Death Orbit (35 page)

He was less sure that the massive swastika-shaped space station carried a negative charge. What kind of power were they running over there? From the looks of the thing, they could be burning coal—it looked that old. But that was the clue: its age.

They’d been circling the space station for several hours now, studying it, confident that none of the Me363 Komets would ever make it back to their home base, confident that no more were coming out after them. They’d detected no defensive weapons attached to the space station. No form of AA guns or SAMs, no signs of weaponry at all. The only spoke displaying any kind of belligerence was the arm holding the collection of space mines. The terminals at the ends of the other three twisted crosses appeared to contain observation windows and, in the case of the one under most scrutiny by Hunter and Company now, what looked like a docking port.

They had reached the end of their quest. There was no doubt that Viktor was holed up inside this orbital monstrosity, no doubt that he had no means of escape, at least nothing the Zon couldn’t catch up with and destroy.

They had him trapped then. All they would have to do was get aboard the space station and take him into custody. Simple as that.

There was one unknown, however. How many soldiers, minions and flunkies did Viktor have inside the space station to oppose their entry? Was it 20? Or 120? Or 1020?

The space station looked like it could hold all that and more. But this was a question of numbers more than perception. Certainly the space station was huge—“The Flying Reichstag,” JT had nicknamed it. But did it really hold many, many people? Most likely not, Ben had reported. To support a large number of people, the space station would have to be taking on supplies, such as food, fuel, and water, every day, day after day, for as long as it wanted to operate. The spacelift capability for such a supply effort would have to be enormous, and well out of range of any entity on earth, the UA included. Obviously, there was no such effort going on.

A large population inside the space station would also require an enormous amount of power. Electric power. Yet the station had no solar panel arrays—indeed, it looked like it was built long before the solar array was even invented—and, from all appearances, no alternative electricity-producing source, such as a nuclear reactor, either. The only way the space station could be powered was by batteries, and batteries wear out. Therefore, conservation is the key to their longevity—and a couple thousand people probably wouldn’t be conscientious enough to turn off all the lights all the time.

Finally, a large population would have to dispense its waste products on a constant, never-ending dispersal rate, and there was absolutely no indication of this from the space station. The only sign of waste disposal were small, vaporish jets seen emanating from the underside of the station’s hub, on a more or less regular basis. Ever the number cruncher, Ben counted the times the vapor jets had appeared during the hours-long fly-around and then broke this number down to an average per thirty minutes. His determination: that this was urine waste being vented directly into space, just as the Zon’s zero-G toilet would do. Number of people taking a leak within a 30-minute period on the space station: 6. Factoring the nervousness of the situation and the fact that weightlessness made some people go more often, Ben determined there were less than 20 people currently on-board the station.

“Unless,” he added, “a couple thousand people are going around pissing in the corners.”

Hunter chose to take Ben’s figure of 20 or so because he doubted the fastidious Nazis would be taking squirts anywhere but in the proper Nazi receptacles.

So what they were facing was maybe a three- to four-man disadvantage should they storm the space station. Certainly this was better than 500-to-1, but still, the Zon crew had to come up with some kind of advantage, something to even the odds a little more in their favor.

That was where the Fifth Law of Repellent Charges came in.

Hunter was bargaining on the fact that if the Zon charge was positive and the space station negative, then if the Zon made contact with it in any way, their charge would short-circuit the station’s charge. All electrical power, or the main systems, anyway, on the space station would be knocked out. Then the Americans could bust in under cover of darkness, sowing confusion and panic. They would be armed with the tasers. They would have surprise on their side.

Of course, in combat nothing ever goes right, and the things you want to count on going in usually don’t happen or don’t matter if they do.

Still, they were here, on the threshold of their dream. They had to take that final step.

So that became the plan. Fly the Zon as close as possible to the space station, specifically, to the area around the docking port, send out a couple space walkers, and have them determine the compatibility of the Zon’s docking ring—presently poking out of the shaved-down, locked-tight cargo bay doors—with that of the space station. Hunter was taking two-to-one odds that it would be a match.

After all, Viktor’s ultimate plan
had
to involve docking the Zon to this mysterious space station at some point.

Or did it?

The raiding party had been determined shortly after they’d begun closing in on the space station.

The more people they could get over into the station, the better their chances would be. There were eight bodies to pick from—the six original astronauts and the two young girls. At least one person would have to remain at the controls of the Zon during the attack, and another would have to be ready to man the pressurization chamber for both the raiding party’s egress and return.

It took some creative thinking, but finally, by a committee vote, they determined that Elvis would be the best choice to remain with the Zon. He knew how to fly it, and he knew something about how to fix it, should anything go wrong during the transfer. Elvis was not particularly happy about this appointment—he, more than Hunter, wanted to get his fingers wrapped around Viktor’s throat. But he knew it was a decision that made sense.

But who would remain behind to run the air lock? The mission into the space station would require every able-bodied man, and running the air lock was really just a matter of pushing the right buttons at the right times. They decided the young girl known as Six would remain on the Zon, too, and be the pressurization queen. The young girl named Eight would suit up, be given a taser, and join the raiding party. Eight was very happy about this appointment: she, too, had a huge debt to settle with the villain king Viktor.

Both spacecraft were moving into a dark period. The earth’s shadow would overwhelm this area of space very soon, and this was perfect for Hunter and his crew. The darkness would last about 35 minutes. If they could get the raiding party ready and over into the space station in that time, they would have the further advantage of attacking in the nighttime, however brief it might be.

