Free Storm Killer by Benjamin Blue

storm cloud tops, it widened until at the target area, it was a circle of light four kilometers in diameter.
    Water vapor within the cone of light and intense heat boiled away and immediately condensed in the super cold air outside the cone. Tremendous quantities of cold rain and ice began to fall into the upper clouds of the hurricane for a distance of three to four kilometers beyond the cone. This cold rain and ice would continue to fall into the storm until Storm Killer stopped its generation of the super concentrated light beam.
    The computer projections were that over the next thirty-six hours, the chilling rain and ice would begin to wreck havoc in the hurricane’s weather engine. The super cold rain would penetrate deeper and wider into the storm clouds and moderate the updrafts and downdrafts of air that assisted in generating much of the storm’s energy.
    Storm Killer’s positioning thrusters were now commanded to fire, maneuvering the station into a slight circular motion causing a sway of one quarter of a degree in six minutes. The cone of light began to move slowly in a counterclockwise direction around the eye wall. At this rotation speed, the light/heat cone would take two hours to complete the entire circuit around the top of the eye wall.
    While the addition of the intense, icy precipitation was a major factor in the projected dissipation of the storm, the overriding factor was the super heating of the upper cloud layers that would cause the temperature gradient from the ground level to the upper level of the storm to decrease by one to one and half degrees centigrade every twelve hours. Sufficient reduction in this temperature gradient would shut down the internal weather engine driving the storm.
    Storm Killer would attack the hurricane for nineteen hours a day until the storm showed signs of weakening. The remaining time, it would be in the Earth’s shadow as it and the Earth rotated through the day.
    The computers on Storm Killer were continuously calculating and recalculating the angle of the platform and film webs, the speed of the hurricane’s forward motion, and the circular motion required to play the light beam across the entire eye wall. An additional two hundred flight variables were added to the calculations to keep Storm Killer targeted and the full power of the sun focused on the job at hand.
    At input variable one hundred and sixty-eight, a decimal point was shifted one position by a worm program hiding in the input processor operating system. At each succeeding input variable, the worm introduced a minor variation.
    The controlled oscillation of the platform slowed and the light beam coned straight down into the center of the eye of Edna. As soon as the targeting anomaly was detected, the control center staff began diagnostics to determine the cause of the glitch. Unless something was done quickly, the surface water in the eye of the storm would begin heating which could lead to an even stronger storm being produced.
    The worm remained undetected for the first twenty minutes following the start of the anomaly until an astute computer engineer detected a minor mainframe storage increase that was not there in any of the prior system test runs. Once detected, it took less than a minute to introduce and execute a scrubbing program that removed the worm. Control was restored.
    Storm Killer continued her attempt to kill Edna.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    19
On The Rabbit’s Trail
    Kim wasted no time after receiving authority to launch the investigation into the air lock sabotage. She ordered all memory stick recordings of the security cameras for the entire twenty-four hours prior to the airlock incident to be delivered to the security desk. No camera was located in the exact spot where the sabotage occurred, but the entrances to the computer system rack rooms were covered.
    With some legwork and mental prowess, it should prove fairly easy to determine who the probable offender was.
    Kim set up a