Starfire (43 page)

Boomer slowly advanced the throttles. Brad forced himself to remain calm as he felt the acceleration and the G-forces starting to build. He saw the flight-director wings move upward, and he pulled back on the controller a little too hard, and the wings dropped down, meaning their nose was too high. “Nice and easy, Brad. She's slippery. Light touches on the controls.” Brad relaxed his grip on the controller and gently guided the flight-director wings onto the pyramid. “There you go,” Boomer said. “Don't anticipate. Nice easy inputs.”

The Mach numbers were clicking off very rapidly, and they transitioned from turbofan to scramjet mode faster than Brad could have imagined. “Sixty-two miles up, Brad and Casey—congratulations, you are American astronauts,” Boomer said. “How's everybody doing?”

“Pretty . . . good,” Casey said, obviously straining through the G-forces. “How . . . much . . . longer?”

“A few more minutes, and then we'll switch to rocket mode,” Boomer said. “The Gs will jump from three to four—a bit higher G-forces, but it won't last as long.” He looked over at Brad, who hadn't moved much at all during the boost. “You doing okay over there, mission commander?”

“I'm doing okay, Boomer.”

“You're doing great. You got some competition up here, Gonzo.”

“I haven't had a vacation in a while—Brad can take my shifts,” Gonzo said.

A few minutes later the scramjets fully spiked, and Boomer kicked the “leopards” into full rocket mode. He noticed a few more dips and swerves in the flight director, although Brad was still sitting straight and didn't look like he was moving a muscle. “Doing okay, Brad?”

“I . . . I think so . . .”

“Walk in the park,” Boomer said. “Just don't think about the fact that if you slip or skid more than two degrees, you can send us tumbling and skipping off the atmosphere for two thousand miles until we break up and crash to Earth in little fiery pieces.”

“Thanks . . . thanks, buddy,” Brad grunted.

“Took your mind off the Gs, I see,” Boomer said, “and your course has straightened out considerably.” And at that moment the “leopards” shut down and the G-forces stopped. “See? No problem, and we're right on course. I'll flip George on so you can take a minute to relax and breathe normally again.” For the first time in many hours, Brad took his hand off the controller and throttles. “It'll take us about half an hour to coast up to station.”

Brad felt as if he'd just spent two hours getting beat up by Chris Wohl and his strike team in the gym. “Can we raise visors?” he asked.

Boomer checked the environmental readouts. “Yes, you can,” he said. “Cabin pressure in the green, clear to raise visors. We'll let Brad rest up a minute—he's had a good little workout, hand-flying a spaceplane from zero to Mach twenty-five. After a couple minutes, I'll have him come back to the passenger module, and have Casey come up for docking. Nice and easy moving about the cabin, everyone.”

Brad raised his visor, then found his squeeze bottle of water and took a deep squirt, being careful to keep his lips sealed around the tube and to squirt the water deeply into his mouth so the throat muscles could carry it into his stomach—gravity would no longer do that for him. That helped settle his stomach, but only a little. He put the water bottle away, then said, “Okay, Casey, I'm ready.”

It took a lot of grunting, groaning, bumping, and helmet-knockers, but Brad finally managed to get out of his seat and over to the airlock. “Not bad for the first time, Brad,” Boomer said, “but President Phoenix was better.”

“Thanks again, buddy,” Brad said. The zero Gs felt really weird—he almost preferred the positive Gs, he thought, even the crushing ones. He opened the airlock door, stepped through, and closed the cockpit hatch. “Hatch secure,” he said.

“Checks up here,” Boomer acknowledged.

The passenger-module door swung open, and Casey was right on the other side, floating horizontally like an orange-clad fairy, a huge grin on her face. “Isn't this wonderful, Brad?” she said. “Look at me! I feel like a cloud!”

“You look great, Casey,” Brad said. I wish I felt the same, he thought. He backed away from the hatch to let Casey pass and was rewarded with a crash against the bulkhead, a few pings off the deck and ceiling while he tried to steady himself, and yet another head-knocker.

