Europa Strike by Ian Douglas Read Free Book Online Page B

strap-on first stage.
    Stan monitored the burn for five seconds before arriving at any decisions. His orders did not explicitly mention the Heavenly Lightning , but he had considerable discretionary flexibility—a large part of the reason for artificially intelligent systems, after all. He noted that the Liliang booster’s flare included high levels of gamma radiation—a sure sign that the vehicle’s thrust had been upgraded through the simple expedient of adding a small quantity of antimatter to the reaction chamber, increasing the specific impulse of the booster’s hydrogen-oxygen fuel mix.
    After five seconds, Stan had assembled enough data to make a good guess on the craft’s intended vector—a close pass of Earth to achieve a gravitational slingshot onto a new course. The ultimate vector could not be determined now, of course; he wouldn’t be able to estimate that until he’d measured the Lightning ’s perigee burn. But it appeared, with 85 percent certainty, that the Heavenly Lightning was bound for a retrograde solar orbit—one that seemed to be going nowhere in particular.
    The information was not what DODNET and the Pentagon were most interested in at the moment, but Stan felt sure they would want to know.
    He linked into the Global Net and began uploading his observations.

THREE
    20 SEPTEMBER 2067
    The Palace of Illusion
    Burbank, California
    2130 hours (Zulu minus 8)
    Â 
    Why , Colonel Kaitlin Garroway asked herself, do I come to these damned functions?
    The answer was obvious, of course. Because the Corps wants well-rounded, well-balanced, socially ept officers and it wouldn’t look good if you turned down too many invitations . She had to ask the question nonetheless. She always felt so damned out of place at these affairs; at least the proverbial fish out of water had managed to evolve legs and lungs after a few million years. She held no such hopes for herself.
    Once upon a time, social gatherings of this sort had been held in private homes—well-to-do private homes, to be sure, but homes all the same. If the guest list was simply too big for the living room, a reception hall might be rented for the occasion.
    Nowadays, an entire minor industry thrived to provide suitable ambiance for the evening. The Palace of Illusion was run by a major area theme park to cater expressly to formal social events. She wondered how much all of this had cost—the lighting and special effects, the live music, the endless tables of food, the sheer space : the grounds and gardens outside on a hilltop overlooking the dazzling horizon-to-horizon glow of Greater Los Angeles; a Grand Hall so large the walls were lost in the artificial mists and play of laser holography designed to create a sense of infinite space; and elsewhere, private rooms, conversation bubbles, or even private VR spheres designed to accommodate social and conversational groupings of every size and taste.
    Several thousand people were in attendance. Kaitlin felt completely lost. She wished Rob, her husband, was here, but the lucky bastard was on the other end of the continent right now, CO of the Marine Space Training Command at Quantico, and he’d been able to plead schedule and a meeting with the Joint Chiefs to duck the invitation. It was harder for Kaitlin. Her current assignment had her in command of the 1st Marine Space Regiment, which consisted of the 1st and 2nd Marine Space Expeditionary Forces, and various support elements. Normally, she was in Quantico too, but for the past month she’d been stationed at Vandenberg, commuting by HST on those few weekends she had free.
    All of which had left her without an acceptable excuse for being here tonight.
    She wandered the fringes of the Great Hall, looking for someone she knew. She had her personal pinger on, set to alert her if she came within fifty meters of any other pinger broadcasting an interest in things that interested her: the Corps,