Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (56 page)

           
A second
laser burst from Skybolt knifed through the spaceplane itself, creating another
huge bubble—this time of titanium, not glass. The heat was so intense that the
plane’s fuel had no time to detonate. In the blink of an eye—both pulses had
lasted less than one-tenth of a second—the spaceplane Elektron One and the commander
of the Soviet Space Defense Command had simply vanished in a puff of plasma.

 
          
ELEKTRON THREE SPACEPLANE

 
          
“Elektron One. Do you read? Over.”

           
Litvyak got
no reply. Ever since the last energy surge—the laser, Govorov had said?—the
tactical air-to-air frequency had been silent. Lost communications procedures
for this mission were different than for other space flights with more than one
manned spacecraft. The standard procedure was to proceed immediately to the
nearest hundredth altitude—one hundred kilometers, two hundred, three
hundred—establish a circular orbit and await reentry or station-docking
instructions. For this mission the instructions were simpler:

           
If weapons
are aboard, continue the attack on the space station Armstrong. The space-based
radar, rescue spacecraft, pressurized modules and fuel cells have priority.
Withdraw only if all weapons are expended.

           
Litvyak
turned his Elektron around, guided it a few kilometers closer to the station
and locked his laser range finder on Armstrong’s starboard space-based radar
array. He fired one of his five remaining Scimitar missiles at the station. The
missile running hot and true, slammed into the face of the upper starboard
array. The explosion from its warhead blew a ten-meter-diameter hole in the
antenna, which wobbled and weaved for a moment, then wrenched itself in two and
toppled over, slamming into the keel.

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
“The bomb didn’t go off,”
Saint-Michael called out. “Ann, you did it. Skybolt worked—”

           
His congratulations
were sharply interrupted by a loud
bang
and rumbling vibration that shook the command module. The one usable
attitude-adjustment thruster could be heard trying to move the station upright
again, but the station began to tip slowly backward. Streams of SBR fault
messages raced across Saint-Michael’s monitors, but he didn’t need to read the
screen to know that there was at least one more Russian plane out there.

           
“Jason,
reset the SBR.
Fast.”

           
He moved
back to the SBR control terminal, entered the command to reset the radar’s
circuitry. But the computer refused the input.

           
“It won’t
take.”

           
“You have
to find out what component is out and power it down,” Ann told him, “or else
the SBR will keep short-circuiting.”

           
Saint-Michael
scrolled through the error messages that had zipped across the screen. It
seemed every single part of the SBR had been hit by a Russian missile. He
switched his comm link to A/A.

           
“Marty, can
you see the station? What did he hit?”

           
“Stand by.”
Marty, who had stopped trying to detach the Russian bomb when the laser fired,
boosted himself away from the keel, flipped upside down to get a better view
and maneuvered over the station.

           
“Try the
number one SBR array.”

           
Saint-Michael
erased the error log and had just entered the code to deactivate the damaged
SBR array when a thunderous explosion rocked the command module.

           
“Fire on
the keel,” Marty shouted over the air-to-air frequency. “The master fuel cell’s
been hit.”

           
Fire-warning
lights blinked on all the surviving panels. Saint-Michael ignored them. “SBR’s
reset, Ann. Hurry up, we’re going to run out of power any—”

           
As he said
those words the main lights in the command module flickered out. A few
battery-powered emergency lights snapped on, but they lit a corpse.
Silver
Tower
was dead once again.

 
          
ELEKTRON THREE SPACEPLANE

 
          
Litvyak’s second Scimitar missile hit
finally produced a spectacular result, even better than the collapsed radar
antenna. The secondary explosions, fire and sparking on the keel from the
missile hit on the fuel cell created a multicolored fireworks display for
dozens of meters from the impact point, then began to creep along the keel
toward the pressurized modules. The explosions fizzled out just a few meters
away from the double column of modules in the center of the keel, but the end
result was still satisfying to Colonel Litvyak: the few visible lights
remaining on the station had all gone out. That last hit had finally killed the
station.

