The Kremlin Strike

by Dale Brown

  “Roger that, Wolf Two,” Brad replied, echoed a moment later by Vasey. “Range to Mars One is now sixteen miles. Stand by to initiate braking maneuver in sixty seconds.”

  “Warning, warning, X-band fire-control radar lock-on,” Nadia’s COMS computer said abruptly. “New radar is at five o’clock low. Evaluated as N036 Byelka–equivalent active electronically scanned array system.”

  Startled, she focused her robot’s rear-facing visual sensors along that bearing. There, sixty miles away, was the distinctive winged shape of a Russian Elektron spaceplane. It was closing on them fast, with its laser up and locked in attack position.

  “Hell,” Nadia said quietly. Caught without the long-range rail guns they’d just expended against Mars One, they had no way to fight back.

  Elektron One

  That Same Time

  Lieutenant Colonel Ilya Alferov checked his radar display with a fierce, satisfied smile. He had a solid lock on one of the four small, odd-looking American spacecraft still aimed at Mars One. Two others were no longer a threat, based on their current trajectories.

  Very soon, he thought coldly, all of the attackers would be dead . . . but at his hands, rather than those of Strelkov and his so-called wonder weapons. Maybe now Colonel General Leonov would realize the mistake he’d made in abandoning further development of Russia’s own spaceplanes in favor of that orbiting monstrosity. Speed and flexibility were the keys to space warfare. The American general Patton had been right when he’d said that fixed fortifications were a monument to man’s stupidity. Cramming weapons into a platform like Mars One that was forced to follow a predictable orbit only made the enemy’s job easier.

  Alferov entered commands into his autopilot and waited while it took control over the Elektron—firing attitude thrusters to center the Hobnail laser precisely on his chosen target. His spaceplane rotated slightly and then stabilized. The laser targeting reticle on his display went solid green.

  He reached out to activate the laser and then stopped. His smile disappeared. The reticle was blinking again. His Elektron had drifted off target for some reason. More thrusters popped, rotating the spaceplane back into position . . . and kept firing in an effort to keep the laser centered.

  Alferov frowned. What the devil was going on? It was as though his Elektron was being pushed aside by some strange force.

  And then a glistening blob of molten metal drifted past his helmet and splashed against the right side of the cockpit. Horrified, he turned his head to look left—just as the high-powered laser beam that had been focused on his spaceplane for the past several seconds finished cutting through its hull, sliced through the fabric of his suit, ignited his oxygen, and ripped him in half.

  Shadow Two-Nine Bravo

  That Same Time

  One hundred and fifty miles below the Elektron, Hunter Noble saw a sudden flare of light as the S-29B’s two-megawatt laser pierced the Russian spaceplane’s fuselage. It veered off its previous trajectory, pitching and yawing while its attitude thrusters fired randomly for a few seconds and then went dead.

  “Enemy X-band fire-control radar is off-line,” the computer reported.

  For “off-line,” read “fried to hell,” Boomer thought grimly, along with the pilot.

  “Good kill . . . Anderson,” he forced out against the G-forces squeezing him back into his seat. They were still boosting to orbit, having opted for a near-vertical ascent that took them up out of the atmosphere in less than a minute—long before any warning from Russia’s EKS satellites could be relayed from Moscow to the Elektron they’d just wrecked. “Nice shooting . . . for . . . a squid.”

  “Thanks . . . Boomer.” Jill Anderson was the S-29B’s offensive weapons officer. Before joining Scion, the former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander had worked in the navy’s ship-mounted HELIOS combat laser program. Getting the chance to fire a weapon with twenty times more power was a dream come true for her.

  Boomer craned his head sideways a little to look over at Liz Gallagher. His copilot was busy monitoring their engine displays and navigation programs. “Ready to go looking . . . for more trouble?”

  “You ask . . . a girl . . . the nicest questions,” she replied with a tight smile. “Oh, yeah, let’s go get ’em.” Straining, she reached up and tapped one of her multifunction displays. “Nav Program Two is laid in and running.”

