Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  Pressing the tool’s on-off switch twice to verify proper operation, Diane unlocked the exterior hatch. Having secured the power tool to a six-foot-long woven line that she clipped to her EMU suit, Diane used the HHMU to move away from the D-shaped opening, past the modules, and toward the long, thin structural framework that ended in one set of solar panels.

  Rapidly exhausting the compressed oxygen inside the handheld propulsion unit, Diane grabbed a tubular member of the truss assembly. Painted black, the tube—made of aluminum-clad graphite epoxy—was both lighter and relatively stronger than metal. Diane hugged it with her left arm while strapping the HHMU to the side of the EMU suit.

  Crawling inside the tubular framework, Diane reached a black tube running all the way from a set of solar panels, still a hundred feet away, to the center of the station. The contents of the tube—thick electrical cables—fed the massive array of nickel-hydrogen batteries and the power converter that provided the GPATS module weapons system with the necessary energy to generate the destructive chemical reaction. The battery also fed the computer system that controlled the warheads and their launching units.

  Pulling on the woven line, Diane clasped the power saw in her gloves and turned it on. The serrated wheel began its silent, high-velocity spin. Diane anchored herself between adjacent beams before pressing the round blade against the side of the tube, immediately slicing through the soft composite material and into the thick wires, which bathed her in a cloud of sizzling debris. On Earth, such action would have resulted in a cloud of sparks, but in the vacuum of space, the intensely hot particles had no oxygen to burn.

  Her EMU gloves insulating her from the 208 volts of electricity generated by the solar panels, Diane made several cuts to achieve a clean separation. Satisfied, she crawled back out of the framework and moved toward where the large laser gun stood atop the GPATs module.

  Twenty-five

  Sergei Dudayev heard another alarm coming from the GPATS module and instinctively pushed himself out of the Hab Module, through Unity, and into GPATS, where one of the computer screens at the front of the module told him of an EPS recharge system failure. The Electrical Power System no longer received a charge from the solar panels, and had automatically switched to the battery packs, which had a charge life of thirty hours—much less if he had to use the laser system.

  Cursing, Sergei floated back into Unity and through the connecting hatch to the cupola, where he watched the American astronaut floating by the base of the laser gun.

  No! Not the laser!

  Returning to the GPATS module, Sergei made up his mind and pressed the launch button for the selected warhead. Its destination: the Russian troops on the border with Chechnya.

  Sergei wished he could release the remaining warheads, but he had to take care of the American first. Without the laser the station would be defenseless against another attack.

  Floating back into Unity, Sergei used the remote actuators to close the outer hatch before repressurizing the hyperbaric airlock. He opened the inner hatch and floated toward one of two one-piece AMEX AX-5 Advanced Hard Suits, made of aluminum and containing no fabric or soft parts, except for the joints, enhancing mobility and comfort for the wearer. The suit had integrated helmet, gloves, and boots.

  Entering the suit from a hatch in the rear, Sergei slipped in both legs first, followed by the upper part of his body. Once inside, he backed himself against a Self-Propelled Life Support System backpack, which perfectly covered the square hatch opening, creating a seal after the magnetic latches all around the joint snapped in place. Pressing two buttons on his chest-mounted display and control panel pressurized the AX-5 to twelve PSI—one of the advantages of the new suit since it eliminated the need to prebreathe pure oxygen prior to an EVA.

  The sound of his own breathing ringing in his ears, Sergei depressurized the compartment and opened the hatch. He could waste no time. The American had already disabled the GPATS battery-charging system and was now about to sabotage the laser.

  The AX-5 integrated thruster system—a simplified version of the MMU—consisted of sixteen compressed nitrogen jets instead of the MMU’s twenty-four. Operating two joystick-type controls on his chest-mounted panel, Sergei fired the aft-facing thrusters to propel himself away from the station and get a bird’s eye view of his enemy.

  Rotating himself in the direction of Diane, Sergei once more fired the thrusters. This time, however, he did it for nearly ten seconds, giving himself a forward velocity of around five feet per second.

