A NASA mission to Venus has a dark secret.Grace Parkowski has her dream job.Piloting remotely-controlled humanoid robots to explore Venus from an air-conditioned room in Los Angeles is the next best thing than actually being there on the hostile planet.But things start to happen. A dragon attacks her on her first mission; the answer to its appearance opening up more questions than it closes. Strange errors show up in subsequent trips to Venus, and neither Grace nor her Space Force boyfriend can figure out what's going on. But, they do learn that the military and CIA are involved in a secret program called Bronze Knot that casts a shadow on the entire Venus effort.When she pushes too far, Grace finds herself on the run from shadowy agents working at the fringes of the federal government. From sunny Los Angeles to arid Barstow to the launch mecca of Cape Canaveral, Grace fights to uncover the truth.What is Bronze Knot, and why are people willing to kill to keep its secrets?Find out in Lag Delay!
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ASIN: B0CRP1SDFF
This book has been through a Pentagon prepublication security review.
For my wife, who somehow puts up with me.
“Ten, nine, eight,” the OuterTek webcast presenter said as Captain Michael DePresti watched the numbers at the bottom of his launch console count down towards T-0.
Everything had been building towards this moment for the last three years.
As the ILIAD mission’s Shrike Heavy rocket government mission integration manager (GMIM), DePresti had worked his ass off to integrate the NASA payload headed to Venus. The rocket that it sat atop was nearly three miles away, at Launch Complex-39a outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the historic control center that had commanded the Apollo and Shuttle missions of years past.
The sun was setting behind them and the Atlantic Ocean, a deep blue expanse to the east, stood as a beautiful backdrop to the most exciting moment in spaceflight: a rocket launch.
His heart pounded at a million beats per second in his chest.
“Seven, six, five,” the presenter continued.
DePresti took a deep breath. It had not been an easy journey to get here. Keeping NASA, the Space Force, and OuterTek in line had seemed impossible at times. Still, this was probably the most exciting moment of his life.
“Four, three…”
He snuck a peak at the graph pinned to the top-left monitor at his quad-screen console, a line chart continually updated with live numbers from the rocket.
Just an hour before, he had been alerted by his Aerospace mission assurance lead that a string of sensors on the rocket’s second stage were giving odd readings. The man, an older Ph.D. following along from Space Systems Command’s (SSC) STARS facility in El Segundo, had explained to DePresti that there wasn’t much danger to the rocket — the numbers were all in-family from previous launches.
However, these parts, mostly thermistors and pressure sensors, gave different values than expected from SSC and Aerospace’s rigorous pedigree review prior to the launch campaign. The sensitive payload needed to remain in certain temperature, pressure, and cleanliness ranges in order to prevent damage. If the sensors didn't work as planned, the billion-dollar mission’s success was in jeopardy.
DePresti wasn’t convinced of his team’s assessment. There was no reason the numbers would be anything other than expected, especially with a mature launch vehicle like the Shrike Heavy. If the sensor values remained in-family, the launch could proceed as planned. If any of them jumped, the rocket’s flight computer would abort at T-1 second and the launch vehicle would remain on the pad.
DePresti swallowed a lump in his throat. He was okay with a recycle and another launch attempt in a few days once all of the consumables had been replenished, but his parents had flown in from Philadelphia to watch the launch from a site just south of LC-39a on the nearby Banana River. Their flight back was tomorrow morning, and if the Shrike Heavy remained on the ground, they would miss his launch.
“Two, one, ignition.”
The Shrike Heavy’s twenty-seven main engines ignited their blend of RP-1 and LOx in a carefully planned sequence. The blast from the faraway pad was so brilliant that DePresti had to shield his eyes with his hand. He looked up at the graph showing the second-stage sensors in question. They were still within the system’s limits, but still not what he had expected to see.
“Liftoff.”
The giant rocket — the most powerful in the world — lifted off of the pad on its twenty-first mission.
Hoots, hollers, and cheers went up from around the firing room.
“We are off the pad,” the presenter said with a thousand-watt grin.
“Liftoff,” DePresti echoed to himself with a smile of his own.
He high-fived his boss — Colonel Chad Hawke, seated at the console next to him — and returned to his monitor.
This mission wasn’t over yet.
This was one of the most complicated mission profiles that any rocket could fly. The Shrike Heavy’s second stage would place the Aering-built ILIAD payload, consisting of a relay satellite and landing module containing two humanoid robots and their associated ground support gear, in a temporary transfer orbit, then at just the right moment do an intense burn that would place the stage on a hyperbolic orbit that would hopefully put them around Venus in just a few months. A lot of things needed to happen for the payload to arrive there safely.
He used his phone to text his girlfriend, an Aering engineer who would be one of the future remote operators of the robots. But, she didn’t respond, likely busy with her own part of the mission.