  Boomer saw the steering cues on his heads-up display shift and he followed them, nudging the sidestick controller slightly to the left. The nozzles of the S-29B’s five LPDRS engines gimbaled in response, and the spaceplane curved away from the still-distant Mars One—climbing toward an orbit that would converge with the second Russian Elektron and the fusion reactor module it was guarding.

  “You know this approach is going to . . . run our fuel tanks . . . pretty dry,” Gallagher said, as conversationally as possible while feeling like an anvil four times her own weight was pressing down on her chest.

  “Yep,” Boomer agreed. “If we win this fight . . . we’re gonna have to glide down the old-fashioned way, nose first.”

  “And if we lose?”

  He fought the Gs to give her a wry grin. “The thought never crossed . . . my mind, Liz. See, I’ve already bailed out from . . . orbit . . . once. I don’t plan . . . to make it . . . a habit.”

  Moscow

  That Same Time

  Leonov stared at his screen with a sense of eerie detachment. First, the EKS satellite warning of yet another American spaceplane launch had hit him like a bolt out of the blue. And then, only seconds later, the telemetry from Alferov’s Elektron One winked out—signaling its sudden destruction by a laser weapon with frightening power and precision.

  The battle in space was not turning in Russia’s favor, he realized. While it was still possible that Strelkov and his men could defeat what now appeared to be an American attempt to board and capture Mars One, that was no longer certain. And based on the ease with which it had killed Alferov, the new S-29 Shadow already closing on the reactor module and its second Elektron escort was a deadly foe.

  Slowly, Leonov reached out for his keyboard. He was running out of time to act. The inset message in one corner of his screen still read: RAPIRA SEVEN ON STANDBY. READY FOR TARGET SELECTION.

  Carefully, he entered a new series of commands into the open fail-safe program, again routing them through one of Mars One’s secondary communications antennas. Seconds later, the message on his screen changed: TARGET ACCEPTED. RAPIRA SEVEN LAUNCHING. WILL AWAIT FINAL ATTACK CONFIRMATION IN ORBIT.

  Six hundred and sixty kilometers above the earth, an armored hatch on the underside of Mars One’s central command module opened. A Rapira warhead with its attached rocket motor slid out into space with small puffs of gas from its thrusters. It separated from the station at ten meters per second and then accelerated away with a short burn from its motor—altering its orbital inclination by a couple of degrees to the north.

  Once it was in position, the Rapira’s thrusters fired again, flipping the weapon over so that its rocket motor was pointed against the direction of orbit. One small antenna faced the earth, waiting for the final order from Moscow that would trigger its programmed deorbit burn and attack.

  Forty-Seven

  In Orbit

  That Same Time

  Brad McLanahan watched the dark shape of Mars One grow with terrifying speed in his COMS display as he flew toward it at nearly seven hundred miles per hour. Numbers flashed through his neural link with the computer, keeping a running countdown of distance, relative velocity, and time to his planned braking maneuver. Through the link he also kept tabs on the positions of the other three robots. Nadia’s Wolf Two was aimed at the Russian station’s aft vertical module. Peter Vasey’s Wolf Three had the forward vertical module as its target, which left the central horizontal module to Brad’s Wolf One. Cub Three, their sole surviving unpiloted COMS, was currently flying using its own autonomous systems. For now, its chief task was to avoid colliding with any of the human-occ
upied robots or with Mars One itself.

  “Range to target is six thousand feet,” his computer told him. “Closing velocity is one thousand feet per second. Initiate rapid braking maneuver . . . now.”

  Brad activated his thrusters and felt a sharp jolt as twenty small rockets spread across the robot’s outer shell fired simultaneously. His speed dropped.

  “Closing at six hundred feet per second. Fuel reserves at seventy-five percent. Continuing the braking burn.”

  More thrusters popped. Brad flew onward, slowing further. Even though they were still deep in Earth’s shadow, he could see a lot more detail on the Russian station and its attached spacecraft now. Blinking green and red position lights indicated airlocks and unoccupied docking ports at several places on all three modules. Pieces of shattered weapons and solar panels drifted in a slowly expanding cloud above Mars One.

