Atlantis gathered herself as she watched the clock slowly tick down below the 2 minute mark. "Recovery 1 you are go for launch." came the voice of the control tower and the shuttle grinned. "Ever rode 6 million pounds of thrust boys?" She asked. "I'm just a rookie at this honey." came the voice of Acton, her second in command. "You're the queen." Atlantis laughed lightly. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Lieutenant." She said.
Just then, an alarm sounded. Atlantis looked at her dashboard. "We have a seal leak in the external tank." She reported. "Hydrogen leak is imminent." The LHO mix was volatile enough while within the tank. If the hydrogen was allowed to expand outside, the entire stack would go up like Hindenburg! Despite the seeming seriousness of the situation, there was a significant lack of urgency in Atlantis' tone. The shuttle had good acting skills, but she couldn't hide the fact that this was a drill. Still, for her crew it was real enough. "Evacuate!" Acton gave the order and the 5 man crew filed out the crew hatch. In the event of a real leak, Atlantis was meant to blow the bolts holding her to the stack and retreat to safety but for the purposes of the drill, she stayed put. Instead she reported the progress to control. "Payload specialist has reached the basket. Number 2 basket is away." She said. "Copy that Atlantis. Hydrogen leak in 30 seconds." Control replied. "Mission specialist has reached the basket. Number 1 basket is away." She looked back to see Acton pausing at the baskets, facing the hatch. "What's he waiting for?" Control asked. "His commander." Atlantis replied, a note of pride in her voice. She was the only shuttle in the fleet who had opted to go Navy rather than Air Force. At last the commander emerged. "Go! Go!" He ordered and Acton jumped into his basket and hit the lever. At that moment, time seemed to slow down. Atlantis felt a cold chill run down her spine despite it being 90 degrees out. The cable holding the basket strained under the added weight of the astronaut, then with a bang it snapped and the basket, with Acton in it, fell 50 feet straight down. "No!" "No!" roared the commander and the shuttle at the same time. The commander jumped into his basket, the fastest way to the ground and readied to go after his fallen comrade. Atlantis blew the bolts holding her to the stack and slipped down gracefully to the ground which she hit at a run. She reached the basket in a matter of strides. It was lying upright but with both ends of the cable splayed around it. She looked inside and instantly felt sick. "Oh god..." She moaned. Acton lay in a sitting position up against the corner of the basket, his skull split wide open. One of his legs was bent at a funny angle. The chill returned and for Atlantis, there was only one question. Who had killed the Lieutenant!
6 hours later found Atlantis resting in her hanger. She expected there to be a chewing out for her actions. Blowing the bolts was a last resort, meant only for emergencies. With the mission still on, there was a chance it would have to be delayed in order to get her refitted to the stack. Regulations stated that she had to remain detached for at least 24 hours while her blood flow was re calibrated for the ground and horizontal positioning. But there had yet to be anything handed down the pipe. Her sensitive ears picked up the sound of a fighter coming in at high speed. All flights had been grounded following the accident so, her curiosity roused, Atlantis poked her head outside. An F-15 landed smoothly on the runway and stopped. It had to be a Navy pilot. Air Force boys had a tendency to use the tarmac. Rising to her wheels, Atlantis rolled onto the taxi way. "What's this about?" She asked the fighter. "JAG investigation ma'am." He replied. "That was fast." She commented. "Your mission is high profile ma'am. And the death of a Navy lieutenant means the Navy wants to have their own team in here as quickly a possible." He said and she nodded. "Yeah." She sighed. "Thank you, commander." "Ma'am." He nodded. Atlantis left for the briefing room, stopping by her hanger to grab her still unfinished report along the way. She knew that JAG would like to interview everyone involved as quickly as possible.
"The Navy must have an excess budget to send two of its lawyers here on a fighter jet." the General said. "Well, JAG asked us to be here as quickly as possible." Rabb replied. "I can see that." The General sighed. "Well, you're in luck. Because one of the astronauts is already in the briefing room. She saw Acton's fall. You can interview her first." He knocked on the door before entering. Inside, Atlantis was just finishing writing her report when she heard the knock. "Enter." She said. She rose to her wheels, standing at attention when she saw the General. "Sir." She greeted. "Captain Atlantis, these two are with JAG. They'd like to ask you a few questions." He said. "That's why I'm here sir." She replied. "You have 15 minutes, Captain. After that, you're needed on the MLP. " Atlantis straightened. "Yes sir." "You're going ahead with the launch?" asked Rabb. Atlantis noted he was a Lt. Commander. "Must be a pretty important mission." "That's need to know commander. Good luck." With a nod to Atlantis, the General left.
