Virus

by Bill Buchanan

  For a few moments, Freedom's lasers went berserk. A wall of space in front of Hell Fire blazed with a brilliant light as the threat detector fell silent.

  “Overload, Scotty. PAM can’t handle it.” Before Gonzo completed his statement, his words stuck in his throat.

  Within seconds, PAM restored order to her hunt and kill sequence. Silently belching out their towers of flame, the flare rockets drew the first laser fire followed by the ECM pods. Within ten seconds, PAM reduced the flares and ECM pods to a powdery dust. All that remained between Freedom and Hell Fire was a shimmering wall containing millions and millions of tinfoil strips.

  Once Scott recovered from the countermeasure launch, she checked the MAP display. The countermeasure launch had slowed their rate of descent, but they remained outside the channel. They must have a correction bum, otherwise PAM would blow them out of the sky.

  Gonzo was brought back to reality when Scott spoke. “Gonzo, get us back in the lane!”

  Quickly, he computed the correction burn. His steady nerve had returned, his voice almost excessively calm. “Five second correction burn commences in three . . . two ... one ... ignition.”

  Scott manually throttled the burn.

  Hell Fire vibrated as Scott and her crew watched the MAP system display. The display showed a computergenerated image of Hell Fire moving back into the approach channel. Suddenly, the NavComputer and MAP displays blazed with a bright flashing red message—critical fuel warning. A sirenlike horn howled over the intercom. They would make it to Freedom all right and smash into smithereens on impact.

  “Touchdown in sixty seconds,” Gonzo repeated. His nerve remained intact while he evaluated their fuel condition.

  Scott looked up and at first she couldn’t believe what she saw. Freedom fired the main gimbal engines about her base. Scott saw them blazing, belching flames against the pitch-black sky and wondered what it could mean.

  PAM detected Hell Fire vacillating in and out of her dead zone and took action to flush out the threat. Freedom simply stopped spinning like a top.

  But Hell Fire did not.

  Suddenly, Freedom seemed to begin rotating. Slowly at first, but the speed of rotation quickly increased.

  The realization of what PAM had done hit Scott like a ton of bricks.

  “We’re out of the lane!” Pasha’s tone—panic.

  Hell Fire had lost synchronization with Freedom and drifted out of the channel again.

  Scott looked down at the MAP display and saw her fixed point of reference—her touchdown point—moving. Hell Fire was overshooting the approach channel, the MAP system had lost synchronization, and they were nearly out of fuel. Scott’s voice reverberated in Gonzo’s ears. “Resync the MAP!” Scott was running manual control and was flustered now. She needed a fixed point of reference to land, but the MAP system lost sync when Freedom stopped spinning. This was insane. It was inconceivable. Scott feared they were as good as dead. She read the NavComputer timer. Forty-five seconds till touchdown.

  Gonzo’s fingers flew over the keyboard, entering data faster than the computer could display it. Within seconds he updated the NavComputer to account for Freedom's sudden rotational stop and once again resynced the MAP system.

  Without an exchange of words, Scott executed another correction burn. “Two . . . one . . . ignition.” Scott watched Hell Fire's position on the MAP display. “We’re back in the lane.” Her tone—tense.

  Hell Fire was closing fast.

  Scott could hear her own heart thumping. The gut-wrenching fear of dying created copious amounts of heat, and her space suit’s cooling system was working overtime. She had to find someplace to set down. The red face now filled Hell Fire's entire windshield. She focused her eyes, searching for the landing zone. Then suddenly— there it was. She recognized the spot. She had a hard time taking her eyes off the landing zone as she fired the final positioning thrusters, rotating Hell Fire's nose over a full 180 degrees about her center of gravity. Scott maneuvered Hell Fire into braking position, putting her tail down pointing toward Freedom.

  Whoop . . . whoop . . . whoop . . . whoop!!! The landing gear alarm bellowed over the intercom.

