Death Orbit (6 page)

Chloe seemed to consider this, then looked back over at him and smiled weakly.

“If you think it will help…” she said.

With that
,
she began unbuttoning her blouse. Beneath she wore a white lace see-through bra. It barely held her small, yet pert breasts in check, and they both popped out when she unsnapped it. Then she reached behind her and undid the ties on her long, flowing dress, pulling it off in one swift motion. This revealed her shapely waist, her perfect rear, her hairless crotch, her beautiful legs.

She now knelt naked and vulnerable before the great Bajiib. He was staring back at her, tears falling to his newly redefined chest.

“Is it helping yet?” she asked him.

Bajiib closed his eyes, and to his great surprise, he began to see colors. Many different reds and blues and greens and yellows were racing toward him at the speed of light. It was both frightening and beautiful.

“More…” he gasped.

Chloe took his hand and laid it gently on her right breast. The nipple immediately became erect.

Now Bajiib could see nothing but a bright white light. It was bouncing off his retinas with such luminescence, he really didn’t know if his eyes were open or not.

She moved his hand down past her abdomen to the area between her legs. It was already moist. Bajiib was now bathed in a glow, and in his ears a choir was singing. This was not what he’d expected, not exactly what he wanted. He’d simply wanted to get laid—once, in his lifetime. All that other stuff about revealing the unconscious and peeling back the flower was just a bunch of crap. There wasn’t even such a thing as
The Book of Thirteen.
He’d made it all up. Or at least, he thought he had. Never did he think it would
really
be like this.

Chloe began moving his fingers back and forth across her genitalia, moaning in response. Bajiib was now hallucinating. He was looking at a man with a long flowing beard and bright white robes. His finger was pointing directly at Bajiib’s skull. He seemed to be saying something…

Chloe reached over and touched the area between Bajiib’s trembling legs. There was already a protrusion in his robes. Chloe began stroking. Bajiib was now face-to-face with the man in the white beard. He was whispering something in Bajiib’s ear. Chloe began stroking harder. The two explosions came almost simultaneously. First, Bajiib’s long overdue scrotum ruptured and emptied—and then so did his heart. And in its last beat, he knew the true meaning of the word ecstasy. He collapsed to the floor, gasping wildly. All blood flow to his organs had stopped. Only his brain remained in function, and that for only a few seconds more.

He managed to pull Chloe close to him and whisper in her ear just as the bearded man in the vision had whispered in his. He had to tell her the key to her dream before it was too late.

But he could only form one last word.

Her ear directly on his mouth, he drew one last breath.

“Hubble…” he gasped.

And then he died.

Gander Air Force Base, Newfoundland, Free Canada

T
HE BRITISH AEROSPACE S.MK 2B BUCCANEER
fighter-bomber circled the fog-shrouded airfield once, then came in for a bumpy, rather ragged landing.

A small army of rescue vehicles surrounded the airplane as it screeched to a halt on the dark, wet runway. This was just a precaution—many terrible air crashes had taken place at Gander over the years. The rescue vehicles usually rolled out whenever an airplane touched down, especially one that came in as hard as this.

The imperfect touchdown could be excused, however. The man at the controls of the ancient airplane had been flying for nearly 16 hours straight. He could barely keep his eyes open. The man in the rear seat, the airplane’s systems operator, was even more exhausted than the pilot. He’d been asleep for almost two hours.

Once the engines were cooled and secured, both men had to be helped from the cockpit. The systems operator came out first. His legs seemed permanently bent in the sitting position. The attending ground personnel wrapped him in a blanket, put him in a chair, and carried him down the access ladder in just that way. He was so cramped up, a severe muscle tear was a real possibility.

The pilot left under his own power, but he, too, was obviously expended. He was Major Ricard Frost, Free Canadian Air Force, and under more normal circumstances, first liaison officer between the Free Canadian government and the United American Armed Forces.

Like so many of the principal people connected to the UAAF, Frost had been given thirty days leave to recover from wounds suffered in the twin actions of the Pacific and Vietnam. Like so many others, though, he’d felt antsy after the first few days and had volunteered to spell some other pilots who needed time off even more.

