The following morning I made my way down to Admiralty for the briefing. I wasn’t sure why I was involved at all, save for the fact that I’d been the only pilot to return. I had nothing else meaningful to contribute, but Willard and Grealish wanted me there, so who was I to argue?
I’d intended to leave Libby asleep in the room. It still felt a little strange having another woman in my bed, but she seemed totally at home with it. I tried not to wake her up, but she opened a bleary eye as I poured myself a coffee. “You got an early flight?”
“Just a briefing. No idea if we’re going out today.”
“Something to do with the Pilgrim being shot down?”
“It wasn’t shot down. It was hit, and unable to proceed into orbit.”
“Okay. So shot down then.”
“How do you even know about that?” I asked, perplexed.
“Everyone’s talking about it. Aoife messaged me to ask if you were okay. Why is she asking if you’re okay?”
“Long story, Lib. I have to go. Enjoy your first day back at work.” I was about to walk out when she sprang out of bed, flung her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, Jax,” she said, simply, before walking off to the shower.
I walked across the grounds in the muted light of the EM glass. We were in Earth’s shadow at the moment, so it was darker than normal. I strayed off the main road onto one of the woodland paths. The needles of the tall junipers dampened my footsteps as I trudged wearily to the Great Wall. The lake on my right looked dark and ominous in the half light, with small ripples breaking the surface. I crossed an inlet stream and re-joined the main footpath, aiming for the nearest mag-lift.
My brain was waking up and trying to make sense of everything I’d heard yesterday. Sara Hennessey had been the object of our suspicions ever since Laura died, so to discover that she was actively working against the mole to keep Amanda and I hidden and safe came as somewhat of a surprise.
I was lost in my thoughts for a moment and moving on autopilot, but as the mag-lift doors opened into the Opps centre the internal lights shook me from my reverie. I grabbed a coffee from the pot in the corner and made my way to the end of the corridor, and over to the mag-lift into Admiralty. There was a buzz of activity on the floor as I exited and turned left towards the conference room, but Addison cornered me.
“Morning, Jaxon. We’re not in the conference room today. Follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the War Room,” he replied.
“Sounds serious. Things escalating?”
“No idea. I guess we’ll find out shortly.”
We walked to the end of another corridor, where two marines stood guard by double doors. They escorted us through scanners over to our right, and then through an airlock into another corridor.
“Why did we just go through an airlock, Addison? What the fuck is this place?”
“The War Room has its own eco-system. The command hierarchy can detach from the primary structure within this complex, and retain control of the station remotely, should the need arise.”
“Should the need arise? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just precautionary, Jax. We’ve been at war with the AoG for a long time, however suppressed the media coverage has been. Berty is a lifeboat, with seven million people on board. It needs a command structure and a governing body. The War Room is just a last resort should the station come under attack.”
I was about to press him further when we stepped into an impressive room with high ceilings – more of a hall, really, with its own spherical exoskeleton. There must have been a hundred people in here. A mixture of civilian and military personnel, all stationed at terminals and desks that filled two-thirds of the space. At the far end was a conference room with floor to ceiling EM glass, and that was our destination.
“Why am I here, Addison? This is well above my station. I’m just a pilot, remember?”
“Oh, come on, Jaxon. We both know you’re working counter-intel. You’ve been caught up in this at every step. You and I were the only ones to return from the mission to resupply. That’s why we’re here, but I expect you to know more about what’s really happening than I do.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I opted to say nothing. The doors slid open as we approached, and a marine captain ushered us to our seats, two-thirds down the table. Over the course of five minutes, everyone that was at the previous meeting entered the room, along with a few that weren’t.
Admiral Willard entered, and everyone stood up. He waved a hand lazily, indicating we should sit, and lowered his gigantic frame into a protesting chair at the head of the table. Two marines closed the outer doors and then tapped on a control panel, which misted the internal glass until it was opaque and white.
