Death Orbit (21 page)

His potential opponent was now but 50 feet from him. Arms outstretched, bar in one hand, zipgun in the other, he certainly looked menacing, not unlike a MIG or some other enemy airplane zooming in on Hunter, hoping for a quick kill.

There was no way the guy in the black spacesuit could know what a big mistake that was…

Once the enemy spaceman had reached a point about 20 feet in front of him, Hunter turned his zipgun forward and gave it a half-second burst. This was enough to stop him completely. He then turned the zipper to the left and gave it an even shorter burst. This moved him just enough out of the way to allow the spaceman to rocket by him. Hunter could see the look of complete surprise on the guy’s face as he zoomed by, flailing his weapon, but just out of reach. He also saw the man was badly in need of a shave and some dental work. A number of crudely healed scars across his cheeks and nose confirmed that he was indeed one of Viktor’s goon boys, sent to do their boss’s dirty work.

Hunter zipped again, rotating his entire body like a cartwheel, then pushing himself forward about 10 feet. The spaceman had stopped himself by this time, and by slowly turning on his back, was now zipping back toward Hunter headfirst. Hunter pulled his zipgun trigger again, banking left as the space thug flew by and catching him with a solid punch right to the face plate. The goon was instantly knocked off at a sharp angle and began tumbling out of control from the sudden exertion of external force.

Predictably, Hunter went flying in the other direction—it was that every-action-causes-an-equal-but-opposite-reaction thing again. But unlike the spacethug, he was prepared for it. A short burst from the zipgun slowed him down completely; another got him moving forward again. His opponent was getting pissed by this time—which was exactly what Hunter wanted. He came right at Hunter a third time, trying to swing the pipe while keeping his zipgun all the way open. Hunter put his own zipper behind his back and squeezed off a one-second burst. This got him rotating on his backside, and as the thug roared by, he was able to hit him three times—twice with his fists, landing blows on top of his head and in his chest, and once with his left boot, which connected solidly with the man’s groin.

Hunter imagined he could hear the grunt as the spaceman doubled up and went tumbling back toward the Mir. Hunter’s maneuver had worked perfectly.

But now it was time to stop fooling around.

He twisted himself to the horizontal and gave his zipgun a long, hard squeeze. In the next instant he was rocketing toward the space thug even as the man was recovering from his triple whammy. He saw Hunter coming and manage to stop spinning just as the Wingman’s right fist connected with his neck. Caught completely flatfooted and unprepared, the thug began tumbling in place once again, no doubt expending what was left of his energy. Hunter reached out, pulled the pipe from his hand, did a quick calculation, and then drove his fist squarely into the guy’s stomach. The combination of this force and the man’s tumbling combined to both knock him unconscious and propel him in a downward trajectory. Within seconds he was spinning out of sight, falling toward earth with a quickening velocity and a fatal burn-up on reentry.

“Next time, don’t skip physics class,” Hunter bade him as he plunged toward the upper atmosphere.

Hunter turned himself around to find that Elvis and the other remaining spaceman were locked in a titanic struggle up against the Mir. Just how his friend had got himself into this position, Hunter didn’t know—and there was certainly no time to find out. One squeeze of his zipgun and he was rocketing to Elvis’s aid.

But in that short span of time, the Mir spaceman had been able to lodge the zipgun out of Elvis’s hand, just as Elvis had managed to pull the weapon from his opponent. Now Elvis was trying to batter the enemy spacewalker with the crowbar-like device even as the man was spraying the zipgun gas in his face. Blinded and disoriented, Elvis took a massive punch from his opponent and went sailing off in the opposite direction. Somewhat aghast, Hunter did a quick plot on Elvis’s tumbling trajectory and determined that his friend would be lost forever if he didn’t get to him inside of 17 seconds.

Hunter squeezed his zipgun trigger, and though it was now dangerously low on fuel, was able to get a good burst and a quick velocity. He went right by the Mir spaceman and was able to swipe him once on the head with his first opponent’s crowbar. The action served to cut the man’s external oxygen hose. He grabbed his throat and began struggling, but the end came quickly. The man was dead and falling back to earth inside of two seconds.

