Starfire (51 page)

“Any flight path that travels to either space station will overfly Russia, sir,” Sokolov said.

“That is
unacceptable
!” Gryzlov shouted again. “I ordered spaceplanes to
not
overfly Russia! Is there any evidence that they are working to detach the Skybolt module from the military space station?”

“No, sir,” Sokolov said. “We scan the station when it passes near a space surveillance site, about every four to six hours, and we have not noticed any external change in the station.”

“It has not been that long since you made your speech or spoken to President Phoenix, sir,” Chief of Staff Tarzarov said. “Maybe the purpose of these flights is to do as you ordered. And, sir, you said you would give the Americans two—”

“Stop making excuses for the Americans, Tarzarov,” Gryzlov said. “I will not be disregarded like this! I will not be made a patsy, like that tottering fool Phoenix!” He looked at the radar plots of the spaceplane's flight path. “This looks to me like a trial attack run on our cosmodrome!
That is not acceptable!
”

“Shall I get President Phoenix on the phone for you, sir?” Tarzarov asked. “This must be explained.”

“No need, Mr. Tarzarov,” Daria Titeneva said as she walked quickly into the president's office, after waiting a discreet length of time after leaving Gryzlov's bedroom. She held up a folder. “Text of an address Phoenix gave on American television just a short time ago. He again denies that it was a space-based directed-energy weapon and that the civilian airplane was downed by the weapon; no mention of deactivating the Skybolt laser; and he says that no nation has the right to restrict any movement of any aircraft or spacecraft above the Kármán line, which is the altitude above which aerodynamic lift cannot be—”

“I know what the hell the Kármán line is, Daria—I trained as a cosmonaut, remember?” Gryzlov interrupted acidly. He nodded, then turned back to his desk and looked out the windows. He was suddenly acting remarkably calm, they all noticed—they had expected him to continue the rant that started this meeting. “So. This is unexpected. Kenneth Phoenix has somehow grown a spine in recent days, despite his surprising agreement to detach the Skybolt module. We have much to discuss, my friends. Let us move to the conference room. Coffee and tea?”

J
OINT
B
ASE
A
NDREWS
,
NEAR
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

S
EVERAL
HOURS
LATER

Inside a large aircraft hangar, Jessica “Gonzo” Faulkner and Sondra Eddington stood at the base of the boarding stairs of the S-19 Midnight spaceplane as the limousine pulled up. Gonzo was wearing her EEAS space suit, while Sondra had an orange ACES suit. Neither was wearing a helmet. On either side of them were two plainclothed Secret Service agents, who had already inspected the interior and exterior of the S-19 spaceplane they were standing beside—they freely admitted they didn't know what in hell to look for, but their job was to inspect any area the vice president might occupy, so they did it. The spaceplane was parked on a secure section of the aircraft parking ramp at Joint Base Andrews, formerly Andrews Air Force Base, the main military airport used by high-ranking members of the U.S. government when they travelrd on military aircraft. The ramp was surrounded by several layers of security, both on the ground and overhead.

A Secret Service agent opened the limousine's doors, and out stepped two persons, both wearing orange ACES space suits: a female Secret Service agent, and the vice president of the United States, Ann Page. Ann came over to Gonzo and extended a gloved hand. “Colonel Faulkner?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Gonzo said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you. I'll be your spacecraft commander today. This is Sondra Eddington, our mission commander.” Sondra and the vice president shook hands as well. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you. I'm looking forward to this,” Ann said, her eyes glistening with excitement. “This is Special Agent Robin Clarkson, my Secret Service detail.” Clarkson shook hands with the pilots. She looked a little nervous, Gonzo thought, but not nearly as much as poor Special Agent Charlie Spellman did when he flew with the president. Ann stood and admired the S-19 Midnight with a big smile on her face. “My first time in an S-19 Midnight. I've got a few flights in an S-9 Black Stallion, but that was in the
very
early days.”

