Wm. F. (Bill) Sattelmeyer

Writer

Interactive Designer

Pitch Black

NASA is dead, and its demise almost killed former astronaut Robert “Pitch” Black. The crash of shuttle Endeavor did, though, cost him his leg, his love of flying, and most of his personal relationships.

But there are other players interested in the final frontier, and they aren’t so reluctant to use space as a battle-ground. As military satellites start malfunctioning and falling to Earth, Pitch finds himself a reluctant player in a new race for space.

Someone is using space-based weaponry to hold the planet hostage. The International Space Station has been crippled and is falling out of orbit, and high-energy ballistic weapons are falling on Paris. Only Pitch’s team of high-tech engineers has the ability to rescue the astronauts and take out the killer satellites before more cities are targeted.

But there is more than one player in the war for the high ground. Pitch himself is a target of a determined pair of killers, and the President of the United States is on a course that could set the entire world back to the Nineteenth Century.

Ignition

Space Shuttle Endeavor, re-entering Earth’s atmosphere

The shuttle screamed as it died … a shrill soul-piercing shriek of torn titantium and escaping atmosphere. Eye-searing fingers of plasma clawed at the cockpit windows, eating away at the shuttle’s thermal tiles and lighting the flight deck with a ghostly flickering glow. Mission Specialist Robert Black — “Dr.” Black to his students; “Pitch” to his friends — clung to the back of his flight deck jump seat and wondered how a simple satellite insertion could have gone so horribly wrong.

On a normal mission he’d be strapped into his seat, looking heroic in his pumpkin suit and enjoying a little light banter with the rest of the crew as they plummeted from orbit over the Pacific. But there would be no more conversation on this flight, and his pickaxe-sized headache wasn’t the only reason.

His right eye had swollen half-shut, caked with blood congealed from the bullet crease at his hairline, and his chest burned where the pipe blow meant for his head had cracked ribs instead.

The flight console below the cockpit windows blinked at him, every indicator dimming briefly at once. A warning horn hooted, indicating that one more of the flight computers guiding the wounded craft had failed. The shuttle bucked and slewed sideways as gravity fought for a firmer grip. His left arm hit the back of the Mission Commander’s seat, and he stifled a groan as broken bones twisted.

He shoved Flight Engineer Kim’s body toward the back of the flight deck while microgravity still worked in his favor and then hauled himself into the right hand, pilot’s seat, straddling the joystick. He glanced at the center console as he strapped himself in one-handed, ignoring Commander Dupont’s unconscious form hanging loosely in his straps to Pitch’s left. A few shards of Dupont’s shattered lexan visor clattered across the control panel as the shuttle rocked again.

Pitch plugged his headset into the connector and thumbed the mike. “Houston, Endeavor.” Only static replied.

He scanned the gunmetal gray panel in front of him, assessing the shuttle’s status. Air pressure dropping, probably as a result of damage from Kim’s pistol. Two computers dead and one not looking so good.

“Houston, Endeavor.” He grabbed the flight plan card from its slot and threw what switches he could. “Houston, Endeavor.” Damn, the shuttle ought to be out of plasma shadow by now; maybe the radio was dead too. Bullets in space: bad idea.

Or maybe they were beyond range of mission control in Houston. He switched channels. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Space Shuttle Endeavor. Off course on reentry and somewhere over the Atlantic. Ship is damaged. Losing electrical power. Flight Engineer Kim is dead. Commander and Pilot unconscious…” He paused, hoping that Angela Carnaby was, indeed, unconscious on the middeck and not dead; they still had a relationship to resolve. His chest tightened again. Better table that for later; he had enough distractions at the moment.

The radio remained silent, and the communications panel had no answers for him either. He transmitted the mayday one more time with the same lack of results. “Houston, Endeavor. Come on, guys, I could really use some help here.”

He gave a mental shrug — a physical one would have hurt too much — and stuck the flight card to Velcro above his right knee. “It’s a damn good thing I know how to fly this bird.” Assuming it flies even remotely like the simulator.

