Silver Tower

CHAPTER 26

Jason Saint-Michael's warning to his crew not to get too cocky about the role the station had played in the invasion of Bandar-Abbas seemed prophetic now as he clicked his microphone to the off position and reflected on the message he had just received from Space Command. The Russians had apparently just used their laser to knock out an American geosynchronous TRW Block 750 infra-red launch detection satellite, leaving Space Command and NORAD with no missile launch detection for south-central Asia. It didn't take a genius to guess what would happen next. Odds were that at that very moment the Gorgon missiles at Tyuratam were being readied for launch.

Which dictated he do… what? He had been about to order Jerrod Will to discontinue Enterprise's orbit around the station and redock, so that Ann and Kevin Baker, who had also made the decision to leave, could be sent back to Earth. But he wasn't so sure now that he shouldn't evacuate most of the personnel…

He mentally kicked himself for not getting Ann off the station earlier. Even though it bothered him to think of her gone, it bothered him much more to think she might be in serious danger. He just hoped Will could get the Enterprise docked and personnel aboard before he had to contend with those missiles headed their way. At least Will and Sontag had flown their most recent resupply mission to the station without Marty Schultz, so there would be that much more room in the cramped Shuttle. The hard part was going to be deciding who should go and who should stay.

Saint-Michael keyed his microphone. "Enterprise, what's your status?"

"Still orbiting the station, per your orders, General," Will said. "What's up?"

"More trouble, I'm aftaid. I want you to redock immediately."

"Will Airlines copies," Jerrod said as he activated his forward thrusters. He turned to Sontag as if to say what now? but the copilot merely shook his head. They'd have their answers soon enough.

By the time Enterprise had docked with the station and Will had made his way to the command module, Saint-Michael had already received two more messages from Space Command. As Will stepped through the module hatch the general acknowledged him with a nod and continued talking to Ann, who had overheard the exchange between Saint-Michael and the controller at Falcon Air Force Station in Colorado Springs.

"General," she said, "it looks like the station's going to be attacked. Skybolt could help. I'm sure I've just about solved—"

"No arguments, please."

"But—"

"Damn it, Ann, report to Enterprise now."

This time there was no argument. As she left the command-module hatch, Will moved next to Saint-Michael. "General, we're ready to fly, if that's what you want. I've got Yemana rigging up for a token OMS and RCS refueling — just a safety margin for us. Won't take long. Kelly is helping him in the docking adapter. What have we got?"

"Eight Soviet orbiting vehicles just entered orbits similar to ours," Saint-Michael told him. "We lost track of them, but ground tracking stations are keeping an eye on them."

"Launched from Tyuratam?"

"Yes, two from the Glowing Star area, the rest from the antisatellite area at Baikenour."

"Gorgons?"

Saint-Michael nodded. "That's MY guess."

"Sounds like they popped the whole ASAT alert fleet. What about the two from Glowing Star? Do you think they're manned?"

"Don't know. They've had time to move two more Gorgons to Glowing Star, but I think our intelligence would've reported that."

"What are our people doing in the gulf? Any major movement?"

"None. Matter of fact, most units on land and in the gulf appear frozen. The Russians haven't retreated, but they're not advancing either. They may be reassessing."

"Or they may be waiting for Silver Tower to get blasted out of the sky before finishing the job of overrunning Iran," Will said. "We'd better get loaded up…"

"I can't just abandon the station completely, " Saint-Michael said, checking the system status readouts. "Not yet, not if the Russians are gearing up for a major offensive. We have to be there when they kick it off."

"General, it might only take one more shot of that laser or one direct hit from a Gorgon to put you out of commission. One shot on a fuel tank or in your engineering module and whoever's left on board will be in deep—"

"We've got the lifeboat…"

"The lifeboat? Excuse me, but the term 'lifeboat' applied to that hunk of tin out there was coined for the congressman and senators who yakked about having a rescue craft but who wouldn't put up the money for more shuttles or spaceplanes. You know that, sir. We both know it's not a lifeboat — it's more like a piece of waterlogged driftwood. It leaks like a bad condom and it probably wouldn't stand the stress of recovery in a shuttle. It's craziness to rely on it."

"Some speech — and maybe all true. But it doesn't matter… It's what we've got to do the job. This is an emergency—"

"Don't create another one, then."

"Jerrod, I hear you. That's it. Take care of your ship and your passengers. I'll cut the crew on the station down to two or three. You take the rest back to Vandenburg or Edwards. Now move it. We haven't got much time."

As Will exited the module, Colonels Marks and Walker approached Saint-Michael. Marks handed the general a computer printout. "Bad news, Skipper. My calculations show that we only have a day and a half s worth of fuel. Tops."

Saint-Michael scanned the fuel figures. "Even with a reduced crew. No experiments? Reduced power usage?"

"Those figures include all that, plus only a conservative estimate on the necessary fuel consumption with the lost thruster — it could be worse than those numbers. "

"We'll need almost four-a-week refuelings at this rate," Saint-Michael said, "unless we get that thruster working—"

Walker cut in. "General, there's another option…"

"I know, return to a standard polar circular orbit. Stop the retracking thruster course corrections. But then we'd have only a few minutes over the Persian Gulf every few hours. We'd be almost useless as a surveillance platform."