           
It was
dead, but not destroyed. Govorov had ordered the station destroyed. The
Americans had already reactivated a “dead” hulk once; they might do it again.
Litvyak swept his laser range-finder designator around the station and finally
rested the red beam on the best and most obvious target of them all: Govorov’s
unexploded bomb.

           
It was all
about to end, right now. Litvyak selected his three remaining
Bavinash
missiles, locked the laser
designator on the bomb. He squeezed the trigger. The three missiles fired
straight and true with a solid lock-on—

           
And all
three were caught in the intense free-electron laser beam that shot from the
station. Skybolt had needed only a millisecond of the station’s waning power to
energize the laser’s ignition circuitry, and once delivered—Skybolt’s internal
battery did the rest. Skybolt’s beam vaporized the Scimitar missiles, and three
one-millionths of a second later the beam traveled the remaining five miles to
Elektron Three and turned the two-hundred-fifty-thousand-pound spacecraft and
its pilot into a few milligrams of cosmic dust.

           
As
Saint-Michael and Ann Page struggled into space suits, the first of the Soviet
GL-25 cruise missiles were just a few dozen miles from the sea. Running
undetected, they had navigated through the western rim of the Selseleh Ye Safid
Mountains in western
Afghanistan
,
down into the
Margow
Desert
valley and along the Chagal Hills down the border between
Iran
and
Pakistan
.
Now they were well within the
Central
Makran
Range
in southwest
Pakistan
,
only minutes from the
Gulf
of
Oman
.
Their inertially guided course had been well chosen by Soviet army planners to
conceal the missiles in the most rugged terrain available and to keep them away
from known surveillance sites or large population centers.

           
Each of the
fifty GL-25 missiles had expended three-quarters of its fuel on only two-thirds
of its journey, but the easier part of the flight was ahead of them. Once over
the ocean the missiles would gradually step-climb to twenty thousand feet,
where their ramjet engines would be more efficient. They would cruise at high
altitude until within three hundred miles of the outermost escort ship of the
Nimitz
, then gradually descend back to
fifty feet above the water. At approximately one hundred miles from the last
known position of the
Nimitz
, their
homing radars would activate....

           
And the
devastation of the American fleet would begin....

 
          
October 1992

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
Without power,
Silver
Tower
was little more than a fifty-billion-dollar
orbiting mausoleum. Air could not
circulate,
module
pressurization could not be maintained because of the leaks in the hull.
Electronic carbon dioxide scrubbers were inoperable, and old-style lithium
hydroxide carbon dioxide scrubber canisters were much less effective without
air being circulated through them. The attitude thrusters that kept the station
on a proper orbit were useless without computer control.

           
The station
was suddenly deaf, dumb and blind.

           
But days
before, right after arriving back on Armstrong, Saint-Michael and his crew had
prepared for another attack, and safeguarding backup power sources had been
their first priority. They’d labeled their makeshift control panel the “planter
box” because it had been constructed using one of the command module’s green
plant boxes— Saint-Michael didn’t know whatever happened to the dirt. Even now
it resembled a planter box, sprouting a dozen thick bundles of wires, some
ending in round twist-lock junction caps or ribbon-cable snap connectors, and
others looping back around through the box and out along cable conduits to
other parts of the command module.

 
         
This was no computer terminal or
sophisticated electronic relay center; the circuits were the wire bundles
themselves. As for the switches, if a wire junction was plugged into another,
the switch was “on.” If it was unplugged, it was “off.” They had labeled each
wire bundle with descriptions of where the wires led and what they did.
Saint-Michael anchored himself now to the Velcro deck and began unplugging,
watching for the last connector to snap into place and the lights to flicker on
in the command module.

           
He reached
down to his spacesuit control panel and clicked on the station wide interphone.
“Ann, how do you copy?”

           
“I can hear
you, Jason.”

           
“Switch to
air-to-air with me.” He switched to A/A on the comm control. “Marty? How do you
read?”

           
“Loud and
clear,
General
. You missed a Fourth of July barnburner
out here. Those Russian spaceplanes sparkle when you hit ’em with the laser.
You all done with your fireworks? Can I come back in to pick up my fares?”

           
“You can
come back in but we’re not leaving. It may be crazy, but we’re going to try to
reactivate the station again.”