  He frowned. If their robots collided with any of that space junk at speeds much higher than a normal walking pace, they could take serious damage.

  “Watch that debris field at twelve o’clock high,” he said to Nadia and Vasey.

  “Copy that, Wolf One,” the Englishman replied. “Wolf Three is going low.”

  “So is Wolf Two,” Nadia said tersely.

  Brad instructed his own COMS to alter its vector slightly, just enough to cross safely below the cloud of debris. Thrusters along the upper surface of his spheroid-shaped robot fired briefly. He curved downward along a gentle arc. More tiny rockets, these on the lower half of the COMS, popped—leveling out his approach so that he was flying straight at the middle of the central Russian module . . . aimed a little to the left of the docked Federation orbiter.

  “Range to target now two thousand feet. Closing at four hundred feet per second,” the computer reported. “Fuel reserves at fifty-seven percent.”

  “Coming up on final braking burn,” Brad said. He held his breath and then fought down a sudden wave of nausea as his perspective flipped. Instead of flying toward Mars One, he seemed to be falling right into it. But he had no choice: slowing down while in orbit meant going down. He could only hope that the maneuvering computer would do its job and control the thrusters with precision.

  “One thousand feet . . . six hundred feet . . . four hundred feet,” the computer intoned.

  “Arm braking thrust routine . . . now!” Brad ordered.

  “Braking thrust routine armed . . . initiating . . . now.” This time, every thruster oriented toward the Russian station went off in a sustained, maximum-power burn. He felt himself slammed forward, deeper into the robot’s cushioning haptic interface. His eyes closed involuntarily.

  The thrusters shut down.

  “Braking maneuver complete,” the COMS reported coolly. “Range to target four feet. Relative velocity is zero. Fuel reserves at thirty-two percent.”

  Brad opened his eyes to find himself floating serenely within arm’s length of the space station’s outer hull. “Jesus,” he said unsteadily. “Is everyone all right?”

  “A bit shaken, but not stirred,” Vasey replied.

  “Wolf Two is in position and undamaged,” Nadia said crisply. “Cub Three is in reserve one hundred feet below the aft module.”

  Brad looked along the curved surface of the central Mars One module, noting several communications and sensor antennas of differing sizes and shapes. Similar antennas festooned the forward and aft modules. “Then let’s go! First, we make these guys blind and deaf. Understood?”

  “Affirmative, Wolf One,” both Nadia and Vasey said.

  He activated a couple of thrusters and drifted toward the nearest antenna, judged by his computer to be the station’s primary radio link. When he got closer, he grabbed its mast with one of the robot’s manipulator limbs. Its fingerlike metal appendages curled tightly around the metal pole, anchoring him in place. Another limb uncoiled, this one equipped with a powered cutting saw. He spun it up and started slicing through the antenna mast. A stream of tiny flakes of glowing metal flew away into space.

  Thirty yards away, near the bottom of the aft space station module, Nadia gripped the mast of another radio antenna. It would be faster to just tear the small dish right off the hull, she judged. She released another of the COMS’ mechanical arms and flexed its appendages—

  “Hostile at three o’clock! Range close,” her computer warned abruptly.

  Something crashed hard into the left flank of her robot—threatening to send her tumbling off into space. Frantically, Nadia caught at the antenna mast with a second mechanical hand. Her thrusters fired in the opposite direction, countering the impact.

  Caught by surprise, she found herself staring at a monstrous figure, a ten-foot-tall humanoid machine with thin, agile arms and legs and a long torso. It was topped by an eyeless sphere bristling with antennas and other sensor arrays. A large pack equipped with maneuvering thrusters was strapped to its back. My God, she thought in alarm, the Russians had deployed one of their own KVM war robots aboard Mars One.

  Quickly, Nadia lashed out at the enemy robot with a third metal limb—trying to shove it away.

  Almost contemptuously, the KVM batted her riposte aside and then reached out and tore the arm off with its own mechanical hands. Trailing sparks from torn wiring, the dead limb sailed away into space.

  Nadia cried out involuntarily. Through her neural link, she felt the loss of that COMS arm as a red-hot flash of pain. “Wolf Two is under attack!” she said desperately.