"But we'd be secure, General. This station is a strategic defense laboratory, not really a surveillance satellite. We've proved our value in the first defense of Iran and the Persian Gulf region, but now the game has changed. We're the target, a major target. If the Russians I shoot down this station, the United States has lost a lot more than just an SBR platform."

Saint-Michael stayed silent, seemingly lost in thought. Walker sensed the shift in the general's thinking and nodded to Marks, who said, "At Jim's request, sir, I've worked up the fuel considerations involved in putting us back in polar orbit." He handed Saint-Michael another printout. "We would have enough fuel to reestablish the new orbit, and we wouldn't be dependent on so many refuelings—"

"Skipper, warning message from Space Command tracking," Moyer broke in through the stationwide intercom. "Orbiting vehicle within five miles vertically and one hundred miles laterally from the station."

Saint-Michael quickly sat back in his commander's seat; Walker returned to his position beside Jefferson on the master SBR display.

Saint-Michael keyed the intercom. "Jerrod, status of your refueling."

"Few more minutes."

"You're out of time, Jerrod. Attention on the station. Emergency. Discontinue all refueling operations. AD crewmen except command module personnel report aboard Enterprise immediately. This station is on red alert. Jake, discontinue SBR earth surveillance. Launch commit all Thor interceptors for station defense." He turned to Walker. "Jim, can you handle the Space Command relays and back up Jake on the SBR board?"

"Sure thing."

"Okay. Moyer, get into a space suit. You're our life insurance." The young tech nodded and hurried off to where one of the space suits had temporarily been stowed in a corner of the command module. "I want rescue balls within immediate reach."

"Space command tracking vehicle within two miles vertical, sixty miles horizontal," Walker reported. "Tracking reports vehicle is under power and maneuvering."

"Jerrod, get Enterprise the hell out of here."

"Tracking reports three more vehicles maneuvering within—"

"Ann isn't on board yet, Jason."

Saint-Michael got both transmissions at the same time, pressed his earset closer to hear better. "Say again, Jerrod—"

Will repeated the message. Before Saint-Michael could explode he heard, "Fifty miles, now at our altitude. Collision course. Repeat, collision course. "

"What the hell…" Saint-Michael turned quickly to station-wide speaker intercom. "Ann Page, report to the command module immediately. Acknowledge."

No reply. The general knew he had to force himself to put her out of his mind and concentrate on the attack. He turned back around toward the master SBR display. "Jake…"

"SBR lock-on, Skipper. Laser target discrimination in progress."

Tethered one hundred yards below Silver Tower, the Thor space-based interceptor-missile garage had obeyed the steering commands sent to it by the station's powerful phased-array radar and had pointed the business end of the garage toward the oncoming antisatellite vehicle. When the SBR locked on, it also slaved a neutral particle-beam laser projector onto the Soviet space vehicle. At that point the laser illuminated the three-ton Gorgon missile, and special sensors analyzed the reflected laser energy. A solid object large enough to damage the station would reflect a different wavelength of energy than a less substantial, lightweight decoy. Once the decoys were discovered, Armstrong's weapons could be employed against only those objects that were a real threat to the station. The whole process, from lock-on to lethal target verification, had taken only seconds. "Forty miles… thirty miles… target discrimination is lethal positive. Thor one auto launch…"

After launch commit was given, the missile's last check was target discrimination. Once targets were checked as lethal, the SBR then automatically issued attack commands to the Thor missiles. The first Thor interceptor missile shot free of its garage, accelerating rapidly to its top speed of over four miles per second. The one-hundred-foot diameter steel mesh net had hardly fully deployed when it hit the first Gorgon ASAT vehicle head-on. "Direct hit." But there were no victory cheers. This wasn't, after all, a planned exercise like their first operational test with friendly Trident D-5 missiles. "Transmit warning message to Space Command, Mission Control, and JCS," Saint-Michael said. "Tell them we are engaging—"

A loud bang and a warning buzzer sounded from the environmental control panel. "What the hell was that…?"

"Rupture in the Skylab module," Marks reported. "Rapid pressure loss… almost zero now…"

"Jason, this is Will on Enterprise. We were hit by projectiles from that Gorgon just before it was destroyed. Minor damage to our right wing leading edge."

"SBR has multiple inbound targets locked on," Jefferson reported. "Range eighty miles. Target discrimination in progress."

"Cabin pressurization in rec section of Skylab, module down to zero," Marks updated. "Skylab module sealed off. I think we took one of those Gorgon projectiles."

Saint-Michael looked grim. "Damn it, we've got to get Enterprise out of here." He switched to stationwide intercom. "Ann, where are you? Report, damn it."

Silence.

"Target discrimination lethal positive for three inbounds—"

Jefferson had just finished his report when his computer monitors showed three automatic Thor missile launches. "Thors two, three, and four away… straight track…"

"Space Command acknowledges our warning message."

"Direct hit on number two… miss on four. Miss on number four—"

"Manual launch," Saint-Michael called out. "Jake, you got it."

Jefferson's fingers manipulated his control board. "Thor five away. Reacquire target four… Switching to auto track—"

"Target three direct hit." Followed by dozens of bangs and scraping noises on the hull and throughout the station. "More flak from those Gorgons," Marks reported. He checked the environmental control panel. "Leaks in the upper connecting tunnel. Cargo shovel defueling system has a shortcircuit. Major damage throughout the Skylab module."