           
“One problem, General.
That last Russian missile took out
your master fuel cell. Where are you going to get the power? I’m pretty good
but I can’t figure out how to jump-start
Silver
Tower
from
Enterprise
.
”

           
“What about
the solar arrays? Can you see them out there? What’s their status?”

           
“Stand by.”
A few moments later Marty came back on channel. “Looks bad, General. I can’t
even find half of the arrays. Three and four are still attached but they’re
collapsed against the keel. It would take an army of techs and a shuttle a week
to repair them
—if
it’s possible.”

           
Silence,
then Ann clicked on channel. “Jason, I might have an answer.... We still have a
power source on this station bigger than all the fuel cells and solar arrays
put together. I’m talking about the MHD reactor.”

           
“You mean
you can hook the reactor into the station power circuits?”

           
“Why not?
Until Kevin Baker and I fixed it that’s what it
was doing all by itself. I can undo some of the fixes we did, reverse the power
relays and send MHD power from Skybolt back through the ignition circuits to
the station batteries. The battery transformers and overload protectors should
be able to protect the batteries from overvoltage damage. All you have to do is
route battery power from the emergency bus to the station main bus and we
should be able to use the MHD reactor to charge the batteries.”

           
“Sounds too
simple,” Saint-Michael said
,
his irony lost on Ann for
the moment. “Well, let’s do it.”

           
Marty said,
“And I can tether
Enterprise
to the keel and transfer to—”

           
“Negative,”
Saint-Michael said as he began to pull apart consoles in the command module. “I
want you to get in contact with someone on earth, tell them our situation and
request a rescue sortie soon as possible.”

           
“That’ll be
a trick,” Marty said. “I never did fix
Enterprise
's
TDRS.”

           
“So use UHF
standby radio. The Dakar-Ascension earth stations will be your best chance, or
Yarra Yarra in
Australia
.
Keep trying. I don’t know how much longer our air is going to last
... .
You copy that, Marty?”

 
          
USS MISSISSIPPI

           
The GL-25
cruise missiles sped south of the Tropic of Cancer, still without being
detected—any ships larger than small fishing vessels had long since abandoned
the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, like townfolk in the Old West scattering
off the main street as the sheriff and the outlaws began squaring off. Two of
the cruise missiles had guidance-system malfunctions and automatically crashed
themselves into the sea, but the rest were precisely on course, speeding toward
the twenty American naval vessels now only five hundred miles away. Three
hundred miles from the outermost escort vessel the missiles began their
preprogrammed descent back to low-altitude cruise mode, maneuver designed to
duck under the extreme farthest range of any maritime radar.

           
The
inertially guided missiles had been programmed as if all of the
Nimitz
's escorts were still arranged in
a protective circle around the carrier. If the fleet had remained in the same defensive
formation as when the missiles were programmed some twelve hours earlier, the
missiles might never have been detected until it was too late. The target-run
point, at which the missile’s homing radar would be activated, was designed to
allow for movement of the fleet; but the planners had to work under the
assumption that the fleet would stay together and not change course by more
than a hundred miles after launch. Secrecy meant everything to the success of
the Soviet missile strike.

           
But one ship,
the USS
Mississippi
, was no longer
with the
Nimitz
group. After the
Backfire bomber attack, the
Mississippi
had been ordered to the area
of the Backfire-Tomcat dogfight to search for Russian survivors. It had taken
several hours to steam north to where the battle had taken place, and they
stayed in the area for some eight hours rescuing a handful of survivors and
retrieving bodies. When they started back toward the
Nimitz
to retake their place in the cordon they were a hundred
miles out of position.
Which put them three hundred miles
south and west of the first of the GL-25 cruise missiles
 

           
Commander
Jeffrey Fulbright, captain of the
Mississippi
, was on the bridge trying to
warm his insides with a fresh mug of coffee.

           
“Those Russians
were really scared of us,” Fulbright was saying to Lieutenant George Collene,
the deck officer. “I guess they thought we were going to put fire to their
fleet. Credit doses of negative propaganda.”

