Death Orbit (41 page)

The small group of helicopters made its way around the line of Cult battleships still firing on the Kennedy Space Center, gained landfall about two miles south of the VAB, avoided the handful of fire zones where the Cult shells were falling onto the base—and kept on going.

They flew over the Banana River, and over the abandoned cities of Titusville, Warm Springs, and Doreena. Finally, after 25 minutes of flight, they saw a very unusual skyline on their horizon: a huge artificial silver ball, thick forests of ugly skyscrapers, a bevy of artificial islands sitting in artificial lakes, and artificial vegetation covering artificial mountains. They were looking at a place just outside Orlando, once known as Disney World, the sprawling pre-Big War amusement park. Now it was empty and long abandoned.

It was odd that this artificial place would be the destination of the five UA helicopters and the captive cargo Sky Crane was carrying. Truth was, in the ultraflat terrain of UA Florida, this place was the highest location for many miles around.

It was called the Super Space Mountain, a ride constructed in the amusement park shortly before the Big War erupted. It was more than 500 feet high, and as its name implied, it was built to look like a mountain that might be found on some other planet besides earth.

It was a slight mushroom shape, with a restaurant, game rooms, and observation deck sitting above the ride itself, a roller coaster whose rails pointed nearly straight down in places.

The observation deck was the goal of the five helicopters. The Hueys reached it first and circled a few times, their gunners looking out for anything or anyone who might interfere with a landing. The pair of Sea Stallion set down, the two huge choppers just fitting onto the south edge of the observation deck, their rotors almost touching. The load of 1st Airborne troops were disgorged once again; their area of defense was much different this time than on the battleship
Sudai.
Now they found themselves looking out on vast stretches of swampy Florida real estate—it seemed to go on for so long, they imagined they could see the Keys by looking south, and the Gulf by looking west.

The Sky Crane came in next. Its pilot gently lowered the steel container until it landed with a bump about 20 feet away from the resting place of the Sea Stallions. The observation deck was only about 400 square feet in area, so the container took up whatever room the Sea Stallions hadn’t.

Once the container was unlashed from its constraints, the Sky Crane backed off, turned back to the east, and departed along with the pair of Hueys. They would now fly to a hidden cache of fuel about 20 miles away, gas up, and return.

The 1st Airborne troopers carefully opened the door to the steel container and were greeted with 10 very groggy enemy officers. The Cult prisoners were still laid out on the floor of their flying cell, groaning as the Sodium Pentothal began to wear off. The Fourth Reich officers were already on their feet, though, and loudly protesting as soon as the UA troopers opened the door. One soldier slapped a Nazi admiral who was too shrill. Another slugged the
Oberfuhrer
who’d begun a loud protest of the admiral’s
unmenschlich Behandlung
—“inhuman treatment.” The raising of a dozen UA weapons finally shut up the German officers. One by one they were led outside.

New fear gripped the Nazis as they realized for the first time where they were. It was dark and windy and very high and they were all sure this was to be the site of their execution. But the UA soldiers took them to the edge of the observation deck, retightened their manacles, and sat them down. Then they went in and brought out the groggy Cult officers and did the same thing.

The prisoners sat like this for thirty minutes. It was close to 2
A.M.
and the sky above them was clear and ablaze with stars. Off in the distance another rumbling of helicopter engines could be heard. The Hueys were returning. They circled the Super Magic Mountain once and then came in for a landing.

The Football City troopers piled out of the first chopper, but this time someone else was with them.

He was a short, wiry man with a baggy black UAAF uniform, a baseball cap, and a pair of bifocal glasses. Every UA soldier on top of the artificial mountain snapped to attention at first sight of him. It was General Dave Jones, the Commander-in-Chief of the United American Armed Forces.

He dismissed all the attention with a quick salute and then walked quickly over to where the prisoners were being held. Jones scanned the 10 angry, yet expectant faces in front of him, selecting one of the Nazi admirals, the man who to him seemed to be the most mature looking of the bunch.

“You are—?” Jones asked him plainly.

The slightly graying, slightly balding Fourth Reich officer got to his feet, wearily clicked his heels, and saluted.

