Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

wrong now. Do you agree?”
    “I’m not a technician.”
    Mercy glared at the other woman. “I
thought you Ethics-page people had to tell the truth.”
    Yvette sighed. “You’re correct on
all accounts, but you’ve made adjustments. Why not proceed?”
    Clenching a fist, Mercy said, “The
test is tricky because we can’t remote-control it. The larger Icarus force
field blocks signals.”
    “What about a preprogrammed burst
for the engines?”
    “If the direction is off, the drive
could graze the L1 shipyard.”
    “That’s a very slim chance.”
    Mercy leaned over the desk and
hissed, “When you combine all of the miniscule chances that could hit
some populated target, or the field igniting water in the Earth’s atmosphere,
the odds rise to about 5 percent.”
    “Only 4 percent of people sent into
space have ever died, and those are horror stories. One chance in twenty for global
destruction is, I admit, uncomfortably high.”
    Mercy’s face lit up. Finally,
someone understood. “I can’t throw those dice. A human has to be at the stick.”
    “That’s what we wanted in three
months.”
    “It’s not safe enough for humans.
The calibration on those drive pods drifts after a few hours. To get even that
close, I had to design firmware to check the bug a hundred times a second.”
    “So you have a workaround.”
    “Money is not time. The hardware that
we rushed to the prototype is nothing like the final product; whole layers of
safety have been disabled. It would be like trusting your bank account to that Intel
chip that did division wrong.”
    “But you could keep it under
control for the duration of the test?”
    “Maybe,” Mercy said, spinning her
MIT class ring.
    “With your special senses?”
    “How do you know about that?”
    “I know blue isn’t the only thing
you see more of. Could you detect the field drift early?” Yvette asked.
    “Yes . . . that’s how I’ve caught
the problems so far.”
    “And if you’re not there, the test
won’t happen?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “Then you’re going. You can match
Commander Zeiss for safe science and stand up to Red when it’s important. We
need both to succeed. The others entrusted me to make the final decision—you’re
on the team for Ascension .”
    “Wh-o-a! I didn’t ask to join. You
only have to wait six months for a hardware respin.”
    “This is sort of like the Secret
Service—we ask you to sign on, not the other way around. Your father approved
the bugging because he thought you were the most qualified candidate in your
field. Having met the others, I concur. We can’t wait any longer. Global situations
are becoming more difficult to manage. We need this experiment now . Admit
it: you’ll learn more in the first minute of live testing than we have in
thirty years of ground simulation.”
    “That’s a quote from one of my
memos. Not fair.”
    “Astronauts don’t whine,” Yvette
said, mimicking Mercy’s mother. “What’s your answer?”
    “If I have to be there to prevent Red
from killing herself, I will. I should be there for final assembly anyway. No
one will raise an eyebrow if I have to slip aboard the test flight due to some
last-minute quirk.”
    Yvette sent a one-word text to PJ
Smith, ‘In.’ Then she opened her briefcase and pulled out a stack of
nondisclosure documents the size of a phone book.
    While Mercy was signing, PJ sent
his daughter’s badge the text message, ‘I’m so proud. Your mother is crying
already.’
    “Why would my mother be crying?”
    When Yvette hit a button on her
briefcase, Mercy’s badge and phone made a bloop sound as they went
offline. This was a heavy-duty media scrambler, used for discussing matters of
the highest secrecy. Dad had an older model on his desk.
    The psychological evaluator asked,
“How long could you stay on moon base in an emergency?”
    Mercy shrugged. “After the
prototype test, they might need a report from me, but this has been the only
project on my