Orbital Cloud Read online

  “I’ll be working on advertising until the evening,” she said. “I think we should be able to increase AdSense purchases by at least 2 percent.”

  “Thanks. For everything. I’ll get the article up this evening. Will you be at Fool’s Launchpad all day?”

  “Until nightfall.” Akari swept the gadgets on her desk into her backpack and stood up. “All right, talk to you again this evening. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  She turned toward the round table, Afro swaying. The AMX was still in progress.

  “Watanabe-san,” she called. Her voice cut through the conversation at the table, bringing it sharply to a halt. “That job from yesterday, fixing the payment code for Pocket Folder? I took a look, but what you’ve got so far is no good. Credit card security codes are being stored in the database.”

  “You mean you’re not supposed to do that?” said Watanabe. “I thought that’s what VisGen did.”

  Akari sighed and shook her head. “Those big companies put hundreds of millions into settlement compliance. Do you have any idea how much it costs to reach PCI Level 1? Same goes for VisGen. Do you read Pat’s blog? That’s where the two hundred million they raised in their first stage went—all of it.”

  Mary stared at Akari, face stiffly composed. So did the other members. Akari continued, showing no sign of noticing the subzero atmosphere in the room. “I rewrote it to require that the codes be entered for each settlement event. If that’s okay with you, I can deliver it right away.”

  “Okay,” said Watanabe after a brief pause. “Can I have your invoice?”

  “Payment at month’s end, right?” Akari said. “I’ll send it over.” To the rest of the group, she added, “Let me know if you need any coding help, everyone. I still have plenty of free time this month.”

  None of the web designers at Fool’s Launchpad were any good at IT engineering, and Akari made her money by compensating for this weakness. Kazumi had no idea why she bothered with Meteor News, which turned no profit at all.

  No use worrying about that now, though—it was time to get to work on today’s news. As for SAFIR 3’s predicted location … maybe he’d just put up the TLEs from STRATCOM as they were.

  Thu, 10 Dec 2020, 17:50 -0700 (2020-12-11T00:50 GMT)

  Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs

  Colonel Claude Lintz, chief of Orbital Surveillance at NORAD, had been toying with the object for some time before he finally put it on his head. A conical red cap with white fur trim and a pom-pom at the tip. A Santa hat, in other words.

  Lintz peered at his reflection in one of the jet-black displays. The cheap novelty item went oddly well with his somewhat too ruddy complexion. It had been his second in command, Major Sylvester Fernandez, who had brought him the hat, and he could see now why Sylvester had been delighted enough by the sight of him wearing it to applaud. Fifty-nine years old and overweight, Lintz was one snowy white beard away from being the spitting image of Santa Claus himself.

  Scowling, Lintz pulled off the hat and tossed it into the cardboard box beside his desk. The hat been issued to Orbital Surveillance as the “equipment” they would need for NORAD’s best-known annual event, only days away now: NORAD Tracks Santa. There, this military organization would “track” Santa’s flight path across the North American continent for the benefit of any children who cared to follow along.

  Begun in 1955, NORAD Tracks Santa had grown more extravagant each year and was now seen as one of their most important annual events. There was a website, of course, and also apps for smartphones and tablets that received tracking information in real time. A thousand volunteers were allowed into the base to help manage groups of visiting children. For NORAD, the exercise was an excellent opportunity to showcase to the world their seamless surveillance net that covered all of North America. Lintz had been tracking Santa for forty years now, never taking a single Christmas vacation, and knew the rationale behind it all—but this new policy requiring personnel to wear the hats during their video calls was, he felt, a bit much.

  True, it was precisely the spectacle of stony-faced men saying things like “Information from Oregon site places Santa over Vancouver moving at Mach 2, over” that convinced children Santa was real. But did the public also recognize that under their funny hats the personnel involved were professional members of the armed forces?

  Pushing the issue of the hat out of his mind, Lintz turned to the task at hand. His office had received twelve videos to play on Christmas Eve from Larry Russell, their CG producer in Portland, and it was Lintz’s job to review them.

