Suddenly Chloe collapsed to her knees. All of the scariest parts of her dream came flooding back to her.
“When I told this priest about my dream, he said it was actually a prophecy of some kind,” she went on, sobbing. “He said it had been written hundreds of years before. And now it must be coming true, because the night I dreamt it, it got very calm up on the mountain. Almost like this…”
She pointed up at the hole in the clouds above the farmhouse.
Kurjan and Dominique just looked at each other, shocked by Chloe’s tale.
“There are many things written about the Final Days, in many religious books belonging to many religions around the world,” Dominique said. “They all claim that truly bizarre, unnatural events will occur before the world finally comes to an end.”
Kurjan looked up through the skylight at the nightmarish scene above.
“Well,” he gulped. “That thing up there fits the bill, I would say.”
A dreadful silence descended upon them. Chloe suddenly stopped crying.
“This priest said one more thing to me,” she began again. “One more word before he… well, before he died. It was something that seemed like it might be the key to finding out exactly what’s happening.”
“Well, what was it?” Kurjan asked her anxiously. “What word did he say?”
Chloe bit her lip for a moment. “He said, ‘Hubble,’” she finally replied. “Is that a man’s name?”
“A man and a telescope,” Kurjan told her. “In fact, it’s probably the most well-known telescope in history. Or it was.”
“But where is it?” Chloe wanted to now, now getting excited again. “Is it on top of a mountain near here?”
Kurjan almost laughed, an impossible act under the circumstances—or so he thought.
“It’s not on a mountain and it ain’t anywhere near here,” he told Chloe. “It’s up in space. It’s the most powerful telescope ever built, and it can see to the ends of the universe. But it’s up in orbit. That’s why it works so well; it doesn’t have to see through the earth’s atmosphere.”
“Oh, my God,” Chloe suddenly cried, her hands going to her face. “That must be it, then! That’s why I came here. So I could tell you about this Hubble thing and you can tell Hunter.”
Again Kurjan and Dominique just stared at each other.
“God, we have to tell Hunter to get to this telescope somehow,” Chloe was saying excitedly. “He has to try to find something with it.”
“Find what?” Kurjan asked her. “A giant snowball?”
Chloe just shook her head. “It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Everything sounds crazy these days,” Kurjan said, returning his gaze to the absolutely mind-boggling meteorological event happening about a mile over their heads.
“Then we have to do it,” Chloe said, her breasts bouncing slightly with renewed enthusiasm. “We have to get in touch with Hunter, we have to tell him to use this telescope to find this thing. I think he’ll know what to do from there.”
Kurjan looked over at Dominique, who just stared sadly back at him. She suddenly retrieved her gown and draped it over her.
Chloe detected the immediate coolness in the room.
“You can get in touch with Hunter, right? He’s our only chance…”
Kurjan and Dominique just shook their heads. Then Kurjan slumped to the floor.
“Getting a message up to Hunter in the Zon space shuttle?” he sighed. “Now that is going to be a problem.”
Twenty-four
Off UA Florida
IT WAS THE CREW of the ancient C-119 Flying Boxcar who saw them first.
The cargo plane-turned-radar-picket craft was flying its usual coastal patrol down from the Kennedy Space Center to the tip of Florida and back again. It had taken off at its usual time—0400 hours—and had reached Key Largo around 7 A.M., as usual. The crew quickly took on some more fuel and began the return trip to the KSC around 0720 hours.
It was on the trip back that things started happening. Just as the airplane was passing off the coast of what used to be Vero Beach, its surface-warning radar sets began lighting up like Christmas trees. A large disruption was evident about 22 miles northeast of their present position. The scatter on the radar sets was so extensive, the C-119 crew thought at first the instruments were broken. They’d never seen anything like this before. It looked like a big blob was speeding toward the waters off the Kennedy Space Center. Indeed, this huge indication was moving so fast, it appeared as it would make landfall at the KSC—and keep right on going.
What could be that big and moving that fast?
The C-119 crew didn’t even want to speculate. They knew the area from which they were picking up this enormous radar blot was the same over which the six Sabre jets and then the huge Seamaster flying boat had disappeared just two days before. The last thing the C-119 guys wanted to do was start guessing about what the hell might be out there.
They immediately made a scramble call to KSC staff command instead. This call put the entire KSC back on high alert. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. The surviving personnel were still in shock after the murderous attack the day before. Large parts of the base were still smoldering, and many of the UA facilities from the battle had yet to be identified. As it was, the base defenders had been burying their comrades all night long.
Still, as soon as the warning sirens began howling, the defenders wearily reported to their battle stations. There were just 423 able bodies left now, many of them actually technicians and support people thrust into the role of combat soldier. A huge trench line had been dug along the beaches bordering the KSC—the threat of an enemy amphibious landing was now greater than ever. The remaining Patriot missile batteries had been aligned in a no-man’s land between the beaches and the space center. The shuttle runway was, of course, unusable; the pair of F-14s, the single F/A-18, the Thunderchiefs, and the Delta Dart all had to fly up to the UAAF base at Myrtle Beach in UA South Carolina following the battle, this was the nearest working airstrip large enough to accommodate the unlikely aircraft. But the distance and the time in between left the KSC woefully unprotected in the area of aerial defense. In fact, the only flyable aircraft at the KSC at the moment were the pair of battered Sea Stallions used by the JAWS infiltration team, the two Hueys, and the CH-54 Sky Crane. Any credible air cover was at least 285 miles away.
