Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit

FREEDOM’S PERIL

Nearly a hundred years after Russia’s thermonuclear first strike turned America into a radioactive wasteland, the brave survivors and fierce FreeFighters of that shattered nation have forced the brutal Sov invader to the peace table. But a new and unexpected danger suddenly appears in the skies over America—from orbit. Someone is reactivating the ancient space systems of the 1980s . . . one by one the nuke-armed space missiles of the past change orbit to threaten every major population center of the world.

Ted Rockson—the ultimate soldier of survival known as the Doomsday Warrior—knows there’s just one way to defend mankind from fiery annihilation: secure the old satellite-killer X-17A spaceplane and ride up to destroy the damned satellites. But when Rockson maneuvers the powerful ramjet alongside a bizarre, jerry-rigged orbital space station, he discovers a strange breed of space survivors—and an old archenemy with the power to turn Earth into radioactive cinders.

DOOMSDAY
WARRIOR

“AVALANCHE!”
ROCKSON SCREAMED.

He raised his left hand and circled it fast—the team signal for primo trouble. He looked up and saw that the wall of boiling white was halfway down the slope and gaining fast, chewing up everything in its path—shrubs, trees, boulders all sucked into snowy jaws.

“God,” Rock hissed through clenched teeth. “Don’t let these men die, this mission fail!”

Suddenly it was all a blur. The roar of the avalanche filled his ears, his mind, his entire body. And then a final explosion of snow and ice threw Rockson from his feet into a darkness blacker than the pits of hell.

ZEBRA BOOKS

are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.

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New York, N.Y. 10016

ISBN: 0-8217-2458-4

Copyright © 1988 by Ryder Stacy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First printing: September 1988

Printed in the United States of America

One

I
t floated like a hovering firefly in the vast blackness of an intergalactic swamp. Earth. How small it looked from up here. How shining and perfect, like an extraordinary pearl lying in the darkest of seas. A pearl just waiting to be plucked and taken. Col. Killov, his skinny arms resting against the cool metal frame, looked through the purple-tinted window of the spaceship
Talon
at the vulnerable planet below.

The Earth was like a woman lying down there—motionless, cloud arms outstretched as if in waiting. Waiting to be ravished, impaled. And Col. Killov, deposed leader of the KGB, would be the one to ravage her. For his excitement came from power. Only power. The rape of governments, of whole lands, entire continents. This was his sexuality. Pure unbridled merciless power dispensed with an iron hand. Those who obeyed him lived, those who didn’t died—and always in most unpleasant ways. For that was how Killov manifested his rule—through terror. He was a master of fear and pain. And that entire shimmering blue and white planet would be his through the application of such. And the things he would do to it and to its helpless masses sent a surge of heat through his shrunken loins.

He reached inside his jacket—so overcome with a surge of emotion did he become—and took out a Primatab. Thank the dark gods, those who had abducted him and placed him aboard the
Talon
had a full supply of drugs, among other things. For the Colonel needed drugs. He was an addict of numerous substances. And though he could do without some of them, he couldn’t do without at least a few basic psycho-chemicals. He had been taking the substances since he’d first been sent over to the United States as a young officer in the KGB—to consolidate and maintain control of the masses—and the Soviet Red Army troops as well. He had had access to all that he wanted then and his drug habit had begun. Then he had taken everything that he could get his hands on, using the mad energy of the chemicals to drive him beyond the humanly possible, enabling him to work his way to the top through betrayal, double dealing, assassination.

He stayed awake for weeks, months, at a time, plotting at his desk. And as he ate less and took more and more of the drugs, he grew skinnier and skinnier, until Killov resembled nothing less than a human skeleton. A death figure in human clothing.

The “Skull” they called him, though never to his face. And even the Elite Luftwaffe Space Corps, Space Neo-Nazis who had brought him up here into orbit around the earth in their powerful warship, the
Talon,
called him that as well:
The Skull.
The Faceless One. For he was more tendons and bone than flesh and muscle anymore. His flesh had sunk into him like moss settles down on a bony hill. And what did show was jaundiced, diseased, like a man with malaria and a few other diseases as well. But it wasn’t malaria that shrouded Killov in such an aura of death—it was his own black spirit. Even the burning soul of A. Hitler had nothing on Col. Killov.

