Page 107 of The Devil's Ransom

She was well aware of theChallengerdisaster and the fate of Christa McAuliffe, but that hadn’t dissuaded her at all. She’d competed, and then won the coveted slot, spending sixty days with the other men of the crew learning the ins and outs for their trip. It had been her dream come true, but now it had turned into a nightmare.

The camaraderie they’d built during training was proving to be nothing but a veneer, with the egos inside the capsule each determined to take charge.

The supposed commander of the mission was a retired NASA astronaut named Clay Hutmacher. Even at sixty, he looked like a Hollywood poster boy for a fighter pilot, with chiseled features and a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair, earning him the callsign “Fabio.” He’d been their lead instructor, and had earned the respect of everyone on board, but apparently not to the point of actually being in command.

Skyler Fitch, the billionaire owner of Auriga, had taken to giving orders to the ground from inside the capsule, showing a crack in the planning for the flight. Fabio was ostensibly the final word, but it was Skyler’s company, and technically, Fabio was just an employee. Skyler hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by being subservient to the minions he’d hired.

Not to be outdone, Allan Laughlin considered himself a voting member as well. The chair of the Senate subcommittee on space and science, he was also a former fighter pilot, the final cog in the wheel turning their glorious spaceflight into a carload of squabbling kids in a station wagon headed to the Grand Canyon.

She felt like screaming, “If you guys don’t quit fighting, I’m turning this spacecraft around and heading home!”

The thought brought a small smile to her face, the first one she’d had since they’d learned of the ransomware disaster. Of course, she couldn’t do that, which was precisely why the men were bickering back and forth.

For the second time, speaking with more force, Fabio said, “Skyler, we need to hit the abort in the beginning of the window. We wait until the end, and we don’t leave ourselves any room to react if it doesn’t work.”

Skyler said, “The window is two hours. I’d rather give my men on the ground that time to work a complete solution. The odds are better for our survival.”

“Sir, if it doesn’t work, the odds are zero. We’ll shoot off into space toward the station.”

The debate had been going on for the last three hours, right up until they’d entered the abort window. Honestly, Abigail had long since given up any hope of returning alive. She knew that without control from the ground, they were going to be a spectacular shooting star, splitting apart into flaming chunks once they hit the earth’s atmosphere.

Senator Laughlin said, “I’m agreeing with Skyler on this. If you abort and itdoesinitiate, and they don’t have control systems from the ground, we’re dead. Give them more time to work the problem.”

Fabio said, “The abort sequence is inside the computers here. If it initiates, then it should follow protocols. The problem is whether their override will work. If it doesn’t, we need time to fix it.”

Skyler said, “You’re hoping the system works. I’m waiting on a backup. Didn’t you tell us in training, ‘Two is one and one is none’?”

Fabio said, “Okay, let’s split the difference. We initiate at one hour, giving them an hour and us an hour.”

Skyler said, “An hour and a half, and that’s as far as I’m going.”

Fabio shook his head but said nothing to Skyler, instead relaying their plans to the ground.

They sat in silence, each with their own thoughts about what was to come. An hour and a half later, Fabio said, “Buckle up. Here we go.”

There was no sequence of events, no flipping of switches or Apollo 13–ish “main bus breakers” to manipulate. There was only a single button protected underneath a Plexiglas shield.

Fabio flipped the Plexiglas up, looked around the capsule one last time, then pressed the button. Nothing happened. No thrusters, no rotation of the capsule, nothing. He hit it again.

Nothing.

He shook his head, looked at Skyler calmly, and said, “You’re an idiot.”

Chapter63

We were three hours into our nine-hour flight back to the United States and Branko was having trouble turning off the ransomware. I would have thought he was screwing with me, but after talking to him, I believed his story.

It had taken us an hour and a half to drive from Rastoke to the Zagreb airfield to link up with our aircraft, and during that time I’d told him what we needed him to do. He’d looked astounded when he found out that he’d attacked systems controlling a spacecraft in flight, saying, “No, no. We hit Auriga corporate. That’s what we attacked. It was to be our biggest ransom ever, but we don’t attack things that involve life support. It’s our creed.”

I’d smacked him in the head, saying, “Bullshit. You hit the spacecraft, and now it’s about to destroy the International Space Station, killing everyone on board.”

He shook his head, saying, “No, no, no. That’s not what we attacked. I know, because I did the exploration after getting the gateway.”

“Who gave you the gateway? The Russian?”

“Yes. Well, he passed it to me. He got it from Sphinx.”

“Who is this Sphinx?”

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