“I don't think you'll find many differences at all, ma'am,” Gonzo said. “The passenger module is very comfortable, but I assumed you'd want to be in the cockpit for this flight.”

“Hell yes,” Ann said. “I hope you don't mind, Miss Eddington. I never turn down an opportunity to ride in the cockpit.”

“Of course not, ma'am,” Sondra said, but it was rather obvious that she
did
mind. I never turn it down either, she thought, but I guess I just don't matter around this place anymore.

“Shall we go?” Ann asked excitedly. “I can't wait to see station again.”

“We have plenty of time, ma'am,” Gonzo said. “No hurry at all. Our launch window opens in about an hour.”

“Very good, Colonel Faulkner,” Ann said.

“Gonzo, please. I don't respond to rank anymore.”

“Gonzo it is.” She looked at the EEAS space suit. “I love this suit,” she said. “It accentuates your figure very well, a lot better than this old thing. You like it?”

“When it's activated it's a bit of a kick in the pants,” Gonzo admitted, “but it makes moving around and working so much better.”

They made their way up the stairs to the airlock entry hatch atop the Midnight spaceplane, then down a ladder and aft to the passenger module, and Gonzo helped Clarkson and Sondra strap in and don their helmets, then briefed them on normal and emergency procedures. “I know the drill, Gonzo,” Sondra said, sounding perturbed when Gonzo tried to help her attach her umbilicals.

“I gotta go through the routine with everybody, Sondra—you know that,” Gonzo said in a low voice, giving the young woman a warning stare and looking to see if Clarkson was noticing any of this. “Play nice, okay?” To Clarkson she said, “For safety reasons, we'll be wearing helmets and gloves, but you can keep your visors open. If necessary, all you need to do is close them, and you'll be secure. Sondra will help you. Have a nice flight.” Clarkson nodded but said nothing.

After technicians made sure everything in the passenger module was secure and ready, they helped Ann Page into the Midnight's right front seat and strapped her in, connected her up, and helped her with her helmet. “I can't wait, I can't wait,” she said excitedly when the intercom was activated. “I miss traveling in space so much. With you guys it probably seems so routine, but back in the shuttle and early spaceplane days, it seemed every flight was a test flight. The media always reported it as ‘just another shuttle launch,' but we were so clueless. You have no idea.”

“Oh, I do, ma'am,” Gonzo said. “I know the guy who designed our ‘leopards' engines, and he can be a real flake-ozoid sometimes. Our lives are in that guy's hands on every flight.”

“Please call me Ann on this flight, Gonzo,” Ann said. “I want to feel like a crewmember and not a passenger who's allowed to ride shotgun.”

“Okay, Ann.”

“Hunter ‘Boomer' Noble,” Ann said. “I remember I was the cat's pajamas in aerospace engineering until he came along. His reputation blew past mine like a freakin' hurricane.”

“The students working on the Starfire project will blow past Boomer soon, I guarantee it,” Gonzo said, “and their school, Cal Poly, isn't even the best engineering school in the country. I think we'll see some amazing advances very soon.”

The two continued chatting until it was time for taxi and takeoff. Gonzo found that the vice president was very familiar with the spaceplane's checklists and switch positions, and she performed very well as a mission commander. “I'm impressed, Ann,” she said. “You know as much about Midnight as a student MC.”

“I helped design the S-9 spaceplanes and trained to fly them, although most times I was just a passenger,” Ann said. “I guess it's like riding a bicycle: once you do it, you never forget.”

Takeoff, repositioning to the air refueling track, and the acceleration using the scramjets were normal. Because their takeoff time was several hours different from the S-29s, the flight paths of the two spaceplanes were several thousand miles apart—as the S-19 Midnight ascended on scramjets, they overflew India, China, and the Russian Far East.

“I love it, I love it, I love it,” the vice president intoned as they started their steep ascent. There was absolutely no hint of the G-forces in her voice, just a big smile on her face. “This is the
only
way to fly!”

