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Chapter 19: Another Attack Against the KESTS

Defending KESTS to GEO

As a military man, John Fornier had been against there being efforts to defend the KESTS space rail structure from the beginning. It was known from before it was built that it was much too vulnerable to attacks from saboteurs and hostile groups in wartime; the dispersability of a multitude of free-flying space vehicles was strategically much better than the lumbering space train rail system so immobile and predictable as to position, being attached to the ground. Why keep on defending the spacerail KESTS, why not just abandon it and let the earthsurface pirates knock it down, let the pirates die in their own wastes, then go back and rebuild the KESTS and resume fulfillment of the plan to restore the planet's ecosystem embarked upon so many decades ago. After all, the KESTS spacerail was just an electric motor, and motors could be rebuilt; and in the meantime they could use reaction engines to make up for losses slowing the great ring of structures in GEO. Yet, John was a man of duty, and he would do his duty the very best he could.

Idly he thought, why should he now be risking his life to defend a mere electric motor? He mentally explored the basics of KESTS as he cruised alongside the great spacerail structure, drifting downward from GEO toward a landing near its ground terminal on the far side of the planet. Yes, the spacerail KESTS was just a big electric motor with two kinds of coupled armatures, in the shape of an orbital transfer trajectory ellipse between equatorial ground radius and GEO radius. The electric motor was a fixed structure relative to the planet, and provided the hard vacuum environment for the 20 km/h armature mass stream along their maglev tracks where near the planet in the atmsphere. Constrained to a path similar to an orbital transfer trajectory, the armature segments were going twice as fast as orbital trajectory, so their excess centrifugal force pressed outward against the stator with an upward force adequate4 to support their own mass within the gravitational field. The planet's gravitational field was equivalent to the motor's axle, and the bearings were maglev tracks along which the millions of armature segments continuously slid around the planet on the underside of the immense electric motor's stator. Electrical energy was input to the motor at the ground connection site at the equator, by electromagnetically accellerating the armature segments passing by there as they slid at 20 km/h along the stator's maglev tracks around the planet. A tremendous amount of energy was kinetically stored in those high velocity armature segments traveling at far above orbital velocity as they whirled around and around the planet inside the motor's stator, their excess velocity providing the outward centrifugal force that balanced most of weight of the motor's stator and its live loads. That same stored kinetic energy was tapped by the vehicles as they slid along different maglev tracks on the outer edge of the motor's stator, the vehicle electrodynamic braking against the upward-bound armature mass streams inside the motor, lifting them up along the outer surface of the gigantic motor all the way from the ground up to the Geostationary Earth Orbit.

The originally emplaced KESTS had been expanded in girth from its hair-diameter starting version, up until it got as big as it is now, able to transport a million people a day with their household possessions, a task it started 35 years ago and had performed for 20 years, before the pirates attacked at the last weeks of the population's temporary exodus from the ground. An exodus which was to have been temporary for much of the population, until the earth's ecosystem could be restored to long term viability. But a bunch of pirates had stopped the process 15 years ago, militarily restricting the Clarke Belt Habitat Ring people to an area they can visit on the ground to about a hundred miles around from the KESTS ground terminal site centered where it tunneled through the Andes mountains in Equador. And for the past 5 years the pirates had been attempting to destroy the KESTS link to the ground, claiming the entire planet as theirs alone. And so as both sides of the conflict learned through experience, the attacks on the KESTS were getting increasingly close to success, despite the patrol ships which protected the KESTS. John believed that the KESTS was inadequately defensible, it was a peacetime kind of transportation system, almost indefensible.

Yet here John was, on his fourth cycle of patrolling down the eastward side of the kinetically supported rail track, thoroughly committed to playing out the deadly duel of space-to-space missiles if an attacker suddenly appeared in his sphere of action.

Armed with a guided missile, he would be able to destroy an incoming bombship before it impacted the rail structure, saving the space train but not its live cargo in the vicinity nor John himself. Nor the pilot of that incoming bombship, but then, those pilots knew they were near their end at the moment they launched, one way or the other. He swayed the trajectory a little, adding another component to the randomness that weaved side to side of the rail structure, getting an unpredictable peek at the part of space that was shadowed moments before by the rail structure. His reaction engines kept him close to the structure, but maintained a trajectory that if dead-sticked somehow, it would not impact the space train rail structure. Down John drifted in his fighter spacecraft, gradually to circle halfway around the planet in the process of losing the 22,300 miles of altitude from his starting point in the Clarke Belt Habitat Ring, now out of sight far above him.

