McKenna thought he might miss her for a while. Or maybe even look her up the next time he was earth side.
The suit secured, the technician helped her slide inside the module, then followed her to make certain she was strapped in and all of the connections properly made. When he was done, the hatch closed and locked, he darted around the hangar, releasing the restraining straps from the Mako. The matte-white paint reflected the hangar lights, rather than absorbing them, like its sister. McKenna thought of the Mako as a virgin MakoShark. Pristine and sleek and naive.
Maj. Lynn Haggar and Capt. Ben Olsen, Mako Two’s crew, closed their canopies. McKenna figured that sometime in the next month or two, he would take Haggar and Olsen aside and explain the MakoShark to them. They were going to be a good team. McKenna also figured he might have a little trouble convincing generals Overton and Brackman of the wisdom of putting a female pilot in a position with combat potential. Brackman would make some comment about McKenna increasing the size of his harem, but despite his social reputation, McKenna could be very objective when professional competence was concerned. Lynn Marie Haggar was a hell of a pilot.
The payload doors closed.
First Lt. Polly Tang, the station operator tethered to the console beside McKenna, flipped a toggle to activate the speaker in the hangar. Punching a PA button, she said, “Willy, you want to clear the bay?”
The technician, Willy Dey, gave her a thumbs-up, shoved off the wing, and came zooming through the hatchway. Arresting his flight by grabbing the door frame, he tapped the red square, and the big door swung shut, rotated, and locked down. A green light above the door confirmed the seal.
“Locked and sealed, Lieutenant,” the tech called out.
She still double-checked the indicators on her console, then tapped a radio button. “Mako Two, how are your seals?”
“All green, Beta Two.”
Polly Tang was Brad Mitchell’s chief assistant.
On the console in front of her, a small screen showed a radar readout of the immediate space around Themis. The revolving scan lit up a dot on every sweep.
“Mako Two, you’ve got a HoneyBee inbound. Six-zero-zero miles and closing at two hundred feet per minute.”
“We’ll dodge it, Beta.”
“Ready to clear gas.”
“Go.”
Tang lifted a protective flap and switched a toggle. She concentrated on the readouts as the atmospheric gas in the hangar was pumped into holding tanks. Themis did not waste anything, especially something as precious as its atmosphere. Rather than bleeding the oxygen/nitrogen blend into space, it was pumped under pressure into reserve bladders and held until the next time the hangar was used. McKenna heard the snap of the safety deadbolts locking the hatchway door as the atmosphere went below the level of livability.
As soon as the readout indicated almost zero pressure and atmospheric content — it never reached zero and they lost some of it — Tang raised another guard flap and inserted her key. Turning the key allowed the circuit to go active. She snapped the toggle switch.
The hangar doors were segmented into eight polyhedrons, the outside edges matching the eight-sided hangar cell. From the center, they began to slowly open outward.
Dull thumps could be heard and felt in the structure when the doors reached their full open position.
“Mako Two, you are cleared for departure.”
“Bye-bye, Beta Two. See you in a couple days.”
The thrusters on the nose of the Mako flared brightly as the compressed nitrogen hit the vacuum. The craft began to move backward. The thrusters flared again, and Mako Two drifted out of the hangar, Haggar and Olsen both waving.
As soon as the craft cleared the bay, Tang closed the doors, cut the lights in the hangar, and secured her console. She pulled loose the Velcro tether at her belt.
McKenna grinned at her and said, “Now that you’ve got some free time, Polly… ”
Her almond eyes smiled at him. She said, “Go away, McKenna.”
“Well, hell. I have to keep trying.”
“And I appreciate it. I really do. But not in this lifetime, huh?”
“How about the next one?”
She smiled as she pushed off the console. “As soon as I get to it, I’ll think about it, okay? Right now, I’ve got to dock a HoneyBee. Go do whatever it is that you do.”
As she sailed down the corridor, toward the rocket-docking facilities nearer the rim, McKenna snagged a grab bar and launched himself in the opposite direction. His pursuit of Polly Tang was once again in limbo, but his reputation, and hers, were still intact. They had enjoyed the repartee for nearly two years, since she came aboard. Tang had two children and was married, her husband the chief HoneyBee engineer at Wet Country.
He reached Delta Blue’s hangar a minute later and found Shalbot and Sgt. Bert Embry, the ordnance specialist, already waiting for him.
“Goddamn, Colonel” Shalbot said, “this rinky-dink outfit can’t even get its pilots to a meeting on time.”
“Your watch must be fast,” McKenna told him.
“No way.” But he checked his wrist.
Embry checked the pressure and atmospheric readouts on the console, then opened the massive door. When the MakoSharks were hangared, the interior hatchways were kept closed and the control station windows were blacked out to keep the Mako crews and the contract visitors innocent of the MakoShark’s characteristics.
The three of them pulled themselves through the hatchway and floated below the MakoShark. The two camera pods were still mounted on the inboard pylons, but the access doors to the pods were open, ready for the insertion of new film cartridges.
“All right, Benny. I want to move those pylons and the camera pods to the outboard hard points, then mount two weapons pylons inboard. The long pylon on the starboard and a short pylon on the port side. Same setup on Delta Yellow and Delta Green.”
“Delta Red?” Shalbot asked.
“No. We’ll keep the reserve ship clean for now.”
“You got weapons clearance, Colonel?” Embry asked.
“We have part of it,” McKenna told him. Permission to mount weapons had to come from General Brackman at Space Command, and except for a training flight when missiles were fired into the Chad desert or the Celebes Sea, the weapons approval request also followed a laborious route through the JCS and the Oval Office.
As soon as McKenna had returned from his recon flight over the ice, he had called Brackman’s office. “General Brackman is in conference.”
“Ah, Milly, my love, my beautiful… ”
“Can it, Colonel.”
“Please.”
“That’s better. Let me see if I can break in.”
Brackman came on the line a minute later. “What’s up, Kevin?”
“I want to install some ordnance for these recon flights, General.”
“Rationale?”
“I haven’t seen the photos yet, but I got a visual on a couple ships and two Tornados. Those people are armed to the teeth.”
“But they can’t see you.”
“We could debate that point,” McKenna said. “Summertime, there’s a lot of light in the area. Low on the ice, we’re vulnerable to overhead aircraft.”
Brackman was not afraid to make decisions, one of the reasons that McKenna respected him. “Okay, Kevin. You can mount defensive missiles. You can mount guns. Weapons release is not authorized, but I’ll get on the horn to Washington and see if I can get a Presidential directive. It’ll be ‘fire only if fired upon,’ if I get it.”
“That’s all I’m asking for, General.”
Now, McKenna told Embry, “On the left inboard, let’s install the gun pod. On the long pylon, I want one Phoenix, one Sidewinder, and two Wasps.”
“Nothing like wide-ranging preparation, Colonel.”