Death Orbit (20 page)

They blinked out just as the Zon had come around from the dark side of the planet on 13-4. A warning buzzer came on momentarily, followed by two flashing panels on the main control board. Geraci was up on the flight deck at the time. He pushed the flashing panels to off and reset the warning buzzer. There were five GPCs on-board the Zon; 3 and 4 were primarys, 5 was the back-up. Theoretically, the spacecraft could run on just one—but that was a situation no one wanted to face.

Failing computers were not the only problem facing the Zon crew. Two maneuvering jets, both on the right side of the spacecraft, had also failed; either they were clogged with frozen fuel residue, or all the wild maneuvering had killed them, too. Then there were the warning lights that kept popping concerning the integrity of the main engine systems—these were the things of nightmares. Everything else aboard the battered spacecraft could be working perfectly, but if the main engines didn’t fire when they were supposed to, then the Zon and everyone on board would be stuck in space forever.

Oddly, though, Geraci and the others had come to view these main engine warning lights as glitches—each time one came on, Geraci would run a diagnostic program on the main engines and everything would come back green. The only logical conclusion was that the problem lay inside the warning lights. But no one wanted to go in and start pulling them apart. What would happen if one of
them
broke? So they lived with nagging blinking lights—and the frightening possibility that at any time the warning light might be true and the heart of the Zon might indeed fail, condemning them all to a slow, gruesome, airless death.

They had just completed 13-4 and were moving into 14-4 when they finally saw it.

Elvis was in the jumpseat; Hunter was at the controls. Ben had just completed another in what seemed like a never-ending series of probability/location profiles on the space mines when his navigation computer began blinking. He looked over at JT, who was fretting in the seat next to him, and they in turn looked at Hunter.

For the first time in a long time, the Wingman had a smile on his face.

“Son of a bitch,” he was whispering, “There it is…”

Way off in the distance, almost hidden in the haze of stars about 40 miles ahead and several orbital layers above, was a long, irregular-shaped object that looked like a huge mechanical multilegged spaceborne water-bug. It was much larger than any previous space junk that they’d encountered. It was larger than the haunted Soyuz capsule and even the Zon itself. As soon as they saw it, they all knew exactly what it was.

It was the Mir space station, the entity they believed housed Viktor and was responsible for sowing all the murderous space mines.

At last they had found it.

“God, it’s an ugly-looking thing,” Cook said, straining to get a glimpse of the spacecraft through the front windshield.

“Yeah, but ugly don’t make a difference up here,” Elvis replied.

Everyone knew exactly what Elvis meant. On earth, there was an old saying regarding airplanes: if it looks good, it flies good. Of course the kernel of truth in this was that aerodynamic lines usually had a design element to them—sometimes the more dramatic the element, the better.

But up in space, there was no need for smooth corners and trim edges. There was no air, therefore no resistance and no need to build in any cool curves or swept-back wings. Just as long as the thing could survive the many hazards of space, what it looked like had no bearing on its operation or success as a spacecraft.

But the Mir looked particularly unattractive, as if some giant hand had simply stuck this here and that there and declared it a spacecraft. Of course, that wasn’t too far from the actual story. The Mir had been cobbled together from separate parts flown up by the Russians in the course of two decades. It was a like a mobile home that had sat in the same place for 20 years or more, getting the latest in mobile home technology—awnings, room extensions, bigger windows, a porch—but still basically a trailer.

“Well, this is what we’ve been waiting for,” Hunter said, powering up the Zon’s remaining maneuver jets. “We’ll only have one chance, so let’s do it by the book…”

“You mean if there
is
a book on something like this,” JT replied.

One hour and twenty minutes later, they had maneuvered the Zon to within a mile of the Mir.

The space station was much larger than it appeared when they first spotted it. It was apparent that since Viktor had appropriated the place, he and his minions had added some new modules. Now the Mir had so many extensions—at least two dozen solar panels for power, several additional docking rings to accept Soyuz capsules, plus two large cylindrical objects, stuck on the southern portion of the complex—that it looked like something from a Rube Goldberg nightmare. But this wasn’t about being pretty. It was about staying alive in space.

