Death Orbit

by Maloney, Mack;

  Once the engines were cooled and secured, both men had to be helped from the cockpit. The systems operator came out first. His legs seemed permanently bent in the sitting position. The attending ground personnel wrapped him in a blanket, put him in a chair, and carried him down the access ladder in just that way. He was so cramped up, a severe muscle tear was a real possibility.

  The pilot left under his own power, but he, too, was obviously expended. He was Major Ricard Frost, Free Canadian Air Force, and under more normal circumstances, first liaison officer between the Free Canadian government and the United American Armed Forces.

  Like so many of the principal people connected to the UAAF, Frost had been given thirty days leave to recover from wounds suffered in the twin actions of the Pacific and Vietnam. Like so many others, though, he’d felt antsy after the first few days and had volunteered to spell some other pilots who needed time off even more.

  The recipients of this gesture were the men of the joint FC-UAAF Maritime Patrol Service, a combined-forces air unit which patrolled the uneasy waters between the tip of the North American continent and the western reaches of the Icelandic floe. Using a variety of aircraft, many of them much older than the men who flew them, the MPS provided the thankless job of endlessly monitoring the main shipping lanes between Iceland and Newfoundland, keeping tabs on any suspicious-looking vessels and always being on the lookout for nefarious submarines.

  MPS duty was unrelentingly routine—that was what made it so exhausting. While the service had certainly seen its share of harrowing incidents, especially in the first few years following the Big War, the dedicated pilots and technicians had not spotted an unfriendly vessel, either surface-riding or U-boat, in nearly eighteen months. This lack of action didn’t mean the MPS was obsolete; just the opposite. The MPS was vital because it was so good and so meticulous. Any potential enemy from abroad would have to think twice before traveling the regular sealanes to get to North America.

  Still, the airplanes the service operated were decidedly bottom-of-the-barrel. There were eleven of them based at Gander. Besides the Buccaneer, there were three Mk 3 BA Shackletons, four-engine, piston-driven maritime bombers that bore more than a passing resemblance to the B-24 Liberators of World War II fame and were almost as old. There was a quartet of Dassault-Breguet Alize antisub aircraft, bulbous little airplanes that somehow found room for a crew of three and a bomb-bay big enough to carry two torpedoes. Probably the oddest craft was the Embraer P-95 Bandeirulha, an old Brazilian design that looked more like a sporting plane than a military aircraft. For in-flight refueling of this plucky group, there was also a pair of BA “Victory” K.Mk 2 jet tankers.

  Frost had been flying MPS for six days. This had been his first flight in the venerable Buccaneer, and as he had vowed many times in the last 16 hours, it would be his last. Easing himself into the waiting jeep now, he could hear his knee joints crackle and pop as he stretched them straight for the first time in more than a half a day.

  “I might be getting too old for this,” he thought, even though he was just a few weeks shy of his thirty-sixth birthday. “Either too old or too smart…”

  Sensing his condition, the Jeep driver drove slowly, carefully, across the rough tarmac, depositing Frost without so much as a bump at the front door of his officers’ billet. The driver promised to fetch Frost a hot meal from the chow hall and maybe a few cans of Mooselake ale, too. This cheered the pilot enough to will himself out of the Jeep and up the steps of his quarters. The Jeep driver gingerly turned his vehicle around and then roared off into the night and fog.

  It was now close to 2 A.M. and in the background Frost could hear the heart-stopping growl of two Shackletons starting up their paleolithic engines. Behind them were a pair of Alizes, and behind them, adding its own primitive engines to the roar, one of the “Victory” refueling ships.

  This meant just about all of the MPS pilots were either in the air or climbing up into it. When Frost came through the front door of the officers’ billet, he was the only living soul around.

  That was okay with him. The last thing he wanted to do now was to see anybody, talk to anybody, or have to interact in any way. All he wanted was a shower, a shave, his meal, a few ales, and then bed.

