by Tom Grace
“Skye’s programmed an attack on the station,” Rainey said. “Based on the time index, it’s going to happen in the next orbit.”
“Can you stop it?” Kilkenny asked.
“I’ll find out in a second,” Rainey replied as he navigated the program’s graphic interface.
Every attempt Rainey made to access Zeus-2’s targeting or operational systems was rebuffed.
“Damn, I’m locked out,” Rainey said, frustrated.
“I thought you were already in the program,” Tao said.
“Only the outer layer,” Rainey explained. “My USB key was enough to pass through the security on that shell. What’s protecting all the satellite command functions is something a lot more robust. We don’t have the time to crack it before Zeus-2 fires on the ISS.”
“Why don’t we just overlay the program?” Grin asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m assuming what’s on this machine is a compiled program, but you’ve got the original source code somewhere. We recompile it with the security neutered and put it right over the top of this one. The computer shouldn’t know the difference.”
“We’d have to be careful with the files containing Skye’s instructions,” Rainey said, running through the potential for Grin’s suggestion. “There’re codes in there that we’ll need to override the targeting commands.”
“But can you do it in time?” Kilkenny asked.
“I think so, but it’s going to be close.”
Kilkenny picked up the phone on Skye’s desk and got the ship’s communications officer. “Yeah, it’s Kilkenny. I need you to place a call stateside.”
With Barnett’s help, Kilkenny was able to route a satellite call from Aequatus through the Johnson Space Center to the International Space Station. It was the first time he’d spoken with Kelsey Newton in weeks.
“Nolan, the flight director said there’s some kind of problem. What’s going on?”
“You and your crewmates better get ready to abandon ship,” Nolan replied.
“What?”
“The people who attacked Liberty know about Washabaugh and have targeted the station. You’ve got less than ninety minutes before they take a shot at you.”
“Can’t you stop it?” Kelsey asked.
“We’re trying, believe me, but there may not be enough time. I’m sorry to cut short your stay up there.”
“I know it’s not you.”
“Time’s wasting. We’re going to upload the telemetry data to JSC, so they can keep you updated on how long before this weapon gets in range. If I have any good news, I’ll call.”
“I love you, Nolan.”
“I love you, too, Kelsey. Now get off that station.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
ISS
“We heard,” Molly said.
She and the others floated in Node 1, just outside the Hab module.
“They know I’m here?” Pete asked rhetorically. “So much for the witness protection program.”
“That’s not funny.” Kelsey looked at the anguished faces of Pete and her two crewmates and saw that they too had done the math, though none would say it. “We can’t all leave.”
Though recently finished, the ISS still lacked one major safety component—the crew return vehicle. Prototypes of the X-38 had performed well through several rounds of flight testing and the final production version was scheduled for delivery on the next shuttle mission along with the rest of the Sisters of the Most Holy Celestial Convent. All they had for the moment was Soyuz, which could seat only three.
“The choice is obvious,” Pete said.
“Don’t play hero, Pete,” Molly replied. “You’ve got a family back home.”
“We all do,” Pete shot back. “You want us to draw straws?”
“No. This is our home,” Kelsey said. “And I for one plan to defend it.”
“How?” Valentina asked.
“We know where this killer satellite is, and we know where it will be when it attacks.”
“And if you know where the bugger is,” Molly added, “maybe you can do something about it.”
“What do you have in mind?” Pete asked skeptically.
“We build our own anti-satellite weapon and take out the other guy’s first.”
Kelsey suited up for EVA and floated out through the airlock. Looking down on the Earth, she tried hard not to think that someone on that beautiful orb was trying to kill them. She worked her way down the length of the station and scaled the side of the Centrifuge Accommodation Module.
High above her, the weblike spherical structure of Zwicky-Wolff was backlit by a waxing gibbous moon. Kelsey felt some regret for the years of work that the beautifully engineered experiment represented, years that would be lost whether their desperate attempt succeeded or failed. Using a handheld pistol grip tool, Kelsey began removing the bolts that fastened the array to the top of CAM.
The Soyuz, a spacecraft whose initial design almost predated Kelsey, slowly descended from the underside of the ISS. Once clear of the station, Valentina fired a short burst from the maneuvering thrusters. Soyuz quietly slipped out from beneath the ISS.
“Hey, Kelsey,” Pete called out over her headset.
“Yeah?”
“JSC thinks we’re all nuts.”
“Do they have a better idea?”
“No, so they sent up the telemetry and wished us good luck. Molly should be uploading it to the Soyuz shortly.”
“Where is the Soyuz? I’m just about ready for it.”
“Passing beneath you,” Valentina replied.
A short burst from the maneuvering thrusters brought the Soyuz up in front of the station’s bow.
“That’s good, Val,” Kelsey said when the top of the spacecraft was level with the end of CAM. “Just tilt the back end out a little, away from the station.”
“Da,” Valentina replied, then she fine-tuned the spacecraft’s alignment.
With one arm pressed against the mast, Kelsey released a short burst of thrust from her SAFER. The base plate of the slender column easily shifted off the top of CAM. The center of gravity for the severed array was somewhere near the middle of the engineered sphere. As Kelsey pushed on the supporting mast, the sphere rotated in place.
