Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (31 page)

           
“Launched
from Tyuratam?”

           
“Yes, two from the Glowing Star area, the rest from the
antisatellite area at Baikenour.”

           
“Gorgons?”

           
Saint-Michael
nodded. “That’s my guess.”

           
“Sounds like they popped the whole AS AT alert fleet.
What
about the two from Glowing Star? Do you think they’re manned?”

           
“Don’t
know. They’ve had time to move two more Gorgons to Glowing Star, but I think
our intelligence would’ve reported that.” “What are our people doing in the
gulf? Any major movement?”

           
“None.
Matter of fact, most units on land and in the gulf appear frozen. The Russians
haven’t retreated, but they’re not advancing either. They may be reassessing.”

           
“Or they
may be waiting for Silver Tower to get blasted out of the sky before finishing
the job of overrunning Iran,” Will said. “We’d better get loaded up....”

           
“I can’t
just abandon the station completely,” Saint-Michael said, checking the system
status readouts. “Not yet, not if the Russians are gearing up for a major
offensive. We have to be there when they kick it off.”

           
“General,
it might only take one more shot of that laser or one direct hit from a Gorgon
to put you out of commission. One shot on a fuel tank or in your engineering
module and whoever’s left on board will be in deep—”

           
“We’ve got
the lifeboat....”

           
“The
lifeboat?
Excuse me, but the term ‘lifeboat’ applied to that hunk of tin out there was
coined for the congressman and senators who yakked about having a rescue craft
but who wouldn’t put up the money for more shuttles or spaceplanes. You know
that, sir. We both know it’s not a lifeboat—it’s more like a piece of
waterlogged driftwood. It leaks like a bad condom and it probably wouldn’t
stand the stress of recovery in a shuttle. It’s craziness to rely on it.”

           
“Some
speech—and maybe all true. But it doesn’t matter.... It’s what we’ve got to do
the job. This is an emergency—”

           
“Don’t
create another one, then.”

           
“Jerrod, I
hear you. That’s it. Take care of your ship and your passengers. I’ll cut the
crew on the station down to two or three. You take the rest back to Vandenburg
or Edwards. Now move it. We haven’t got much time.”

 
         
As
Will
exited the module, Colonels Marks and Walker approached Saint-Michael. Marks
handed the general a computer printout. “Bad news, Skipper. My calculations
show that we only have a day and a half’s worth of fuel. Tops.”

           
Saint-Michael
scanned the fuel figures. “Even with a reduced crew. No experiments? Reduced
power usage?”

           
“Those
figures include all that, plus only a conservative estimate on the necessary
fuel consumption with the lost thruster—it could be worse than those numbers.”

           
“We’ll need
almost four-a-week refuelings at this rate,” Saint-Michael said, “unless we get
that thruster working—”

 
          
Walker
cut in. “General, there’s another option....”

           
“I know,
return to a standard polar circular orbit. Stop the retracking thruster course
corrections. But then we’d have only a few minutes over the
Persian
Gulf
every few hours. We’d be almost useless as a surveillance
platform.”

           
“But we’d
be secure,
General
. This station is a strategic
defense laboratory, not really a surveillance satellite. We’ve proved our value
in the first defense of
Iran
and the
Persian Gulf
region, but now the game has
changed.
'We're
the target, a major
target. If the Russians shoot down this station, the
United
States
has lost a lot more than just an SBR
platform. ...”

           
Saint-Michael
stayed silent, seemingly lost in thought.

           
Walker
sensed the shift in the general’s thinking and nodded to Marks, who said, “At
Jim’s request, sir, I’ve worked up the fuel considerations involved in putting
us back in polar orbit.” He handed Saint Michael another printout. “We
would
have enough fuel to reestablish
the new orbit, and we wouldn’t be dependent on so many refuelings—”

           
“Skipper,
warning message from Space Command tracking,” Moyer broke in through the
station wide intercom. “Orbiting vehicle within five miles vertically and one
hundred miles laterally from the station.”

           
Saint-Michael
quickly sat back in his commander’s seat;
Walker
returned to his position beside
Jefferson
on the master
SBR display.

           
Saint-Michael
keyed the intercom. “Jerrod, status of your refueling.”

           
“Few more minutes.”

           
“You’re out
of time, Jerrod. Attention on the station. Emergency. Discontinue all refueling
operations. All crewmen except command module personnel report aboard
Enterprise
immediately. This station is on red alert. Jake
discontinue
SBR earth surveillance. Launch
commit
all Thor
interceptors for station defense.” He turned to
Walker
.
“Jim, can you handle the Space Command relays and back up Jake on the SBR
board?”

           
“Sure thing.”

           
“Okay.
Moyer, get into a space suit. You’re our life insurance.” The young tech nodded
and hurried off to where one of the space suits had temporarily been stowed in
a comer of the command module. “I want rescue balls within immediate reach.”

           
“Space
command tracking vehicle within two miles vertical, sixty miles horizontal,”
Walker
reported. “Tracking reports vehicle is under power and maneuvering.”

           
“Jerrod,
get
Enterprise
the hell out of here.”

           
“Tracking
reports three more vehicles maneuvering within—”

           
“Ann isn’t
on board yet, Jason.”

