent a message for you to call us. Thanks for getting back with us so soon.”

“What’s up?”

“It’s not good, I’m afraid, Mr. Adams. Is the bird on the pad yet?”

“It is; the crawler reached the facility yesterday, and we’ve started the countdown.”

“You may want to put the kibosh on the countdown and bring ’er back into the hangar—um, excuse me, the VAB. Hurricane Gertie has strengthened almost to a Cat 5 and the models are showing a westward turn into the central Florida coast.”

“Oh shit,” Adams murmured, dismayed. “Where does landfall look most likely?”

“It’s a little early to say that for certain,” Jones replied. “But the model consensus—and the models that seem to be tracking it the best—show landfall pretty much on top of us, give or take fifty miles or so either way. We expect conditions to begin deteriorating in about thirty-six hours from our last update, which was two hours ago. The base commander is declaring a HURCON II.”

“Damn, damn, damn,” Adams cursed. “When will we violate launch criteria?”

“Based on what I’ve looked up on your launch criteria, I’d estimate about two and a half, maybe three days max, from now, but I can send you the data to compare to your launch criteria if you like.”

“How do you know?”

“Our models give us the wind speed and pressure curves as the system approaches the coast,” Jones explained. “It’s part of that whole ‘forecast cone’ structure. Of course, that varies depending on where in the cone you are, but we’re showing the center of the cone making a beeline for us. And I can do a decent estimate of when that’s gonna exceed your commit criteria, based on knowing what your wind speed launch violations are, and that’s been established for years.”

“Oh. Okay, then no, you probably know more about that than the folks we have left here,” Adams decided.

“Right. So like I said, you’re gonna get a violation due to winds in about two and a half or three days. When’s launch?”

Four days from now. Right at the end of our window.”

“Ooo. That’s unfortunate.”

“No shit.” He flushed in frustration and withheld anger.

“Well, I’d recommend a rollback into the VAB to protect the bird,” Jones decided. “You can always roll it back out once the storm goes through.”

“Assuming the VAB, as old as it is, and as little maintenance as we’ve been able to give it the last couple years, can withstand a Cat 5. What’s the max sustained wind on this beast?”

“About a hundred fifty-five miles an hour currently, and continuing to strengthen. But the models show it could reach as much as two-hundred ten, two-hundred twenty, miles an hour by the time it makes landfall. Maybe higher.”

“WHAT?”

“It’s late in the season, the water’s warm, and it’ll come right over the Gulf Stream, then stall out almost on top of us when the steering currents crap out due to that high pressure ridge in the Gulf of Mexico strengthening and extending north. Never mind that Bermuda high blocking it to the north . . . and it wants to turn to the right to recurve, but it can’t. So the offshore half—and most of the eyewall—will still extend over the Gulf Stream . . . which, around here, is pretty much just offshore,” Jones explained. “This is gonna hammer Florida bad.”

“How long will it stay stalled on top of us?”

“We don’t anticipate actual landfall for at least a week,” Jones sighed. “Brigadier General Mackinaw is flying out all the aircraft he can, loaded with as many personnel as he can, to Tyndall, and battening down everything else.”

“Where are you going?”

“We’re not,” Jones said. “Well, we’re moving to higher ground, sure. And higher up in the buildings. But we’re essential personnel for this.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. Theme park ride, it ain’t.” They were silent for long moments, then Jones asked, “When does your launch window close?”

“JPL says that we’ve pushed it about as late as we can push it, and hope to catch the object,” Adams said. “‘We have those four days. Six barely possibly, but it’s iffy. And that’s assuming everything goes smoothly and we don’t get any serious damage to the VAB or the control center. Never mind the pads.”

“Mmph. Looking at my data, here, that doesn’t bode well.”

He cursed. “This was already a Hail Mary. We cobbled the bird together with short supplies, we were already tight on the window. But it’s the only one we had.”

“Yeah, I know. Listen, I’ll keep on top of this, and feed you more information as soon as I have it, okay? Is there any way you can speed up the countdown?”

