Station Breaker

by Andrew Mayne

  STATION BREAKER

  ANDREW MAYNE

  ANDREWMAYNE.COM

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  [Cosmodrome]

  1. Space Gun

  2. Glitter Menace

  3. Moving Target

  4. Hot Mess

  5. Party Crashers

  6. Airlock

  7. Border Patrol

  8. Babysitter

  9. Blood Stains

  10. Emergency Launch

  11. Ground Control

  12. Crash Dummy

  13. Bailout

  14. Fly by Wire

  15. Drogue

  16. Escape

  17. Impact

  18. Crawlspace

  19. Street Gang

  20. Invisible

  21. Paranoia

  22. High Ground

  23. Impulse Control

  24. Emt

  25. Walkway to Heaven

  26. Fugitive

  27. Shopping

  28. The Frat

  29. Selfie

  30. Party Animal

  31. Jump Seat

  32. Air Show

  33. Pilot

  34. The Captain

  35. Co-Pilot

  36. Deep Six

  37. Escorts

  38. Point of Entry

  39. Border Patrol

  40. Convenience

  41. Sandlot

  42. Black Box

  43. Red Agents

  44. Examination

  45. The Hole

  46. Airdrop

  47. Insider

  48. Dead Drop

  49. Rally

  50. Secret Ops

  51. Detour

  52. Menace

  53. Support Crew

  54. Small World

  55. Strategy

  56. Space Ops

  57. Crash Course

  58. Countdown

  59. State of the Art

  60. Mission Statement

  61. Assembly

  62. Security Protocols

  63. Grand Theft

  64. Projectile

  65. Thruster

  66. Touch Down

  67. Standby

  68. Breaking and Entering

  69. Pressure

  70. Invader

  71. Rec Room

  72. Captive Audience

  73. Bad Intentions

  74. Sting Operation

  75. Hide and Seek

  76. Stalker

  77. Super Power

  78. Death Spiral

  79. Reaction

  80. Last Stand

  81. Adrift

  82. Fallback

  Thank you!

  About the Author

  Also by Andrew Mayne

  Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Mayne

  v 1.1

  AndrewMayne.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Thank you to everyone who provided me with notes, corrections and input on this book.

  PREFACE

  ALL OF THE technology described in this book is either currently being tested on the launch pad or in advance stages of development.

  This is a story of the very near future.

  [COSMODROME]

  DROPS OF BLOOD trickled through Natalie Kharitonova’s fingertips and splattered into the puddle below. She caught her distraught reflection in the pool of water and the glow on the horizon as a RD-300 rocket engine fired on its test stand, lighting up the night sky over Baikonur Cosmodrome.

  Bracing herself against a silver sedan, smearing blood across the door, the roar was a distant hum under the sound of her own difficult breathing.

  "Don't run," said the thick-jawed man from the window of the black Mercedes as he rolled up.

  Natalie pushed away from her resting spot and stumbled further into the parking lot, trying to find someone to help her.

  A minute ago she was reaching for her keys when the two men came to a stop.

  "Natalie," the driver had shouted, feigning familiarity.

  When she turned to look at who was calling to her, he fired his pistol.

  The noise startled her more than the wound. She thought a rock or something sharp had flicked her. It was the growing numbness and the sight of blood on her palms that told her what just happened.

  In an instant she knew this was about what she had seen a few hours ago.

  It had been a clerical error. As a payload supervisor, normally it was her job to inspect all cargo before being loaded onto the Baikal rocket – except for military cargo.

  But this wasn't a military payload, or at least she hadn't thought so. There was no certificate from the Army, much less a liaison officer from Roscosmos.

  Clipboard in hand, Natalie had donned her clean room scrubs and entered the sterile chamber just like she did for every other launch. When she saw the plastic case sitting on the table, there was nothing indicating it was military. But when she cracked the seal and looked inside, she realized immediately there must have been some mistake.

  She quickly closed the case, but it was too late. The escort assigned to the cargo had re-entered the room, having momentarily abandoned his post.

  There were no words exchanged between them. Natalie made a quick exit, not even bothering to throw her garments into the bin.

  She headed straight for Supervisor Volodin's office, Roscosmos Chief Zhirov's right-hand man, and told him what she had seen.

  He listened carefully, made a call, then gave her a warm smile and told her it was just a mistake. Everything was fine. There had been a mixup with some sensing equipment.

  Natalie thanked him, laughed it off, pretending the best she could. She knew he was lying. Having an engineering background, there was no mistaking what was in the case.

  She wasn't sure what she was going to do about it, if anything. Then the Mercedes pulled up and the man shot her.

  Natalie managed to weave through another row of cars, but her legs were betraying her. Darkness began to encroach her peripheral vision as she continued to bleed out.

  She made one more stride, then collapsed on the wet pavement. Unable to move, yet still somewhat alert, she heard the footsteps of the approaching men.

  "Get her into the bag, then place her into the trunk," one said to the other.