  This plan began unfolding like clockwork. He reached his quarters, stripped, and showered in luxurious privacy. He had a quick towel-off, a quicker shave, and then there came a rapping on his door. It was the Jeep driver, carrying a tray holding an enormous bowl of stew, a basket of rolls, a tin of common crackers, and a small container of hot sauce. It was Frost’s favorite meal! He gratefully accepted the tray only to find the man was also holding the promised six-pack of Mooselake ale. Exhausted and famished, Frost felt tears come to his eyes. He thanked the driver profusely, promised him a citation of some kind, then shooed him out. Returning to his billet, Frost opened the first beer, rustled up an old copy of Air Progress, and dived face first into the basin of stew.

  It was hard to say what went down quicker, the heavily seasoned goulash or the first Mooselake ale. Either way, they were both gone inside of five minutes. Frost licked the bowl several times over, then poured the first few drops from beer number two into the vessel and drank the runoff. Once the rolls and crackers were gone, he got up from the table, staggered a bit, and collapsed onto his bed. It was almost 2:30.

  Outside the wind was beginning to howl; a huge storm was churning in the Atlantic. Frost and his backseater had seen the massive clouds forming on the southern horizon all during their long flight. The weather service was predicting this storm would hit New England within hours and linger there indefinitely. Some forecasters were already speculating that it might be one of the largest storms to hit the East Coast in history; it was so big it was already affecting them way up here in Gander.

  Yet now, looking up through the overhead window in his room, Frost could see a patch of sky, one which the howling winds had cleared of all fog, at least temporarily. Through it, Frost could see a bright patch of stars. They looked absolutely stunning at the moment, so much so that he raised himself up a bit just to get a better look. His view was somewhat limited, but he could still partially make out the Big Dipper and Orion.

  Suddenly he spotted a small blinking light swiftly making its way across the sky. He knew immediately it was not an airplane; this object was traveling through space.

  Could it be? he thought. Was there really any chance that the light was the Zon spacecraft, containing Hunter and his UAAF colleagues?

  No, not really. As the flashing light passed from view, Frost was sure it was more likely to be a satellite or a piece of space junk than the captured space shuttle, especially at this latitude. Still, as Frost lay back on his bed, his thoughts went to his American allies and their continuous struggle to bring freedom and order to their very troubled land. Frost was a close personal friend of Hunter himself, having first met the Wingman several years ago at a place called the Pitt, once known as Pittsburgh. Frost had transported a cache of jewels for Hunter, who was working as a pilot-for-hire at the time. They’d been amigos ever since.

  Frost ripped the cap off his third beer and drained it greedily. It felt like the high-alcohol-content lager was flowing directly into his tired veins, bypassing his stomach and liver entirely. Many things had happened since he’d linked up with the United Americans. The continent had been freed, invaded, and freed again. Major battles had been won in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia. Now Hunter and company were hunting for Viktor II in orbit. It seemed to be an appropriate culmination of all the hard-fought and hard-won victories. Where else should the climactic chase be, but in outer space? A pang of sadness went through Frost’s tired chest. If only he was up there with them…

  His fourth beer brought more memories. Sure, the key wars had been won, but many men had died as a result. Brave souls and close friends. Bull Dozer, the one-of-a-kind commander of the original 7th Cavalry, United America’s first credible ground force. Dozer had been killed
in a titanic last battle against the Russians in Washington, DC. Then there was Seth Jones, twin brother of Dave Jones, the C-in-C of the UAAF. Frost had never met the man, but from what he’d heard, he seemed to be nothing less than deserving of his reputation as the patron saint of the entire Free America movement.

  There was Mike Fitzgerald, the godfather of the UAAF. Fitz had been a close friend of everyone in the UA inner circle, the kind of guy who’d made a million dollars no less than six months after the Big War had ended, only to give most of it away and join the UA freedom fighters. A ballsy pilot and an expert strategist, Fitzgerald had been killed preventing an enemy nuclear missile from obliterating Football City in the last stages of the war against the Fourth Reich.

