by Dale Brown
All heads turned to Colonel Walker as he gave that last report. "Clean miss, General. Targets seven and eight appear to be . . . to be following an evasive course. Still at seventy miles range but closing slowly."
Jake Jefferson looked stunned as he watched his console. "Skipper, I don't understand it. One second, Thor number ten was heading straight to target number seven, and the next, it was gone. I've lost contact with it."
The realization was not long in coming. The fact that the targets were evading confirmed it. They were dealing with Elektrons . . . The Russians had launched two armed Elektron spaceplanes at them. . . .
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE
It was Colonel Ivan Voloshin who launched the first Bavinash Scimitar interceptor missile in space combat. Ironically, Silver Tower's crew would never realize the honor they did the Soviet pilot by launching a Thor missile at him.
Both Govorov and Voloshin had immediately detected all ten Thor missile launches. The Elektron's simple but highly effective infrared tracker and laser range finder had picked up the fast-moving devices easily and computed Scimitar launches against each Thor missile. But Govorov's orders had been to save as many of each Elektron's ten missiles as possible and not use them against a Thor missile unless attacked. directly. Voloshin's single Scimitar inissile followed the laser beam locked onto Thor number ten and destroyed it--Govorov guessed that the Scimitar hit the Thor missile directly, not just snagging on its large net.
But what especially counted was that Space Station Armstrong had just launched its last missile. It was now totally defenseless.... "Elektron One, this is Two," Voloshin called over the discrete VHF frequency. "I count ten Thors expended, General. " "Affirmative, Two. Deploy as planned and be prepared to attack on my command."
With the laser range finder locked onto the space station itself, Govorov began to maneuver his Elektron spaceplane above the station's keel, opposite from the free-flying Thor missile garage. Although he could not see him,
he knew that Voloshin would be steering his spaceplane directly opposite, about a kilometer away from the station, keeping the Elektrons two kilometers apart.
In this position both he and Voloshin could target exactly one-half of the station with their laser target designators. They could pick and choose their targets with high precision, with special emphasis on the space-based radar, solar-array control boxes, sensors and communications antennas. They would be sure to destroy the station's fighting capabilities before administering the final blow: an attack on the pressurized modules themselves. Killing the crewmen of Space Station Armstrong was not Govorov's plan, but he was determined to eliminate the orbiting platform as a threat. If American lives were lost in the process, he couldn't be blamed. The stations' crewinembers had forfeited any ordinary consideration
when they had chosen to intervene in Operation Feather. Nobody had invited them. Now they would learn the price for their actions, and pay it....
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
"Anything we can do?" Moyer asked from behind his spacesuit helmet. The strain in his voice was evident. "Whatever they're going to hit us with," Saint-Michael
said, "we don't have to sit here and let ourselves get shot up." He unstrapped himself and moved over to the station's attitude-control panel. "Everyone, evacuate the station. Get aboard Enterprise. Now." "What's the plan, Skipper?" Marks asked him. "I'm going to deorbit the station, use every last bit of fuel to slow us down so the station will reenter the atmosphere. They may try to destroy this station, or they might try to occupy it. Either way, they're not going to get it. I'll jettison the lifeboat just before the deorbit bum. Let's just hope they won't fire on a lifeboat. . . . " ,"There's got to be another way-" "They're calling the tune now, Chief," Saint-Michael said bitterly. "We dance to it or pay the consequences." He looked around the module, at Moyer, Walker, Marks and Jefferson. "There'll be other times. . . . Our job right now is to survive. And that means getting your butts on the shuttle in the next three minutes."
A few minutes earlier Ann's chief worry had been what Saint-Michael would do when he found out she'd countermanded his orders and not gone over to the Enterprise. There just wasn't the time to explain why she thought she could get Skybolt running again, and she suspected that even if she'd had the time, even if the rush of events hadn't forced him into making a quick decision, she'd still have big trouble convincing him the laser was worth another try. She'd cried wolf too often, failing when it counted to get him to listen because too many of her earlier assessments of Skybolt's capabilities had proved overly optimistic.
