Using information transmitted over their helmet radios by Elvis and JT, Hunter and Geraci glided over to the spinning Russian space capsule without incident. Hunter found himself fighting off the euphoria which had gripped him when he’d first emerged from the Zon. There was business to be done here—he couldn’t let anything interfere with the matter at hand, even if it was something as cool as walking in space.
They both pulled their tethers to a halt about 20 feet in front of the Soyuz. Now it was time for the real fun to begin. Geraci unhooked his lifeline and used his zip gun to get within a few meters of the Soyuz. With the NJ104 officer now so close to it, Hunter got his first good indication of the size of the space capsule. It was actually much larger than he’d thought, probably about the length of a city bus, but much thinner. It was painted lime green, with absolutely no streamlining. Up close, it looked like a Klingon warship.
Geraci pumped his zip gun again and now he was within arm’s reach of the spacecraft. Another shot of jet-gas and he began spinning almost at the same pitch as the ancient Russian spacecraft. Hunter could only shake his head in admiration for the engineer. It was the old “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” response to problem solving.
Geraci gave his zip gun one more short burst and was now spinning in synch with the Soyuz. He reached out with his left hand and grabbed hold of an antenna mount. Then his right toe snapped an equipment bay latch. In one quick motion the engineer lodged his left toe under a porthole frame and fired the zip gun once, twice, and then a third time.
Amazingly, the Soyuz stopped spinning.
But it was still a little wobbly. Hunter immediately jetted himself over to Geraci and rehooked the engineer’s tether. Then, together, they pulled the huge but weightless Soyuz toward them. The resulting jerk served to stabilize the spacecraft. Soon it was floating along as evenly as they were.
Each took a deep gulp from the oxygen supply. They’d corralled the old Soyuz easily enough. Now what?
“Let’s get inside,” Hunter radioed over to Geraci.
They found the main door latch after about a minute of looking. Geraci ran his finger along the seal and found that it was broken. The door into the capsule was not secured. Getting in would be no problem.
Hunter radioed their intentions back to the Zon; JT and Elvis, now sitting in the one-two seats, were on guard for more space mines. Ben and Cook were still acting as the ETA coordinators.
“Whatever you do, you’ve got to make it quick,” Ben told them. “My flowchart tells me we can expect another bomb to go off within the next twenty minutes.”
Sufficiently warned, Hunter and Geraci used pure muscle power to pry open the main hatch to the capsule. All the tumbling had bent it to the degree that its hinges no longer wanted to work. They were able to get it open wide enough for them to slip through. Taking a few moments to tie their tether lines to the nose of the capsule about six feet away, they guided themselves back to the open hatchway and prepared to go inside.
Geraci went first. It took him a few seconds to set himself correctly, but he quickly found some handholds and began climbing inside headfirst. He had to maneuver himself through the small airlock, then pass through a kind of safety tube in order to reach the crew cabin. This journey would take about two minutes in all, Hunter guessed. He began counting off the seconds as Geraci’s boots disappeared from view.
Just as he reached 1:59, his headphone exploded in static.
“Jeezus, I’m here,” he heard Geraci exclaim. “And wait ’til you see this…”
Now Hunter propelled himself inside the Soyuz, through the tiny airlock and into the safety tube. The interior looked like nothing less than the set to a science-fiction movie, and not a particularly expensive one, either.
It was very dark inside the airless space capsule. There were no interior lights or reflective material of any kind. A kind of greenish-blue powder covered everything. Hunter touched a panel with his glove and found the dust to be extremely sticky. Had smoke filled the capsule at one time, causing the odd coating? He didn’t know. What was obvious was how very cluttered it was inside; all kinds of space junk was hanging from the walls, making it very cramped and hard to maneuver around. Still, Hunter pressed on.
He could see Geraci’s boots suspended beneath the porthole which led up to the Soyuz flight compartment. Hunter inched his way up to them, feeling more uncomfortable with each passing second. Should an emergency arise—like a space mine going off nearby, or if the Soyuz began tumbling again—this was not the place to be. It was an odd sensation, being claustrophobic in outer space. But that’s exactly how Hunter felt.
