Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (63 page)

“We don’t still have them do we?” Scott asked, twisting in a big looping arc, hoping to determine if it might miss the station. It looked like it might clear the lower port assembly, but it was going to be close.

“Negative,” Sergei said. “All old programs have been purged. Stand by. I will contact Baikonur for codes. How much time do we have?”

“A minute, maybe less.” Commander Rutledge said, glancing back at the newbies who were twisting to watch him. “Is anyone still in the lower lock module?

“Yes sir, last pair is cycling through,” Hiroko said.

“Get them out of there. If it clips the station, it looks like that’s where it’s going to hit.” Scott flipped back to the main crew channel. “We’ve got a problem. Get yourselves tethered to the TLS. We’re looking at an out-of-control approach, and we might be in the impact area.” His voice sounded calm, but his heart was pounding in his chest like a trip-hammer.

He watched the hatch on the airlock jerk open, venting an odd cloud of fog from the residual air being blown into space. Two astronauts tumbled out, their safety tethers stretching like giant rubber bands. “Move! Move!” he shouted at the frantically flailing men. Nudging forward on his control stick, he swung around toward the oncoming Progress capsule.

“Sergei, where’re those codes? It’s looking bad out here.” Sweat oozed out on his face as he accelerated toward the twisting astronauts.

“Receiving codes now,” the Russian replied. “Estimate ten seconds before I have control.”

“You won’t be able to stop it.” Scott said. “We’re about thirty seconds from impact. It’s dead-on the Airlock Module.”

“Copy, Commander,” Sergei said. “I will attempt to deflect. Can you estimate delta-v and vector?”

“Negative,” Scott barked. “I’m a little busy out here. Isn’t it giving you a position from the Nav-sys?”

“Not without link.” In the background Scott could hear the frantic tapping of a keyboard, and he realized Sergei was entering the code manually. “I have control."

The navigational thrusters fired with a small sputtering of exhaust. Scott could clearly make out the vapor, an indication of just how close he was to the capsule. “Cut loose!” he barked to the two men still hanging from the open airlock door. “Disengage your tethers.” Pulling back on his control stick he lined up for a quick pass in front of the oncoming ship.

The nearer of the two men snapped his wrist back and caught the spring clip. The other fumbled once and managed to snap free just as Scott hit him at about two and a half meters a second. The heavy thudding grunt told him that the crewman was ok, but startled by the impact. The other one grabbed the leg of the first, threatening to send them tumbling as they passed. Fortunately Scott had anticipated the imbalance and was already thrusting to center the load against the small pack.

Over the shoulder of the first spacesuit, Commander Rutledge watched the approaching ship. It had turned slightly and was continuing to thrust downward toward the Earth, slowly deflecting itself away from the dead-center hit that it would have made. “Not enough,” he groaned into the comlink. “It’s still going to hit.”

“Copy,” Sergei replied.

“Looks like it’s going to graze the airlock, but I can’t tell for sure yet.” He bumped the back thrust slightly to float his two passengers free, and rotated the MMU to get a better view of the situation. “Keep rotating. The port solar wing is too high. It’s going to clip the module, and we’re going to lose the hatch to the nose of the capsule.”

“The low-gain antenna is located there,” the Russian said. “If is damaged in collision, we will not be able to maintain control.”

“Roger that,” Scott replied calmly, considering he’d just escaped being between the capsule and the station.

Climbing on top of the adrenaline rush, his astronaut training kicked in, giving him the familiar cool edge that held him together in a crisis. He watched the events playing out in slow motion.

He glanced back along the umbilical toward the node, watching his crew pull themselves along the surface of the partially assembled TLS. The tether was going to shear in the impact, and if the men weren’t on the opposite side of the small hull, they might be finding themselves facing another dangerous situation when it whipped back along its length.

A flash of light pulled his eyes back to the station, sunlight reflecting off the capsule’s solar wing as it twisted against the antenna truss assembly. The support frame bowed, trying to flex out of the way until the glass surface of the selenium cells shattered in a soundless explosion of tiny silver needles.

“Collision,” he announced without emotion.

The nose of the OSV slammed into the module, shearing off a massive fragment of its hull with a shower of sparks and metal fragments. A huge shard from the airlock broke free and sliced deeply into the supply ship before it tore loose, spinning pieces of debris along the tether toward the construction node.

“Incoming!” he roared, as if his voice had to carry the distance without the radio. The tether was the next thing to catch his attention, a lateral wave flashing along its length, as the Progress module pushed it out of the way. It drew tighter as it was pulled by the opposite wing of the capsule. “It’s going to snap,” he said, watching the bindings fray and then rip from their sockets. Fortunately it broke, rather than looping tightly around the ship. As it was, the lateral energy of the collision with the tether had been enough to start the CSM heading towards its own impact with the station.

“Commander,” Sergei interrupted his observations. “I have lost contact with Progress Module. What is your status?"

“Looks like we’re all safe out here for now. It’s tumbling but I think its trajectory is below the rest of the station.” He turned further toward the construction crew, and watched the umbilical whip harmlessly past the last straggling trainee. “It pulled a wicked slice and hooked upward when the wing tore loose, but it looks like it’ll clear most everything else.”

“I have pressure dropping in lock module and adjacent compartments. We are losing air to seal ruptures. I must go shut bulkheads immediately.”

“Roger, Sergei. Get it done and I’ll start rounding up the kids. We’ll cycle through the lock on the Science Module as soon as I can get them herded together."

“Copy, Commander. I will be away from Control for several minutes,” Sergei signed off to get the leak cut off before it became a bigger problem.

Scott turned back to the two refugees who floated nearby, “Come on, let’s go home.” He tried to keep his tone light, but he was glad that they couldn’t see the thick layer of sweat that coated his face.