Now Hunter’s headphones were filled with concern from JT and Ben back in the Zon. They’d been watching the entire encounter and now realized the fix Elvis was in. But even if they got the Zon started up again and went after their tumbling colleague it would probably be too late to do any good.

If Elvis was going to be saved, it was up to Hunter to do it.

By this time, Elvis had tumbled far beyond the top of the Mir. The last gasps from Hunter’s zipgun now sent him rocketing by the tip of the space station and into the deep black void beyond. It was imperative that he keep Elvis in sight, catch him, and figure out how to get back later. To this end, Hunter unconsciously put his hands back to his side and closed his boots together. Like an F-14 or an F-111 going to full-swept wing, he streaked toward his tumbling friend, finally gaining on him, catching the heel of his boot about 15 seconds after the punch that had put him in this position.

Now all Hunter’s brainpower would have to come into play. He didn’t so much grab Elvis as he redirected his trajectory. Like hitting a cue ball, which in turn hits the next ball and the next, Hunter’s action sent Elvis heading straight down, still out of control, but at least not on a path to Jupiter or out of the solar system.

Hunter squeezed his zipgun again; there was just about enough gas to slow his own trajectory, with maybe one last burst to spare. Standing on his head, he gave the zipgun trigger that one last pull. Slowly but surely, the weak stream of gas spilled out and he found himself following Elvis back down toward the Mir.

It was here he would have to get lucky. He’d hoped to push Elvis in such a way that he would—for lack of a better word—
collide
with the Russian space station. And that’s exactly what happened. Elvis went into a docking ring at the top of the MIR headfirst, hitting it hard enough to stop his flight path, but not enough to ricochet him off in another unpredictable direction. Out of gas and fairly out of control, Hunter slammed into the same docking ring just a few seconds later. Somehow, he was able to grab a hand hold on the Mir and catch Elvis’s right arm at the same time. He pulled his colleague over to him and rapped twice on his helmet.

Groggy, confused, and damn dizzy, Elvis finally responded with a shaky thumbs-up. He was okay.

Compared to the fistfight in space, getting into the Mir was a breeze.

The emergency entryway was exactly where Elvis had remembered it. And just as he predicted, the hatchway could be operated from the outside and was functioning. It took them a few moments to figure exactly how the thing worked, though. It was jerry-rigged to some degree, no surprise, considering the same people who had built the Mir had built the Zon. But finally Hunter figured out that of the three twist-and-dog locks on the outside of the hatchway, two turned clockwise, while the third went counterclockwise. He pulled the hatchway open with a mighty heave that almost sent him off on his own fatal trajectory. Only the smallest puff of air came out, leftover, no doubt, from the last time the hatch was used, which appeared to be some time ago.

Hunter went in first. Elvis, still punchy from his experience, brought up the rear. Both of them had their tasers out and ready; though powerful, these weapons had only a limited power supply, which was why they didn’t use them during the astral fistfight. They were both able to squeeze into the pressurization chamber; it was tight, but a marked improvement over the Zon’s, which was barely large enough to fit one person. The pressurization itself went much quicker than they were used to. Within 30 seconds, they were able to open the inner hatchway and step inside the Mir.

If anything, it was darker inside the station than in the haunted Soyuz. What light there was came in the form of tiny blue bulbs strung almost like Christmas ornaments along the entrance corridor. They had entered this long hallway about halfway between two large hatchways. These obviously led into the main interiors of the station. One was to the left, the other directly above them.

But which way should they go? To their left was the part of the station where most of the docking rings were. Did this mean a kind of unimportant cargo area lay close by? Maybe. In any case, when Elvis pointed straight up, making a suggestion on which direction they should travel, Hunter quickly agreed.

They floated up, tasers ready, not quite knowing what to expect. Just because only two gorillas came out after them didn’t mean there weren’t more inside. They had to be ready for anything.

They reached the end of the upper passageway and spun the hatchway lock. It was already unlocked. With Elvis holding his taser out as far as possible, Hunter pulled the doorway back.