“Nice, easy movements, Brad,” Gonzo told him. “Remember . . .”

“I know, I know: no gravity to stop me,” Brad said.

“Watch Casey and you'll learn,” Gonzo said with a smile.

“See ya, Brad,” Casey said gaily. With barely perceptible touches along the bulkhead, she glided like a wraith into the airlock.

“Show-off,” Brad murmured as he helped close the airlock hatch. He couldn't wait to get into his seat, fasten his safety belts and shoulder harness, and crank those straps down as hard as he could.

EIGHT

There are a lot of dark sides to success.

—A
NITA
R
ODDICK

P
LESETSK
C
OSMODROME

A
RKHANGELSK
O
BLAST
, N
ORTHWEST
R
USSIAN
F
EDERATION

T
HAT
SAME
TIME

“Tri . . . dva . . . odin . . . zapusk . . .”
the launch-center master controller announced. The spaceplane shuddered, then shook, then rumbled as if it were going to shake itself to pieces, but then the cosmonaut felt the hold-down towers separate. The rumbling stopped, and very soon the G-forces started to build as the Angara-A7P booster began its ascent.

“Main thrusters at one hundred percent power, all systems nominal,” reported the lone cosmonaut. Colonel Mikhail Galtin was the number one active cosmonaut in the Russian Federation and commander of the astronaut training corps at Star City near Moscow. He was a twenty-two-year veteran of the Soviet and Russian space corps, with four public trips to space, including the first transfer from one space station to another. He also had several flights into space with classified projects, including two military space stations based on Salyut-7 and Mir. But he was known in cosmonaut circles as a member of the design team, one of the first spaceplane pilots, and now the most experienced pilot of the Elektron spaceplane, the only spacecraft specifically designed as an attack plane—a space-borne fighter.

Galtin was a protégé of the then–Soviet Union's most gifted and skillful cosmonauts since Yuri Gagarin: General-Lieutenant Alesander Govorov, Colonel Andrei Kozhedub, and Colonel Yuri Livya. Govorov was the true pioneer, the father of the Soviet Union's Space Defense Force, the first military branch in the world dedicated to manned space operations in defense of the homeland. No military cosmonaut stepped aboard any spacecraft unless Govorov had done it first, even if it was just another copy of an Elektron or Salyut. Kozhedub and Livya were the “Red Barons” of the Soviet Union's Space Defense Force, Govorov's wingmen on attack missions, and feared adversaries in space or on Earth. Galtin was just a young trainee when these space giants had taken on the United States and Armstrong Space Station in combat.

The Elektron spacecraft occupied the top stage of the Angara booster, mounted vertically atop the booster with its tail and wings folded, within a protective shroud that would open after orbital insertion and allow the spaceplane to fly free. Although Galtin had plans for a two-seat version of Elektron, all of the spaceplanes now flying were single-seaters, and they were the only spacecraft in the world that flew just one passenger into space.

In less than ten minutes, Galtin was in orbit. He performed several functional checks of his Elektron spaceplane and its payload while he waited for his objective to come into range.

“Elektron One, this is Control,” the mission controller radioed about two hours later. “Range to Kosmos-714 is inside one hundred kilometers.”

“Acknowledged,” Galtin said. He activated Elektron's radar, and a few seconds later found his objective. “Elektron One has radar contact.” Kosmos-714 was an electronic eavesdropping satellite that had malfunctioned and had been in a decaying orbit for several years—it would make a perfect target. It was in a different orbit than Galtin's; their orbits would cross about five kilometers from each other at their closest point.

As was the case for any fighter pilot, it was necessary to do a little gunnery practice every now and then.

Galtin entered commands that opened the cargo-bay doors atop the fuselage and extended a large canister, called
Gvozd'
or “Hobnail,” from its stowed and locked position. At fifty kilometers he entered commands into his autopilot that would take control of the Elektron's attitude thrusters and rotate the spacecraft to track the satellite as it passed by. The two spacecraft were converging at over thirty thousand kilometers per hour, but that wouldn't matter for this weapon.

