This time, there was no conversation. The room grew so silent that Walker could easily hear the faint, shrill ringing in his ears that told him his blood pressure was rising. Absently, almost automatically, he reached into his blue and black jacket’s inside pocket, extracting the small plastic box with its dose of a single small, blue pill.
“How likely is that?” Archibald Severin, the secretary of defense, wanted to know. “We’ve been getting reports for months, I know, but there’s been no hard data.”
Ignoring the cold stares from his audience, Walker slipped the pill under his tongue, feeling it dwindle and dissolve. Like nitroglycerin, the vasorelaxant absorbed directly into his bloodstream. “So far, we’ve had very little information to work with, sir. And no means at all of gaining confirmation, short of a reconnaissance overflight—which, of course, is what we were trying to do with Black Crystal.”
“If the UN forces are working on a Ranger project of their own…” Gray said. His fist clenched, relaxed, clenched once more. He turned to Marine General Warhurst, seated across the table from him. “Warhurst? Your people are up there now. Any chance they could manage a look-see for us at Tsiolkovsky?”
“My people,” Warhurst replied, “are at Fra Mauro, with orders to conduct a snap raid at Picard. That’s twenty-five hundred kilometers away from Tsiolkovsky, across some of the roughest, most mountainous terrain on the Moon.”
“They have lobbers. Landing modules,” the SECDEF pointed out. “If the enemy is developing their own AM craft, then we are in a race. We must know.”
“Well, having the Marines trek across twenty-five hundred kilometers of Lunar wilderness seems to me to be out of the question,” Turner said. “But they may find some intel that’ll help us at Picard. Billaud might know what’s happening on the farside.”
“Long shot, General,” Admiral Gray said.
“Hell, long shots are all we have, right now.”
“The big question is whether the enemy’s waiting for my people at Picard with something they can’t handle.” Warhurst cocked his head, nailing Walker with a look. “Colonel? Anything at all about UN forces in Crisium? Ship landings? Transports from other Lunar bases?”
“None, General,” Walker replied. “We assume the Sparrowhawk crew was making their observations of the area when the laser took them out.”
“Then they’re going in blind.”
“We’re all blind on this one, General Warhurst,” Turner replied. “I’d say all we can do is send them in and see what they find at Picard.”
“What if the Sparrowhawk was shot down to cover UN deployments at Picard?” Admiral Gray said. “They could be walking into a trap.”
“We at least should warn them,” Warhurst said, “that Black Crystal was shot down.”
“I would strongly recommend against that,” Arthur Kinsley, the director of Central Intelligence said. “The Marines must reach Picard if we’re to have a chance of capturing Billaud. What can we tell them? To be careful? I’m sure they know enough to keep their heads down! And we do not want to tip our hand to the UN, to let them know how much we know…or guess.”
Harrel rapped the tabletop, commanding attention. “You will tell them, General Warhurst, that they are clear to proceed.”
“But, sir. We don’t know—”
“You will tell them, General. We need that information. And we need Billaud. The possibility that the UN is running an AM project of their own merely makes the acquisition of that information even more imperative. I’m sorry, but I see no way around it.”
As the debate continued, Walker dithered for a moment over whether to stay at the podium or return to his seat. He decided on the latter, quietly walking around the table and resuming his seat. There was nothing more in the way of hard information to convey, and it was clear that the discussion had swept well beyond the parameters of his report.
He wondered, though, what the Marines would think about being sent into their objective blind…sent in without even knowing that they were blind.
LSCP-44, The Moon
0643 hours GMT
Kaitlin climbed up the ladder from the LSCP’s cockpit. It had been over an hour now since they’d filed aboard, and the mounting tension within the craft’s steel bulkheads was as thick as week-old bottled air. The cockpit was a cramped and claustrophobic space, wedged in among instrument consoles and all but filled by the side-by-side couches for the module’s pilot and the mission commander.
The right-hand seat was empty, and Kaitlin pulled herself into it. Lieutenant Chris Dow sat in the other seat, completing the prelaunch checklist.