This novella appeared as one of the short novels published in an anthology of military fiction by Stephen Coonts titled COMBAT. It was published in February of 2001.
Below you can read a sample of R.J. Pineiro's contribution to this anthology.
1 The soft whirl of the Environmental Control and Life Support System broke the silence of space, the dead calm that Russian Mission Specialist Sergei Dudayev had grown to detest since his arrival at the International Space Station three months before. He knew he didn't belong here, in the pressurized cylindrical modules that had been his entire world for what now seemed like an eternity. A place where "up" and "down" had no meaning, no significance. A state-of-the-art rat cage where humans worked, ate, and slept protected from outer space by layers of metal alloys and insulating compounds. Outer space. Sergei frowned as he gazed out through the Habitation Module's panoramic windowpanes at the light cloud coverage over southern Africa. The Earth looked peaceful, quiet, majestic. At five-foot-four, the thirty-year-old Russian cosmonaut was a short man, particularly when standing next to his American or European colleagues. A neatly-trimmed beard, hollow cheeks, and a charming smile, Sergei gave the impression of someone who found no pleasure in food. On his long, bony face, Sergei's alert, rather feminine eyes, had an Italian softness that made people feel at ease with him. Today, he was banking on his natural ability to make everyone inside the International Space Station feel comfortable in his presence. Closing his eyes, he listened to the sound of his own breathing as he prepared himself mentally for what he had to do. He felt his heartbeat increasing, the adrenaline rush, the perspiration forming on his creased forehead. He opened his eyes and stared at a perfectly round bead of sweat floating inches from his face. He placed his index and thumb around it and toyed with it for a few seconds before squashing it. The silent explosion projected hundreds of tiny liquid particles in an isotropic that slowly trended upward as they got sucked in by the air revitalization system extractors overhead. The time had come. With Atlantis heading back down to Earth and the launch of the shuttle Endeavour at the cape being delayed by a week, the ISS’s regular crew of eight had been temporarily reduced to five, including himself. The opportunity to take over the U.S. military’s GPATS module would never be so easy. The Global Protection Against Terrorist Strikes module was one of several modules that made up the current core of the station. But unlike it sister modules, which served either as living quarters or to run experiments and collect data, GPATS, the highly classified military payload of a shuttle flight a year ago, housed a prototype hydrogen fluoride chemical laser gun powered by an array of solar cells. Initially plagued with bugs, the laser had already proven itself useful six months ago, when a malfunctioning satellite had come dangerously close to colliding with the space station. The laser had managed to transfer enough energy to the satellite to deflect its trajectory, missing the station by a thousand feet. Since then, the Pentagon, in order to protect the station from space junk, had used two shuttle flights to haul a billion dollars worth of upgrades to increase its power and accuracy, making it capable of disabling enemy satellites as well as incoming nuclear warheads--its design objective during the Strategic Defense Initiative project over a decade ago. But GPATS also housed another weapon, deployed at the request of the United Nations Security Council: thirty BGU-85 warheads, each fitted with individual Earth re-entry boosters. The BLU-85 was the largest non-nuclear warhead made by the United States, big brother of the venerable BLU-82 used during the Vietnam era to clear out large areas of forest for helicopter handing pads. The purpose of the BLU-85 aboard the ISS: a tactical, non-nuclear, first-strike anti-terrorist capability weapon that could be delivered with surgical precision anywhere on Earth within minutes. Each warhead provided the equivalent yield of fifteen thousand tons of TNT, or fifteen kilotons--small when compared to the 200 kiloton warheads atop ICBMs, but large enough for its intended application. A single BLU-85 could level a military compound in a hostile nation, vaporize a terrorist training camp, discourage an advancing army, or destroy a cocaine plantation--all with the push of a button, and guided to its target by its own radar in shoot-and-forget mode. Observing procedures similar to the ones followed for decades by missile silo crewmen, the weapons were kept in a state of readiness, their launching controlled by two crew members from the United States, the country that footed the entire GPATS bill. GPATS was the United Nations ultimate hammer against a rebellious nation or terrorist group, capable of delivering a quick and devastating blow without the large overhead of troop deployments or air strikes, or the political and moral problems associated with a nuclear strike. And now I will use this weapon against the Russian butchers, thought Sergei, who had become aware of this secret payload during the last month of his training. Sergei Viktor Dudayev was Russian by birth, but his heart belonged to the struggling people of Chechnya, the land where he’d spent most of his youth as the son of a military officer during the final decade of the Soviet Union. Growing up in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, had allowed the young Dudayev to develop strong bonds with the locals, some of