Death Orbit (37 page)

Unlike the Mir, the space station passageway was large and there was no restriction of movement. JT, Ben, and Hunter fit quite comfortably at three across. The claustrophobic feelings of the much smaller Russian-built space station were nowhere in evidence here. This place had been built for comfort, for movement, and obviously for many, many people to use.

They finally reached the left-hand turn in the arm; the next passageway would lead them to the hub. A hatchway was located here, and it was bolted tight. Geraci quickly solved the lock and within a minute was spinning the old-fashioned dogwheel and unclamping the hatch.

JT and Hunter took one side of the doorway, Ben and Cook the other. They had their weapons up and ready—there was no telling what they would find on the other side, even though up to now they’d heard no noise, nor had they encountered evidence of human activity anywhere.

They gave Geraci the okay sign and the combat engineer gave the door a mighty yank. JT flooded the other side with his powerful lantern. It illuminated the helmeted faces of two black-spacesuit-clad men.

They were holding rifles—down-on-the-ground, unsophisticated Mauser rifles, circa 1945. A brief stand-off ensued—no one dared make a move. Hunter studied the pair of rifles. He knew they probably fired a 7.62-mm caliber bullet and that the projectile was of the high-speed, long-range variety. In this moment an odd question came to mind: what happens when someone shoots a gun in outer space?

He got his answer a second later.

The guy on the left fired first. The explosion from his gun muzzle seemed tremendous. But the instant he pulled the trigger, the old every-action-has-an-opposite-reaction came into play. The Mauser’s recoil was so powerful and violent, the shooter was sent reeling all the way up to the top of this second dark passageway, slamming himself against a bulkhead, knocking himself out, and most likely causing himself a fractured skull.

The bullet went in the exact opposite direction, rocketing over everyone’s head at tremendous speed and pinging off the hatchway down at the other end of the module. But it didn’t stop there. It ricocheted off the floor, up to the ceiling, back down to the floor, and up to the ceiling again. It went on ricocheting like this for ten very dangerous seconds, until it finally lodged itself into one of the regalia cases and came to a halt. If it hadn’t done this, and if Sir Isaac Newton was right, it could have kept bouncing off the walls of the module forever.

The physics class ended when JT lunged forward and zapped the second shooter with his stun gun. They’d just seen the first rifle shot in space; now they were watching the first taser-induced conniption. The second JT’s weapon made contact, the goon began spazzing crazily, bouncing off the walls like a cartoon character, repeatedly smashing his face mask into the heavy-steeled girders. He finally broke his neck and screamed as all the air was sucked out of his lungs.

But because they were still inside their helmets, there was no way they could hear the sound he made when he died.

It took the small party of Americans another 10 minutes to grope their way up to the next hatchway, and another five to peel off the body of the man who’d so foolishly fired the Mauser.

This door was locked, too, and once again Geraci did the honors of opening it.

To everyone’s mild surprise, there were two more space-suited fellows waiting on the other side. They, too, were holding Mausers. But somehow they’d been privy to the fate shared by the first pair of spacemen who’d attempted to stop the raiding party. These two had their hands raised in surrender even before the hatchway was fully open. Almost comically, their guns were floating in place right above their heads.

Behind them was another door which led through an emergency air lock, and then into the hub of the station. It was not surprising that the hub could operate on its own pressurization system; the airlock was doubled as the inner fortress’s front door. What
was
surprising was that only four goons had come out to try to stop them, and two of them had given up without a fight.

JT yanked one of the spacemen through the first hatch, giving him just a taste of a taser shot, enough to knock him out. Terrified, his companion held his hands even higher in surrender. Hunter studied this man through his helmet faceplate. Like the pair of thugs they’d iced back at the Mir, he looked underfed, unwashed, unshaven, and generally unhealthy.

JT had his taser up in the man’s face now. Terrified, the man leaped to the ceiling, he was trying to raise his hands so high. Ben pulled him back down and spun him around. Hunter grabbed him by the shoulder pad and pointed at the air lock. No words needed to be spoken. The man quickly began pushing buttons and pulling levers. Soon the air lock door opened with a whoosh.