  Twenty-six

  Diane Williams had just finished cutting the array of cables that controlled the sophisticated servomotors of the gimbal-mounted laser gun when she noticed an external door opening on the side of the GPATS module.

  She cringed when a single sleek cylinder, roughly fifteen feet in length by three in diameter, slowly left the station after being pushed away by its spring-loaded release mechanism, designed to get the warhead away from the station before firing its reentry booster.

  With less than ten minutes of oxygen left, and with the warhead floating farther away from the station, Diane decided to go after the warhead while it was still floating near the GPATS module.

  Switching off the power saw and letting it float at the end of the woven line, Diane reached for the HHMU, but her hands never got there.

  Twenty-seven

  Sergei rammed the American female astronaut at a relative velocity of nearly five feet per second. The blow, cushioned by the thick aluminum suit and also by the high-pressure environment around Sergei’s body, barely bothered him or his heavy high-technology garment, but it sent the American tumbling out of control toward the framework to the right of the U.S. Laboratory Module.

  Twenty-eight

  The powerful blow took Diane Williams entirely by surprise. Her forehead crashed against the polycarbonate plastic helmet before the Earth and the station flashed around her. In one of the flashes, she caught a glimpse of what had crashed against her. The Russian terrorist had suited up and come after her in one of the rugged AX-5 suits.

  She finished that thought when another blow, this one to the back of her head, nearly knocked her out as she smashed into the tubular framework near the … where in the hell am I? She pulled free of the stiff latticework just to be welcomed by a foot shoved against her chest-mounted display.

  “Bastard!” she muttered in between breaths as her legs got caught in the crossbeams and batons of the framework. Blinking rapidly to prevent her tears from separating from her eyes and floating inside her helmet, Diane saw the Russian thrusting himself upward for several feet before an expulsion of compressed nitrogen gas from the upward-facing thrusters drove him back down at great speed. This time both feet stabbed her midriff, hammering her farther into the latticework.

  Catching her breath, Diane feared that her suit would rip at any moment. The warning lights on her EMU’s chest mounted display told her that Sergei had already damaged something, but with her body lodged in the framework at such unnatural angle she needed time to free herself.

  Struggling to remain focused, Diane pulled on the woven line, but before her fingers could grab the power saw, Sergei descended on her once more. Tightening her stomach muscles, Diane took the blow better than her suit, which emitted a high-pitched noise that told her she was losing pressurization.

  Sergei floated himself up once more. Diane began to feel dizzy and lightheaded as her suit began to lose life-supporting pressure. Fortunately, her prebreathing had removed all nitrogen from her bloodstream, preventing the bends caused by a sudden drop in external body pressure. Quickly, she turned the emergency oxygen knob fully open to maintain an endurable level of pressure.

  With the image of the Russian’s boots coming down on her again, Diane Williams switched on the power saw and firmly held it with both hands against the approaching boots. Every ounce of strength left flowed into her arms, locked at the elbow. She could not afford another blow. Her EMU would not take it. She had to s
top him.

  The Russian landed over her. Diane drove the spinning blade into the base of his left boot, letting the serrated edge sink deep into the aluminum, creating a cloud of sparkling white debris.

  Twenty-nine

  Sergei noticed that the American held out her arms to prevent him from crashing against the EMU. He sensed the resisting motion and got ready to propel himself back up when he felt something strange. For a moment he wasn’t sure what it was. It sounded like a malfunctioning fan, or a grinding noise of some sort.

  Suddenly, his suit’s pressure began to drop, and a burning pain from his heel reached his brain, telling Sergei that the American had pierced the AX-5. Instantly commanding the thrusters to push him back up, he noticed the white cloud surrounding Diane Williams, and he also noticed the object in her hands.

  A power saw!

  His suit’s pressure dropping rapidly below two PSI, Sergei bent in pain from the millions of nitrogen bubbles expanding in his bloodstream. His joints ached to a climax and the cramps in his stomach and intestines scourged him. He could no longer control his body. He was paralyzed, unable to make the smallest movement, except for his eyes, which he focused on the chest-mounted display that told him that he should already be dead. A moment later he passed away.

