Mother of Storms

March-June 2028 This is the good part. Hassan Sulari loves this one. When the magnetic catapult on the mothership throws his little spaceplane forward and he kicks in his scramjets, somewhere over Afghanistan, he'll sail upland away into a high suborbital trajectory over the pole. Hassan has never gotten authorized for orbit, but this is pretty close. It's his first real mission. He's carrying four cram bombs"Compressing Radiation Antimatter" is what it stands for, and when they talk to the media they are supposed to stress that they are "mass-to-energy, not really nuclear" weapons, because for all practical purposes they are baby nukes and that's bad PR. The catch is that damned jack in the back of his head. He accepted a lot of extra money from Passionet to have it installed and to fly with it, it's going to make him richand in UNSOO that's not commonbut there is still the nagging feeling of showing off. After all, he's a pilot, not an actor. "We're getting ready to go plugged with you," the voice from Passionet says. "If you've got any embarrassing thoughts to get out of the way, think them now." "None I know of. I'm at orbital injection minus four minutes." Hassan does his best to sound bored. "We knowtiming's perfect Give our folks a ride." Just as they click off and it goes live, he does have the range thought that there really don't have to be human crews for UN Space Ops like thisa machine could do a prohibited-weapons interdict just as well. He finds himself wondering why he does thisno, to his shame, why he is fearing doing it. That makes his stomach knot hard during the last instants of countdown. Then he hears the word "inject" and the mothership catapult flings him forward over the nose of the big airpla≠ watching his stability gauge, he sees it's all go, waits a few more seconds till the navigation computer has a fix, and then flips the scramjet lever. He is slammed into his seat again, and the brown-and-white mountains of early spring morning fall away below him. The vibration is heavy, and the pressure is intense; he sees the West Siberian plain open out beneath him, wrapped in its canopy of blue air. He is as high up as weather satellites go. His heart is pounding and despite the military reason for the mission he is mentally lost in the scenery. By the time die scramjets cut out, there is polar ice on the horizon, and his hands automatically begin their ritual of arming and readying the shots. He arcs higher still, coasting upward on inertia, and now the Earth begins to return toward him. He is weightlessnot because there is no gravity but because he is moving with itand he has an intense recollection of his childhood fantasies about space travel He hopes they won't mind having that in the wedge they are recording Over the pole now, falling nose-down across the ice cap ninety miles below, and the countdown begins; his weapons lock on target and he need only pull the trigger on cue to turn over control to the missiles themselves. He receives the go-ahead and initiates. There are four hard shoves on the little spaceplane, and he sees his missiles falling away tike sparklers thrown down a dark canyon. He will miss their impact off the North Slope, but the pleasure of launching them was exquisite. And from the jack in his head, he is informed that 750 million people shared the experience. There's a cherry-red glow around the bottom of the spaceplane, and weight begins to return as the plane once again resists gravity rather than rides wBarnes, John is the author of 'Mother of Storms' with ISBN 9780812533453 and ISBN 0812533453.