Everyone wanted more. He took a breath. “I’ll look into it, but I doubt it. Those things are generally as tight as they can get already.”

“Okay, well, we’ll all have to do the best we can, I guess.”

“Yeah. I’m just not sure that’s gonna be enough. Listen, thank you,” Adams said. “I need to get my people together and see about safing the bird and my people.”

“Right. Talk soon.”

“Later.”

And he hung up.


“How long does it take to get the crawler back to the VAB with a load?” Adams queried in the emergency staff meeting he’d called.

“What the hell?! We’re four days and counting from launch, Pete!” his flow director and pad ops chief, Greg Crooks, said. “If we roll back, we’ll be awfully damn close to the end of the launch window in getting the bird off the ground by the time we can recycle the countdown! We’ll never catch the damn asteroid!”

“There may not be anything we can do,” Adams said with a sigh. “I just heard from Meteorology at Patrick. The model consensus shows Gertie headed right for us.”

Curses, mutters, and grumbles went around the room.

“Can it get worse?” Crooks complained. “That’s the worst news yet.”

“Be careful what you wish for, Greg, because yeah, it can,” Adams said, solemn. “It’s already a Cat 4, verging on a Cat 5, and it’s gonna strengthen—a lot—as it crosses the Gulf Stream.”

“How much?” someone asked, fearful.

“They’re estimating well above two hundred miles an hour, say two-ten plus, sustained winds in the eyewall,” Adams said. “And then stall out once it makes landfall . . . on top of us.”

The room fell silent in shocked dismay.

“So there are two things I need to know,” Adams continued. “Well, lemme back up and punt. Is there any chance we can shave at least a day, but better, a day and a half, off the countdown checklist?”

“No way in hell,” Crooks declared. “We’ve got it as tight as it’ll go now and be sure the bird will fly.”

“Shit. Okay, back to those things I need to know, and I think there’s actually three. One: how long does it take to do an emergency regress of the crawler? Two: what’s the max windspeed the VAB was designed to withstand, and is it in condition to handle the original specs? And three: what’s the highest storm surge we’ve ever had at KSC?”

Eyes grew wide around the room.

“Does anybody know any of that off the tops of your heads?”

Heads shook in the negative.

“Then go find out.”

“Pete, there may not be answers to find,” Crooks pointed out. “Not now. Not after the outbreak and everything that went with it.”

He kept calm, because they needed him to. “Then find what you can. If you can’t find VAB specs, find out what the strongest winds were that it’s already been hit with. If you can’t find the highest storm surge, contact the local National Weather Service office—however you can, to whoever’s left there—and see if you can get a table of data. If you can’t raise them, Patrick Meteorological might know; ask for Anita Jones. We meet back here in four hours, and I need answers. GO.”


Four hours later, they reconvened in the same conference room.

“Okay, guys, what have we got?” Adams asked.

“The standard speed on the crawler is the standard speed on the crawler,” Bob Rogers said. “Loaded, it’s about a mile an hour. So it’ll take us about three and a half hours to get from the pad back to the VAB. We might be able to push it a little and cut that to three hours, but it’s risky, on both the bird and the crawler.”

“We’ve got a risky situation,” Adams pointed out. “Still, half an hour? Eh. Probably not worth pushing that hard.”

“So keep it to the standard speed?” Rogers verified.

“Yeah. We’ll just accommodate the time in our planning.” Adams looked around. “What about the VAB’s ability to withstand the winds?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Paul Anders said. “Evidently that documentation has been lost in all the . . . shit . . . of the last couple years. We’re still looking, but I dunno if we’ll find it in time for this particular situation. That said, I can tell you that the center has ridden out quite a few hurricanes over the years, and we’re still standing. Some of the support buildings have suffered damage, but as nearly as I can tell, the VAB has been through winds up to maybe a hundred five, hundred ten miles an hour, and only suffered cosmetic damage. And it’s in about as good a shape as it was before the outbreak; we’ve kept it maintained as well as we could. I’ve got a team putting the storm shutters over the launch control windows, and those things are pretty sturdy. I think we’ll be good.”

