No kidding, Brad thought. Straining against the enormous forces pinning him to his seat, he tapped his display repeatedly, rapidly cycling through the video feeds coming from his flock of nanosatellites as they slid past the Russian space station. Three high-tech weapons of some kind had just popped up through previously concealed ports — one on each of the three connected modules.
Two of the Russian weapons looked oddly like long clear-glass tubes. They swiveled smoothly through different arcs. At short intervals, the tubes glowed brightly. Not for very long, no more than one or two seconds. But each time they did, one of his recon satellites died — going dark without so much as an electronic whimper, let alone a bang.
Those tubelike devices were combat lasers, Brad decided. Powerful ones, too, judging by how quickly they were knocking out his nanosats. He hoped the Sky Masters and Scion experts at Battle Mountain were picking up enough data to make some educated guesses about the Russian lasers’ effective range and lethality.
What he couldn’t make out was the nature of the space station’s third weapons system. Much larger than the two lasers, this one had emerged through a camouflaged hatch in the central module. From what he could see, it consisted of a stubby cylinder surrounded by an array of other components mounted around it in a weird starfish pattern.
And then, as he stared at the image relayed by his last surviving nanosatellite, Brad saw the center of this strange weapon disappear in a dazzling pulse of light.
WHAAMMM.
Before he could even blink, he was hurled forward against his seat straps by a massive impact on the S-19’s aft fuselage. A searing wave of heat rippled through the cockpit — painfully scorching even through his protective clothing, a skintight silvery carbon-fiber pressure suit layered with a lighter, unpressurized coverall containing additional radiation protection and a coolant system. Every display, control board, and instrument panel instantly short-circuited in a blinding cascade of sparks.
Utterly out of control, the crippled spaceplane tumbled away end over end through space — pitching, yawing, and rolling erratically as its thrusters and main engines fired at random.
Twenty-Three
Colonel Vadim Strelkov stared at his displays in astonishment. Scarcely a minute after the battle began, it was over.
“Command, this is Revin. All targets engaged by our lasers have been destroyed. Hobnail battery power storage is at sixty percent.”
“Excellent work, Leonid,” Strelkov said gratefully. Not a single one of the stealth weapons launched by the Americans had gotten close enough to detonate. The only downside was that it would take hours to fully recharge the two lasers. He turned his attention to the S-19 Midnight. Their telescopes were having a hard time tracking it as it spun and jolted away from them. He opened a circuit to Filatyev. “Do you need to fire a second Thunderbolt shot at the enemy spaceplane, Viktor?”
“Negative, Colonel,” Filatyev reported proudly. “We scored a direct hit. I evaluate the result as a mission kill. Their engines and electronics are crippled beyond any hope of repair.”
Watching from the Kremlin, Gennadiy Gryzlov intervened. He rapped his desk sharply. “You should make sure of them, Strelkov. Launch one of your Scimitar missiles and blow that S-19 to hell!”
Strelkov hesitated. What the president demanded was impossible. With all the will in the world, he could not bend the laws of physics.
From his command post below the National Defense Control Center, Colonel General Leonov saw his dilemma. “What is the range to the enemy spaceplane, Colonel?” he asked.
“More than two hundred and fifty kilometers, sir… and opening very rapidly.”
Leonov nodded. “That is well beyond the effective range of Mars One’s missiles, Gennadiy,” he told Gryzlov calmly. “Any Scimitar fired now would only end up going ballistic. The odds of scoring a hit are infinitesimal, especially against a target that is tumbling so wildly.” He shrugged. “Besides, there’s no need to waste any more weapons on them. The Americans inside that S-19 are already as good as dead.”
The president scowled. “Are you sure of that?”
Strelkov saw one of his displays change. The station’s computer had just updated the projected track of the enemy spacecraft. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said with complete confidence. “The enemy spaceplane is falling out of orbit. It will reenter the earth’s atmosphere and burn up.”
“When?”
“Within the next sixty minutes at most,” Strelkov said. “And quite probably, much sooner.”
As the crippled spaceplane spun end over end through space, the world’s cloud-streaked blue, brown, and green surface unrolled across its cockpit windows, sank out of sight in a blaze of stars or the blinding glare of the sun, and then reappeared — never in quite the same place or for the same number of seconds… but always looming ever closer, ever larger.
Pinned in his seat by sharp jolts as different engines or thrusters fired, Brad McLanahan fought to stay conscious. His vision was blurred by the dying spacecraft’s wild, erratic motion. Awkwardly, he reached for the display in front of him. It was dark. Their computers, both the primary and its backup, were down, knocked off-line or fried by whatever the hell it was that had just hit them. C’mon, baby, wake up, he thought as he punched buttons on the side of the display to try a hard reset. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hunter “Boomer” Noble doing the same thing from the pilot’s seat.
Seconds passed. But nothing happened. The S-19’s cockpit screens and instrument panels stayed obstinately black.
Brad scowled. Swell. Just fucking swell. Without those computers, they had absolutely no way to regain control over the spaceplane. Then he noticed the little row of red lights glowing on the right-sleeve control panel of his space suit… and realized he could not feel the comforting sensation of air flowing through the umbilical hose connected to his seat. Their life-support system was dead, too. So was the intercom that allowed them to talk to each other when suited up.
On the plus side, he guessed, was the fact that they hadn’t blown up.
Yet.
Without waiting any longer, he reached out and grabbed Boomer’s shoulder. With an effort, the other man turned his helmeted head to look back at him. One eyebrow strained upward in a silent question.
Brad jerked a thumb “up” toward the canopy over their heads. Every system in the cockpit was shot and they were pretty clearly dropping out of orbit. It was time to get out. Through the clear visor of his helmet, he saw Boomer nod and mouth back, “Gear up and grab your ERO kit.”
Mercifully, the engines and thrusters that had been firing randomly began shutting down in ones and twos — either because they’d consumed all their fuel or because they’d burned out. At least that would make it slightly easier to move around inside the S-19’s cramped cockpit. But only slightly. Between zero-G and the weird centrifugal and Coriolis effects induced by the spaceplane’s tumbling motion, even getting out of the seat was going to be a bitch.
Brad swallowed, fighting the urge to throw up. He gritted his teeth. The longer he just sat here, the harder this would be. Carefully, he unbuckled his harness and pushed the straps out of the way. Then he bent at the waist and raised his thighs toward his chest, as though he were doing a stomach crunch. While his left hand gripped the edge of the seat, the fingertips of his right gently pushed off against the other side.