Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (54 page)

           
Then he
heard it, the sound of her voice coming over the microphone: “Jason . . . you
okay?”

           
“Where are
you?” he managed to get out.

           
“In Skybolt.
You seen Marty?”

           
“No.” Over
interphone: “Marty, come in. . ..”

           
No reply.

           
“He was in
Enterprise
.
...”

 
         
Saint-Michael switched to the
air-to-air UHF frequency. “Marty, this is Jason. Report.
Report
, damn it....”

           
But when he
looked out the observation port again he saw where Marty had disappeared to.
The shuttle
Enterprise
was speeding away from
Silver
Tower
,
and Saint-Michael just caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared.

           
“Marty, on
board
Enterprise
... come in______
_ ”

 
          
SPACE SHUTTLE
ENTERPRISE

 
          
Marty Schultz was sitting in the
left-hand commander’s seat on
Enterprise
's
flight deck, nudging her thrusters forward in an attempt to fly
the shuttle away from the space station and the attackers bearing down on it.
He’d already made up his mind. He wasn’t going to be the hunted; he was going
to be the hunter. Not to be vainglorious, but, well, better to go doing some
good in the space shuttle that had been his inspiration than wait around for
the Russians to shred the patchwork shuttle with their missiles.

           
He keyed
the microphone button on the control stick. “Sorry to be late reporting,
General. As I guess you’ve noticed, I’ve been sort of busy here on
Enterprise
—”

           
“What the
hell
do you think you’re doing? Where do
you think you’re
going?”

           
“One at a time, General.
What I was doing was getting ready
to load Skybolt... saw the Russian plane’s missiles hit
America
...
Hamptom and Horvath bought it.... Where I’m going is away from
Silver
Tower
. Figure those planes will be
on my tail pretty quick now. Well, I’ve always wanted to see what this baby can
do. Now I’m going to find out....”

           
Saint-Michael
wanted to kill him.... He was so upset the irony of that thought went right by
him.... First it had been Jerrod Will. Now it was Marty Schultz. What was it
with these shuttle jocks? Did they all have to be heroes ... ?

           
“Marty,
listen...”

           
But Marty
wasn’t listening. Leaving
Enterprise
's
thrusters on full power he unstrapped himself from the
commander’s seat and moved across the flight deck to the payload specialist’s
station. The cargo bay doors were open and he could see out through the twin
aft-facing observation windows into the cargo bay and behind
Enterprise
.

           
He
activated the reaction-control-system thruster controls at the payload station,
checked them,
then
unstowed the manipulator arm.

 
         
Swinging the arm out of the cargo bay
he pointed the TV camera aft, set it to wide-angle view and swept it behind the
shuttle.

           
Almost
instantly he had a picture-perfect view of two Soviet Elektron spaceplanes
giving chase.

           
“I got two
Elektrons on my tail,” he radioed back to the station. “These gumballs are in
for a surprise...

 
          
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE

 
          
“Damn it,” Govorov said over the
command radio, “don’t let that shuttle get away....”

           
Kozhedub
and Litvyak had fired two
Bavinash
missiles each at Armstrong, when Govorov saw the shuttle suddenly bolt from the
vicinity of the lower pressurized modules. He had no way of knowing if it was a
bluff or not, but the shuttle did seem to be piloted by a space-suited
astronaut, so he ordered both his wingmen to give chase.

           
For a
moment he hoped Litvyak would leave the job to Kozhedub because, from his
vantage point about a kilometer behind and above his wingmen, Govorov had seen
Litvyak’s second Scimitar missile, a
single
missile, obliterate the spaceplane
America
docked at the station, creating an instant ball of flames. Flames in outer
space were a rare sight. The blast must have had the force of at least a
kiloton of TNT.

           
Deciding it
was not necessary to wait for his wingmen to return, Govorov pressed a switch
on a newly installed panel near his right knee. Behind him, a hydraulically
powered pallet lifted the space- reactive bomb out of Elektron One’s cargo bay.
The side of the weapon opposite the pallet was uncovered, revealing a series of
mechanical grapples all along the outer surface of the bomb.

           
He was
going to maneuver Elektron One underneath the station’s central keel, as close
as possible to the pressurized modules without running the risk of hitting an
antenna or a piece of the debris that seemed to cluster everywhere around the
crippled station. When he was positioned properly he would gently nudge the
bomb up onto the central open-lattice keel until the grapples caught, then
release the bomb and pallet from his cargo bay. Once away from the station—
five to ten kilometers was safe in this case—he would detonate the bomb. It
would be fast and sure. No more mistakes....

           
He began
his slow, careful approach to the station, maneuvering well above the central
pressurized modules to begin a visual scan of the station. Not the time to
charge ahead blindly. Logic said the station’s crew should have abandoned the
station in the shuttle or space- plane, but it was such an incorrect assumption
that got Voloshin killed on the first mission. There was time. He would wait
and watch the explosion, watch as the huge American space station folded and
tore apart. As for the men who might still crew the station, well, he would try
not to feel for them. At least they would die quickly....