“So we can move the bird into the VAB and take shelter there ourselves,” Adams decided. “And the launch control wing will be safed. That all sounds good. What about storm surge?”

“That’s a little more difficult, Pete,” Anders said. “We’ve had a lot of problems over the years with beach erosion in places, and there’ve been a lotta things tried, none of it really recent due to the outbreak. Some of the railroads and vehicle roads out near the launch pads have flooded over the years. And if we have a really big storm surge, say ten or twelve feet, we could be swimming—the max height above sea level for the entire center is only about ten feet. And it’s a stretch for only one storm, but if it sits on top of us long enough and cuts away at the beach, we might lose pad 39A or B, or both. And never mind our current requirements, those are historic sites—the Moon missions launched from there.”

“Shit,” Adams cursed. “Those are not the answers I was hoping for.”

“I know, but it is what it is, Pete.”

“Okay,” Adams decided. “I guess we move the bird back to the VAB, move all our personnel into one of the higher floors, ride it out, and hope for the best.”


Adams got a phone call.

“Adams here.”

“Mayor Adams, this is Mayor Binney, Port St. John.” The tension in the man’s voice was noticeable.

“Yes, what can I do for you?” At least they were talking and not shooting.

Binney’s words came out in a rush. “Sir, you know we have a hurricane moving in. You know how urgent the pumps are. We’ve got to have some support. I’m not threatening, I’m warning. We could lose crops, infrastructure, everything. We’re sandbagging and boarding, but we need technical help on the pumps.”

Well, didn’t that change the dynamic.

“I had actually been sending a couple of experts and a couple of skilled techs right at the moment you got excited a few days ago, Mayor Binney. This could already have been accomplished.”

His counterpart sounded a bit less panicky. “Mr. Adams, you may have the benefit of a bunch of geniuses who are calm under fire. I’ve got mixed people of mixed backgrounds who’ve survived zombies, some roving gangs, ragged-edge survival and are scared. Either I made an effort by force, or they’d have replaced me, if you get my meaning, or done it themselves.”

If the Chief didn’t deliver, then the Chief could be sacrificed. Yeah.

Adams said, “I remember a bunch of idiots claiming sunglasses and face masks would reduce the risk of infection. People always want an easy answer.”

Binney said, “They do, sir. I promise you and your people no harm if you can get those experts here to help.”

“The problem is, once things got hostile, there was a breach of trust. I really hate to be in this position, but I’m going to need ambassadors, shall we say, to good faith.”

Jesus, he was about to demand hostages for diplomacy. This wasn’t Colonial, it was Medieval.

“Who, though?”

There was only one workable option. “Make it a half dozen children, old enough not to need diapers, younger than thirteen. We’ll show them some movies and technical stuff at the museum. They’ll be safe.”

There was a long pause. “I guess I’ll have to arrange that. I’ll call back shortly.”

“I’ll wait for your call.”

He hung up. This was just awful.

Four hours later, six children and six technicians passed each other on the causeway, under cover of armed guards. The Port St. John contingent seemed completely cowed by the black SUV with bull bars and a machinegun. It was good to have support. Even if the guy providing it was completely out of his gourd.

The “King” claimed Canaveral as a protectorate, but his communications came down to wanting to see a space launch, and for them to continue afterward. He was in fact a royal Patron.


Adams was making disaster plans to protect the center personnel as best he could, when his phone rang. He grabbed it and absently rattled off, “KSC Launch Control. Adams.”

“Pete, this is Anita Jones with Patrick Meteorological Division.”

“Oh, hello, Dr. Jones. Do you have any more information for us?”

“Maybe, but I need to know something first. What are your plans?”

“Hm? I . . . I’m afraid I don’t understand the question . . . ”

“What are you doing about the launch?”

“Oh. Well, we’ve halted the countdown. They’re safing the bird now, and prepping for an emergency regress on the crawler, back to the VAB.”

