"Wesley, the world is watching us right now, waiting to see if our country can band together and pull off the greatest accomplishment in humankind's history. The United States is the greatest country in the world, and we will again prove that by placing normal citizens on the first settlement in space. That is why everything must go as planned. I've told you of many safety precautions we've taken in keeping everything a secret but there is one other thing I never mentioned to you that ties into the whole point I made earlier about fear and Beyer Tech's incredible space shuttle.

"Much like I've placed a lot of trust in you and McNalley & Jones to get construction done, I've placed quite a bit of trust in Jon Morris and Beyer Tech. Unlike the trust I've publicly given you, I did not want to place the same amount of trust, and consequently pressure, on Morris. The final part of our secret plans will happen sometime within the next few months. We will simultaneously test the shuttle and transport the first pieces of the space station into orbit."

"Don't tell me; this will all be done in secret," Maddox said.

"Yes it will. If the space shuttle fails, we only lose a few pieces of the space station. In that case, we work a deal with Russia to use their proton boosters. Making this kind of deal would take time but we could use that time to reproduce any station pieces that might be destroyed. As far as the world is concerned, these pieces aren't done anyway. Any possible failure could be kept under wraps and nobody would be the wiser.

"But if the shuttle runs smoothly, as Beyer Tech assures us, we will transport all of the space station pieces into orbit within a few weeks. Space construction can commence way ahead of schedule out of the public eye. By the time we get into a normal routine in space and make headway in putting together the station, we can finally announce our progress to the world."

The President wore an optimistic grin at the thought of their potential success though Maddox still had doubts. But the President was nice enough to keep Maddox in the loop about certain things, but that was out of courtesy, not because he was looking for another opinion.

"What do you think about the plan?" Armour asked.

Maddox learned to accept their decisions. Agreeing with Marshall and Armour was the only way he would stay informed about all aspects of the space station planning.

"Sounds good to me."

The President had decided that it was important for Maddox to visit the space shuttle, the secret launch facility and his old 'rival,' Jon Morris. When Maddox asked exactly where this meeting would take place, Marshall continued to be as secretive as always. The only hint he gave was that the hidden location was in the project leader's 'neck of the woods.'

The meeting ended soon after. The men exchanged a few pleasantries before Maddox was ushered back to the elevator.

When Maddox walked outside, he realized how much his life had changed in the short time since he entered the cabin. An hour earlier, Maddox was afraid he might not be walking out of the cabin. Now, he learned highly classified details of how space construction would progress.

"I suppose you won't be telling me where we're going next?" Maddox asked the burly Secret Service agent still serving as his babysitter. The large man said nothing. "I didn't think so."

The limousine drove along the bumpy dirt road until it reached the highway. In less than an hour, they returned to the airport and reboarded the plane. No sooner had Maddox and the agent buckled their safety belts when the engines whirred to life. Within minutes, the plane was in the air, heading toward another destination unknown to Maddox.

My neck of the woods, Maddox thought, trying to figure out the President's hint. That could be just about anywhere.

Maddox lived all over the country during his life. The only place with plenty of deserted areas to house a secret shuttle launch facility was his current home in the Arizona desert. But he knew Marshall and Armour would not want the secret facility anywhere near the space station facility. That area was far too close to countless members of the national media to risk exposure.

Maddox gave up and closed his eyes to catch up on some sleep. His nerves were currently on overdrive but the gentle whir of the plane engines and light vibration of the turbulence put him to sleep in a matter of minutes.

Maddox woke to the screeching of tires against asphalt. He was momentarily confused by his surroundings but remembered when he saw the Secret Service agent sitting next to him.

"Did you have a nice nap, Sleeping Beauty?" he asked, uncharacteristically breaking his silence.

"How long have I been sleeping?" Maddox asked, attempting to gauge how far away from D.C. they'd traveled. The agent snorted, reminding Maddox of someone else. "You work with Peter Mansfield a lot, don't you?"

For the first time all day, the agent's stone-faced exterior softened and the hint of a smile appeared.

"I'm normally in charge of his primary security," the man answered, surprising Maddox by using words not monosyllabic. "How did you know that?"

This time, it was Maddox's turn to snort and ignore the question.

