Death Orbit (31 page)

He took a deep gulp of oxygen and ordered his mind to get back to the matter at hand. The fact that the Zon was not moving was actually a good thing for him and his men. Like their earthly predecessors, the Komets were shitty when it came to fuel. They could carry only tiny amounts of the highly unstable chemicals T-stoff and S-stoff, the combining of which produced a highly explosive reaction, which in turn produced thrust, which in turn propelled the Space Komet. But once their dual tanks were dry, there was no reserve, no alternate way of producing that all-important
stob.

Get caught out here with no T-stoff or S-stoff and you were
fricken.
And no one aboard the
Himmel-zwischenraum-Rang
would risk his life to come out to get you, either. In fact, they would be too busy dividing up your personal belongings.

So fuel was important and so was electrical power—to run the Komet and its weapon—but this, too, was a precious resource chronically in short supply. Actually, the controls in the cramped cabin were pretty rudimentary and took only about 25 percent of the juice on a typical flight. It was the weapon that drained all the power. It was known as a
Elektrischgewehr,
roughly “electric gun,” or more crudely, the “juzegun.” It was a long metal stem wrapped in copper wire with a sleeve of thick rubber insulation running about three quarters of its six-foot length. At its tip was an aluminum flare studded with copper spokes. By pushing a lever forward, a Komet pilot could send a direct current of electricity through the wand and out to the copper spokes, charging it up to 80,000 volts. Should the juzegun’s victim be a working, fully-charged piece of space machinery, like a drifting satellite, the jolt would set up an opposing polarity—and kill all power inside the target. And out in space, no power was as good as a knife in the heart.

Schikell and his men had previously used the electric guns almost exclusively on space junk, the nuts and bolts of their orbital mines. Though most of it had been inactive for years, some space trash still carried electrical charges powerful enough to zap a man into the next orbital path if he touched them wrong. The juzegun neutralized that effect and allowed safe reclamation of the high-flying trash.

But should the
Elektrischgewehr’s
victim be a human, the 80,000-volt charge would undoubtedly kill him, this Schikell and his men knew from experience. Several months earlier, two workers aboard the Heavenly Space Station had been caught committing a minor offense. They were quickly tried and convicted to several months in the brig. The stationmaster, however, decided that as a deterrent, the men should be executed. They were set adrift in spacesuits and two Komets were dispatched to chase them down. Once caught, they were zapped with the juzegun. Both died instantly.

Now Schikell and his men were charged with intercepting and holding the Zon. Before embarking, the stationmaster had told Schikell directly that if the Zon tried in any way to avoid their capture, they should zap it with the juzeguns.

If any of the Zon’s occupants should venture outside the spacecraft in a bid to ward off the Komets, then they should be zapped as well.

Back aboard the Zon, the equivalent of a call to battle stations had been sounded. The flight deck was crowded once more. Hunter was at the main controls, Elvis was at shotgun. JT and Ben were in the jump seats, Cook and Geraci were behind them. The girls were tucked in behind them. Everyone was in his space suit.

The notion that the Zon was dead and drifting was not entirely inaccurate. Hunter had directed the spacecraft to power down shortly after the Komets were first spotted approaching. Hunter knew exactly what the small, rather inconceivable spaceships were up to; their glowing wands gave them dead away. They were charged with so much electricity, the radar beams were bouncing back over six bands, so thick was the interference. Just like the small tasers they had carried during their foray into the ghostly Mir, electricity was the only real weapon one could use in space.

And the more of it one had in his possession, the more powerful he could be.

So Hunter had ordered the Zon to go dark, and inside a minute their electricity usage was down to the slightest of drains—just enough to keep the three surviving GPCs awake, the cabin pressurized and the air filters working; everything else had been cut down or off completely. Without the customary whir of the control-board computers, the navigation system, the intercom, and a million other things, it was strangely quiet inside the spacecraft now.

Hands tense, more than a few beads of sweat popping up on the brows and lips, they waited for the six Komets to get closer.

Hans Schikell was sweating, too.