           
“Or good
old-fashioned fear of retaliation, sir,” Lieutenant Collene said. “If I had
just tried to bomb an enemy vessel I’d sure as hell think twice about getting
on their ship afterward.”

           
Fulbright
glanced at the young officer, closed his right hand into a fist. “Wouldn’t you
just love to go down there and properly welcome those sonsofbitches to the USS
Mississippi
?”

           
Collene
looked at his captain over the top of his glasses. “That, sir, is what their
political officers
tell
them we do.”

           
“So let’s
not disappoint them—”

           
“Bridge,
CIC. Radar contact aircraft bearing zero-four-zero true, range two-eight-seven
nautical miles. Fast-moving, heading south.”

           
Fulbright
picked up the phone. “CIC, this is Fulbright. Got an ID on ’em?”

           
“Negative, sir.”

           
“Feed me
the numbers.” He lowered the phone and called to the deck officer. “Lieutenant,
steer heading zero-four-zero true. Make it zero-six-zero. We’ll try to cut them
off, whatever they are. Make flank speed. Let’s go take a look.”

           
“Zero-six-zero
true, flank speed, aye, sir.” Collene repeated the command to the helmsman, who
repeated it to Collene, steered the ship to that heading, made the speed change
to engineering and then read off his instruments to Collene when the course and
speed were set.

           
“On course zero-six-zero.
We are at flank speed, showing
two- seven knots, sir.”

           
“Very well.”

           
“Bridge,
contact one now two-six-five miles, bearing zero-four- five. We have a rough
altitude estimate of angels ten and descending. Speed estimated six-zero-zero
knots.”

           
“Any identification
beacons? IFF?”

           
“No codes,
sir.”

           
“Lieutenant,
steer zero-nine-zero,
maintain
flank speed. I want—”

           
“Bridge,
CIC. Radar contact aircraft two, range two-six-zero nautical miles, bearing
zero-three-eight, fast-moving, same heading south as contact one. Speed and
altitude the same as contact one.”

           
Fulbright
swore and picked up a second phone. “Communications, this is the bridge. Get
Nimitz
on FLEETSATCOM. Advise him of our
contacts. Broadcast warning messages on all emergency frequencies to all
aircraft on those contacts’ course and speed. Tell them to change course and
stay clear of all vessels in this area or they will be fired on without further
warning—”

           
“Bridge,
CIC. Radar contact aircraft three, range two-four-zero, bearing
zero-three-zero, moving below angel’s five. Same course and speed as the....
Now radar contact four, same course and speed.... looks like a stream of them,
sir. New contact five....”

           
“Discontinue
reports, radar, I get the picture,” Fulbright said. “Lieutenant, sound general
quarters.”

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
There was irony in the station’s
near-destruction: if the command module had not been as tom up as it was by the
previous Soviet attack it would have taken hours, perhaps days, to trace all
the wiring and circuitry leading from Skybolt and the MHD reactor to the
station’s banks of batteries. As it was, the main, emergency and essential
power buses, and the connecting point between the power supply and the circuits
powered by it, were all now readily accessible.

           
Saint-Michael’s
job was to connect the backup power system to the main bus. Finally he stood up
from the planter box, clicked on his interphone, and told Ann that he was
ready. She reported finishing the rewiring in the Skybolt control module, so he
switched the channel to air-to-air and raised Marty.

 
         
“We’re going to fire up the reactor,
Marty. Stand by.”

           
“Roger,
General.... hey, wait a sec, I’m picking up UHF broadcasts from... the
Seychelles
,
or someplace like that. It sounds like the navy. Something’s up....”

           
“Okay,
listen in and give me a report later. We’re going to fire her up and see what
happens.”

           
Ann
maneuvered herself to the one control panel in the entire module that was illuminated.
It was a simple switch that would allow power from the backup batteries to flow
to the ignition circuits. “Jason, when I start up the reactor it’ll go full
bore until I get power to my main reactor controls. I only hope the batteries
can handle it....”

           
“Look at it
this way: if something goes wrong we can’t be in any worse shape than we are
now. Any explosion will be out on the keel where the batteries are. Plug ’er
in.”

           
Ann touched
the switch and closed her eyes. “Here goes everything. ...”