  Immediately, Scott shoved the landing gear handle down and the tricycle gear exploded out of the nose and wheel wells. Once Hell Fire's descent slowed to a hover, she planned to pivot the nose over and set down for a three-point landing. Once the gear locked light turned green, Scott pushed hard forward against the main engine throttle and so began her final braking maneuver. Hell Fire shook violently for a few brief seconds as their descent slowed but then suddenly, it was over. Hell Fire's main engine ran out of fuel and shut down.

  The last remnants of altitude quickly clicked off.

  Scott felt helpless. Her spacecraft had no power, she couldn’t maneuver. Instinctively, she struggled to ignite the main engine, grappling with the controls, refusing to give up. It was useless.

  The laws of physics prevailed. Hell Fire's kinetic energy endured.

  The red antenna face looked like a colossal bed of nails racing up to meet Hell Fire and rip her to shreds.

  “God, I’m sorry, fellas.” Her voice was a cry of pure desolation. She had done her best, but her best was not good enough.

  Her crew understood.

  Leaning forward, Scott reached underneath her seat and pulled up on a pair of red handlebar grips. She felt them ratchet into position. Instantly, the briefcase-sized black box came alive and began speaking over the intercom in a detached robotic tone. “The self-destruct system has been activated for detonation in six hours.”

  Scott raised her eyes toward the heavens, tightly clutched her four-leaf clover and brought it to her chest. She felt a form of calmness creep over her mind, or perhaps it was her soul.

  And Hell Fire impacted on Freedom's red face.

  The Costs, 12/24/2014, 0601 Zulu, 11:01 p.m. Mountain

  Standard Time

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  “Things are not good, General, but looks like they made it.” Colonel Napper’s tone was somber, almost morose. He walked slowly into the conference room carrying a pink slip of paper. He looked at General Mason knowing that he was living through his own private agony.

  Mason felt apprehensive and watched tensely as Napper reread the note.

  There was a deep silence.

  "Hell Fire activated the black box,” Napper continued slowly.

  A dread premonition washed over Mason. Nausea overwhelmed his stomach. He held his head in his hands and spoke softly. “No beacon? Only the black box transmitter?”

  “No beacon.” Napper sighed. Tears filled the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry, General.” Napper felt a wave of compassion for Mason, but there was nothing he could do.

  Several minutes passed in silence.

  Mason slowly lifted his head—a broken man. The defiant fire which once blazed in his eyes was gone. His cloudy blue eyes mirrored the agony he felt in his heart.

  “How long?”

  Napper read the note a third time, checked his watch, then spoke quietly. “Five hours and forty minutes.”

  Napper’s words sponged the last remnants of energy from Mason’s body. “Deliver this message to the President.” He licked his dry lips and spoke slowly. “Within twelve hours, this crisis will pass. Recommend he inform the Saudis and Kuwaitis. They’ll know what to do. Hope will take over automatically after Freedom is destroyed. Recommend the Congressional Medal of Honor be awarded to Major Linda Scott, her crew, and Hope Commander Pasha Yakovlev.” Mason rested his chin on his hands and thought about their families. The gain is never worth the cost. “Get the addresses and phone numbers of their families. I want to meet with each of them. They must understand why their loved ones had to die.”

  The period of silence which followed extended beyond five minutes.

  Napper sat perfectly still, totally absorbed in the events of the moment. From this day forward, he knew that his life would be different. He now more
clearly understood the oppressive burden and formidable responsibility that comes with leadership. In a way he felt he had finally faced the real world. After reviewing their situation, Napper spoke with compassion. “It is hard to send people to their deaths.”

  Napper looked into Mason’s eyes. They were dark,

  The End of the Beginning cloudy pools of anguish. Mason’s expression remained blank, distant, and unfocused.

  Mason drew a single long breath but didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

  27

  Damage Control, 12/14/2014, 0602 Zulu, 11:02 P.M. Mountain

  Standard Time

  Onboard Hell Fire,

  Red Face,

  Space Station Freedom

  Watching the impact from a distance, Freedom seemed to devour Hell Fire. The aerospace plane simply disappeared from sight.