The space station seemed eerily serene as Hunter closed to within a mile of it. It appeared to be powered up. There were two sets of navigation lights on its most far-flung extensions: a pair of red lights at the end of the foremost solar panel, and a couple of green lights flashing at the end of the cylindrical capsule on its bottom tier. Both sets were blinking rapidly. There were several portholes visible from the Zon’s current angle, and dim, bluish lights could be seen within them.

Still, they were getting no reaction at all as they slowly moved in. But what did they expect? What does one do if the space station is about to be intruded upon? It’s not like they could just fire a burst from their cannons and then run away or escape into a convenient cloud bank, like during a high-speed dogfight down on earth.

No—in space, everything was different.

It was no easier for Hunter to climb into the EVA suit a second time than it had been the first.

The damn things were bulky and uncomfortable and made in such a crude way that they never felt like they fit right in all places everytime. They were tight where they should have been loose, loose where they should have been tight. Add the fact that climbing into one in zero-gravity was like trying to wrestle underwater, a truly miserable experience.

Yet Hunter proceeded to pour himself into the suit with a kind of grim determination. It seemed like he’d spent most of his adult life chasing Viktor—whether the real one or the fake—and now, at last, he was certain he had the supercriminal dead to rights. Unlike their previous confrontations in the desert, above the ocean, or through holographs or proxies, there really was no place Viktor could hide this time, now that Hunter had found the Mir. They were in space; there was nowhere else to go but down, and Viktor’s only ability to do that was the Zon, and Hunter and Company had taken that away from him. Now, it seemed like only a matter of apprehending the much-hated terrorist and dragging him back to earth for a quick trial and, it was hoped, an even quicker execution.

And then, maybe Hunter and the rest of the world could finally get some peace.

Elvis was right beside him, struggling to get into his ETA suit. There had been no need to ask for volunteers to go on this particular excursion. Of them all, Elvis probably had the most personal debt to settle with Viktor. The supercriminal might have robbed the earth of many years of what could have been restablization, but he’d robbed Elvis of many years of his life. During the time under his capture, Elvis had been beaten, brainwashed, and beaten again so many times, he wasn’t even sure who he was. Only after the Zon was captured by the UAAF on Lolita Island did Elvis begin to emerge from the fog of his nasty experience.

With each passing minute, the ex-fighter pilot and member of the Ace Wrecking Company grew more determined in his quest to make Viktor pay—and pay big someday.

From all appearances, that day was today.

JT and Ben were now strapped into the Zon’s flying seats. Cook was in the jumpseat, helping them look for any rogue space mines which would absolutely fuck up the upcoming EVA. Geraci was down in the crew compartment, trying to assist Hunter and Elvis into their suits and get their admittedly crude weaponry and communications equipment to work.

When this Zon flight was first planned, one question that arose was what weapons, if any, the crew should take into orbit. It wasn’t as if standard military firearms would be of any use. And the UAAF didn’t have any ray guns or destructo beams in its arsenals. There was really only one weapon anyone could think of that might be effective in outer space. This was the taser, the police-issued stun gun first popularized in the 1970s. The Zon crew had brought ten with them. Each one could deliver a whopping 50,000-volt jolt, enough to knock a person unconscious, at least on the ground. Truth was, Hunter had no idea exactly how they would work in space, if at all.

In any case, he and Elvis were now packing two tasers apiece, each carrying a full charge. They also had two radios sewn into their suits. One was a NASA-issued so-called “local communicator” of the same type used in the early shuttle days. Their back-up would be a Russian-designed two-way radio that looked liked it had been assembled by elves up at the North Pole. It was so tinny and toyish, no one believed it could work, or if it did, for very long.

Finally, they were set to go into space. On Hunter’s word, JT and Ben had maneuvered the Zon to within 1500 feet of the Mir, specifically, the space station’s lower left side. Here, Elvis knew of a rudimentary emergency hatch which led into a pressure lock which could be operated manually from the outside; he’d used the hatchway several times during his days in Viktor’s capture. Through this, he was sure, he could get them into the Mir, and possibly without anyone inside knowing exactly what they were up to.