"SBR tracking four inbounds," Walker said. "Range of closest target eighty miles—"

"Snared target number four," from Jefferson. His dark blue flight suit was already soaked with sweat.

"Only five more Thors," Saint-Michael said. "I don't like the way the math is working out here."

"We've got ten more Thors stored on the keel," Walker reminded him.

"They might as well be on earth," the general said. "We've got no one to load them onto the garage."

"Enterprise could do it…"

"It would take too long to load those missiles with the manipulator arm. If we only had—"

"I'll go," Moyer said suddenly. "Shouldn't take me too long…"

"It'll take you all day to load ten missiles by yourself," Walker told him.

"At least I can load a few."

"We can't spare you," Saint-Michael said. "If we run out of missiles and we're still under attack, we abandon the station. Period—"

"Target discriminating on four inbounds… showing two decoys. Repeat, tracking two decoys."

"Decoys?" Marks said. "They put decoys on an ASAT launcher?"

"A decoy can still do damage."

"But we don't have the Thors to spare," Saint-Michael told Walker. "Target the other two."

"Rog… Selective targeting option running… Thors six and seven away…"

"Warning message, Skipper," Walker broke in. "Recheck on that last target discrimination. Now showing all four as lethal positive."

Saint-Michael looked dead ahead. "Launch commit on all targets. Check the neutral-particle projector, find out what happened—"

"Thors eight and nine away. Straight track."

"Direct hit on targets five and six…"

"Miss on target seven, clean miss on seven."

"Manual launch Thor ten," Saint-Michael. ordered Jefferson. "Make this one count, Jake."

No shit, Jefferson thought, but said nothing as he ejected the last Thor interceptor missile and sent it toward its target. "All Thors away."

"Miss on target eight!"

All heads turned to Colonel Walker as he gave that last report. "Clean miss, General. Targets seven and eight appear to be… to be following an evasive course. Still at seventy miles range but closing slowly."

Jake Jefferson looked stunned as he watched his console. "Skipper, I don't understand it. One second, Thor number ten was heading straight to target number seven, and the next, it was gone. I've lost contact with it."

The realization was not long in coming. The fact that the targets were evading confirmed it. They were dealing with Elektrons… The Russians had launched two armed Elektron spaceplanes at them…

It was Colonel Ivan Voloshin who launched the first Bavinash Scimitar interceptor missile in space combat. Ironically, Silver Tower's crew would never realize the honor they did the Soviet pilot by launching a Thor missile at him.

Both Govorov and Voloshin had immediately detected all ten Thor missile launches. The Elektron's simple but highly effective infrared tracker and laser range finder had picked up the fast-moving devices easily and computed Scimitar launches against each Thor missile. But Govorov's orders had been to save as many of each Elektron's ten missiles as possible and not use them against a Thor missile unless attacked directly. Voloshin's single Scimitar missile followed the laser beam locked onto Thor number ten and destroyed it — Govorov guessed that the Scimitar hit the Thor missile directly, not just snagging on its large net.

But what especially counted was that Space Station Armstrong had just launched its last missile. It was now totally defenseless… "Elektron One, this is Two," Voloshin called over the discrete VHF frequency. "I count ten Thors expended, General."

"Affirmative, Two. Deploy as planned and be prepared to attack on my command."

With the laser range finder locked onto the space station itself, Govorov began to maneuver his Elektron spaceplane above the station's keel, opposite from the free-flying Thor missile garage. Although he could not see him, he knew that Voloshin would be steering his spaceplane directly opposite, about a kilometer away from the station, keeping the Elektrons two kilometers apart.

In this position both he and Voloshin could target exactly one-half of the station with their laser target designators. They could pick and choose their targets with high precision, with special emphasis on the space-based radar, solar-array control boxes, sensors and communications antennas. They would be sure to destroy the station's fighting capabilities before administering the final blow: an attack on the pressurized modules themselves. Killing the crewmen of Space Station Armstrong was not Govorov's plan, but he was determined to eliminate the orbiting platform as a threat. If American lives were lost in the process, he couldn't be blamed. The stations' crewinembers had forfeited any ordinary consideration when they had chosen to intervene in Operation Feather. Nobody had invited them. Now they would learn the price for their actions, and pay it…

"Anything we can do?" Moyer asked from behind his spacesuit helmet. The strain in his voice was evident.

"Whatever they're going to hit us with," Saint-Michael said, "we don't have to sit here and let ourselves get shot up." He unstrapped himself and moved over to the station's attitude-control panel. "Everyone, evacuate the station. Get aboard Enterprise. Now."

"What's the plan, Skipper?" Marks asked him. "I'm going to deorbit the station, use every last bit of fuel to slow us down so the station will reenter the atmosphere. They may try to destroy this station, or they might try to occupy it. Either way, they're not going to get it. I'll jettison the lifeboat just before the deorbit burn. Let's just hope they won't fire on a lifeboat…"

"There's got to be another way—"

"They're calling the tune now, Chief," Saint-Michael said bitterly. "We dance to it or pay the consequences." He looked around the module, at Moyer, Walker, Marks and Jefferson. "There'll be other times… Our job right now is to survive. And that means getting your butts on the shuttle in the next three minutes."