In other words, if some kind of an attack was coming, the defenders at KSC would have to bear the brunt of it with little more than rifles and a few SAMs for at least an hour and maybe much longer.
About 15 minutes after first spotting the huge radar indication, the crew of the C-119 was finally able to get a long-range TV visual on the enormous surface disruption. Their initial, if unspoken, fears proved true. The huge radar blob was being caused by 12 Cult battleships steaming west at full speed and sailing extremely close together, an old Cult tactic.
And, no surprise, they were heading right for the KSC.
It was the USS Marconi that sighted the battleships next.
The diminutive spy ship was positioned about 22 miles off the coast of the KSC, still looking for any signs of the missing Sabre jets or the Seamaster.
Because it had most of its sensitive visual and listening devices powered down, the Marconi wasn’t aware the Cult battleships were in its vicinity until its communication officer picked up the original scramble alert message sent by the C-119 to the KSC.
The spy ship went to battle stations immediately. Its armament, three mounted Harpoon missile launchers and several M60 cannons, while formidable, were no match for the 16-inch guns of the Cult battleships. But the spy ship did have one great advantage: its speed. Crammed inside its engine room was not the usual set of smoky diesel engines that combined might muster up a 22-knot battle speed on a good day. Rather, the Marconi had a pair of GE-404 aircraft derivative gas turbines serving as its power plant. Though it hardly looked it, the Marconi could travel along the surface at close to
55 knots, an incredibly high rate of speed that could be well used either for attacking or leaving an area of danger.
This morning, it would be used for both.
The Marconi’s crew got a return message from KSC about 10 minutes after the high alert was called at the battered space base. The twelve battleships were coming, that much everyone knew. But what was their intent, exactly? Were they part of another combined attack? Or were they coming in alone? Even more important, were their holds filled with more specialty troops, meaning another attempt at an armed landing was in the offing? Or were the sinister Cult commanders planning something else?
The coded message sent from KSC command to the Marconi told the crew of the spy ship that it was up to them to find out.
The fleet of swift-moving battleships was still 16 miles off the coast of Central Florida when the Marconi first made its presence known.
The tiny spy ship emerged from a self-induced fog bank just north of the battleships, and fired two Harpoon missiles at the lead Cult vessel, the sleek new Sub-shoppi. The pair of missiles slammed into the side of the battleship, causing some damage but not enough to put the vessel in any real danger. However, it did slow it down, and as the lead vessel in the swift-moving pack, served to slow down the entire squadron of battleships as well.
This had been the Marconi’s intent all along. With the battleships’ speed now cut in half, the swift little spy trawler opened up its two jet engines and made a course directly for the middle of the enemy flotilla.
The problem with a battleship was that because it was the biggest thing on the sea, it was also the hardest to maneuver. Turning one quickly was nearly impossible; even slowing one down was equivalent to slowing down a supertanker, a long, complicated thing to do. The crew of the Marconi knew this, which was why they were now on the seemingly insane beeline toward the center of the 12-ship enemy formation. They had speed and surprise on their side. It would be enough to last them a minute or so.
The Marconi made direct contact with the battleships about 45 seconds later, speeding by the two trailing ships, the Fuchu and the Gooshu. The elite SSSQ crewmen managed to strafe the decks of both battleships with their M60 cannons as they raced by, taking out several antennas and a radar set.
The Marconi came upon the trio of rear-flanking ships next, the Ishima, the Lareedai, and the fearsome Taishima. More cannon fire, another Harpoon launched, two more antennas, and a radar dish destroyed. The Marconi was up to 50 knots now, traveling between the two rather elderly middle-flank ships, navigating a space not 30 feet wide. This put them right on the tail of the two largest ships in the squadron, the massive Yumitta and its sister vessel, the Binashi. Two more Harpoons were launched, both clipping the rear steering gears of the big ships, damaging them moderately. The Marconi was now passing out of the formation, firing its cannons at the portside pocket battleship Linomee and sending its last Harpoon at the bridge of the flagship, the impressively arrayed Sudai.
The air was filled with five-inch shellfire from the battleships by now—but it was too little too late. The Marconi was already speeding away to the south, its helmsman turning the ship this way and that, not allowing the sighters on any of the Cult ships to get a good register on it. Laying out another cloud of steam cover, they disappeared over the horizon just two minutes later.
In all, their attack had lasted less than five minutes, and the damage they’d inflicted, while bravely executed, was not enough to force the battleships to turn around or call off their impending attack. But that had not been the purpose of the Marconi’s brazen escapade.
Rather, the ship had just performed its usual mission: to spy. By getting in close to the battleships, they were able to see exactly how the vessels were riding in the water, how they turned, and how many people appeared on deck once they’d begun shooting.
