The Kremlin Phoenix (34 page)

Captain Wilkins feathered the throttle
of the
Solar Explorer III’s
lander as strong winds tried to push him off
course. The elongated dome shaped spacecraft, designed to be carried by the
SEIII
all the way to Pluto and land on that frozen planet’s surface, was wholly
unsuited for the gale force winds it now encountered as it dropped towards
Switzerland. The lander was a flying habitat and laboratory, intended for
Pluto’s thin atmosphere, not the two hundred kilometer an hour gusts now
battering its hull. Outside it was minus sixty degrees centigrade and the
radiation levels were so high, a human being would be dead after eight minutes of
unshielded exposure. Even the lander’s hull, specially insulated for deep space,
was close to its engineering tolerances.

Wilkins glanced at the
instruments, checking his location and leveling off as the lander passed over
the Alps. It was dark as night outside, even though by Earth time it was early
afternoon. It had been more than a decade since the war had extinguished life
on Earth, and the nuclear winter had pushed the temperature down to levels not
seen since the mass extinction event of Snowball Earth six hundred and fifty million
years ago.

A tracking display began to flash
with two dots, close together, as Zurich’s city center appeared through dark
swirling clouds.  The dots represented the location of the L-2 Station’s two
shuttles, both of which had been chosen to complete the mission because, with
their aerodynamic shape, they were far more suited to flying in Earth’s
atmosphere than the ungainly
SEIII
lander. Unfortunately, they were also
much less able to deal with the toxic radiation levels than Wilkin’s spacecraft.

“I’m picking up the shuttle
beacons,” he reported.

His signal was distorted by
static, but almost every surviving human was gathered in the L-2 Space
Station’s control room, one and half million kilometers away, hanging on his
every word.

A strong blast of air buffeted
the lander, pushing it off course, then Wilkins pitched down and burned propellant
at a furious rate to force the clumsy vehicle back on track. The lander’s radar
soon warned the ground was fast approaching, so he began braking hard and
thrusting sideways towards the two shuttle beacons. When the beacons were a
hundred meters below, he switched on the lander’s floodlights, illuminating the
two delta winged craft parked close together and already partially covered in
dirty snow.

Captain Wilkins decided to risk
flying closer to the forty story building in the high winds to reduce walking
time from the lander. Every second he was exposed to the saturated radiation
would count, as this was their last chance. The L-2 Space Station had no
shuttles left and this was the
Solar Explorer III’s
only lander. It was
all or nothing, as if he were maneuvering for the first manned landing on
Pluto. Only the stakes were far higher, and he’d never trained for these
conditions.

The lander dropped to twenty meters,
bucking wildly in the unpredictable winds blasting between the buildings, pushing
computer controlled attitude thrusters beyond their design limits to maintain
level flight. Below was a wide snow covered road, with parked cars either side.
Decayed skeletons littered the sidewalks and lay entombed in cars, all partially
hidden beneath brown snow drifts. If not for the howling winds constantly
tearing at the snow, preventing deep drifts from building, none of it would
have been visible.

Wilkins nosed forward and
throttled up to push the clumsy spacecraft towards the office tower’s courtyard.
The lander’s flood lights illuminated glass windows ahead, including a large
section that had been destroyed by the first L-2S shuttle pilot when he’d
blasted his way into the bank. Wilkins drifted towards the building, choosing
his landing spot carefully, then a strong gust caught the elongated dome shaped
lander and hurled it towards the tower. He pulled back, but the gust pushed the
lander against the building’s third floor windows. Three floodlights on the
exterior of the hull shattered against the office tower’s windows, exploding
glass into a long abandoned office. One of the attitude thrusters was crushed
and began venting propellant, triggering a fuel alarm, warning Wilkins that a
rapid drop in propellant tank pressure had been detected.