It took him at least another minute to claw his way through the safety tube, but at last Hunter found himself climbing up into the flight compartment. That’s when he saw what had caused Geraci to call out.
Skeletons. There were three of them. They were still in their space suits, still strapped into their seats. But the faces behind the glass of the helmets were devoid of skin and muscles, leaving only skull and bones and teeth. They looked like they’d been picked clean by some kind of flesh-eating scavenger, but the more likely explanation was that a lack of oxygen inside the capsule had caused their skin to dry up and turn into minute specks of powder which were somehow dispersed in every direction around the capsule. This, Hunter was sure, explained the presence of the ghastly dust everywhere.
“Hell of a way to go,” Geraci said. “However they went, that is…”
Hunter could only agree. One man’s hands were grasping his throat; another’s were cemented to his air supply regulator. Clues, Hunter surmised, that a sudden, unexpected depressurization had caused the demise of the three nameless spacemen.
“But when?” Geraci asked, reading his mind.
It was a good question—and one that was difficult to answer. Soyuz capsules began service decades before. For all they knew, this incident could have taken place back in the sixties or seventies, a space flight that went bad and was covered up by the Russian government. Then again, these cosmonauts could have died the day before, or the day before that. The whole concept of time, aging, and decomposition did not apply in the same way out here in space. Whether this happened recently or back more than 30 years ago, the capsule and the stiffs would still look pretty much the same.
Hunter reached over and unstrapped one of the dead spacemen, allowing the weightless corpse to float free. Beneath his seat was a radio device which Hunter retrieved and studied. It looked to be something made during the 1930s, and not in any era of spaceflight. It was a tantalizing piece of equipment, but it gave them no clue as to when the spacemen had died—or under what circumstances.
There was still a little bit of electricity aboard the spacecraft—the tiny light on its rear end was still blinking. But again, this did not provide anything. Fuel cells could go on for years, especially if they were maintaining a small load. But juice on the inside might mean that some of the other instruments could be brought back to life and possibly salvaged to help maintain the Zon.
Hunter was about to push the flight computer power panel when suddenly he felt a familiar vibration rise up inside him.
“Damn,” he whispered. “This is not a good time…”
Their helmet radios crackled to life an instant later. Cook was on the line.
“You guys better get your rear ends back here now,” he told them. “JT just spotted another mine…”
As it turned out, JT had discovered not one but two space mines.
One was orbiting in approximately the same flight path as the Zon had been before moving up 30 miles to inspect the Soyuz. But the second mine was perilously close—less than a half mile below their present position.
Hunter and Geraci scrambled out of the Soyuz as fast they could, all curiosity as to how the spacecraft came to be tumbling out here with its ghoulish cargo now forgotten. Cook gave them continual radio updates on the location of both space mines even as they emerged from the hatch and began undoi
ng one of the tethers from the Russian spacecraft. The lower mine would probably pass by without affecting them. But the upper bomb—well, that would be a different story.
“We read it as coming into a complementary orbit in less than four minutes,” Cook was telling them urgently. “Better speed it up, guys…”
Hunter and Geraci needed no prompting. To save time, they left one tether tied to the Soyuz and shared the other to make their way back to the Zon. They were now streaking toward the mother ship as fast as their zip guns would carry them.
“Three minutes,” Cook said, as they arrived back at the Zon. “Two and fifty-five… hurry!”
But moving quickly in space was impossible. Hunter and Geraci had reached the Zon’s hatchway, all right, but now the simple task of undoing the tether and getting the pressure lock to work seemed to take hours, with every moment performed in painfully slow motion.
“We’ll be in its track in one minute, fifty seconds,” Cook was telling them as the bawky hatch finally snapped open. “One minute forty-five…”
Hunter had to practically shove Geraci inside the airlock; it would hold only one person at a time. The engineer reluctantly went in, headfirst—and then had to stay that way for a long agonizing minute as the primitive pressurization system slowly filled the lock with oxygen.