A few minutes earlier Ann's chief worry had been what Saint-Michael would do when he found out she'd countermanded his orders and not gone over to the Enterprise. There just wasn't the time to explain why she thought she could get Skybolt running again, and she suspected that even if she'd had the time, even if the rush of events hadn't forced him into making a quick decision, she'd still have big trouble convincing him the laser was worth another try. She'd cried wolf too often, failing when it counted to get him to listen because too many of her earlier assessments of Skybolt's capabilities had proved overly optimistic.

Well, let the general get steamed. There were bigger problems to worry about now. As she worked to reprogram the proper relays to the MHD reactor, her tracking indicator told what was happening out in space… Two of the Gorgons — no, not really Gorgons but some sort of Russian spacecraft — had passed through Armstrong's Thor missile barrage untouched and were moving closer to the station. It became harder and harder to work the keyboard and test the last of the circuits as fear caught hold of her.

She knew that the Skybolt laser was now the station's only defense against the two blips she saw moving ever closer on her tracking indicator. She knew it and yet she also knew that she was minutes away from having the laser ready. She started a prayer, stopped. No fair, any last-minute invocation of the deity; it was up to her now. You asked for it, so get it done, she taunted herself, and once more she was able to focus all her concentration on the job at hand…

"Request permission to open fire, sir," Voloshin radioed. "Stand by, Elektron Two," Govorov said. "We'll begin in one minute. Do not attack the shuttle. Repeat, do not attack. They'll use the shuttle to evacuate."

"An American space shuttle would be a nice prize, General."

"There is only one prize here, Voloshin. Armstrong. Remember that."

There was silence on the frequency for a few moments, then: "General, do you think they'll try to scuttle the station?"

"It's what I would do. A remote-controlled or timed-thruster burn could be set up to do the job after they've evacuated." Govorov checked the digital chronometer on his instrument panel. "Status check, Elektron Two."

The reply came a few moments later, "Status positive, Elektron Lead. Oxygen, twenty liters. Fuel, sixty percent."

"Lead has twenty-two liters oxygen and sixty-two percent fuel. One hour until we need to begin deorbit or rendezvous with Mir. " Mir was the Soviet's orbiting module, a far cruder version of Silver Tower that had limited surveillance capabilities and no offensive or defensive weaponry. In recent years it had been used principally as a site for astronomical experiments and as a refueling depot. "We'll commence our attack in two minutes, whether or not the station has been evacuated."

"Enterprise shows ready for crew transfer, General," Jefferson reported.

"Very well. Signal JCS and Control that we'll transfer to Enterprise immediately." Jefferson nodded and began switching his comm panel to the proper air-to-ground frequency when a new voice came over the intercom: "General, this is Ann."

Saint-Michael shifted toward his comm panel. "Ann? Where the hell have you been?"

"In the Skybolt module. "Get out of there, now. We're evacuating the station."

"I only need ten more minutes—"

"For what?"

Just then the loud hum of the interphone's CALL override blocked out Ann's reply. "General, this is Will. Come up on interphone four."

"What the hell—? Ann, I want you in the command module on the double. Move out." He switched his comm, panel to the discrete closed-circuit interphone channel. "All right, Jerrod, what is it?"

"A way out. Maybe…"

"Don't keep us in suspense—"

"Baker and Yemana are outside the shuttle, General. They're working their way down to the spare Thor missiles."

"They're what?"

"Baker came up with a way to manually activate the missiles. He and Yemana are going to unstow two of the missiles, point them at those Russians, and cook 'em off."

"Goddamn, Jerrod, I didn't authorize that. It's too risky. Once the Russians see—"

"General," Will interrupted. "It'll work. Those spaceplanes are right on top of you, but they're on the opposite side from the spare Thors on the underside of the keel. By the time they find out what's happening it'll be too late."

Saint-Michael shook his head. Suddenly everyone in his command had turned into a damn space cowboy. He was losing control. He turned toward Moyer standing in his space-suit near the hatch to the research module. "Move down to the connecting tunnel between engineering and the storage module, on the double. See if you can signal Baker and Yemana. Try to tell them to get their butts back on board Enterprise." On the discrete interphone channel he said, "It's a damned stupid idea, Jerrod. Once those Russians see us fooling with the Thor missiles they'll blow us all away. Order Baker and Yemana back."

"Sir, I think we should at least go out fighting—"

"You think? I'm still the commander of this station and I want those men ordered back. Do it."

There was a short pause, then the reluctant reply: "Yes, sir."

But it was already too late. Moyer called over stationwide interphone. "General, I can see one of them. He's made it to the spare Thor racks."

Wearing large MMUs, the manned maneuvering units, on their backs, Baker and Yemana unstowed two Thor missiles, refrigerator-sized cylinders with dozens of arms sticking out of each side. After the missiles were hauled out of their containers Baker opened an access panel on one side of each missile and activated a series of switches that bypassed the SBR controls and made the missiles autonomous. Next he removed a maintenance access-cover on each missile and manually activated the Thor's radar-seeker head. Finally he and Yemana helped each other to attach the missiles to brackets on their MMU cylinders, and together both men slowly, carefully edged their way underneath opposite sides of the central station keel and maneuvered the seeker-heads of their missiles around the edge of the keel and up toward where they had last seen the Soviet spaceplanes.

