Through the wireless intercom came a stronger, firmer voice: "Jason…?"
"How you doing?"
"I see stars every time I blink my eyes, and my head hurts like hell. Where are we going?"
"Enterprise. "
"Didn't the Russians attack it?"
"Enterprise won't get us home," Saint-Michael said, opening the hatch to the docking module at the end of the main connecting tunnel, "but maybe it can save us. My spacesuit has enough air — and power for only seven hours. Enterprise, even damaged, has enough air and water for thirty days and it still has the thruster power to keep itself in orbit. It's our chance until—"
She wondered why Saint-Michael had suddenly stopped in midsentence. Then she understood… He had carried her into the docking module, where the burned-up bodies of Bayles and Kelly still lay. She almost imagined that she could see the crewmen trying to crawl back to Silver Tower for safety, chased by the wall of flame from Enterprise's destroyed fuel cells… Saint-Michael's eyes were drawn to the distorted faces, the sightless eye sockets, the scorched Space Command uniforms, the gnarled, bony hands. Gently lifting his precious cargo over the charred remains, he realized that the woman he carried in that plastic and canvas rescue ball could just as easily have been one of those bodies on the deck beneath him.
As he made his way down the docking tunnel into Enterprise's air locks and into the shuttle itself he saw that the hungry fire had blackened everything.
"Are we in Enterprise yet?" Ann asked. He could not answer, and she did not press the question.
Montgomery, Wallis and Davis were still strapped in place, melted POS masks on their chests. The fuel-cell explosion in the lower deck storage area had torn apart Enterprise's middeck. The air was filled with floating debris that would never settle, never fall.
"I'm going to leave you on the middeck," Saint-Michael said. He let her float between the airlock hatch and the ladder leading to the upper deck, plugged the rescue ball into another oxygen supply hose and activated the oxygen supply. Enterprise's oxygen supply, he noted with relief, still seemed operational. "You can recharge your POS pack with the hose inside the ball. I've got to… to see if Enterprise is flyable. "
Ann did not acknowledge. She knew what he really had to do — move the bodies of Will and Sontag out of the charred cockpit.
One missile left.
General Alesander Govorov took every last second available to him before breaking off his systematic attack on the American space station. He had plunged Scimitar missiles into all but two of the station's eight pressurized modules, making sure that all within range were at least punctured. The two modules remaining were both on the outside of the revolving station and were therefore moving the fastest and were harder to hit, so he had targeted easier modules, the ones closest to the central keel, with his few remaining missiles.
Clouds of debris hovered everywhere around the torn-up space station. A sparking relay junction or fuel cell occasionally erupted somewhere on the keel, and pieces of the space-based radar, communications antennas and heat-exchange radiators fluttered in the weightlessness of space as if pushed by some strange, unearthly wind. The station's rotation was erratic. Originally centered directly along the central keel, now it was a wobbly, off-kilter eccentric spin. The space shuttle was still attached to the docking port, but the cockpit windows were dark and lifeless and the battered, ruptured nose insured that the shuttle was useless.
Govorov had established contact with Soviet Space Defense Command shipborne tracking stations just after Voloshin had disappeared. The ground-tracking stations were not as sophisticated as the American Tracking and Data Relay, Satellite system, TDRS, or WESTAR, so voice and data contact with small, low-powered craft such as the Elektrons was intermittent at best. They could not help with Voloshin's disappearance. They were also no help with a plan to dock with the Soviet Union's orbiting module. Besides, Govorov found he did not have the fuel to risk a long, protracted hunt for Mir, so his only option was to deorbit.
"Elektron One, this is Glowing Star Command Control."
"Go ahead, Control."
"Elektron One, we are recommending another orbit to align in the slot for deorbit."
What? This was crazy… "Control, I don't have the reserves for another two hours in orbit. I need to deorbit on this turn in the slot. What is your reason for the delay?"
"We are showing a possible obstruction within ten kilometers of your computed descent path, Elektron One."
"An obstruction? Another spacecraft?"
"Affirmative. We predict that the object could be within five kilometers of you when you begin your deorbit burn. Please state your intentions."
Govorov took a firm grip on his control stick. It seemed the fight was not over. "Can you identify the object, Control? Its point of origin?"
"Negative. It is not a known orbiting spacecraft. It has appeared in your vicinity within the hour, very close to your present flight path. "
"I want a vector toward the object, Control, immediately."
"Say again, Elektron One."
"I want a vector toward the object. I intend to engage the… obstruction."
"Yes, sir. Stand by."
When Govorov received the range and vector coordinates to the subject, sweat broke out on his forehead. It had indeed moved very close to his flight path — dangerously close. It was less than thirty kilometers away, no more than five thousand meters from his own altitude.
He activated his laser designator and opened his cargo-weapons bay doors once again. He thought he knew what this oncoming spacecraft was. For several years the Americans had had a fighter-based antisatellite missile in operation. Fired from a high-performance F-15 fighter, the missile could seek out, track and destroy many kinds of Soviet satellites. Enhancements to the American ASAT weapon reportedly included a much higher altitude capability, a larger warhead and a more maneuverable design. It was supposed to be as long as a Thor space-based missile, perhaps ten to twelve meters long, but not as large in diameter and aerodynamically shaped for carriage under an F-15 like a flying torpedo.
It had to be an American retaliatory response. The Americans were mounting their ASAT attack at the one point in his mission when he was the most vulnerable: just before deorbit. Low on fuel, maneuvering to enter the deorbit slot, busily inattentive to everything else — a perfect time to strike. Well, the Americans were going to get a surprise. He would be the hunter instead of the hunted…
"Elektron One, spacecraft is at your altitude, inside twenty kilometers, slow moving… now on collision course. Repeat, collision course. You are on an intercept heading, twelve o'clock, now eighteen kilometers."
Govorov put his laser viewfinder on widest possible arc… At the extreme magnification of the laser designator appeared a large, bright object moving across the stars at the very rim of the earth. As it came slowly into range he could make out its smooth, oblong shape and a circular device on one end — an active radar-homing device or infrared seeker? At fast he worried that he might be engaging someone's low-orbiting satellite, or perhaps even a reconnaissance "ferret" satellite, but this thing was unlike any satellite he had ever seen. It was not pointed directly at him, but the laser rangefinder reported it was definitely moving closer. He placed the aiming reticle directly on the nose sensor of the weapon, received a READY beep in his headset, rechecked his weapons panel and at a range of fifteen kilometers fired his last Scimitar missile.
The hypervelocity missile tracked precisely on course, following the laser beam directly to its target. Govorov watched it all the way to impact. The missile plunged through the circular device at the nose of the spacecraft and sliced through it like it was paper. No explosion, only a puff of metal and some escaping gases. The spacecraft began to wobble a bit — obviously its directional control now destroyed — but otherwise it continued on course. Worried that the device wasn't yet dead — perhaps it had some sort of proximity detector or last-track-to-target capability — Govorov maneuvered well above the spacecraft, then rotated around so he could watch it. The device did not follow him. A few moments later it was safely underneath him, now noticeably wobbling. Its altitude had already decreased — it would not be long before it reentered the atmosphere. There was no proximity explosion, no terminal or kamikaze detonation. Govorov reminded himself to inform Soviet intelligence of this new type of American spacecraft. He wanted more information on it, wanted to know what its capabilities were. Right now, though, he had to concentrate on the instructions the ground controllers were sending him in preparation for deorbit. As he maneuvered to begin his deorbit burn, he thought that even with the unexplained loss of Voloshin and Elektron Two, the mission had been a success…