The plane slowed and came to a halt. When Maddox heard the plane's door open, he quickly walked down the aisle and through the open doorway. He found himself in the same hangar they left from earlier that day.

"Arizona?" Maddox asked, shocked that they landed in the last place he expected. "Where are we going?"

The Secret Service agent led Maddox to yet another limo, the large man's silence returning.

Why the hell would Marshall risk exposing the space shuttle with so much media attention in this area? News helicopters are always flying near the construction facility. They could easily stumble upon another facility if they flew over it, Maddox thought. Unless the facility is located somewhere that helicopters can't go...

"Fort McKenzie," Maddox blurted out. "There's a no-fly zone at Fort McKenzie, that's why nobody has spotted anything."

"I'm sorry, sir. But I have no information to divulge to you," the agent said. Maddox realized the agent wouldn't know anything and shouldn't hear about anything Maddox learned from his meeting.

The project leader sat back in the limo and smiled to himself, proud that he'd figured out about Fort McKenzie. McKenzie was the perfect place for a hidden facility, a large, mostly decommissioned Army base in the middle of nowhere. Although Maddox had never visited the base, he knew of its whereabouts, some 25 miles southwest of the construction site. Maddox knew that once they exited the airport and got in the southbound lane of the highway, it would only be a half an hour until they reached Fort McKenzie.

But the limo never turned south. In fact, once they reached the highway, the driver inexplicably turned north. In just under twenty minutes, Maddox reached the secret destination.

"---toff will be in ---ty sec----. Over," Maddox's walkie-talkie crackled, bringing his mind and thoughts back to the present moment. These damn things never seem to work, Maddox thought, tapping the walkie-talkie against his palm. Whether it was here or at the space station construction facility, Maddox could not think of a single time he used the handheld communicators and heard a complete sentence without a burst of static.

"Please repeat. Over."

"Liftoff will be in sixty seconds," the voice repeated from inside of mission control. "Are you sure you don't want to monitor the systems down here with us? Over."

Maddox recognized the voice.

"No thanks, Jon. Figured you would want to watch it from out here, too. Over."

"I do," Jon Morris answered. "But I want to be here to prove to everyone there's nothing to worry about. Over."

"I certainly hope you're right. Over."

"No hope is needed, Wesley. This is going to work perfectly," Morris responded confidently. "Thirty seconds until liftoff. Ten minutes until we celebrate. Over and out."

Maddox switched off the walkie-talkie. The ground began vibrating as the enormous engines in the massive space shuttle continued to power up. A few months ago, Maddox doubted a shuttle that size could be built, let alone rocketed into space. But after touring the shuttle facility and meeting with Jon Morris, he was excited to see what would happen in less than a minute.

The shuttle facility had been built at a huge test site for nuclear weapons used mainly during the Cold War. The government had not used the huge underground facility since the fall of the Berlin Wall but had the wherewithal to sustain the highest-level of preservation on every aspect of maintenance.

Smoke billowed from beneath the shuttle, lightly at first, increasing with every second that passed. The sound of the engines grew louder and louder, drowning out the sound of Morris's voice as he came back on the walkie-talkie, beginning the countdown from the ten-second mark. The vibration also intensified; Maddox had to concentrate on keeping his balance on the roof of the control tower. The whole scene felt like some sort of natural catastrophe, especially as fire from the boosters caused more smoke to rise into the air.

The location of this facility was totally secret, far away from civilization or the chance of being discovered. Maddox made sure the media would be at one of two places: the space station facility or Fort McKenzie. It would be impossible to completely hide transportation of space station pieces, but they made sure the media was far away for now. It had been Maddox's idea to trick the media into going to Fort McKenzie. The old Army base seemed the most obvious location for something major to happen; Maddox himself had thought it was the shuttle's home once he landed in Arizona after his meeting with Marshall and Armour.

Maddox formed the plan of sending a squadron of large military trucks to the space station facility and having them return to Fort McKenzie. But most of the trucks merely looped around the facility and returned to the base.

With the lone media member following the caravan, Maddox supervised the loading of two key pieces of the space station in a dozen other trucks. It had still been dark outside and no prying eyes saw these other trucks sneak out an unknown exit at the rear of the construction facility. While the local reporter was presenting his story on the early news, and the local news chopper followed the convoy south to Fort McKenzie, the real action was heading north. Maddox could not have planned it any better.

