CHAPTER 57
Low Earth Orbit
Wednesday
4:50 p.m. Pacific Time
7:50 p.m. Eastern Time
M,
Just got word. Top Secret launch. Soldiers. Will intercept ISS around 8AM Eastern.
A
K,V,M,
Soldiers coming 8AM Eastern on secret launch!
M
“Why haven’t I been given a burn package to go home?” Allison asked the CAPCOM for Roscosmos. She had fallen back to sleep and had mostly slept through the entire night.
“Major, please stand by.” There was a pause and then a familiar voice.
“Major, this is General Hastings and the rest of the Chiefs are listening. We have an operation ongoing presently with a Top Secret asset. A team is moving into place any moment now to intercept and retake the ISS. We would like for you to move closer for live reconnaissance. I’m told you were just sent the burn package.”
“Understood, General,” Allison said but she was confused. She had never heard of a Top Secret manned vehicle and now she had just told the Russians all about it. The software downloaded and she initiated it. There were several retro-rocket burns and she slowly approached the ISS with her periscope view, staying locked on target. “Do you have the video feed, General?”
“Yes, we see it now, Major.”
To Allison’s amazement, she saw a spacecraft approach that looked like a small version of the old space shuttle. It was an X-37 variant. The payload bay doors were open and she could clearly see several astronauts on board it. The spacecraft did several roll, pitch, and yaw maneuvers and then reached a near zero relative velocity with the ISS near the Quest Airlock.
“So, I guess the rumors of the X-37D are real?” she said to no one in particular.
“V! Get up!” Michael slapped him across the face.
Vladimir jumped and kicked within his floating sleeping bag system. “What?”
“We have a boarding party almost on top of us!” Michael was already half the way in his suit and continued to pull at it from all different directions, cinching it tight. Fortunately, the Dorman suits were fairly easy to don. “Get your fucking suit on!”
“Where are they, K?”
“They are five thousand meters and closing according to the multipath. I don’t have them in cameras yet, but they are approaching from the RAM side and it looks like they might be headed for the Quest Airlock Module,” Keenan told them.
“Get me a goddamned exterior camera view!” Michael shouted as he and Vladimir scrambled about.
Michael had managed to get his suit donned but had waited about putting on his gauntlets so he could prep his and Vladimir’s firearms. He checked them. Made certain there were rounds in the chambers. And then he set the safeties off.
“K, how long to the launch window for our next warhead?”
“Nine minutes.”
“Launch it early if you have to. A lesser effect will still be an effect,” Vladimir said. “If we get overrun and taken or killed, launch them all on backup targets of choice.”
“I understand.”
There was a clanging against the hull not far from them. It was near the airlock. That is where they would come through.
“Come on, V! I have a plan.”
The X-37D carrying the HE1 mission team came to a relative stop with the ISS just a few meters from the Quest Airlock Module hatch. Frank could see the space between them and the Earth below them and the heavens above them and the large space station all around them and it frightened the shit out of him.
“I recommend not to look about too much, Colonel,” Ames told him from her pilot’s seat. “It takes a bit to get used to it.”
“No time for that, I guess.”
“We’ll hold here until you are clear. Then we will back off a bit to make certain not to be in any lines of fire,” she told him. “Go!”
“Let’s go, guys.” Frank held onto the gadget they had been rapidly trained on called a personal maneuvering unit. The PMU was a large horseshoe-shaped object with multiple jets on it that could be fired by a thumb lever. The unit was tethered to their suits at the waist so they could drop it as they needed. Frank led followed by Mac, then Casey, then Kenny. Captain Stevens was getting prepared to follow behind them.
“Shit!” Stevens said. “I’m tangled. I’ll be right behind you, Colonel.”
“Don’t dally about, Stevens. You cover our six as we breach. I doubt there is a need but you win that by default now,” Frank ordered him.
“Yes, sir.”
“It looks like the operation is started, General.” Major Simms had brought the Soyuz to within a thousand meters and had a full view from multiple cameras on the spacecraft. She watched as four of the team egressed from the X-37D. A fifth astronaut seemed to begin to move but then stopped. She zoomed in on him more closely. She wasn’t sure if he was tangled up or what. Then she saw him pull his firearm and shoot the astronaut in the seat next to him in the head, turn and fire into the seat in front of him.
“Oh my God!” Allison shouted. “There’s an enemy on the team! He just fired on the pilots!”
“We see that, Major.” General Hastings was shocked. There was nothing they could do from Earth.
Allison didn’t hesitate. She dropped her faceplate and evacuated the Soyuz capsule, then fired a burn to push her closer. Once the outer hatch was released and the capsule had fired a braking burn, she unbuckled her harness and pulled her way through the Orbital Module, grabbing the gun she had taken and her last fire extinguisher along the way. She flung herself outward from the opening toward the X-37D and started floating across the several-hundred-meter gap between them. She pulled the fire extinguisher tether, bringing one of them up to her body, and fired it in the opposite direction accelerating her even faster.
Suddenly, one of the glide bodies fired from the hotel module in a bright white flare and rocketed away from them toward the Earth below. Allison tried not to think about it because there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. But she could do something about the asshole she was zooming toward. She held the shiny metal extinguisher lever until it ran dry and then she brought up the gun she had taken from the man she had killed. She activated the laser sight and brought it down in front of her and tracked it across the X-37D payload bay. The man who had just shot the other astronauts had yet to realize she was even in the universe with him. It looked as if he was trying to remove the bodies from the copilot seat or maybe, maybe, he was fighting with somebody still alive there.
Allison put the green dot on his head and pressed the trigger. His suit deflated and he spun slightly forward, bounced off the seatback in front of him, and then floated slowly away from the payload bay. Allison scrambled with the tether for the last extinguisher but couldn’t get to it in time. She slammed into the open payload bay stomach-first over the back of one of the seats. The suit absorbed most of the impact but it was enough to knock the wind from her. She grasped for air and a handhold but she found neither. She tumbled feet over head and was certain she was about to tumble outward and away when a hand grabbed her by the fire extinguisher harness and started to reel her in.
She was bleeding air and blood from her left shoulder. Quickly, the pilot pulled a patch and slapped it to her suit. Allison pulled a roll of tape from her waist pouch and wrapped it over and around the patch. The air leak had been stopped at least. Then the pilot of the X-37D grabbed her arm and tapped at her wristband transceiver, tuning her to their channel.
“Captain, name classified. United States Space Force,” the woman there said.
“Major Allison Simms. United States Space Force,” Allison said.
“Thanks for the help, Major.”