Their conclusion: the battleships were definitely on their way to the KSC. However, they were riding relatively high in the water, suggesting their holds were probably not filled with specialty soldiers, waiting to try another landing. Instead, the ships were probably heading toward the battered UA base with the intention of simply bombarding it with their huge guns.
In the crazy state of affairs surrounding the beleaguered space center these days, that was actually good news.
The first barrage of 16-inch shells hit the KSC at exactly 0800 hours.
Six of them came down in all, their one-ton warheads slamming into the already useless shuttle runway, leaving a nearly perfect row of 6 craters, 45 feet wide and 25 feet deep.
Another barrage arrived at 0801, exactly one minute after the first. They, too, came down on the perforated five-mile airstrip, leaving six gigantic holes and sending tons of dust and debris into the air. No sooner was this cleared by the morning winds than another half dozen shells came down, almost in the same place.
It went on for an hour. Barrages of 16-inch shells streaking over the beaches, over the VAB, over most of the indispensible space center support buildings and landing on the long, battered, and completely deserted airstrip. At the end of just a few minutes, the runway looked like a moonscape. At the end of an hour, it resembled a small piece of the Grand Canyon.
For the hour of total bombardment, it was a matter of all the defenders keeping their heads down and their ears plugged. Just the volume at which the shells screeched over was enough to puncture an eardrum or cause an ear to bleed. The sonic waves resulting from the shells’ impact could do even worse damage. Stay low and cover up was the order for all UA personnel manning the trenches and defensive systems positions. This might get worse…
But that was the strange thing: the huge shells were not hitting any areas where UA troopers were gathered. They were not hitting the beach, or the string of Patriots sites, or any of the command buildings within the space complex itself. The battleships’ barrage, while frightfully impressive, proved to be actually harmless. A study in pinpoint shooting from more than two dozen miles away, the hour-long barrage amounted to little more than lobbing one 1-ton shell after another, hitting the same target over and over again, a target that had been destroyed long ago.
This kind of action smacked of two things—and both were very evident to General Dave Jones and his staff, still holed up inside the command bunker below the VAB, still somehow managing the defense of the undermanned, underequipped UAAF outpost.
Between the incredible vibrations caused by the shells landing about three miles away and the subsequent storm of dust and plaster which rained down on them after every hit, Jones and his men were trying their best to monitor the situation via closed-circuit TV, and speculating on exactly what the Cult ships were up to.
“It’s a bag job, it has to be,” said Colonel Catfish Johnson, commanding officer of the 1st Airborne Division. “Those ships were paid to destroy the airstrip, and that’s what they’re doing. Apparently they weren’t paid to do anything else—so they’re not.”
It was a theory that few around the table could argue with. The battleships could have reduced the entire complex to rubble a long time ago and didn’t. The Beagles could have bombed all of the critical launch support buildings during the battle the day before, but they didn’t. The Sparvee fast-attack boats could have leveled the VAB with their Styx missiles, but they didn’t.
It all led to the validation of what the UAAF command staff had suspected all along: the combined Nazi-Cult attack force didn’t want to destroy the KSC as much as they wanted to capture it. And the only reason they would do that was to use it to launch their own payloads into outer space. With the intelligence collected during the JAWS raid down in Cuba, there really was no doubt as to what the UA’s enemies wanted to launch into orbit: the hodge-podge collection of nuclear warheads waiting inside the stockyard at the mysterious, fog-enshrouded Double-Trouble base.
“If they’re able to get all those warheads in orbit,” Johnson continued, coming back to the discussion that had been ongoing inside the command bunker for nearly 72 hours, “
they will quite literally be able to control the entire planet. Wherever someone didn’t do their bidding, they could simply find a means of sending one, two, or more of those warheads back down, and if they survived reentry, they would wipe said place off the map.
“It’s crude and it’s not pretty, but it would be an effective way of gaining total power. And we’d be hard pressed to stop them. Especially when one of these things could just come falling out of the sky on top of us at any moment.”
That, more or less, put it all in a nutshell. The enemy had the weapons, they had the means to put those weapons in space. All they needed was a launch facility to close the deal. The KSC was really the only working spaceport left on earth.
So now the UAAF command staff faced a very unusual situation. They were up against an enemy many times more powerful and many times more ruthless, yet one that had found itself limited by what it could do in the field of battle. Apparently there were no specialty troops left after the battle the day before, and no sizable mercenary army in the area who would want to take on a landing at KSC. To get such a landing force—whether to move a substantial force of Cult troops halfway around the world or pay an exorbitant fee to hire someone more local—would take time.
This left the unseemly alliance with the only option of lobbing their huge shells onto noncritical areas of the KSC until some other strategy could be divined. It was a situation that could persist for a long, long time.
If the eardrums of every one in the UA defense forces could last that long.
Twenty-five
Skyfire, Cape Cod
IT WAS NOW MORNING, but it was darker than ever.
The swirl of the hurricane high above the farmhouse had not moved, and if anything, the storm had gained in strength again.
Out on the ledge of the highest peak of Nauset Heights, Dominique was standing, braving the wind and the rain, looking out onto the raging, violent sea.
Death Orbit Page 26
