“Yep, all good there.” Larry looked confused. “Even though their life signs are weak, Ripley says there’s still movement onboard.”
“Least that’s something.” Russ got to his feet. He paced one way for a few steps and then the other. “What the hell is going on up there?” He walked closer to the large central screen, and put his hand to the microphone at his mouth. He swallowed dryly.
“To all and any member of the Orlando crew, please come in. Over.” Russ licked his lips. “Please send a sign that you can read us, urgent. Over.” Russ knew there was a dozen ways they could communicate. Even if all the standard comms went down, they could use the cabin lights to blink out a Morse code message. He stared at the empty screen as the seconds stretched.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Russ paced again for a few moments. “We can’t wait.” He spun. “Bring them down, bring them down, right now.”
“You got it, boss.” Scott started to type furiously, and yelled commands over one shoulder then the other. “All right people, by the books, we are going to initiate auto control.” He turned to a line of technicians behind him. “What are we over now?”
“Nothing good right now, but we’ve got a couple of emergency drop sites in Canada, nearest being CFB Edmonton coming up — it’s a Canadian military forces base located in Sturgeon County.”
“I know it, in Alberta,” Russ said. “I’ll alert them, and we can start a long reentry to glide on in to it.” He clapped his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s bring our astronauts home.”
The babble of voices rose in the command center as every scientist, technician, and administrator worked rapidly at their controls. They quickly overrode Orlando’s cockpit control system and then began working directly with Ripley to initiate several gentle burns to angle the shuttle orbiter’s nose down toward the Canadian base at CFB Edmonton.
On the large screen, there was an inbound trajectory plotted as a solid black line. The angle of descent meant that the shuttle would glide for thousands of miles, reaching speeds of Mach 2.5 on its way to the Edmonton emergency runway. It would still take hours to finally make touchdown, but Russ felt his confidence build as they had the shuttle in their control and his team had trained for this so many times he bet they could do it in their sleep.
“Walk in the park,” Scott said.
Russ straightened, feeling better… until the alarms started blaring.
“What the hell, now?” Russ sprinted to Scott’s terminal.
Scott was shaking his head. “Something’s gone wrong.”
“You think?” Russ leaned over him, and briefly looked up at the large screen. “Hey…”
“I know, I know, they’re way off course.” Scott grimaced. “I don’t know how, but Ripley is being overridden. Orlando has put herself into a dive — she’s going down, I mean, straight down.”
“No, no, no, at that speed she’ll end up bug shit on a windscreen.” Russ wiped his mouth with a hand and felt nauseous.
“Hooold it… she’s slowing.” Scott’s brow was now permanently furrowed.
“Slowing?” Russ straightened. “Jesus Christ, there’s someone still alive in there.” Russ couldn’t think straight as the floor of the control room exploded into a chaotic melee of shouted voices and rushing people as information was sought, used, and sent. He pulled the headset back over his head, and switched it on, blanking everything else out.
“Commander, Mitch, I don’t know if you can hear me, but you’ve got to relinquish manual control. Mitch, anyone, please, if you can hear me but can’t respond, just switch the orbiter back to auto-pilot, so we and Ripley can bring you in safely… please.”
What the fuck is going on up there? Russ felt panic rising in his chest again. He looked back up at the screen. There was another directional line now branching away from the trajectory they had plotted into the Edmonton runway. They were pulling out of their death dive, but they were still far too steep on reentry.
It was weird; if he had to guess, he’d say it looked like someone had detected NASA’s intrusion, and decided to break its control, and then, what? First, put the Orlando into a nosedive and destroy it and themselves? Russ wiped his brow with a sleeve, and tried to make sense of it.
It was if they’d changed their minds and were now trying to glide the shuttle in. It didn’t make sense — it was like there was a war going on up there. He watched as the Orlando leveled out a little more.
“Jesus.” Russ spun. “Scott, give me a destination, ASAP. Put it up on screen.”
His friend’s hands flew, and then up went an extrapolated vector represented as a dotted line. It ended at a point on the map way up in Alaska.
“Hooooly shit.” Russ put a hand to his forehead and blinked for a few moments allowing his mind to catch up. “We, we need to be there.” Russ snatched up a phone, and held it away from his mouth for a moment. “I’m taking charge of this personally. “
Scott stood. “Count me in.”
Russ nodded. “We need a rescue and recovery plan. And we need to leave, like, now.”
CHAPTER 5
“An American space shuttle has crashed.” Viktor Dubkin allowed himself a small smile as he sat before the Russian president.
President Volkov, known as the ‘Little Wolf’ but never to his face, remained impassive, his unnaturally cold blue eyes didn’t waver or blink as he sat staring back.
After another moment, one eyebrow rose a fraction and he grunted. “The shuttle that was photographing the nuclear missile sites across the globe, da?
Dubkin nodded slowly. “The very same, my president.” He spread his hands. “Normally we could not care any less. We know that they know, approximately, where our missile fields are — just as we know where theirs are — these are no secret to any good spy agency.” He pursed his lips for a moment. “But where this becomes problematic is we now know that they were using the new ground-penetrating technology developed by their military. It has the ability to see inside the silos and identify the specific kiloton profile of each missile.” He paused. “It can also tell which are real or just decoys.”
“Hmm, a little too much information.” Volkov’s eyes swiveled. “But the shuttle is crashed, so the problem is now solved?”
“Perhaps not,” Dubkin said. “It broke its normal orbit, but we don’t believe it was a catastrophic crash. It came down hard in the Revelation Mountains in Alaska, and may still be intact.” His brows went up. “And that means the data could be still intact.”
Volkov shrugged. “Destroy it. Before any rescue and retrieval mission can be organized. Who will be able to say it wasn’t obliterated when it hit the ground.”
Dubkin bobbed his head. “I would have recommended this option myself, except for one thing.” His smile widened. “The Americans weren’t just filming us. They were photographing every nuclear missile site in the world — every potential adversary and ally… and even their own sites. This film is invaluable, and I think critically important to Russia.” He leaned forward. “It is a gift, Comrade President, just waiting to be plucked from them.”
Volkov’s eyes narrowed. “And I suspect a potential gift also to China, Iran, and North Korea.” He made a grumbling sound of assent deep in his chest. “Invaluable to us, and also worth billons if sold.” Unbelievably for Dubkin, he saw the corner of Volkov’s mouth lift microscopically.