He wasn’t nervous per se; it was the temperature inside the Komet 363. It was now approaching 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was damn hot for someone wrapped inside a heavy rubber spacesuit sitting in a tiny lead-lined cockpit. It was the combining of the T-stoff and S-stoff that caused all the residue heat. Once the two dangerous chemicals were fed together, they produced temperatures upwards of 12,000 degrees—all this no more than seven feet behind where Schikell sat. Just like its ancestor, the Me-163, the Komet wasn’t known for its pilot amenities.

Besides, if there wasn’t so much heat in the cockpit, he’d probably be complaining about the bitter cold.

They were now about a half mile away from the Zon, Schikell and his wingman in the lead, the other four Space Komets forming a chevron right behind them. They were drawing up to the Zon cautiously—Schikell had expected some kind of reaction by now. But the spaceship looked absolutely
in extremis.

He really was wondering now if the thing had anybody aboard it or not.

But then it moved.

Just a little, and almost imperceptively, but it did move; Schikell saw it. It had moved slightly away from them. He immediately reached forward in the cockpit and hit the small red light on a strip of four on a bar up near the support beam for his canopy. The Space Komets did not have radios within them—they interfered with the juzegun’s operation. There was no way then to communicate between the Komets except by this—signals by colored lights. Yellow meant status quo. Orange meant get ready and stop or go. Green meant return to base. Red meant expect trouble. Combinations of these lights meant different things, with a quick flashing of the red bulb meaning something was very wrong.

Schikell was flicking the red light madly now—he was certain that he saw the Zon move. But a quick glance at the rest of his men around him showed no red lights in return.

He did see the Zon move, didn’t he?

Schikell reached up and flicked his orange light twice. This meant squadron halt. He gladly reached over and pulled the lever which stopped the T-stoff/S-stoff reaction, releasing a blast of compressed air from two nozzles in the nose for braking at the same time and feeling a remarkable difference in the cockpit temperature almost immediately.

Now, with the six Space Komets lined abreast, they were suspended about 100 yards away from the nose of the somnambulant Zon. Schikell was trying to figure out how he could communicate via the colored lights with the others to ask the question “Anyone see it move?” when, a moment later, the Zon moved again.

He definitely saw it this time. The big spacecraft shifted about five yards to the left and away from the idling squad of Space Komets. Again Schikell’s hand was flicking wildly on the red light button, but to no response from the others. His wingman flicked three yellow, then an orange. It was the equivalent of “What’s the matter?”

Schikell returned the query with a long, long sequence of red. This meant approximately
“Fuck you and pay attention.
”

When Schikell looked up again, the Zon had moved once more, this time at least ten yards to the left and away from the squadron. Now he felt a little shiver go through him.

The Zon
was
moving, wasn’t it? Or was
he
moving and it just seemed like it? He didn’t know and for a moment panicked slightly, applying a minute amount of compressed air brake and suddenly finding himself going backward at a high rate of speed. Flustered now, he hit the T-stoff/S-stoff throttle again, initiated the chemical reaction, felt the mild yet substantial kick in the ass, and then quickly cut off the dual fuel flow. After all that, he wound up in approximately the same position as before, supremely embarrassed and that much lower on fuel.

The Zon moved again.

That was it for Schikell; the time to go in for the kill was now.

He began flicking his orange and red lights. At last his men knew what he meant. The two flankers applied throttle and began moving slowly toward the wings of the Zon. The pair of inner rooks did the same thing, inching their way down to a slightly lower orbit, intent on coming up behind the big spacecraft. Meanwhile, Schikell and his lieutenant carefully applied power and moved slowly up toward the nose.

It took about five minutes for all this shifting about; no maneuver, large or small, was easy in space. Everything was so exact that the room for error built in for the atmosphere and gravity on earth didn’t come into play up here. To move an inch, sometimes you had to move a mile. Sometimes two. Or even three. Or four…

It would take Schikell the longest to get into the pre-juzegun position. His attitude was slightly askew from his jittery offside earlier, and he had to work harder and longer at getting into the proper alignment. The squadron was going to stick the Zon with six wands all at once, like harpoons to a whale. It was extremely important that they all move in and make contact simultaneously. If not, the connection might not take and the majority of the charge could dissipate without bringing much harm to the Zon.

