Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit (19 page)

“Yeah, just like a giant spear that you would use to get a lion. Only this spear will be filled with so much
boom-boom,
if we’re lucky, we’ll blow the Wheel’s metal balls all the way to Alpha Centauri.”

“C’est le
destiny
des le gran Eiffel,” Louis said, awe in his voice. “C’est tout le raison d’etre.”

Twenty-Four

T
he junk ships gathered around the Grand Eiffel Tower as it floated serenely in its hidden orbit. No longer
so
serenely, Rockson mused, as he watched them tie up alongside it. The long strings of junk balls that made up each of their ship colonies were tethered to the great monument like horses to a pole.

Once they were firmly secured, men in spacesuits began carrying out loads of explosives from their storehouses. And there were a hell of a lot. Explosives had been used in boosters for separating them, used in space construction for driving home welds and brackets, for fusing them together. And like the pack rats that they were, the Frenchies had managed to gather quite a load of boom boom over the last century.

Rock added a few smart bombs of his own, set in strategic places around the top fifty feet of the tower, so he could aim and set off the whole pie when the time came by radio command. They added another ton or two down near the base, figuring a whole secondary set of explosions couldn’t hurt any. It took almost five hours and by then they were getting reports back that the Wheel was already wreaking heavy damage to Earth, though it wasn’t yet clear just who it was shooting at.

Also, nearly thirty of the Space Nazis heavily armed space tugs were taking up battle formation on each side of the Wheel with much coded radio contact between them. Whatever the hell was happening—it sounded real bad. Rock hoped there would yet be time to stop Killov’s madness once again. And kill the bastard
better
this time.

“Let’s movez, baby,” Rock said slapping Louis XIV on his suited shoulder. “We’ve got le guerre to fightez.”

“Ah, at last,” the Astro Frenchie said, raising his arms toward the Eiffel and half-bowing to it. “Zee prophecy comes true. Vous are truly
le Napoleon. Zee
Earth warrior who flyez up to savez tous the men et les femmes who livez in le miserable, en le despaire pour so long.”

“I’m no fucking Napoleon,” Rockson laughed. “I don’t have a trace of French blood in me. But when it comes to kicking butt—it don’t matter what color, race, or religion you are.”

“Sacre bleu,” Louis laughed, “vous are un egalitarian especiale. Vive le liberté. Et la vie. Allons enfants de la patrie!”

“Well, whatever that means—the same to you and morez.” Rock grinned through his helmet. He pulled a flair gun he had found in storage and fired it. It went off about five hundred feet from the top of the antenna of the Eiffel.

“Attencion, attencion,” Louis XIV announced over his headmike. “Returnez to les garbage ships. Nous attackez maintenant.”

A great shout went up from all the Frenchies as they raised their arms. The time had come, at last the time had come to rid themselves of the godlike sceptre that had been haunting them their entire lifetimes up here. They propelled themselves back to their respective sphere ships, which floated everywhere around the tower. Rock looked down at the huge crescent blue and white Earth. There were red boils on it.
Huge cities afire.

Back at the Dynasoar, Rajat had more bad news. The Wheel was sending out probe X-rays and radar scans of the junk ring, searching no doubt for any thing living, anything that could
oppose.

“It looks like they’re getting ready to take us all out soon, as a precaution. I don’t think they know what we’re up to, they just want to consolidate their power up here so nothing can oppose them.”

Rock could see that the whiz kid had aged already just since they’d left C. C. It was amazing what life and death responsibility, having to make split second decisions, did to a kid. It was in the eyes, always in the eyes. Already the youth was getting a darker, less innocent look in them. Rock felt bad about that too. But disillusionment was only the first casualty of the soul.

“Then we’ll have to get ahead of them,” Rock said. “Like right now.”

“Without any maneuvering with the Frenchies?” Connors asked nervously. None of them wanted the great space battle—though they knew they had to.

“Are they still firing down?” Rock asked Rajat.

“Uh—yeah, they’re really messing up Eastern Europe with their laser stuff. I mean they must have every battery in the place on. Firing twenty, thirty times a minute, with long sustained beams. Thousands of square miles must be on fire down there.”