Willard nodded at General Lavigne, who stood up and addressed the room.
“Good morning. As you are all aware, yesterday the Nova Pilgrim was ambushed and forced back to Cheltenham, along with five Sigmas and their pilots. We received a communique from the Opps Centre at Compression Echo, shortly after 10pm last night. They are threatening to destroy the Pilgrim and its cargo, and the remaining stocks of EM glass currently being stored at Shipyard Berkley.”
He paused for a moment and looked at the assembled personnel. “We have one-hundred-and-fourteen damaged EM panels on Globe 10, and four damaged panels elsewhere because of the gravity system outage and subsequent rotation hold. That’s after we have depleted our own inventory and repaired the most compromised panels on the structure. So, we need that cargo.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“They are the Government of the United Coalition of Britain,” replied General Lavigne. “They are requesting the further evacuation of six-hundred officials and military personnel, all of whom were supposed to be on this vessel, anyway.”
“Sounds like a fair trade, Sir,” said Addison.
The general nodded. “On balance, it does, but we have been unable to verify the message from official channels, which means it could also be a ruse to bring AoG agents on board, or an explosive device capable of ending our mission.”
There was an outbreak of chatter around the table.
“Settle down, please,” barked Admiral Willard. “Continue, General.”
“We have no choice but to accept their terms at face value, but we need an alternate plan once the Pilgrim is in low orbit.” He turned to face the wall of holloscreens to the right side of the conference table. The full-wall display showed the Bertram orbiting Earth in real time, and the location of Compression Echo.
“We need to execute this plan precisely, in stages. The first stage will be to send seventy percent of our remaining Sigma fleet to Cheltenham, as a protective escort for the Pilgrim, and a visible deterrent to the CAF. The fleet will affect re-entry over the Atlantic, four-hundred kilometres west of Reykjavik, heading south before turning east towards the Irish Sea. At this point, the majority will spiral up to take positions, whilst seven Sigmas stay low until they land at Echo and surround the Pilgrim.”
“Seven, Sir?” came the response from a man in BRAF uniform sat opposite Addison.
General Lavigne nodded. “The launch bay at Echo can hold a maximum of twelve Sigmas alongside the Pilgrim. There are five already down there, so the most we can send is seven. The remaining squadrons will form a perimeter around Cheltenham at five and fifteen miles, staggered at altitudes of one thousand, five thousand and ten thousand metres.”
“What about the remaining Sigmas on the Bertram?”
Admiral Willard spoke. “They will mobilise and rotate around the Bertram at a distance of fifty kilometres.”
Lavigne pressed a corner of his hollotab and drew everyone’s attention back to the screen wall. The display changed to show a closer view of Echo with the Sigmas surrounding it. There must have been three hundred Sigmas on the screen, all rotating the site at different altitudes and distances. It was a display of force that I could barely comprehend.
“Two of the seven Sigmas will carry Navy pilots to command the Pilgrim as a precaution. We don’t know the condition of the personnel that were forced to return to Echo yesterday after they hit the Pilgrim. The other five will carry senior BRMC commandos, whose job it is to confirm the payload on the Pilgrim. We will equip them with scanners and they’ll sweep the shuttle for explosives and incendiaries prior to the evacuation.”
“If the all-clear is given, the six hundred people listed in the communique will board the Pilgrim and once this is complete, the shuttle will ascend with the Sigmas and join the fleet who will escort them to low earth orbit, just above the Kármán line at one-hundred kilometres.”
The Kármán Line was an attempt to define where Earth’s atmosphere ended and outer space began. It was the altitude at which a satellite would decay before completing a single orbit, due to the sudden increase in atmosphere.
“And if the all-clear is not given?” I asked.
“Then, Lieutenant, we will take it by force. I will ask the fleet to fire upon the structures surrounding the launch bay, whilst the commandos take control of the Pilgrim and allow the navy pilots to launch.” He paused.
