Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (35 page)

           
“Ann....”

           
His call
was drowned out by another explosion. His grip instinctively tightened on the
ceiling handhold. But it was not another explosion on the keel. It was a loud,
rhythmic drumming sound, reverberating through the entire station....

 
          
ELEKTRON TWO SPACEPLANE

 
          
The laser designator refused to lock
onto the large round bull’s-eye itself—some sort of mirror inside reflected the
laser energy away instead of back to the spaceplane—so Voloshin had to target
the housing of the bull’s-eye instead. No problem there. The station was
revolving at a perfect rate, not too fast, not too slow. In seconds the strange
housing would be in range and he would send a Scimitar missile straight
through—

           
Colonel
Ivan Voloshin saw a flash of red light and felt suddenly hot, as though he’d
been dunked in a tub of hot water. The feeling was so pleasant that he let the
warmth wash over him like a gentle wave. He even had time to worry about
something silly: that he had to urinate badly. Was it because his hand felt as
if it had been stuck in a bucket of warm water? That was a favorite technique
of his mother’s, he remembered: before going to the store with him, she would
always ask if he had to go to the bathroom, and he of course would always say
no. Then she would tell him to wash his hands and make sure to use hot water,
and all of sudden he had to go....

           
Colonel
Voloshin carried that pleasant childhood memory with him into oblivion as his
Elektron spaceplane exploded into uncountable fiery pieces.

 
          
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE

 
          
“Elektron Two. Report on that flash
of light on your side.” Nothing, not even a hiss of static. “Voloshin. Report.”
Govorov had to jerk his lateral thrusters quickly to avoid a large piece of
debris, probably from the crippled American space station, that had appeared
out of nowhere.

           
He glanced
at his spaceplane’s fuel gauges. His wild escape maneuver and his present
station-keeping pulses to maintain his position on the revolving space station
were seriously depleting his supply. Wasting more precious fuel searching for
Voloshin would probably push him right to the time-line. He no longer had the
time to spend locating, identifying, targeting and shooting at individual
station subsystems.

           
“Voloshin, fuel status.”
No reply.

           
“Elektron
Two, this is Elektron One. If you can hear me, break off your attack and join
me one thousand meters above the station axis. Acknowledge.”

           
Still no reply.
Things had just darkened for Govorov: low on
fuel, lost wingman, only five Scimitar missiles remaining and their target not
yet destroyed. He discontinued his station-keeping position and circled the
wobbling space station. No sign of Voloshin. Instead of expending the energy to
station-keep around Armstrong, Voloshin had probably stayed above the wreck
and... been struck by a piece of debris.. ..

           
Now only a few more minutes until the deorbit time-line limit.
Govorov could not spend time targeting the stations’ subsystems. He maneuvered
to face the revolving station, activated his laser designator, and took aim on
the station’s pressurized modules. .. .

 
         
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
“Ann? Can you hear me?”

           
The
intercom had gone dead. The lights were completely out now except for one or
two remaining emergency lights. He had no way of knowing if the SBR or Skybolt
had worked. He didn’t even know if she was still alive.

           
Suddenly
Saint-Michael’s huge sophisticated space station seemed like an orbiting
mausoleum, and all he could think of was finding her and getting out of this dark,
entombing crypt.

           
Ever since
the command-module crewmembers had evacuated the station, Saint-Michael had
been wearing the bottoms of his spacesuit. He now made his way over to where
the upper half of his suit was floating, slipped into it and joined up the two
halves. While breathing oxygen from his POS he connected his gloves,
communications headset and helmet in place and activated his life-support
backpack. He then moved toward the hatch leading to the connecting tunnel.

           
He passed
through the connecting tunnel and had just entered the engineering module when
the entire ceiling seemed to explode on top of him. He caught a glimpse of a
projectile shooting straight through the module and crashing through the deck.
The Velcro-covered floor seemed to erupt and buckle like hot tar.
Sparks
filled the cabin. A PRESS warning horn sounded, followed by a FIRE warning
light that flickered on and off. In a few moments the only lights on in the
module were the two warning lights, creating an eerie strobe-light effect.
Saint-Michael had to overcome the sudden disorientation and will his legs to
move. Carefully he climbed through the shards of metal, plastic, wiring and
other debris now floating throughout the galley module and made his way to the
hatch to the Skybolt module. Smoke began to billow through the galley as he
peered through the thick Plexiglas window into the module....

           
Ann was
suspended about a foot from the ceiling, her arms and legs dangling like a
puppet’s, her POS system hovering near her neck; Saint-Michael noted with
relief that her mask was on. She was not moving, A few blobs of blood encircled
her forehead.

           
He opened
the hatch, closed it behind him and made sure the Skybolt module began to
repressurize itself. When the pressure was nearly normal he slid down the
narrow aisle between the massive electronics racks and pulled Ann to him. He
quickly checked her POS connections and found them secure. Further examination
revealed a large cut and a bump on her left temple.

           
He touched
his helmet to her POS faceplate. “Ann, can you hear me?”

           
After a
long, tense wait he noticed her neck and face muscles jerk, and then her eyes
opened.

           
“You all right?”

           
“I... I hit
the instrument panel... big explosion....”