“I am Admiral Karl Doenitz, the Fourth,” he brayed in strong, accented English. “I am commanding officer for all surface and underwater fleets of the…”

Jones interrupted him with an impatient wave of his hand.

“I could not care less what you command,” Jones told him. “Or who you are related to. All I want to know is if you are an educated man…”

Doenitz seemed stunned.

“Educated?” he repeated. “Of course I am! I have a degree from the University of Cologne, from the State Institute of Technology, from the War College at…”

Again Jones interrupted him with a wave.

“Did you ever take astronomy, Admiral?” he asked Doenitz. “Or astrophysics? Or cosmology?”

The German officer hesitated again.

“I am familiar with these things,” he said finally. “Not as much as other areas, but certainly…”

But Jones was not listening to him any more. He nodded to the pair of Football City Special Forces troopers next to him and they picked up the German officer by the arms and led him over to where the second Huey had set down.

The troopers on this aircraft had been busy putting some kind of long, tubular instrument onto a slender metal tripod. In the darkness and shadows it looked like a weapon, but on closer inspection, it was revealed to be a large telescope.

Jones waited silently as the troopers finished setting up the powerful Meade 1660 75X telescope. His own personal possession, it had an automatic viewfinder, motorized controls, and a small microprocessor unit attached to aid in gaining preprogrammed targets.

Doenitz waited silently, too, the pair of huge troopers flanking him on both sides. What the hell was this? he couldn’t help but wonder. Exactly how insane were these United Americans?

Finally, the troopers backed away from the telescope and turned back to Jones.

“It’s all yours, General,” one reported.

Jones stepped forward.

“Thanks, guys,” he said to the soldiers. “Why don’t you see what’s cooking on the other side?”

The troopers took the hint and quickly cleared out, leaving Jones and Doenitz alone.

Jones put his eye to the telescope’s lens and began punching numbers into the microprocessor. The telescope began turning slowly on its pan, the small motors nudging it along with a slight buzzing sound. When it stopped, Jones sighted the eyepiece again.

Doenitz heard him gasp.

“Damn,” Jones then whispered. “It gets bigger every time.”

By now Doenitz was bursting with curiosity.

“General, I demand to know what this is all about!” he huffed.

Jones looked up at him and gave a grim smile. Hunter had been right about one thing: the Germans would have to see it for themselves.

“What this is about, Admiral,” Jones finally said, “is the end of the world.”

Twenty minutes later, all of the captured officers had taken a turn looking through the telescope. All of the UA troopers atop Super Magic Mountain had, too. Each man was shocked by what he saw, even the near brain-dead Cult officers.

What they had seen was a tremendously bright light coming right out of the lower part of the Big Dipper. Even the dullish Cult members knew this was not an ordinary star or planet they were looking at. It was a comet. One that was moving so fast, it was actually growing larger as they were looking at it, filling up the telescope lens right before their eyes.

The Germans were especially shaken. They knew what this meant, and they believed Jones when he told them that all calculations indicated that the comet was heading right for the earth. They also knew that if such a large object, moving so incredibly fast, actually hit the earth, it
would
be the end of the world, no question about it.

The shock of this knowledge was so great, it took almost ten minutes of silence before the Germans regained their arrogant bearings.

Doenitz sought Jones out in the small crowd gathered atop the fake mountain.

“So, General,” he began. “You have shown us this thing. And you claim it will hit the earth in, what… five days?”

“Four and a half…” Jones replied.

“Whatever,” Doenitz sniffed. “So, let’s say this is true. What do you expect from us? We are close to overwhelming you. Our forces are much stronger than yours, and we have more on the way. Do you really think this changes anything?”

Jones just stared back at him, astonished but not surprised that the Nazi officer seemed to be advocating continuing their little war, even in the last few days of civilization.

Doenitz waited for a reply, and when he didn’t get one, he gulped uncomfortably and straightened up a bit.

“What is it that you want from us?” he asked Jones directly. “Do you actually expect us to surrender to you?”

Jones just shook his head sadly and wiped his tired eyes. This was the moment he’d been dreading.

“No, not surrender,” he said finally. “Just the opposite, in fact.”

Kennedy Space Center, the next morning

T
HE HELICOPTERS CAME IN
first.