Atlantis turned her attention to the two lawyers who were both standing at attention. The girl was pretty, a dirty blond with dark tanned skin. Good toned muscles, probably from one of the sun belt states. Her partner was a head taller and Atlantis was struck by his aura of authority. His handsome looks hid his inner strength. This was a man who had seen and lived through hell, and become stronger because of it. Her respect for him went up a notch. "You may stand at ease." She said and both relaxed. "Ma'am," began Rabb. "Commander, I know why you're here and what you're going to ask." She interrupted. "I just finished writing up my report before you came. Read it over first, then if you still have questions you may ask me anything you like." She passed the report to Rabb who opened the file. While he was reading, his partner noticed something about Atlantis. "You have a piece of grating stuck in your nose gear." She said. Atlantis looked, spotting the chunk of metal. "Huh, so I do." "You didn't notice?" The blond asked. Atlantis shook her head. "No, must've gotten stuck in there when I blew the bolts. I hit one of the walkways on my way down." She explained. "May I take a look at it?" Atlantis eyed her. "You ever worked around shuttles before?" She asked. "No. But my father was an ex-fighter pilot. And he worked on a Tomcat farm as a lead technician in his later years." Atlantis thought for a moment, then consented.
Megan Austin was not the type of individual to be intimidated. She'd been around aircraft all her life, grown up in a man's world. But she hadn't been prepared to be face to face with a space shuttle, and a captain at that! Atlantis was big, easily a head taller than the tomcat she flew in on and twice as strong. Keeping in her view the whole time, Austin eyed the sliver. "Doesn't look like its punctured anything." She said. "Just missed the hydraulic lines." "Good thing too." Grunted the massive shuttle above her. "I need those hydraulics." "I can pull it out if you like." "Get on with it." Atlantis ordered. She winced only slightly as the piece came out. Austin was at her nose a second later. "I didn't hurt you did I?" Atlantis smiled gently. "Nothing I can't handle." She replied. "Captain," Rabb finished reading the report. "You state here you think Lt. Acton was murdered. Why do you think that?" He asked. "That wire had just been put up that morning. It was brand new and had been checked several times. There was no way it could've snapped. Not by accident." She replied. "So you think it was sabotage?" "I know it was sabotage." The General opened the door. "Atlantis, time to go." He said. She nodded. "Coming right now sir." She said. "Commander, care to accompany me to the launch pad?" Rabb glanced at Austin and both seemed a bit confused by the request. "Very well ma'am." He replied, falling into step beside the shuttle. Atlantis watched her pace so he wasn't panting to keep up with her normally much longer stride. Once they were outside, she spoke up. "Commander, there was one thing I didn't put in my report and that was why I thought Acton was murdered." She began. "Go on." Rabb nodded. She took a deep breath. "It wasn't just the cable. Just before the accident I had this feeling. A chill running down my spine. I've only had that happen once before, the morning of my sister's fatal launch." "You sensed Challenger was going to die?" He asked. "I'm certain of it." She replied. "And I'm also certain that's what I sensed here too. I launch in less than 48 hours. Lt. Acton was murdered, Commander. And I expect you to have found the bastard that did this by then and nail his hide to the nearest office door." She growled. "Yes ma'am." He said, snapping off a salute. Atlantis returned it with her cargo arm and continued on to the pad alone.