He popped down two of the Supervals to get him up, and then a Secsynth and a Neurostretcher to get him down and cool him out. It was always a delicate balance with the drugs—an up, a down, an in-between. But Killov was an expert in that as well. He was a master of all that was found in the dark regions of men’s hearts. That was why he had learned how to manipulate them so well.

Within seconds he felt the rushes stream through his blood. The glow, the golden glow that fueled him in his dark designs. Fueled him like flesh fuels the ghoul, blood the vampire. Killov stared down at the Earth and had an overwhelming urge to stab at it, to tear it apart with his bare hands from up here. It looked small enough for him to. And his maddened state grew wild, frenzied, so that his rat eyes bulged and glowed like red lava pits as he stared down pressing his hands against the thick spaceglass, as if he wanted to break through and throttle the beautiful blue and white living creature below. Throttle and strangle and
mutilate
it with his long bony fingers until there was nothing left but fire and blood, the blue turned to black and the white to red.

It was his destiny—to destroy. And those who had “kidnapped” him from imminent death inside a volcano (where he had been trapped by Ted Rockson and his merry band of rebels) would now be his new army to carry out his destiny. They thought
they
controlled
him.
But it was the other way around. It was laughable really; all those who had tried to use Killov in the past, those who had tried to manipulate him for their own designs—had lost. Had lost their power, and their lives, and a few other things along the way. None had won.

Killov smirked, his eyes almost twisting around in his skull as he saw one, then two, then three Earths below him. And they were all tumbling around each other like thrown dice in a gutter. And Killov knew no matter how they fell—he would win.

Two

“T
his way, Rock,” Dr. Pedersen, one of Dr. Shecter’s top science Chiefs, led the way up the steep winding stone stairway. “Watch your step up here, this is some of the worst of it,” the white-jacketed astronomer said, as he pointed with his lantern toward the stairs ahead. Rockson could see that many of the steps were cracked, crumbling beneath their feet even as they moved.

“Not the greatest architecture,” Rock commented dryly as he slammed his knee against a hard outcropping. It had snuck past his vision in the flickering shadows of the lantern held high in Pedersen’s pale hands.

“The place was never much of anything,” the astronomy chief went on, coughing from the dust that they stirred up around them as they walked. “It was just an emergency exit from the old highway tunnel system in which Century City was originally built. When the nukes hit, this one survived the explosion. It wasn’t found for nearly fifty years and then it was dug out by hand and shovel to clear the debris from the bottom step to the very top. We tech boys claimed it as our own. The telescope has been up top five years now, since Shecter’s ambitious atmospheric observation team went into full functioning.”

“Explain that to me again, would you?” Rockson asked as he slowed down so as not to bump into the slow-footed Pedersen a few steps ahead on the stairs. These science types were all the same, Rock thought, pale, skinny and not quite on balance. They spent all their time locked up in Shecter’s labs discovering this great invention or that new cure for some mutant genetic disease. The science chief was nothing if not productive. It was Shecter and his teams that had given Century City its many marvels of technology in a world that had for the most part de-evolved to the primitive, the monstrous. Rockson sure as hell wasn’t going to begrudge all the tech boys for the fact that they never went out in the wastelands, were not of the same breed as the fighting men Rockson usually found himself with.

“That whole space observation program I mean,” Rock went on. “I lost track of it several years ago after the proposal for putting a space telescope up on the mountain was voted through the Council—amid raucous debate as I remember.”

“How unusual,” Pedersen muttered and even in the darkness Rock could feel the venom in his words. And in a strange way he suddenly felt close to the guy, for he had had his share of problems with the Council as well. They also serve who stay inside and work in the unventilated laboratories deep beneath the mountain that held the hidden Free City.

“We get opposed on every goddamned project,” Pedersen went on. “But somehow Shecter, through his powers of persuasion, manages to get a few more dollars through—and we do it. The telescope was hard fought for. The military members wanted a ground-oriented scope that would be used more for local mountain observations of Red search and destroy operations, so they could set up a more complete early warning system. But Shecter opted for space observation. There’s a hell of a lot of junk up there—both radiation and debris—and we felt it was time to start seeing just what was hovering up there above our heads.”