  The Russian war machine reached out with one hand and grabbed hold of another of her limbs—securing itself to her COMS. Glittering crystals of frozen gas floated away from the KVM’s backpack thrusters as they fired again to hold it stable. The metal fingers of its other hand probed at the stump of the arm it had ripped loose, trying to find a place where it could dig in and start peeling away her robot’s protective hull.

  “Hold tight!” Brad called out.

  Obeying him, Nadia tightened her grip on the thin radio mast.

  And then she felt another powerful impact as something slammed into the Russian war machine from below. Several mechanical limbs wrapped themselves around the KVM’s torso and legs. Another COMS had grappled with the enemy robot. Now its thrusters fired at full power, burning through all its remaining fuel to wrench the Russian machine away from her.

  Nadia felt fresh agony as the arm the KVM had been using as an anchor tore loose.

  Still entangled, the second COMS and the Russian robot spun off into space—moving away from Mars One at a hundred feet per second. As they rotated around each other, she could see the KVM’s hands flailing as it tried to pry itself free.

  Suddenly there was a brief flash . . . and then the torso of the Russian war machine came apart in a cloud of frozen oxygen mixed with dark globules of blood. Splintered shards of composite armor floated away from the COMS. Locked together, the two wrecked robots fell into the endless void, shrinking rapidly until they disappeared from sight.

  Inside the cockpit of her COMS, Nadia stared in horror. “No, Brad,” she said brokenly.

  “I’m fine,” he reassured her quickly. “That was Cub Three and a strategically applied explosive breaching charge, not me.”

  Nadia swallowed hard. She could not cry, not in zero-G. If she did, her own tears would cling to her eyes and blind her. “Thank God,” she murmured. Then she shook herself. This battle was not yet over.

  Doggedly, she turned back to the small communications antenna and began prying it loose with her robot’s remaining limbs.

  A couple of minutes later, Brad finished cutting away another sensor dish. He tossed it away from Mars One as though it were the world’s largest Frisbee. That was the last of them. The Russian crew inside the station no longer had any way to communicate with the world below.

  He fired more thrusters and glided back around the central module until he came to a shallow bay that now lay open to space. The large, camouflaged clamshell doors that had sealed it previously were folded back against the station�
�s outer hull. There was a standard-sized airlock on the inner wall. This was where the KVM that almost killed Nadia must have been lurking . . . ready to lunge out at them from ambush, he realized.

  Well, it sure was nice of the Russians to leave at least one door open for him, Brad thought coldly.

  “Wolf One to Two and Three,” he said. “I am ready to enter Mars One.”

  “Roger that, One,” Nadia said. Her voice echoed his own determination. “Wolf Two is prepared to breach the aft module.”

  Vasey spoke up from his position at the other end of the Russian space station. “Wolf Three is ready to assault. But it looks a rather tight fit,” he said thoughtfully.

  Brad nodded. Their COMS were likely to find it difficult, maybe even impossible, to maneuver inside Mars One. They hadn’t been able to get any intelligence on the station’s internal structure, but the odds were that it was broken up into separate compartments, some of which might be too small to accommodate their large, egg-shaped machines. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I guess we’ll see. If necessary, though, we’ll open everything up to space from the outside.”

  “Mr. Martindale may not be terribly happy about that,” Vasey pointed out. “Since we’re supposed to capture Mars One intact.”

  Nadia snorted. “Mr. Martindale is not here. We are.”

  “A fair point,” Vasey allowed.

  Brad shrugged inside his cockpit. “So we do our best not to break stuff unless we have to.”

  “And the cosmonauts?” Nadia wondered.

  “They get one chance to surrender,” Brad said somberly. “After that, all bets are off. Just make sure your short-range radios are set to the standard Russian frequency so you can talk to them if necessary. Is that clear?”

  “As crystal,” Vasey acknowledged.

  “Then let’s move.” Through his sensors, Brad looked ahead. A bright glow lit the curved horizon of the earth. Mars One was approaching the dividing line between light and shadow.