Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (44 page)

           
Another
series of strategic maneuvers were being accomplished in an entirely different
realm: under the sea. A small fleet of American attack submarines had moved
into the
Indian Ocean
and were edging closer and closer
to their adversaries. But unlike the sky-spanning maneuvers of a high-altitude
B-52, this precombat dance was measured in single miles or even in yards. It
might take days for a Los Angeles-class attack submarine to move two miles
closer to the escort ships surrounding the
Arkhangel;
then, in a chance encounter, it would be discovered by a lucky helicopter sonar
dip or a tiny telltale sound from within the submarine, and then the sub would
be forced to run off and start all over again. Four subs were involved in this
tension-filled chase, maneuvering bit by bit toward their huge target.

           
The
Nimitz
was a bit more fortunate: the
four Soviet attack submarines from
Vladivostok
remained with the
Arkhangel
battle
group in a defensive posture, prowling the seas close to their battle group.
Other subs were being reassigned from
Havana
and from the
Mediterranean
toward the
Persian
Gulf
, but they could be tracked as they made their way through the
Suez Canal
or
Strait
of
Gibraltar
or around
Cape
Horn
. If hostilities erupted they at least could be intercepted
before they reached the
Nimitz
battle
group. What the outcome would be was, of course, uncertain.

           
The battle
lines were already drawn. Even though the combatants were still several hundred
miles apart, the chief players in the final battle of the
Persian
Gulf
had already been chosen. The confrontation would soon be at
hand.

           
There was
no jovial prelaunch breakfast with family members and politicians, no press
conference, no words of congratulations or encouragement. The crew of
America
had the traditional steak-and-eggs breakfast, but it was served in strict
privacy in the HTS Launch Control Facility mess hall. A few words passed between
the crewmembers, but they were hushed and confined strictly to the flight or
the launch.

           
After
breakfast the crew filed toward the life-support shop for their prelaunch
suiting-up. The four crewmembers pulled anti-“g” suits over their coveralls,
which would protect them against the sustained
five
to six
“g”s they might experience in the first ten minutes of
flight. Because breathing they might be difficult in the high “g” environment,
each would also wear POS facemasks, with oxygen fed into the masks under
pressure.

           
After their
last-minute physical and suiting-up the crew walked to the loading dock on top
of the spaceplane.
America
was still in her loading
hangar, sitting on top of the huge sled, with the sled’s hydrogen-oxygen rocket
engines on either side. They took a long escalator ride to the top of the
loading dock, walked across a catwalk to the top entry-docking entry hatch and
then rode a moving ladder down to
America
's
airlock on the flight deck.

           
In spite of
America
's
huge size, the flight deck was no
larger than a shuttle upper deck. They moved through the large airlock chamber
and into the flight deck area. The galley, waste-control-system facilities and
storage lockers were on the left. The right side of the cabin held numerous
storage lockers for space suits and EVA equipment.

           
Forward of
the airlock were two permanently mounted seats with space beside each seat for
another temporary jump seat. The HTS seats were hydraulically dampened, heavily
padded seats that would help the occupant to better withstand the high “g”
forces.

           
Forward of
the passenger seats was a small area with auxiliary controls and
circuit-breaker panels, and forward of that was the cockpit. The entire flight deck
forward of the airlock was a huge life- support capsule. In an emergency the
flight deck would explosively cut itself free of the spaceplane, rocket away
from the stricken craft and parachute to earth under a
two-hundred-foot-wingspan delta-wing parasail.

           
Under
strict Master Mission Computer (“Mimic”) control, preflight preparations in the
cockpit were already well under way by the time the crew had boarded, so Ann
and her fellow crewmembers had little else to do but strap in and monitor the
computer’s progress. A wall of four large computer monitors on the front
instrument panel explained each preflight step being performed. As a sort of
token gesture to the humans, the computer would pause after each step and ask
if the humans wanted to proceed. The reply was always “yes”; the computer would
proceed anyway if no reply had been given within five seconds. After only
thirty minutes of computer-actuated switching and lightning-fast electronic
commands and replies,
America
was ready for launch.

           
“Falcon
Control, this is
America
,”
Colonel Hampton radioed. “Mimic reports prelaunch checklist
complete. Acknowledge.”

           
“
America
,
we confirm. Checklist complete. Be
advised, launch sled fuel-pressurization complete.”

           
“Roger.
Awaiting final clearance.”

           
“Stand by,
America
.”

           
The last
radio exchange puzzled Ann: it was an unusual amount of human intervention for
a normal hypersonic spaceplane launch. Usually any clearances required for
launch were obtained by Mimic enquiries to various other computers around the
facility. Humans were not ordinarily consulted.

           
Ann turned
to Marty and keyed her interphone switch. “Is there something wrong? I don’t
recall this step in the simulator rides.”

           
Marty
hesitated before replying: “I’m sure with all the brass observing this flight,
someone just hit the pause button somewhere to give the brass time to get
caught up. Mimic can move pretty fast.”

           
The wait
lasted for some five minutes,
then
a sudden voice on
the radio announced:
“
America
,
this is Falcon Launch Control.
Ignition
sequence interrupt
. Launch abort. Launch
abort.”

           
Ann had her
harness buckles, oxygen hoses, “g”-suit hoses and communication cords off in
five seconds. Marty followed suit and immediately got to his feet.

