“Alpha-One’s orbit confirmed,” Konnikov reported. “Transferring tracking data to Thunderbolt’s fire-control computer.”
“Tracking data received,” Major Viktor Filatyev said from his station in the aft weapons module. “I have a firing solution.”
Strelkov nodded to himself. It seemed odd to open a new era in the history of warfare so prosaically, with so little fanfare or drama. Then again, perhaps that was fitting. After all, this would be a conflict fought by machines against other machines at vast ranges, with none of the carnage and chaos of close physical combat. “Weapons release granted,” he said simply.
“Firing Thunderbolt… now,” Filatyev announced.
Mars One shuddered slightly. Maneuvering thrusters aboard their docked Progress cargo ships and Federation orbiter had fired simultaneously to counteract the recoil from their plasma rail gun.
Two thousand kilometers away and two-tenths of a second later, Topaz-Four, one of America’s most advanced radar reconnaissance satellites, glowed brightly — eerily wreathed in lightning. Shedding antennas, thruster cones, sections of fractured solar panels, and other fragments, the wrecked satellite spun away into space.
“Good hit. Altai Center confirms a kill on target Alpha-One,” Konnikov said, with a grin. He checked their ground track again. “Time to solar terminator now twelve minutes and thirty seconds.”
Strelkov felt himself relax. Despite his earlier show of confidence, and their destruction of the American spaceplane, he had never been completely sure Thunderbolt could actually engage and destroy targets at the ranges its creators promised. “Good shooting, Viktor,” he told Filatyev. “Stand by for a new target.”
Mars One was now officially at war.
Clenching his teeth against stabs of pain from his much-abused muscles and joints, Brad McLanahan dumped a last armful of torn brush on top of a shallow mound of dirt, rocks, and clumps of moss. He’d spent the past half hour frantically burying his bright red-and-white parachute, silver carbon-fiber space suit, helmet, emergency radio beacon, and white life-support backpack, using just his left arm because it sure felt like his right shoulder might be dislocated.
Straightening up, he dusted off his hand and stepped back a few feet to survey his work with a critical eye. There was zero chance it would fool anyone up close, he decided. But his improvised cache should hide the gear he’d just ditched from anyone hunting him from the air… and that seemed the most immediate threat.
Brad swung around and checked the other side of the small woodland clearing he’d landed in. The most he’d been able to do over there was drag the blackened, six-foot-diameter aerogel ERO shell off into a thick stand of young spruce trees. Their overhanging branches ought to break up its silhouette. Maybe, he thought doubtfully. With some luck. Then again, he’d been pushing his luck pretty hard over the past several hours. How much further could it possibly carry him?
While chewing that over in his mind, he mopped at his sweaty forehead with a sleeve of his coverall. This outer garment he’d worn over his space suit wasn’t exactly designed for hard manual labor on the ground. Or for trekking through what sure looked a lot like an uninhabited wilderness — a landscape of scattered woods, grassy meadows, boulder-strewn rises, and reed-choked bogs.
Brad shook his head in mild dismay. This was not going to be fun. Damn it, he’d signed on with Sky Masters and Scion to fly… not to go crawling around in swamps and forests like some U.S. Army grunt. Then he grinned wryly, imagining Nadia’s reaction if she heard him whining like this. She’d probably kick his ass all the way from here — wherever here was — to Battle Mountain. Besides, what was that old line? “If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined up.”
Well, at least his footgear, a pair of black leather zippered paratrooper boots, was appropriate for the task in front of him. Plus, Sky Masters had included a lightweight pouch with SERE — Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape — supplies with the ERO kit. The water-purification tablets and protein bars it contained should keep him from dying of thirst or starving to death… at least for a few days.
Maybe even more important, the survival kit included a compact satellite phone with some additional capabilities — rudimentary language translation and digital map software — built in. Limited battery power meant he’d have to carefully ration its use… but at least he might be able to call for help.
But not right now. Like cell phones, satellite phones could be tracked through their GPS receivers. And if hostiles had monitored his flaming descent through the upper atmosphere or spotted the ERO’s big parachute when it opened at thirty thousand feet, this whole area was likely to get unhealthy mighty fast. He’d do better to cover as much ground as he could before the light failed. “Phoning home” would have to wait until he could find someplace reasonably safe to hole up in.
Brad used a parachute riser cord he had collected before he buried the parachute to rig up a sling for his right arm. Some other injury was causing some intense pain in his right knee, but at least he could walk. Resolutely, he slung the SERE pouch over his left shoulder and started hiking east — heading deeper into the cover offered by the forest. Behind him, the waters of a large lake glinted in the early-afternoon sun.
Half a mile from the clearing he’d crash-landed in, he struggled through a thicket of dwarf birch trees and unexpectedly emerged onto a narrow dirt road running north and south through the forest. The road’s surface was deeply rutted, indicating that it was at least occasionally used by heavy wheeled vehicles. It was probably a logging trail, he thought.
Still, any road was a sign there might be people living or working close by. And stumbling into them could mean big trouble for him.
Careful to avoid making any sudden moves that might draw even more attention, Brad slowly backed a few feet into the thicket. Once he was in some cover, he squatted down. From this position, he spent several minutes studying the road and the woods on the other side. Nothing moved. At least nothing he could see. Everything seemed quiet.
About twenty yards up the road, he spotted what looked like a rusting metal sign nailed to a tree. Cautiously, he moved forward to examine it.
It was written in the Cyrillic alphabet: oрджиканский государственный природный заповедник.
Dry-mouthed, Brad ran that through his satellite phone’s software. It seemed worth the risk to get a fix on his location. A translation blinked onto the tiny screen, along with a digital map that highlighted “the Oldjikan State Nature Reserve.”
“Yeah, that answers my question,” Brad growled under his breath as he stared at the map. “I am so well and truly fucked.”
The good news was that he’d survived the totally insane stunt of plunging four hundred miles down from orbit aboard a completely untested, foam-filled escape pod. The bad news was that he’d landed in Russia’s far east region… just three hundred and fifty miles from the Vostochny Cosmodrome.
Twenty-Six