He switched his headset to intercom. “Angie, it’s Pitch. If you can hear me, I’m going to get you home. Stick with me, okay? Just a little longer.” He hadn’t expected an answer, and he didn’t get one. He gripped the joystick in his right hand and carefully moved his broken arm to the panel over the Commander’s seat where he could transfer flight controls from the computer.

The shuttle suddenly banked hard to the left. Thickening atmosphere wailed outside the cabin. His arm slammed down on Dupont’s helmet. He felt the bones pop through the skin, the pain spiraling higher as if he had stuck his arm in a blender, and he lost consciousness for a moment. When he could see again, he tucked his left arm under his restraint and flipped to manual control with his good hand.

The shuttle slowly responded to gentle gyrations of the stick, RCS thrusters barking as they adjusted attitude. Now that he had control of the spacecraft, he needed a place to land it. First rule of landing: have somewhere you can set your craft down. Second rule: don’t be coming in like a bowling ball thrown from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

He had no idea what Kim and Dupont had been planning nor why they had left orbit over an hour early, but he knew that basic physics would put Endeavor on a course for a European touchdown instead of KSC.

The flight system indicated their destination was set for Zaragoza — a primary Transatlantic Abort Location just southwest of the Pyranees — but if the shuttle held together he had no intention of landing where his attackers surely had a welcoming committee. Spain had a second TAL, but it was too close to the primary site for comfort. He spun through the onscreen data and found a suitable emergency runway just as the last APU failed and the glass cockpit went completely dead.

Pitch reached overhead to shunt power from the auxiliary power units to the fuel cells and fought the stick until the system rebooted, then banked Endeavor sharply to the right, toward Morocco, knowing that as he did, his speed and altitude might not equal the distance he had to fly.

Landings were always harder than takeoffs, but this one looked to be a killer. Maybe literally. As the pull of gravity grew stronger, Pitch felt fainter. He knew he’d lost a lot of blood, and a couple of G’s of deceleration didn’t help matters either. He didn’t have the time or energy to find his helmet and connect the oxygen supply, so he settled for boosting cabin pressure. He heard it whistling away behind him.

The HUD began scrolling time, distance and altitude to the landing site. The glide slope fell into the ocean just short of Casablanca. He began running through the checklist hoping that some engineer somewhere had designed the shuttle to be landed by a one-armed, one-eyed mission tech. At best he’d only have one shot at the approach.

Dupont woke, moaning, his face a pulpy mess where his helmet faceplate had fractured under impact from the fire extinguisher bottle. He scrabbled blindly to unlatch his shoulder harness and undo the helmet retaining ring. Pitch didn’t think Dupont could regain control of the shuttle, but he couldn’t take the chance. He gritted his teeth against grinding ribs as he leaned across the center console to grab Dupont’s helmet and used it to club him back to unconsciousness. Dupont slumped to the left across the environmental systems panel.

“Next time you try to kill me,” Pitch hissed, “make sure you do.” Endeavor raced over the African coastline, speed dropping below Mach 3. The HUD shifted automatically to display bearing and approach, but Ben Guerir, abandoned in the mid-eighties, had no Tactical Air Navigation System or even any human controllers to guide him in. Fortunately, right now he wasn’t looking for a 10.0 from the landing judges; he’d settle for a controlled crash.

He braced his feet as best he could on the rudder pedals. He hadn’t had time to adjust the seat from Angie’s trimmer frame to his longer legs, so his knees stuck up like he was driving a clown car. He scrubbed dried blood from his eye, hoping to improve his vision, and saw ocean turn to desert outside the cockpit window. Good. They wouldn’t drown.

The shuttle flashed over Marrakech, dragging its signature double sonic boom across the city. Mach Two. Mach One. Stall alert. Damn! 600 miles an hour. 400. Full flaps. Pitch felt the spacecraft shudder as the airspeed bled off. Wait for it. Wait for it.

