Charlie Foxtrot: Blog

I've just submitted Chapter 43 of "A New Past", so it should be up in a few hours.

For everyone who has asked, I'm not going to commit to a fixed publication schedule. I will try to post at least a chapter a month.

Chapter 43 is the latest chapter back from my editors. Thanks for all of the feedback, but please stop blaming my editors and proof-readers for any mistakes I've made.

I'm working on Chapter 55, but will probably have to do some significant editing if I'm going to be finished by Chapter 60.

Thanks for reading,

-Charlie

Thanks for your patience. I've started reposting corrected chapters of the first 2 books. The only significant change is the renaming of one "Cynthia" character to "Candace" to reduce confusion on who was doing what.

-Charlie

Just a quick update since several readers have asked.

I have started sending the next nine chapters (41-49) of "A New Past" to my editor volunteers. That's approximately 90k words, by the way. I've not yet determined a schedule for posting, but wanted to let folks know that progress is being made.

I plan on completing Paul's story in about 60 chapters total, but have not made as much progress on chapters 50+ over the past few months, due primarily to real life work commitments.

I will begin posting updated versions of the prior chapters the week or so before posting new installments. I appreciate all of the readers who have taken the time to provide feedback and spotted typos in the original postings.

Thanks for reading,

-Charlie Foxtrot

Thanks to all who have gently encouraged me to continue working on the next installment of "A New Past". I'm happy to say the story is still progressing, though not at the pace I would like. Real life intrudes too often. That said, I am roughly half way through the third (and final) book and am still confident that I'll start posting in the last quarter of the year. That could be October 1st, or it could be December 31st. At this point, it depends on how easily the words flow now that all of the major plot pieces are in place.

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for reading.

-Charlie Foxtrot

Several readers have asked for an update on the next installment of "A New Past".

I'm happy to say the story is progressing, but my day job is limiting my writing time, so it is going slow. I am on the 6th of 20 planned chapters. If a logical breakpoint is reached (something less than 20 chapters), I'll reach out to my editors and try to post a sub-set of the entire tale.

In the meantime (so you know there is progress), here is another scene from the work in progress.


The usual caveats apply. This has not gone through any editing or proofing, so please don't think it will remain the same when I finally start posting.

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for reading.

-Charlie Foxtrot

*****

"Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. This is Golf Sierra Niner, in de-orbit profile passing latitude eight-nine north on heading one nine zero, altitude two twelve klicks, descending. We are broadcasting in the blind and unable to receive communications."

I marveled at the disciplined voice of Terry White, the pilot. We had been on what I considered a routine flight up to PTO-1 for a supply delivery. We had launched the station in December of 1994, just outside my eighteen month goal and manned it continuously since. Dr. Thomas Culpepper, one of the season three interns and now working with Dr. Wilkerson in my materials research team, oversaw the orbital science operations.

I had joined the flight at the last minute, wanting to review some of the material processes being worked on in the orbiting lab. It was two days docked to the station and then an orbital change to retrieve an end-of-life military satellite for the DoD before returning to Edwards Air Force base with our cargo. That had been the plan.

That changed after a debris hit following the satellite retrieval.

"Anyway to know if we are broadcasting?" Samantha Conner, the co-pilot asked.

"Negative. Whatever hit us took out at least one antenna array. Once we get lower and are not ionizing the air so much, our other comms should work," Terry replied. "I just hope no one gets twitchy with something de-orbiting from over the pole."

While tensions around the world had reduced to some extent over the past two years, the START II treaty was still stalled in Congress and the US retained a formidable response capability to a missile attack. Of course, GS-9 was on a published flight path and I was confident the Air Force was tracking us, given our mission to retrieve a military satellite.

"How's our speed?" I asked as I glanced over my shoulder and out the window. The glow of reentry had dimmed.

"We're below six klicks a second. Why?"

Rather than answer, I flipped two switches on the engineer's panel before me and began typing on the keyboard. After a minute, I sat back and watched the screen.

"Yes! I'm able to connect to the remote telemetry system. Let me alert ops."

I began typing again.

"Ops is online. They can hear our broadcast, but we can't hear them," I said a few moments later.

"That's good news," Sam said.

"It is. Let me see if they are tracking....Shit. High T-34, high fluctuations on M-34, port engine." I typed furiously as I kept one eye on the monitors at my engineering station.

"Any station this net, Golf Sierra Niner broadcasting in the blind. We are loosing one engine. Requesting immediate clearance to land...."