  Of all the men who’d passed on, Fitz was the one Frost, as well as everyone else, missed the most. Popping his fifth beer, Frost wondered what it would be like if Fitz were still alive; what he would think now that the American continent was finally free of all outside invaders. What he would think of Hunter’s high-speed chase in outer space…

  Sometime during draining his sixth and last beer, Frost finally fell asleep. Dreams flowed through his head like clouds whipped up by a storm. First, he was back at the controls of the antique Buccaneer, then he was swimming in the Caribbean, then he was a child again, playing hockey outside his family’s home in Parry Sound, then he was back in the old Buck again.

  It went on like this for sometime: Frost drifting in and out of montages of nonsensical dreams. Yet despite his depleted state and his belly full of beer, his instincts remained sharp, and somewhere in the midst of all his dreaming, he sensed that he was not alone in the room. The feeling grew stronger even as he dreamed he was up on a high, snow-capped mountain, looking down on a burning city below.

  Finally, somehow, in some way, he was able to open his eyes. Vaguely, through the sleep and the faint light of his room, he saw that, indeed, he was not alone. There was a figure sitting in the chair directly across from his bed. It was a man. His legs and arms were crossed in a very familiar way. He was staring very intently at Frost, his features wrinkled in worry on his pudgy, Irish-red face.

  Frost raised himself slowly and only then did he realize he could see right through the man.

  “Hello there, Frostie,” he heard the words echo in his room, the last one tinged with a definite brogue. “It’s been a long time…”

  Frost’s eyes were now wide open. His jaw had dropped and he was trembling. He recognized the man and the voice immediately.

  “Jeezus, Fitz!” he cried out. “Is it really you?” The ghost of Mike Fitzgerald laughed once, then his face returned to its former frown.

  “Yes, it’s me, Frostie,” he said sadly. “In the pink, if not the flesh…”

  Eight

  In Orbit

  IT WAS A GENTLE beeping that shook Jim Cook out of his zero-gravity slumber.

  The commanding officer of the elite JAWS special operations team was floating in place down on the crew compartment level of the Zon, his shoulders and knees straining slightly against a pair of sleep tethers. Two bubbles of saliva were hovering approximately three inches from his nose. People tended to drool in space, especially when they were in a deep sleep. This particular pair of sputum had been floating in front of Cook for the past hour or so.

  The beeping woke him not because of its soft volume, but because it was a sound he hadn’t heard on the Zon before. It was a pulsing tone, a repetition of the slightly tense notes of A and G. It was not a warning buzzer per se. It was the spacecraft’s earth-to-space radio, and this was the first time it had come alive since the Zon had reached orbit.

  This mission into space was the most secret operation ever undertaken by the United Americans. “Top Secret” didn’t come close to describing the security surrounding the Zon’s launch and the ensuing space-chase. Any radio communication between the spacecraft and earth controllers ran the risk of exposing the whole operation. It had been agreed upon from the beginning that contact between earth and the Zon would be nonexistent. The spacecraft would be on its own, running silent as it pursued the supercriminal Viktor II. This blackout decree would be breached only in case of an extreme emergency on either side, and then they would speak only in code.

  This is why hearing the sound of the radio come alive woke Cook so quickly.

  He shook the sleep from his eyes, unlashed his tethers, and pushed himself across the compartment to the radio set. A gentle engagement of the receive button was rewarded with a violent burst of static.

  “Behold a mystery,” Cook heard a strangely echoing voice intone. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a twinkling of an eye, a trumpet shall sound. And the dead shall be raised. And we shall be changed.”

  Still groggy, Cook thought at first he’d somehow broken into a stray radio or TV transmission from earth. Was this nonsense really originating from Mission Control at the Cape?

  He quickly consulted a card listing all the emergency security phrases that was floating next to the radio set. None of them matched what he had just heard.

