Fatal Orbit

by Tom Grace

  As they stared into the empty chamber, their thoughts wrestling with an elusive mathematical foe, Johnston entered the torpedo room, followed by a couple of enlisted men from the galley. He waited for a moment, but neither Grin nor Kilkenny seemed to notice his arrival.

  “Looking for a glimpse of the future in that crystal ball of yours?” Johnston asked.

  “Oh, sorry, Cap’n. We didn’t see you come in.”

  “Obviously. I must say, gentlemen, you both look like something we’d scrape out of the bilge. When was the last time either of you got some sleep?”

  “I took a fifteen-minute nap about ten hours ago,” Grin replied.

  “Pitiful. Look, I work my crew hard, but they still get eight hours in the sack. Sleep deprivation can kill a sub just as easily as a torpedo. I notice you two didn’t make it to the captain’s table tonight, so I had the boys whip up something to go. The coffee’s decaf.”

  “Thanks,” Kilkenny said.

  Johnston turned to the enlisted men, who’d finished setting out some sandwiches and a pot of coffee. “You’re dismissed.”

  The crewmen nodded and left.

  “Dig in, gentlemen,” Johnston ordered as he poured himself a cup.

  Virginia’s captain sipped his coffee and looked into the empty chamber. Submarine warfare could accurately be described as a game of Blind Man’s Bluff, where opponents could hear, but not see each other. These two civilians had brought a bit of technological wizardry onboard, a glimpse of a technology that might one day provide the U.S. Navy with an immense advantage over its adversaries.

  “So, where are you at with this? Can you get it running again?”

  “Running?” Kilkenny replied. “Sure, but for only short periods of time. Our setup wasn’t designed to handle the amount of acoustic data we’re pulling out of your sensors.”

  “All right, but can you fix it so it can run full-time?”

  Grin nodded. “It’s a math and memory problem—Tough, but solvable.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, you did help us tag all three of the subs we were sent out to find.”

  “At least we earned our keep,” Kilkenny said.

  “More than that. I’m putting my report together on this experiment. Despite technical difficulties, I’m convinced acoustic daylighting is an asset the navy absolutely must acquire. If I had any say in the matter, you’d get whatever you needed to finish the job.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA

  AUGUST 10

  “NASA is definitely going after the ZetaComm satellite,” Moug reported.

  “When?” Skye asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. ZetaComm would be better off collecting on the insurance and building a new one. Bringing this one back for repair and a second launch—it’s just throwing good money after bad.”

  Skye leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, pondering this development.

  “Regardless if it’s a smart-money move or not, they’re doing it,” Moug said. “Maybe NASA still feels it has something to prove.”

  “If they retrieve that satellite, what they might prove could shut this company down and send the both of us to jail. I just hope Zeus-1 has enough fuel left to take care of this.”

  “Are you going to make another pass at the satellite?”

  Skye shook her head. “A few more holes won’t stop them from picking it up.”

  Moug studied his employer carefully. In the years that he’d been with her, he’d known C. J. Skye to be a person who never shrank from doing what had to be done, no matter how unpleasant.

  “Owen, we always knew it might come to this someday,” Skye said.

  “Another shuttle,” Moug sighed. “This could shut NASA down for good.”

  “They’ll recover,” Skye replied confidently. “They always do. On the plus side, it’ll keep them out of commercial launches for a while.”

  “And we’ll be there to pick up the slack. It’s decided then?”

  Skye nodded.

  “I’ll get to work on collecting the data for our intercept.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII

  AUGUST 10

  “Is this one of the guys responsible for tracking my boat?” Granskog asked sternly as Kilkenny entered the paneled conference room.

  Commander Mike Granskog stood beside a long oak conference table that was covered with large naval charts—plots of submarine movements tracked by Virginia. The wiry commander’s balding pate stretched tightly over the top of his head like a drumskin, the slack bunched in thick ripples on his furrowed brow.

