SpaceCorp (38 page)

“Pentmethylenediamine,” the Supreme Leader said.

“Yes, that is it! His Excellency is most learned!”

Inside the warehouse, a din of flies telegraphed the horror that had been. There were twelve corpses, each guarded by a child with a hand fan in a vain attempt to keep the flies off. The village coroner met them.

“Why have these bodies not been claimed by their next of kin?” the Supreme Leader asked the coroner. “They should be cleansed and prepared for interment.”

“We were ordered not to, Excellency. We were told you wanted to view them as they were found.”

“Very well, let us be quick so the families can see to their dead. Pull the shroud back on that one.”

The coroner moved quickly to remove the bloody sheeting from the upper torso of an old woman.

“Who was she?” the Supreme Leader asked.

“We are not sure, Excellency. It might be Paria’s mother-in-law. He has the fish shop on the street where she was found. We are still searching for the head.”

“Very well, I have seen enough. Thank you for your assistance, Mayor. My aide will stay behind and instruct you in what your next steps are. Do not speak of this visit to anyone.”

As the Supreme Leader strode toward the waiting jeep, his aide had to grasp the arm of the mayor to keep him from following. “His Excellency can find his own way back to his helicopter. Now listen carefully. First, you must have that crater filled in. When that is finished, you must liberally dowse it and the surrounding foundations with kerosene and set them ablaze. We do not want evidence of a bomb. We want it to look like a bolt of lightning from above. Next, we need to take several of the corpses and lay them about the impact area. Dowse them with kerosene and set them ablaze as well.”

“Burn their bodies! You cannot be serious, sir. What about their families?”

“Tell the families it is a matter of state security. Tell them also that the Supreme Leader extends his regrets that such action must be taken and that they will be compensated… richly… as will you, mayor.”

“Compensated?”

“How much income do you make in one year, mayor?”

“Oh, well let me see, the city pays me 10 million rials per year, plus I have a tailor shop… altogether maybe 80 million rials.”

“Each family will get one year’s salary. You will get five year’s salary. But you must ensure that no one speaks to the press unless a government minder is present. They will be coached on what to say before the press arrives. We have scheduled 25 members of the international press corps to come for a full day’s visit. They will be arriving by bus on the morning of the 18
^th
. You must ensure that the entire village participates fully. Is that understood, mayor?”

“Did you say five year’s salary?”

“Is that
understood
?”

“Oh yes, yes, of course. The whole village will cooperate—I guarantee it!”

“You had better. If word of this gets out to anyone by any means, you shall be joining your recently deceased citizens. Is that understood, mayor?”

This time the mayor only nodded.

December 1
^st
, 2071

Section 209 of Evin Prison on the northern edge of Tehran

Evin Prison was mainly for political prisoners, intellectuals mostly, who for whatever reason had not managed to sufficiently anger someone high enough up in the Iranian government to cause themselves to be hanged. But neither were they deemed to have done anything wrong in particular such that they could serve out a finite sentence and eventually be freed. Hence, unless they were known to the international community and there was extreme international pressure, most of the unfortunate souls who enter could count on spending the rest of their lives there. On rare occasions, the person who ordered their incarceration in the first place would die in office, and whomever they had placed in Evin would be set free. But again that was rare. Mostly, Evin’s prisoners just rotted away a little bit more day after day until they too passed on.

Section 209 of Evin Prison was a bit different. It was for temporary detainment of those suspected of security related crimes. It was controlled by the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security or VEVAK (
Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar
). Though your stay there might be short, your presence there was very hush-hush with press access strictly forbidden. Their antiquated system of paper records was maintained just to preclude anyone hacking the system and publishing a roster of inmates. Public awareness of a person being detained could lead to international pressure on the government. Sometimes that was embarrassing. Sometimes it provided a stronger bargaining position.

Being temporary, it was not a big place having only 11 rows, each with eight or nine solitary cells and two or three four-man cells. When Section 209’s 130-man capacity was exceeded, the overflow was sent to Section 240, a short distance north of 209 where they had capacity for several thousand. That was precisely the situation today when the entire brain trust of the Iranian Space Agency at Shahrud, Iran arrived at Section 209 via heavily guarded bus convoy. The previous inmates had the night before been moved to 240 to make room. Questioning of the new arrivals was perfunctory with emphasis placed on whether or not a detainee was in mission operations the night of September 24
^th
, 2072. The guards did not even rough them up or forbid them food and water as was the usual protocol for the newly arrived. By Evin standards, the guards might have been described as polite, almost deferential.

Back in Shahrud, the families of those who had worked in mission operations had been questioned—some would have said rather more thoroughly than necessary given they were women and children. The subject was always the same—the authorities wanted to know if the person arrested had spoken of the night of the 24
^th
. Of course, all workers in mission operations were thoroughly briefed and frequently reminded to never take work home. Hence, no family members were among the detainees.

Meanwhile, Row 9, Cell 5, was one of the 4-man suites and it was there that Dr. Farshad Rahmani, General Omid Farahavi, and Government Minister Hashem Shirazi now found themselves.

“Do you think the room is bugged?” Dr. Rahmani lip-spoke.

Both Farahavi and Shirazi nodded at the same time.

“Why are we here?” he persisted.

Shirazi rolled over on his cot to face the cell wall. Farahavi got up from the cot he was sitting on and sat next to Rahmani on his cot. He leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees with his head facing the ground as though he were very tired or maybe feeling faint.

“They are shutting down Shahrud, probably to cover up the warhead’s destruction of the little village,” Farahavi said
sotto voce
.