The massive rocket engines suddenly thundered beneath her, and the brief moment of dismay at surely being now on a suicide mission, quickly gave way to the intention that she, Donna Bullguarde, would be the proud one to finally bring down the KESTS, the hated spacerail link between the arrogant Clarke Belt Nation and the great Sovereign Nation of Earthsurface.

She had been taking her turn atop the massive rocket, as usual, to play the simulation games in the pilot seat on her 4 hour shift, as she had taken her turn so many times in the past year. Always before, when the launch sequence got to that point, there were only simulated sounds and instrument readings; they were the same now except that the thunder and shaking was for real this time, no doubt about it as she was pressed down into the acceleration couch beyond any simulation. And so she knew that although the game would be the same as those she had played in this very seat so many times before, this time there would be nothingness for her at the end, and glory with her name added to the list of heros engraved in the hall of honor, maybe even be the one to have a statue made in her image as the one who finally achieved full sovereign separation from those above. She would bring honor to those of the Harem of Bullguarde, honor to the Daughters of Landsworth Breeding Man from whom she was traded to Bullguarde Breeding Man and produced children for him before being put on this assignment years ago. To Donna and Landsworth would be the Glory!

She would play the game with much practiced expertise, game of dodge and subtrafuge with the KESTS Patrol Spacecraft which was even now unwittingly on its way down, 21,000 miles above her. She was assured of blotting out that patrol craft and its pilot, along with the million or so of current riders of the KESTS at the moment when she detonated her nuke; and if she could dodge the patrolcraft enough by some miracle, she would also sever the KESTS spacerail bridge and down it would fall. And the planet's surface would forever then belong to the Harems and each's Breeding Men, evermore honoring the name of Donna Bullguarde, greatest bombpilot of all. She smiled grimly and clenched the joystick a little tighter, as her mind began the practiced solutions of the equations that paralled those of the guidance computer, she then began to sometimes slip in an unpredictable factor into her trajectory, intending to outwit the piloted patrolship and its computer.

John Fornier relaxedly again thumbed his randomizer thruster a bit, getting to the other edge of the KESTS spacerail to get a quicker peek beyond that which it had shadowed moments ago. And he instantly froze a second or two while he observed and mentally digested the blip that he saw headed his way. He knew he was good as toast already, for there was no preventing that nuke from torching all life on or near the KESTS now; but he would be able to save the spacerail itself if his skill held out long enough, if he destroyed the intruder before it could ram its nuke into the KESTS bridge structure. All his predecessors had made that sacrifice and had saved the KESTS itself thereby; now his number was up to do it too, his bad luck to draw this patrol shift. He quickly analyzed the probable trajectories and his mental calculations paralleled his patrol spacecraft's computer guidance system, minimizing intercept time to fire his space missile at the upcoming intruder before it could reach the KESTS. John's skill would attempt to gain those two seconds toward intercept of the incoming piloted bombcraft, mere seconds quicker than the calculable intercept to the KESTS, in the game of dodge and subterfuge now desperately ongoing.

His thoughts flashed back to the warm hug and kiss of his wife 2 years ago, just before she launched in her patrol craft on an also unlucky numbered mission, just as this one has now become. His grief at her loss required many reminders of why this all was happening, and now he again resorted to remembering why this had to be played out to the end.

The KESTS spacerail bridge had been built from the ground up to GEOrbit to save civilization along with the earthsurface ecosystem, a generation ago, first to provide clean electric power and total recycling facilities in GEO, then expanded to move huge amounts of people and their belongings into space in a hurry. Nature had become overburdened by the accumulation of toxic wastes of mankind's civilization, waste material she had no way to recycle herself, and the ecosystem was dying, the weight of mankind's civilization had become much too great to sustain by nature, and mankind was forced to either die off or to take responsibility for its needs for total recycling of its waste products, its needs for abundant clean electrical power, and room to expand its population up where sunlight was always abundant, and the responsibility to restore the earth's ecosystem back to long term health. The first small crossection KESTS was built and emplaced, infilling an orbital Transfer Trajectory between the equatorial ground and around the Earth to peak at stationary earth orbit, moving at the same angular velocity as the earth surface, so payload left by the KESTS would stay in space, already with orbital velocity. The KESTS structure was like a giant perimeter electric motor, driven by electrical power put in where it attached to the ground, and it enclosed a hard vacuum throughout its internal maglev track system, the motor's armature mass stream traveling faster that orbital transfer velocity just enough to provide the outward centrifugal force component to balance the weight of the motors earth-motionless stator with its live loads. The small initial KESTS was used to lift materials to build onto itself until it was big enough to carry a million people a day between the ground to GEO; the electric power needed to energize this enormous transportation system came from one of the first Solar Satellite Power Stations the KESTS had enabled to be built in GEO, its solar-derived electrical energy cleanly beamed down to rectennas located near the KESTS ground terminal armature mass stream electromagnetic accelerators located within the tunnel through the Andes in Ecuador. From GEO spaceports, expansion of mankind to go to the lunar surface for raw construction materials was easy, since GEO already was 91% up out of Earth's great gravitational well. So Earthsurface-like interior space habitats were robotically built from raw materials brought from the Moon, constructed at a rate adequate to provide new fine living space for one million people immigrating each day for 20 years, so as to enable civilization to prosper anew on space resources while the planetary ecosystem was to be lovingly nursed back to balanced health, saving as many species as possible from the moment the decision was made to go this route, to create a planet-wide National Park.

