J.J. shook his head in disgust as he looked over the shambles that was
the gantry. Dr. Andros had just phoned from Command, asked him to
undertake a preliminary assessment of the condition of the facility,
just to ballpark the extent of damage. The assignment was already
depressing him. Still, from what he could see so far, things could have
been worse. There was no obvious physical injury to VX-2 or to the
transmission antennas up on the hill, though the testing and
corrections could take weeks. The gantry was a total loss, no doubt
about that, but otherwise the major physical structures on the island
appeared unscathed. The main reason, naturally, was that almost
everything important--including the superconducting coil and the
Fujitsu--was well underground.
The main scene now was all the bodacious helicopters, Hueys, on the
landing pad and all the Army commandos milling around. Jesus! How did
everybody in Launch Control miss what was really going on? Looking
back, the whole thing was fishy from the word go.
Now the Army types were collecting the bodies of the terrorists and
acting like they had cleaned up the place all by themselves. Guess that
was going to be the official story. . . .
Mr. Bates had already come down to Launch, shook everybody's hand, and
thanked the crews for hanging in there. He looked a little shook up,
but he wasn't talking like it. Totally upbeat. You had to love the guy.
He also delivered the news that as soon as things settled down, SatCom
was going to kick some ass in the space business.
Jordan Jaegar looked up at the brilliant Greek sunshine and grinned in
spite of himself. Shit, he couldn't wait.