Hunter, meanwhile, was turned somersaults just outside the hatchway, trying to position his body this way and that in order to get a visual track on the space mine. He finally did catch a glimpse of it. It was indeed about a half mile below them and maybe two miles out. Like everything else around him, it was moving slowly, but spinning in such a way as to deteriorate its orbit—and get closer to the Zon.
“You got about one minute, Hawk,” Cook’s voice told him, just as the pressurization seal light came on. Now, at least Geraci was inside. But how could Hunter get into the pressure lock, wait for it to repressurize, then get into the Zon itself, climb out of his ETA suit, get up to the flight deck, take over the controls, and get them away from the space mine all before it went off?
The answer was, he couldn’t. There just wouldn’t be enough time.
On this one, the evasive maneuvers would have to be done by someone else.
It was Elvis in the commander’s seat when the light flashed on the control panel indicating that Hunter was inside the pressure lock and that the hatch was locked and sealed behind him.
Well, at least Hunter was safe, he thought. But now they had less than 30 seconds to evade the oncoming space mine. That was not enough time for any of the elaborate, ballet-like maneuvers that Hunter had instituted when encountering the previous orbital bombs. Those precise movements had been choreographed in such a way as not to call attention to the Zon while maintaining their orbital path. But now, with every second important, Elvis knew only blunt, evasive action could save them.
Luckily for them, he was the man to do it.
Elvis had been at the controls of the Zon spacecraft for its five previous flights, all of which had been taken under duress at the hands of Viktor and his minions. As such, he knew how to finesse the creaking spaceship and how to kick it in the ass. Right now, it was the latter that was needed.
So as soon as he knew Hunter was safely on-board, Elvis fired the Zon’s main engine, and at the same time, commanded the steering jets to point the spacecraft’s nose straight up. There was a tremendous burst of power felt by everyone on-board. There was also a disturbing buckling sound—once again, it felt like the whole spacecraft was about to come apart at the seams.
But Elvis stayed with it, slowly backing off the throttles as the Zon zoomed away from the orbital bomb. A few seconds later, the mine went off, not a kilometer away from where the Zon had been just moments before. The shock wave hit the spacecraft five seconds later, shaking it from nose to stern and back again. The electricity failed; then the computers crashed. The vibrations got so bad, the zero-gravity toilet flushed itself. But finally the violent rattling died away. The electricity blinked back on. The computers regained their previous whir. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They had survived yet another space blast.
JT and Geraci immediately hurried aft to get Hunter out of the pressure lock. Elvis and Cook righted the Zon again as Ben began backtracking the space bomb’s orbital path. He noticed something odd on the radar. Somehow the Soyuz space capsule had followed them up their escape route and was now tumbling dangerously close to their nose.
“Jeezus, look at that!” Cook yelled, as the oddly-shaped green spacecraft came back into view.
The Soyuz was spinning in such a way that everything not strapped down inside it was now spewing out into space. This included one of the cosmonaut’s skeletal bodies which was suddenly ejected through the main hatchway.
As they all watched in horror, the dead cosmonaut suddenly became entangled in the tether line Hunter and Geraci had left tied to the Soyuz—so that’s how the Russian capsule had followed them up! But now, with uncanny movements, the ghostly spacemen began climbing up the lifeline right toward the Zon itself.
“God damn,” Elvis breathed. “This is too much…”
It took only a few seconds for the skeleton to make its way up the tether and bump against the front of the Zon. The force of that collision then caused it to topple over the snout and lodge right up against the front window.
Suddenly, the dead cosmonaut was staring right in at them.
“God damn!” Elvis cried again. “Damn, this is way too much!”
The cosmonaut’s mask was open and his teeth were bared. He was jiggling in such a way, it appeared as if he was laughing hysterically at them.
“Do something!” Ben yelled over at Elvis—but the pilot was already taking action. He fired a side maneuvering jet and the sudden movement dislodged the body and sent it spinning off into space forever. One second it was there, the next it was gone.