Rahmani assumed the same position as his comrade. “But why? Surely they don’t think we did that on purpose, do they?”

“I assure you, my good doctor, they do not care one whit about what our
intentions
were. They are simply erasing the event from time.”

“But how?”

“Look around you. We are all here, not in Shahrud. I suspect that demolitions of the facility will commence tomorrow. And I further suspect that your families will be relocated to remote areas of the country by the end of the week.”

“That’s preposterous!” Rahmani said in a loud voice.

Farahavi immediately grabbed him by the back of the neck and clapped his other hand over the man’s mouth. “Keep your voice down,” he said glaring into Rahmani’s eyes. He held the man in his powerful grip until he nodded.

“But,” Rahmani whispered, “Will there not be a public outcry, from our families I mean?”

“Not unless they wish to join us here.”

Rahmani leaned back against the wall. “My son was going to attend University in Europe to study rocketry. He was going to leave in less than a week.” He had tears welling up in his eyes as he spoke.

“I suggest he choose a different career path.”

“What will become of us?”

“That depends,” Farahavi said. “They may keep us alive to keep our families quiet. Or they may just hang the lot of us.”

“But that would set the whole Iranian space program back years… decades!”

Farahavi looked at Rahmani with consternation. “You have not been paying attention. They mean to erase us and everything we have done and everything we intend to do. It’s all gone… no more... it never happened.”

“But how can they hope to compete with the Americans in space with us in here?”

“They do not.”

Rahmani grasped the big general’s shoulder. “But the Supreme Leader was adamant about the sovereignty of Iranian air space,
all the way to the steps of heaven
, he said.”

“Yes, he did say that. Perhaps he meant to show that while we are a backward nation with limited technology, we can still sting. Hence, the program to shoot down the Centaur. Then fate intervened and we ended up taking down a space station. Then fate intervened once again and we ended up destroying an unfortunate village… which he is now attempting to blame on the Americans. Our sudden disappearance helps him make the point that Iran could not possibly have been responsible—there is no space program in Iran.”

“But how can that be realistic? When we had the first shoot down there were hundreds of press releases bragging about our prowess in antisatellite technology. How can he reverse himself like that?”

“For the Supreme Leader reality is like underwear. When one set becomes foul, he discards it for another. That’s the universal mark of the powerful—the ability to match reality with whim.”

“But General, you make our Supreme Leader out to be some kind of child who chooses toys to play with and then casts them aside when he grows bored with them.”

“Underwear, toys—pick your analogy. I for one would prefer to be a toy—at least then I would be held in occasional esteem. But I am afraid that right now underwear is more realistic—a private barrier to absorb flecks of shit and piss so they don’t stain his public outerwear.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
S
EVEN

June 7
^th
, 2072

Vandenberg Teleconferencing Center

Hank Larsen entered the Vandenberg Teleconferencing Center exactly on time—alone as agreed. He had heard that Iranian diplomats occasionally arrived late as a means of establishing a psychological upper hand. Today should be different. The Iranians were eager to see a firsthand demonstration of the capability of SpaceCorp’s space weaponry and for that they would have to either be on time or wait sixteen hours for the next Iranian overflight by the
Einstein
. Six months ago the
Einstein
was just a multi-generational advance in space station technology. Today she was all that plus one helluva bad attitude—her crew was itching for a fight. Hank smiled.

Once they had permission to open the case, it had only taken Mack, Monica, and Jason just two weeks to reverse engineer the laser cannon and another week to redesign it for treble the power. Now every space station in the SpaceCorp fleet was equipped with eight cannon—four topside and four on the bottom. And the crews knew how to use them. They got plenty of target practice deorbiting space debris.

Today’s demonstration would take place in a remote location in the middle of the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. This was so no one could claim the results were products of Hollywood theatrics. Iran had been instructed to outfit four large aircraft with remote controls. Additionally, a small village of cinder block and heavy timber construction had been erected. Lifelike mannequins had been placed in the planes and buildings. Showtime would begin when the formation of aircraft flew over the village at high noon local time. Hank yawned and looked at the clock on the monitor screen—a bit after midnight Pacific Standard Time.

The tracking monitor for the
Einstein
showed her to be passing over Tehran, minutes away from passing over the target sight. Hopefully the Supreme Leader would have gotten a clear view of the pride of the space station fleet as she passed overhead—more proof that this demonstration was real. The Supreme Leader had been warned to keep his observers at least five kilometers from the target site and to wear protective goggles to ward off possible injury from reflected light. Hank did not care much whether they took that warning seriously. It was enough for his conscience that they had been told. He took guilty pleasure in imagining the Iranians letting their arrogance place their observers a bit too close.

His attention was drawn to the video feed from Tehran finally coming through. The Iranian president was on the other end and uncharacteristically on time.

“Mr. Larsen?” President Hassan Velayati asked. “You are the new Sierran head of state, no?”

“Greetings, Mr. Velayati. I am
of
the new sovereign nation of Sierra but am in no way the head of state. I’m just a member of SpaceCorp.”

“Do you not have a head of state?”

“I’m not sure. We haven’t really felt the need for one in Sierra. SpaceCorp is here today representing its own interests… no more.”

“And for the record, how would you define SpaceCorp’s interests?”

At this Hank Larsen cocked his head and raised his left eyebrow. “We are interested in getting you to stop shooting at our space stations. In the past we chose not to arm our stations. Recent behaviors from your nation have proven this to be an unwise policy. This demonstration today is to show you what we can do now that we have armed our stations… without further loss of life, I might add. Is that… uh, sufficient for your
record
?”