Eagle Station

“First, we’re going to cut the S-29’s crew from the normal complement of five to just two — a pilot and a weapons and systems specialist,” Brad said. On-screen, the S-29B schematic showed the whole aft cabin emptied of its crew workstations, acceleration couches, and other equipment and stripped down to bare metal. “In addition, we’ll need to remove all four defensive microwave emitters.” Again, the schematic changed — now visually deleting the two wingtip microwave pods, the third pod mounted on top of the forward fuselage, and the last emitter set below the S-29’s aft fuselage.

“What does that gain you?” one of the Space Force staff officers asked curiously.

Brad could feel the atmosphere in the hangar start to shift. He could tell that many of those who’d at first thought the idea of using a spaceplane for this mission was crazy were beginning to wonder if they might have been wrong. “Cutting the crew size and stripping out the microwave pods gets us just enough mass and cubic capacity for the additional life-support and stellar navigation gear we need to make a long-range, deep-space mission feasible.”

He continued. “Running through all the numbers, the Shadow’s five LPDRS engines, firing in pure rocket mode, are powerful enough to make a translunar injection burn from Earth orbit possible — as long as the spaceplane is fully fueled before departure.”

Another of Kelleher’s staff officers raised a hand. “But that’ll pretty much leave the S-29 with dry fuel tanks,” she pointed out. “So you get only one pass across the far side before using the moon’s gravity to slingshot you back toward Earth on a free-return trajectory. That’s a serious limitation for any reconnaissance mission, especially if the situation turns hot and the enemy starts shooting.”

“No doubt about it,” Brad agreed. He smiled. “Pretty early on in our sims, we identified the fuel constraint as a serious operational problem. Fortunately, we’ve come up with a solution for that. Granted, the maneuvers required are a little tricky, but they’re not beyond the capabilities of a good pilot.”

Speaking carefully, he outlined this revolutionary element of their mission plan. Behind him, the screens depicted the necessary spacecraft modifications, timing, and anticipated maneuvers in intricate detail. When he finished, you could practically hear a pin drop across the hangar.

From near the back row, Colonel Miller broke the silence. “You know, Brad, that’s really fucking clever.”

“Thanks, Dusty,” Brad acknowledged with a grin.

“It’s also the kind of cockeyed scheme that only someone who’s basically batshit crazy would even think of in the first place,” the S-29B pilot went on.

“Maybe so,” Brad allowed. He shrugged stubbornly. “But it will work.”

Miller nodded. “Oh, no doubt about that.” He grinned back at the younger man. “I just wanted to go on record with my assessment of your fundamental mental health.”

Smiling broadly himself, Brad waited for the subsequent laughter to die down before picking up the threads of his briefing. Miller’s quip had broken a lot of the remaining tension.

Another Space Force staffer asked a question: “Without its defensive microwave emitters, won’t the Shadow be more vulnerable to enemy attack?”

Nadia stepped up to the lectern to answer this one. While Brad, Boomer, and Jason Richter worked through orbital mechanics and life-support problems, she’d put in a lot of time analyzing the military aspects of their proposed mission. “That is true only if the Russians and Chinese are using modified air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles as their weapons against targets in lunar orbit. We consider that highly unlikely.”

“Why is that?” President Farrell asked.

“Because, given the costs involved in ferrying payload mass from the earth to the moon, it would be remarkably inefficient to rely on relatively bulky, single-use missiles,” she explained.

The president’s eyes narrowed. “Then what do you think we’re facing?”

“Quite probably a version of the same Russian-designed plasma rail gun we captured on Mars One,” Nadia told him.

And just that quickly, Brad sensed the tension in the room return to its previous high pitch.

“Jesus,” Farrell muttered. “Powered by what? Some kind of solar array? With battery backups?”

Now it was Jason Richter’s turn to answer a question. “No, sir. My guess is they’ve also developed a smaller version of their helium-3 fusion reactor. My engineering teams don’t see any technical hurdles that would prevent the Russians from scaling down that ten-megawatt reactor they built for Mars One.” He shrugged. “A smaller reactor, somewhere on the order of one or two megawatts, would only weigh one or two tons. That’s well within the payload capacity of one of those Chinese cargo landers. And having that much power available would be very useful for any lunar base.”