O
VER
Y
ELIZOVO
A
IRPORT

K
AMCHATKA
K
RAI
, E
ASTERN
R
USSIA

T
HAT
SAME
TIME

“
Garpun
flight, this is
Uchitel,
your order is
solnechnyy svet,
repeat,
solnechnyy svet,
” the senior controller radioed. “Sunshine, sunshine. Proceed as planned.”

“Harpoon flight leader acknowledges,” the pilot of the lead formation of two MiG-31D Foxhound fighters radioed in reply. “Break. Harpoon Two, did you copy?”

“Da
,
vozhd',”
the second MiG-31's pilot responded. “Two is ready.”

The lead pilot completed his before-release checklists, turned to center the flight-director bars in his heads-up display, gradually fed in power until he was in afterburner zone, waited for airspeed to build up past Mach 1, then pulled up into a steep climb and continued feeding in power until he was in zone-five afterburner. Now climbing at ten thousand feet a minute, he punched through fifty thousand feet. The airspeed had hit Mach 1.5, but now it was in a gradual decline as the pilot traded airspeed for altitude, but that was not a concern for him: keeping the flight-director bars, which depicted his necessary course and climb angle as broadcast from the headquarters tracking station, was his main job.

“Datalink has downloaded final targeting data,” the weapon-systems officer behind the pilot reported. “Data transmission to
Osa
commencing. Ten seconds to go.”

At sixty thousand feet the pilot received his first low-fuel warning—the two huge Soloviev D30-F6 engines in full zone-five afterburner were gulping fifty thousand pounds of fuel an hour, yet it carried only thirty thousand pounds total—airspeed had decreased to just three hundred knots, and climb rate was down to three thousand feet per minute. “Data transmission complete, five seconds to launch,” the weapon-systems officer said. The pilot was relieved—in ten seconds, if they didn't pull out of this climb, they were going to stall and drop out of the sky like a rock. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . missile away.”

The MiG-31D made a shallow turn to the left, and both crewmembers were able to watch as the Wasp missile ignited its solid-propellant motor and began its climb into space on a long yellow-and-red column of fire and smoke. The Wasp was a derivative of the 9K720 Iskander short-range theater ballistic missile. It received flight-path data from a ground tracking station, used its inertial guidance system to follow the flight path, then activated an imaging infrared terminal guidance system to home in on its target. Even traveling nearly vertical, it traveled well over a mile per second. Twenty seconds later, the second MiG-31 launched its own Wasp missile . . .

. . . on an intercept course for the S-19 Midnight spaceplane that was hurtling through space over Russia to rendezvous with Armstrong Space Station.

A
RMSTRONG
S
PACE
S
TATION

M
OMENTS
LATER

“Missile launch detection!”
Christine Rayhill, the terrestrial-weapons officer on Armstrong Space Station, shouted. “Two Russian Wasp ASATs launched from Kamchatka!”

Kai Raydon mashed the “all-call” button on his console. “Combat stations!” he shouted, trying to keep his voice under control. “All personnel to combat stations, this is not a drill!” To Valerie Lukas he said, “All defensive systems to auto, Valerie—we'll have to put it back in MANUAL when the spaceplane approaches. What's the status of Skybolt?”

“Still deactivated,” Valerie said. “We've just started disconnecting Starfire.”

“Connect it back up—we might need it,” Kai said. “Where are the students?”

“I'm right here,” Brad said, attached to a bulkhead beside Valerie's console. “Casey is in the Skybolt module. What should I do?”

“Keep watch over the monitors and sing out if you see something that looks dangerous,” Kai replied. “Point it out to Sergeant Lukas, or anyone else, if she's busy. I can always use another set of eyes.”

“Should I get into a space suit?” Brad said on intercom once he'd donned his oxygen mask and activated it.

“It's too late,” Kai said. “All the modules should have been sealed up by now. Command-module personnel have to rely on damage-control crewmembers to assist.” Kai didn't want to think about what would eventually happen to all of them in the case of a major hull breach, oxygen or no, but one hundred percent oxygen was the best they had. He hit another intercom button. “Boomer, say your status?”