But toward the end of the upward movement of the population, a few tough renegade men began to kidnap women before they could get to the KESTS ground terminal, and created huge harems of them, and formed the Sovereign Nation of Earthsurface. And there became a war zone that eventually balanced into a boundary to define limits to where the Clarke Belt Nation people could travel to around the KESTS earth terminal, in their conversion work to restore the land to the ideal ecosystem National Park condition, a mere 100 miles radius around the Ecuadorian terminal of the KESTS. But the vast majority of the nearly vacated planetary earthsurface had been taken over by the Sovereign World guerillas, rejoicing in their windfall possession of a world full of vacated cities and industries, now wealthy beyond their wildest dreams through their piracy. All they had to do now was to sever the KESTS bridge, and the planet would be forever theirs, to pillage and squander as they always had done before the plan to move to the Clarke Belt was approved by the majority of mankind, thinking to save their planet and to save their civilization, so sad to leave their homelands, all of them. But now ownership of abandoned property was theirs, these militant Sovereign Earthsurfacers, so clever. And the game of Destroy/Protect KESTS evolved to that of the present moment; now it was up to John and his lone patrol craft to once more protect the bridge between the 12 billion person Clarke Belt Nation and the home planet it motionlessly ringed 22,300 miles above the equator.

Donna wished that she had a launchable nuke, but there were only a relatively few of the great reaction engine powered launchcraft left over from before KESTS was built, and they had not been intended to be bombers. So she had to contend with the warhead being lashed onboard in the cargo bay, requiring her spacecraft's impact with the KESTS spacerail bridge before detonating it, to bring down the KESTS. Short of that goal if unreachable, she would detonate it anyway, frying the enemy craft, herself, and all life on the relatively unprotected KESTS, usually about a million people traveling on it at any given time. Hers was the glory of the moment, and in only a few minutes she would know just how big a winner she was.

Donna faked a quick move from around the shadow side of the KESTS relative the patrol craft, then quickly reversed at the last instant, hoping that would lure the patrol craft to fire its missile but not risk the missile to hit the KESTS.

John took the bait and fired his space missile at the upcoming bombship, but the intruder uncannily dodged back behind the KESTS structure at the last instant; John had missed his chance. Dismayed only for an instant, he too faked a move around the KESTS, reversed and surprised the upcoming spacecraft. In remembrance of his fallen wife he hit the thrusters full blast and rammed the intruding spacecraft in its cargo bay area, hoping to damage the nuke's firing mechanism before it could be detonated.

Donna elatedly reached for the bomb detonation switch just as she was about to contact the KESTS bridge, but was slammed to the side from an impact from something. A second slam indicated she had collided with the KESTS; she then hit the detonation switch but nothing happened. Checking the viewfinders, she found that her craft was bent around the spacerail bridge, tangled with the patrol ship's wreckage. She closed her helmet's faceplate to conserve air, and began to crawl back to the cargo chamber to inspect the nuke there, and set it off manually if possible. She was illuminated by the glare of the headlight of a spacetrain which had stopped just short of the wrecked spacecraft tangled around its maglev track structure as she clambered in her spacesuit toward the cargo bay door area. The light also then showed the figure of another spacesuited figure as it exited from that cargo bay. John had managed to disarm the nuke, and was surprised to be accosted by the attacking pilot who began a free-fall wrestling fist fight right there with him, kicking at him until passing out from lack of air in the spacesuit. He dragged the limp figure from the tangled wreckage, and held it by one arm while he jumped to the spacetrain's airlock door, and soon they were inside, surrounded by a crowd of astonished passengers; opening the faceplate of the attacker, John found the unconscious beautiful face of Donna, former Haremmate of Bullguarde of the Sovereign Nation of Earthsurface.

posted by Unknown @ 5:16 PM