  Thirty

  As the limp body of the Russian floated away from her, Diane Williams used her hands to free her right leg, caught in between two crossbeams. That gave her the leeway to position her body so that it became easy to release her other leg from a pair of tubes running along the length of the latticework.

  Feeling dizzy, Diane used the HHMU strapped to the side of her backpack unit to move toward the airlock’s open hatch. Finding it harder to breathe, she pushed herself through the opening, forcing her mind to remain focused. Her fingers groped around the control panel on the opposite wall, managing to engage the servomotor to close the hatch before pressurizing the compartment.

  She fumbled with the visor assembly latch for a few seconds, finally removing it, letting it float overhead while releasing the helmet joining ring. The locking mechanism snapped, and she pushed the clear hemisphere up.

  A breath of air. She exhaled and breathed deeply again, coughing, inhaling once more.

  A distant rumble brought her gaze toward the airlock’s porthole. The missile’s thruster fired to commence Earth reentry. Regretting having disabled the laser, Diane removed her EMU suit, leaving on only the cooling garment as she unlocked and opened the hatch leading to Unity and the cupola beyond it, where she engaged the K-band antenna.

  Thirty-one

  Jake Cohen sat upright when Diane William’s voice crackled through the overhead speakers in the Flight Control Room at Johnson Space Center.

  “Houston, come in, over.”

  “Houston here. What in the world is going on up there?”

  “Houston, the station is under control, but we have a serious problem. The terrorist managed to fire one warhead. It just started its deorbit burn.”

  “Stand by,” Jake said over the radio, before calling NORAD to advise them of the situation. He then contacted Andrews Air Force Base to call back the F-22s. The terrorist aboard the International Space Station had been neutralized. The Air Force would try to halt the attack, but Jake was warned that it might be too late already.

  The veteran CapCom slowly hung up the phone before reaching for the mike in front of him. He had to warn Diane of the possibility of ANSAT missiles heading her way.

  “Houston here.”

  “I’m still here, Houston, go ahead.”

  Jake struggled to remain as professional as he could, particularly when all eyes in the Flight Control Room were on him. “Situation report?”

  “Just accessed the station through Unity. Currently performing a visual check, looking for the rest of the crew. So far I haven’t found anyone else.”

  “I’m afraid we might have bad news for you. A squadron of F-22s is currently trying to shoot you down with ANSAT missiles. We’re trying to call them back, but we might be too late.”

  “Did you say ANSAT?”

  “Affirmative. You’re might have to use the laser.”

  “That’s a negative, Houston. I disabled the laser before coming inside the station. It’s out of commission until we can get a crew to come up here and repair it. I’m afraid if any of those ANSATs are fired, this place is going be in real trouble.”

  Jake closed his eyes. “Okay, listen. In that case you need to be ready to get into the Soyuz escape vehicle and leave the station immediately. You’ve stopped the terrorist from launching any more warheads. We’ll deal later with the damage those missiles might do to the station.”

  “That’s a negative, Houston. There has to be another way.”

  Dammit, Diane! Jake thought, before saying as calmly as he could, “ISS, Houston. There is nothing you can do. Repeat, there is nothing you can do without the laser. If the ANSATs are fired, they will destroy the station.”

  “Houston, I have an idea.”

  Thirty-two

  Colonel Keith Myers kept the rearward pressure on his sidestick as the F-22 soared above 80,000 feet. Brief side glances out of his canopy, and the forty-eight-year-old colonel verified the tight inverted-V formation of his five-jet squadron.

  The F-22 was a beautiful plane, and Myers loved to fly it. The advanced tactical fighter-bomber, brought into full production only last year, was a worthy replacement of the venerable F-15 Eagle, which had carried the Air Force through the latter portion of the twentieth century. Myers had been one of five test pilots of the two prototypes built by McDonnell Douglas, and at the end of the evaluation period he had been assigned to lead the first wing out of Andrews.