“Copy that Commander,” one of the two said. Scott still couldn’t recognize their voices, and it bothered him to think that these virtual strangers were so dependent on each other.

“Damn. We’re gonna get bumped out here,” another of the faceless crewmembers said, calling Scott’s attention to the node where the capsule looked to be only narrowly missing. “It’s going to graze us with the engine assembly."

It was tumbling around its center of gravity, but at this range Scott couldn’t be sure if the assessment was correct. “Get off the upside,” he ordered, realizing that there was an astronaut floating between the TLS and the Progress.

“I’ll just nudge it.” From this distance Scott could see the man brace himself against the hull of the ship.

“Do not do that!” Rutledge yelled into the comlink. He watched the capsule spin slowly onward, understanding what he was planning to try. “I repeat, do not—“ But even as the words came out of his mouth he saw a faint red spray envelope the side of the TLS, and knew that it didn’t matter anymore.

Everyone started yelling at once. The cross talk on the channel was so bad that nothing could be heard except the heterodyne warble of RF saturation. Scott clicked to the ground channel and said, “Houston, we’ve got a situation. Have you been monitoring?”

“Roger Alpha,” the voice of Capcom sounded icy cool and collected. “We show you’re losing gasses and have structural damage throughout the station.”

“Damn it, Houston,” he snarled into the mic. “We’ve lost a crewman and we’ve got eight of us out here floating around trying to figure out what the hell happened.”

“Confirmed.” The voice from Earth said, still without emotion. “We lost telemetry on Garrison. We can assume he’s dead."

“I’ve got a cloud of red spray out here that tells me that much ...” Scott stopped, steadying himself. “I need to get these people inside before anyone else dies. Do you copy that Houston?” He looked at the readout on his MMU to see if he had enough to ferry everyone back in. Close.

“Sorry, Scott,” Joshua Lange came online. “We’re looking into what happened, but it looks like the approach control protocols on the OSV were out of date.”

“Sergei already figured that out.” Scott’s breathing was rattling in his ears.

“Commander Rutledge,” One of the rookies interrupted on the main com. “We’ve got another problem."

“What now?” Scott groaned.

“The cargo ship is going to deep-six the fuel cache,” he said with a matter-of-fact tone that sent a chill down Scott’s spine.

“Say again?” Joshua asked from the surface. At that instant a bright flash silhouetted the partially constructed hull of the TLS, and Scott recognized it as an explosion.

“Houston we’re in trouble up here.” Flashes of light spread in a wave across the ISS hull. Small slashing pieces of metal tearing at the flesh of the station. The solar cells tore with each impact, the radiators began venting coolant, and one particularly large chunk of debris drilled squarely into the center of the Russian Science Module, sending it twisting off at an odd angle. Gas roared out into the darkness, spraying a liquid kaleidoscope across the heavens. Another piece tore into the joint between the Control Module and the crew section, embedding itself like a knife into the heart of the Station.

All Scott could do was watch helplessly, listening to the screaming of the rookies as they clung to the ball of the TLS hull like ants abandoned on a floating toy.

“Houston, we’ve got a problem. A big one.”

***

Stormhaven:

“Excuse me, Mr. Taylor,” Mica interrupted Viki’s questioning of Cole. “I am monitoring NASA communications as you had instructed, and there appears to be a situation developing.”

Viki shot Tom a significant glance, but said nothing. “Yes Mica, what’s going on?” Cole asked.

“The ISS has gone offline, and the only communications coming from the station are low-power suit radios.” Mica cut in an audio link, but kept it quiet enough to talk over. Viki cocked her head, ignoring the foreground conversation while the computer continued its explanation. “There has been an impact. It appears that a supply ship has collided with a fuel supply cluster. They are reporting structural damage and are losing atmosphere. At this point there has been at least one fatality,” Mica finished, bringing the volume up on the speakers.

“I think I’m hearing four or five voices,” Viki offered. “So there are a lot of survivors.”

“There are at least eight astronauts outside for construction training exercises and several more inside. Although NASA has not indicated, there were at least twelve, and possibly as many as eighteen, stationed there.”

“Are they going to be able to mount a rescue mission?” Cole asked, as Dave’s image came up on one of the wallscreens, he was standing on the bridge of one of the ships. Mica had apparently informed him at the same time it was telling Cole.

“I would estimate a low probability of that happening,” Mica said. “The
Independence
left the station late last night, and it would be unreasonable to expect that they can have another orbiter ready for at least six to eight days.”

“Who else could do it?” Tom asked.

“The Chinese have been launching almost continuously for the last month,” Dave said. “They might have the capacity, but I think they’d have trouble getting anything to that orbital inclination soon enough. Plus even if they could, CNSA technology is incompatible with NASA’s. Nothing matches, from the docking ports to the radio frequencies.”

“And no one else has the capability,” Cole said, pausing as he let it soak in. “Except us."

“You saw this coming?” Tom said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Well, not specifically this,” Cole said, “but I got a message from Carter Anthony about supply issues at the station and then Kuromori mentioned that Japan and the ESA were refusing to send supplies to the station. I figured it’d be prudent to be ready, just in case.”

“I guess that means we’re nominated,” Dave said, stepping up to the command console and logging in. “We’re going to have to hurry though. If they’re on EVA life support, they’ve got less than ten hours depending on how long they’ve been outside already."

“Am I the only one here that’s noticed that the entire US Military is just looking for an excuse to shoot at us?” Viki said in exasperation.

“So we talk to them,” Cole said. “And we get the GNS back on the line now."

“GNS is off the air,” Tom said.

“Mica, please call Nikki and Brad Stone to the Communications Center. Are you ready with the GNS domain overlays?”