Strike Force

“Yes, sir.” There was only a slight hesitation as Boomer considered whether or not to use his prerogative and not do this, but he decided that the required phase of this flight had been accomplished — if the general became incapacitated, it wouldn’t affect mission completion. Besides, what aviator wouldn’t want to fly into orbit if he had the chance? “Ready when you are, General,” Noble responded. “Let me make a few changes to the flight plan and get them entered into the computer…” It took only a few minutes, with Patrick carefully monitoring Boomer’s inputs and the computer’s responses. “Done. Isn’t there anyone you need to call first? Don’t we need to get permission from someone?”

“Nope. Let’s do it.”

“You got it, sir. I’ve got computer control and engine monitoring.”

“I’ve got the aircraft.”

“You got the leopards. Ready anytime you are.”

“Here we go.” Patrick pressed the voice-command button: “Computer, orbital burn.”

“Ready for orbital burn, stop orbital burn,” the computer responded. “LPDRS engines reporting ready…engines firing in three, two, one, now.”

Patrick had steeled himself for the push, but he never expected the punch he received as the high-tech rocket engines fired off. Because there was less atmosphere to let airspeed build up more gradually as before, the shove was ten times worse than takeoff. Patrick used every ounce of strength he possessed to keep his legs and stomach taut, forcing every milliliter of blood to stay in the upper part of his body. Soon he found doing the H-maneuver wasn’t that necessary, because soon he had to pressure-breathe against the regulators forcing oxygen into his helmet — in a reversal of the normal breathing mechanism, he had to carefully sip the high-pressure oxygen into his lungs, then forcibly push carbon dioxide out. If he tried to breathe normally, the high-pressure oxygen would pop his lungs like overfilled balloons.

“General McLanahan.”

“I’m…okay…Boomer,” Patrick grunted. He strained to look out the side of the canopy toward Earth, but he couldn’t see anything, and the G-forces pressed painfully on his neck and vertebrae.

“Keep your head and back still, sir. The boost isn’t a good time for sight-seeing.”

“I figured that out real quick, Boomer.”

“Ninety seconds left. How are you doing?”

“O…kay.” Even saying one letter was difficult, like talking while facing into a hurricane. “No sw…” And then Patrick felt his chest shudder, and his vision tunneled and spun. He grunted out the bad air even harder, then had to fight to keep the pain down as he slowly, carefully let the high-pressure oxygen refill his lungs.

“General! Can you hear me?”

“R…og…er…”

“I’m going to cutoff…”

“No…no…keep…go…ing.” Patrick wasn’t sure if he meant it, but he did hear the words come out of his gritted teeth…and the pressure and the pain remained, so Noble must’ve heard him.

It seemed to take an hour, but in fact it was over in less than sixty seconds. Patrick barked out a breath, forgot to reverse-breathe, and was surprised when he took a deep breath and the pain didn’t come back. “Sta…station check,” he snapped.

“MC’s in the green, sir,” Boomer replied.

“AC’s in the green,” Patrick said before checking his oxygen, cockpit pressurization, and mission displays.

“That was a hairy one, sir,” Boomer said. “I hope it was worth it. Take a look.”

He looked…and he gasped in surprise despite himself. The horizon was no longer flat in any direction — it was all curvature now. Out the right side he could see all of the New England states and beyond almost to Nova Scotia, and out the left he thought he could see all of the Great Lakes to the very western tip of Lake Superior. The ground was sliding under them at an amazing speed. “Are we…?”

“Seventeen thousand one hundred miles an hour…Mach twenty-six point zero-two-one, altitude crept up a little to eighty-seven point eight-nine miles,” Boomer said. “Welcome to low Earth orbit. You’ve really earned your astronaut’s wings now.”

“How did I do?”

“A little worse than last time, although you kept on pressure-breathing — instead of screaming, you were grunting like Atlas lifting the weight of the world onto his shoulders,” Boomer said. Patrick silently thanked the aerospace medical and life support technicians for repeatedly drilling the pressure-breathing routine into him while preparing for this mission — he doubted he was lucid enough to consciously do the drill. “The G-forces hit hardest going from Mach fifteen to Mach twenty-six. Sit back and relax for a few minutes, sir, and then I’ll brief the re-entry procedures.”