Back pressure on the joystick, and the shuttle's nose flared up. Hold it. Hold it. Stretch the glide. The runway boundary flashed below the nose. Drop the landing gear! The shuttle slammed into the runway just as the main gear locked. It bounced hard; Pitch felt one of the tires blow-out.

Slewing to the right, bring it back! Speed brakes. Damn, no drogue chute. Get the nose down. Easy. Easy.

Pitch realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out in a long sigh, started to smile, and then, just before the nose rotated horizontal, he saw the nose gear light flash red.

 

Morocco, North Africa

Endeavor buried its nose in the tarmac. It was not a quiet death. Aluminum screamed as it stretched beyond structural limits. Thermal tiles and chunks of titanium spewed from its belly at two hundred fifty miles an hour before it began to cartwheel. Ribs and spars howled as their welds ripped open, one by one. Fuel and oxidizer tanks squealed as they burst, and the payload doors shrieked as they sheared off, venting coolant. The shuttle had never been capable of going gently into that good night.

The crew cabin twisted free of the main body, skidded across the runaway, and rammed to a halt in the desert scrabble of the median in a final paroxysm. The rear jump seat rocketed forward over the center console, and the titanium back crushed Pitch’s left knee, slicing through most of his leg before wedging tight against the remains of the glass cockpit.

 

Ben Guerir, Morocco, North Africa

Flight surgeon Rodger Braithwaite of the Royal Army Medical Corps leaped to the pavement from the ramp of the tilt rotor air ambulance and squinted at the wreckage. Clouds of burning insulation added to the tall columns of smoke from fires flickering around the wreckage, and melted asphalt ran in sticky fingers into the desert. Propellant spewed from ruptured tanks, cloaking the crash site in deadly gases.

A ParaJumper ran up with a portable ventilator and a handful of Draeger tubes.

Braithewaite took the items on the run. “Survivors, Lieutenant?”

“One so far, sir.” The stains and tears on Lt. Miller’s desert khakis suggested he’d crawled through the wreckage himself.  A raw, red burn ran down one cocoa-colored forearm. “Unconscious but stable. Have her on a portable brace. Egress hatch is partially obstructed, so she’s still inside. We’re cutting an entrance now through what used to be the middeck rear wall.”

“Just one? Out of how many?”

“NASA says four, sir.”

“Bloody hell. What in the King’s name is an American space shuttle doing in Africa? Never mind. Not important. Yanks wouldn’t tell us anyway.” They ducked under yellow tape marking the Clean/Dirty boundary, and Braithwaite checked his air sampling tubes, hoping most of the contaminants had boiled away. “Have you located the other personnel?”

“No, sir. Just the one in the lower crew area. The hatch to the flight deck is blocked. The cockpit emergency hatch is useless. The airframe around the windscreen is mashed near flat. We can see what we think is the pilot. Left hand seat.  Smashed up and not moving. Presumed dead.”

“While we’re presuming, he may be dying. I want cockpit access now.” He pointed at a squad of Marines leaping from a pair of Black Hawks. “Draft the damn Americans. Someone landed their bloody spacecraft in the middle of the desert on my watch, and I bloody well want to know why.”

 

Endeavor wreckage, Flight Deck

Pitch fought to remain conscious. The acrid tang of burning electronics stung his eyes and lungs. Sandy colored afternoon light filtered through the shuttle’s crushed forward windscreen in thin, dusty rays, illuminating the jump seat that had crushed his leg. This was one landing he wasn’t going to walk away from. He laughed and nearly blacked out. Blood dripped from his mangled knee and pooled on the deck.

He couldn’t see his watch — in fact, he couldn’t move his entire left arm. That couldn’t be good. Frighteningly, his leg didn’t hurt, and a disturbing numbness crept up his left side. For awhile he thought he could hear voices, but they faded away. He hadn’t been able to more than croak a shout that no one heard anyway.