Rock prayed Century City wasn’t burning. But he didn’t say anything, no sense worrying these two even more. Besides, the Earth was turned so that America was yet safe in its night.

“How do we get there—to the Wheel’s orbit—the fastest, no bullshit way?” Rock asked. “And I don’t want none of this orbiting around the Earth three times to get momentum kind of stuff. We’ve got to
blitzkrieg
them, in their own Nazi style.”

“Well—it’s pretty dangerous, but theoretically possible,” Rajat said, as Connors pushed a few buttons and gave commands here and there, getting the ship out of neutral and ready for orbital change—flight.

“We’ve been working on a number of different approaches on computer. The approved way is, of course, the one you already rejected—what they call the triple pass, using the ship’s elliptical orbit around the Earth to create a slingshot effect, to either rise up or descend with very little exertion of power. But it would take at least sixteen hours—and—”

“Get to the good part,” Rock said impatiently. “Sorry to cut you off, but in combat situations—we’ve got to be fast—there’s not time to go through long explanations.”

“Sorry, Rock—forgot myself,” Rajat said, embarassed for a moment. He was in fact used to sitting back and having long drawn-out discussions with his professors and science peers back at C.C. on everything under the sun.

“Well the quick way,” he said suddenly, “we use a maxi-main burn of the core engine to fly into low orbit, almost out of the stratosphere, and move in a straight line right under their orbit on the far side of the Earth. Then we use all boosters to come up. Could come in almost literally
behind
them. Wouldn’t be be expecting us, that’s for sure.”

“And the bad news?” Rock asked as he strapped himself in.

“We’d have to go so low, we might come out of orbit. Rock—the spaceballs—I don’t know how good they’d do down so far, or for that matter the Eiffel Tower. I mean we’d be down to about ninety miles, the very lower limit of spaceflight. And that’s pushing it.”

“Calculate the absolute iowest orbit you can take us down in,” Rock said, “and still get us through. Maybe we can enter at extremely high velocity, you know, get a running start, just power our way through.”

“Well, it’s going to be delicate,” Rajat said, nodding his head from side to side. “The higher the speed, the more friction created. Of course we need to maintain a minimal speed—ah damn—I’m being wordy! Just give me five minutes, I’ll have your answers! Connors, you take control and head her around. Like Rock says, we can at least get a run in near-planet space to build up a little speed. Take her out to coordinate A57/B-789A at 2,000 miles, co-terminate Number three and four at a 90 burn!”

“Roger,” Connors replied, and quickly repeated his commands to Louis XIV who was flying alongside the Dynosoar in the pearl ship.

The Astro Frenchie relayed the instructions to the others and the entire fleet turned Earthward and started moving in a deceleration trajectory.

They had to go slow at first, towing the huge explosive-laden Eiffel Tower from out of its shroud of space junk. The combined ships pulled hard on the great monument, taking it like a sword from out of a sheath and then out of the junk ring. The entire fleet assembled behind the golden-glinting Eiffel with two of the pearl ships guiding it from the front. Rock’s Dynasoar and Louis XIV’s ships floated just ahead of it.

“Will you look at that!” Rajat said as they all peered at the collection of ragtag ships that spread out for miles behind them. “A fleet of garbage.”

“Junk or not—the fate of the Earth rests with what we do in the next minutes,” Rock said. “Attention, Wheel Strike Force,” Rock radioed back to his own men. “Full spacesuit and battle gear. Make sure you have shoes fully magnetized and charged up—and your weapons as well. Sorry, we didn’t give you more time for space combat training. But— God bless all of you. Fight like bastards; don’t throw up in your suits. Throw up
now!
I’ll see you on the far side of the Earth.”

Twenty-Five

“P
etrograd, Minsk, Stalinville—all burning,” Col. Killov sneered with a mad glee in his pinhole eyes. “All aflame like they’ve been hit with A-bombs.” He was beside himself with the intoxication of power. The laser beams on the Wheel—which his kidnapped Red Army scientists had worked on under threat of torture and death twenty-four hours a day—were functioning perfectly. Beyond Killov’s wildest expectations. For not only could he aim them with pinpoint accuracy, but their destructive power was far greater than he had anticipated. “That will teach Premier Vassily not to take me lightly . . . Can’t wait to do America—Ha!”

