The Kremlin Strike

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.

Still holding on, he pivoted slowly up and around to face the back of the cockpit. One of his knees slammed into Boomer’s helmet. He tightened his hold on the seat as the reaction pushed him away. “Oops,” he muttered, feeling his face redden slightly. He guessed no one would award him a prize for grace and style in zero-G anytime soon. Or ever, McLanahan, his mind scolded, unless you stop screwing around.

Cautiously, he reached out with his right hand, grabbed on to the back of his seat, pulled himself over it, and twisted around again. Then he reached down and grabbed the pull handle set almost flush with the deck between the cockpit seats. At his tug, a section of the deck plating rose smoothly and pivoted away — revealing the deep compartment containing their PLSS life-support gear and Emergency Return from Orbit kits.

Boomer had already unlatched his own harness and turned to face him. He reached out with a gloved hand and took the bulky white backpack Brad gave him. It took them both several minutes to struggle into the backpacks and connect up their umbilical hoses. Instantly, fresh oxygen started flowing to their suits. The red lights on their suit-sleeve environmental control panels turned green.

“Radio check.”

Brad heard Boomer’s voice clearly through his headset. The short-range radios in their backpacks were working. “Roger,” he replied. “Loud and clear. How me?”

“I hear you, too, loud and clear,” Boomer said back. He sighed. “Okay, McLanahan, are you ready to field-test those Rube Goldberg — style Emergency Return from Orbit kits I showed you way back when at Battle Mountain?”

Almost against his will, Brad shot him a crooked grin. “Do I have a choice?”

“Nope.”

“I figured as much,” Brad said. He pulled one of the ERO cases out from the storage compartment and passed it to the other man. Then he took the second kit for himself. Looking again at the weird assortment of gear it contained — the inflatable aerogel-Nomex shell, parachute pack, and twin-nozzle retro-rocket — didn’t exactly inspire confidence. On the other hand, considering that his options boiled down to either rolling the dice with this untested piece of equipment or certain death aboard the crippled S-19 when it hit the atmosphere, maybe that wasn’t such a tough choice after all. And Earth, as it slid across the spaceplane’s cockpit windows, already looked a hell of a lot closer.

Boomer waited for him to float back across his seat and clip on. “Step one is to get these cockpit canopies open. Now, the motors are probably shot to shit. But even if they aren’t, our control switches are, so—”

“We do this the old-fashioned way,” Brad finished for him. He reached out to his side of the cockpit and pulled open a small panel. Inside was an emergency release lever and a manual crank handle to raise the starboard-side canopy. “Right?”

“I’ll give you a gold star when we get down,” Boomer said dryly. He opened an identical panel on his side of the S-19’s cockpit. “Okay, let’s get this done.”

What would have been a comparatively simple task in Earth’s gravity was much more difficult in zero-G. Brad found he had to wedge his booted feet under his seat to get enough traction just to turn the handle. With excruciating slowness, the twin canopies unlatched and cranked open — straining upward into the blackness of space.

“Who gets out first?” Brad grunted, struggling to turn the crank handle for his canopy.

“I already tossed that coin in my mind,” Boomer said, sounding equally exhausted. “You won.”

Brad forced a smile. “What’s this? Noble by last name, noble by nature?”

“Hell no,” Boomer retorted. “This is more like callow youth before crafty veteran. This way, I figure if you screw up somehow, I get a shot at seeing what went wrong in time to do better.”

“Fair enough,” Brad agreed. He tilted his helmet toward the open canopy, waiting as the earth, which now filled their whole view, twirled away out of sight, leaving only stars in its wake. The gap looked wide enough. There was no percentage in waiting any longer. He unclipped from the seat and triggered a short burst from his backpack’s emergency maneuvering system. With the ERO clutched to his chest, he soared out into space — clearing the edge of the canopy with only inches to spare.

