“Jesus. It just fired! Speed seven hundred feet per second. Thirty nautical miles south, fifteen miles downrange. Time to impact ninety seconds.”
“Houston, what in the hell is going on? Are you sure that’s not Mir?”
“Absolutely, Lightning. We’re still tracking the Russians. Can’t tell what it is! Good heavens! It just accelerated again. Eleven hundred feet per second. It’s going to ram right into you! Time to impact forty seconds… thirty-five… thirty… use your thrusters, Michael! Quick!”
Kessler exhaled and reached down for the Reaction Control System primary thrusters. He knew the implications of burning early. When traveling over twenty thousand miles per hour, a one-second mistake translated into coming out over five miles off target after re-entry. He checked the timer. He was still a minute away from the deorbit window, but only twenty seconds from becoming a permanent orbital wreck. Since Lightning was flying tail-first, Kessler scanned the rear. He looked in all directions. Nothing.
He waited. Ten seconds… nine… eight… now!
He threw the switches and the highly pressurized helium pushed the hydrazine from the right OMS tank through a maze of pipes down to the four primary RCS thrusters. Propellant met liquid oxygen in a hypergolic reaction, unleashing a combined thrust of 1740 pounds. Kessler sank into his seat from the mild two Gs that resulted.
“Six seconds to impact… five… four… Oh, my God! Look at that thing!” Kessler shouted as the tiny point in space rapidly grew. He snapped his head back as the enormous satellite zoomed past him. It was gone just as suddenly as it had appeared. “Son of a bitch! It missed. It was a damned satellite!”
“Say again, Lightning?”
“I said it was a satellite. It just blasted across my field of view less than a hundred feet away!”
“Looks like it’s moving away, Lightning. Continue deorbit burn.”
“Roger. One minute, thirty seconds. Helium level down to twenty percent. Hydrazine at fifteen percent.”
“Helium and hydrazine levels confirmed. Two minutes to switch.”
“Roger,” Kessler acknowledged. The GPCs would automatically switch from the nearly exhausted OMS tanks to the smaller RCS tanks. Kessler’s eyes shifted back and forth between the propellant levels and the Mission Timer. All seemed nominal, yet he could feel his heartbeat reaching a climax.
“Twenty seconds, Lightning. Fifteen… ten… five… two… switch!”
Kessler closed his eyes and held his breath. A malfunction now would be fatal. The GPCs completed the multi-valve operation in a millisecond, making the transition transparent to the RCS thrusters.
“Switch confirmed, Houston. RCS thrusters now operating out of their own tanks. Helium and hydrazine levels nominal. Mark four minutes.”
“Roger, Lightning. You’re looking good.”
Kessler slowly exhaled. “Almost there, Houston.”
“Mach thirty, Lightning.”
“Speed confirmed.”
“Lightning, Houston. Warning. The… is slowin… down. Repeat, the… llite is… ing… hig… er.”
“Houston, Lightning. You’re breaking up. Say again. Repeat your last.”
Static.
Kessler understood. With his low orbit, he had already slowed down enough that the ionized air surrounding his spacecraft had become dense enough to prevent communications.
Hunter was warning him about something slowing down. Could it be the satellite? He checked the Mission Timer. Four minutes, thirty seconds. Kessler counted down the last few seconds. The GPCs turned off the RCS jets.
Kessler fired the verniers to flip the orbiter so that its underside would be exposed during re-entry. In doing so, Lightning faced forward in anticipation of its atmospheric glide after re-entry. Kessler saw the satellite. It had slowed down and was coming back. This time its speed was slower than before, but definitely along a collision course.
Damn! It’s almost like a fucking missile!
Kessler checked his speed. Mach twenty-four and dropping. The light vibrations he felt on the control stick told him air molecules had begun to strike the underside. He pulled back the stick and kept his eyes trained on the incoming satellite. Without a copilot he had no way of knowing the exact range and time to impact.
Kessler was back piloting an F-14D Tomcat with an incoming missile. His eyes followed it as it arched toward him. He waited. With the cool professionalism he had learned in months of training and tempered in actual combat, Kessler waited for his chance.
It’s only one missile, he decided, thinking of the time he’d had two or three locked on his tail. The missile got closer and closer. There was no chaff or electronic countermeasures to help him. This was one-on-one. Man against machine.
Kessler narrowed his eyes as his fingers caressed the control stick directly connected to the RCS thrusters. For a brief second the missile appeared suspended in mid-space. No motion was apparent. Kessler saw it through the pinkish glow that appeared at the bottom of the front windowpanes. Just a few more seconds. The missile was close. Too close.
“All right, let’s see what this bird can do,” he whispered. In a swift move, he threw the control stick forward and to the side. The appropriate RCS thrusters came alive, forcing the orbiter into a steep left bank and dive. The satellite disappeared from his field of view. He waited. No impact.
Suddenly he felt the cabin temperature quickly rising. He had nearly flipped the orbiter to avoid the collision, but in the process had exposed Lightning’s upper fuselage tiles to a heat much greater than that for which they were designed. With both hands he centered the stick, forcing Lightning back into level flight, and struggled to pull the nose up. The maneuver had left him with a fifteen-degree angle of re-entry instead of the required thirty-five. Again, he was exposing the white thermal tiles of the upper forward fuselage to temperatures reaching two thousand degrees.
Perspiration rolled down his face and neck as the cabin temperature rose above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. He pulled back hard as his eyes remained glued to the attitude indicator.
Twenty-three degrees… twenty-five.
The bright orange glow that had engulfed not only the front thermal glass panes but also the sides and upper panes began to fade into a light pink.
Twenty-eight… thirty.
Kessler eyed the interior temperature. Ninety-eight degrees. He kept up the pressure as the vibrations spiraled toward a climax. Completely focused on his task, Kessler briefly scanned the windowpanes and then turned back to the attitude indicator. Thirty-five degrees and holding. Mach eighteen. Kessler checked the timer. He had another ten minutes of this.
His mind went through the possibility of the satellite coming back again, but unless it had some level of thermal protection it wouldn’t last long. On the other hand, the satellite was very large. It had a lot of mass to burn during re-entry. Kessler had two options: continue on his existing path and risk a rear collision if the satellite had not totally burned up yet, or decrease his angle of re-entry to accelerate and maybe buy himself a few extra seconds at the risk of exposing Lightning’s white tiles again. One exposure he felt certain the tiles could take, but two or three? He checked the timer. Nine minutes left. He decided to gamble it and kept the orbiter at the safe re-entry angle.