They were now just one step away from getting inside the hub.

Meanwhile, there was a great deal of panic on the other side of the air lock door.

There were now only 16 soldiers left to defend the inner hub, the remains of what had been a very small skeleton crew all along. None of these men had any weapons of any consequence with which to repel the invaders. They’d seen the brief encounters their comrades had engaged in with the Americans; they now knew that weapons such as rifles and pistols were useless, and even dangerous to use in zero-G. All they had left were their bare hands and a total of five knives between them.

They’d decided the best thing to do was imitate their comrades and simply give up.

The air lock door opened a few moments later and all six Americans came flooding into the large inner chamber, tasers held high. The 16 goons, all of them depleted, unwashed, skinny, and barely dressed, were floating several felt off the floor, lined up in a perfect row, their hands held high over their heads.

“This is too easy!” JT yelled, as he and Ben began hauling the surrendering minions back down to the floor.

Meanwhile, Hunter and the others were marveling at the design of the immense inner chamber. It didn’t look like a battleship in here, nor did it look like a space station. It looked like the inside of a palace. Paintings, chandeliers, velvet wall coverings, ornate chairs, and tables bolted to the walls—it looked very mysterious in the glare of their trouble lights. And, like everything else on the station, very, very old.

Hunter opened the front of this helmet and took his first deep breath of the space station air. It tasted stale and sweet.

“Anyone speak English?” he shouted at the prisoners.

No one answered—at first.

Hunter pulled down one of the goons and gave him a zap of the taser on his shoulder. The man spun away in obvious pain.

“Anyone know English now?” Hunter yelled.

Suddenly eight hands went up—fully half the prisoners spoke it.

Hunter reached up and pulled the nearest one down to him.

“Where’s your boss?” he growled at the man, his taser snapping and crackling just a few inches from the goon’s exposed neck.

“In… in the main sleeping chamber,” the man mumbled, pointing to a hatch right over their heads.

“How many goons up there with him?”

The guy just began shaking his head.

“None,” he said. “No goons. The only goons are down here.”

“Is
anyone
up there with him?” Ben wanted to know.

The blabbermouth just shook his head again, causing him to float away a little.

“Just four officers,” he replied, as Hunter yanked him back down once more. “None of them are armed…”

“Too easy,” JT kept saying, tying the hands of one of the prisoners and then letting him float away to bounce off the walls of the very showy dark chamber.

Cook was right up beside Hunter. He seconded JT’s feelings.

“It does seem like the end of the road should be a lot harder than this, Hawk,” he said.

Hunter would have been inclined to agree—if they were still back on earth. But the logical view was this: Viktor had nowhere else to go. Sure, the space station looked big and old and seemed like a waste just to house 20 skinny underarmed goons. But that was a mystery for a different time. Hunter’s greatest concern at the moment was that they’d get into this inner chamber and find Viktor and his officers dead—of self-inflicted wounds.

To his mind, they had to move quickly.

While Ben and Eight stayed behind with the prisoners, Hunter, JT, Cook, and Geraci floated up to the hatchway indicated by the prisoner. Geraci began fiddling with the bolt, assuming the hatch was locked from the inside. To his surprise, he discovered it was already open.

“Too easy…” JT whispered again, bringing his taser up to bear. “Way too easy.”

Hunter nodded to Geraci, who kicked in the door with a mighty boot, which predictably sent him reeling in the opposite direction. He was caught by Cook as Hunter and JT went flying through the door.

This place was as ornately appointed as the main chamber. At first it appeared Hunter’s worst fears had come true. There were two Nazi officers floating just on the other side of the hatchway, legions of blood bubbles running out of two huge neck wounds.

Two more officers were floating above a grand imperial steel-poster bed bolted to the floor at the far end of the chamber. Despite their shoulder loads of Nazi insignia, they both seemed a little too timid to take the same way out as their colleagues.

But where was Viktor, the big kahuna himself?