Their only, shared radio transmission came after they had maneuvered their bulky missiles around the keel and aimed them at the point in the sky where the Soviet spaceplanes had been parked. Yemana put a finger on his MMU thruster, took a deep breath, and called, "Now."

Yemana jetted forward six feet, stopped and swung his missile up. Ironically, since the SBR antenna on his side had been blasted away he had a perfectly unobstructed shot at one of the Soviet spaceplanes, which he could see as a dim oblong shape against the backdrop of stars. He waited a few moments until a tiny flashing green light on the removed maintenance access panel illuminated, then hit a button on the engine control panel, unclipped the missile and pulled back his right-hand MMU thruster controller. He had jetted only ten feet away from the Thor missile when it's engine ignited…

Baker had to move forward a few extra feet to clear the large SBR antennas on his side, but it took only a few extra seconds. Then he swung the front of the Thor missile upward, twisting the hand thruster controllers to counteract the huge inertia of the Thor missiles. It took a few moments longer for him than for Yemana, but Baker soon had his Thor missile pointing right where the Soviet spaceplane had been parked…

Except it was no longer there…

"General, missiles pointed right at us," came the startled call from Colonel Voloshin. The Soviet pilot couldn't believe what he saw: an American astronaut maneuvering a Thor missile around in open space. The sight would have been merely weird if it weren't such a clear warning of imminent attack.

Govorov reacted instantly, pulling his Elektron spaceplane straight up ninety degrees and applying full throttle. As an added measure he overpressurized one of the small tail-thrusters of his Elektron spaceplane, then cut the thruster off, sending a cloud of monomethyl hydrazine rocket fuel out behind the spaceplane. In seconds he had darted several hundred meters away from the huge American space station.

The Thor missile ran straight and true. Yemana fought the sudden back-blast of the Thor's main thruster and quickly regained control of his MMU. He watched, fascinated, as the missile's steel-mesh snare began to unfurl and quickly expand to nearly its full one-hundred-foot diameter. There was no way it was going to miss…

Except at that moment the Soviet spaceplane heeled sharply upward, and literally in the blink of an eye it was gone. The Thor missile ran straight toward the spot where the spaceplane had been, but it made no attempt to turn upward to pursue the fleeing Soviet intruder. Although Yemana had no way of knowing, the missile's radar-seeker head had locked onto the dense cloud of hydrazine fuel. When it reached the slowly dispersing cloud, the missile computed zero distance to its target and detonated its one-thousand-pound flak warhead.

Yemana saw the flash of the exploding warhead but saw or felt nothing else. The missile had exploded less than three hundred feet away, sending five hundred pounds of metal chips flying in all directions. Unimpeded by any obstruction or even the resistance of gravity, the chips easily found the astronaut and tore through his body, detonating the MMU's pressurized tanks and adding their explosive fury to the carnage. Yemana's ragged corpse was propelled by the explosion's shockwave out into space.

"General, the missile has exploded behind you. I'm beginning my attack."

Govorov kept the throttle of his Elektron at full thrust until he heard Voloshin's message, then selected the roll thrusters and did a fast four—"g" dive back down toward the station. He heard a few pings of metal against the silica tiles of his Elektron but ignored it. He saw nothing now but his quarry in the sights of his Scimitar missile-launcher…

Will and Sontag saw the flash of light and heard the rumbling explosion of the first Thor missile. "Yemana. Baker. Where are you?"

Sontag unstrapped and quickly propelled himself between the two flight deck seats and across to the aft crew station. He pressed his face to the windows facing into the cargo hold and scanned the sky behind Enterprise toward the center keel and lower pressurized modules. "I see one of them," Sontag called out cross-cockpit. "I don't know if it's Baker or Yemana…"

Baker saw the Soviet spaceplane almost on top of him, but there was no time to reacquire his target. He tried to maneuver his MMU down and over to aim the Thor missile's sensor at the spaceplane, but in his rush to steer the missile he activated the MMU thruster controls too rapidly and sent himself into a violent forward spin. When he tried to apply opposite thrust to correct his spin, the Thor missile broke free from the attach point on his MMU, and he had to watch Silver Tower's last hope for defense spin away toward earth.

Colonel Voloshin saw the flash from the first exploding missile, and the sudden glare made him furious. He immediately activated his laser target designator and centered the aiming reticle on the first target in view: the white-suited body of Dr. Kevin Baker just beginning to get his spinning MMU under control. He squeezed the trigger. A single Scimitar missile ejected itself from the rotary launcher in Elektron Two's cargo bay. Its tiny rocket engine ignited. The missile's seeker-head followed the reflected laser energy from Elektron Two straight to its target.

The laser seeker-head broke apart on Kevin Baker's MMU chest-mounted control pack, but the hypervelocity Scimitar missile kept on going. Right behind the seeker head was a nonexplosive arrow-pointed warhead made of an alloy of molybdenum and depleted uranium, designed to penetrate the thickest armor — Baker's chest offered no resistance to the missile, which was now traveling at well over a mile a second. The missile pierced Baker's body, his MMU, went completely through the storage module fifty yards behind Baker, and through the outer bull of Skybolt's MHD reactor before deflecting off one of the four-foot-thick MHD reactor walls and off into space.

"Oh… my… God."

Will strained around and saw Sontag move back slowly from the cargo bay windows. "What is it, Rich…?"

"One of them… oh, God… they shot him point-blank with a missile."