Now if only this pays off...

"One...liftoff," Morris yelled over the walkie-talkie.

The fire from the shuttle boosters continued burning hard and the cloud of smoke engulfed nearly half of the shuttle, yet the monstrosity of a space vehicle still did not budge.

As the shuttle struggled to move, Maddox's thoughts suddenly centered on the space station piece secured in the shuttle's cargo hold. Thousands of man-hours were spent designing and building this piece to perfection and Maddox knew that all of this work would be lost if something horrible should happen.

The scene felt more like a nightmare every second the shuttle did not budge. Time felt like it came to a standstill. Only a few seconds elapsed since Morris called for liftoff but it seemed an eternity.

Or at least enough time for worry to completely grip Maddox's mind.

It's not working, I knew it wouldn't work...All of my hard work is about to burst into flame...The shuttle is too big, the fuel isn't burning hot enough to generate the power needed...Everything is going to be destroyed...

A new noise suddenly blasted throughout the morning air, drowning out every other noise made thus far. It sounded to Maddox like the creaking of an old door, only magnified a thousand times. The sound was so intense and earsplitting that he dropped the walkie-talkie as he hurried to place his hands over his ears. He instinctively closed his eyes but this did nothing to dull the pain that drummed inside of his head.

Continuing to cover his ears, Maddox watched in shock as the huge space shuttle began to struggle its way off the ground. The huge craft slowly rose, hovering just off the ground for a few long, dangerous seconds. Just when Maddox was certain the shuttle would tip over and explode in a fiery spectacle, it did the seemingly unthinkable: it gained speed. The deafening creaking died down the higher it rose. In less than a minute, the shuttle became just a dot in the sky on another quiet morning in the desert.

Maddox stared above for five minutes. He was fairly certain the shuttle and his station piece were safe but he prayed he would not see an explosion way up in the Earth's atmosphere. He finally picked up the walkie-talkie, anxious to check with mission control that all systems were running smoothly.

"Mission Control, do you read? Jon, it looks like you were right. I guess there wasn't anything to worry about. Over."

"Worry? Who was worried?" a voice answered, though not through the walkie-talkie. "I guess we should have fired the last booster a little sooner than we did. But if being off by a few seconds on liftoff was the worst thing that happens today, I'd say we did pretty well."

Maddox spun around and saw Jon Morris standing a few feet behind him, staring through a pair of binoculars up into the sky.

"How long have you been standing there?" Maddox asked.

"Long enough to say I told you so."

Less than an hour later, Morris and Maddox stood side by side in mission control, monitoring the shuttle's computer systems. Every system read normal as the super space shuttle orbited Earth miles above the ground. The final part of this secret mission, and the easiest part at that, was about to come to a close.

"Are you ready for this?" Morris asked.

Maddox took a deep breath and nodded. Morris pushed a couple of buttons and the main television monitor in mission control changed to a view inside the shuttle's cargo hold. Following the push of another button, Maddox watched the bay doors slide open, showing the dark of space just beyond.

"What happens next?" Maddox asked.

"The piece is released into orbit and the shuttle returns to Earth. When it lands, we load up the next station pieces and liftoff again, next time learning how to compensate for the boosters so everything goes exactly according to plan. You want to do the honors?"

Morris pointed to a button on the computer screen labeled "RELEASE." Maddox walked over to the computer and pushed the button, releasing the space station piece from its confines. The two men watched it float away from the shuttle, yet stay close by in orbit.

"It won't be long until James Armour's crews finish overhauling the old space shuttles for transporting even more people and materials into space," Morris said. "That means you need to finish getting ready to go into space yourself."

CHAPTER TWO.

MAY 16, 2015.

Tyler Ainsworth Junior was not a happy man.

The moment he had been dreading for the past three years was finally here. And he did not know what to do about it.

Father would have come up with something, he thought to himself. He would have made this work somehow. After all, Father could do anything, I am apparently worthless.

But Tyler refused to believe all was lost. This refusal was why he grew increasingly frustrated with every moment he stared at the mountain of paperwork in front of him. Tyler was sure his employees and stockholders would eventually learn the truth and assume he was a big failure or a big crook.