  The quality of the videos was exceptional. There was Santa on his sleigh, riding in to the sound of jingle bells from the east. The NORAD F-22 squadron’s scramble to intercept this “airspace incursion” had been filmed right at Peterson Base. This real footage had then been masterfully combined with computer graphics.

  Lintz watched as the F-22 pilot who had made visual confirmation of Santa performed a low-speed barrel roll around his sleigh and reported that the jolly old elf’s mission was now a Santa-NORAD joint operation. Lintz whistled in approval at the relatively slow aerial acrobatics, difficult to pull off in previous-generation aircraft without stalling. Sylvester had selected the pilot personally: Second Lieutenant Madu Abbot, a promising young woman of Indian extraction. Despite her youth, there was no better F-22 pilot in the whole of US Northern Command.

  On the screen, Santa paused in his work of distributing presents to snowy US and Canadian cities and looked up at the night sky. Then he reached under his seat and took out a helmet with two hoses attached.

  Lintz’s chair creaked as he leaned in closer and muttered to himself, “You’re up, old man.”

  Lintz would have his staff check Santa’s exploits within the atmosphere. The F-22 acrobatics in particular were sure to receive close attention from Sylvester, an ex-pilot himself. But he wasn’t delegating space to anyone. He had been involved in space surveillance at NORAD since joining the air force at the height of the Cold War in 1980. This part of his job he yielded to nobody.

  The reindeer, now snorting inside airtight helmets that Santa had put over their heads, waved farewell to their air force escort with their front hooves, then kicked off into outer space. Lintz watched the map and velocity data displayed beside the animation closely.

  The sleigh’s velocity increased with each kick of the reindeers’ legs. One kilometer per second, two, three … The once-flat horizon gradually curved down at the edges, and more stars appeared in the sky above. Lintz was gratified to see that the twinkling of the stars had subsided too. His repeated warnings at the storyboard phase had had their desired effect. Even in a video starring Santa Claus, there were some things he insisted on getting right.

  Just as Santa’s sleigh reached 7.6 kilometers per second, its target came into view—the International Space Station—looking like a giant dragonfly with its great solar panels spread wide.

  The sleigh performed a series of minor course corrections to get the ISS lined up directly in front of it, then gracefully swung forward and over it.

  Lintz grunted with approval. “I see you did your homework, Larry.”

  Santa’s sleigh had just performed the same maneuver the Russian spacecraft Soyuz used to dock with the ISS. It was the sort of unnatural-looking move that only made sense in orbit, but the video made it entertaining. Even the most demanding space fans would surely be satisfied.

  The ISS scene would be the highlight of NORAD Tracks Santa in 2020. Santa was stopping off there for the benefit of one Judy Smark, whose father Ronnie had made them the first tourists in space. In the video, Judy was a little girl with both palms pressed to the cupola window as she watched the sleigh dock. Her father, fierce eyed and goateed, stood beside her with one hand on her shoulder.

  “A bit overdone there,” Lintz murmured to himself.

  The girl on the screen looked t
en at most, but Judy Smark was twenty-eight. Lintz was still wondering whether it would be out of line to suggest a change there when he heard someone speak to him.

  “Colonel Lintz, sir, may I have a moment of your time?”

  Lintz turned his head to see a dark-complexioned serviceman standing just outside his office. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you there. You should have just come in. I have an open-door policy.”

  Lintz glanced down at his visitor’s name tag: d. freeman, staff sergeant. What was Freeman’s first name again?

  He noticed a message blinking at the corner of his display. His aide, Captain Jasmine Harrison, had sent him a précis of his visitor’s organizational affiliation and background. Orbital Surveillance wasn’t as big as it had once been, but it was still home to over two hundred personnel. Back when they had been watching Soviet missiles and bombers from under Cheyenne Mountain, Lintz had known all of his coworkers, but with all the reassignments and restructuring these days, that was no longer possible. His advancing age didn’t help either. Jasmine’s assistance was invaluable.