“How late can you push the regress?”

“As late as we can. And we already are.”

“Good. Hold off on the regress until you hear from me.”

“What? But why?”

“Because I’ve just been made aware of something. While the usual model consensus still shows landfall as a damn powerful Cat 5 on or near the Cape, there’s a new model, out of that consortium of universities that’s also been reconstructing the radar grid. And it’s showing Gertie recurves before making landfall.”

That would sure be good. How much before, though? Launch scrub criteria are pretty firm, and awfully damn tight . . . ”

“That’s why I said wait. We’re still refining it in the model runs. But Pete? They’ve spent most of their time during the outbreak building the model based on historical data. It’s good.

Adams was silent for a long moment.

“Thanks, Dr. Jones. I’ll take all of that kinda news I can get. Keep me posted.”

“Wilco.”


Additional good news arrived in the form of the techs returning from Port St. John, having helped reconfigure some heavy flow pumps to avoid flooding in the lower-lying residential areas nearer the shoreline; some of the locals had spent the same time dredging out the drainage canals that ran through all the neighborhoods, maximizing the ability of the system to shunt flood waters away from populated areas, whether from torrential rain or storm surge. And, the techs reported, the eastern shoulder of U.S. 1—which ran along the coast of the mainland, skirting what was termed Indian River—was being converted into a levee of sorts with what earth-moving equipment was available.

“What about the kids?” Adams wondered. “Did they get back home okay?”

“Without a problem,” Carter told him. “We took them around what’s still functional of the visitor center and rolled the videos with the transducers. They loved it. Our techs came back, the children went home with their parents, and everybody was satisfied. The kids went back talking about what they’d learned. Their parents asked if we were gonna start holding Space Camp again. They want to send all the kids to Space Camp to get trained on stuff.”

Adams raked a hand through his hair.

“Okay, so the kids got home all right,” he said. “Good. But Space Camp? Really? I got all I can swing a cat at, now. Somebody else is gonna have to set that up, dammit.”


“Wait, what?” Crooks exclaimed, as he spoke with Adams on the gantry phone system. He and his team were working frantically to prep the SHRUGS launch vehicle, with the Hina probe already loaded, for return to the VAB. It was turning into a hairy process, as a few lines of thunderstorms, spawned by Gertie well outside its wind field, kept blowing across Merritt Island. He was, consequently, having a hard time processing the information Adams was imparting. “The hurricane’s gonna turn?”

“It may turn,” Adams reiterated with emphasis. “So go ahead and finish safing, but don’t do anything that would invalidate the portion of the countdown checklist we’ve already gone through, and don’t start the move until the very last second. And you might wanna check with me first, just in case. Consider this a countdown hold until further notice.”

“Oh, I see now,” Crooks said. “All right, Pete. Pad team will comply. And hope to hell it turns, and we can resume count instead of recycling it.”

“Exactly, and good man, Greg. Adams out.”

“Crooks out.”


“Adams, this is Jones.”

“Hey, Dr. Jones. What’s the word?”

“The word is—um, wait, you didn’t roll all the way back yet, did you?”

“No, the bird’s still on the pad, but we’re getting close. The winds are awful iffy, and damn, but the lightning in the feeder bands! It’s real close to the commit criteria of having to roll back. We had to pull everyone off the gantry for the time being, just to make sure nobody got zapped.”

“Good! Because the word is good. Gertie’s turning, and there’s no going back from that! That Bermuda high shifted and extended southeast like the consortium’s model predicted, and Gertie would have to go way out and around it, and by then it’d be up the coast anyhow. It’s maybe an hour or two before you’ll start to feel the effects of the recurve, and you’re not gonna get anything worse in the meantime. In fact, you’re coming up on a break in the feeder bands, so even the rain should taper off soon.”

“Really? Don’t shit me, now.”

“No, really. Hold for about another hour, then you’ll start seeing sunshine. Once you see sunshine, get your people out to the pad and resume the countdown!”

“Done!”