The recipients of this gesture were the men of the joint FC-UAAF Maritime Patrol Service, a combined-forces air unit which patrolled the uneasy waters between the tip of the North American continent and the western reaches of the Icelandic floe. Using a variety of aircraft, many of them much older than the men who flew them, the MPS provided the thankless job of endlessly monitoring the main shipping lanes between Iceland and Newfoundland, keeping tabs on any suspicious-looking vessels and always being on the lookout for nefarious submarines.

MPS duty was unrelentingly routine—that was what made it so exhausting. While the service had certainly seen its share of harrowing incidents, especially in the first few years following the Big War, the dedicated pilots and technicians had not spotted an unfriendly vessel, either surface-riding or U-boat, in nearly eighteen months. This lack of action didn’t mean the MPS was obsolete; just the opposite. The MPS was vital because it was so good and so meticulous. Any potential enemy from abroad would have to think twice before traveling the regular sealanes to get to North America.

Still, the airplanes the service operated were decidedly bottom-of-the-barrel. There were eleven of them based at Gander. Besides the Buccaneer, there were three Mk 3 BA Shackletons, four-engine, piston-driven maritime bombers that bore more than a passing resemblance to the B-24 Liberators of World War II fame and were almost as old. There was a quartet of Dassault-Breguet Alize antisub aircraft, bulbous little airplanes that somehow found room for a crew of three and a bomb-bay big enough to carry two torpedoes. Probably the oddest craft was the Embraer P-95 Bandeirulha, an old Brazilian design that looked more like a sporting plane than a military aircraft. For in-flight refueling of this plucky group, there was also a pair of BA “Victory” K.Mk 2 jet tankers.

Frost had been flying MPS for six days. This had been his first flight in the venerable Buccaneer, and as he had vowed many times in the last 16 hours, it would be his last. Easing himself into the waiting jeep now, he could hear his knee joints crackle and pop as he stretched them straight for the first time in more than a half a day.

“I might be getting too old for this,” he thought, even though he was just a few weeks shy of his thirty-sixth birthday. “Either too old or too smart…”

Sensing his condition, the Jeep driver drove slowly, carefully, across the rough tarmac, depositing Frost without so much as a bump at the front door of his officers’ billet. The driver promised to fetch Frost a hot meal from the chow hall and maybe a few cans of Mooselake ale, too. This cheered the pilot enough to will himself out of the Jeep and up the steps of his quarters. The Jeep driver gingerly turned his vehicle around and then roared off into the night and fog.

It was now close to 2
A.M.
and in the background Frost could hear the heart-stopping growl of two Shackletons starting up their paleolithic engines. Behind them were a pair of Alizes, and behind them, adding its own primitive engines to the roar, one of the “Victory” refueling ships.

This meant just about all of the MPS pilots were either in the air or climbing up into it. When Frost came through the front door of the officers’ billet, he was the only living soul around.

That was okay with him. The last thing he wanted to do now was to see anybody, talk to anybody, or have to interact in any way. All he wanted was a shower, a shave, his meal, a few ales, and then bed.

This plan began unfolding like clockwork. He reached his quarters, stripped, and showered in luxurious privacy. He had a quick towel-off, a quicker shave, and then there came a rapping on his door. It was the Jeep driver, carrying a tray holding an enormous bowl of stew, a basket of rolls, a tin of common crackers, and a small container of hot sauce. It was Frost’s favorite meal! He gratefully accepted the tray only to find the man was also holding the promised six-pack of Mooselake ale. Exhausted and famished, Frost felt tears come to his eyes. He thanked the driver profusely, promised him a citation of some kind, then shooed him out. Returning to his billet, Frost opened the first beer, rustled up an old copy of
Air Progress,
and dived face first into the basin of stew.

It was hard to say what went down quicker, the heavily seasoned goulash or the first Mooselake ale. Either way, they were both gone inside of five minutes. Frost licked the bowl several times over, then poured the first few drops from beer number two into the vessel and drank the runoff. Once the rolls and crackers were gone, he got up from the table, staggered a bit, and collapsed onto his bed. It was almost 2:30.