"Can we retrieve him? Can you see where he is?"

Sontag forced himself to look out the window once again. The space-suited figure was spread-eagle, in nearly the same position as before, but this time with a cloud of unrecognizable debris floating all around him. The body started to revolve, as though at the end of an invisible noose, and Sontag could see the softball-size hole in the corpse…

"Enterprise, this is Saint-Michael. Jerrod, what's happened?"

Will clicked open the ship-to-station interphone. "General, Baker and Yemana… — they're dead."

A pause. "You sure?"

Will didn't answer, instead put his head down on his chest and hammered on the front glare shield, realizing now what he had done…

Lieutenant General Govorov could identify only one possible source of the unexpected missile attack: the Thor missile garage tethered beneath the station.

He quickly activated his laser designator and placed the aiming reticle on the neutral particle-beam projector mounted beneath the garage. He fired two missiles into the garage, creating a huge fireworks display of sparks and secondary explosions that finally caused the Thor garage to break free of its steel tether and spin away from the station.

He reestablished his original observation position above the space station and keyed his microphone. "Elektron Two, report."

"Status green, Lead," Voloshin replied. "Two American cosmonauts carrying what appeared to be Thor missiles…"

"Cosmonauts?"

"Affirmative. I can't see first one, he was close to the explosion of the Thor missile he launched at you. Second one has been… dispatched. I'm maneuvering to begin attack."

"Acknowledged. Maneuver back to preplanned position and report when ready to attack. I am maneuvering back into position."

As Voloshin watched Govorov pull his fighter into a wide turn around the space station, the younger pilot thought about the wisdom of waiting to get back in position. No, the time to attack was now — before the Americans tried something else. He pulled his Elektron up twenty degrees, pointing it at the center of the station, and activated his laser designator.

The aiming reticle rested on the first large object in view — the underside of the crew compartment of the space shuttle Enterprise…

"They're maneuvering back to their original positions, General. "

Saint-Michael, already shocked by the report on Baker and Yemana, was motioning Jefferson, Marks and Walker toward the hatch to the main connecting tunnel. "Get on board Enterprise. They're going to start tearing this station apart with those missiles. Moyer, report to—"

A sudden explosion threw all in the command module to the wall. A large red light began blinking over the hatch leading to the main connecting tunnel. "Fire in the connecting tunnel…"

Saint-Michael helped Walker to his feet, then retrieved his earset. "Enterprise. Emergency. Fire in the connecting tunnel. Prepare for emergency disconnect."

"Jason." The voice belonged to Jerrod Will aboard the shuttle Enterprise. "Under attack… rapid decompression…" But Will, Sontag and the other crewmen aboard Enterprise had no time left.

The Scimitar missile plowed through the lower deck of the pressurized crew compartment of Enterprise, tearing apart a fuel cell and creating a massive hydrogen-oxygen explosion. Within a hundredth of a second, the lower and middeck sections of Enterprise were aflame. Davis, Wallis and Montgomery died instantly.

The missile pierced the middeck, deflected off an aluminum spar, blew through the forward cabin bulkhead and went through the RCS engine pod on the nose of the shuttle. The exploding hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide fuel tanks in the RCS pod dissipated the Scimitar missile's remaining energy, but the damage had already been done.

Without a space suit or pressurized cabin providing a protective layer of air pressure around their bodies, the temperature of the four remaining living crewmen's bodies bubbled the dissolved gases in their blood out of solution, exploding the blood vessels in their bodies. Within a few long, agonizing minutes, in the freezing-cold depths of space, Will, Sontag, Bayles, and Kelly boiled to death.

"Will."

Saint-Michael detached himself from the Velcro near the master SBR display and propelled himself over to the hatch leading to the main connecting tunnel. He hit the button to open the hatch: nothing. The special fire- and smoke-detection interlocks built into the hatch automatically closed and locked the hatch if fire or smoke was present.

Saint-Michael turned to Marks. "Wayne, decompress the connecting tunnel down to the docking module. Moyer, can you hear me? What's your position?"

"I'm in engineering," Moyer said, his labored breathing obvious in the intercom transmission. "I'm moving toward the connecting tunnel."

"Copy." Saint-Michael checked the status displays above the hatch. The FIRE warning light had gone out, and now a PRESS warning light had illuminated. "I show the fire out and the connecting tunnel depressurized to one-half atmosphere, Moyer. You're clear to activate the interlock bypass. Be sure to take a couple of POS packs with you in case they need them."

"Roger. Opening the hatch now." Moyer depressurized the engineering module, opened the hatch leading into the connecting tunnel, then closed and sealed the hatch behind him and moved toward the large airlock module. It didn't take long for Moyer's report. "Skipper?"

"Can you make it into Enterprise? How does it look?"

"I'm at the hatch to the airlock module. I've got a FIRE light on over the hatch—"

The transmission stopped.

"Moyer?" No reply. "Moyer, report."

"Skipper… my God… the whole airlock module is burned out. I can see two bodies in the airlock. They're both burned. I think it's Kelly and Bayles… I think they tried to get back to the station…"

"Moyer…" Saint-Michael paused, tried to calm himself, to think it through… A fire in the airlock, at least two dead… two dead outside… Moyer… Ted, we need you to inspect the Enterprise. It's our only chance to get out and be rescued. You've got to check out the shuttle."