"Hill Air Force Base looks closest," Sam said as she checked the track against her display.

"...at Hill Air Force Base," Terry finished.

"Ops says we are clear. They are alerting Hill."

A red alram flashed and a klaxon sounded on my panel.

"Shutting down port engine!" I announced.

"Throttling down starboard," Terry stated as he monitored his controls.

The cockpit was quietly tense as the two pilots adjusted course and monitored our altitude. I kept an eye on the engines. I had many hours in test firings and simulator time, but this was the first trip sitting alone in the engineer's station on a real flight bridge. I was proud of completing all the certifications we had devised for the position, but found myself wondering if the training was enough for a real emergency. I pushed those thoughts away and pulled out the checklist for landing on one engine and began reviewing the procedures, just as I had trained.

"Should we stretch for Edwards?" Sam asked.

"Negative," I responded. "Get us on the ground. We should not have lost the port engine from a debris strike. Something else is going on. Let's get safely down and figure out what happened."

The design of the GO-X had given way to the GS series of orbiters. Hunter and I had been able to reduce the size of the generators and make them integral to the wing base, to allow a streamlined lifting body design that could support both orbital and sub-orbital operations. While this was the ninth orbiter PT Innovation had built, it was only the second of the GS series. This flight was making me wonder if we had missed something in the design.

"I've got the beacon for Hill," Sam announced several tense minutes later. "I guess that means the nav array is intact at least. Come right to two-two-five and we'll then track back south to line up for a straight approach."

"How long is their runway?" Terry asked.

"Runway 14 is 4115 meters long. You should have plenty of roll space."

"Agreed, but let's get the speed down some more. I'm going nose up and drop some speed. Starboard engine at idle," he said.

I felt myself press into the seat as our nose came up and we climbed some while Terry put us into a gentle turn, first further west, and then back to the southwest.

"Looking good," Sam said as she handled navigation.

"Hill is ready for us," I said as I read the brief message from Ops on my display.

"Come right to one four zero," Sam said as she kept an eye on the nav display.

"I've got a visual," Terry said as he banked the orbiter. "We're on the glidepath."

I scanned my controls and then pulled my seat belt and shoulder harness tight. While the pilot and co-pilot had windows, the engineering station and the payload specialist stations blocked any view, so I had to rely on the video display to show what the pilots could see through their windows. I made sure the emergency landing checklist was clipped in place where I could easily see it.

"Ten-K to threshold. Angels four-mike," Sam said. We were at four thousand meters, and ten thousand meters from the end of the runway. It was a little higher than our typical approach profile.

"Port engine offline. Starboard engine at idle. All indicators green," I said.

"Lowering gear," Terry said without emotion.

I monitored the landing gear indicators.

"Gear is down and locked," Sam reported.

"I've got the ball," Terry said. "High in glidepath. Correcting."

I felt the nose come up some and watched the airspeed bleed off and the altitude drop. The deft balancing of forces was an artform that I could appreciate but did not want to try and master. I would have been inclined to drop the nose, which would pick up speed and increase lift in this craft.

"On glidepath," Terry said for the benefit of our cabin recorders. Over and over, it had been drilled into me to keep the dialog going on actions and observations to capture as much data as possible.

"Four-K to threshold, Angels one-mike," Sam said. I had wondered why we used the "K" designator for kilometers, but called out "mike" for altitude. Evidently, "Angels" had been used for altitude in thousands of feet, so our pilots had taken the Angels as one thousand, but added "mike" to indicate meters instead of feet.

I brought my focus back to my display.

"Two-K, five hundred meters," Sam said softly.

I took a deep breath and watched our airspeed drop as the nose came up a little higher. The last two thousand meters seemed to take forever, even though I knew it was a matter of moments before we pressed firmly against our seats and heard the chirp of tires hitting the runway. A moment after that, I was pressed against my shoulder straps as the brakes were applied.

"Touchdown," Sam said.

I began going through the post landing checklist as Terry and Sam brought us to a complete stop at the southern end of the runway. On my monitor, I saw the base emergency crews surrounding us.

"Sam," Terry said. "Let Paul and I finish the shutdown while you go pop the hatch and let them know we're okay."

"I'm on it," she said as she unbuckled and headed aft to the primary crew hatch.

Ten minutes later, we were all standing in the shade of the orbiter as we looked at the communications antenna array. A small pit was evident in the carbon fiber panel, but there was nothing catastrophic about it. The port engine also looked fine.

"Whatever caused our problems," I said softly to Terry, "It was not a debris strike."

*****