Give me a large enough lever and a place to stand and I can move the world, Kelsey thought, the effects of microgravity still magical to her.
She tilted the mast until its base plate touched the mating collar on the top of Soyuz, then fired another burst to halt the rotation. Bolt by bolt, Kelsey grafted the experimental array to the Russian craft, transforming two machines of peaceful exploration into an orbital battering ram.
“I’m set, Val,” Kelsey announced. “You can pull away.”
“Understood. Firing thrusters.”
Valentina slowly pulled Soyuz out in front of the ISS and tilted the array out and away from the station’s delicate solar wings.
“I’ve finished with the telemetry,” Molly announced. “Uploading it now.”
“Is coming over good,” Valentina reported. “I am setting Soyuz for remote operation and preparing to leave capsule.”
Valentina opened the hatch on the side of the spacecraft and pulled herself through the opening. She was dressed in a Russian Orlan suit, which was designed for tethered EVAs.
“I must admit,” Valentina said, “this part makes me a little nervous.”
Kelsey let go of Soyuz and held her arms out wide.
“I’ll catch you,” she promised.
Valentina pushed off toward her and covered the short distance quickly.
“There,” Kelsey said as she wrapped her arms around her crewmate. “Now to get back to the station.”
“Nervous part still, yes?” Valentina said.
“Not the nervous part, Val. If Pete can do it from the other side of the planet, we can certainly do it from a couple hundred feet.”
Kelsey fired the SAFER unit and flew Valentina and herself
back to the airlock. With the two spacewalkers clear, Molly and Pete launched Soyuz.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
AEQUATUS
“Anything?” Kilkenny asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.
Grin was digging deep into his repertoire of programming tricks, trying to aid Rainey in circumventing the encrypted lockouts protecting Zeus-2’s operations program.
“This is a weapons grade hunk of code, Nolan,” Grin replied, not taking his eyes from the work.
The answer wasn’t an excuse, simply a statement of fact. Grin was the most gifted programmer Kilkenny had ever met, and that included a lot of whiz kids at MIT whose native tongue might have been binary. Given enough time, he knew Grin would eventually solve the intricate mathematical rules governing the encryption and take control of the killer satellite, but the time they were given was growing short.
Soyuz had disappeared from view, the cobbled-together spacecraft shrinking in size until it could no longer be discerned against the star-filler blackness of space. The crew of the ISS had fired their one and only shot against the approaching nemesis and the waiting game had begun.
Since launching Soyuz, the four astronauts had sequestered themselves in the Hab module. It was the closest thing to a home for them aboard the orbiting research station—a place where they could draw at least a little comfort. The crew had grown silent, unable to voice their fears. Most of their thoughts were on those they would leave behind if things went badly.
Death would come quickly in the vacuum of space. Once the station’s hull was breached and the atmosphere ripped away, the water in their bodies would begin to boil and pockets of water vapor would form in their skin. Within twenty seconds, embolisms would develop in their abdomens and hearts. They would also be unconscious—their brains starved of oxygen. Death would finally take them a few minutes later.
They’d considered donning spacesuits, but in the event of a breach that would only prolong the ordeal. The soonest NASA could get a shuttle up to rescue them would be in two days, and they would still be dead.
“I’ve got an idea,” Valentina announced.
“Let’s hear it,” Pete replied.
“This satellite knows where we will be, yes?”
“That’s right,” Kelsey replied. “Our telemetry is pretty easy to follow.”
“What if we weren’t there? Would it know where to look?”
“That the dumbest thing I—”
“No, it’s not,” Kelsey said, cutting Pete off. “It might even be inspired. We don’t know how this thing finds its targets, but part of it has to based on telemetry, just to get it into the ballpark.”
“Exactly,” Valentina agreed. “What if we move station out of this ballpark? We have Progress module—why not use its engines to change our orbit?”
“That could work,” Pete slowly admitted, the engineering part of his brain starting to wrap itself around the problem. “We’d have to check how our paths are going to cross, to see if we need to speed up or slow down.”
“Well, what are we floating around here for?” Molly asked. “Let’s make it happen.”
Zeus-2 completed its self-insertion into polar orbit, nine hundred miles above the Earth’s surface. All systems were functioning nominally and its weapon was now fully active.
The Eastern Hemisphere of the Earth was in shadow, the terminator between day and night passing just off Europe’s Atlantic coast. Soon, Zeus-2 would pass over Greenland and the North Pole, and then its target would come into view.
“Ready for Progress burn,” Valentina called out, “in three … two … one …”
Attached to the rear of the Zvezda Service Module, Progress-12’s S5-80 engine ignited. A tongue of white-hot gases flared from the nozzle, pushing the ISS down into a lower orbit while at the same time accelerating it.
With each passing second of the burn, the ISS picked up speed and lost altitude—a combination designed to shorten the time it took the station to orbit the Earth and place them out of the killer satellite’s target area.
“And Progress burn terminates … now.” Valentina called out.
“Altitude at 186 miles,” Molly reported. “Speed thirty-two-thousand KPH.”