He thrusted away from the tower
for two seconds, then throttled down before the winds could drive the lander
against the building again. The dome-shaped vehicle dropped towards the ground
as its three lander legs extended. The three legs touched down, automatically compensating
for the uneven landing surface, then Wilkins powered down the engines. Out of
habit, he glanced at the fuel indicators. He had eighteen percent left, not
even enough to get back into orbit. When they’d simulated the landing on the
station, they thought he’d get down with thirty percent to spare, but they’d
greatly underestimated the strength of the winds.

Captain Wilkins unbuckled from
his seat and quickly climbed down through four levels of crew habitat and
laboratory space to the equipment deck. The lander, part spacecraft, part research
base, had been designed to place a six man team on the surface of Pluto for a
hundred days and return them safely to the Solar Explorer III for the voyage
home. He’d always expected to be landing with his team, to be celebrating their
achievement moments after landing. Now he felt a twinge of regret that he was
alone, even though he’d refused to allow any of the crew to accompany him.
There was no need for them all to die, on what was a one man job.

He climbed into his bulky metal
suit, an articulated anthropomorphic vehicle that would have been equally at
home exploring the bottom of the ocean, as the surface of a distant planet. It’s
size was to ensure he didn’t freeze on the desolate surface of Pluto, but now
the dense shielding would have to serve a different purpose – buy him a few precious
minutes in Earth’s irradiated atmosphere.

He performed a full suit system
check, ensured the data link between his suit and the lander was functioning,
then cycled through the cylindrical airlock. Even after all these years since
training, he almost said, “Commencing EVA,” but he bit the words off. This
might have been an Extra Vehicular Activity, but it wasn’t the one he’d trained
for, and he didn’t want to grace it with that description. When the cylindrical
chamber finished turning, the outer door slid open revealing a gray,
blizzard-wracked world lit only by the lander’s surviving floodlights. The
office tower was barely visible, rising before him into darkness, while great
black shadows in the distance hinted at the presence of other once gleaming
buildings, now little more than towering tombstones to their creators. Without
hesitation, he stepped out onto the landing platform and signaled for the small
elevator to lower him to the ground.

“I’m outside,” he reported as he
switched on his two shoulder mounted flood lights.

When the elevator stopped, he lumbered
forward, through knee deep snow, towards the bank. The relentless wind had piled
dirty snow drifts against the bank’s glass front wall and driven snow through
the ragged hole the first L-2S shuttle pilot had blown in the bullet proof
window. Wilkins squeezed the big suit through the opening, then ambled across
the bank’s spacious reception area. Beautifully finished marble walls and
floors spoke of meaningless opulence, and inactive security cameras, infra red
sensors and motion detectors covered the cavernous area, guarding wealth no
longer owned by anyone.

At the far side of the great
marble palace, a two meter high metal column crowned by a glowing blue ring had
been erected by the first L-2S shuttle pilot. It was a signal repeater,
designed to beam a signal out to the waiting shuttle, for retransmission up to
the L-2 station. The signal repeater stood at the top of a set of marble stairs
that led down to the vault, below ground level. Wilkins knew at a glance that
the repeater was fully functional, but in standby mode, as no data stream was
being received.

“Tom, what’s your radiation
level?” Mariena’s voice sounded through crackling static.

He realized he’d been avoiding
looking at his radiation sensor. One glance told him the suit was being drowned
in radiation well above its tolerance level. “It’s hot enough to fry an egg in
here. You wouldn’t know where I could find an egg down here, would you?”

As if the suit had been
listening, a pleasant English woman’s voice sounded in his ears. “Warning! Lethal
radiation level detected. Return to lander immediately.”

“Not today,” Wilkins said. “Command:
Disable audible radiation warnings.”

He took a deep breath and tried
to walk down the stairs, knowing he had little chance of succeeding. The suit’s
metal feet were too wide and cumbersome for the polished marble stairs. At his
first step, he tripped and fell forward. The suit’s thrusters fired
automatically, trying to break his fall, but they were not engineered for Earth’s
gravity. If it had been Pluto, he could have floated over the stairs, but on
Earth, the suit weighed several tons, far more than the thrusters could lift. He
fell face first onto the stairs, shattering the fragile marble steps and sliding
to the bottom. The status indicators inside his helmet told him the suit had suffered
no damage, so he rolled sideways and sat up.

