“Enemy X-band fire-control radar is off-line,” the computer reported.
For “off-line,” read “fried to hell,” Boomer thought grimly, along with the pilot.
“Good kill… Anderson,” he forced out against the G-forces squeezing him back into his seat. They were still boosting to orbit, having opted for a near-vertical ascent that took them up out of the atmosphere in less than a minute — long before any warning from Russia’s EKS satellites could be relayed from Moscow to the Elektron they’d just wrecked. “Nice shooting… for… a squid.”
“Thanks… Boomer.” Jill Anderson was the S-29B’s offensive weapons officer. Before joining Scion, the former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander had worked in the navy’s ship-mounted HELIOS combat laser program. Getting the chance to fire a weapon with twenty times more power was a dream come true for her.
Boomer craned his head sideways a little to look over at Liz Gallagher. His copilot was busy monitoring their engine displays and navigation programs. “Ready to go looking… for more trouble?”
“You ask… a girl… the nicest questions,” she replied with a tight smile. “Oh, yeah, let’s go get ’em.” Straining, she reached up and tapped one of her multifunction displays. “Nav Program Two is laid in and running.”
Boomer saw the steering cues on his heads-up display shift and he followed them, nudging the sidestick controller slightly to the left. The nozzles of the S-29B’s five LPDRS engines gimbaled in response, and the spaceplane curved away from the still-distant Mars One — climbing toward an orbit that would converge with the second Russian Elektron and the fusion reactor module it was guarding.
“You know this approach is going to… run our fuel tanks… pretty dry,” Gallagher said, as conversationally as possible while feeling like an anvil four times her own weight was pressing down on her chest.
“Yep,” Boomer agreed. “If we win this fight… we’re gonna have to glide down the old-fashioned way, nose first.”
“And if we lose?”
He fought the Gs to give her a wry grin. “The thought never crossed… my mind, Liz. See, I’ve already bailed out from… orbit… once. I don’t plan… to make it… a habit.”
Leonov stared at his screen with a sense of eerie detachment. First, the EKS satellite warning of yet another American spaceplane launch had hit him like a bolt out of the blue. And then, only seconds later, the telemetry from Alferov’s Elektron One winked out — signaling its sudden destruction by a laser weapon with frightening power and precision.
The battle in space was not turning in Russia’s favor, he realized. While it was still possible that Strelkov and his men could defeat what now appeared to be an American attempt to board and capture Mars One, that was no longer certain. And based on the ease with which it had killed Alferov, the new S-29 Shadow already closing on the reactor module and its second Elektron escort was a deadly foe.
Slowly, Leonov reached out for his keyboard. He was running out of time to act. The inset message in one corner of his screen still read: RAPIRA SEVEN ON STANDBY. READY FOR TARGET SELECTION.
Carefully, he entered a new series of commands into the open fail-safe program, again routing them through one of Mars One’s secondary communications antennas. Seconds later, the message on his screen changed: TARGET ACCEPTED. RAPIRA SEVEN LAUNCHING. WILL AWAIT FINAL ATTACK CONFIRMATION IN ORBIT.
Six hundred and sixty kilometers above the earth, an armored hatch on the underside of Mars One’s central command module opened. A Rapira warhead with its attached rocket motor slid out into space with small puffs of gas from its thrusters. It separated from the station at ten meters per second and then accelerated away with a short burn from its motor — altering its orbital inclination by a couple of degrees to the north.
Once it was in position, the Rapira’s thrusters fired again, flipping the weapon over so that its rocket motor was pointed against the direction of orbit. One small antenna faced the earth, waiting for the final order from Moscow that would trigger its programmed deorbit burn and attack.
Forty-Seven
Brad McLanahan watched the dark shape of Mars One grow with terrifying speed in his COMS display as he flew toward it at nearly seven hundred miles per hour. Numbers flashed through his neural link with the computer, keeping a running countdown of distance, relative velocity, and time to his planned braking maneuver. Through the link he also kept tabs on the positions of the other three robots. Nadia’s Wolf Two was aimed at the Russian station’s aft vertical module. Peter Vasey’s Wolf Three had the forward vertical module as its target, which left the central horizontal module to Brad’s Wolf One. Cub Three, their sole surviving unpiloted COMS, was currently flying using its own autonomous systems. For now, its chief task was to avoid colliding with any of the human-occupied robots or with Mars One itself.
“Range to target is six thousand feet,” his computer told him. “Closing velocity is one thousand feet per second. Initiate rapid braking maneuver… now.”
Brad activated his thrusters and felt a sharp jolt as twenty small rockets spread across the robot’s outer shell fired simultaneously. His speed dropped.
“Closing at six hundred feet per second. Fuel reserves at seventy-five percent. Continuing the braking burn.”
More thrusters popped. Brad flew onward, slowing further. Even though they were still deep in Earth’s shadow, he could see a lot more detail on the Russian station and its attached spacecraft now. Blinking green and red position lights indicated airlocks and unoccupied docking ports at several places on all three modules. Pieces of shattered weapons and solar panels drifted in a slowly expanding cloud above Mars One.
He frowned. If their robots collided with any of that space junk at speeds much higher than a normal walking pace, they could take serious damage.
“Watch that debris field at twelve o’clock high,” he said to Nadia and Vasey.
“Copy that, Wolf One,” the Englishman replied. “Wolf Three is going low.”
“So is Wolf Two,” Nadia said tersely.
Brad instructed his own COMS to alter its vector slightly, just enough to cross safely below the cloud of debris. Thrusters along the upper surface of his spheroid-shaped robot fired briefly. He curved downward along a gentle arc. More tiny rockets, these on the lower half of the COMS, popped — leveling out his approach so that he was flying straight at the middle of the central Russian module… aimed a little to the left of the docked Federation orbiter.
“Range to target now two thousand feet. Closing at four hundred feet per second,” the computer reported. “Fuel reserves at fifty-seven percent.”
“Coming up on final braking burn,” Brad said. He held his breath and then fought down a sudden wave of nausea as his perspective flipped. Instead of flying toward Mars One, he seemed to be falling right into it. But he had no choice: slowing down while in orbit meant going down. He could only hope that the maneuvering computer would do its job and control the thrusters with precision.
“One thousand feet… six hundred feet… four hundred feet,” the computer intoned.
“Arm braking thrust routine… now!” Brad ordered.