Well, let the general get steamed. There were bigger problems to worry about now. As she worked to reprogram the proper relays to the MHD reactor, her tracking indicator told what was happening out in space.... Two of the Gorgons---no, not really Gorgons but some sort of Russian spacecraft-had passed through Armstrong's'Thor missile barrage untouched and were moving closer to the station. It became harder and harder to work the keyboard and test the last of the circuits as fear caught hold of her.
She knew that the Skybolt laser was now the station's only defense against the two blips she saw moving ever closer on
her tracking indicator. She knew it and yet she also knew that she was minutes away from having the laser ready. She started a prayer, stopped. No fair, any last-minute invocation of the deity; it was up to her now. You asked for it, so get it done, she taunted herself, and once more she was able to
focus all her concentration on the job at hand. . . .
ELEKTRON ONE SPACEPLANE
"Request permission to open fire, sir," Voloshin radioed. "Stand by, Elektron Two," Govorov said. "We'll begin in one minute. Do not attack the shuttle. Repeat, do not attack. They'll use the shuttle to evacuate." "An American space shuttle would be a nice prize, General." "There is only one prize here, Voloshin. Armstrong. Remember that.."
There was silence on the frequency for a few moments, then: "General, do you think they'll try to scuttle the station?" "It's what I would do. A remote-controlled or timedthruster bum could be set up to do the job after they've evacuated." Govorov checked the digital Vhronometer on his instrument panel. "Status check, Elektron Two."
The reply came a few moments later, "Status posibve, Elektron Lead. Oxygen, twenty liters. Fuel', sixty percent." "Lead has twenty-two liters oxygen and sixty-two percent fuel. One hour until we need to begin deorbit or rghdezvous with Mir. " Mir was the Soviet's orbiting module, a far cruder version of Silver Tower that had limited surveillance capabilities and no offensive or defensive weaponry. In recent years it had been used principally as a site for astronomical experimentsand as a refueling depot. "We'll commence our attack in two minutes, whether or not the station has been evacuated. "
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
"Enterprise shows ready for crew transfer, General," Jefferson reported. "Very well. Signal JCS and Control that we'll transfer to Enterprise immediately." Jefferson nodded and began switching his comin panel to the proper air-to-ground frequency when a new voice came over the intercom: "General, this is A .M.11
Saint-Michael shifted toward his comm panel. "Ann? Where the hell have you been?" "In the Skybolt module. "Get out of there, now. We're evacuating the station." "I only need ten more minutes-" "For what?"
Just then the loud hum of the interphone's CALL override blocked out Ann's reply. "General, this is Will. Come up on interphone four." "What the hell-? Ann, I want you in the command module on the dduble. Move out." He switched his comm, panel to the discrete closed-circuit interphone channel. "All right, Jerrod, what is it?" "A way out. Maybe ...... "Don't keep us in suspense-" "Baker and Yemana are outside the shuttle, General. They're working their way down to the spare Thor missiles." "They're what? ''' "Baker came up with a way to manually activate the missiles. He and Yemana are going to unstow two of the missiles, p6 int them at those Russians, and cook 'em off." "Goddamn, Jerrod, I didn't authorize that. It's too risky. Once the Russians see-" "General," Will interrupted. "It'll
work. Those spaceplanes are right on top of you, but they're on the opposite side from the spare Thors on the underside of the keel. By the time they find out what's happening it'll be too late. "
Saint-Michael shook his head. Suddenly everyone in his command had turned into a damn space cowboy. He was losing control. He turned toward Moyer standing in his space-
suit near the hatch to the research module. "Move down to the connecting tunnel between engineering and the storage module, on the double. See if you can signal Baker and Yemana. Try to tell them to get their butts back on board Enterprise." On the discrete interphone channel he said, "It's a damned stupid idea, Jen-od. Once those Russians see us fooling with the Thor missiles they'll blow us all away. Order Baker and Yemana back." "Sir, I think we should at least go out fighting-" "You think? I'm still the commander of this station and I want those men ordered back. Do it."
There was a short pause, then the reluctant reply: "Yes, sir.
