Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (26 page)

           
“Status!
Where are those damn—?” Page’s next words caught in
his throat as he stared, transfixed, out the starboard side of the bridge at an
apparition that was coming ever closer.

           
Like a
flaming spear driving right for the heart of the
California
, it
appeared to be flying slowly, almost lazily, its short cruciform wings and long
cigar-shaped body blackened and burning. It trailed a long line of thick black
smoke, and it seemed to wobble up and down unsteadily. Yet it kept coming
..
..

           
“Hard
starboard, flank speed,” Page ordered. The helmsman spun the wheel but his
reply was drowned out by the long, whining staccato of the starboard Phalanx
Close-In Weapon System, a radar- guided twenty-millimeter Vulcan multibarreled
machine gun used as a last-resort defense against antiship missiles. Page
watched smoke issue from the Phalanx muzzle and then an answering puff of fire
from the already flaming airborne spear, followed by a deafening roar. . . .

           
Just before
Captain Matthew Page died, he thought of his wife Amanda, her eyes the same
sky-blue as the cloudless canopy over his head. He smiled as the darkness
descended on him.

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
Ann bypassed the safety procedures
and cross checks as she hurried to the command module. Crewmembers turned
toward her as she approached Saint-Michael.

           
“Still no
word,” the general told her. “The frigate
Oliver
Hazard Perry
is alongside the
California
now.”

           
“What did
they say? What happened?”

           
“Our ships
were attacked by six Soviet medium bombers,” Jim Walker said. “The bombers had
Su-27 fighters from the
Brezhnev
escorting
them and carried Kelt antiship missiles. Apparently the Su-27s managed to down
six of our Tomcats, which were pursuing. The
California
and
the other escorts sent four of the bombers into the gulf, but the others got
their missiles off. Two of the missiles hit the
California
broadside—”

           
“At least
it wasn’t nuclear,” Saint-Michael said quickly, not looking at Ann. “The
California
radioed
a distress call and the
Oliver Hazard
Perry
got to her within minutes. We’ll know better what the
California
's
situation is when they put out the
fires.”

           
“How long... until we can restart surveillance on the area?”
Ann asked, trying not to show what she was feeling.

           
Saint-Michael
wanted to hold her at least, but for the time being
they
both had their roles to play.... “Twenty minutes,” he said in answer to her
question. He wished he could say more, reassure her ... but that would be phony
as well as embarrassing. Looking at her, though, seeing what she must be going
through in her worry about her father, he could only admire her and feel for
her. A considerable lady, hell... a terrific woman....

 
          
TYURATAM
,
USSR

 
          
It was a big surprise for the junior
airmen and their supervisors to see General Lieutenant Alesander Govorov, the
commander of Space Defense, out early that morning inspecting the area.
Accompanied by the newly promoted Colonel Nikolai Gulaev, Govorov entered the
vehicle assembly building of Glowing Star, Tyuratam’s antisatellite launch
site, and came up behind
Starshiy
Praporshchik
Igor Cacreyatov, who happened to be sitting with his feet on
his desk, sipping coffee laced with a bit of East German schnapps. The big
senior warrant officer stared idly out the window watching the work out on
launch pad two.

           
“Work seems
to proceed slower than usual, Airman Anokhin,” Cacreyatov said over his
shoulder. “I’ll postpone the inspection of launch pad two until tomorrow, but
it had better be done then or I will crack some heads.”

           
Gulaev
glanced at Govorov, half expected to see the Space Defense commander pull out
his 7.62-millimeter Tokarav TT-33 automatic pistol and blow poor Cacreyatov
away, but to Gulaev’s surprise Govorov’s face showed a wide smile as he picked
up the tiny two hundred fifty milliliter schnapps bottle, ran his nose over the
mouth and nodded his approval at the scent.

 
         
Without turning around, the senior
warrant officer said, “I can tell without looking, Anokhin, that you have
something in your hand that will cost you a month of kitchen duty and a week’s
pay if you so much as think about stealing or drinking.”

           
“I think
not, Comrade.”

           
Cacreyatov
got to his feet in a flurry of arms and legs and stood at attention, eyes
straight ahead, chest heaving.

           
“I think
I’ve found the reason why my Elektron project is delayed, Colonel Gulaev,”
Govorov said. The thin smile stayed on his lips as he dropped the tiny bottle
of schnapps onto the cold concrete floor. Cacreyatov’s reflex was to try to
reach out and grab it, but he wisely kept at attention.

           
“The
instant that bottle hit the floor,
Cacreyatov,
you
were no longer a
starshiy praporshchik
.”
Govorov was no longer smiling. “What lower rank you sink to—or whether your
military career comes to a sudden end—depends on your answers now and your
actions in the next forty-eight hours.” He let the words sink in, then: “Now,
Colonel Gulaev has reported to me that the second Elektron has been sitting
beside that SL-16 booster for three days. When he inquires about its status, he
gets no reply. You will give
me
a
reply, Cacreyatov, and you will give it to me
now.
”

           
The freshly
demoted senior warrant officer said he had no excuse, sir—

           
“Wrong
answer, Cacreyatov,” and Cacreyatov could almost see five thousand rubles a
year fly out of his pocket. “This is not a damned military academy. When I ask
a question I expect a real answer. So once again—what is the reason for the
delay?”

           
“Sir, I...
was unclear about the procedures dealing with the Elektron. My men are not
allowed to work near the Elektrons without direct supervision from Colonel
Gulaev’s special personnel.”

           
“Do Colonel
Gulaev’s men prohibit any contact with the Elektron?”

           
“No,
sir...”

