Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (33 page)

           
Their only
shared radio transmission came after they had maneuvered their bulky missiles
around the keel and aimed them at the point in the sky where the Soviet
spaceplanes had been parked. Yemana put a finger on his MMU thruster, took a
deep breath, and called,
“Now."

           
Yemana
jetted forward six feet, stopped and swung his missile up. Ironically, since
the SBR antenna on his side had been blasted away he had a perfectly
unobstructed shot at one of the Soviet spaceplanes, which he could see as a dim
oblong shape against the backdrop of stars. He waited a few moments until a
tiny flashing green light on the removed maintenance access panel illuminated,
then hit a button on the engine control panel, unclipped the missile and pulled
back his right-hand MMU thruster controller. He had jetted only ten feet away
from the Thor missile when it was engine ignited....

           
Baker had
to move forward a few extra feet to clear the large SBR antennas on his side,
but it took only a few extra seconds. Then he swung the front of the Thor
missile upward, twisting the hand thruster controllers to counteract the huge
inertia of the Thor missiles. It took a few moments longer for him than for
Yemana, but Baker soon had his Thor missile pointing right where the Soviet
spaceplane had been parked....

           
Except it
was no longer there....

           
“General,
missiles pointed right at us,”
came
the startled call
from Colonel Voloshin. The Soviet pilot couldn’t believe what he saw: an
American astronaut maneuvering a Thor missile around in open space. The sight
would have been merely weird if it weren’t such a clear warning of imminent
attack.

           
Govorov
reacted instantly, pulling his Elektron spaceplane straight up ninety degrees
and applying full throttle. As an added measure he overpressurized one of the small
tail-thrusters of his Elektron space- plane, then cut the thruster off, sending
a cloud of monomethyl hydrazine rocket fuel out behind the spaceplane. In
seconds he had darted several hundred meters away from the huge American space
station.

           
The Thor
missile ran straight and true. Yemana fought the sudden back-blast of the
Thor’s main thruster and quickly regained control of his MMU. He watched,
fascinated, as the missile’s steel-mesh snare began to unfurl and quickly
expand to nearly its full one-hundred-foot diameter. There was no way it was
going to miss....

           
Except at
that moment the Soviet spaceplane heeled sharply upward, and literally in the
blink of an eye it was gone. The Thor missile ran straight toward the spot
where the spaceplane had been, but it made no attempt to turn upward to pursue
the fleeing Soviet intruder. Although Yemana had no way of knowing, the
missile’s radar-seeker head had locked onto the dense cloud of hydrazine fuel.
When it reached the slowly dispersing cloud, the missile computed zero distance
to its target and detonated its one-thousand-pound flak warhead.

           
Yemana saw
the flash of the exploding warhead but saw or felt nothing else. The missile
had exploded less than three hundred feet away, sending five hundred pounds of
metal chips flying in all directions. Unimpeded by any obstruction or even the
resistance of gravity, the chips easily found the astronaut and tore through
his body, detonating the MMU’s pressurized tanks and adding their explosive
fury to the carnage. Yemana’s ragged corpse was propelled by the explosion’s
shockwave out into space.

           
“General,
the missile has exploded behind you. I’m beginning my attack.”

           
Govorov
kept the throttle of his Elektron at full thrust until he heard Voloshin’s
message, then selected the roll thrusters and did a fast four-“g” dive back
down toward the station. He heard a few pings of metal against the silica tiles
of his Elektron but ignored it. He saw nothing now but his quarry in the sights
of his Scimitar missile- launcher. .. .

           
Will and
Sontag saw the flash of light and heard the rumbling explosion of the first
Thor missile.

           
“Yemana.
Baker. Where are you?”

           
Sontag
unstrapped and quickly propelled himself between the two flight deck seats and across
to the aft crew station. He pressed his face to the windows facing into the
cargo hold and scanned the sky behind
Enterprise
toward the center keel and
lower pressurized modules.

           
“I see one
of them,” Sontag called out cross-cockpit. “I don’t know if it’s Baker or
Yemana....”

           
Baker saw
the Soviet spaceplane almost on top of him, but there was no time to reacquire
his target. He tried to maneuver his MMU down and over to aim the Thor
missile’s sensor at the spaceplane, but in his rush to steer the missile he
activated the MMU thruster controls too rapidly and sent himself into a violent
forward spin. When he tried to apply opposite thrust to correct his spin, the
Thor missile broke free from the attach point on his MMU, and he had to watch
Silver
Tower
’s last hope for defense spin
away toward earth.

           
Colonel
Voloshin saw the flash from the first exploding missile, and the sudden glare
made him furious. He immediately activated his laser target designator and
centered the aiming reticle on the first target in view: the white-suited body
of Dr. Kevin Baker just beginning to get his spinning MMU under control. He
squeezed the trigger. A single Scimitar missile ejected itself from the rotary
launcher in Elektron Two’s cargo bay. Its tiny rocket engine ignited. The
missile’s seeker-head followed the reflected laser energy from Elektron Two
straight to its target.

           
The laser
seeker-head broke apart on Kevin Baker’s MMU chest- mounted control pack, but
the hypervelocity Scimitar missile kept on going. Right behind the seeker head
was a nonexplosive arrow- pointed warhead made of an alloy of molybdenum and
depleted uranium, designed to penetrate the thickest armor—Baker’s chest
offered no resistance to the missile, which was now traveling at well over a mile
a second. The missile pierced Baker’s body, his MMU, went completely through
the storage module fifty yards behind Baker, and through the outer hull of
Skybolt’s MHD reactor before deflecting off one of the four-foot-thick MHD
reactor walls and off into space.

