Starfire (37 page)

“Nothing,” Brad said immediately—probably too immediately, because he saw Jodie's eyes flare again, then narrow suspiciously. “Jodie, I'm not a machine.” I
know
one, Brad thought, but
I'm
not one. “I'm the same guy. Maybe that home invasion did freak me out a little. But I'm—”

“Listen, Brad, I've got some thinking to do about us,” Jodie said. “I really thought we could be more than friends, but that was with the Brad I met long ago. This new one is scary. It seems like you're scarfing up everything this Chief Ratel is feeding you, and you've turned into a monster.”

“A
monster
! I'm not—”

“I suggest for your own sake that you tell this Chief Ratel guy to piss off and maybe get some counseling, before you go completely off the deep end and start roaming the streets in a mask and cape looking for blokes to beat up,” Jodie said, jabbing a finger at Brad. “In the meantime, I think it's best for me to keep my distance from you until I feel safe again.” And she stormed away.

M
ARICOPA
, C
ALIFORNIA

L
ATER
THAT
NIGHT

A woman with long dark hair wearing a leather jacket, dark slacks, and rose-tinted sunglasses was fueling her rental car at a deserted-looking gasoline station when a new-looking windowless van pulled into a dark parking spot beside the station's office. A tall, good-looking man in jeans and an untucked flannel shirt got out of the van, took a long admiring look at the woman at the pump, and went inside to make a purchase. When he came out a few minutes later, he walked up to the woman and smiled. “Evening, pretty lady,” he said.

“Evening,” the woman said.

“Nice night, isn't it?”

“It's a little cold, but pleasant.”

“My name's Tom,” the man said, extending a hand.

“Melissa,” the woman said, shaking his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same, Melissa,” the man said. “Pretty name.”

“Thank you, Tom.”

The man hesitated, but only for a second, before stepping a bit closer to the woman and saying, “I have an idea, Melissa. I have a bottle of bourbon in the van, some nice leather seats in back, and a hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket. What do you say we have a little fun together before we get back on the road?”

The woman looked Tom directly in the eye, then gave him just a hint of a smile. “Two hundred,” she said.

“Done this before, have we?” Tom said. “That's a little steep for a half-and-half in my van.” The woman removed her sunglasses, revealing dark seductive eyes and long lashes, then unzipped her leather jacket, revealing a red blouse with a plunging neckline and a deep sexy cleavage. Tom fairly licked his lips as he took in the sights. “Park beside me.”

The woman parked her rental car beside the van, and Tom opened the side door for her. The interior of the van was very well appointed, with a leather couch in back, rear-facing leather captain's chairs behind the driver's seat, a television with a satellite receiver and DVD player, and a wet bar. Melissa took one of the captain's chairs while Tom poured two glasses of bourbon. He handed one to her, then tipped his glass to hers. “Here's to a pleasant evening, Melissa.”

“It will be,” she said. “But first?”

“Sure,” Tom said. He reached into his jeans, pulled out a money clip, and shook out two hundred-dollar bills.

“Thank you, Tom,” Melissa said, taking a sip of bourbon.

Tom motioned behind him, and it wasn't until then that the woman noticed a sports camera in the corner, pointed at her. “You don't mind if I turn on my little camera there, do you, Melissa?” he asked. “I like to keep a souvenir collection.”

The woman hesitated for a moment, a little confusion in her eyes, then gave him her tiny smile. “No, go ahead,” she said. “I like performing in front of cameras.”

“I'll bet you do, Melissa,” Tom said. He turned, made his way to the camera in back, and pressed the button to turn it on. “I have another one up front that I want to get also.” He turned . . .

. . . and found himself face-to-face with Melissa, looking into her dark, hypnotic eyes. He smiled, admiring her high cheekbones and full red lips. “Hey, baby, I can't wait either, but let me . . .”

