“I do think it will be quite terrible,” Yakov said.
Baldrick was staring at the needle. He finally spoke. “You can’t do that to me.”
Yakov laughed harshly. “I can do it without a second thought. You’re an animal that deserves to die if you were in on the making of this thing.” He pressed the tip of the needle against Baldrick’s neck.
A nerve on the side of Baldrick’s face twitched. His eyes were turned, watching the needle.
“Just a prick,” Yakov whispered, “and you’re infected.”
The needle began pressing down on the skin.
“Take it away,” Baldrick hissed.
Turcotte leaned forward into the other man’s face. “You work for The Mission?” “I work for them, but I’m not one of them,” Baldrick said. “There are only a couple.”
“Them?” Turcotte asked.
“Guides?” Yakov interjected.
“Yes,” Baldrick said.
“Is there a vaccine?” Kenyon asked.
“No.”
Yakov frowned. “But you’ve been exposed!” He pulled the needle back slightly. “Is there a cure?”
Baldrick looked away.
“Answer the man, you son of a bitch!” Toland yelled.
Baldrick looked around the habitat. Half the people there already had the beginnings of black welts on parts of their bodies that could be seen.
“Is there a cure?” Yakov demanded one more time.
Baldrick looked the Russian in the eyes. “Yes. There’s a cure.”
Yakov nodded. “And once you are exposed to the Black Death, and then cured, you’ll be immune. Dangerous living, my friend. If you don’t get back to The Mission on time, you’re dead like us.”
“Where is The Mission?” Turcotte asked.
“I cannot tell you that,” Baldrick said.
Yakov put the needle back at the man’s neck. ‘Where is The Mission?”
Baldrick smiled. He jumped forward, the needle tearing at his neck. He grabbed the MP-5 Kenyon had leaned against a case. As he brought it to bear, Turcotte shot him once in the upper right arm, knocking him back. He still struggled to bring the gun up.
“Stop!” Turcotte yelled.
But Baldrick ignored the order. The muzzle swung through horizontal. Turcotte’s finger twitched on the trigger, but he hesitated to fire again, knowing they needed Baldrick alive.
Toland reached for the gun and Baldrick fired, hitting the mercenary in the chest and killing him. The muzzle kept going up, and Turcotte realized what he was going to do. Turcotte jumped forward, but Baldrick pulled the trigger once more a half a second before Turcotte could grab the gun.
The round went up through the mouth and blew off the top of Baldrick’s head.
CHAPTER 21
It was an intricate and very difficult task that the Endeavor was trying to accomplish. First, the mothership was slowly tumbling. Second, both it and the shuttle were moving relative to Earth. Third, the shuttle had to approach on the side of the gash and try to grab hold of the side with its fifty-foot manipulator arm at such slow relative speeds to ensure that the arm held and wasn’t ripped off.
The crew of the Endeavor and those at NASA knew all these difficulties. But the history of America’s space program had been full of long shots, and once those involved were briefed on the stakes, there had been no question that the mission would be accepted.
But, as expected, as the Endeavor maneuvered close to the mothership, the first pass didn’t succeed. This had been anticipated.
A second pass was attempted. And failed, the end of the fifty-foot arm missing the rip in the mothership’s side by a hundred meters — a relatively tiny distance given the scale of the maneuvers, but a tremendously large one given the length of the arm.
The point of no return had been reached. A third pass was attempted, the crew — and those running the mission on the ground — now knew that Endeavor did not have enough fuel to return to Earth.
The third one worked. Barely. The arm grabbed hold of the edge of the blasted-out black metal and the claw on the end locked down. The shuttle swung around on the end of the arm, bumping against the side of the massive alien ship, bouncing off, then coming to rest.
Within minutes, the boarding team, led by Lieutenant Osebold, was preparing to space-walk in their TASC-suits to enter the mothership.
“We made the decision during planning to have both shuttles take as many passes as needed to link up, regardless of their fuel situation,” Kopina said. “We’re prepping some Titan rockets with fuel payloads. They won’t be ready for a couple of days, but we will get the payloads up and we will get Endeavor down.” “So they’re stuck?” Duncan asked.
Kopina nodded. “It’s mainly a psychological problem. They have enough air, water, and food to last three weeks.”
“They could also fly the mothership back down,” Duncan noted.
Kopina looked at her. “That’s a possibility, but not one that has been approved yet.”
“What does approval matter if they have control of the ship?” Duncan asked.
Kopina shifted her attention to the other screen. “Columbia has visual on the talon,” she announced. “Let’s hope they have better luck on linkup. Columbia is carrying more fuel than Endeavor because not only do they have to catch the talon, they then have to maneuver it to the mothership. So there was a sacrifice in payload so she could take more fuel into orbit.
“I’m putting Columbia’s cockpit intercom on speaker,” Kopina said as she flipped a switch.
A woman’s voice filled the room. “Range three hundred meters, closing at relative four mps.”
“That’s Colonel Egan, the pilot of Columbia,” Kopina said.
Duncan could see the talon on the screen in front of her. Unlike the mothership, it wasn’t tumbling, at least as far as she could tell. “How come the talon seems to be stable?” she asked.
“We noticed that a day or two ago,” Kopina said. “Best guess is that there was some internal shifting inside that counteracted the initial rotation.”
“How can that be?” Duncan asked.
“Any one of a lot of things,” Kopina said. “An internal bulkhead giving way. Shifting of liquid inside of tanks. A system can degrade over time.”
“But it happened in such a way to exactly counteract the original rotation?” Turcotte asked.
“Not exactly,” Kopina said. “There’s still some yaw and pitch. Hey, let’s be thankful for small favors. If it was still tumbling like it was initially, it would practically be impossible for Columbia to get close.”
“Two hundred meters,” Egan said. “Closing at three mps. Adjusting and slowing.”
The talon, although nowhere near as large as the mothership, still dwarfed the shuttle. The lean, black ship was over two hundred meters long and thirty meters in diameter at its thickest point. It was slightly bent to one side, giving the appearance of a very large black claw.
“One hundred meters. One meter per second. Rotating cargo bay to face target.”
“They’re putting the arm closest to the talon,” Kopina explained. The camera view shifted. They were now looking up out of the cargo bay of the Columbia. The talon was a lean dark shape filling the space above the shuttle. The thin form of the manipulator arm could be seen, slowly extending.
“What the hell!” Colonel Egan’s voice conveyed her surprise. “Something’s happening!”
Turcotte and the others in the room could see it also — there was a small golden glow on the tip of the talon.
“Get them out of there.” Duncan ordered.