Admiral Willard chose this moment to speak. “We have requested that the Pilgrim remain empty of personnel until we can inspect it, and that the shuttle and Sigma pilots be waiting for us by their ships as we arrive, but these requests have gone unanswered.”
“How do we know the Pilgrim is flight worthy?” asked Addison.
“We don’t,” replied Willard, “but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have repaired it. Either their demands are genuine, and this mission turns out to be nothing more than a rescue mission and a further evacuation of personnel, or the Pilgrim is a trojan horse filled with god-knows-what, designed to incapacitate the Bertram and effectively end our mission. Either way, they need a working shuttle, so we are continuing on the assumption that they’ve carried out the repairs and checked the shuttle for departure.”
“Why don’t they just fill the shuttle with the people on the list and take off?” I asked. “Why wait for us to come down there?”
“This is the question that has kept us awake all night, Lieutenant. Either the Navy pilots are incapacitated – unlikely, given that they haven’t requested more pilots, or there is a wider plot that we are yet to establish. Or they realise that any approach made to the Bertram would be dangerous, given the circumstances. The launch might even be treacherous, with other aircraft patrolling that we’re not aware of. We simply don’t know.”
There was a moment of silence around the table. The concern was palpable. Every person present in that room understood the importance of the retrieval of the Pilgrim, but this mission was not straightforward.
General Lavigne walked over to the holloscreen wall, and pointed at Echo as it slowly rotated to the opposite side of Earth, relative to the Bertram. “We cannot fail this first stage of the rescue, which is why we are taking such a vast fleet with us. We need a show of strength, long enough to give them pause whilst we affect the rescue of our men and women pilots, and the precious cargo stored inside the Pilgrim. Globe 10 is damaged. We have switched off the atmospheric systems inside and everyone working on it is doing so in pressurised suits with their own oxygen supply, because continued pressure will eventually lead to a hull breach that will cause irreparable damage to this station.”
“Can we repair it in time for our orbital breakaway, General?” asked an older woman in civilian attire, sitting next to Grealish, who had been unusually quiet.
“Probably not,” replied Lavigne, “but our engineers have assessed the damage and agree that we can continue repairs once we are free of Earth’s gravity. As long as we can seal the hull prior to the breakaway date, we can replace the EM panels in the following days. The four hull panels damaged on Globes 11, 9, 8 and 6 must be repaired prior to breakaway though, as these are at critical structural points of the station and the panels are on board the Pilgrim. We cannot evacuate these globes.”
So there was damaged to Globe 11. It made sense, I suppose. Debris from 10 would naturally float into the path of 11 as a consequence of the station's movement. Addison and I exchanged looks. ‘Critical structural points’ didn’t sound good. I was glad I didn’t live on any of those globes. Oh, wait…
Addison looked at Lavigne. “Okay, so assuming everything goes to plan and we extricate the Pilgrim from Earth to low-earth orbit, what’s next, Sir?”
Lavigne looked uncomfortable. He walked back to the table, and leaned over with both hands on the table-top to look around the room. “This is where it gets complicated.”
He lowered himself back into his seat. “At this stage we will have a shuttle with six-hundred souls on board, and an unknown payload. The scanners we’re sending in with the Marines are handheld and designed only for a minimally penetrative scan to identify any obvious risk items in the hold. They can detect explosives and incendiaries, but there are hundreds of tons of cargo in that hold and many opportunities to hide things that may be harmful.”
He sprang back to his feet and walked back to the holloscreen, swiped across and pulled up a scale diagram of the Nova Pilgrim.
“There are several access doors to the shuttle. Eight on the port side of the upper deck and eight on the starboard side, plus four on either side of decks two and three, two on either side of the cargo hold, and the main cargo bay door. As most of you will know, when loading personnel we usually marshal everyone up the cargo ramp and use the internal stairs and corridors to reach the upper decks. What we are planning to do is launch the Nova Palmer and bring her alongside the Pilgrim, and dock with her, to affect the transfer of all passengers. The Palmer will have full body scanners at the entrance to check every individual as they enter.”