They were Mi-6 Hooks, enormous flying machines capable of carrying up to 11,000 pounds in cargo, people, or weapons. Four of them began circling the Kennedy Space Center shortly before sunrise, the sound of their rotors cutting through the unusual calm that had befallen the battered American base.

Many of the weary UA defenders climbed out of their trenches at the first sight of them. Shielding their eyes against the brightening sky, they tried to get a closer look at the copters as they began descending one by one toward the center of the space complex. Helicopters like these had never been seen around the KSC before. They were too big and too noisy, and these were painted in a very strange way.

It was only when the Hooks got closer to the ground that it became obvious they were not carrying the blue and white colors of the UAAF; they were covered in a dull silver and gray low-level camouflage pattern instead. In defiance of this bland color scheme, bright red swastikas had been plastered all over their fuselages, tail sections, and noses, and anywhere else they could fit. There were a number of splashy Iron Crosses painted onto the copters as well.

The Hooks belonged to the Fourth Reich’s 81st Combat Lift Squadron. They landed, one right after another, in the parking lot next to the battered VAB. Though the parking lot was surrounded by heavily armed UA troops, by strict order, not a shot was fired to prevent the copters from doing so.

A small group of United American officers was waiting at the landing site. They were not a welcoming committee. They were simply on hand to tell the Nazis where they could park their gigantic helicopters.

A dozen high-level Nazi officers climbed out of the first Hook and greeted the UA officers with a round of bootclicking and curt bowing. They were from the command staff for the 5th Bavarian Engineering Korps and, they said, they were glad to be here. The UA officers did not introduce themselves or attempt any formal greeting in reply. They gave the German officers a set of preapproved photocopied maps, showing them where the Hooks could be unloaded, and then left.

It was 0545 hours.

The “peaceful” Nazi occupation of the Kennedy Space Center had begun.

It was 0600 hours when the second wave of Nazi helicopters arrived.

Unlike the first group, which had been carrying advance supplies such as radio sets, fuel oil, tents, and K-rations, these Hooks were carrying troops, specifically, the elite Himmler Company from the 1st Berlin Special Ops Brigade.

Twenty-four Hooks set down in all, each one disgorging about 50 Nazi troopers. Inside of 30 minutes, more than 1,200 German shock troops were lined up along the main road connecting the VAB and the KSC’s launch pads. Each one was carrying a machine gun, extra ammo clips, a half dozen hand grenades, and a personal rocket launcher. Each one was also wearing sunglasses.

The sight of so many Nazi soldiers was disconcerting, to say the least, for the UA soldiers assigned to watch the landing areas. After all, there were only about 500 UA soldiers left. Many were wounded, and all were low on ammo, food, and sleep. If the Nazis suddenly reneged on this unusual agreement—or if it was an elaborate deception all along—then a battle between the German storm troopers and the UA defenders would be extremely violent, extremely bloody, and over pretty quickly.

This was the price the Americans had to pay if they wanted to save the world.

At 0630 hours, another fleet of Hook helicopters arrived. They were carrying the main force of the 5th Bavarian Engineering Korps. They landed astride the pummeled shuttle runway, some of their gigantic copters carrying large pieces of construction equipment as well as full loads of combat engineers.

But by 0645 hours, more than 500 of these combat engineers had been landed, along with a squadron of bulldozers, front-end loaders, and other pieces of earth-moving equipment. At exactly 0655 hours the CEs declared themselves ready for duty. At exactly 0700 hours, and with permission from the UAAF high command, the Nazis CEs went to work.

Quickly collecting vast amounts of debris thrown up from the 48 hours of bombardment of the shuttle runway, the Germans mixed the rubble with gasoline, tar, and thick lubricating oil, and using sheer manpower, pushed, pulled, and shoveled the mixture into dozens of crater holes over a two-mile stretch of the airstrip. The Nazis had previously boasted that their concoction would harden quickly enough to allow heavy aircraft to land on the section of recovered runway within an hour. The unbelievers scoffed. But sure enough, at exactly 0835 hours, a handful of Antonov An-22 transport airplanes appeared overhead. One by one the huge cargo planes came down and landed safely. The miracle patch job had worked.