Hunter shot over to the two remaining officers. He mimicked his action earlier and painfully zapped one with his taser. This immediately unlocked the lips of the second man.

“Where is he?” was all Hunter had to say.

Trembling mightily, the man pointed to the space under the huge bed.

“Hiding,” he said in accented English. “Under there.”

Cook and Geraci had flown into the room by now, and with JT’s help, they yanked a tall, skinny, almost lifeless body out from under the huge bed. This person was dressed in a very effeminate-looking nightgown, which had recently been soiled. His hair was greasy, his goatee untrimmed and full of foreign particles. He looked pitiful.

The three men yanked him up to Hunter’s position and pulled his arms behind him.

Hunter had to take a long, hard look to realize that this was the man they’d come all this way to capture. The man who called himself Viktor.

It felt like an atomic blast went off inside Hunter’s head. Why bother hauling Viktor’s sorry ass back down to earth? Why not just get it over with, here and now? As it was, Hunter could just barely hold himself back from grabbing the terrorist by the throat and choking him until he was dead right then and there. Or better yet, applying his taser to the man’s scrawny neck and squeezing out the full 80,000 volts until he was literally cooked on the inside.
Why not do it?
Why not put an end to the most feared human scourge since Hitler?

Why not just kill him now and do the whole universe a big favor?

But just as Hunter was grimly considering this, another bolt of lightning hit him, this one from out of the blue. His eyes went wild. His mouth fell open. His hands began to shake so much, he let go of the taser and it floated away.

You’ll know, Hawk…
He heard Dominique’s words suddenly flood into his head, almost as if she were beside him again, whispering in his ear.
You’ll known soon…

In that moment, which seemed to last an eternity, Hunter
did
know. Dominique was dead. Her spirit had visited him in the air lock. She had told him what he had to do, and it had nothing to do with capturing Viktor.

Suddenly Hunter turned to JT. His face was as white as a sheet.

“We have to go,” he said quickly to his friend. “Right now…”

JT looked back at him and almost laughed. “Go?” he exclaimed. “Go
where?”

Hunter did not reply. He had already turned himself around and was flying back out the bedroom door, back into the main chamber, heading toward the air lock.

“Come with me!” he called over his shoulder to the others, in the harshest voice anyone had ever heard him use. “Now! That’s an order.” They complied.

JT, Cook, and Geraci all left the bedroom on Hunter’s heels. Picking up Ben and Eight along the way, they exited the main chamber, leaving behind the prisoners, Viktor, and his two very surprised underlings.

Several hours later

I
T LOOKED LIKE A
big gray trash can.

This was not unusual—a lot of things looked like weightless trash cans up in space. The high-tech corrugated design was definitely the one of choice when it came to building satellites for orbit. The cylindrical lines helped in construction, launching, powering, and orbital stability.

Still, this one was particularly trash-canny. It was tumbling along on path in mid-orbital range, looking for all the world like it was about to lose its cover and begin spewing space trash everywhere.

But this satellite was different in a few ways, too. First, it was big. Much bigger than the typical KH-12 spy bird or TIRUS weather/sat. Second, it had a pair of unusual wings—actually, solar-array panels—that appeared longer and wider than most. They were flapping like bird’s wings. This movement was due to the tumbling, but still, it made it appear that the wings were responsible for pushing the satellite forward.

It looked like a tumbling trash can with wings, not exactly a fitting epitaph for what was once the most famous space instrument in the world.

It was the Hubble. The huge telescope, first launched in the early 1990s and immediately discovered to have a debilitating flaw, was given a corrective lens a couple of years later. It went on to represent mankind’s biggest eye in the sky. It saw things that no earth-based telescope could ever see. The first black hole. The first pulsar. The first planets outside the solar system.

But somewhere along the way, either shortly before the Big War or sometime soon after it, the Hubble was abandoned, or more likely, simply forgotten. Someone somewhere must have shut its main power supply down—the solar panels were not fully extended—and when it began tumbling, no one was around to put it back in an upright position. It had probably been going head over heels like this for years.