The Project Gutenberg EBook of Project Daedalus, by Thomas Hoover This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ** Title: Project Daedalus Author: Thomas Hoover Release Date: November 14, 2010 [EBook #34320] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROJECT DAEDALUS *** Produced by Al Haines ============================================================== This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, http://creativecommons.org/ ============================================================== PROJECT DAEDALUS Retired agent Michael Vance is approached for help on the same day by an old KGB adversary and a brilliant and beautiful NSA code breaker. While their problems seem at first glance to be different, Vance soon learns he’s got a potentially lethal tiger by the tail – a Japanese tiger. A secret agreement between a breakaway wing of the Russian military and the Yakuza, the Japanese crime lords, bears the potential to shift the balance or world power. The catalyst is a superplane that skims the edge of space – the ultimate in death-dealing potential. In a desperate union with an international force of intelligence mavericks, with megabillions and global supremacy at stake, Vance has only a few days to bring down a conspiracy that threatens to ignite nuclear Armageddon. Publisher’s Weekly “Hoover’s adept handling of convincing detail enhances this entertaining thriller as his characters deal and double-deal their way through settings ranging from the Acropolis to the inside of a spacecraft. Michael Vance, formerly of the CIA, is on his way to an archeological dig when some old friends show up. First comes KGB agent Alex Novosty, caught laundering money that the KGB claims was embezzled – and he wants Michael to take charge of the hot funds. Then National Security Agency cryptographer Eva Borodin (who is Michael’s ex-lover) appears with an undecipherable but dangerous computer file: the co-worker who gave her the file has since vanished. Heavies from a Japanese crime syndicate attack Michael and Eva, who are rescued by Alex, but it looks like Alex and the syndicate aren’t complete strangers. Moreover, the mysterious Daedalus Corporation seems to be a link between Alex’s money and Eva’s file. As Michael is drawn into this deadly web, he realizes there is a secret agreement between the Russians and the Japanese – and it has nothing to do with tea-brewing customs.” BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER Nonfiction Zen Culture The Zen Experience Fiction The Moghul Caribbee Wall Street Samurai (The Samurai Strategy) Project Daedalus Project Cyclops Life Blood Syndrome All free as e-books at www.thomashoover.info PROJECT DAEDALUS Thomas Hoover BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • PROJECT DAEDALUS A Bantam Falcon Book / August 1991 All rights reserved copyright © 1991 by Thomas Hoover Cover art copyright © 1991 by Alan Ayres ISBN 0-553-29108-4 Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 0987654321 Key Words: Author: Thomas Hoover Title: Project Daedalus Hypersonic, Superplane, Edge of Space, thermonuclear warhead, Supersonic, Space Plane, Crete, Minos, Palace of Minos, Greece, Greek Islands Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material. Ovid: The Metamorphoses, translated by Horace Gregory. New American Library. Copyright © 1958 by The Viking Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc. So Daedalus turned his mind to subtle craft, An unknown art that seemed to outwit nature. Ovid, The Metamorphoses PROLOGUE Thursday 8:40 A.M. G-load is now eight point five. Pilot must acknowledge for power-up sequence to continue. The cockpit computer was speaking in a simulated female voice, Russian with the Moscow accent heard on the evening TV newscast Vremya. The Soviet technicians all called her Petra, after that program's famous co-anchor. Yuri Andreevich Androv didn't need to be told the force weighing down on him had reached eight and a half times the earth's gravity. The oxygen mask beneath his massive flight helmet was crushed against his nose and the skin seemed to be sliding off his skull, while sweat from his forehead poured into his eyes and his lungs were plastered against his diaphragm. Auto termination will commence in five seconds unless you acknowledge. Petra paused for a beat, then spoke again: Four seconds to shutdown . He could sense the blood draining from his cerebral vascular system, his consciousness trying to drift away. He knew that against these forces the human heart could no longer pump enough oxygen to the brain. Already he was seeing the telltale black dots at the edge of his vision. It's begun, he thought. The "event." Don't, don't let it happen. Make your brain work. Make it. Three seconds . The liquid crystal video screens inside his flight helmet seemed to be fading from color to black and white, even as his vision closed to a narrow circle. The "tunnel" was shrinking to nothing. The first stage of a G-induced blackout was approximately two and a half seconds away. You've done this a hundred times before at the Ramenskoye Flight Test Center, he told himself. You're Russia’s best test pilot. Now just do it. He leaned back in the seat to lower his head another few millimeters, then grasped for the pressure control on his G-suit, the inflatable corset that squeezed critical blood paths. He ignored the pain as its internal pressure surged, gripping his torso and lower legs like a vise and forcing blood upward to counter the accumulation at his feet. Two seconds . With his right hand he rotated a black knob on the heavy sidestick grip and turned up the oxygen feed to his mask, an old trick from fighter training school that sometimes postponed the "event" for a few milliseconds. Most importantly, though, he strained as if constipated in the snow, literally pushing his blood higher—the best maneuver of all. He liked to brag that he had upped his tolerance three G's through years of attempting to crap in his blue cotton undersuit. It was working. The tunnel had begun to widen out again. He'd gained a brief reprieve. "Acknowledged." He spoke to Petra, then reached down with his left hand and flicked forward the second blue switch behind the throttle quadrant, initiating the simulated hydrogen feed to the outboard scramjet tridents, portside and starboard. Acceleration was still increasing as the flashing green number on the video screens in front of his eyes scrolled past Mach 4.6, over four and a half times the speed of sound, already faster than any air- breathing vehicle had ever flown. Only a few seconds more. He had to stay conscious long enough to push his speed past Mach 4.8, raising the fuel-injector strut temperature of the scramjets to the 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit regime and establishing full ignition. If the scramjets failed to stabilize and initiated auto shutdown, he would flame out—at almost twenty-five hundred miles per hour. You are now experiencing nine G's, the female voice continued, emotionless as ice. Pilot will confirm vision periphery. The fucking computer doesn't believe I can still see, he thought. Most men, of course, would have been functionally blind by then. Prolong the experience of ten G's and you went unconscious: the event. Confirm, Petra's voice insisted. "Thirty-eight degrees." He read off the video screens inside his helmet, temporarily quieting the computer. But now he had a demand of his own. "Report scramjet profile." Inboard tridents at eighty-two percent power. Outboard tridents at sixty-eight percent power, the voice responded. Get ready, Petra. Spread your legs. I'm coming home. The velocity scrolling on the right side of his helmet screen was about to pass through the barrier. Strut temperature was stabilizing. With engines in the scramjet mode, the vehicle should be able to push right on out to Mach 25, seventeen thousand miles per hour. From there it was only a short hop to low orbit. If— Inboard tridents at eighty-eight percent power. The voice came again. LAC compression nominal. The liquid air cycle equipment would be using the cryogenic hydrogen fuel to chill and liquefy the rush of incoming air; oxygen would then be injected into the scramjets at pressures impossible to achieve in conventional engines. With a sigh he eased back lightly on the throttle grip in his left hand. As he felt the weight on his chest recede, the pressure in his G-suit automatically let up. He smiled to think that a less experienced pilot would now be slumped in his seat, head lolling side to side, eyes wide open and blank, his bloodless brain dreaming of a lunar landscape. He knew; he'd been there often enough himself. In the old days. System monitors commencing full operation. Good. From here on, the fuel controls would be handled by the in-flight computer, which would routinely monitor thrust and temperature by sampling every two milliseconds, then adjusting. But that was the machine stuff, the child's play. He'd just done what only a man could do. Power-up complete for inboard and outboard tridents, portside and starboard, Petra reported finally.