Station Breaker

74 Sting Operation

Captain Baylor calls into my ear. "David, are you okay?"

I completely forgot I still had the microphone and earbud in place and think I'm having a psychotic breakdown.

"I'm all good," I reply. My Russian hosts look at me like I'm even more insane than they already believe me to be. "My friends back on Earth. Give me a second. Hey, Baylor. So I met some new friends. Yablokov and Domnin gave them a forced time out and locked them into a storage section."

"Have you been able to capture one of the other commanders?"

"Well, no. It seems they decided to barricade themselves behind two doors in the secure module. There's no way to get to them without a plasma torch and catching their attention."

"That's… unfortunate. Unless you can think of something soon, I suggest that you and your friends make it to the nearest vehicle and hightail it back to Earth before the nuke goes off. We just got intel that Radin placed Zhirov's puppet candidate under arrest for unspecified reasons."

"Wait, what?"

Markov takes the comm. "Hello, David. It would seem that Radin has decided to play his hand on a three-dimensional chessboard."

"Does he know that Zhirov has a nuke?"

"He hasn't taken any direct action to suggest that he does. Arresting Milov is a typical Russian maneuver. We should have seen it coming."

"What does this mean for us?"

"Not good. By going at Zhirov indirectly, Radin is chipping away any advantage to using the nuclear weapon as a bargaining chip. This likely means that Zhirov will have his men detonate it sooner rather than later. Which could be any moment."

"There's a cheery thought. The crew here seems to think that at least one of the commanders, Domnin, wants to get out of this alive and Yablokov wouldn't mind either."

"And how would they do this?"

"The most likely scenario is they use a small rocket called an EVO to send the nuke away from the station and detonate it when it's on the other side of the Earth."

"Could you use this rocket to get it to a higher orbit where the nuclear device wouldn't be a threat?"

"Not likely. Right now we're trying to guess if they made a dead-man trigger or not. If they didn't, then all we have to do is wait for them to pop out of the secure module and bum rush them and take the nuke."

"And if they did?"

"Well, that would be the dumbest of dumb ideas in the history of dumb ideas."

"And what is your plan for that situation?"

"Um, something?" I look at the Russians who have been patiently listening to one side of the conversation. "My boss says Radin just arrested Milov. He thinks Zhirov is going to go nuclear very shortly and make it look like it was Radin's fault and stage a coup."

"Yebena mat'!" says Sergey.

"No kidding. So we need a plan real fast. If they don't have a trigger, we ambush them. If they do… um we think of that when we get to it. Any suggestions?"

"We need to know if they have a trigger they can set off right away," says Yves.

"Yes. I thought I just said that?"

He shakes his head. "That means we need a way to know. Right now they should still be in the secure module. One of us can go to the command section and watch the monitors. There's a camera aimed at both hatches." He scratches his chin. "This trigger. Would it be taped to their hand?"

"Probably. That's what I'd do… if I was suicidal and homicidal."

"Okay. We need someone to go to the command center and watch. The rest of us should wait here. If they don't have a trigger we can make it to them before they finish opening the inner airlock."

"Sounds great."

"I want to kill these men," says Sergey.

Man, he sure flipped the bit fast. "I know where you can find a crowbar to do that."

"And what if they do have a deadman's trigger?" asks Vera.

"We hide," says Sergey.

"Basically." I think it over for a moment. "Yablokov would be the one with the trigger, right? He probably thinks Domnin won't push it if things go south. They still have to get to the EVO, right? Where are they stowed?"

"There are two directly above us," says Yves.

I passed right by them without noticing. "The airlock faces the other side, right? I doubt Yablokov is going to do an EVA alone with the bomb. They'll probably both go up there."

"Perhaps, but what good would that do if Yablokov has the bomb and the trigger?" asks Sonin.

"Um… yeah. How are the EVOs programmed?"

"They're not," says Yves. "They're controlled from the command center. Each one has a frequency."

"That's it… Those two have to go outside to load it. Then they have to come back inside here to send it on its merry way. We do a little switcharoo while they're coming back into the airlock."

"A switcha-?" asks Vera.

"One of us is already outside. We unload the EVO without them knowing. When they send it away we dismantle the bomb."

"Outside? In space?" asks Vera.

"I was thinking inside here… Oh, right. Yablokov still has his trigger. Dumb idea."

"What if we take it into one of the spacecraft?" asks Sergey. "The one you snuck aboard? There, perhaps we could dismantle?"

I think it over for a moment. I'm a little surprised that he was the one to figure that out. "Yeah, that could work. There are a lot of 'ifs' in there. Let's just hope they don't have a deadman trigger."