Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (33 page)

“We are at orbital insertion interface. Need access clearance confirmation,” he said. The squadron had reached the edge of space and the point of no return. If they were to continue climbing, they were going to have to commit to making one orbit before they could return to base.

“SpaceCom confirms you have clearance. You are to maintain pursuit and eliminate the target. Calculate your orbit,” Flight Control said.

“Negative on orbit calculations. The target is still in vertical ascent and approaching 400,000 feet.” The pilot flipped to the local channel with his eye-blink switch.

“We’re going to have to go vertical, or we’re going to slip across under the target in about two minutes. This is going to be a bone-crusher. Any of you sissies not up to it, jack-off now,” he said, pulling back on his stick to nose the fighter upward.

“Bulldog Leader, we are non-uplinked on satellite, are you still visual?” Flight Control asked.

“Affirm on the visual. They’re showing no sign of flattening out. If we go straight up after them, then we’re going to roll out anywhere in the sky.” The pilot started to angle up and looked around at his squadron, all the pilots matching his maneuver even though it was going to stack the acceleration quickly.

“Good luck, Bulldog flight. You are authorized to shoot the moon. Take them out,” the Flight Controller said.

Pulling twenty-G in a sustained climb is not something that any pilot wants to do twice, but the squadron followed their leader without question, so the game was still on.

***

Bridge of the Dancing Star:

“Well, we’re here,” Dave said, feeling his arms like lead against his chest. He’d given up trying to hold them over the control console. “We’re doing orbital speed but still climbing vertically away from the planet."

“So, we could keep climbing like this until...” Sophie grunted, obviously struggling but unwilling to give up.

“Yeah, but we need to flatten out or we’re going to make it to the moon in about forty-five minutes,” Dave said.

“That’s one way to lose the TAV,” Dani groaned.

“I’ve got another one,” Cole said. “They have to go ballistic, right?”

“Yeah. They don’t carry that much fuel. Maybe enough for two orbital insertions and a few minutes of maneuvering.”

“Good. Then head backward, against the Earth’s rotation.” Cole’s voice sounded strained, but under this much acceleration there was no way Dave could turn his head to check on his condition.

“Ok, so then what?” Dave asked.

“Once they commit to an orbit, we can do a heading change and they can’t.” Cole sounded like every word was an almost impossible effort. “They’ll be flying backward against all that LEO space junk, while we flip a bitch and leave them to bang into shit.”

“It’s worth a shot, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll hit anything. There’s a lot of crap up here but it’s spread out all over the place. Ok everyone, here we go again.” Dave grunted as the force of acceleration shifted from pushing them into the back of their seats to down toward their feet. The
Dancing Star
arced upside down toward the west, and they got their first view of Earth.

“Attention unauthorized craft. This is US Space Command. You have violated International Space Access restrictions. By law, we are authorized to use any and all means to bring you down.” The voice of the TAV leader came over the com as Dave eased them over into a flattening loop that pointed the nose of the huge ship toward Earth, even though they were still climbing on their inertia.

From deep inside the ship there was a pinging noise and Dave recognized the sounds of cannon rounds hitting them somewhere.

“They’re shooting at us!” Glen shouted.

“Not for long. This is going to get painful but hang on.” He slid back and forth on the flight controls and the force of acceleration shifted sickeningly as the huge ship jinked like a fighter jet. He pulled a long swinging turn to port, and once he heard the ringing sounds of more cannon fire, he cut the acceleration, letting them coast weightlessly for several seconds. The ripping noise of the projectiles hitting the ship got louder until it sounded like it was in the hull right behind them.

“Now!” he said, warning them that he was about to start maneuvering, but not giving them any real clue. The force of gravity returned, upside down, and the
Dancing Star
pitched around on its center toward the onrushing TAV.

There was another explosion of rounds hitting the hull, and they could actually see the sixteen small fighters less than a mile away. Abruptly, they slammed back into their seats and Dave shot them forward between the jets, twisting the
Star
in a rapid barrel-roll.

“That ought to get us a couple minutes anyway,” he said, squaring them to the horizon and pushing the acceleration back into the floor at about a tenth-G. It wasn’t enough to give them a normal feeling of weight but it would help to have an orientation so they could move around without floating. It also meant that they were not really in orbit.

“While they’re finding themselves back there, we need to inspect for damage, and get any essential repairs done,” Dave said, glancing up and realizing that Cole looked like he was on the edge of passing out.

***

Low Earth Orbit:

“Bulldog Leader to Base. Bulldog Flight is unable to pursue target and declaring a fuel emergency. We–"

A small fleck of metal from some long forgotten satellite, traveling at almost 20,000 miles an hour relative to the Starhawk, exploded through the canopy, punching a smooth hole through the pilot’s helmet and catastrophically removing the top two inches of his skull. He was dead even before the particle passed through his seat and into the oxygen tank behind him, shattering the fragile craft like an eggshell.

The other pilots of Bulldog Flight watched the unexplained explosion in horror as the
Dancing Star
accelerated away, apparently unharmed and potentially more dangerous than anything they’d ever encountered.

***

Washington:

Sylvia Hutton watched the broadcast playing out live on national TV and across the internet, cameras straining to catch the dancing fireflies a hundred miles above Stormhaven. The wheels had been set in motion, and there was no way they were going to stop until they’d ground her administration to death on the millstone of public opinion.