  At the head of the table sat Rear Admiral Jack Dawson, Kilkenny’s former CO and the man currently in charge of Naval Special Warfare. When Kilkenny left the service, only the temples of Dawson’s close-cropped Afro showed any sign of gray, but just two years after achieving flag rank, a field of salt-and-pepper gray had spread across the admiral’s head like kudzu.

  “He is,” Dawson replied, leaning back in his chair with the satisfied smile of a coach whose underdog team had just pulled off an upset.

  “How the hell did you do this?” Granskog demanded. “You figure out a way to hack into the fleet’s computers after we returned to port?”

  “Sir,” Kilkenny answered, “I can assure you the Virginia’s plots are legitimate. Once we located your boat in the exercise area, we were able to keep tabs on it most of the time.”

  “Mike, calm down,” Dawson said. “The means used to track your boat is experimental, and, for the moment, compartmented.”

  “I drive a boomer for a living, so I’m naturally averse to the idea of anybody being able to follow me when I’m at sea. Hiding at depth is what keeps me and my men alive and able to do our job.”

  “I understand,” Dawson replied. “SEALs work under the cover of darkness, too. What Kilkenny is working on for us is a way to increase a sub’s situational awareness without compromising its stealthiness.”

  “Well, I’m all for that. It just would’ve been nice to know there was a fourth boat involved in the exercise.”

  “Back in the bad old days, would the Russians have let you know something like that?”

  Granskog almost snapped back an answer, but quickly realized it would be better to keep his mouth shut.

  “That’ll be all.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Granskog replied.

  With a quick exchange of nods, Granskog departed.

  “He didn’t seem too happy about the project,” Kilkenny said.

  “Mike’s a damn good sub driver. He’s just pissed ’cuz Virginia tagged him during the exercise. Cost him a case of Bombay Sapphire. By the way, where’s your buddy Grin?”

  “Sacked out. We burned a lot of midnight oil over the past few days.”

  “It shows. You two did a good job out there.”

  “Thanks. I think we proved acoustic daylight on a sub is doable, but it’s going to take a lot more work to turn it into a reliable onboard system.”

  “Nobody expected a flawless performance first time out of the chute—I just wanted you to prove the concept. You did. Now the navy can talk real dollars with that consortium you work for and really figure out what it’ll take to rig our ships for acoustic daylight.”

  “My father’ll be pleased to hear that,” Kilkenny said.

  “He was. I spoke with him shortly after Virginia pulled into port.”

  “Bet he’s already got the lawyers and accountants churning out the paperwork.”

  Dawson smiled. “I don’t doubt it. He’s also agreed to loan you and Grin to the navy for a couple more weeks of evaluation.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry. By evaluation, I mean dog and pony show. I want to take some of the brass out on the Virginia and let them see this thing in action.”

  “And get a few more big guns backing you up,” Kilkenny said.

  “All part of the game.” Dawson leaned back in h
is leather chair with the back of his head cradled in the palms of his hands. “And speaking of games, just a reminder that security’s sphincter factor is going to jump by about a factor of ten in a couple days. We got company coming.”

  “Company?” Kilkenny said, puzzled.

  “The Chinese. They’re running a couple of their Russian-built destroyers down our side of the Pacific on a goodwill tour. Pearl is their last stop before sailing back east part of their reward for yanking the leash a bit on North Korea.”

  “I’ll pass the word to Grin.”

  “Good, because we got your project bottled up real nice right now, and I’d kind of like to keep it that way for as long as possible.”

  Kilkenny nodded. “Loose lips sink ships.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LIBERTY

  AUGUST 11

  Sixteen hours after undocking from the ISS for her return flight home, Liberty drew close to the NRO’s damaged satellite. Oculus was spinning slowly, end over end—a billion-dollar piece of orbital debris.

  Pete looked through the upper windows at their quarry. “She sure didn’t get very far.”

  “At least it’s not our fault,” Caroline replied.

  “What do you think, Pete?” Lundy asked.

  “I think it’s going to be a pain in the ass. If we can’t stabilize that spin, the show’s over.”

  “We can’t go at it from underneath,” Caroline said, “but look at the way it’s rotating. It’s all in one plane.”