  His visitor, he read, was one Daryl Freeman, staff sergeant. Indonesian born, Catholic, entered the country five years ago on a student visa. An engineer who’d signed up hoping to earn citizenship and this year had finally been assigned to a long-requested post at NORAD.

  “Just the man I wanted to see, in fact,” said Lintz, motioning Freeman in. Noting with satisfaction his visitor’s consternation, Lintz clicked the link in Jasmine’s message to display Freeman’s current orders. It seemed he was working under Sylvester, putting together a report on the ASM-140, an experimental antisatellite weapon currently being developed. “How’s that ASM-140 coming along? Bring me up to speed, um … Daryl.”

  Daryl straightened his back hurriedly and saluted. Lintz smiled to himself. These were all techniques he’d learned in a seminar the air force had held for administrators nearing the end of their careers. They were what allowed him to maintain an open-door policy despite being bad with names.

  First, always call people by their first names. It inspired loyalty and caught people used to a more formal organizational structure off guard. Second, be the first to ask a question. This was a way of seizing the initiative.

  “The project is proceeding as planned, sir,” Freeman said. “We have received a delivery of three ASM-140s from Lockheed and successfully installed a fire control system obtained from the Smithsonian into that F-15C you claimed for us just before it was due to be scrapped. The firing test should take place as scheduled on week 50.”

  As he listened, Lintz recalled the details of the project. The Chinese space station Tiangong-2, operational since 2017, and the stream of low-cost miniature satellites launched every time a taikonaut stayed there were a serious headache for the United States. Equipped with high-definition cameras so cheap they were practically disposable, the satellites were an attempt to surpass the surveillance net the Americans had already built in quantity if not quality.

  The US had decided it needed to demonstrate its ability to respond meaningfully to this provocation. Asked to come up with a proposal, Lintz had unearthed an old idea from the days of the Strategic Defense Initiative: “the flying tomato can.”

  The design was simple. A missile with homing capabilities was attached to the outside of an F-15 fighter and carried high enough to render atmospheric effects negligible. Once launched, it flew toward the satellite that had been designated as its target for a direct hit. Much cheaper than ground-based ASAT weaponry, unaffected by weather conditions, and with a very rapid launch process, the idea had many advantages. It had been shelved for a range of reasons, but now that it had been recognized as a possible solution to the problem with China, NORAD’s proposal to revive it had been taken up, and development was under way. Destroying objects in orbit was forbidden by the guidelines of the UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, but it would be useful as a deterrent.

  Lintz had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the planning and development of this new weapon and was now facing the problem of securing personnel. The F-15C was already being phased out, so no young pilots held a license for it, and none seemed interested in obtaining one either. Whether his superiors were aware of these issues or not Lintz didn’t know, but either way, they seemed to have even higher hopes for the ASM than Lintz did. Wherever the plans for the antisatellite exercise known as “Seed Pod” had come from, it had been made clear to him that he was to implement them as soon as possible.

  “Major Fernandez brought me that reassignment petition for your project,” said Lintz. “What came of that? I recall signing it.”

  “Thanks to you, sir, USNORTHCOM has approved Captain Ricky McGillis’s transfer to NORAD as requested. I understand that the captain is looking forward to flying an F-15C again.”

  Satisfied that the report matched what he remembered, Lintz folded his hands over his stomach. “Excellent,” he said. “Now, how can I help you today, Sergeant?” Glancing at the monitor again, he realized that he’d missed the final part of Jasmine’s message: SAFIR orbit surveillance request. So Freeman wasn’t here about the ASM-140 at all.

  “As it happens, sir, I am not here concerning the ASM-140. I came to request your assistance with SAFIR 3.”

  Lintz smiled broadly. He was always ready to talk about objects in orbit.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” he said. “Take a seat if you like.”

  Freeman refrained from sitting on the sofa, but he did shift his center of gravity and settle into a more relaxed posture.

