Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (32 page)

           
“Rog....
Selective targeting option running.... Thors six and seven away....”

           
“Warning
message, Skipper,”
Walker
broke in.
“Recheck on that last target discrimination.
Now showing
all four
as lethal positive.”
Saint-Michael looked dead ahead. “Launch commit on all targets. Check the
neutral-particle projector, find out what happened—”

           
“Thors eight and nine away.
Straight track....”

           
“Direct hit
on targets five and six
.. ..”

           
“Miss on
target seven, clean
miss
on seven.”

 
         
“Manual
launch
Thor ten,” Saint-Michael ordered
Jefferson
. “Make this
one count, Jake.”

           
No shit,
Jefferson
thought, but said nothing as he ejected the last Thor interceptor missile and
sent it toward its target.
“All Thors away.”

           
“Miss on
target eight!”

           
All heads
turned to Colonel Walker as he gave that last report. “Clean miss, General.
Targets seven and eight appear to be... to be following an evasive course.
Still at seventy miles range but closing slowly.”

           
Jake
Jefferson looked stunned as he watched his console. “Skipper, I don’t
understand it. One second, Thor number ten was heading straight to target
number seven, and the next, it was gone. I’ve lost contact with it.”

           
The
realization was not long in coming. The fact that the targets were evading
confirmed it. They were dealing with Elektrons... The Russians had launched
two
armed
Elektron
spaceplanes at them....

 
          
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE

 
          
It was Colonel Ivan Voloshin who
launched the first
Bavinash
Scimitar
interceptor missile in space combat. Ironically,
Silver
Tower
’s crew would never realize
the honor they did the Soviet pilot by launching a Thor missile at him.

           
Both
Govorov and Voloshin had immediately detected all ten Thor missile launches.
The Elektron’s simple but highly effective infrared tracker and laser range
finder had picked up the fast-moving devices easily and computed Scimitar
launches against each Thor missile. But Govorov’s orders had been to save as
many of each Elektron’s ten missiles as possible and not use them against a Thor
missile unless attacked directly. Voloshin’s single Scimitar missile followed
the laser beam locked onto Thor number ten and destroyed it—Govorov guessed
that the Scimitar hit the Thor missile directly, not just snagging on its large
net.

           
But what
especially counted was that Space Station Armstrong had just launched its last
missile. It was now totally defenseless....

           
“Elektron
One, this is
Two
,” Voloshin called over the discrete
VHF frequency. “I count ten Thors expended, General.”

           
“Affirmative,
Two. Deploy as planned and be prepared to attack on my command.”

 
         
With the laser range finder locked
onto the space station itself, Govorov began to maneuver his Elektron
spaceplane above the station’s keel, opposite from the free-flying Thor missile
garage. Although he could not see him, he knew that Voloshin would be steering
his spaceplane directly opposite, about a kilometer away from the station,
keeping the Elektrons two kilometers apart.

           
In this
position both he and Voloshin could target exactly one-half of the station with
their laser target designators. They could pick and choose their targets with
high precision, with special emphasis on the space-based radar, solar-array
control boxes, sensors and communications antennas. They would be sure to
destroy the station’s fighting capabilities before administering the final
blow: an attack on the pressurized modules themselves. Killing the crewmen of
Space Station Armstrong was not Govorov’s plan, but he was determined to
eliminate the orbiting platform as a threat. If American lives were lost in the
process, he couldn’t be blamed. The stations’ crewmembers had forfeited any
ordinary consideration when they had chosen to intervene in Operation Feather.
Nobody had invited them. Now they would learn the price for their actions, and
pay it....

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
“Anything
we can do?” Moyer asked from behind his spacesuit helmet. The strain in his
voice was evident.

           
“Whatever
they’re going to hit us with,” Saint-Michael said, “we don’t have to sit here
and let ourselves get shot up.” He unstrapped himself and moved over to the
station’s attitude-control panel. “Everyone, evacuate the station. Get aboard
Enterprise
.
Now.”

           
“What’s
the plan, Skipper?” Marks asked him.

           
“I’m going
to deorbit the station, use every last bit of fuel to slow us down so the
station will reenter the atmosphere. They may try to destroy this station, or
they might try to occupy it. Either way, they’re not going to get it. I’ll
jettison the lifeboat just before the deorbit burn. Let’s just hope they won’t
fire on a lifeboat....”

           
“There’s
got to be another way—”

           
“They’re
calling the tune now, Chief,” Saint-Michael said bitterly. “We dance to it or
pay the consequences.” He looked around the module, at Moyer,
Walker
,
Marks and
Jefferson
. “There’ll be other times.... Our
job right now is to survive. And that means getting your butts on the shuttle
in the next three minutes.”

           
A few
minutes earlier Ann’s chief worry had been what Saint-

 
         
Michael would do when he found out
she’d countermanded his orders and not gone over to the
Enterprise
.
There just wasn’t the time to explain
why she thought she could get Skybolt running again, and she suspected that
even if she’d had the time, even if the rush of events hadn’t forced him into
making a quick decision, she’d still have big trouble convincing him the laser
was worth another try. She’d cried wolf too often, failing when it counted to
get him to listen because too many of her earlier assessments of Skybolt’s
capabilities had proved overly optimistic.