  Natalie felt their rough hands as they picked her up and laid her inside a plastic pouch – the kind they keep onboard a spacecraft in case of a fatality.

  The scent of the material reminded her of a spacesuit, which set off a mental trigger in her mind. She remembered where she'd seen these men before...

  Their names were Yablokov and Domnin. They were cosmonauts. They weren't supposed to be here. They were supposed to be getting ready to launch in just a few hours.

  That thought faded as quickly as it came. When they zipped the bag over her head, she worried about her daughter, Elena. If Natalie didn't call and remind her, she would forget to start the oven and dinner would be cold.

  1

  SPACE GUN

  T-MINUS 4 HOURS:

  I think my Commander is insane.

  Not the kind of insanity natural to anybody willing to sit on top of a million gallons of explosive fuel – but the workplace shooting kind of nuts.

  I tell myself I'm the crazy one. This is Commander Halston Bennet we're talking about. I've known him for years. Yet, a second ago I saw him in the prep room mirror slipping a gun into the side pocket of his spacesuit when he didn't think anyone was looking.
>
  At first I don't think anything of it. Bennet, after all, is the manliest man you'll ever meet; a former Navy pilot, SEAL instructor, and a NASA astronaut before coming to work for iCosmos. Of course a guy like him would carry a gun into space. Military pilots are taught hand-to-hand combat in case they come down in hostile territory. Russians keep pistols on their Soyuz craft in case they land somewhere with wolves – which is just about everywhere there. Maybe Bennet is just planning for any contingency?

  Hell, maybe he wants to shoot Martians.

  I try to put it out of my mind, but I can't. I should say something.

  Maybe it's just a standard operating procedure I don't know about? In that case, telling Renata, our launch manager, that he has a gun won't be a big deal.

  But what if it's Bennet's little secret? Maybe he's not supposed to do this, but the piece is his good luck charm?

  If I rat him out, he could be out of the company and I'll probably catch shit for being the one that finked on an American hero.

  An American hero.

  Halston Bennet is the kind of man that made me want to become an astronaut. He's the man I want to be when I grow up. He's also the one that trained me to go into space.

  Space.

  Holy shit.

  Of course this would happen on my first mission.

  Hell, I didn't even know I was going until twelve hours ago. I was an alternate for Robbie Carlyle. I got a phone call at 3 AM telling me I needed to get my ass to Canaveral in the next hour.

  The official story is Carlyle suffered a sprain while working out.

  The real story is that he slipped in the shower getting busy with some girl other than his regular girlfriend.

  I've been listed as an alternate six times. After the fifth time the astronaut I was alternating for defiantly refused to show up with the flu, a broken leg or visible cold sores, I kind of gave up and decided I'd be going into space after about the 10,000th rich jerk-off tourist flew out of Mojave in one of those suborbital tin cans they call a spaceship.

  Then I got the call.

  I'd been waiting for that call ever since I decided I wanted to be an astronaut.

  Not because I wanted to set foot on Mars or perform earth-shattering experiments in micro-gravity. But because I wanted to fly things. The faster the better.

  My heroes have always been pilots. From Chuck Yeager to Han Solo, I wanted to be the guy at the controls – a guy like Bennet.

  Bennet. Damn it. In some alternate universe I was going to be a military guy turned NASA astronaut like him.

  Imagine my disappointment when I was seventeen years old and walked into an Air Force recruitment center wearing my Coke-bottle glasses and was told in no uncertain terms the only way I'd see the inside of a fighter cockpit was if there were paper towels and a bottle of Windex in my hand so I could clean it for the guys with perfect eyesight.

  Pissed, I worked two jobs that summer; getting up hours before dawn to fold newspapers and deliver them. I can still smell the wet ink and feel the warm newsprint in my hands as it sucked all the moisture from my fingers. After that, I worked at Burger King during the day, getting laughed at by my friends as they came into the place imagining new and ridiculous ways to "Have it their way." Har har, guys.

  I used the money I earned to buy myself laser surgery for my eyes. Which was something my parents couldn't afford – trying to raise three kids on one teacher's salary as my mother finished up her master's degree.

  With beyond perfect 20/10 vision, I walked into the Navy recruiter's office and was told, sorry kid, LASIK was an automatic disqualifier.

  They changed the rule later, but it was too late for me. Uncle Sam wanted no part in making my dream a reality. I'd never be a guy like Bennet, a Real American Hero™.

  Dejected and rejected, I decided I'd find other ways to take to the sky. I studied engineering and aeronautics in college and found that as a student you could get cheap pilot training.

  I learned how to fly fixed wing, rotary, single engine, multi-engine and even no-engine in gliders and a hot air balloon. One summer, a couple of my flight school pals and I even took a trip to Russia and got to take control of MiGs. I did a crash course in Russian, afraid I'd try to change the air conditioner and end up ejecting myself over Siberia.

  To pay for it all, I spent my spare time volunteering for medical studies where they poked me with different chemicals as I sat around playing flight simulators.