  Slamming into the red face tail first, Hell Fire ripped through the flimsy mesh covering Freedom's outer skin and skidded to a sudden stop on the radar antenna feed. Looking like a beached whale, Hell Fire plowed to a stop in the blink of an eye against a massive structure of waveguide suspended like a trampoline beneath Freedom's red face. The gear snapped off at the wheel wells as Hell Fire ripped through the outer skin into the plumbing. Row after row of radar waveguide (shaped like pipes) absorbed the kinetic energy of the massive aerospace plane like a colossal coiled spring. Instantly, the heart of the antenna stopped pulsing with radar energy. Freedom's red face was totally blind.

  The force of the impact rocked the space plane so violently that Scott’s head was thrown into the control panel, shattering the glass CRT screen of the computer display. Although she was dazed, she sustained only bruises from the shoulder restraints because most of the force of the impact was absorbed by her helmet.

  Once they plowed to a stop, Gonzo unharnessed himself and killed the electrical power to the backseat instrumentation.

  Inside Hell Fire's reconnaissance bay, braces and bulkheads struggled to absorb instantaneous forces of impact which they were never designed to carry. Carbon composites flexed and splintered, buffeted by incalculable forces. Hell Fire's airframe members cracked, her walls twisted.

  Electrical fires broke out immediately inside the cockpit, backseat, and reconnaissance bay. Warning lights began to flash and alarm bells rang. Sparks flew from every instrument panel like a fireworks display. Instrument and reconnaissance bay lighting flickered. The flight computer struggled to isolate and contain the damage caused by the sudden impact and subsequent fires. Every sensitive piece of instrumentation equipment had been damaged by the shock wave. Although overloaded with critical failure data, the flight computer commanded the Fire Control System to life.

  Beneath the cockpit inside the reconnaissance bay, something exploded.

  “Fire in the hole!” Mac screamed as his eyes darted frantically to and fro over the blazing equipment. The electrical fire began adjacent to the oxygen cylinders and weapons bin. If he didn’t move fast, they’d be blown to kingdom come. He ripped off his shoulder restraints, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and directed the spray on the blazing equipment. Cabin exhaust fans aided the fire by sucking black smoke and flames from the reconnaissance bay up into the cockpit. Within seconds, Hell Fire was filled with thick smutty smoke. The overhead lights in the bay now flickered continuously. Once the smoke had circulated throughout Hell Fire, the exhaust fans stopped. A nozzle suspended from the ceiling began dumping copious amounts of foam on the blaze.

  Panicky, he inspected the weapons and oxygen tanks. Although covered in foam, he’d acted in time.

  Once the fire had been suppressed and the damaged weapons checked, Mac took an inventory of himself. He felt a withering pain below his left knee. As he gingerly felt his upper shin, his face contorted. Broken—he could feel a splinter of bone torn through the thin skin on the front of his shin, and the swelling was just beginning. Then he thought of Pasha.

  Pasha didn’t speak. He hadn’t moved. Something was terribly wrong. He remained strapped into his makeshift seat undaunted by the fire and smoke. Grabbing a flashlight, Mac maneuvered into position beside Pasha and shined the beam through the visor onto his face. Even through the thick smoke, after one quick glance Mac knew his injuries were serious. There was bleeding from the mouth. Blood droplets floated about Pasha’s face, suspended inside his helmet. Barely conscious, Pasha struggled to say something when he sensed the light shining on his face. His lips were moving, but there was no sound. Leaning closer, Mac cut up the sensitivity on Pasha’s intercom mike. For a moment, all Mac heard were gurgling sounds. Pasha gagged after coughing up a dark blackish-red discharge. Mac had to do something quickly or Pasha would drown in his own blood.