At thirty kilometers' range he activated the weapon. Outside Elektron there was nothing to see, but on the radar screen Galtin noticed the bloom and shaky path of the target satellite on radar, and in seconds he noticed that there were multiple objects on radar now—the satellite had been broken apart.

Hobnail was a one-hundred-kilowatt, carbon-dioxide, electric-discharge coaxial laser. It had a maximum range of more than fifty kilometers, but even at that range the laser could burn through a centimeter of solid steel in seconds—the skin on Kosmos-714 was far thinner. The batteries for the laser allowed it to be fired for about thirty seconds maximum, no longer than five seconds per burst, which equated to about six to seven bursts depending on how long the laser was activated. That was about half the number of attacks as in the Elektron's current weapon, the Scimitar hypervelocity missiles, but Hobnail had much greater range and accuracy and could engage targets in any direction, even targets crossing at very high speeds. That was Hobnail's first successful test in space, although the laser had been used successfully in a laboratory for many years. Every Elektron spaceplane would eventually get one, as would the Russian Orbital Section, the Russian-built segment of the International Space Station that had recently been separated from the ISS.

Galtin entered commands into his computer to stow the Hobnail back into the cargo bay and deactivate his attack radar. He would not begin his deorbit for another seven hours, but there was one more task to accomplish.

Three hours later, he reactivated the radar, and there it was, exactly where it was supposed to be, just thirty kilometers away, well within range of Hobnail: Armstrong, the American military space station. It was at a much higher altitude and in a completely different orbit—there was never any danger of a collision—but surely the Americans would squawk about a deliberate flyby like this.

Too bad, Galtin thought happily. Space does not belong to the United States. And, if necessary, it will become a battleground once again.

A
RMSTRONG
S
PACE
S
TATION

T
HE
NEXT
DAY

“Oh my God, I can't believe what I'm seeing!” Jodie Cavendish exclaimed when the monitor came to life. A round of applause broke out behind her from the spectators who had been cleared by the American Secret Service to watch the test firing—they were expecting the president of the United States to arrive in a couple hours. What they saw were Brad McLanahan and Casey Huggins, both wearing blue flight suits with patches of Armstrong Space Station and Project Starfire, floating in free fall at a console. Behind them were Kai Raydon and Valerie Lukas. “You made it! You made it!”

“Hi, Jodie; hi, Jerry; hi, Lane,” Brad said. “Greetings from Armstrong Space Station!”

“I just can't believe what I'm seeing,” Jodie said, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. “I never would have believed this would ever happen, mates.”

“You guys look great,” Lane said. “How was the spaceplane trip?”

“Awesome, Lane,” Brad replied. “The G-forces weren't as bad as I was expecting.”

“Speak for yourself, buster,” Casey said. It was so strange to see the young woman floating in zero-G with legs extended underneath her, exactly like every other astronaut—it was almost jarring
not
to see her in a wheelchair. “I thought I was going to be squished inside out.”

“You guys feeling okay?”

“Not bad,” Brad said.

“He was puking his guts out,” Casey said with a giggle.

“Just twice,” Brad said. “I got a shot, and I'm feeling okay now.”

“I get dizzy every now and then, but I'm feeling great, Lane,” Casey said. “I still have my barf bag handy, though.”

“We heard you got to fly the spaceplane and even dock it on the station,” Lane said. “How cool! How was it?”

“I had a few shaky moments, but it went great,” Brad said. “I wish Boomer the pilot was here, but he had to take the spaceplane to the International Space Station—since the Russians disconnected their service module, they can't make as much water and oxygen as before, so some techs have to leave. How's everything looking from down there, Jodie?”

“Apples, Brad,” Jodie replied. “However, we're still getting that intermittent fault on the lithium-ion capacitor output relay, the same one we've been working on for a couple weeks now.”

“Is Jerry up on the channel with us?”

“He's meeting with his team on a video teleconference to try to come up with a solution,” Jodie said. “He's thinking it's a temperature issue—he says when the station is in sunlight the relay works fine, but then when they go into shadows the problem sometimes crops up.”