whom were killed during the turbulent civil war period following the fall of the Soviet Union. This secret loyalty had remained very much alive inside Sergei Dudayev after he’d left this war-scarred land, abandoning his friends in their fight for independence. The fire continued to burn in his heart even after he had settled in Moscow and tried to start a new life; even as he himself climbed the military ladder of the Russian military, following his father’s footsteps; even as his distinguished career eventually led him to the Russian space program. Sergei reached into a Velcro-secured side pocket and extracted a small electric stun gun, capable of discharging a single 20,000-volt shock, powerful enough to incapacitate an average man for thirty minutes. His people in Chechnya had managed to smuggle the tiny gun inside a Progress Russian cargo spaceship, which had arrived at the station just last week. Along with the gun came coded instructions from his Chechen contact in Moscow on the critical timing to take control of the station. "Hey, Serg. You look pretty depressed today.” One of the American astronauts floated past him, patted Sergei on the back, and stopped in front of the food galley. The American was the current resident aboard the ISS from the United Nations Security Council. In addition to standard mission specialist responsibilities, he was also chartered with the protection of the GPATS module. Ever since the UNSC deployed GPATS, a minimum of one crew member aboard the ISS possessed the training and the weapons to defend the military module. Sergei didn't respond, his eyes shifting from the American’s holstered stun gun to the back of his light-blue flight overalls, identical to the ones Sergei wore, except that the muscular UNSC’s soldier filled his, while Sergei's looked a size too big for his lanky frame. The tall astronaut turned around, his hands fumbling with a brown pack of dehydrated peaches. His round face, pink and white, went well with his short hair. Curious brown eyes blinked at Sergei. "You okay, pal? You look sick. Have you been getting enough sleep?" His heartbeat rocketing as he tried to hide the stun gun behind his back without looking suspicious, Sergei forced a smile, slightly closing his eyes as he nodded. "Yes, I am fine. Thank you." The bulky American shrugged, turning his attention back to his dried peaches. Sergei Viktor Dudayev tightened the grip on the stun gun and gently pushed himself toward the food galley, arming the weapon and pressing its bare-wire ends against the soldier's neck. A light buzzing sound filled the Habitation Module as the pouch flew off, spilling its contents in a brownish cloud. The American jerked for an moment and went limp, his arms floating in front of his body. First incapacitate, then kill. Blocking out all emotions, Sergei choked his victim until breathing ceased. Then he felt for a pulse, finding none. Satisfied, he grabbed the dead man’s stun gun before pushing his body aside. Adrenaline rocketing his heartbeat, Sergei stared toward the other end of the Habitation Module, where sleep compartments occupied both sides of the padded walls and the ceiling. A crewman slept in one of them. Another American, the station commander. The Russian cosmonaut drifted toward him, coming to a rest in front of the compartment. The commander’s arms floated loosely to the sides as his head leaned slightly forward. The Velcro straps securing him against the padded board applied just enough pressure on his body to create the illusion of sleeping in a comfortable bed. Sergei curled the hairy fingers of his right hand around the plastic case of the UNSC soldier’s stun gun, and without further thought, drove the hot end of the weapon into the side of the commander’s neck. The astronaut opened his eyes and stared at Sergei in surprise, before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his arms jerked forward, almost as if trying to reach for his attacker. The motor reflex ended a moment later, and, again, Sergei strangled his incapacitated victim. The Russian unzipped the front of the American's suit and removed a key attached to a chain around the his neck. The American also wore a small badge around his neck. Briefly eyeing the credit card-size object, Sergei decided to come back to it later. Right now he needed both ISS master keys. Sergei Dudayev floated to his first victim and retrieved a second key, before approaching the center of the module and eyeing the close circuit TV monitors of the operations workstation, where he verified that the remaining crew members, one British and one Japanese, were still inside the U.S. Laboratory Module, the forty-four-foot-long pressurized cylinder similar in shape and size to the Habitation Module. Satisfied, he inserted both keys on the top of the keyboard of the Multipurpose Application Console, linked to the electronic core of the ISS’s network. From here, Sergei had control of all onboard subsystems such as electrical power, thermal control, data management, communications, interface with ground control, and even full space station attitude control and orbit altitude. Sergei Dudayev bypassed all manual overrides of the air revitalization system and emergency hatch releases of the U.S. Laboratory Module. A few more strokes of the keys and he heard the alarms going off across the station as the computer system automatically isolated the laboratory from the rest of the station by closing and locking the hatches at both ends of the module. His eyes drifted back to the flat-panel monitor, which now showed two astronauts frantically waving at the camera and reaching for the