Chapter 49
Low Earth Orbit
International Space Station
Tuesday
6:55 a.m. Eastern Time
“Major Simms? Allison? Are you awake?” Nolvany yawned as his watch beeped. He stopped the alarm and then checked their orbit status. They had completed a Hohmann transfer to a slightly higher orbit than the ISS and had rephased back almost directly over them. All of that had taken several hours. Since the computer could handle it, the two of them had decided to get some sleep.
“Are we there yet?” Allison groaned awake.
“Yes. See for yourself.”
Allison squinted and blinked a few times to clear her vision from the sleep, and then focused on the monitor Vasiliy was pointing to. The Earth was bright beneath them.
“Do you think they have seen us, Major?” Nolvany pointed at the ISS beneath them several kilometers through the periscope view. “Perhaps they have not looked up?”
“I hope they believe we have left them alone and are not coming back. Maybe they’re on a sleep cycle,” Allison said. She reached into a pouch on her left arm and withdrew an energy bar. “We should probably eat.”
“Yes, we probably should,” Nolvany agreed and did the same.
“Did we do a braking burn?”
“According to the computer we have. The lidar shows us at three thousand four hundred thirty-one meters from the ISS with negligible relative velocity.”
“Three and a half kilometers is a long way to go,” Allison said more as a thought than a negative view of their plan.
“Yes. Nobody has ever done an EVA that far away from a platform. We will break the records by a very long way.”
They watched through the periscope view quietly for a few moments as they finished eating, both of them considering what they had to do next. The plan was mostly suicidal and reminded Allison of those movies where people were offered a chance to get out of prison to go on extremely dangerous and low probability of success missions in order to achieve a pardon. “Suicide mission” was always the term used to describe them. Allison took a final swig of water and then pulled out the pack of zip ties from a stowage bin. She took the odd-looking shotgun she had placed beside her and started working the largest zip tie through the trigger guard and then connected the tie to itself. She practiced holding the short tiple-barrel pistol-looking weapon with her right hand and making the motion of pulling the zip-tie loop around the trigger of the shotgun with her left. “This will be tricky.”
“Yes. But doable,” Nolvany agreed. “If we survive this, I will design a weapon for space suits.”
“I hear you.” Allison looked out the window down at Earth. The ISS was glinting brightly beneath them. “While I know the ‘official’ word is there are no more weapons in space, I’m glad the Russians still have these survival kits.”
“Me too.” Nolvany taped another one of the triple barrels to his left forearm. “These are newer versions. You should see the older ones.”
“Will the gun blast toss us on unwanted angular spins?” she thought out loud. “Hmm.”
“Let’s do the math then, Major. Let’s assume that the weapon has a muzzle velocity of say five hundred meters per second, the gun weighs about four kilograms and if it were a bullet, we could guess a standard bullet weighs about five to twenty grams. The space suit weighs about a hundred kilograms and let’s assume the astronaut weighs seventy kilograms. Then the weight of the gun, astronaut, and space suit is about a hundred seventy-three kilograms. Let’s say one-seventy for ease of math. Given the muzzle velocity of five hundred meters per second, the bullet will have a momentum of, let’s say, twenty grams times five hundred meters per second, which is 0.02 kilograms times five hundred meters per second, which is exactly one Newton second.”
“So not much thrust,” Allison said. “You’re pretty good at math. Okay, I see where you are going with this. So, in order to determine the velocity imparted to the astronaut plus suit plus gun mass, we just simply can assume all the momentum is transferred. So, we divide that momentum of one Newton second by the total astronaut mass, which is one Newton per second divided by a hundred and seventy kilograms. That gives us, um, about 0.006 meters per second or six millimeters per second. Sound right to you?” Allison asked.
“Yes. That is, let me think a moment, two hundred twenty–thousandths of a kilometer per hour. You won’t even notice it when you fire the weapon unless you are really extended and there is an angular momentum imparted, but I suspect that is extremely small.”
“Yeah. I get it,” she said. “Never really thought about before, but movies get it so wrong.”
“Yes. Even Russian movies get it wrong.” He started attaching the triple barrel to his arm with tape.
Allison watched how Nolvany attached the weapon and then did the same to her right arm with the barrels sticking out just beyond her glove fingertips. She taped it in a way that she could get to the safety mechanism and the zip tie. Then he handed her another weapon.
“Here, put one of these in your pouch. Zip-tie the trigger.”
“Thanks.” She took the smaller Makarov semiautomatic pistol and thought about how she could use it. First, she zip tied the trigger. Following that, she wasn’t sure what to do.
“Put that in your pouch. Use it second.” Then he handed her one of the survival knives from the one of the survival kits. “Use this third.”
“Hope we don’t get to that point.”
“Major, have you ever been in combat?” Nolvany asked solemnly.
“No.” Allison almost sounded sheepish. “I have been through training, though.”
“Not the same. But I’m glad you have training.” Nolvany frowned. Allison realized it wasn’t a frown at her, but rather at what was to come. “Combat is not a place for philosophy or ideals. We are not police. These people, these criminals, they plan to kill us and maybe millions of people. We mean nothing to them and they will kill us instantly. Our only hope is to kill them as soon as we see them. Can you do this?”
Allison looked at her dead friend lying beside them and then back to Vasiliy. She thought about her father dying of lung cancer. She thought of her sister and her niece. Allison thought of all the people down there who might die. She could do this. She could and would do this.
“Like I said before, I’m good, Vasiliy.” Allison placed the handgun in her pouch and unsnapped her restraints. “Now, let’s get the fire extinguishers and do this shit.”