He popped two more Elevals and then a single B-tab to counter the others. He was on so many drugs now, dozens of different ones a day, that Killov had to keep adding more to bring down the effect of the last. Up and down he went, swinging from elation to psychotic depression at any moment. That was what made him so feared. For he had killed men for just being near him when in a foul mood. But he was feeling good now, real good.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” he asked as Col. Heinrick and the Führer Glock stood behind him, waiting impatiently. Somehow their leadership in this whole venture had been first diluted, then cut off completely. Without their even realizing it, Killov had taken control of the entire military and their internal security apparatus controlling the Wheel and the several dozen huge space tugs and barges. Their Nazi culture had survived challenges over the last century up here in orbit. But now it had succumbed to a greater evil. It had been a mistake to bring Killov into this, they could see that now. Even though he had made the men work far harder than they ever had, had gotten the scientific know-how to make the Wheel’s mega-weapons systems function—something they had never been able to do—it had been a mistake. But it was too late. Killov had consolidated his power, had taken over the whole thing right beneath their noses, and it was Killov who the Reich’s troops responded to now.

“Ah, Col. Killov,” the Führer said, stepping forward, suddenly deciding to assert himself for once with the Skull. For he was a powerful man as well. Sure, the Führer thought, perhaps he had let things go a little—but now he would stop it in its tracks, take back control of his little empire in the sky, at this key moment of victory.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” Killov growled impatiently, not wanting to lift his eyes from the burning cities of the planet Earth which spun before him on a huge screen. The great continents were like a child’s clay arrangements below him, with funnels of smoke rising where his lasers had struck. He wanted to keep raking the Soviet Union. And when he had taken out all of Vassily’s forces
—then
he would move the Wheel over the U.S., and search for Century City. Ah, that would be his greatest pleasure, to destroy Rockson and his friends, like ants underneath a flaring match.

“I think that it’s time that the plans of the Fourth Reich were begun. The targets you are selecting are those of your own pleasure. And while they doubtless should be destroyed—I think
now
it would be better to wait and—” Damn, his words weren’t coming out right. He wasn’t being nearly forceful enough. And Killov’s eyes now glared at him, with ultimate power in them, like twin lasers.

“You’re trying to say—you want to take back control over the entire operation, over the attack system that I’ve set up and have working in perfect synchronized motion.”

“Yes, it is mine and I demand control,” the Führer exclaimed, now talking loudly. He walked around the front of the holograph globe that rose up in the center of the command room of the Wheel. The control center that ran the awesome firepower now fully fired up and ready to destroy. A hundred swastika-armbanded officers were monitoring systems. The Earth spun like a smoking beachball. It was a crystal ball of death into which Killov stared.

No little ant would get in his way. You could bet Lenin’s balls on that, Killov thought, staring down the Führer, making the wall-eyed jerk’s lips twitch in fear.

“It’s mine and I demand that you relinquish control,” the Führer went on, as he pulled out the mini-laser-luger from the block holster at his side. He walked around until he stood opposite Killov so the blue and green and white pearl of the Earth spun between them, just at stomach level.

Killov’s skeletal face burned with a dark glow as he saw that the ant had dared pull a weapon on him. For such as he was reserved
special tortures.

“Yes, mine,
mine,”
the Führer was shouting with a twisted smile on his face. His lock of black hair fell down across his forehead. He had put up with it too damned long. But now, at this moment of Glory, he would claim it all back again. It felt good to exert control. He was the Führer, he was strong, he was—

“Yours?”
Killov grinned, forcing his trembling mouth to move back at the corners so that his dried-out lips cracked and little rivulets of red began oozing down onto his chin. He hadn’t smiled for a long, long time. “Of
course,
how could I have gotten so wrapped up in my own excitement? My apologies,
Mein Führer.
It’s all yours.” He stood and mock-bowed at the man, and then held his hands out toward him in a gesture of Nazi salute.
“Hail the Führer!!”

Only the invisible gas that sprayed out of a ring on his right index finger right over the top of the holograph globe and into the Führer’s face was not a tribute. It was a deadly poison that instantly rotted the entire nervous system and brain into a smelly soup.