           
Well, let
the general get steamed. There were bigger problems to worry about now. As she
worked to reprogram the proper relays to the MHD reactor, her tracking
indicator told what was happening out in space.... Two of the Gorgons—no, not
really Gorgons but some sort of Russian spacecraft—had passed through
Armstrong’s Thor missile barrage untouched and were moving closer to the
station. It became harder and harder to work the keyboard and test the last of
the circuits as fear caught hold of her.

           
She knew
that the Skybolt laser was now the station’s only defense against the two blips
she saw moving ever closer on her tracking indicator. She knew it and yet she
also knew that she was minutes away from having the laser ready. She started a
prayer, stopped. No fair, any last-minute invocation of the deity; it was up to
her now. You asked for it, so get it done, she taunted herself, and once more
she was able to focus all her concentration on the job at hand.,..

 
          
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE

 
          
“Request permission to open fire,
sir,” Voloshin radioed.

           
“Stand by,
Elektron Two,” Govorov said. “We’ll begin in one minute. Do not attack the
shuttle. Repeat, do
not
attack.
They’ll use the shuttle to evacuate.”

           
“An
American space shuttle would be a nice prize, General.”

           
“There is
only one prize here, Voloshin. Armstrong. Remember that.”

           
There was
silence on the frequency for a few moments, then: “General, do you think
they’ll try to scuttle the station?”

           
“It’s what
I would do. A remote-controlled or timed-thruster bum could be set up to do the
job after they’ve evacuated.” Govorov checked the digital chronometer on his
instrument panel. “Status check, Elektron Two.”

 
         
The reply came a few moments later,
“Status positive, Elektron Lead. Oxygen, twenty liters. Fuel, sixty percent.”

           
“Lead has
twenty-two liters oxygen and sixty-two percent
fuel
.
One hour until we need to begin deorbit or rendezvous with
Mir” Mir
was the Soviet’s orbiting module, a far cruder version of
Silver Tower that had limited surveillance capabilities and no offensive or
defensive weaponry. In recent years it had been used principally as a site for
astronomical experiments and as a refueling depot. “We’ll commence our attack
in two minutes, whether or not the station has been evacuated.”

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
“
Enterprise
shows ready for crew transfer, General,”
Jefferson
reported.

           
“Very well.
Signal JCS and Control that we’ll transfer to
Enterprise
immediately.”
Jefferson
nodded and began switching his comm panel to the proper air-to-ground frequency
when a new voice came over the intercom: “General, this is Ann.”

           
Saint-Michael
shifted toward his comm panel. “Ann? Where the hell have you been?”

           
“In the Skybolt module.
I—”

           
“Get out of
there,
now.
We’re evacuating the
station.”

           
“I only
need ten more minutes—”

           
“For what?”

           
Just then
the loud hum of the interphone’s CALL override blocked out Ann’s reply.
“General, this is Will. Come up on interphone four.” “What the hell—? Ann, I
want you in the command module on the double. Move out.” He switched his comm
panel to the discrete closed-circuit interphone channel. “All right, Jerrod,
what is it?”

           
“A way out.
Maybe....”

           
“Don’t keep
us in suspense—”

           
“Baker and
Yemana are outside the shuttle, General. They’re working their way down to the
spare Thor missiles.”

           
“They’re
what?”

           
“Baker came
up with a way to manually activate the missiles. He and Yemana are going to
unstow two of the missiles, point them at those Russians, and cook ’em off.”

           
“Goddamn,
Jerrod, I didn’t authorize that. It’s too risky. Once the Russians see—”

           
“General,”
Will
interrupted
. “It’ll work. Those spaceplanes are
right on top of you, but they’re on the opposite side from the spare Thors on
the underside of the keel. By the time they find out what’s happening it’ll be
too late.”

           
Saint-Michael
shook his head. Suddenly everyone in his command had turned into a damn space
cowboy. He was losing control. He turned toward Moyer standing in his spacesuit
near the hatch to the research module. “Move down to the connecting tunnel
between engineering and the storage module, on the double. See if you can
signal Baker and Yemana. Try to tell them to get their butts back on board
Enterprise
.”
On the
discrete interphone channel he said, “It’s a damned stupid idea, Jerrod. Once
those Russians see us fooling with the Thor missiles they’ll blow us all away.
Order Baker and Yemana back.”

           
“Sir, I think
we should at least go out fighting—”

           
“You
think? I’m still the commander of
this station and I want those men ordered back.
Do it.”

           
There was a
short pause, then the reluctant reply: “Yes,
sir.”

           
But it was
already too late. Moyer called over stationwide interphone. “General, I can see
one of them. He’s made it to the spare Thor
racks        ”

           
Wearing
large MMUs, the manned maneuvering units, on their backs, Baker and Yemana
unstowed two Thor missiles, refrigeratorsized cylinders with dozens of arms
sticking out of each side. After the missiles were hauled out of their
containers Baker opened an access panel on one side of each missile and
activated a series of switches that bypassed the SBR controls and made the
missiles autonomous. Next he removed a maintenance access-cover on each missile
and manually activated the Thor’s radar-seeker head. Finally he and Yemana
helped each other to attach the missiles to brackets on their MMU cylinders,
and together both men slowly, carefully edged their way underneath opposite
sides of the central station keel and maneuvered the seeker-heads of their
missiles around the edge of the keel and up toward where they had last seen the
Soviet spaceplanes.