The suit’s flood lights
illuminated the body of the first L-2S shuttle pilot. He sat propped against
the wall, head forward, eyes vacant, face blistered with radiation burns. The
pilot wore his pressure suit, modified by the station’s maintenance team with
radiation shielding which had bought him precious minutes. Wilkins knew the man
well and felt an instinctive urge to do something for him, to commemorate his courage,
but there was no time. Instead, he climbed to his feet, feeling dizzy for the
first time. The radiation warning light inside his helmet was flashing at him,
but there was no way to switch it off, so he ignored it, and moved forward with
growing urgency.

Wilkins stomped along the
corridor, past a floor-to-ceiling bank vault, then turned left towards the bank’s
data center. The metal security door had been blown open by the second L-2S
pilot, demolishing one side of the door frame. Standing in front of the wrecked
door was a second signal repeater, glowing blue, waiting for a signal.

Wilkins squeezed through the
shattered doorway into a dark room filled with supercomputers glowing with tiny
lights, all still powered by the bank’s own uninterruptible power supply years
after their makers had passed away. In front of the super computers was a long
table, inset with five interactive virtual screens. Sitting on a chair in front
of the central screen was the second L-2S shuttle pilot. He was slumped
forward, transparent helmet on the table and one gloved hand resting on a
virtual screen. Sitting beside the screen was the cylindrical computer
Commander Zikky had prepared for the mission, designed to break the bank’s
encryption system and send data to the first relay standing just beyond the
wrecked doorway. For security reasons, the bank had isolated its computing
center from any global links, making it impossible for the Lagrange-2 Station
to remotely access the bank’s records.

Captain Wilkins walked towards
the dead shuttle pilot, took him by the shoulder and pulled him out of the
seat, letting his body drop to the floor. He suppressed his anguish at treating
the dead man so coldly, but he knew his own time was running out. The dizziness
was growing, his eyes were watering and his temperature was rising.

He blinked back tears and sweat
to see clearly. The second pilot had placed a flat metal disk on the virtual
display, allowing Zikky’s computer to talk to the bank’s supercomputing center.
On top of Zikky’s computer, a small octagonal display showed a string of
numbers, letters and symbols while the bank’s virtual screen contained an empty
input box beneath a symbol selection display. Wilkins knew at a glance, Zikky’s
machine had broken the bank’s security, but it had taken much longer than the
second pilot could endure.

“Zikky,” Wilkins said, surprised
at how feeble his voice sounded. “Your computer has cracked the bank
encryption, but it’s not loading the key.”

Loud static drowned out Zikky’s
reply.

“Say again,” Wilkins said,
pushing the volume to maximum.

“It . . . manual ent– . . . to
stop . . . hack. You will . . . enter it . . .”

“Manual entry?” Wilkins asked.

He touched the virtual screen
gently, trying to input the access code, but the electrically sensitive glass
would not respond to the suit’s non-conductive metal fingers.

Wilkins sighed, knowing what he must
do. “Command: Service unlock, right hand, activate.”

The pleasant English voice
responded, “Warning! Extreme environmental conditions detected. Maintenance
aborted.”

“Command: Disable all safety overrides,”
he said with growing irritation. “Command: Service unlock, right hand,
activate.”

A click sounded in his ears, then
a circle appeared around the suit’s right wrist. He used his left hand to twist
the suit’s right hand twenty degrees, then let his right arm hang straight down
by his side. The large metal hand, able to lift a boulder or a feather, fell
off the suit, exposing his naked flesh.

Wilkins suppressed a groan as his
skin began to burn. He carefully began tapping the virtual screen’s symbol
selector, copying each character from Zikky’s computer. When he was halfway
through entering the encryption key, has hand was screaming with pain, and began
to shake involuntarily.