. . . and that's when the knife plunged through his abdomen, up through his diaphragm, through his lungs, and all the way into his heart. A hand went over his mouth, but he did not cry out—he was dead before he hit the carpet.

The woman pulled the rear sports camera down from its mount, took the money clip, cracked open the side door, saw there were no onlookers, and quickly left the van, got into her own car, and drove away. By the time they found the body, she was hundreds of miles away.

T
HE
W
HITE
H
OUSE

W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

D
AYS
LATER

“There it goes,” Vice President Ann Page said. She was in the White House Situation Room with President Kenneth Phoenix; National Security Adviser William Glenbrook; Harold Lee, the undersecretary of defense for space; and Air Force General George Sandstein, commander of Air Force Space Command, watching live video being broadcast from space on the Situation Room's wall-sized high-definition monitor. They watched in stunned amazement as a large section of the International Space Station separated from the rest of the structure and began to drift away from the ISS. “For the first time in almost twenty years, the International Space Station is vacant,” Ann breathed, “and for the first time ever, there aren't any Russian components on it.”

“What is being taken away, Ann?” the president asked.

“That is called the Russian Orbital Segment, or ROS, sir,” the vice president replied, not needing to refer to any notes—as an ex-astronaut and aerospace and electronics engineer, she was an expert on all American and American-involved space stations dating back to Skylab. “There are three docking and airlock modules, one docking and storage module, one laboratory, one habitation module, one service module, four solar arrays, and two heat radiators.”

“Any critical modules being taken away? If we sent crews back up there, would they be in any danger?”

“The most important Russian module was Zvezda, or ‘star,' the service module,” Ann replied. “Zvezda is the large module all the way in the ‘back' as the station flies, and as such provides attitude and navigation control and is used to boost the station to a higher orbit when necessary. It also produces power, oxygen, and water, among many other critical functions.”

“And now?”

“Zvezda will eventually be replaced by two American modules, the ISS Propulsion Module and the Interim Control Module,” Ann explained. “These two modules were built back about twenty years ago when Zvezda was delayed in construction and were meant to serve as backup control and propulsion systems in case Zvezda failed or was damaged; the Propulsion Module was also designed to deorbit the ISS when the time came.”

“That time might be coming sooner than we expected,” National Security Adviser William Glenbrook commented.

“Both modules have been in storage at the Naval Research Laboratory,” the vice president went on. “When the Russians made the announcement that they were going to take the ROS off the ISS, the NRL initiated functional checks of the two modules. That has just been completed, and now we are just waiting to have the modules mated to a booster and sent to the ISS. The problem with that is that the two modules were built to be transported to the ISS aboard a space shuttle, so some reengineering will have to be done to get them on a rocket. That might take a few more weeks.”

“So that's why the station had to be abandoned?” the president asked. “They couldn't make power, water, or oxygen, or control the station?”

“The Harmony module on the ISS can make consumables, but for only two astronauts, not six,” Ann said. “Unmanned and manned spacecraft can resupply the ISS and dock to the ISS to control and boost it higher if necessary, so station control and provisions should not be an issue. For safety reasons, it was decided to evacuate the ISS until the Russians' de-mating procedure was—” Ann suddenly stopped and was staring at the high-def monitor. “Oh, my Lord! Well well, our Russian friends sure seemed to be very busy over the past several months, haven't they?”

“What is it?” Phoenix asked.

“This,” Ann said, rising from her seat, going to the screen at the front of the Situation Room, and pointing at a small triangular-shaped object on the screen. “Freeze that,” she ordered, and the computer responded by pausing the live feed. “That, Mr. President, if I'm not mistaken, is a Soviet-era Elektron spaceplane.”

“The Russians have a spaceplane, like the one I flew in?” President Phoenix asked incredulously.