           
“We’ve got
to get out of here. Can you move?” She nodded, reached out with a foot to find
the floor was still several feet above the deck. “I can move you, want to get
you into a rescue ball.”

           
“Skybolt...
it works, Jason. I fired... it fired....”

           
“Easy.
Never mind Skybolt. Those spaceplanes are shooting up the modules. This one
could be next.” He unstowed a rescue ball from a yellow-painted container
mounted on the module ceiling. “Can you seal yourself up inside?”

           
She nodded
weakly, her labored breathing fogging the POS face mask.

           
Another
explosion rocked the station, and with it the station’s spin seemed drastically
to change direction. Saint-Michael had to hold himself steady until his body
caught up with the new wobble in the station, then he opened the rescue ball.

           
“Curl
yourself up around the POS pack.” With his help she wrapped her arms and legs
around the POS pack and lowered her chin on the top of it.

           
“Don’t
forget—seal up the ball when I cover you with it, and keep checking the
pressure gauges. Keep the ball at seven p.s.i. with your POS if you need to.”

           
With Ann in
a fetal curl a few feet from the deck, Saint-Michael enclosed her with the
rescue ball and zipped it closed around her. He could feel her fumbling with
the ziplock-style pressure seal inside as he steered her over to an oxygen
panel in the Skybolt module, plugged an oxygen hose into a pressure fitting on
the ball and began to inflate the rescue ball. He noted the ball’s small
pressure gauge steadily rise, pumped the ball up to one standard station
atmosphere and checked the seal again. It looked like a big beach ball.

           
Leaving Ann
connected to the oxygen
fitting,
he bypassed the
safety interlocks and undogged the hatch leading to the engineering module. The
galley had completely lost its pressurization, and judging from the occasional
explosions he heard, the rest of the station was probably just as dead. Only
one last possibility for survival. He disconnected Ann and her rescue ball from
the oxygen supply and carried her through engineering and the connecting tunnel
to the docking module—

           
Through the
wireless intercom came a stronger, firmer voice: “Jason
... ?”

           
“How you doing?”

           
“I see
stars every time I blink my eyes, and my head hurts like hell. Where are we
going?”

           
“
Enterprise
”

           
“Didn’t the
Russians attack it?”

           
“
Enterprise
won’t get us home,” Saint-Michael said, opening the hatch to the docking module
at the end of the main connecting tunnel, “but maybe it can save us. My
spacesuit has enough air and power for only seven hours.
Enterprise
even
damaged, has enough air and water for thirty days and it still has the thruster
power to keep itself in orbit. It’s our chance until—”

           
She
wondered why Saint-Michael had suddenly stopped in midsentence. Then she
understood.... He had carried her into the docking module, where the bumed-up
bodies of Bayles and Kelly still lay. She almost imagined that she could see
the crewmen trying to crawl back to
Silver
Tower
for safety, chased by the
wall of flame from
Enterprise
's
destroyed fuel cells....

           
Saint-Michael’s
eyes were drawn to the distorted faces, the sightless eye sockets, the scorched
Space Command uniforms, the gnarled, bony hands. Gently lifting his precious
cargo over the charred remains, he realized that the woman he carried in that
plastic and canvas rescue ball could just as easily have been one of those
bodies on the deck beneath him.

           
As he made
his way down the docking tunnel into
Enterprise
's
air locks and into the shuttle itself he saw that the hungry'
fire had blackened everything.

           
“Are we in
Enterprise
yet?” Ann asked. He could not answer, and she did not press the question.

           
Montgomery,
Wallis and Davis were still strapped in place, melted POS masks on their
chests. The fuel-cell explosion in the lower deck storage area had tom
apart
Enterprise
's
middeck. The air was filled with floating debris that would
never settle, never fall.

           
“I’m going
to leave you on the middeck,” Saint-Michael said. He let her float between the
airlock hatch and the ladder leading to the upper deck, plugged the rescue ball
into another oxygen supply hose and activated the oxygen supply.
Enterprise
's
oxygen supply, he noted with relief,
still seemed operational. “You can recharge your POS pack with the hose inside
the ball. I’ve got to... to see if
Enterprise
is
fly
able.”

           
Ann did not
acknowledge. She knew what he really had to do— move the bodies of Will and
Sontag out of the charred cockpit.

 
          
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE

 
          
One missile left.

           
General
Alesander Govorov took every last second available to him before breaking off
his systematic attack on the American space station. He had plunged Scimitar
missiles into all but two of the station’s eight pressurized modules, making
sure that all within range were at least punctured. The two modules remaining
were both on the outside of the revolving station and were therefore moving the
fastest and were harder to hit, so he had targeted easier modules, the ones
closest to the central keel, with his few remaining missiles.

           
Clouds of
debris hovered everywhere around the tom-up space station. A sparking relay
junction or fuel cell occasionally erupted somewhere on the keel, and pieces of
the space-based radar, communications antennas and heat-exchange radiators
fluttered in the weightlessness of space as if pushed by some strange,
unearthly wind. The station’s rotation was erratic. Originally centered
directly along the central keel, now it was a wobbly, off-kilter eccentric
spin. The space shuttle was still attached to the docking port, but the cockpit
windows were dark and lifeless and the battered, ruptured nose insured that the
shuttle was useless.