Though they were in space and were about to go into what amounted to hostile territory, the plan was fairly simple: gain entrance to the Mir, eliminate any opposition, search for Viktor, and then take him back—and hope he had a spacesuit that fit. The search and the chase were over; now all that remained was the capture.

One last call up to the flight deck revealed no problems. The Mir was still blinking passively, now but 1200 feet away and there wasn’t a space mine in sight. Hunter and Elvis did one last pressure check on their suits and Geraci did a green test on the external chamber-lock. Everything was working as well as could be expected.

Hunter and Elvis shook hands with Geraci and then each other. Then they went out the door.

It took exactly eight minutes for them to get out into space. The depressurization chamber seemed to take longer every time they used it. But finally they were free of the Zon and untangling their lifeline tethers.

Elvis was particularly eager to get going. He didn’t even bother to test his zipgun, the gas-powered steering device which would propel them over to Mir. He attached his tether and gave his zip a long, powerful press. The next moment he was speeding away from Hunter and toward the spaceship looming off the nose of the Zon.

Hunter, once again caught up in the absolute beauty and freedom of walking in space, now hastened to join his colleague. He gave his own zipgun a long pull and was soon horizontal and nearly colliding with the bottoms of Elvis’s space boots.

It was very strange to be out here, though; this thought could not escape Hunter’s mind no matter what the circumstances. The whole when-an-object-is-in-motion-it-tends-to-stay-in-motion thing had an absolutely entirely different meaning up in orbit. With no atmosphere, gravity, or external means of friction to slow you down, once you got up a head of steam, you kept it unless you took it upon yourself to slow down. It was this external aspect of being in space that made Hunter the most excited. The great blue earth, spinning so tremendously fast directly below him, seemed to be the one out of place up here. Space—cold, dead, dark, and yet magnificent—was now the norm. Life on Earth, the air, the water, the people and the plants, seemed the aberration.

And above him, billions of stars, billions of galaxies, worlds of untold tales. Life, or what might pass for life, swirling around within the cold, pale light of the stars. Spinning in what might be…

A sudden jerk on his helmet knocked Hunter out of his latest daydream. It was Elvis. He’d kicked both of them to a stop about two-thirds of the way across the void to the Mir. Hunter looked up at him and saw he was gesturing frantically. But what was wrong? The Mir was still there, unmoving, though its velocity was nearly seven miles a second. His spacesuit seemed to be working okay, no leaks that he could see. The same with Elvis’s suit.

“What’s the problem?” he called over to Elvis.

Of course, the reply was broken up with static.

“Six o’clock… look… just about… six…”

He was pointing to a spot at the bottom of the Mir, which corresponded roughly with six o’clock low. The glare from the earthglow made it hard to see at first—but then Hunter finally got it.

“Damn,” he whispered into his microphone.

Two tiny figures, clad in black spacesuits, had come out of the Mir and were heading right for them.

What followed was the first fistfight in outer space.

The pair of men in the black spacesuits were also equipped with zipguns. One push on their triggers and they were suddenly looming large in Hunter’s face plate.

“Split up!” someone yelled into his headphones. It could have been Elvis, or maybe JT, back on the Zon. But whoever was giving the order, it was good advice. Hunter and Elvis quickly separated via a quick punch from the zipguns. Within a few seconds they were 50 feet apart but still barreling in on the Mir.

Their two oncoming opponents also split up. The one on the left was now heading right for Hunter, the other for Elvis. Both appeared to be carrying long, thin, dark twisted tubes, possibly some kind of space tool, but bearing a remarkable resemblance to a crowbar. Obviously these were intended to be used as weapons. But again, this seemed crazy. They were in space. Essentially, nothing had any weight, only mass. What happens when you get hit with a crowbar that is weightless while you are weightless as well?

Hunter was certain that the man heading for him in this weird kind of speeded-up slow motion was bent on finding out.