           
“Oh... my
... God...”

           
Will
strained around and saw Sontag move back slowly from the cargo bay windows.
“What is it, Rich ... ?”

           
“One of
them... oh, God... they shot him point-black with a missile.”

           
“Can we
retrieve him? Can you see where he is?”

           
Sontag
forced himself to look out the window once again. The space-suited figure was
spread-eagle, in nearly the same position as before, but this time with a cloud
of unrecognizable debris floating all around him. The body started to revolve,
as though at the end of a invisible noose, and Sontag could see the
softball-size hole in the corpse....

           
“
Enterprise
,
this is Saint-Michael. Jerrod, what’s happened?”

           
Will
clicked open the ship-to-station interphone. “General, Baker and Yemana... they’re
dead.”

           
A pause.
“You sure?”

           
Will didn’t
answer, instead put his head down on his chest and hammered on the front glare
shield, realizing now what he had done....

           
Lieutenant General
Govorov could identify only one possible source of the unexpected missile
attack: the Thor missile garage tethered beneath the station. He quickly
activated his laser designator and placed the aiming reticle on the neutral
particle-beam projector mounted beneath the garage. He fired two missiles into
the garage, creating a huge fireworks display of sparks and secondary
explosions that finally caused the Thor garage to break free of its steel
tether and spin away from the station.

           
He
reestablished his original observation position above the space station and
keyed his microphone. “Elektron Two, report.”

 
         
“Status green, Lead,” Voloshin
replied. “Two American cosmonauts carrying what appeared to be Thor
missiles....”

           
“Cosmonauts?”

           
“Affirmative.
I can’t see first one, he was close to the
explosion of the Thor missile he launched at you. Second one has been...
dispatched. I’m maneuvering to begin attack.”

           
“Acknowledged.
Maneuver back to preplanned position and
report when ready to attack. I am maneuvering back into position.”

           
As Voloshin
watched Govorov pull his fighter into a wide turn around the space station, the
younger pilot thought about the wisdom of waiting to get back in position. No,
the time to attack was now— before the Americans tried something else. He
pulled his Elektron up twenty degrees, pointing it at the center of the
station, and activated his laser designator.

           
The aiming
reticle rested on the first large object in view—the underside of the crew
compartment of the space shuttle
Enterprise
.
...

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

           
“They’re
maneuvering back to their original positions, General.”

           
Saint-Michael,
already shocked by the report on Baker and Yemana, was motioning
Jefferson
,
Marks and
Walker
toward the hatch
to the main connecting tunnel. “Get on board
Enterprise
.
They’re going to start tearing this
station apart with those missiles. Moyer, report to—”

           
A sudden
explosion threw all in the command module to the wall. A large red light began
blinking over the hatch leading to the main connecting tunnel.

           
“Fire in
the connecting tunnel....”

           
Saint-Michael
helped
Walker
to his feet,
then
retrieved his earset.
“
Enterprise
.
Emergency.
Fire in the connecting tunnel.
Prepare for emergency
disconnect.”

           
“Jason.”
The voice belonged to Jerrod
Will aboard the shuttle
Enterprise
.
“Under attack... rapid decompression
.. ..”
But Will, Son- tag and the other crewmen aboard
Enterprise
had
no time left.

           
The
Scimitar missile plowed through the lower deck of the pressurized crew
compartment of
Enterprise
,
tearing apart a fuel cell and creating
a massive hydrogen-oxygen explosion. Within a hundredth of a second, the lower
and middeck sections of
Enterprise
were aflame. Davis, Wallis and
Montgomery died instantly.

 
         
The missile pierced the middeck,
deflected off an aluminum spar, blew through the forward cabin bulkhead and
went through the RCS engine pod on the nose of the shuttle. The exploding
hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide fuel tanks in the RCS pod dissipated the Scimitar
missile’s remaining energy, but the damage had already been done.

           
Without a
space suit or pressurized cabin providing a protective layer of air pressure
around their bodies, the temperature of the four remaining living crewmen’s
bodies
bubbled
the dissolved gases in their blood out
of solution, exploding the blood vessels in their bodies. Within a few long,
agonizing minutes, in the freezing-cold depths of space, Will, Sontag, Bayles,
and Kelly boiled to death.

           
'‘Will.”
Saint-Michael detached himself from the Velcro near the master SBR display and
propelled himself over to the hatch leading to the main connecting tunnel. He
hit the button to open the hatch: nothing. The special fire- and
smoke-detection interlocks built into the hatch automatically closed and locked
the hatch if fire or smoke was present.

           
Saint-Michael
turned to Marks. “
Wayne
, decompress
the connecting tunnel down to the docking module. Moyer, can you hear me?
What’s your position?”

           
“I’m in
engineering,” Moyer said, his labored breathing obvious in the intercom
transmission. “I’m moving toward the connecting tunnel.”

           
“Copy.”
Saint-Michael checked the status displays above the
hatch. The FIRE warning light had gone out, and now a PRESS warning light had
illuminated. “I show the fire out and the connecting tunnel depressurized to
one-half atmosphere, Moyer. You’re clear to activate the interlock bypass. Be
sure to take a couple of POS packs with you in case they need them.”