Elvis, Ben, and Cook just stared at each other in disbelief. It was as if they’d all just shared the same nightmare.
The words Cook had heard on the strange radio broadcast the day before came back to him.
“The dead shall rise and they will mock you,” the voice had said. “And then it will be your time to die…”
Sixteen
Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral
THERE WAS STILL A COLUMN of ugly black smoke rising above the northern end of the Kennedy Space Center when the six F-86 Sabre jets pulled on to the main runway and prepared to take-off.
Despite the pall from the previous night’s battle, it was a crystal-clear morning; the sun was about 20 minutes from rising and the sky was brightening quickly. The half-dozen Sabre jets, their engines now at full growl, were about to embark on a recon flight which would take them down to the southern tip of UA Florida and back to Cape Canaveral again. Their mission: to look for signs of any “belligerent naval activity” moving toward the KSC from the south. The Sabres were being sent out to search for any Cult battleships that might be in the area.
A recent acquisition from the Empire of Peru, the Sabres had been extensively refurbished by Jeff and George Kephart of Sky High Spies Inc., the same company that operated the world’s last remaining SR-71 hypersonic spy plane. Instead of the antique J47-GE-17 power plant originally installed on the Sabres, the Kepharts put a balls-out J79-GE-11A 15,000-pound thrust afterburner engine in each F-86, the same power plant found on the old yet speedy F-104 Starfighter. These engines gave the Sabres speed and power their original designers could only have dreamed about. Also removed were the airplanes’ inadequate armaments. Instead of a single .50 nose-mounted machine gun, the Sabres were given two M60 aerial cannons attached by pods to the underbelly. Hard points were also installed on the reinforced underwings, allowing the F-86s to carry a variety of ordnance, including antiship, antitank and air-to-air anti-aircraft missiles.
Once their equipment rehab was completed, the Sabres were painted in bright silver with red trim and detailing around the nose intake and rear stabilizer. Whe
n finished, the six jets looked like aerial hot rods. The Kepharts sold them to the UAAF for a song. Their only request was that the Sabres be handled by a specialist maintenance crew and that the Kepharts themselves be allowed to fly them once in a while. The UAAF high command readily agreed.
The first action the Sabres saw was during the mass suicide attack by the mysterious army of Norsemen the previous night. Loaded with full cannon pods and a wide array of ground ordnance, the F-86s had bombed and strafed the attackers on the fringes of the battlefield while the three huge C-5 gunships concentrated on the main enemy force in the middle. Despite their small role, the rehabbed Sabres had given a good accounting of themselves, proving an airplane could look sharp and still perform well in combat.
This recon mission out over the Atlantic would be a little less strenuous on the Sabre jets and their pilots—or so it was hoped. Ever since the fleet of Asian Mercenary Cult battleships had been spotted off the Florida Keys, the UA command had been garnering all its recce elements in an attempt to locate the elusive enemy fleet. Because of the attack the night before, this effort was redoubled since a follow-up Cult attack on the KSC seemed like a real possibility. And though the Sabres were not your typical recon plane, the way things were going, every little bit would help.
For this mission, the Sabre flight would first head east out over the Atlantic, then turn south over Grand Bahama Island, then southwest to an area off Key Largo. Once there, they would land and refuel at an auxiliary UAAF naval station, then make the return flight to Cape Canaveral. In all, the entire mission would cover just 320 miles. For radio purposes, the collection of Sabres would be known as Flight 19.5.
Two of the airplanes were fitted with dual seats and dual controls; these planes also carried extra navigation equipment on board. The other four Sabres were hauling heavy weapons, including one Harpoon antiship missile apiece. Leading the flight in one of the two-seaters was a UAAF lieutenant named Taylor “Chuckie” Charles. A veteran of the war against the Fourth Reich and a pilot in the UAAF’s 1st Aerial Expeditionary Force, which had deployed to Vietnam the year before, Charles was known as a level-headed, competent officer and an extraordinary flyer. He was due for a promotion to Captain as soon as this mission was completed.
Death Orbit Page 13