“I thought the Palmer was out of service,” I said, and then remembering my place, added, “Sir.”
A man in navy uniform to the right of Lavigne’s empty chair shook his head. He looked at Lavigne. “If I may, Sir?”
Lavigne nodded. “Go ahead, Captain.”
The navy captain looked back at me. “The Nova Palmer cannot enter Earth’s atmosphere due to damage to the EM shield generators sustained whilst docking. Previous damage to the hull and flight systems has been repaired. Operationally, it’s perfectly functional.”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Addison, uncharacteristically. He wasn’t the only one that looked deflated by this news.
“Quite,” replied Lavigne. “I cannot understate how dangerous this will be without shields. The Pilgrim will need to power its shields down, to enable docking and cannot power up until the two craft separate.”
“That being said,” continued Lavigne, “we will have a squadron of Sigmas form up with shields deployed behind the two shuttles to protect them from any debris or stray meteors. This is why we need to do it in low-earth orbit. The debris floating around at that altitude is travelling far slower than the debris at the altitude of the Bertram, so whilst there’s more of it, it’s less lethal.”
There were some nods around the table, but still one or two looks of concern.
“Sir?” A woman at the far end of the table wearing BRAF fatigues raised her hand.
“Wing Commander Nevis?” came the reply.
“CAF, ICP and Allied EU Guardians are capable of low-earth orbit, Sir. As are US ICP Pegasus Fighters.”
“Yes, they are, and that’s what makes this mission so difficult. We don’t know whether to expect a confrontation, and there’s a lot of sky for pursuit.” He paused for effect. “But, they cannot penetrate the Mesosphere significantly as they do not have the shield capability or the airframe density for re-entry, which is why it is essential that we reach a minimum altitude of one-hundred kilometres. They can follow us up, but any attempt to do so would be a suicide mission. Three-to-four minutes is all we need. Not only are they out of weapons range at this point, but the moment we break the stratosphere at fifty kilometres, we will outrun them.”
“Sir,” I spoke, “why would they engage us if the plan is to repatriate six-hundred top-brass? Or even if the plan is to destroy the Bertram. Surely, their best course of action is to make our retreat easy and safe?”
“That’s true, Lieutenant, but we cannot rule out the possibility of attacks from other regions, or even rebel units inside the Coalition. We have no idea of the presiding sentiment amongst the military brass of the US, Brazil or AEU countries. Our only point of contact has been with the government of UCoB. We’re potentially repatriating six hundred from Cheltenham. There were two million left behind, so today’s rescue mission is little more than a token gesture.”
You could hear an ant fart. The stunned silence seemed to engulf the room.
“Now comes the challenging part,” said Lavigne, moving across the holloscreen wall towards the far end of the table. All eyes followed him. “Because of the risk to life by devices stowed within the Pilgrim’s cargo, we are going to unload the EM panels outside of Globe 10 while it is depressurised, at a distance of one kilometre, inside the shields. Any explosion that may occur will be far enough away in the vacuum of space, that no further damage will arise to the Bertram except from potential debris. Each crate of panels will be opened in the cargo bay, inspected, and then towed from the hold by Sigma and deposited on the Palmer, which will hold station half a kilometre away. We have the equipment to do it, but it will be time consuming and dangerous. Once the Palmer has a crate on board, they will dock in the forward bay of Globe 10, where unloading will begin. Each crate holds ten panels, and there are twenty crates.”
“And once that’s done, what happens to the Pilgrim?” asked Addison.
The general sighed and shook his head. “We’ll enter the cargo hold with a team of inspectors who will study every inch of the vessel, looking for anything that may harm the Bertram. If they find nothing, then the Pilgrim will routinely dock in Globe 10, and assist with repairs as necessary.”
“And if they find something?”
“They’ll scuttle the Pilgrim.”