As it was on earth, it was in space: timing was everything.

So Schikell fiddled and faddled, applied power, then braking, then more power, then more braking, at the same time trying to keep everyone else in sight in case they began signaling him about a problem.

Finally, he was in position, and so was everybody else. Schikell settled down a bit and took a long gulp of oxygen. At last they were all in place. That’s when he turned in the cockpit, curious to see if anyone aboard the space station was watching them—and got the shock of his life.

The Heavenly Space Station was so far in front of them, he could barely see it. It was passing into night, fading into the earth’s shadow. Schikell froze, absolutely
froze
—in his seat.
How did this happen?

He turned back to the Zon and saw the answer. As the squadron was moving, the big dumb spacecraft had been moving, too. No one in the squadron had realized it because somehow, the Zon had moved in exact relation to them, making it appear like it wasn’t really moving at all, when in reality, they were all moving away from the space station.
Far
away.

Schikell began flicking his lights madly once more, but it was an effort quite wasted. The others had already realized what had happened—they’d been suckered big time. And now they were reacting in a panicky mode. A
very
panicky mode.

One of the flankers turned 180 degrees and began a mad dash back toward the space station, already fading completely from view as it went into the earth’s shadow. The other five Komet pilots watched their comrade’s desperate attempt with a mixture of hope and horror. The Komets never strayed more than two miles from the Heavenly Space Station; they just weren’t built for it, fuelwise. Now the station seemed like it was 100 miles away. Did they have enough fuel to get all the way back? Their colleague’s reckless action would tell the tale.

It took only about a minute to get the answer. They could barely see his taillight now as the gray-green plane ran out of chemicals and had an engine shutdown. It didn’t take an astrophysicist to figure out the lone Komet had fallen way short of the mark. The flanker didn’t make it back more than one-fifth of the way before he drained all his Stoff.

Now his engine had gone silent and so had his power, and soon he would begin to freeze and die. It would take anywhere from a minute to 48 hours. After that, he would plunge back into the atmosphere and burn to a crisp.

That was the fate that awaited the rest of the squadron, too. And all of them knew it.

Still Schikell wanted to spear the beast, the last defiant act of a desperate man, but even this would be denied him. The Zon was moving again, this time with a great amount of power. Its main engines had been lit and suddenly its cockpit was alive with light and movement. In that glow, Schikell thought he saw the profile of a man he’d only heard about, one he wished he’d never have to come up against. The handsome features, the eagle nose. The too-long, slightly unkempt hair sticking out of his crash helmet. This was the famous Hawk Hunter, Schikell was certain of it now. Who else could have engineered such an illusion to trap them out here? Deep down inside, where all pain from embarrassment came from, Schikell felt like someone had kicked him about a dozen times. It was not the most unpleasant feeling though. If he was to die at the hands of the famous Hawk Hunter, he thought grimly, at least he’d been bested by the best.

The big Zon spaceship began moving even quicker now, away from Schikell and his men, leaving them in the depths of space. As it rode by, Schikell saw two more faces appear at the forward cockpit window. They belonged to a pair of young females; he recognized them as the “comfort girls” everyone used to
frick
inside the Mir before it was abandoned.

Both girls were laughing as they passed by. And both were displaying their middle fingers to him.

Cape Cod

T
HE WIND WAS HOWLING
so loudly outside the headquarters of the Southern Massachusetts Home Guard that no one on duty inside heard the radiophone beeping at first.

For five days the tremendous storm had been battering Cape Cod and the members of small citizen military unit had been performing search-and-rescue duty nonstop for the past 100 hours. They were in the right place for it their base was near Chatham Light, on the elbow on the Cape. In some places nearby, the tides were running so high, the waves were going across the peninsula and dumping into Cape Cod Bay several miles on the other side, washing out a number of roads and at least one major highway. This flooding had isolated large pockets of the upper Cape, cutting off all electricity and phone lines and trapping hundreds of people as well.