  The radio began beeping again. He pushed the receive button and again was assaulted by a burst of static.

  “We who are alive shall not prevent them who are asleep,” the same voice began again. “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout. And with the voice of an archangel, the dead shall rise first…”

  Cook was now more confused than ever. If this was someone on the ground trying to tell him something in code, they were not reading from the same page. There was nothing on the security phrase list that even came close to what he was hearing.

  “We who are alive will then be caught up together,” the creepy voice came back on. “The dead shall rise and they will mock you. And then it will be your time to die.”

  With that, the transmission ended.

  Cook tried for the next five minutes to regain the frequency of the strange broadcast, but to no avail. Whoever had sent the weird message was no longer on.

  Confused and still punchy, Cook now faced another quandary. How should he report the odd incident? Normally, he would not have hesitated a bit. He would have floated up to the flight deck to tell those up there what had happened. But the way things were aboard the Zon lately, he knew they had enough problems to handle already.

  Still, he pushed his way to the roof of the crew quarters and then over to the hatch, which led up to the flight compartment. Then he took a deep breath, undid the hatch lock, and drifted up.

  The flight deck was dark and somber. The only light was coming from the green and red VDT screens; it cast an almost cartoonish glow on everybody and everything.

  But what was happening up here was anything but humorous.

  Hunter was sitting in the flight commander seat. His right hand was gripping the control stick so tightly, and had been doing so for so long, Cook believed he could see where it had actually bent a little.

  Hunter was staring intently out the front windshield and into space beyond. His eyes were darting back and forth, up and down, this way and that. Like a human radar, he was sweeping the space in front of the speeding spacecraft, looking, searching…

  JT was in the seat beside him. He, too, was gripping his control stick tightly, his eyes looking everywhere at once, though not as quickly as Hunter’s. Ben was in the seat directly behind JT, Elvis was behind Hunter, Geraci was behind Elvis. They were studying space directly above the spacecraft, which, because the Zon was inverted at the moment, was actually straight down, toward the cool blue globe of Earth.

  Cook quietly floated into the flight compartment and took his place behind Ben. Ever since spotting the first piece of exploding space junk, the crew of the Zon had been forced to maintain this tense, mind-numbing vigil. One wrong move, one missed unidentifiable object, and they could all go up in ball of flame. It was the equivalent of a ship trying to wind its way through a minefield—at 17,500 miles an hour.

  They’d come across six of th
e space mines since the first one—each exploding once it had placed itself in an orbital path about five miles in front of the Zon. Only by quick action on Hunter’s part had they been able to avoid the results of an explosion which created thousands of pieces of deadly space flak.

  But the key to this defense was spotting the space mine before it could get into position and explode. And the only way to do this was to keep watching for the tumbling objects and get the Zon out of the way as quickly as possible. It had proved to be a stressful endeavor.

  That these orbital bombs were being sent against them intentionally was no longer in dispute. It was obvious that someone somewhere was controlling the space mines simply because of the way they moved prior to detonation.

  Because everything flying around in each orbital path was traveling at relatively the same speed, the space mines had to slow down in order to get into position to harm the Zon. There were a couple of different ways to do this: firing retrojets by remote control was one, sending a control message to the mine to start tumbling was another. Either way, the object’s velocity would decay and slow it down. Either way, this had to be done on purpose, by a guiding human hand. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind on board the Zon just whose hand was controlling these potentially disastrous weapons.

  But they also knew that by sending these devices against the Zon, the same controlling hand was providing them with clues to its location.

  Each time a space mine had been detected and avoided, Hunter and the others took note of its location, its estimated speed, and from which part of the sky it had come. The plots that resulted from this stressful tracking had pointed to one indisputable conclusion: whoever was dropping the space mines in the Zon’s path was just up ahead, maybe as close as 230 miles, and traveling in an orbital path just slightly higher than that of the Zon.