“It's more akin to a small space shuttle, sir,” Ann explained, “in that it's carried atop a booster, and then reenters the atmosphere and glides unpowered to a runway. Although it's smaller than the shuttle and carries only one cosmonaut, its payload is almost twice that of our S-19 spaceplanes, about fifteen thousand pounds. They were armed with guided missiles, specifically designed to hunt down and destroy American satellites and Silver Tower. The plane hasn't been seen since the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviets said they were going to build hundreds of them. Maybe they did.” Ann paused, distracted by painful memories of decades past. “I was aboard Armstrong Space Station when the Soviets attacked with three of those bastards. They almost took us out.”

“Did we know they were going to launch a spaceplane, General?” the president asked.

“Not exactly, sir,” Air Force General George Sandstein, commander of Air Force Space Command and deputy commander for space of U.S. Strategic Command, replied. “About three days ago we received a notification of a launch from Plesetsk Cosmodrome Launch Site 41 of a Soyuz-U rocket with an unmanned Progress payload to assist in the ROS de-mating process, sir. Nothing was mentioned about a spaceplane. We tracked the payload and determined it was indeed going into orbit and on course to rendezvous with the ISS, so we classified it as a routine mission.”

“Isn't it unusual for the Russians to use Plesetsk instead of Baikonur, General?” Ann asked.

“Yes, ma'am—Plesetsk was almost abandoned after the Russians made a deal with Kazakhstan for the continued use of Baikonur,” Sandstein replied. “Plesetsk was mostly used for intercontinental-ballistic-missile tests and other light and medium military projects—” Sandstein stopped, his eyes widened with shock, then he said, “Including the Elektron spaceplane and BOR-5 Buran test articles.”

“Buran?” the president asked.

“The Soviets' copy of the space shuttle, sir,” Ann said. “Buran was designed from the start as a military program, so test launches of the subscale test articles were from Plesetsk, which is well inside Russia instead of Kazakhstan. The Buran spaceplane itself made only one launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the mission was highly successful—a completely autonomous unmanned launch, orbit, reentry, and landing. Five Burans were built; one was destroyed, and three were in various states of completion.”

“If the Russians are launching spaceplanes again, this could be the start of a new Russian initiative to push back into space,” Glenbrook said. “They have the ROS, and it's not going to be attached to a Western space station anymore, so they can do what they want without a lot of close observation. If they are starting to fly Elektrons, they might be gearing up in many more areas, all related to building up their own capabilities as well as countering our own.”

“An arms race in space,” the president said. “Just what we need right now. Aren't we required to notify the Russians if we're going to launch a spaceplane into orbit?”

“Yes, sir, and we do, each and every time,” Sandstein replied. “Date and time of launch, initial orbital path, destination, purpose, payload, and date and time of return.”

“We give them all that?”

“Our spaceplanes are much more than orbital spacecraft, sir,” Sandstein explained. “Their flight paths are much more flexible than a launch from an Earth launch pad, as you yourself experienced. To avoid conflict, we agreed to give them information on each flight so they could monitor the flight and react to any unexplained diversions.”

“So the Russians knew I was flying in the spaceplane?”

“We don't give them that much detail, sir,” Sandstein said with a hint of a smile.

“So we should be getting the same information on the Russian spaceplanes, correct?”

“If we want to reveal that we know about it, sir,” Ann said. “It might be better if we didn't reveal that we know about Elektron right now. We can assume that they know, but we don't have to reveal all we know about their activities. Silence is golden.”

President Phoenix nodded—now that the discussion was beginning to move from the military into the geopolitical arena, he needed a different mix of advisers. “What can the Russians do with that section of the space station?”

“All by itself, the ROS is already a fully functioning space station for two or three persons,” Ann said. “They could probably use a few more solar arrays for power, and they don't have as sophisticated space and Earth sensor systems or communications as the ISS, but they can have other spacecraft dock with it for resupply; it can maneuver, boost itself when it needs to, produce power, water, and oxygen, everything.”

“And they undocked it just because Gryzlov is ticked off at me?” the president remarked. “Unbelievable.”