Heaven's War Read Online Free PDF Page B

they need is what they used to have in Russia…a lane right down the middle of the fricking road for VIPs.”
     
    Valya remembered such a road, running near Energiya. “What makes you think you’d be a VIP here?” she teased.
     
    “I’ve spent four years teaching these folks how to operate in space, and now they’re on their way to Keanu. Without me, Vikram Nayar would be just another space wannabe instead of the rajah of
Brahma
.” One of the things Valya had liked about Dale, his good looks aside, was his confidence that, now and then, slipped into arrogance.
     
    It had hurt him with NASA, she knew. His astronaut career had stalled seven years back. But, for some reason, it had endeared him to the Indians Valya had met. Certainly her stock had risen considerably when they learned she was dating Dale, the unspoken observation being,
He could have all the younger women he wanted!
     
    The same thought had occurred to Valya, of course, who assumed that, in fact, Dale likely
was
having all the younger women he wanted. They had only met two weeks before the
Brahma
launch, hardly time enough to develop a real relationship. She had been flattered by his attention and certainly enjoyed making love with him but wondered how much of the shared attraction was transient—or fueled by a common language.
     
    No matter. Barring a miracle, they had both left behind a world in which relationships existed. Now their goal was day-to-day survival.
     
    She realized, however, that the affair with Dale had probably saved her life. When the shocking news came that a pair of objects had been fired from Keanu toward Earth, and that one of them was targeting Bangalore Control Center, Valya had not known what to do, where to run.
     
    Valya had spent the last two days at the center, working frantically and not productively, trying to translate some of the signs, symbols, and signals received from Keanu. The new imagery from the
Brahma
crew on the NEO had not been shared with the linguistic team dealing with the earlier radio signals. Valya knew there was additional material, but in true ISRO fashion, it wasn’t being shared.
     
    In fact, she was close to leaving the center when Dale appeared in her tiny office and said, “We’re going, now.”
     
    “What about the mission?” she heard herself saying, though she was already in motion down the hallway.
     
    “Fuck the mission, it’s over, anyway.”
     
    They had run for the parking lot, a cramped collection of multicolored automobiles behind the control center. Seeing the jammed vehicles—Indians were worse than Russians when it came to respecting the rights of other cars in a parking lot, and Russians would happily block you in for a day if it suited them—Valya had said, “We’re never going to get out!”
     
    But Dale had simply grinned his crooked grin. “Oh, we’ll get out if I have to steal a car.”
     
    They had barely reached his Mercedes, however, when they realized they weren’t going to get away. They could see and hear the approaching object.
     
    Dale reached for her—to shield her, she thought—but the blinding impact slammed both of them to the pavement. A blast of heat washed over them—it wasn’t hot enough to melt metal, or flesh. Either that, or it didn’t last long enough. It was possible that the jammed vehicles sheltered them.
     
    When Valya was able to stand…helping a stunned Dale to his feet…she was confronted by the most bizarre thing she had ever seen.
     
    A giant white sphere rotated where the main control building had stood. The ground story looked largely intact…Valya thought she couldactually see people in those windows, trying to get out of the destroyed building. A couple of them jumped—not as far or as horrifying as footage from 9/11, but bad enough.
     
    “Don’t look,” Dale had said.
     
    “I’m not a child,” she had snapped.
     
    “Point taken. The plan still holds, though. Let’s get out of