Moyer's voice was remarkably steady. "Yes, sir. I understand. I'm ready."

"Stand by. Depressurizing the airlock. " Saint-Michael turned to Marks, who activated the station's environmental control panel. Marks nodded back to the commander. "Docking, airlock module at five p.s.i."

"Roger," Moyer replied, his voice hoarse but steady. He waited until the FIRE light over the entry hatch went out as the thinned atmosphere in the module extinguished any last remaining fires. "Entering airlock. " In spite of all his efforts, Moyer could not avoid looking at the charred remnants of the men who had been his best friends for so many months. His stomach took over then…

From his vantage point high over Armstrong Space Station Alesander Govorov saw the bright flash and the explosion as the crew compartment of Enterprise was rent apart by Voloshin's missile. He saw the reflections of light in the cockpit windows and the rapidly spreading cloud of gases and debris around the shuttle. "Elektron Two. Report."

"Moving into position, Lead…"

"That explosion. What happened?"

A slight pause, then: "Teaching the Americans a lesson, Lead. Before they can attempt another attack—"

Govorov pounded on an armrest in frustration, trying to vent his anger. Voloshin was a top-notch cosmonaut and atmospheric fighter pilot. He was also five years younger than Govorov, and like most young pilots displayed more than a little impetuousness. Govorov would have strong words with him later. For now… Follow your orders, Colonel. We have a job to do. I want it done as surgically as possible. We are not teachers or butchers. "

Govorov activated his laser designator and swept it across the center beam of Armstrong Space Station. He had had only a few minutes to study the sketches of Armstrong Station before this flight, and those sketches had obviously been outdated. But some of the targets were obvious.

Such as space-based radar. One of the huge phased-arrays had been sheared off, but its mate on the underside center keel was still intact. Using the green-screen TV camera integral to the laser designator, he zoomed the picture in until the aiming reticle was centered on the huge control junction linking the radar antenna to the keel. Destroy this one junction box and the radar's steering, power and electronics went with it. He activated the arming panel, placed one gloved finger around the stick-mounted trigger and gently squeezed.

"Cabin pressurization zero. Fire in middeck spread to upper deck. Big hole in forward bulkhead. Three… bodies in middeck… Davis, Wallis and Montgomery. Montgomery is still strapped into his chair. They… they didn't have a chance."

Saint-Michael was leaning on an overhead handhold receiving Moyer's damage report of Enterprise. Seven dead on Enterprise. Seven dead… "Can you find the damage, Ted?"

"Yes, sir. Huge explosion somewhere in the lower deck. Might be a fuel-cell rupture. There's a big hole in the forward bulkhead. Looks like it goes clear through.

"Is it repairable?"

"I don't think so, not without a welder. Looks major."

Enterprise was gone. "Whatever the Russians shot at her, it was effective," Saint-Michael said to no one in particular. "Ted, report back here on the double."

"What should I do with the Enterprise crew? Just leave them here—?"

An ear-splitting sound like the crack of a whip echoed through the command module. The entire station began to vibrate. A warning message appeared on a screen surrounding the master SBR display. "We've lost the entire number-two SBR array," Jefferson said, scanning his instruments. "No signal from that side at all. "

"They've started," Walker said. "They're not going to stop until they've sawed this station to pieces."

"Moyer, get back here. All of you, report to the lifeboat," Saint-Michael ordered. "I'll set the thrusters to deorbit the station; we'll time it so that—"

A voice broke in over stationwide intercom on the CALL position: "Control, this is Skybolt. I think I have the laser operational again… I told you I was close to it…"

Saint-Michael was startled by Ann's voice. He paused half a second, then flipped a button on the communications panel. "You what? Skybolt's working?"

"I need you to switch control of the SBR back to, Skybolt from the Thor system. I can't do it back here. Switch the SBR over to—"

Ann was cut off by a loud bang and a warning horn blaring from the environmental control panel. "Control junction on the starboard radiator system," Jefferson said after checking the warning display.

"That's half our environmental system out."

"We can't risk it," Walker said. "A few more shots like that and we've had it." But Saint-Michael motioned him to be quiet.

"Ann, can Skybolt really be effective?"

"Baker error-trapped the system for me," she said. "I think the system will track targets now. I'm not sure if we trapped out the MHD ignition power problem, but—"

"We don't have the time, Jason," Walker broke in, his voice tight. "We've got to get to that lifeboat—"

Another loud bang; the station shuddered. The lights in the module dimmed for a moment and another environmental warning horn blared. The situation seemed too far gone to bother checking on the damage.

"Jason," Ann said. "You've got to do it now. It might already be too late.

"All right, damn it. We'll try."

Walker was about to continue to protest but Saint-Michael rode over him: "But not you five. I want all of you in the lifeboat. Immediately. I want you clear of the station when I fire the laser."

"You can't do it alone," Ann said. "The laser has to be fired from the Skybolt module and I need someone to monitor the SBR from up there. We may also need to move the station. I've got to stay here in the Skybolt module… "

Saint-Michael hesitated again, but he knew there was no other option. This was her play. "All right, Ann, stay in Skybolt. Walker, Marks, Jefferson, Moyer, report to the lifeboat."

Several more loud bangs and a major fuel-cell explosion had occurred by the time Walker reported that all remaining crewmembers of the crippled space station were sealed aboard the lifeboat.