In six minutes, watching that behemoth ship struggle to escape the Starhawks, she saw Colton Taylor turn the tides of favor against them. It was an unimaginable disaster to have it played out in front of the cameras, even though she knew that those who prevailed would tell their version of the truth.

Her phone beeped, interrupting her thoughts. “Yes?” she said, without taking her eyes off the monitor.

“You’re watching the news?” It was Gene Reynolds. “I just got the report that the explosion we saw on the coverage was one of the Starhawks, and not the
Dancing Star
.”

“You’re saying the Stormhaven ship was armed?” She leaned forward on her desk and shook her head in frustration.

“We don’t know that, but it’s possible. They were in a dangerous retrograde orbit, so it could have been a piece of debris. One of the other interceptors took a minor hit on a wing several minutes after the engagement and is not expected to survive reentry.”

“So we’re going to lose two pilots, and they never fired a shot."

“That’s basically what we suspect, Ma’am,” Gene said

She understood the dangers of letting this play out in front of the world, and now that it had happened, she knew there was no way to turn back. This was going to march relentlessly forward, and the whole planet was going to be staring at her for answers.

***

Bridge of the Dancing Star:

“Somehow we’re still airtight, but I’ll be damned if I know how.” Sophie bounced in, almost floating and almost walking. They’d inverted and were flying “feet up” with a steady one-tenth-G acceleration back toward the Earth. In truth, they would still be gaining altitude for another few minutes before they managed to conquer their vertical velocity.

“How bad is it?” Cole asked, sitting at his station staring at the Earth through the windows.

“I can see a hundred fractures in the lower deck, and I can’t even begin to guess about what the outer hull and landing gear look like, but nothing actually penetrated.”

“Thank you, Daryl,” Cole said. “I think we all owe him dinner for that one.”

“No kidding,” Dave agreed. “I’ve seen firsthand what Vulcan cannon rounds can do to a target.”

Glen came bounding in. “One of the cargo modules is a hard vacuum, but everything in the aft section seems to be holding. There’re a couple places where it looked like things came loose during the shaking, but as long as we don’t have to run for our lives again we should be ok.”

“Do we have any detectable systems failures?” Colton asked, standing up looking wobbly and weak. He reached for the edge of his console to steady himself.

“Portside external optical systems are negative on response, but otherwise all primary systems are functional,” Mica answered, linking to the ship telemetry through a commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit above them. “Power and propulsion systems are nominal.”

“Thank you Mica. I wasn’t aware that you were up here with us.” Cole smiled in amazement at the computer’s ability to improvise.

“I am still on the ground Mr. Taylor,” Mica said. “I am only capable of monitoring functions through the satellite network. The uplink bandwidth is insufficient to allow for tele-operation."

“Are we still in communication with Viki?” he asked.

“Yeah Cole, I’m still here.” Her voice came through the uplink like she was standing on the bridge with them. “Tom is handling Brad Stone for the moment, so I can speak freely. Are you ok?”

“We’re fine, Vik. Do you know what happened?” Cole asked.

“We got it all on video,” she said. “Looks like Dave kicked ass on a couple fighter jets. The news has been replaying the long-range pictures we took, and every outlet in the world is watching the show.”

“Problem is that we got shot up pretty badly in the process. We’ve lost outboard video on one whole side of the ship, and we can’t tell if we have landing gear or not,” Cole said.

“Well, considering what it looks like you did from down here, it’s no wonder. Did you guys actually ram that jet?"

“Nah. We missed them all,” Dave said. “Why?”

“Because one of them exploded just after you pulled the reverse.” She paused and then said, “I just got handed a note here. Hang on. The White House is claiming that you fired on the escort vehicles and destroyed one of them in an unprovoked engagement.”

“Bullshit!” Dave roared. “We’ve got the bullet holes to prove otherwise."

“I believe you, but we need to show it first-hand down here to prove our point. Take it once around the block and then bring it home,” Viki suggested, but her voice made it sound like she was giving an order.

“Roger on that,” Dave said. “We’ll see you in about an hour.”

***

Warren AFB, Colorado:

Of the sixteen F-28 Starhawks that had given pursuit, only fourteen returned to their hangars in Colorado. And of the pilots who did come home, none would ever feel the same flying in space again. Having left confident and in charge, they’d discovered their collective ego was much more fragile than their thin-skinned craft.

It should have been a slam-dunk mission. After all, they’d been chasing a flying Winnebago. How hard could that be?

The mood of the support crews in the hangar reflected the feeling of failure, and the two vacant buildings, where the ground crew sat on the curb staring up at the empty sky, punctuated their sense of loss. The pilots who’d never return, a sobering message to the rest, the future was coming at them and it knew no mercy.

Major Dino “Dizzy” Diamond sat slumped in his cockpit on the end of the runway, staring at the pedals, replaying visions of his wingman struggling to keep her plane together as the atmosphere shredded it in a relentless flaying of its airframe, a layer at a time.

In his mind he could imagine what it must have been like, facing the certainty of being slowly shredded by the searing forces of reentry. Fighting the reality of the physics, Jackie had refused to accept the inevitability of her death, trying to maintain control until the energy built up and the body came apart in a thousand molten metal meteorites.

The personal horror for Dizzy was that he knew that some of those flaming bits were flesh and bone, not titanium and ceramic.

Tears had splashed against the inside of his helmet, flung forward by the G-forces of reentry, and now melded into a puddle on the rim of its pressure seal. Out of fuel, because of the cost of staying with his wingman, he’d dead-sticked the approach, coasting to a stop on the end of the runway, unable to taxi in.