“But?”
“—but you’re not in the general’s league, sir — far, far from it,” Lukas went on. “You don’t have the experience and haven’t shown the same level of commitment and dedication as the general. You’re not qualified to pass judgment on the general — in fact, in my opinion, sir, you haven’t earned the right to be talking about him the way you are.”
“Like you’re talking to me now?”
“Write me up if you want, sir, but I don’t appreciate you second-guessing the general like that,” Lukas said flatly. She logged herself off from her console and detached herself from the bulkhead with a perturbed jerk and a loud riip! of Velcro. “I’ll help you download the sensor data and prepare your debrief for the general, and then I’ll be happy to help you prepare the Black Stallion for undocking…so you can go home as soon as possible, sir.” She said the word “sir” more like the word “cur,” and that jab wasn’t lost on Boomer.
With Seeker’s exasperated and irate help — not to mention they didn’t do very much chatting as they worked — Boomer was indeed done quickly. He uploaded his data and findings to the general. “Thanks, Boomer,” McLanahan radioed back. “We’re scheduled to do the videoconference in about ninety minutes. I found out the Joint Chiefs chairman and National Security Adviser are going to sit in. Kick back for a while and get some rest.”
“I’m fine, sir,” Boomer responded. “I’ll go hide out in Skybolt, get my e-mail, and check in on my girlfriends.”
“‘Girlfriends’…plural?”
“I don’t know — we’ll see what the e-mails say,” Boomer said. “None of them like me disappearing for days and weeks, and I certainly can’t tell them I’ve been blasting terrorists to hell from space.”
“They probably wouldn’t believe you if you did tell them.”
“The ladies I hang out with don’t know a space station from a gas station — and that’s the way I like it,” Boomer admitted. “They don’t know, or care, what I do for a living. All they want is attention and a good time on the town, and if they don’t get it, they split.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“That’s why I always like to have more than one on the hook, sir,” Boomer said.
“Could be fireworks if they ever run into each other, eh?”
“We hook up together all the time, sir,” Boomer said. “No brag, just fact. Like I said, all they want is attention, and they get even more attention if folks see them arm in arm with another hot babe. Besides, if there’s ever any conversation—”
“Wait, wait, I know this one, Boomer: ‘If there’s any conversation, you don’t have to get involved,’” Patrick interjected with a laugh. “Okay, go say hi to your girlfriends, and don’t tell me how many you got waiting for you to get back. Meet me in the command module in sixty minutes so we can rehearse our dog and pony show.”
“Yes, sir,” Boomer replied. Before McLanahan clicked off, he asked, “Uh, General?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m sorry if I got out of line earlier.”
“I expect you to give me your professional opinion and point of view anytime, Boomer, especially on a mission,” Patrick said. “If you were out of line, I wouldn’t hesitate to let you know.”
“It got me pretty steamed, watching those bastards setting up a rocket with a damned chemical warhead on it. All I wanted to do was blast a few more.”
“I hear you. But it’s more important we get this program off and running. We both know we’re going to catch some flak for what happened in Tehran — shooting more missiles wouldn’t have helped us.”
“Maybe offing a few more terrorists would compel them to keep their heads down and hide in their ratholes for a few days more.”
“We have some incredible weapons at our disposal, Boomer — let’s not let the power go to our heads,” Patrick said patiently. “It was an operational test, not an actual mission. I know the temptation to play Zeus with a few SkySTREAK missiles is powerful, but that’s not what we’re here for. Meet back here in sixty.”
“Yes, sir,” he responded. Just before the general logged off, Boomer remarked to himself that the general looked even wearier than any other time since embarking on this sortie to the space station — maybe the combination of witnessing the chemical weapon release and the monthly trips into space were starting to get to him. Boomer was half his age, and sometimes the stress of the trips, especially the recent quick-turn, high-G re-entry profiles, and multiple sorties they had been flying, wore him down fast.
Boomer floated back to the crew quarters module, retrieved his wireless headphones and video goggles, and floated to the Skybolt laser module at the “bottom” of the station. Skybolt was the station’s most powerful and so most controversial piece of technology, a multi-gigawatt free-electron laser powerful enough to shoot through Earth’s atmosphere and melt steel in seconds. Tied to Silver Tower’s radars and other sensors, Skybolt could attack targets as small as an automobile and burn through the top armor of all but the most modern main battle tanks. Classified as a “weapon of mass destruction” by all of America’s adversaries, the United Nations had been calling for the weapon’s deactivation for many years, and only America’s veto power in the Security Council kept it alive.
Ann Page, Skybolt’s designer, operator, and chief advocate, was on Earth preparing to testify to Congress on why funding for the weapon should be continued, and Boomer knew that very few others on the station ever went near the thing — Skybolt was powered by an MHDG, or magnetohydrodynamic generator, which used two small nuclear reactors to rapidly shoot a slug of molten metal back and forth through a magnetic field to produce the enormous amount of power required by the laser, and no amount of shielding and assurances by Ann could assuage anyone’s fears — so he often went into the module to get some peace and quiet. The Skybolt module was about a fourth of the size of the main modules on the station, so it was relatively cramped inside, and it was crammed with pipes, wire conduits, and a myriad of computers and other components, but the gentle hum of the MHDG drive’s circulating pumps and the excellent computers and communications gear there made it Boomer’s favorite place to get away from the others for a while.
Boomer connected his headphones and video goggles to the module’s computers, logged in, and began downloading e-mail. Even though the headphones and goggles were a pain, there was precious little privacy on Silver Tower, even in the huge modules, so the only semblance of privacy had to come down to the space between one’s ears. Everyone assumed that if personnel from the super-secret High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center were on board the space station that all incoming and outgoing transmissions of any kind were being recorded and monitored, so “privacy” was a vacuous idea at best.
It was a good thing he had bothered to put on the gear, because the video e-mails from his girlfriends were definitely not for public viewing. Chloe’s video was typicaclass="underline" “Boomer, where the hell are you?” it began, with Chloe sitting in front of her videophone photographing herself. “I’m getting tired of you disappearing like this. Nobody at your unit would tell me a goddamned thing. That sergeant that answers the phone should be booted out of the service, the fag.” Chloe called any man who didn’t immediately hit on her a “fag,” believing being gay was the only reason that any normal male wouldn’t want to screw her right away.