Less than twelve hours ago he and Kim and Carnaby and Dupont had gazed reverently at the Earth from the flight deck, now the shuttle was a scrap heap in Africa, Kim was a mangled shape draped over the center console, and Dupont slumped in his seat, head twisted at an impossible angle. If Angie were still alive on the middeck, he might never know… when the shuttle had cartwheeled and the forward section broke off at the payload bay, the rear of the flight deck had folded over the access hatch like bad origami. Maybe life came at you fast, but apparently death was no slouch either.

His head felt like a helium balloon tugging at its string. His eyes refused to focus, and the darkness pressed down on him, urging him to sleep. Five more minutes, he thought. I can last five more minutes. Just five.

 

Endeavor wreckage, Mid Deck

“Can you hear me? Commander Carnaby? Hang on; we’ll have you out of here in a minute.”

Carnaby felt the pressure of gravity on her back, saw the faces whirl in and out of view. She heard muffled commands and metal-shearing noises, and she tasted blood. Very odd. Where was she? Oh, right, they were on orbit, preparing for reentry.

Let’s see, Dupont had sent her to speed up reentry preparations on the middeck where Pitch had been hurriedly jamming experiments back into their lockers. She recalled that even upside down he was handsome, in a young Clint Eastwood kind of way. Same chin, same crinkles in the corner of the eyes, but hair as black as midnight and eyes as gray as storm clouds. Carnaby had pointed at the watch on the cuff of her flight suit and given him the “wrap it up” sign.

“Come on, people, let’s wrap this up. We’re losing her!” someone shouted.

“What?” Carnaby rasped. Her throat felt as if she had swallowed a box of nails. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“You’re doing fine, Angela. You’re out of the shuttle and fifteen minutes from hospital. Stay with me.”

“Blood pressure dropping,” someone else said.

Carnaby squeezed her eyes shut trying to remember. Pitch had made some comment about her being responsible for reentry, and he was right. But the ESA had swapped Dupont in as Commander at the last minute for some top-secret satellite launch. NASA needed the cash.

She gasped, feeling her teeth cut through her lower lip as someone wrenched her arm out of its socket. “Pitch!”

“We’re cutting him out right now, Angela,” a disembodied voice said. “I’m going to give you a little something for the pain, but I want you to stay awake. Do you understand me?”

As the pain blurred into an overall numbness, she remembered what she had forgotten. She and Pitch had plans for tonight: dinner for two. She thought it might be something special. As she floated into darkness, she wondered why it felt like they would be saying goodbye.

 

National Mall, Washington, D.C.

Senator Geoffrey Clarkson enjoyed routine; it gave him a sense of security. No one would have called him reckless or, worse yet, spontaneous. Today, as always, he wore one of his trademark blue pin-stripe suits with the maize and blue tie. He ran a hand across his sandy hair as the doorman at his Georgetown condo flagged him a cab. He kept it trimmed close to remind his colleagues of his military service. It also hid the creeping gray.

On the way to the Hill, he sorted through his schedule on his handheld, making a few changes to free up his afternoon and setting an alarm for tomorrow’s floor vote. The narrow streets and flowering trees gave way to the open end of the Mall as the cab turned onto Constitution Avenue.

The cab eased to the curb. “This is your stop, Senator,” the driver said.

Clarkson grabbed his briefcase and opened the door before he realized they hadn’t reached the Senate office building. Set against a patriotic blue sky, the National Air and Space Museum loomed above him, edged in gold by the morning sun. He hesitated, one foot on the pavement. “This isn’t…” he began.

“I know where you wanted to go, Senator. But you have an appointment here.”

Clarkson looked at the micro still in his hand, as if it might offer an explanation.

“Get out, Senator,” the driver said bluntly. He canceled the meter. “I’m not telling you again.”

Clarkson looked around as the cab sped away. Few pedestrians wandered the Mall at this hour, and he saw no one he recognized. No one beckoned. He walked up the steps toward the museum’s main entrance and the spiraling aluminum sculpture representing Flight. A short, gray-haired man in a black trench coat gazed up at the coils, and Clarkson stopped a few paces away, uncertain whether to say anything.