  Mac struggled across the reconnaissance bay and threw open an equipment locker. After grabbing a spare helmet, he cranked up the pressure inside Pasha’s EVA suit. Mac’s objective was positive pressure; he wanted to increase the pressure inside Pasha’s suit so that it was greater than cabin pressure. After releasing three latches about his neck, Pasha’s helmet popped off with only a slight twist. Immediately Mac cut down the suit pressure, cleared Pasha’s mouth and the bloody residue from his face, then slammed on the new helmet. Mac expected the gasses and smoke inside the cabin were toxic, so he wasted no time after removing Pasha’s helmet. The operation took less than one minute.

  “Scotty, Pasha’s in a bad way. Internal bleeding. Don’t know how bad.” Looking around the smoke-filled bay,

  Mac surmised what happened. “Supply crate tore loose. Looks like one caught him in the chest.”

  “Can he be moved?”

  Pasha signaled an affirmative to Mac with his hand, then spoke softly. “I can be moved—but slowly . . . may’ve busted a few ribs.”

  There was a moment of concern as Scott thought through what to do. After pausing a few seconds, Pasha spoke again with a deliberately light tone. “More doctors recommend Tylenol for headache than any other leading brand.” The crew breathed a sigh of relief, hoping Pasha’s injuries were not as serious as they appeared. There was no infirmary onboard Hell Fire, and at this moment the Freedom infirmary wasn’t taking walk-ins. Once he had eased the tension, Pasha took a shallow breath and delivered his suggestion. “Recommend you vent smoke, purge cabin air, survey damage—inside and out. There’s much work to do. We need a new plan.” During the crash, equipment and supplies tore free from their storage areas, smashed open, and were now strewn about the reconnaissance bay. Most of their supply crates and equipment had been either crushed or damaged by the fire. Small and large chunks of loose debris still vectored about the cabin, bouncing from wall to wall like a 3-D billiard game.

  “Mac, Gonzo. What’s your condition? You clear to vent?” Scott tensed for the damage assessment.

  “My hand’s sprained but other than that I’m OK,” Gonzo replied flatly. He read over a long list of system failures, then spoke again. His tone was cautious. “I’ll hold the damage report until I check her over for structural integrity, but all in all, it could’ve been a lot worse.”

  “How about the radio?”

  “Dead. We’re running off battery for now but some of the primary cells were damaged.”

  “Mac, how about the transponder beacon?” Scott wanted to call home—radio Headquarters an Fin OK signal indicating that they were still alive.

  Mac surveyed the debris in one of the equipment storage lockers. Smashed by the concussion of the impact, fragmented pieces of the transponder looked fossilized, coated with a layer of fire retardant foam. Then Mac saw the boomer and shook his head. The remotely controlled minesweeper had been smashed to smithereens by a large crate. “Transponder’s out of business, Scotty, and the boomer’s busted.”

  “Any chance of repair?”

  Following a moment of silence, Mac spoke with a tone of dismay in his voice. “None whatsoever. Pasha was right. We need a new plan. Vent the cabin, then you’d better come down here and take a look.” He paused, then spoke slowly. He sounded apprehensi
ve. “And one other thing.”

  “Name it, Chief.”

  “Bring me down a leg splint—one I can inflate.”

  “You mean?”

  “Yeah, it’s broken. Smashed by a low flying crate.”

  Scott winced. For an instant she physically felt his pain. She quickly recovered as she noticed smoke once again erupting beneath her feet from the reconnaissance bay. She vented Hell Fire's cabin air into the vacuum of space. Gonzo pushed himself and his EVA pack outside to inspect the airframe, rocket, and scramjet engines. Once the oxygen in the cabin had been depleted, the fires squelched themselves out.

  A single emergency light now illuminated the disordered interior of the reconnaissance bay. Overlaid with nonconductive foam, the camera control console lay in ruins, shattered beyond recognition. Instrumentation equipment ripped from its mounting braces floated about the cabin anchored only by its cabling. All their supplies, including the weapons, spilled from their storage cabinets and were blanketed with foam.

  After restoring the cabin air pressure, Scott climbed into the hole and began surveying the damage.

  She didn’t like what she saw.

  The Corridor, 12/25/2014, 1010 Zulu, 3:10 A.M. Mountain

  Standard Time

  Onboard Hell Fire,