The past few years of Tyler's life had been the most stressful he ever endured. Construction progressed as well as hoped but available funds dwindled to an increasingly low number. An enormous amount of pressure had been placed on his shoulders and no decision he made ever seemed to be the correct one. If only he held together the crumbling pieces of his empire a few more years, then everything would have turned out okay...

Tyler took off his reading glasses and pushed away from his desk, taking a break from hours of studying numbers. He rubbed his tired eyes, a mix of extreme exhaustion and intense frustration.

Tyler opened his drawer and removed a bottle of scotch, a reminder of his days before rehab. He had not been this tempted to drink for as long as he could remember. Tyler ripped off the seal from the top of the bottle and twisted off the cap. The liquor's pungent aroma hit his nostrils immediately and made his head feel lighter. At this moment, Tyler craved every good feeling alcohol ever brought him. One sip would bring him his freedom, take away all of his worries.

The bottle made it as far as his lips before the thought of his father stopped him.

This is what he would expect me to do, Tyler thought. The old bastard would want me to be weak and drink. He would want me to fail. But that's not going to happen.

A part of Tyler told him to dump the scotch down the drain, throw away the bottle and avoid the liquor completely. He would not do that, though. He would not ignore the temptation. Only by keeping the scotch in his drawer would he fight the temptation and grow stronger, prove to everybody that he was capable of success.

If only the pages of numbers in front of him would cooperate. He angrily swiped his arm across the desktop and sent papers, office-supplies and even a lamp flying across the room. Although the objects hit the carpeted floor, Tyler heard a hollow banging noise and felt a slight vibration on the ground.

He leaned back in his chair and took a few deep breaths, forcing himself to relax. Come on, this isn't the end of the world. Tyler had to laugh at the irony of that thought, helping take the edge off his current situation. Tyler glanced around the room and for the first time in hours became aware of his surroundings.

The room was not very big, completely different from every room or office Tyler worked in during his life. Growing up as wealthy as he did, Tyler was accustomed to spacious living quarters. Even his room in Mimosa Grove had been twice the size of this room. But what the small room lacked in size, it certainly made up for in style.

Thick, plush carpeting covered every inch of the cold metal floor beneath. An antique oak bed much larger than would be standard in all other rooms was positioned in the far left corner. Tyler's large hardwood desk was accompanied by a comfortable leather chair, whose matching sofa was just across the room. A movie projector was attached to the ceiling and a large screen covered most of one wall. An extensive movie collection which would one day become the world's largest was cased in a large cabinet attached to one of the walls. Another large cabinet, filled to the brim with all of Tyler's expensive clothes and suits, was attached to the wall next to the movie cabinet.

The rest of the gray metal walls were covered with expensive paintings. Of course there was only enough wall space to fit a few of the dozens of paintings that once adorned the walls of his father's house. The rest of those paintings had been auctioned off but at least Tyler kept the Picasso and a few other favorites. There was no empty wall space in his small room now, much to Tyler's delight. After all, the dismal gray walls reminded him too much of prison or something...

Could I go to prison if I'm caught? The stockholders certainly won't be happy if the company goes down the drain and they lose all their money, Tyler thought. At least I have plenty of places to hide around here and nobody knows where I am...

Tyler stood from his desk and stretched his weary muscles. He was not sure how long it had been since he last slept but it felt like days. Since there was not a single window in his room to the sun or outside world, time was tough to gauge.

There would be plenty of time to sleep and do nothing in a few years. Tyler had too many other things to get done now, too many things he needed to figure out if he really wanted to make it beyond the next few years. And the first problem he had to deal with lay scattered across the floor. He began to pick up papers and place pages in order when his cell phone rang. Few people had the number to Tyler's phone, even fewer who'd have good news. He ignored the annoying jingle and continued to pick up his papers.

When Tyler finally had them in order and sat back down, his phone rang again. The name Marc flashed on the phone's small screen.

If there's one person who knows not to annoy me with minor details, it's my assistant, Tyler thought to himself. If Tyler kept ignoring the call, he was sure his assistant would come find him .. It will be much easier to yell at him and hang up than it will be to yell at him and get him to leave.

"You'd better have a good reason for interrupting me," Tyler warned. "I am neck deep in work and I'm finally figuring out a strategy that will save your worthless job."