“The Eagle has landed,” the man said over his shoulder.

 “I beg your pardon?” Clarkson said.

Zhao Dan turned, removing black-framed sunglasses. He enjoyed the look of consternation on the Senator’s face as he tried to reconcile Zhao’s mid-Western accent with his Asian features. He was certain Clarkson couldn’t tell if he was Japanese or Chinese. He most certainly wouldn’t know he was North Korean. “Apollo 11,” Zhao said. “The first transmission from the surface of the moon.”

“Oh. Right. Neil Armstrong.” Clarkson served, after all, as chairman of the Space Appropriations Committee. He’d even been through the Air and Space Museum once.

“And Buzz Aldrin.” Zhao shook his head sadly. “No one ever remembers who was second.”

 “I’m sorry, have we met?” Clarkson asked.

“We have not met even now. I have been instructed to tell you we have taken our own “small step;” although our own Eagle has landed quite far from here.”

A gust twirled around the museum entrance. Clarkson had forgotten the date. “We’ve heard from Spain?”

Zhao walked around the sculpture, his eyes tracing a curve that swept up to a cloudless sky. “No. Skyfall failed.” He gestured toward the NASA building on the opposite side of Independence Avenue. A large black sedan braked to a fast stop, and three men raced up the front steps.

An icy chill raced up Clarkson’s spine. “Failed. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” He did know that if the operatives weren’t already dead, they would soon be. The Nightwatch Council tolerated no failures. “The shuttle did not land where we planned. In fact, it was destroyed.” He consulted his watch. “About an hour ago in North Africa.” He patted Clarkson on the shoulder. “Do not worry, Senator. Are you familiar with the game of Go? Attaining the shuttle would have given us a good position on the board, but there are many moves left in the game.”

“Game?” Clarkson asked. “What game?” Two more men leaped out of a black SUV and ran into the NASA building. “Was anyone hurt?”

Zhao shrugged. “That is of no importance. Our goal…” He cocked his head at Clarkson. “Never mind, your part is complete. Losing another shuttle will destroy the U.S. space program all by itself. It may even be a better move than we could have made on our own.”

Clarkson felt faint. “Destroy the program? I thought you said…”

“Do not worry, Senator. No one will trace the accident to you. For now. After all, you never know if we might have further use of you.” Zhao looked up at Clarkson with a smile as cold as the metal of the sculpture. “But you should hope we do.”

 

Marrakech, Morocco

The crash cart exploded into Casablanca’s Clinique Al Antaki emergency room, where it acquired a waiting physician and a pair of nurses. “BP 70 over 40,” a Royal Armed Forces EMT said as they jogged down the hall. “Male, white, probable age early-30’s.”

“Does he have a name?” the doctor asked.

Braithwaite handed the doctor his clipboard. “Robert Black. NASA. Maybe the co-pilot. Some unexplained head trauma — probably a concussion — broken ribs, fractured collar bone, compound fracture of the left arm. Barely conscious when we found him. Not to mention he’s lost more blood than I thought was possible.”

One of the nurses noted the bloody smear halfway down the blanket wrapping the astronaut. “He’s lost more than that.”

Lieutenant Miller hefted a large polystyrene chest. “We’ve got the remains of his leg on ice, ma’am, but you’re not going to like the condition it’s in.”

The doctor glared at Braithwaite, whose soot-smeared uniform sported fresh blood stains. “I hope you don’t have any more like this.”

“No, more’s the pity. Only one other survivor: female, arrived earlier.”

 “Right. Up in surgery. Well, then, let’s keep this man alive, people.” Two interns jogged over as the gurney slid into the blue-tiled emergency station.  “Thank you, Colonel.”

Braithewaite shook his head. His didn’t give the man one chance in ten. Still, the damn Americans were stubborn blokes. “Thank me by saving this man, doctor.” Because, he thought, he may be the only one who can tell us why one crew member had a knife in his chest.