Saint-Michael received Walker's acknowledgment, wished the men luck, then lifted a large plastic cover on a yellow-and-black-striped button at his commander's station. Instantly a series of explosive activators and self-contained hydraulic thrusters pushed the lifeboat free of its moorings and propelled it away from the station. Well, maybe somebody would live to tell what had happened here. And why…

"Lead. Watch out. Below you."

This time, Govorov easily spotted the object of Voloshin's warning. The long, silver, oblong vessel beneath the cargo-docking port jarred loose from its dock and moved quickly away from the station. In a few moments it was lost from view. "The rescue craft," Govorov radioed back to Voloshin.

"They've abandoned the station. It doesn't appear to have been jettisoned by accident."

"Should we consider boarding Armstrong, Lead?"

"No, I still think they'll fire the station's thrusters by remote control and deorbit the station. Stay in position and continue to pick off their station subsystems. If we have missiles left, we can target the pressurized modules."

As he talked Govorov noticed the station start to slowly revolve and he expertly maneuvered his Elektron to keep up with the station's slow rotation. It was not difficult to do, but the revolutions were a bit erratic — obviously the thrusters were no longer under computer control — and the station was revolving around the central keel, not along the pressurized module's axis.

Several pieces of the space-based radar array and other hunks of debris snapped off the keel and were sent crashing into the pressurized modules. It looked as if the station was tearing itself apart. They could save their Scimitar missiles for another sortie, Govorov decided.

Meanwhile, Voloshin had maintained his position in space and was watching the station revolve under him rather than trying to maintain his position in relation to it. The lowermost sections of the station were beginning to come into view now… He spotted the strange-looking device at the end of one of the lower pressurized modules — the Skybolt steerable mirror-housing. The mirror itself resembled a huge shiny bull's-eye.

As good a target as any, he thought as he activated his laser target-designator…

"That's the best I can do, Ann," Saint-Michael said over the intercom.

Talking was the least difficult thing to do with the POS mask on. The large curved glass faceplate distorted his vision and fogged up when he spoke or breathed hard. The hoses and interphone wires floating around his head obstructed his hands as well as. his vision. Trying to accomplish a task as delicate as steering an eight-hundred-ton space station was all but impossible.

"Can you hit the positive X axis just one shot?"

"It'll take me too long to fiddle with these controls," Saint-Michael told her. "If you can't do it, say so. We'll need time to get into spacesuits before the Russians blow this place. "

He was a prophet. A huge explosion rocked the station, sending him scrambling for another handhold. The impact felt as if it was only a few feet away. The lights flickered, steadied, flickered again, then blinked out. A few undamaged automatic power-failure lights snapped on. The station's spin seemed to accelerate, like a roller-coaster ride picking up speed at the crest of the incline…

"Ann…"

His call was drowned out by another explosion. His grip instinctively tightened on the ceiling handhold. But it was not another explosion on the keel. It was a loud, rhythmic drumming sound, reverberating through the entire station…

The laser designator refused to lock onto the large round bull's-eye itself — some sort of mirror inside reflected the laser energy away instead of back to the spaceplane — so Voloshin had to target the housing of the bull's-eye instead. No problem there. The station was revolving at a perfect rate, not too fast, not too slow. In seconds the strange housing would be in range and he would send a Scimitar missile straight through-

Colonel Ivan Voloshin saw a flash of red light and felt suddenly hot, as though he'd been dunked in a tub of hot water. The feeling was so pleasant that he let the warmth wash over him like a gentle wave. He even had time to worry about — something silly — that he had to urinate badly. Was it happened because he felt as if it had been stuck in a bucket of warm water? That was a favorite technique of his mother's, he remembered: before going to the store with him, she would always ask if he had to go to the bathroom, and he of course would always say no. Then she would tell him to wash his hands and make sure to use hot water, and all of sudden he had to go…

Colonel Voloshin carried that pleasant childhood memory with him into oblivion as his Elektron spaceplane exploded into uncountable fiery pieces.

"Elektron Two. Report on that flash of light on your side." Nothing, not even a hiss of static. "Voloshin. Report." Govorov had to jerk his lateral thrusters quickly to avoid a large piece of debris, probably from the crippled American space station, that had appeared out of nowhere.

He glanced at his spaceplane's fuel gauges. His wild escape maneuver and his present station-keeping pulses to maintain his position on the revolving space station were seriously depleting his supply. Wasting more precious fuel searching for Voloshin would probably push him right to the time-line. He no longer had the time to spend locating, identifying, targeting and shooting at individual station subsystems. "Voloshin, fuel status." No reply. "Elektron Two, this is Elektron One. If you can hear me, break off your attack and join me one thousand meters above the station axis. Acknowledge."

Still no reply. Things had just darkened for Govorov: low on fuel, lost wingman, only five Scimitar missiles remaining and their target not yet destroyed. He discontinued his station-keeping position and circled the wobbling space station. No sign of Voloshin. Instead of expending the energy to station-keep around Armstrong, Voloshin had probably stayed above the wreck and… been struck by a piece of debris…

Now only a few more minutes until the deorbit time-line limit. Govorov could not spend time targeting the stations' subsystems. He maneuvered to face the revolving station, activated his laser designator, and took aim on the station's pressurized modules…