           
“Is access
limited in any section of the Elektron?”

           
“Well, the
cargo area is sealed, and some components in the cockpit are removed or
sealed—”

           
“Per my
instructions,” Govorov told him. “Does this limited access to the cargo bay or
those security sealed cockpit components explain the delays?”

           
Cacreyatov
kept his mouth shut.

           
“No? Then
it seems you’ve lied to me. Why the hell is that SL-16 not ready for launch?”

 
         
“Sir, replacement parts were not
ordered in time. They have just been installed, but the crews haven’t—”

           
“Who didn’t
order the parts in time?”

           
Cacreyatov
closed his eyes, bracing for the execution. “Sir, I failed to order the
third-stage pressure-test fittings in time for the final mating. The tests are
being completed this morning. When the tests are finished I will make the final
inspection. The second SL-16 will be ready for launch in forty-eight hours.”

           
Govorov
nodded at the veteran maintenance officer. “Now understand this. For the good
of my command I should bring you up on charges for having liquor in this
building, but I can’t spare the time to court-martial you. You
will
lose, however, one pay grade for
every hour over forty-eight that both of those SL-16s are delayed from launch
readiness. You will lose another pay grade for every launch countdown hold
attributable to you. If you run out of pay grades you will spend a year at hard
labor for each hold. And don’t push your technicians too hard to make up for
your own laziness, Cacreyatov— they might decide to get sick, and then where
will you be?” He did not need to spell it out. The message was received.

           
“I take
responsibility for Cacreyatov’s incompetence, sir,” Gulaev said as he and
Govorov headed for the exits. “If I’d supervised his section more closely I
might have spotted his laziness earlier—”

           
“Call it a
hard lesson learned, Nikolai. No commander should operate from a chair. You
were thorough in your inquiries, but you never went personally to inspect the
progress on the ships.” He glanced at his deputy. “Get Elektron number two
manned and ready to fly in two days. That’s the way to redeem yourself. And
good luck, Nikolai.... More depends on you than you can imagine.”

           
“Yes,
sir.... By the way, sir, Colonel Voloshin, the pilot for Elektron Two, has
already reported to Glowing Star. I’ve thoroughly examined his fitness reports
and evaluations and find them to be excellent.”

           
“Good....”
Govorov’s voice trailed off as he caught sight of Elektron One, mounted on top
of an SL-16-A booster three miles away. The three-stage solid- and
liquid-propellant rocket, similar to the long abandoned American Satum-V
booster, was well over two hundred twenty feet tall and weighed nearly two
hundred fifty tons. It carried four “strap-on” solid propellant boosters on its
lower stage to lift its payload to the required one-thousand-mile orbit around
earth.

           
“I want to
go up to the Elektron,” Govorov said, as he got into the waiting staff car.
“Arrange it, please.”

 
         
“Yes, sir,” Gulaev said. He was on the
Zil limousine’s earphone in an instant, and a few minutes later they were
riding the service elevator to the SL-16’s capsule.

           
Unlike the
booster, the Elektron spaceplane was painted a dull gray, a color designed to
help stabilize its temperature once in space. It was fifty-five feet long and
thirty feet wide from wingtip to wingtip. Its nose, wing leading edges and
underside were all covered with protective silica tiles. The aft end of the
spaceplane was round and fit perfectly into the thirty-foot-diameter third
stage of the SL-16 booster. Forward of the mating area the spaceplane’s
fuselage flattened into smooth, gracefully flowing lines, making it somewhat
resemble a manta ray. The cockpit was a small bump on the upper side. The bump
continued down the Elektron’s spine to form the small ten-ton- capacity cargo
bay and main-engine housing, then flared gently into a dorsal atmospheric
stabilizer.

           
Technicians
accompanying Govorov and Gulaev set up safety barriers and attachments to the Elektron
as Govorov inspected every square inch of the spaceplane’s surface. “Looks
good,” he said as he checked the last of the tiles. “They did a tremendous
job.”

           
“The tiles
are reinspected twice a day, sir,” Gulaev said. “That will continue right until
lift-off.”

           
The
technicians finally unlatched the hatch on the upper side of the cockpit. As if
he traveled in a spaceplane every day of his life, Govorov knocked gravel from
his boots, grabbed a boarding bar mounted just above the hatch and climbed into
the cockpit.

           
Cacreyatov,
Gulaev, the two technicians—for a brief moment all of them faded from Govorov’s
mind as he slid into the seat of the Elektron spaceplane—no, he told himself,
the space
fighter
....

           
Its cockpit
was futuristic, featuring advanced digital instrumentation, a wide
laser-projection heads-up display and a digital computer- controlled weapons
monitor panel. Three redundant microprocessors handled all on-board functions,
but almost everything from orbital insertion to reentry and landing could be
accomplished manually or by remote control with ground controllers. The cockpit
was large enough for the cosmonaut inside to swivel around and operate a second
set of controls mounted behind him, and a docking port on the Elektron’s belly allowed
easy docking to
Mir
, the
Soviet
Union
’s orbiting module. That was essential: on its planned
seek-and-destroy missions the Elektron would most likely need a refueling
before a safe landing could be attempted.

           
“Excellent....”
Govorov said in a half-whisper. He examined the weapons control panel and the
switches mounted on the multifunction control stick, satisfying himself that
the positioning was correct for a gravity-free environment. Up in space with
the normal sense of up and down suspended, a pilot could not rely on muscular
cues to tell in him a split-second’s time what switches to pull. So it was
necessary to realign all the switches in the spaceplane cockpit to conform to a
functional hierarchy.