Another quick burst from the gas jets altered his trajectory, sending him corkscrewing away from the S-19’s aft fuselage as it spun past on its descent toward the atmosphere. More finger taps on the maneuvering controls turned him around so that he could see the world below. He was so close now that its clouds and forests and mountains filled his whole field of view — growing larger and more defined with every passing second as he curved east and down at more than seventeen thousand miles per hour.

“Some view, huh?” he heard Boomer radio. The other man’s space suit was visible only as a bright speck of reflected sunlight several miles away on their orbital track.

“I liked it a whole lot more from inside a working spacecraft,” Brad admitted ruefully.

“Yeah, me too.” Hissing static overlaid Boomer’s words. They were already near the outside edge of the range of their low-powered radio gear and separating fast. “So we’ll build our own. Now get to it, Brad… and good…” The static grew louder and louder until it drowned out every other sound.

“Good luck to you, too,” Brad said softly, knowing the other man was already too far away to hear him. He switched the radio off. Since no other human being was within its limited range, there was no point in wasting battery power. For a brief, terrifying moment, he experienced the sudden, overwhelming sensation of being utterly and completely alone — totally cut off from everyone he knew and loved. If this emergency reentry went wrong, no one would ever really know what had happened to him. He’d simply vanish, like a shooting star that streaked across the night sky for one brief moment and then disappeared forever in a split-second flash of bright golden light.

Abruptly, he shook his head in self-reproach. Whine when you’re back on the ground, McLanahan, he thought grimly, not now.

It took some doing to open and empty the clear ERO case without putting his suit into a spin. At last, though, Brad managed it.

Equally careful and precise movements allowed him to unfold the disk-shaped aerogel shell so that its thin Nomex cloth heat shield faced the earth below. Cautiously, he maneuvered into position inside the uninflated shell, strapped the parachute pack to his suit, and tightened his hold on the little handheld rocket motor. Then, satisfied that he was as close to the exact center as he could get, he activated a pair of pressurized containers. Instantly, expandable polyurethane foam spewed out of their nozzles — inflating the six-foot-diameter bag around him.

Within seconds, the foam had hardened, locking him snugly in place. And what had been a disk of ultrathin, ultrastrong material now had a conical dish shape.

Brad looked up at the star-speckled black depths above him and then took a deep breath. There was no sense in putting this off any longer. Sure, he was already on a course to deorbit anyway, but their derelict S-19 Midnight was on that same basic trajectory… and it was bound to break up on reentry, shredding into a massive fireball composed of thousands of burning fragments. It would be a whole lot better to drop out of orbit far, far away from where the spaceplane was doomed to meet its own fiery end.

Here goes, he thought. Next stop, Earth… or oblivion.

He squeezed the retro-rocket trigger.

At first, the ride was undramatic. When the rockets fired, he only saw two quick puffs of vapor and felt a tiny jolt… about the same as if someone had dropped a five-pound weight on his stomach. But the velocity decrease was just enough to steepen his descent, further tightening gravity’s grip on his improvised reentry capsule. For long moments, though, nothing seemed to be happening. Since he couldn’t see the world growing beneath his heat shield, Brad had no visible frame of reference and no way to judge his relative motion.

All that changed the moment he crossed the Kármán line and hit the tenuous upper fringes of the atmosphere. As the aerogel-and-Nomex “sled” tore deeper and deeper into thicker and thicker air, it decelerated fast. G-forces slammed into Brad’s chest, squeezing down harder and harder the farther he fell. Despite his training and pressure suit, the Gs kept piling up with crushing force. It grew more difficult to breathe. Desperately, he contracted his stomach, thigh, and shoulder muscles, fighting to keep enough blood in his brain to stay conscious. Colors started to leach out of the world at the far corners of his vision.

Superheated filaments of electrically charged plasma streamed past him in a dazzling light show. Gradually, the sky above him changed color, shading from the black of space to a rich blue hue. Rivulets of sweat stung his eyes. It was getting hotter now… much, much hotter.

Down and down Brad plunged — blazing across the sky like a meteor… or a fallen angel cast out of the heavens.