The pad flow workers looked up as a shaft of sunlight cut through the murk of the clouds. In the northeast, a patch of blue sky could just be seen.

“Huh. That . . . looks good.”

“Yeah. Hey, Jim. How’s the clock?”

“Eh. We’re gettin’ tight, Mike. If we resume the count right now, we can maybe, maybe launch it just in time to catch up.”

Just then, the loudspeakers across the center annunciated. The voice was Adams’.

ATTENTION. ATTENTION. HURRICANE GERTIE HAS BEGUN TO RECURVE. LAUNCH HOLD LIFTS IN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. REPEAT, WE RESUME THE COUNT IN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. PLEASE MAN YOUR STATIONS AND PREPARE FOR LAUNCH IN TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS, THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES.

Cheers could be heard over most of the launch facility.

He said, “And tell those probe monkeys there’s no more time. If they find more sensors, they’ll have to use them on the next mission. It’s done.”


Unfortunately, their difficulties weren’t over.

Cryogenic fuel could create problems that most people never thought about when they fueled their own vehicles. Liquid oxygen, aka LOX, was tanked in the SHRUGS at a pressurized –340°F. This tended to cause objects in contact with it, such as pipes, valves, and such, to shrink by an amount determined by the thermal properties of the materials of which they were manufactured. This could, in turn, cause leaks, if adjacent components didn’t shrink at the same rate. The historic STS-35 mission teams could attest to that.

So when a LOX spill occurred on the pad, the area had to be evacuated and tanking stopped while the LOX evaporated and all the components came to a thermal equilibrium. That meant an unanticipated launch hold. And that shoved the launch time scant minutes past what JPL considered the drop-dead end of the launch window.


“It’s got to be filled, and it’s got to be filled on time,” Adams pressed on the horn to the gantry phone system from the launch director’s console.

“There’s a limit on venting versus filling, condensing versus just wasting LOX, Pete,” Crooks pointed out, as work continued behind him on the bird. “This is literally as fast as we can possibly do it. Remember when Scotty said he couldn’t change the laws of physics?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, well, we already found you a loophole. But goddamn, it’s going to be tight.”

“Okay . . . can we overlap processes on the countdown?”

“We already are.”

“Can we overlap anything else? Shave off seconds?” They were staring at the ragged edge of the launch window. Anything would help.

“No, that’s about the size of it, Pete. I’m sorry. We’re doing the best we can.”

“I know. I’m sorry, too. We’re just that little bit behind from the initial hookup problems, the pad leak, never mind the damn hurricane, and—”

“You’re worried we’re gonna miss the launch window.”

“Yeah. It’s already closing hard. This target isn’t like the usual shit where we were going to the Station or something, and could just stand down and recycle for the next day or two.”

“I’ll let the guys know to push everything as tight as they can get it,” Crooks offered. “That’s about all we can do.”

“I hope it’ll be enough,” Adams said.


“That’s it, and there’s the final count . . . ” the ground launch sequence engineer murmured from his console in launch control.

No one was sitting; the panoramic window overlooking the launch pads—the storm shutters having been removed some six hours before—showed launch literally in the last fifteen seconds of the window. Now they had to hope JPL’s calculations were correct, or slightly favorable.

“Get on the horn and get the word out,” Adams barked. “And tell the king to look north.”

The control room scrambled to obey.


The disembodied voice sounded over the video broadcast of the night launch. It was also being transmitted on shortwave and AM. Who would see the video was uncertain. However . . . 

The sky lit from horizon to horizon with an orange glare. The rocket rose on a column of liquid golden fire pouring onto the ground, even as a pure white plume of steam shot out to the side, shining in the light of the launch. The ground shook as it had before, and might again.

“ . . . And here we have a pillar of fire lighting up the night sky over the Kennedy Space Center. It should be visible to observers throughout the Florida peninsula and up into Georgia, possibly even the Carolinas, all along the East Coast. The human race has reclaimed our planet from disaster. And more importantly, we are now reclaiming space.

“This is Canaveral Launch Control.”


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