The first step was to get the Zon close to the space station docking port, and Elvis was already well on the way to doing this. Taking over the main controls from Hunter, he had moved the Zon to within 50 feet of the port, perfectly matching the space station’s rate of speed and settling in alongside it in a classic example of sympathetic movement. Throughout this entire maneuver, everyone else on board was looking out of the various portholes, keeping large sections of the space station under surveillance, ready to call out with any indication that the enemy spacecraft was going to defend itself, or that they had detected the Zon’s movement. But no one saw anything. The space station just continued spinning silently, either unaware of the Zon’s presence, or more likely, unable to do anything about it.

There were equal amounts of confusion and excitement in the crew compartment now. Six people were climbing into EVA spacesuits in an area built to handle four at the most. The fact that everyone was trying to do the same thing in the same space under zero-G made for a proliferation of arms, legs, and feet, with much tugging at sleeves, squirming to fit into boots, and heads trying to screw into helmets.

Surprisingly, everyone was outfitted and ready to leave the Zon inside of 10 minutes.

Geraci went out first. Armed with his taser and a huge battery-powered light, he went through depressurization and was soon floating up and out of the tiny one-person air lock. Cook went next; together they would look for and study the docking ring mechanism and see what the compatibility factor would be.

JT and Ben would follow them out. They were carrying an extra taser each, plus extra battery packs for everyone. They would be bodyguards for Geraci and Cook while they looked for the docking ring. If Geraci and Cook were successful, and were able to find a way to mate the two spaceships quickly, Ben and JT would be the first ones through the door to the space station.

Eight was the next one to go out. She would be employed as a lookout, and as she’d informed the astronauts that she’d taken several space walks before while on the Mir, she didn’t require any training in the fine art of EVA. Still, she promised to stay hooked to her tether at all times.

Hunter would be the last one to go. He’d be providing the ultimate back-up, helping Cook and Geraci with their search and evaluation while at the same time helping JT, Ben, and Eight look for any enemy activity. Should they gain the station as they were hoping, Hunter would be the third man through the door.

Eight was about halfway through the depressurization process when they received the first bit of encouraging news from the outside. Cook and Geraci had located the docking ring and were fairly certain it was a match with the Zon’s. What’s more, there was a grounding device attached to the ring which prevented, to a certain degree, the problem of two space craft hooking up with disparate charges. The first thing Cook and Geraci did was to disconnect this device from the docking ring and allow it to float away. But this action just emphasized the need to speed things up. If there were people planning on opposing them inside the station, they certainly knew an attack was coming now. From now on, every second would count.

Eight finally went out the door, and now it was Hunter’s turn. Six helped him recheck his equipment, including his oxygen supply and his taser. Then, sweetly, she floated up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss right in the middle of his helmet visor.

“Good luck!” she yelled into his ear.

Hunter smiled and stepped into the tiny air lock.

It never failed to amaze him that the Russians would make such an important piece of equipment so small, so cramped, so uncomfortable. Certainly space was a design element on any extraterrestrial craft; there was no wasted space on the old NASA shuttles, and there was none on the Zon. The difference was that the NASA shuttle designers had planned small from the get-go; the Russians just stuck everything anywhere it fit, and whatever didn’t fit, they left behind.

So the small air lock was a victim of poor design, just like everything else on the Zon. Why, then, was it so dark? In a time and place where a potential space-walker had to check many elements of their survival suits, and make sure that everything was working okay in the lock itself, the Russians had chosen not to include any illumination, not even an attachment for a 10-watt bulb. The interior of the lock was mostly shaped metal, and all the cut-outs that had made it through the forming process were used up with controls for the lock’s operation.

A spacewalker had to cram himself into this tiny casketlike chamber and wait in the dark as the air was sucked out and his own air supply came on. It could be an unnerving experience.

But Hunter’s mind was on other things as he stepped into the chamber for the minute of depressurization. Six closed the hatch behind him and successfully bolted the double lock. Then she began the depressurization process. Meanwhile, Hunter was already projecting what they had to do once he got back out into space. They would have to double-check the docking ring, make sure there were no defense they would have to contend with, make sure there was some means of an electrical hook-up, and a few hundred other things, all while trying to beat the clock.

His mind was more preoccupied than usual as the air was sucked out of the tiny chamber, taking all remaining traces of light with it.

That’s why Hunter was extremely surprised, to say the least, when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder.

He would never forget that feeling. That nudge on his right shoulder, just below his regulator hose and just above the small pocket in which he kept his extra taser battery pack.

Instinct took over as he began to spin around—who could possibly be tapping on him in this airless, dark place that was hardly built to fit one, never mind two?

When he turned, he got his answer—and from that moment on, he knew his life would never, ever be the same again.

It was Dominique.

She looked glowing, radiant—and quite transparent. She was standing right behind him, her hair flowing as if in a stiff wind, her face crinkled up in a smile. Hunter nearly went into shock. Instantly, he believed he was suffering from post-atmospheric narcolepsy, a lack of oxygen to the brain due to an equipment malfunction during the depressurization process; it was known to cause vivid hallucinations.

But he knew this could not be the case. He was still breathing, though very hard and uneasily now. Dominique was simply there with him—though he could almost see right through her.

“What… is this?” he was finally able to mumble.

The smile never left her face.

“This is goodbye, Hawk,” she told him, plainly.

“Goodbye…” he stammered—it seemed like such a strange thing for a hallucination to say. “What does that mean?”

“I mean, this is the end,” she said. “I’m in another place now. On another plane. I was just able to come back and talk to you one last time.”

Hunter just stared at her.
Another place? Another plane?
What the hell was this?

“Are you trying to tell me… that you’re a ghost?” he heard himself asking.