           
“Remember,
get a good tight grip on that safety belt on the rescue tower,” Marty was
saying. “It’ll jerk you pretty hard when it pulls you away from the—”

           
They heard
the sound of the upper airlock hatch being wrenched open. “Someone’s out
there,” Marty said, not quite believing. “How? They just called the abort....”
They both hurried across to see who could possibly have made it on top of the
spaceplane only five seconds after the abort was called.

           
In reply
the huge curved airlock door swung open and a tall figure stepped through. Ann’s
eyes showed stunned recognition, but before either Ann or Marty could speak,
the figure addressed them:

           
“No time
for explanations now,” Jason Saint-Michael said straightfaced and moved quickly
past them toward the cockpit.

 
         
Ann merely stared at the back of the
cockpit seats for several moments,
then
turned around
to see two launch technicians dropping through the open hatch. She moved to the
cockpit as Horvath slid past her and
Hampton
began strapping into the right seat.

           
“Jason ...
you’re all right
... ?
You’re going to fly...?”

           
“Looks like
it.”

           
“But you
told me your plan was disapproved. ...”

           
“It comes
down to good old-fashioned arm-twisting. More later,” he said as he strapped
into the left-side commander’s seat. “Get ready for launch; we can’t delay too
long or we’ll lose the optimal launch window. We’ve only got ninety minutes to
pull that damned casket thing out of the cargo bay and put a fuel tank on
board—a
full
fuel tank this time.”

           
She
squelched her questions and went back to her seat. Schultz and Horvath were
helping the technicians assemble a spare crew seat beside the two permanent
ones. Marty motioned Horvath into his permanent seat. Horvath accepted and
began strapping himself into the seat beside Ann while Marty began securing
himself onto the flimsylooking tubular seat they had just assembled.

           
“You’re
going to fly in
that?”
Ann asked.

           
“You bet,”
Marty said. He gave his best swashbuckling grin. “Only rookies need anti-‘g’
seats.”

           
“But what
about the mission to retrieve the bodies....”

           
“Looks like
it’s a different mission now,” Marty said. “They sure cut it close, though.
It’s dangerous as hell to interrupt a launch countdown after the rocket fuel
tanks have been pressurized. A few more minutes and it would’ve been too late
without a week-long abort.”

           
He jabbed a
thumb aft. “If I know General Saint-Michael, he’s organized the world’s fastest
cargo switch in history. One of those fuel tanks can hold five thousand pounds
of liquid oxygen and ten thousand pounds of liquid hydrogen—more than enough to
refuel
Silver
Tower
’s
depleted fuel cells.
The PAM boosters?
They’ll make
great boosters for Armstrong Station.”

           
“So we’re
really going to do it
..
.
we're reactivating Armstrong Station.
...”

 
          
TYURATAM
,
USSR

           
Marshal
Alesander Govorov was on a late afternoon tour of Glowing Star, the Soviet
spaceflight center in south-central
Russia
.
He had shunned his military escort, although his staff car with armed driver
was following along a few dozen meters behind. In the growing dusk, wandering
around his Elektron launch facility—now, by Stavka decree, unquestionably
his
—he preferred solitude as he observed
his workers scurrying around the launch pads.

           
He looked
ahead and saw his dream standing before him, illuminated by banks of spotlights
on tall towers: three SL-16 Krypkei rockets, service gantrys and umbilicals in
place, ready for launch. On top of each booster was an Elektron spaceplane,
gleaming in the Space Defense Command colors of silver and red.

           
Each
spaceplane, he knew, was armed with ten Scimitar hypervelocity missiles, now
for the first time being mass-produced in the Leningrad Malitanskaya-Krovya
exotic weapons factories. They had proved their worth in combat with stunning
results. He also had three top Soviet cosmonauts, hand-picked and personally
trained, on twenty-four-hour alert at the Space Defense launch center.

           
His newly
formed combat unit, the first of its kind, was the talk of the Soviet military,
but despite—or perhaps because of—the unit’s success much effort was being
expended in instituting refinements and improvements. Changes had already been
proposed, for example, in Govorov’s simple but effective hypervelocity
missile-weapon design. Undoubtedly the changes would end up complicating
things, requiring more cosmonaut intervention before launch, but that, Govorov
thought, would be considered a reasonable price to pay.

           
One change
already made was an added explosive warhead to the Scimitar missile, needed
because some midlevel engineer had noted that fifteen Scimitar missile hits on
the space station Armstrong did not produce the devastation everyone had
expected. With new explosive Scimitars in the Elektron’s cargo bay, it was that
much more dangerous to fly, but that was always the way. The better, the more
dangerous.

           
Govorov
also knew that careers were made by those eager to make such refinements, and
sometimes those men would steamroll over those in their way. He was on the
lookout for such men, but at the same time he was careful not to hold on too
tightly to his precious
Bavinash
missiles. Progress, for better or worse, was inevitable.

           
More
important, his big gamble had paid off. Even in the Soviet military hierarchy those
with the guts to stand for what they believed in could have some success. High
rank usually meant heavy inertia, and the members of the Kollegiya had more in
common than they would ever want to admit.

 
         
But leaders could reward as well as
strike down—when they perceived their own self-interest. Govorov, once
commander of a small tenant unit at Tyuratam, now was commander of half of the
entire base—over two thousand square kilometers, a dozen launch pads with
support equipment and two thousand men and women— and he could summon as much
hardware as he required from any comer of the Soviet Union to fill those launch
pads. On his own authority, he could launch a half-billion kilograms of men and
machines into earth orbit. He could do everything and anything except attack a
foreign spacecraft, and then he needed only the word of one man, the general
secretary of the
Soviet Union
himself, to attack any
spacebome target he felt was a threat to the nation.