  “I want to use NORAD facilities to keep tabs on the second stage of the SAFIR 3 rocket launched from Iran last week, sir,” he said. “I’m sure you remember the launch.”

  “Indeed, I do,” said Lintz. “Licensed production of the DPRK’s Taepodong. Parked in orbit at 250 km, as I recall. Not a bad design at all. What about it?”

  “I discovered today that its orbit is gradually flattening out, sir,” Freeman said, making a sideways C with the thumb and index finger of his left hand and letting it grow longer and narrower.

  “Atmospheric effects? No, that wouldn’t make sense …”

  “No, sir. I ruled out the effects of the upper atmosphere. And there’s another strange thing about it. According to the TLEs from STRATCOM, SAFIR 3’s second stage—designation ‘SAFIR 3 R/B’—is actually gaining altitude.”

  “That’s impossible. An error in the TLEs?”

  Freeman nodded. “Possibly, sir,” he said. A rocket shell that had spent all its fuel simply did not gain altitude. “But this is STRATCOM data, so I don’t think it could be a simple mistake. I would like to ask for your permission to use NORAD’s radar for further observation.”

  Lintz glanced at the calendar on his office wall. A thick line ran from the sixteenth of December—next Wednesday—through to Christmas. Santa-tracking season wasn’t the best timing for an unscheduled surveillance operation.

  “How long do you plan to observe SAFIR’s stage 2 for? And on what timetable?”

  Freeman shifted his gaze elsewhere and moved his lips soundlessly for a few moments before responding, “For one week, sir.”

  Lintz was satisfied by the pause. Freeman had obviously been calculating when SAFIR 3’s second stage orbit would take it over North American airspace. The next thing he said confirmed it.

  “SAFIR 3 R/B’s orbital angle is currently seventy-five degrees. We could track it with radar during the day, but I was hoping to use the Oregon site by night to minimize the disruption.”

  Lintz was about to grant him permission but stopped himself just in time. He’d delegated the right to decide on surveillance targets to Freeman’s superior, Sylvester. It would be bad form not to at least involve him in this decision. “Has the major approved your proposal?” he asked instead.

  “I requested permission, sir,” said Freeman, looking uncomfortable,
“but as I did not receive a reply from the major, I took the liberty of escalating the matter to you directly.”

  That explained it. Sylvester was a superb administrator, but as an ex-pilot, space wasn’t his field of expertise. He probably didn’t realize how unusual it was for a rocket body to gain altitude. In that respect he was an excellent fit for the NORAD of today, which had become far more concerned with airborne terrorism than ICBMs since the events of 9/11.

  “I see,” Lintz said finally. “I imagine it failed to, ahem, capture his interest.”

  As the two men shared a conspiratorial smile, a long arm reached into Lintz’s office to rap on the open door. Speak of the devil.

  Sylvester strode in briskly, registered Freeman’s presence, and smiled. “Sergeant Freeman,” he said. “Just the man I wanted to see. I need you in Hanger 5. The high-altitude pressure suits have arrived. McGillis’s fitting can wait until tomorrow, but I want you to ask the maintenance team to get working on the alignment with the ejection seat today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sylvester turned to Lintz with a rueful smile, knowing that the colonel would still be stuck on the mention of high-pressure suits. “Hadn’t you heard, Colonel?” he asked. “They’re making us put the F-15 pilot in a pressure suit to carry the ASM-140 up there. It’s all in Sergeant Freeman’s report.”

  “What do they need a thing like that for? A regular pilot’s suit was enough in ’85. Did the stratosphere depressurize at some point in the past thirty years?”

  Sylvester sighed. “Sergeant,” he said. “Explain it to the colonel.”

  “Yes, sir,” Freeman replied, and turned to face Lintz. “Sir, as you observe, the pressure in the stratosphere has not changed in the past thirty years. Neither has the aircraft lost integrity nor the human body grown weaker. What has changed is air force regulations.”