But it was already too late. Moyer called over stationwide interphone. "General,
I can see one of them. He's made it to the spare Thor racks.
Wearing large MMUs, the manne d maneuvering units, on their backs, Baker and Yemana unstowed two Thor missiles, refrigerator-sized cylinders with dozens of arms sticking out of each side. After the missiles were hauled out of their containers Baker opened an access panel on one side of each missile and activated a series of switches that bypassed the SBR controls and made the missiles autonomous. Next he removed a maintenance access-cover on each missile and manually activated the Thor's radar-seeker head. Finally he and Yemana helped each other to attach the missiles to brackets on their MMU cylinders, and together both men slowly, carefully edged their way underneath opposite sides of the central station keel and maneuvered the seeker-heads of their missiles around the edge of the keel and up toward where they had last seen the Soviet spaceplanes.
Their only, shared radio transmission came after they had maneuvered their bulky missiles around the keel and aimed them at the point in the sky where the Soviet spaceplanes had been parked. Yemana put a finger on his MMU thruster, took a deep breath, and called, "Now."
Yemana jetted forward six feet, stopped and, swung his missile up. Ironically, since the SBR antenna on his side had been blasted away he had a perfectly unobstructed shot at one
of the Soviet spaceplanes, which he could see as a dim oblong shape against the backdrop of stars. He waited a few moments until a tiny flashing green light on the removed maintenance access panel illuminated, then hit a button on the engine control panel, unclipped the missile and pulled back his right-hand MMU thruster controller. He had jetted only ten feet away from the Thor missile when it was engine ignited. . . .
Baker had to move forward a few extra feet to clear the large SBR antennas on his side, but it took only a few extra seconds. Then he swung the front of the Thor missile upward, twisting the hand thruster controllers to counteract the huge inertia of the Thor missiles. It took a few moments longer for him than for Yemana, but Baker soon had his Thor missile pointing right where the Soviet spaceplane had been parked. . . .
Except it was no longer there. . . . "General, missiles pointed right at us," came the startled call from Colonel Voloshin. The Soviet pilot couldn't believe what he saw: an American astronaut maneuvering a Thor missile around in open space. The sight would have been merely weird if it weren't such a clear warning of imminent attack.
Govorov reacted instantly, pulling his Elektron spaceplane straight up ninety degrees and applying full throttle. As an added measure he overpressurized one of the small tail-thrusters of his Elektron spaceplane, then cut the thruster off, sending a cloud of monomethyl hydrazine rocket fuel out behind the spaceplane. In seconds he had darted several hundred meters away from the huge American space station.
The Thor missile ran straight and true. Yemana foughi the sudden back-blast of the Tlior's main thruster and quickly regained control of his MMU. He watched, fascinated, as the missile's steel-mesh snare began to unfurl and quickly expand to nearly its full one-hundred-foot diameter. There was no way it was going to miss....
Except at that moment the Soviet spaceplane heeled sharply upward, and literally in the blink of an eye it was gone. The Tlior missile ran straight toward the spot where the spaceplane had been, but it made no attempt to turn upward to pursue the fleeing Soviet intruder. Although Yemana. had no way of
knowing, the missile's radar-seeker head had locked onto the dense cloud of hydrazine fuel. When it reached the slowly dispersing cloud, the missile computed zero distance to its target and detonated its one-thousand-pound
flak warhead.
Yemana saw the flash of the exploding warhead but saw or felt nothing else. The missile had exploded less than three hundred feet away, sending five hundred pounds of metal -chips flying in all directions. Unimpeded by any obstruction or even the resistance of gravity, the chips easily found the astronaut and tore through his body, detonating the MMU's pressurized tanks and adding their explosive fury to the carnage. Yemana's ragged corpse was propelled by the explosion's shockwave out into space. "General, the missile has exploded behind you. I'm beginning my attack."
Govorov kept the throttle of his Elektron at full thrust until he heard Voloshin's message, then selected the roll thrusters and did a fast four--g- dive back down toward the station. He heard a few pings of metal against the silica tiles of his Elektron but ignored it. He saw nothing now but his quarry in the sights of his Scimitar missile-launcher....
