The Launch: A Jamie Austen Novella (THE SPY STORIES Book 6) by Terry Toler

Author:Terry Toler [Toler, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2021-04-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

2:45 p.m. 37 minutes to launch

Carl Brayton finished embedding the glitch into the software after agonizing for an hour over whether or not he should even do it. Adam’s words resonated with him. What if it was your daughter?

Adam wanted him to sabotage the mission so he could talk to his daughter. Carl admitted to himself that if it was his daughter, he would want someone to do the same thing for him. It felt counterintuitive, though. Most of the time, he built firewalls to prevent glitches. NASA had some of the most elaborate firewalls known to man, and Carl was one of the few people on earth who could maneuver his way around them.

He embedded a minor glitch that would take thirty minutes to fix, which meant if and when the light went on the mission would have to be scrubbed. He wasn’t even sure he would activate it, but he’d have that option.

The glitch could only be activated by a password seventeen characters long. Once the glitch activated at precisely ten minutes to launch, the password had to be entered within one minute. If it wasn’t, the glitch would self-destruct on its own. Under any other circumstances, this would be considered an ingenious plan.

The main concern was that the password had to be entered carefully. If one digit was wrongly entered, the glitch wouldn’t activate the warning light but would create a software problem that could cause the spacecraft to veer out of control after launch. That had caused Carl to reconsider. Is it worth the risk? What if I entered it wrong? I could put Adam’s life in danger.

“It should be all right,” he reassured himself.

Why do I have an eerie feeling that it won’t be?

***

2:52 p.m. 30 minutes to launch

Jamie had never laughed so hard in her life.

“What do two people from Alabama say after they break up?” Bud asked.

“I don’t know. What?” Jamie asked.

“Let’s just be cousins.” Bud roared with laughter.

Jamie tried not to laugh too hard because her head hurt when she did, but she couldn’t help it. Bud’s jokes weren’t that funny, but his delivery was cracking her up. She’d had been leery at first getting into a truck with a total stranger. Bud was as harmless as a fly and a godsend. He had gotten her to within five miles of the exit to Kennedy Space Center, but they were now at a standstill. Traffic was backed up as far as they could see. They had moved less than a mile in the last forty-five minutes.

“This traffic is unbelievable,” Jamie said sorrowfully. Her chances of making it to see her dad before his launch diminished with each second they sat there.

“It must be all the people coming out to watch the launch of that crazy person who’s going off into space for a thousand years,” Bud said.

Jamie fought back tears.

“What’s the matter, sugar?” Bud hadn’t said it improperly. It was said more like a grandfather talking to his granddaughter.

“Bud, I’m sorry.” Jamie took a moment to try to compose herself.

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