They found themselves staring into a larger, darker cylindrical tube. This was obviously one of the living modules. By this time, both Hunter and Elvis had gone off their internal oxygen supply and were breathing the station’s air through their open face plates. They say that your sensory organs are heightened in space, where there is no gravity to affect the molecules of an odor or a sound. And are they right!

The inside of this module smelled like the worst barroom either one had ever been in. It was a sickly combination of spilled whiskey, sticky beer, cigarette and/or cigar smoke (who the hell would smoke in space?), and body odor. Also present in this free-floating malodorous cloud were thousands of tiny white specks. They looked like household dust, but when Hunter wet his finger and caught a few dozen, he knew immediately they were more than just some ordinary dirt sprinkles floating around due to some sloppy housekeeping.

“Let me guess,” Elvis said, studying the legion of white specks which had adhered to Hunter’s finger. “Cocaine or heroin?”

Hunter gave it a taste test.

“Both,” he declared. “With maybe a little PCP and other crap thrown in, too.”

Elvis just shook his head.

“Whenever I was up here, it was Party Central,” he sighed. “You’d think being a hundred miles up and going seven miles a second would be high enough and fast enough for these guys.”

Hunter wiped off his finger in disgust.

“These guys wouldn’t know a good buzz if it came up and bit them on the ass.”

They floated on, past a debris cloud made up of plastic containers which had previously held beer, extinguished cigarette butts, bottle caps, and expended matches. The last item of litter was the most frightening for Hunter. Obviously the Mir was not pumped up with 100-percent oxygen. If that were the case, one strike of flame, one tiny spark, and the whole kit-and-kaboodle would have gone up like a bomb.

This was because oxygen was very flammable. The earth’s atmosphere was made up mostly of nitrogen; otherwise, everything would have burned up long ago. But inside most spaceships, the oxygen content was much higher, to aid in respiration as well as simplicity in pressurization and filtering. So how much pure O did the artificial atmosphere inside the Mir have? Just how much of an ignition point would be needed to set the whole place up? It couldn’t be much more than it already was, and that’s why Hunter shuddered to think of anyone actually lighting up a tobacco stick inside.

They reached the next hatchway and were forced to fool with its lock for more than five minutes. There was a corked cap stuck in its gearbox and the door would not budge until Hunter and Elvis were able to cut it away. They finally achieved this with the help of their helmet antennas, and with some more pushing and shoving, were able to pull the hatch open.

It led to another tubelike corridor, which in turn served as the entrance for a second cylindrical living module. Getting into this one was no problem—but the smell inside was even worse than before—booze, smoke, a fog of coke and smack particles. Hunter found the whole thing appalling. Viktor and his gang had achieved space flight, one of the grandest accomplishments of human history, yet they were defiling it like it was nothing but another place to get high, get drunk, and get stupid.

So much for that giant leap for mankind.

There was one further item floating around in this weightless flotsam. It was a female’s bathing-suit top. Elvis snagged it with his index finger about halfway through the smelly module. It appeared small. Hunter couldn’t venture to guess what it was doing here, or who’d left it behind. Keeping it as evidence, though, he and Elvis pressed on.

The next hallway was even darker than the first two. The string of blue lights were ragged and many of the bulbs were burnt out. Up ahead, they thought they could hear a slight pounding noise. Irregular and at a different volume than the low hum of everything else aboard the Mir, this indicated the first sign of human activity might be straight ahead. Tasers primed and ready, they reached the next hatchway and began to open the dog-locked door.

Hunter was getting the distinct impression that he was floating through a space-borne version of Führer-bunker, the underground hiding place Hitler had chosen for his grave in the last mad days of the Third Reich. What would lay inside this, the third and last living module? Dead bodies, full of self-inflicted wounds? More skeletons? Or were these simply ghosts they were hearing, lost souls trying like hell to get off the smelly space station as well?

However superintuitive he was, Hunter’s musings weren’t even close to what they found inside the third capsule.

It was better lit than the first two, and unlike them, it was crammed with communications, navigation, and life-support gear. However, it was in an even further advanced stage of decay—and it smelled worse, too.