Parkowski was curious how the rocket had actually done performance-wise on its mission. She had seen the executive-level summaries, how they had “nailed the bullseye” and whatnot, but as an engineer she wanted to see the raw data and analyses that had led everyone to conclude that the mission was a success. There were processed data in the post-flight report, but this was the raw, unfiltered data that had been used to produce the summaries
There was only one engine on the second stage, as opposed to nine on each first-stage booster, so there was significantly less data for it. But, in the folder with all of the engine data and analysis, there were two copies of everything. One set had raw data, spreadsheets, and charts had “DELIVERY” in all-caps before the real filename.
The other set did not.
Curious, she pulled up a chart deck with both the DELIVERY tag and the one without and compared the two.
The one that said DELIVERY was exactly like she had expected. The second stage had separated from the first and immediately did its first burn, getting on its transfer orbit for the Hohmann maneuver that would end with it on its interplanetary orbit to Venus. Then, once it reached the second planet, the second stage would burn again to reach an orbit around Venus before separating the payload and putting itself in a disposal orbit that would decay until it burned up in a few years in Venus’ hellish atmosphere.
That one made sense.
What didn’t make any sense was the other chart package.
It showed a completely different burn sequence, with much longer coasts and a longer mission duration than Parkowski remembered from when she followed the launch closely.
The data was there, in separate files, backing up that burn sequence as well.
Parkowski, once again, was no expert, but it looked like the second stage got to the same location from a distance-traveled perspective. But the number of burns, as well as their durations, were very different from those labeled DELIVERY.
She wasn’t dumb.
OuterTek had delivered one set of data files and the associated chart packages to the Space Force.
And, in their internal records, kept another set for their own use. But why?
Parkowski had two possible answers.
One, OuterTek had taken a different route to the final destination for their second stage. Maybe they didn’t get enough performance out of their first stage cores and had to use a different burn sequence to get the ILIAD probe to the right place by the correct date. She knew that there was a strict time requirement in the contract with penalties in place if they didn’t make it. NASA — and Aering — needed as much time as possible with a short communications pathway with Venus for the VR controls of the ACHILLES units to work properly. It would be hard to hide that from the Space Force and NASA, but it was still possible.
The other option was something that had been sitting in the back of Parkowski’s head. She hadn’t found anything in her investigations at Aering and OuterTek to rule it out and she had found evidence to confirm it.
Her current running theory was that there was an extra payload added to the mission at the last minute. Something needed for the Space Force or the intelligence community or some other secret group within the government. A weapon, a sensor, whatever it was, it didn’t matter to her, just that something was there.
That payload was put on right before the launch. All of the development of it, its concealment of it on the ILIAD mission, and all of the things that happened post-launch were hidden under the special access program Bronze Knot.
It was dropped off at some point along the path to Venus. Where it was placed, Parkowski wasn’t sure, but once again, the actual location wasn’t important, just that it was dropped off somewhere along the hyperbolic orbit to its final destination.
If her suspicions were correct, the payload even used the same communications pathway that the ACHILLES robots did back to the White Sands ground station; its narrowband and wideband packets intermixed with those of the mobile explorers that she had controlled from the Aering facility.
All of this secrecy, all of the subterfuge, all of the violence on the pier and the car chase through southern California, it all was to protect this payload if her theory was correct. Dr. Pham was killed to keep it a secret.
Whatever it was, it was worth killing for.
Parkowski took a deep breath. What the hell was it? She looked for some more information in the data delivery folders but couldn’t find any.
She closed out of Mosu and Sangam. Then, she went to a different folder, the one containing all of the day-of-launch data and information, as well as all of the media content.