  A medium-built, muscular man with fair skin and short brown hair, Myers looked and acted the role of the typical Air Force squadron commander. He was cocky and sometimes borderline-arrogant, but he knew how to carry out orders and get his men motivated to follow them as well. On the ground he was a bastard, who pushed everyone to do and act their best, but once airborne, he was the ideal flight leader, wise and courageous, fully capable of making lifesaving, split-second decisions.

  Myers definitely knew how to follow orders, even when those orders meant the destruction of one of the world’s greatest technological achievements: the International Space Station.

  “Leader to Ghosts, Leader to Ghosts,” Myers said over the squadron frequency. “Prepare to release.”

  “Roger,” came the response from his other four jets, each carrying a single ANSAT missile attached to the underfuselage pallet.

  Myers activated the ordnance-release system. Firing the ANSAT was quite simple because of the nature of the missile, which was already preprogrammed to home in on the station flying 105 miles overhead. There was no radar control from the parent craft or from an overhead satellite to guide it to its target. The ANSATs were shoot-and-forget. According to the briefing, Myers would fire his missile first. Each of his men would follow serially until all five missiles had been fired.

  Shoving the sidestick back while pushing full throttle, Myers pointed the nose to the upper layers of the stratosphere before pressing a button on the sidestick.

  A silver missile glided upward in a parabolic flight as he rolled the jet and pulled away. The missile continued skyward solely on the momentum it had gained from the F-22, until right before reaching its apex, when the single solid-propellant booster kicked in and projected it up at great speed.

  “Leader’s out,” commented Myers as he watched his wingman get into position for his release.

  “Ghost Leader, Ghost Leader, Eagle’s Nest, over.”

  “Nest, Leader, over.”

  “Abort, Leader. Repeat, abort mission. Authorization code Three-Niner-Alpha-Zulu-Seven-Six-Lima-Charlie.”

  Myers glanced at the small notepad strapped right below the Heads-Up Display. Abort Code 39AZ76LC. That’s a match.

  “Leader to Ghosts, Leader to Ghosts. Abort, abort. RTB, RTB.
”

  “Roger,” responded the other four jets, acknowledging not just the abort, but also the Return-To-Base order.

  Colonel Myers watched his wingman rolling his jet out of the climb and returning to formation with the ANSAT still strapped to his F-22’s belly.

  Myers said, “Nest, Ghost Leader. One demon got away. Repeat. One demon got away. Other four demons secured. RTB.”

  “Roger, Lead. Will pass it on.”

  The runaway ANSAT’s thruster still burning in the distance, Myers cut back throttles and dropped his F-22’s nose. His squadron followed him.

  Thirty-three

  As she floated inside the Habitation Module, Diane Williams only had two more minutes before the ANSAT missile reached her orbit. She inserted the keys she had removed from the GPATS’ launching station into the key slots on the top of the keyboard of the Multipurpose Application Console, connected to the central electronic brain of the station.

  The screen came up with a list of menus, each containing its own list of submenus and commands. She chose a menu that controlled the station’s rotational verniers. A three-dimensional drawing on the screen showed the ISS’s current attitude with respect to Earth, and also indicated that the station was operating under automatic computer control. She switched to manual, transferring control of the verniers to a joystick controller next to the station.

  She then programmed the station to split the large screen in two. The bottom section still displayed the station’s attitude, but the top section now showed a color radar map of the ISS and its surroundings. The resolution was set to 250 miles out, and it showed no sign of the ANSAT yet.

  “Houston, ISS. I’m all set, over.”

  “All right, ISS,” Jake Cohen responded from Mission Control. “ANSAT is three hundred miles high two hundred ninety miles downrange with a closing velocity of seven hundred miles per hour. It should show on your screen any moment now.”

  Diane’s eyes never left the display as she said, “I see you.” The blue dot entered Diane’s range from the east and approached the station at great speed. She estimated another minute to impact.