  Tosh studied the tumbling satellite carefully. “She’s right, it’s spinning like a fan. We come at it from the bottom, we get all chopped up, but if we pull Liberty around in front—”

  “—we can get a clean shot at its center of gravity,” Lundy said. “If we get you close, can you grapple it?”

  “Probably,” Pete replied, “but I won’t know till I get there.”

  “Good enough for me. Suit up, you two. Tosh and I’ll bring the bus around.”

  After the spacewalkers had floated down to the middeck, Lundy nodded to Tosh. The pilot initiated a program uploaded by Jesup to Liberty’s computer as part of an in-flight data upgrade. The program instantly deactivated the link between the orbiter’s closed-circuit television system and the communications system.

  “Liberty, this is Houston,” Capcom’s voice crackled in Lundy and Tosh’s headsets.

  “This is Liberty,” Lundy replied, expecting the call. “Go ahead, Houston.”

  “INCO is showing a fault in your CCTV system.”

  “Checking on that, Houston.” Lundy and Tosh went through the motions of checking for a system fault. “Roger, Houston. CCTV downlink is offline. We still show onboard CCTV active. Are we still a go on satellite retrieval?”

  “Roger, Liberty. You are still a go,” Jesup confirmed. “You’ll just have to do without us looking over your shoulder.”

  Caroline stood in the payload bay, Liberty’s nose pointed down at the Earth below. The orbiter’s robotic arm extended straight up from the port side of the bay, aimed like a spear at the slowly spinning satellite. Pete stood at the end of the arm, his feet secured to a small metal platform, his arms outstretched.

  Tosh piloted the orbiter while Lundy watched the approach through the upper observation windows, making minute adjustments along the way. Though similar, this approach was far more difficult than docking with the ISS.

  “How’s it look, Pete?” Lundy asked.

  “Right on the R-Bar.”

  Hanging out in space, Pete was moving toward the satellite at one-tenth of a foot per second. To keep from getting dizzy, he kept his eyes focused on the center point of the spinning satellite. Oculus wasn’t rotating very quickly, but it still had several times more mass than the spacewalker.

  “Five feet,” Pete estimated, calling out the distance for Tosh. “Three … two … and hold.”

  Tosh fired the maneuvering thrusters and brought the orbiter to a dead stop. The satellite was now spinning within arm’s reach. Pete’s body tensed like a snake preparing to strike. In his mind, he tried to slow the satellite down into still images, looking for the perfect spot to latch on.

  He lunged forward. One hand struck the flat side of the satellite, the other missed entirely. The bulky suit had thrown off his timing. The satellite swept around and a piece of metal framing struck his wrist.

  “Shit,” he cursed, recoiling.

  “You okay?” Caroline asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied bitterly. “I’m going for another try.”

  On his second attempt, Pete grabbed hold of the main framing struts. The satellite continued rotating and his arms turned with it, his left forearm crossing over his right like a twist-tie. The torque strained at his wrists and shoulders and he felt himself being pulled out of the foot restraints. He held on until he had to let go. Beads of sweat covered his forehead as he gulped for air.

  “I think you slowed it down,” Caroline said.

  “A little.”

  Pete’s third grab slowed the rotation even further, and his fourth arrested the spin completely. He held tightly on to the satellite, panting, afraid that if he let go it might somehow begin rotating again.

  “You okay?” Caroline asked.

  “Just a little beat up. Preparing to secure the satellite to the RMS.”

  Pete removed his foot restraints from the end of the robotic arm, then swung himself around the side of the satellite. “I’m clear, Tosh. Go ahead and snag it.”

  Tosh switched on the camera at the end of the RMS and saw a clear view of Oculus’s foil-covered side. He slowly panned the camera until he saw the grappling point on the satellite’s frame. Slowly, he guided the arm forward until it lightly touched his target, then he grabbed on tight.

  “Good latch,” Pete reported. “You can reel it in.”

  “Hang on, Pete. I wouldn’t want to leave you out there.”