           
Saint-Michael
got both transmissions at the same time, pressed his earset closer to hear
better
. “Say again, Jerrod.”

           
Will
repeated
the message. Before Saint-Michael could explode he
heard, “Fifty miles, now at our altitude. Collision course. Repeat,
collision course ”

           
“What the
hell....” Saint-Michael turned quickly to the stationwide speaker intercom.
“Ann Page, report to the command module immediately. Acknowledge.”

           
No reply.
The general knew he had to force himself to put her out of his mind and
concentrate on the attack. He turned back around toward the master SBR display.
“Jake....”

           
“SBR lock-on, Skipper.
Laser target discrimination in
progress.” Tethered one hundred yards below Silver Tower, the Thor space- based
interceptor-missile garage had obeyed the steering commands sent to it by the
station’s powerful phased-array radar and had pointed the business end of the
garage toward the oncoming antisatellite vehicle. When the SBR locked on, it
also slaved a neutral particle-beam laser projector onto the Soviet space
vehicle.

           
At that
point the laser illuminated the three-ton Gorgon missile, and special sensors
analyzed the reflected laser energy. A solid object large enough to damage the
station would reflect a different wavelength of energy than a less substantial,
lightweight decoy. Once the decoys were discovered, Armstrong’s weapons could
be employed against only those objects that were a real threat to the station.
The whole process, from lock-on to lethal target verification, had taken only
seconds.

 
         
“Forty miles ... thirty miles ...
target discrimination is lethal positive. Thor one auto launch....”

           
After
launch commit was given, the missile’s last check was target discrimination.
Once targets were checked as lethal, the SBR then automatically issued attack
commands to the Thor missiles. The first Thor interceptor missile shot free of
its garage, accelerating rapidly to its top speed of over four miles per
second. The one-hundred foot- diameter steel mesh net had hardly fully deployed
when it hit the first Gorgon AS AT vehicle head-on.

           
“Direct hit.”
But there were no victory cheers. This wasn’t,
after all, a planned exercise like their first operational test with friendly
Trident D-5 missiles.

           
“Transmit warning
message to Space Command, Mission Control, and JCS,” Saint-Michael said. “Tell
them we are engaging—”

           
A loud bang
and a warning buzzer sounded from the environmental control panel. “What the
hell was that... ?”

           
“Rupture in
the Skylab module,” Marks reported. “Rapid pressure loss ... almost zero
now....”

           
“Jason,
this is Will on
Enterprise
.
We were hit by projectiles from that
Gorgon just before it was destroyed.
Minor damage to our
right wing leading edge.”

           
“SBR has
multiple inbound targets locked on,”
Jefferson
reported.
“Range eighty miles.
Target discrimination in progress.”

           
“Cabin
pressurization in rec section of Skylab module down to zero,” Marks updated.
“Skylab module sealed off. I think we took one of those Gorgon projectiles.”

           
Saint-Michael
looked grim. “Damn it, we’ve got to get
Enterprise
out of here.” He switched to
stationwide intercom. “Ann, where are you?
Report
, damn it.”

           
Silence.

           
“Target
discrimination lethal positive for three inbounds—”
Jefferson
had just finished his report when his computer monitors showed three automatic
Thor missile launches.

           
“Thors two,
three, and four away... straight track....”

           
“Space
Command acknowledges our warning message.”

           
“Direct hit
on number
two.
. . miss on four. Miss on number four—”

           
“Manual
launch,” Saint-Michael called out. “Jake, you got it.”

          
Jefferson
’s
fingers manipulated his control board.
“Thor five away.
Reacquire target four.... Switching to auto track—”

           
“Target
three direct hit.” Followed by dozens of bangs and scraping noises on the hull
and throughout the station.

           
“More flak
from those Gorgons,” Marks reported. He checked the environmental control
panel. “Leaks in the upper connecting tunnel. Cargo shovel defueling system has
a short-circuit. Major damage throughout the Skylab module.”

           
“SBR
tracking four inbounds,”
Walker
said. “Range of closest target eighty miles—”

           
“Snared
target number four,” from
Jefferson
. His dark blue
flight suit was already soaked with sweat.

           
“Only five
more Thors,” Saint-Michael said. “I don’t like the way the math is working out
here.”

           
“We’ve got
ten more Thors stored on the keel,”
Walker
reminded him.

           
“They might
as well be on earth,” the general said. “We’ve got no one to load them onto the
garage.”

           
“
Enterprise
could do it....”

           
“It would
take too long to load those missiles with the manipulator arm. If we only had—”

           
“I’ll go,”
Moyer said suddenly. “Shouldn’t take me too long....”

           
“It’ll
take you all day to load ten missiles by yourself,”
Walker
told him.

           
“At least I
can load a few....”

           
“We can’t
spare you,” Saint-Michael said. “If we run out of missiles and we’re still
under attack, we abandon the station. Period—”

           
“Target
discriminating on four inbounds... showing two decoys.
Repeat
, tracking two decoys.”

           
“Decoys?”
Marks said. “They put decoys on an AS AT
launcher?”

           
“A decoy
can still do damage.”

           
“But we
don’t have the Thors to spare,” Saint-Michael told
Walker
.
“Target the other two.”