  When it came time to graduate, my friends all went into commercial aviation. I didn't. Flying a jumbo jet wasn't the same as going to the stars. So I took a job as a science teacher in my mom's school district.

  The same week classes started, iCosmos, the private space company with its own fleet of rockets, announced they were accepting applications for astronauts.

  I pissed my mom off when I turned in my school resignation after iCosmos hired me. Although, it wasn't as an astronaut at first. They had plenty of former NASA people, like Bennet, who'd gone through their program to choose from.

  When the recruiter read the part on my resume about working for various pharmaceutical companies, you should have seen the fiendish look in her eyes when I explained I'd basically been a medical guinea pig.

  "Oh, we need those too," she replied.

  "Will it help me be an astronaut?" I asked.

  "Sure, why not?" she answered in that Northern Californian, non-response.

  It didn't matter. Being a test monkey stuck at the bottom of a swimming pool for ten hours in a leaking spacesuit, or finding out what happens when your cockpit chair snaps loose as the capsule goes rolling sideways down a hill, was a lot closer to being an astronaut than flying complaining tourists and neurotic flight attendants on the same route over and over.

  The day they finally accepted me into the iCosmos astronaut program, after nearly killing me on Earth nine ways from Sunday, was the second happiest day of my life.

  The happiest was today, when I got the call. That all came to a fiery reentry when I saw Bennet, the man who taught The Most Interesting Man in the World how to be interesting, stick a gun into his pocket.

  Man up, David. Go talk to him.

  Worst case scenario and he actually is crazy?

  He'll just shoot me here on Earth instead of 200 miles up.

  2

  GLITTER MENACE

  ACTING AS CASUALLY as I can, I finish sliding my chest unit into place and make sure all the lights are green. I double-check it, even though half a dozen people will take a look before I get into the capsule. Spaceflight is supposed to be routine now, but not that routine.

  "What's up, Dixon?" asks Bennet, looking up at me from his wrist display.

  "You know, suicide pills are a lot easier to pack," I say in the weakest possible way as I point to the pouch with the gun.

  He glances past me and sees the mirror. "Watching me suit up? I didn't know you were into that."

  This kind of locker room trash talk is a bit out of place for Bennet, not to mention the fact his son is openly gay and a Republican US Senator elected in no small part because of his father's support.

  He's clearly trying to avoid the topic.

  I press on. "Seriously. Is that some new SOP I don't know about?"

  Bennet takes his time as he examines his readout then walks up to me, standing toe-to-toe, our chest units almost touching.

  "Dixon, there are things you need to know and things you do not need to know. I do not have time to tell you all the things you need to know. What I can tell you is that what you thought you saw doesn't exist in your world. Understand? But I'll humor you and tell you that because of certain security requirements for our payload, I'm required to take certain precautions."

  He gives me a friendly clap on the shoulder and smiles. "Don't worry, son."

  I've seen the cargo manifest. We're just bringing standard supplies to the US-iCosmos Space Station. There are no military or spy agency payloads I'm aware of.

  But would I know? A
line item that says 35 x 55 x 20 cm box weighing 2.4 kilograms listed as "Replacement carbon dioxide sensor monitor" could be some NRO long-range LiDAR sensor designed to scan foreign satellites or something or other.

  "I'm proud of you, Dixon. This is what it's all about. You're going do to fine."

  That's the Halston Bennet I know, the man who trained me and dozens of others in the iCosmos program – the guy we secretly try to emulate.

  "Gentlemen, you all set?" says Stephanie Peterson as she enters our locker section. Technically part of the cargo, she's a NASA astronaut we're taking to the Station.

  An athletic, imposing former Air Force pilot, she's also the man I want to be when I grow up.

  "I was just explaining to Yoga Boy how things are going to be."

  "You just do whatever Halsy tells you." She gives me a wink.

  I want to ask her if she knows about "Halsy's" gun. But by the informal way those two talk to each other, I get the feeling that if he's up to something she'd either know, or be in on it.

  Yoga Boy. Ugh. Bennet once caught me doing some stretches before a pool dive and never let it go.

  He's a great instructor but never lets you forget who the real men are – the men and women who served in the military and were part of NASA's astronaut program. They were accepted from the best and the brightest. The twee poseurs like myself are just pretenders.

  "Astronauts to the press room," Renata calls to us from the door.

  "Let's go, Dixon," says Bennet as he gives me a friendly pat on the back. "Time to tell them what it feels like to be about to have your space cherry popped."

  It's disorienting the way he just can switch right into the avuncular instructor whose calm voice walked me through my underwater and zero-g training on our 727 Vomit Comet jet.

  It's hard to call it a "press room" when at the moment it's a mostly empty auditorium with just twelve internet bloggers.

  On a real mission, something besides a FedEx run, the room would be full. Today we get anyone with more than ten Twitter followers and nothing better to do until their parents come home.

  It's kind of embarrassing and nothing like the newsreel footage I grew up watching of astronaut press conferences.

  Vin Amin, the CEO of our company, insists that we do this before every launch.