           
He nudged
his control stick forward and watched as his laser range finder counted down
the distance to the station: three thousand meters, twenty-eight hundred,
twenty-six....

 
          
SPACE SHUTTLE
ENTERPRISE

 
          
They were close enough now....

           
From the
magnification setting on the arm camera Marty Schultz estimated that the two
Elektron spaceplanes chasing him were no more than four or five miles behind.
Enterprise
,
powered by its two monomethyl-hydrazine engines, had accelerated another
thousand miles an hour since the chase had begun, but the Russians were slowly
but surely catching up.

           
Just as he wanted.

           
He shut
down the engines and using only the aft thrusters spun
Enterprise
head-over-tail until she had turned a full hundred eighty degrees back toward
her pursuers. He then grasped the arm controls and studying the TV monitor that
gave the best view of the cargo bay and the manipulator’s claw, reached into
the cargo bay with the arm and extracted a large cylindrical drum device from
an attach-point in the center of the bay.

           
He had
conceived his plan shortly after making
Enterprise
flyable. Realizing that a Soviet spaceplane attack might come with very little
warning, making it impossible for them to abandon the station, he’d suggested
loading up
Enterprise
's
cargo bay with Thor interceptor
missiles and launching them by shuttle-directed remote-control.

           
In spite of
the disaster after the first time they’d tried to launch Thor missiles for
station defense, Saint-Michael had agreed to the plan, at least the idea, and
told Marty and Hampton to load the missiles. But by the time the Soviets had
announced their assault by firing their chemical laser, he’d changed his mind.
Enterprise
would only be used to carry the Skybolt laser module to a high-storage orbit.

           
That had
been it—until Marty had gotten back aboard
Enterprise
to get ready to accept the Skybolt
laser module Ann would be detaching. From his docking point beneath the central
keel near the Skybolt module, the eight remaining Thor missiles he’d taken off
the shuttle only hours before had been well within reach of his remote
manipulator arm. When the Soviet spaceplane attack had begun it had not been
difficult to detach two missiles, activate the mechanical ejector-arming mechanism,
stow the missiles in
Enterprise
's
cargo bay, and jet away from the
station. He had deliberately circled Armstrong once to get the Russian’s
attention,
then
flown away with as much speed as
possible....

           
It took
thirty seconds for Marty to extract the two missiles from the cargo bay,
then
clicked on the air-to-air comm channel. “Armstrong,
this is
Enterprise
.
Come in.”

           
“Marty.”
Saint-Michael’s voice again. “Where are you?”

           
“Where I should be, General.
Listen, you have to
launch-commit the Thor missiles now.”

           
“You got
some of the Thors on board?” Saint-Michael didn’t wait for a reply, instead
immediately threw himself toward the far side of the master SBR control console
hunting for the Thor missile controls. Almost every control panel had been
moved or replaced, and during the first spaceplane attack the impact explosions
had thrown any unsecured panels all across the module. But after a few frenetic
moments of searching he found the Thor arming controls and ordered an automatic
launch-commit on all Thor missiles.

           
The six
missiles under the central keel were not affected by the command; only the two
missiles that Marty had manually armed responded. The Elektron spaceplanes were
less than three miles away when the Thor missile’s rocket engines ignited.
Marty stayed long enough to watch both Thors shoot into space toward the
Russian spaceplanes, then made his way back to the cockpit and strapped into
the commander’s seat.

           
Time to
take off, babe. He reactivated the digital autopilot and RCS thruster controls.
If those missiles didn’t hit their targets, he knew there were two Russians who
were going to come at him with everything they had.

           
They had
indeed agreed between themselves who would take the first shot on the American
shuttle
Enterprise
:
Colonel Kozhedub in Elektron Two had the honors. Colonel Litvyak, who had put
the Scimitar missile into
America's
fuel tanks, kept his laser seeker- range finder activated but caged it to scan
directly ahead of Elektron Three. If he had illuminated
Enterprise
with
his laser, Kozhedub’s missile might try to slide across to the second beam and
miss the target, or the two lasers could interphase and cancel each other out.

 
         
“It’s moving away,” Kozhedub called
out as the shuttle slowly rotated on its longitudinal axis and sped away at
right angles to the Elektron’s line of flight.

           
“Can you
follow him?” Litvyak said. “I can—”

           
Kozhedub
told him no
thanks,
he could get this one just fine.

           
Litvyak
started to say something but a glance at his front instrument panel stopped the
words in his throat. Directly centered in his laser spotting-scope screen was a
Thor missile unfurling its steel mesh snare!

           
“Watch out.
The shuttle has just launched
missiles... Litvyak yanked on his control column, trying to translate directly
to the right and dodge the missile. It tracked toward him. He switched
thrusters again and moved downward at full power, changing directions so hard
that his helmet cracked against the cockpit canopy. No change. The Thor missile
was still following him, looming larger and larger....

           
The missile
was less than a mile away when Litvyak, in the last- ditch effort, fired three
Scimitar missiles at the large cylindrical interceptor. The first two missiles
exploded harmlessly on the mesh, but the third impacted directly on the sensor
nose of the missile and detonated the Thor’s high-explosive warhead.