"Out of the question!" 3 hours later found the General, Rabb, Austin and Atlantis alone in the control room. The shuttle had finished her prep work and was set to be mated to her stack in the morning. Right now, she was clutching a cup of coffee in a death grip with her remote arm and her blue eyes were flashing at Rabb's suggestion to pull Lowery off the mission. "We need Lowery. He's the only pilot qualified to fly this mission!" "Sir, wouldn't it be prudent to delay the launching?" Rabb asked. "Negative, we're going on schedule." The General replied. "Sir, it is my duty to summon a Navy board of inquiry and I can guarantee you that they will not allow Lowery on that spaceflight." Atlantis' eyes were like ice chips as she glared at him. "If you do that, then I can guarantee..." "Captain!" The General interrupted. "Close the door." "Sir!" Atlantis turned, slamming it shut. "Until recently, the US was monitoring eastern China and southeast Asia with a recon satellite in a geosynchronous orbit giving us real time images of the region. 26 days ago, we lost all contact with it. They think the power cells failed." The General explained. "Aren't there other satellites that can pick up the coverage?" Austin asked. "Only intermittently. We're blind 90 percent of the time." Atlantis replied. "And that's not a very good percentage given China's recent show of force." She noted how Rabb stiffened at this and recalled hearing about a Navy commander who had been captured by the Chinese recently. She wondered if Rabb was that commander. "You don't have a replacement satellite ma'am?" He asked. "Launched 2 weeks ago on a titan rocket. Unfortunately, the third stage booster failed and it never made it to proper orbit." The General answered. "That's why I'm going up. To give it a nudge." Atlantis added. "But its in such a low orbit that within a week it'll burn up. So we have to launch now! Dammit!" She cursed. "My sister is better equipped to handle this. Columbia knows how to handle low flying satellites." "You'll do fine Captain." The General reassured. "We have a day and a half until launch." "Which means we have 36 hours to determine what happened." Rabb said. "Which means times a wasting, commander. You'll have our full cooperation in this as long as you don't interfere with launch procedure." Atlantis said and Rabb nodded. "We'll nail the bastard for you ma'am." He promised and the General tried to explain the shuttle's answering grin as anything but bloodthirsty.
"Commander!" Rabb turned in time to see Atlantis bounding towards him. "Nice landing." She grinned. "You'll forgive me when I say I never want to pilot a falling brick again." He said. She chuckled. "Any leads?" She asked. "Gorlton." He replied. "He's the only person who could've had access to the lasers to cut the cable." "I concur." She glanced at the pad. "Keep me informed, commander." "The name's Harm!" He called after her. Shaking his head, he went inside. He had a suspect to catch.
Atlantis was in position but the last thing on her mind was the mission. She'd just received Rabb's file as she'd requested and after reading over it, she held the Lt. Commander in very high esteem. Her first look at him had been wrong. He hadn't just seen hell and lived through it, he'd seen worse, done worse and yet it hardly showed. It took a special type of man for that. "Recovery 1, control how do you read?" "Loud and clear control, go ahead." Atlantis replied. "Captain, do not grasp that satellite." It was Rabb. "Commander what was that?" She asked. "If you grab that satellite there will be a major malfunction." "Explain." She ordered. She was so close to it she could grab it now if she wanted to. "Gorlton sabotaged the arm. There's a charge in the locking mechanism that will destroy the satellite. You must not grab it!" Atlantis cursed. She was feet from it now. Quickly, she retracted her arm, swinging around out of the satellite's path. Then and only then did she close the claw on the end of the arm. A massive explosion tore the arm off its mounting. She squealed and for a moment, she couldn't see anything. Then, her senses returned. "covery 1. Recovery 1 do you copy!" "Control, Recovery 1." Atlantis took a shaky breath. "Everyone's okay, though I'll be operating without an arm for a while." "Understood, prepare to receive vectors for entry interface. You're coming home." "Copy that, standing by." She paused. "And tell the comm-tell Harm I owe him one."
50 minutes later, Atlantis made a smooth touchdown back at Vandenburg. "Not my most ideal spaceflight ever." She said as she rolled up to the General. "But it could've been a lot worse." She looked at Rabb. "Thank you, Harm." "My pleasure ma'am." He replied. "Atlantis." She corrected, blue eyes twinkling. "My name's Atlantis." She straightened. "You flew Tomcats, correct Harm?" She asked. "Yes Atlantis." He replied. Behind him, Austin and the General shared a knowing look. "One hour Atlantis, then I want you in medical to repair that arm." "Yes sir." She nodded, lowering herself down for Rabb. "Climb aboard, I'll let you fly this one." "I'm a little rusty." Rabb warned. "I can live with that." She grinned. The pair headed for the runway and Atlantis' engines roared as she took to the air. Austin laughed as Atlantis rolled inverted on the climb out, doing a barrel roll before waggling her wings playfully as she gained altitude.