Will and Sontag saw the flash of light and heard the rumbling explosion of the firstThor missile. "Yemana. Baker. Where are you?"
Sontag unstrapped and quickly propelled himself between the two flight deck seats and across to the aft crew station. He pressed his face to the windows facing into the cargo hold and scanned the sky behind Enterprise toward the center keel and lower pressurized modules. "I see one of them," Sontag called out cross-cockpit. "I don't know if it's Baker or Yemana. . . . "
Baker saw the Soviet spaceplane almost on top of him, but there was no time to reacquire his target. He tried to maneuver his MMU down and over to aim the Thor missile's sensor at the spaceplane, but in his rush to steer the missile he activated the MMU thruster controls too rapidly and sent himself into a violent forward spin. When he tried to apply opposite thrust to correct his spin, the Thor irdssile broke five
from the attach point on his MMU, and he had to watch Silver Tower's last hope for defense spin away toward earth.
Colonel Voloshin saw the flash from the first exploding missile, and the sudden glare made him furious. He immediately activated his laser target designator and centered the aiming reticle on the first target in view: the white-suited body of Dr. Kevin Baker just beginning to get his spinning MMU under control. He squeezed the trigger. A single Scimitar missile ejected itself from the rotary launcher in Elektron Two's cargo bay. Its tiny rocket engine ignited. The missile's seeker-head followed the reflected laser energy from Elektron Two straight to its target.
The laser seeker-head broke apart on Kevin Baker's MMU chest-mounted control pack, but the hypervelocity Scimitar missile kept on going. Right behind the seeker head was a nonexplosive arrow-pointed warhead made of an alloy of molybdenum and depleted uranium, designed to penetrate the thickest armor-Baker's chest offered no resistance to the missile, which was now traveling at well over a mile a second. The missile pierced Baker's body, his MMU, went completely through the storage module fifty yards behind Baker, and through the outer bull of Skybolt's MHD reactor before deflecting off one of the four-foot-thick MHD reactor walls and off into space. "Oh ... my ... God .
Will strained around and saw Sontag move back slowly from the cargo bay windows. "What is it, Rich ... ?" "One of them . . . oh, God . . . they shot him point-blank with a missile. " "Can we retrieve him? Can you see where he is?"
Sontag forced himself to look out the window once again. The space-suited figure was spread-eagle, in nearly the same position as
before, but this time with a cloud of unrecognizable debris floating all around him. The body started to revolve, as though at the end of an invisible noose, and Sontag could see the softball-size hole in the corpse.... "Enterprise, this is Saint-Michael. Jerrod, what's happened?"
Will clicked open the ship-to-station interphone. "General, Baker and Yemana . . . -they're dead."
A pause. "You sure?"
Will didn't answer,instead put his head down on his chest and hammered on the front glare shield, realizing now what he had done....
Lieutenant General Govorov could identify only one possible source of the unexpected missile attack: the Thor missile garage tethered beneath the station.
He quickly activated his laser designator and placed the aiming reticle on the neutral particle-beam projector mounted beneath the garage. He fired two missiles into the garage, creating a huge fireworks display of sparks and secondary explosions that finally caused the Thor garage to break free of its steel tether and spin away from the station.
He reestablished his original observation position above the space station and keyed his microphone. "Elektron Two, report. I I
"Status green, Lead," Voloshin replied. "Two American cosmonauts carrying what appeared to be Thor missiles ...... 'Cosmonauts?" 'Affirmative. I can't see first one, he was close to the explosion of the Thor missile he launched at you. Second one has been ... dispatched. I'm maneuvering to begin attack." "Acknowledged. Maneuver back to preplanned position and report when ready to attack. I am maneuvering back into position.
As Voloshin watched Govorov pull his fighter into a wide turn around the space station, the younger pilot thought about the wisdom of waiting to get back in position. No, the time to attack was now-before the Americans tried something else. He pulled his Elektron up twenty degrees, pointing it at the center of the station, and activated his laser designator.