“Not enough to fling us out into space,” Kelsey said, “but hopefully enough to keep us one step ahead of the wolf.”
As Zeus-2 rounded the pole, its target acquisition system went active. Projecting the space station’s last known orbital track, the killer satellite selected a point ten minutes distant where it would have an optimum firing solution.
It scanned the area of space where the ISS was supposed to be, but found nothing to lock on to. Per its programming, it began systematically searching along the station’s projected orbital track, looking for the largest man-made object ever constructed in space.
Passing over the Carolina Islands, Soyuz-Zwicky-Wolff was the antithesis of the Zeus-2. It lacked the weapon’s targeting sensors, supercomputer brain, and nuclear power plant—in almost every way it was an inferior spacecraft. It soared through space silently, emitting no electromagnetic energy. Reduced to the bare essence of what a spacecraft is, the combined object was a projectile moving through space.
Time was running out. Kilkenny had hovered over Grin and Rainey as if his presence could somehow help. It didn’t, but neither man would say so because both knew what was at stake for him.
“You mother!” Grin cursed when his latest and most promising attempt ran into a digital brick wall.
It had taken him ten minutes to piece together that last bit of code. With less than a minute left until Zeus-2 reached its firing position, the clock was running out.
“I’m sorry, man” Grin said. “We are so friggin’ close.”
Kilkenny nodded, but he knew it was too late. He left Skye’s office and walked out onto a small balcony. Bodies littered the water, many blackened and disfigured by the destruction inflicted on the Sanya. The living were the priority of the teams of men in small boats searching the blessedly calm sea, but success seemed a rarity. The only hazard to the rescuers was the burning slick of fuel that spread out from the broken hull like a California wildfire during a drought.
The Sanya lay low in the water now, much of her hull hidden beneath the surface. Kilkenny heard a load gasp from the ship, the sound of air rushing out of the superstructure. Slowly at first, the Sanya moved forward, and as she did the weight of her flooded hull pulled her down. As Kilkenny watched, he felt his own hopes sinking into a cold, black abyss.
Kilkenny looked up at the clear afternoon sky. Somewhere, beyond the blue, Kelsey was passing overhead. And while he couldn’t see her or the craft on which she sailed, he prayed that Kelsey and her crewmates were far enough from the doomed station. Tao quietly stepped up beside him and placed her arm around his back. She said nothing, because there was nothing that could be said.
Zeus-2 detected a large round object, then quickly dismissed it and moved on. It next found an object passing over the equator, far ahead of where the ISS should have been. It was in a lower orbit, but matched the station’s rough physical dimensions. The killer satellite targeted this object and recomputed its plan of attack.
Soyuz-Zwicky-Wolff had no plan of attack, other than the faint hope of being in the right place at the right time. Passing over the Tropic of Cancer, its onboard computer relayed one last instruction to the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The lateral thrusters fired a long burst, causing Soyuz to spin rapidly about its longitudinal axis. The ninety-foot-diameter sphere of the Dark Matter Array rotated in concert with the Russian spacecraft, the precision-engineered members on the equator of the weblike structure almost a blur.
As the firing point neared, Zeus-2’s reactor ramped up to maximum power. Gyros kept the weapon aimed at its target, tracking the ISS like a hunter training his shotgun on a flock of ducks. The orbits of the two spacecraft were closing—the space station was less than two thousand miles away.
Then Zeus-2 lost it
s lock on the target. Its sensors were jumping back and forth between the ISS and a much closer, unidentified object. The nearer object was partially obscuring its view of the station. Zeus-2’s computer attempted to compensate for the intermittent target lock, trying to time an opening when it could fire. It only needed a second.
When Zeus-2 reached the optimal position, it fired. A six-megawatt bolt of energy flashed from the conical beam control assembly. The spinning sphere of the Zwicky-Wolff array caught the blast. Key structural members were severed and truss work flew apart. Bits of loosened metal debris spun out in every direction and a hail of shrapnel battered the stealthy composite shell of the killer satellite. Stripped of the Dark Matter Array, Soyuz passed by Zeus-2 harmlessly.
The multiple impacts on its hull staggered Zeus-2-like a boxer caught in a flurry of punches. And by the time its gyros had regained control, the ISS had passed out of range.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
“Nolan, get in here!” Grin shouted excitedly. “You gotta see this!”
“Did you get in?”
“Just now,” Grin replied. “Unfortunately, the thing had already taken its shot at the station, but you have to see this.”
Kilkenny sat beside Rainey and looked the animation on the laptop’s display.
“Here’s Zeus-2 coming over the pole,” Rainey explained, “and this is the ISS. Check this out. Zeus is looking for the ISS over here, but it’s not where it’s supposed to be. Zeus takes a few more minutes, and finally reacquires it over there. Then, as Zeus moves in for the kill, it loses track of the ISS—something got in the way.”
“Whatever it was got right in its face,” Grin added, “really messed with the shot.”
“It got a shot off?” Tao asked. “Did it hit the ISS?”
“I don’t think so,” Rainey replied. “Near as I can tell, this other object stood right in the way and took the hit. Then Zeus went into a spin and by the time it righted itself, the ISS was gone.”
