Stone Soldiers 5: Black Knight Down Read Free Page B

gestured for Josie to take the lead.
    "Will you be all right?" Josie asked.
    "I've handled a lot worse," Kenslir said. "And don't worry- I'll try to be gentle with Jimmy."
    Josie frowned then walked away, toward the end of the corridor and the blast door leading to the Fountain of Youth chamber.
    ***
     
    Senior Airman Pete Edwards was intently staring at his wristwatch, wishing the time would pass faster. As usual, his shift was coming to an end, but a night of staring at a monitor displaying a large section of U.S. airspace was making his eyes cross.
    He looked back at his monitor, not really registering what was there, and picked up the cup of strong coffee to his right. He almost had it to his lips when he spotted something.
    The monitor he watched, night after night, tracking objects in orbit over the Earth, was usually filled with hundreds and hundreds of targets. They moved in very predictable patterns, and each had numbers corresponding to their place in the Earth-Object Catalog. Over the months, Edwards had nearly memorized the many satellites and debris he regularly saw. There were satellites, spent rocket stages, even tools dropped by astronauts. A vast sea of debris in space, all meticulously tracked by the Air Force.
    "Holy shit," Edwards said, spilling coffee down his shirt. There was a new track on the screen.
    It wasn't entirely new, this track. It was something he'd been briefed on when he first got his posting to Space Command. A something that normally was not displayed on his monitor due to its extremely classified nature. Part of his nightly routine was to log onto a very special screen and check the logs for this object, ANY-5, to verify it was still following its normal polar orbit. Solar wind and other space debris could alter an object's orbit, and the higher ups wanted to make absolutely sure they knew where ANY-5 and its sister classified, anomalous objects were at any given moment.
    For ANY-5 to show up on his screen without a special passcode meant that its orbit had changed. And that was worrisome. ANY-5 had, impossibly, been in orbit since before the beginning of the space program- Edwards had checked the logs and orbital data. Originally, its orbit had been thought to be erratic and unpredictable. Then the Air Force had assigned a super computer to the task. A pattern had emerged and it was confirmed that Anomaly-5 had a precise orbital pattern- even if it did seem to alter itself over time.
    Edwards ignored the hot coffee on his shirt and quickly clicked on ANY-5, then entered his password to access its data log. He paled when he read the figures.
    "Captain!" Edwards declared, standing up in his chair.
    Captain Sandra Cox put down her own coffee and the crossword puzzle she was doing and looked up from her desk at the rear of the Space Command monitoring room. Like a miniature version of NORAD's main monitoring room, her small domain of twenty stations and Airmen usually was deathly quiet.
    She frowned at the sight of the coffee on Edwards' shirt. "Pete- can you just wait to change your shirt? Shift's almost over."
    "Ma'am- I have a situation here," Pete said, very worried.
    At first Cox thought the Airman was talking about his shirt. But the panic in his voice and the look on his face seemed to indicate otherwise. Standing up, she brushed out the wrinkles in her blue slacks and walked over.
    "What now, Edw-?" she started to ask, looking at Edwards' screen.
    Captain Cox had been assigned to the Space Command monitoring room a little longer than Edwards. She had familiarized herself with all the work stations and all the classified satellites in the database. She immediately noticed ANY-5's log had been accessed. And that the log indicated its orbit was changing. Significantly.
    Captain Cox dashed back to her own desk and switched her master console over to mirror Airman Edwards'. She then grabbed a red phone to connect her to NORAD's main command center.
    "This is Captain Cox, at Space