  Sailing 220 miles over Asia, Zeus-1 waited, its elliptical orbit carefully adjusted to bring it into range of the shuttle at precisely this moment. The spacecraft was nearing perigee, the point when it was closest to Earth, barely 180 miles above the surface. Roughly the same altitude as Liberty.

  As Liberty soared above Malaysia, Tosh carefully retracted the RMS back toward the payload bay. Pete worked his way down from the middle of the errant satellite toward the propulsion unit. There, he found a charred, gaping wound in the craft’s side.

  “I can confirm that this bird had a big blowout.”

  “What do you see?” Lundy asked.

  Pete moved closer to the damaged area. “There’s a huge hole in the skin of the propulsion unit and the metal looks scorched. Something must’ve sparked in the one of the tanks when they switched on the booster and set the whole thing off.”

  When the satellite was twenty feet from the payload bay, Tosh momentarily stopped retracting the RMS.

  “Hang on, Pete,” Tosh said. “I gotta line the bird up before I bring her in.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  Looking at the charred wound, Pete had no sense of the movement as he rotated with the satellite. He pulled his head just over the opening and gazed inside the craft. The spherical oxygen fuel tank was mostly intact, save for the rupture in the lower hemisphere. The tank’s aluminum skin peeled back in a radial pattern around the opening.

  Must’ve been a weak spot in the metal, he thought.

  The symmetry of the blast opening struck Pete as odd—it was too perfect. As he stared into the hole, he caught a flicker of movement. Another spot of light whizzed by. Stars.

  The two objects Zeus-1 had been tracking gradually merged into one. The killer satellite was now ahead of the orbiter, the spacecraft’s black-tiled underside an inviting target at such close range, its altitude nearly matching that of its prey. Gyros spinning, Zeus-1 took steady aim.

  Liberty’s heat-resistant ceramic tiles offered little protection against the focused intensity of the high-energy laser. The beam ripped through th
e equipment bay into the middeck, where it narrowly missed the returning leader of the previous ISS expedition. Passing through the flight-deck, the beam severed Lundy’s forearm, vaporizing flesh and bone.

  “Son of a—” Lundy said, reaching for his damaged limb.

  Before the shuttle commander could complete his pained expression, the laser drilled through the top of the crew compartment and passed, somewhat diminished, into space. As quickly as it had struck, the bright pulse was gone.

  Warning alarms blared, combining with the shrill whine of the pressurized atmosphere escaping through two deadly breaches. Blood oozed out between Lundy’s fingers and a stream of crimson droplets was drawn into the escaping flow of air.

  Tosh turned away from the aft station, his eyes following the blood trail from Lundy’s arm to the hole in the ceiling. A second blast from Zeus-1 struck the pilot in the abdomen before exiting through the starboard upper observation window.

  The temperature inside the crew compartment plunged as the air grew thin. Two of the returning astronauts fought to plug the holes in the middeck while the returning ISS commander scrambled through the interdeck access.

  “We are losing atmosphere!” the balding cosmonaut shouted as he emerged onto the flight-deck, his voice barely audible in the din.

  Then he saw what had happened to the Liberty’s commander and pilot. Tosh floated in a fetal position, doubled over in pain and coughing up blood. Lundy, one arm useless and bleeding, was frantically searching for something to stem two of the breaches in Liberty’s hull. The cosmonaut raced to his aid.

  “Oh my God!” Caroline shouted.

  Liberty’s warning alarm rang loudly over the spacewalkers’ headsets. Pete looked up from the damaged satellite and saw two gray-white plumes spouting from Liberty’s brow.

  A third shot struck the aft fuselage, lancing the spherical tank containing Liberty’s supply of liquefied oxygen. The rear of the orbiter disintegrated in the fury of two back-to-back explosions as first the oxygen, then the hydrogen detonated. The nozzles from the three main engines spiraled away like paper cups caught in a gale.

  Shards from the exploding tanks sprayed through the payload bay. Several struck Caroline, slicing through her helmet and spacesuit, while others were embedded in the payload bay doors and the airlock. She died almost instantly.