Outside the wind was beginning to howl; a huge storm was churning in the Atlantic. Frost and his backseater had seen the massive clouds forming on the southern horizon all during their long flight. The weather service was predicting this storm would hit New England within hours and linger there indefinitely. Some forecasters were already speculating that it might be one of the largest storms to hit the East Coast in history; it was so big it was already affecting them way up here in Gander.

Yet now, looking up through the overhead window in his room, Frost could see a patch of sky, one which the howling winds had cleared of all fog, at least temporarily. Through it, Frost could see a bright patch of stars. They looked absolutely stunning at the moment, so much so that he raised himself up a bit just to get a better look. His view was somewhat limited, but he could still partially make out the Big Dipper and Orion.

Suddenly he spotted a small blinking light swiftly making its way across the sky. He knew immediately it was not an airplane; this object was traveling through space.

Could it be? he thought. Was there really any chance that the light was the Zon spacecraft, containing Hunter and his UAAF colleagues?

No, not really. As the flashing light passed from view, Frost was sure it was more likely to be a satellite or a piece of space junk than the captured space shuttle, especially at this latitude. Still, as Frost lay back on his bed, his thoughts went to his American allies and their continuous struggle to bring freedom and order to their very troubled land. Frost was a close personal friend of Hunter himself, having first met the Wingman several years ago at a place called the Pitt, once known as Pittsburgh. Frost had transported a cache of jewels for Hunter, who was working as a pilot-for-hire at the time. They’d been amigos ever since.

Frost ripped the cap off his third beer and drained it greedily. It felt like the high-alcohol-content lager was flowing directly into his tired veins, bypassing his stomach and liver entirely. Many things had happened since he’d linked up with the United Americans. The continent had been freed, invaded, and freed again. Major battles had been won in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia. Now Hunter and company were hunting for Viktor II in orbit. It seemed to be an appropriate culmination of all the hard-fought and hard-won victories. Where else should the climactic chase be, but in outer space? A pang of sadness went through Frost’s tired chest. If only he was up there with them…

His fourth beer brought more memories. Sure, the key wars had been won, but many men had died as a result. Brave souls and close friends. Bull Dozer, the one-of-a-kind commander of the original 7th Cavalry, United America’s first credible ground force. Dozer had been killed in a titanic last battle against the Russians in Washington, DC. Then there was Seth Jones, twin brother of Dave Jones, the C-in-C of the UAAF. Frost had never met the man, but from what he’d heard, he seemed to be nothing less than deserving of his reputation as the patron saint of the entire Free America movement.

There was Mike Fitzgerald, the godfather of the UAAF. Fitz had been a close friend of everyone in the UA inner circle, the kind of guy who’d made a million dollars no less than six months after the Big War had ended, only to give most of it away and join the UA freedom fighters. A ballsy pilot and an expert strategist, Fitzgerald had been killed preventing an enemy nuclear missile from obliterating Football City in the last stages of the war against the Fourth Reich.

Of all the men who’d passed on, Fitz was the one Frost, as well as everyone else, missed the most. Popping his fifth beer, Frost wondered what it would be like if Fitz were still alive; what he would think now that the American continent was finally free of all outside invaders. What he would think of Hunter’s high-speed chase in outer space…

Sometime during draining his sixth and last beer, Frost finally fell asleep. Dreams flowed through his head like clouds whipped up by a storm. First, he was back at the controls of the antique Buccaneer, then he was swimming in the Caribbean, then he was a child again, playing hockey outside his family’s home in Parry Sound, then he was back in the old Buck again.

It went on like this for sometime: Frost drifting in and out of montages of nonsensical dreams. Yet despite his depleted state and his belly full of beer, his instincts remained sharp, and somewhere in the midst of all his dreaming, he sensed that he was not alone in the room. The feeling grew stronger even as he dreamed he was up on a high, snow-capped mountain, looking down on a burning city below.

Finally, somehow, in some way, he was able to open his eyes. Vaguely, through the sleep and the faint light of his room, he saw that, indeed, he was
not
alone. There was a figure sitting in the chair directly across from his bed. It was a man. His legs and arms were crossed in a very familiar way. He was staring very intently at Frost, his features wrinkled in worry on his pudgy, Irish-red face.