radio. Sergei turned the intercom system off. He didn’t care to hear their pleas, just as the world had refused to listen to the cry of his people as Russian forces raped his beloved Chechnya. Visions of his explosive youth, of his slaughtered friends, of his hasty departure filled his mind as Sergei typed again. This time he overrode the air pressurization and revitalization control system of the station and began to bleed the air still trapped inside the Laboratory Module into space. The astronauts continued to wave and scream in front of the camera, but their struggle didn't last long. Soon they began to breathe through their mouths. Their movements grew clumsier, erratic, until they went limp. The Russian quietly followed the bodies floating in the monitor. His soul could hear their screams now, their shouts and pleas for mercy. All four astronauts had died without really knowing Sergei's motive, without an explanation why their lives had to end so abruptly inside this man-made pocket of life traveling at thousands of miles per hour over a fragile Earth. The two keys giving him access to all modules of the station, including GPATS, Sergei quickly typed the appropriate commands on the MPAC workstation, unlocking the latching mechanism that isolated GPATS from the rest of the station. Locking the MPAC system by removing both keys, Sergei used a single arm motion to propel his weightless body across the length of the Habitation Module, where a hatch connected that end of the module to Node One, also known as Unity, a pressurized cylinder fifteen feet in diameter and eighteen feet long sporting six hatches that served as docking ports for the other modules. A hatch connected to the U.S. Laboratory Module, another to the GPATS Module, and a third to the airlock, where the crew could suit up prior to an EVA, extra-vehicular activities, or space walks. The hatch immediately above Sergei led to a Russian-made Soyuz capsule to be used by the crew of the station to return to Earth in an emergency. Sergei planned to use the Soyuz Emergency System (SES) to return to Chechnya after he had completed his mission. A fifth hatch attached a cupola to Unity. Composed of eight large windows arranged in a circle over the node, the cupola provided the crew of the ISS with a 360-degree field of view in azimuth and complete hemispheric field of view in elevation of Earth. Part of the instrumentation aboard the cupola was the control system for the ISS robot arm, a larger and more versatile version of the venerable robot arm of the space shuttle program. Unity’s sixth hatch was used to dock with visiting shuttles or Russian Progress supply ships. The other end of the U.S. Laboratory Module connected to Node Two, which led to additional modules on that side of the station, including the Columbus research module from Europe, and the Japanases experimental module. Using the hand-holds built-in along the padded walls lining Unity, Sergei directed himself into the GPATS module. Placing his feet into the secure straps in front of the latched hatch, he applied nine pounds of pressure on the hatch actuator lock lever, turning it 180 degrees. The hatch opened to the contour of Unity’s inner wall. Sergei pulled it toward him about six inches, before pivoting it up and to the right side, exposing the crowded interior of the GPATS module. Unlike the other modules, illuminated with soft-white overheads, the interior of GPATS had a green glow designed to minimize eye fatigue during prolonged combat situations. Viewed from the inside, the module looked like a half cylinder. The side facing Earth was completely taken up by the BLU-85s, each stored in its own individual compartment and stacked ceiling high for the entire length of the module, leaving a three-foot-wide "walkway" between the wall of shelled warheads and the left side of the compartment. The forward section of the side of GPATS opposite the warheads consisted of two large computer consoles, each capable of launching warheads if the order ever came from the United Nations Security Council. The workstation closest to the hatch had a red light above it, meaning it was the system currently designated as active. The other system, set in stand-by mode, served as back-up. Farther down the left side Sergei saw the single computer system controlling the powerful GPATS laser, gimball-mounted above the module. Gliding past gleaming instrumentation and displays, the Russian cosmonaut reached the laser system, whose operation he had to learn before being qualified as mission specialist. ISS regulations dictated that every crew member aboard the ISS knew the operation of the laser in case of an emergency. The operation of the warheads, however, was limited to UNSC personnel, mostly American. In the event that a mission specialist like Sergei figured out how to operate the warhead-launching system, he would be incapable of doing so without the authorization codes, which were kept in a safe next to the workstation. Sergei had picked up bits and pieces of the launching procedure during a recent drill by eavesdropping on an intercom channel. If the order to launch ever came, the authorized crew would use their keys simultaneously to open the safe and extract the sealed envelopes containing the launch codes, which would then be compared with those received from Earth. If the codes matched, the order to launch one or more warheads would be executed. Such precautions were required given the fact that albeit non-nuclear, each warhead was capable of leveling downtown Washington D.C. However, no authorization from the Pentagon or the United Nations was required to use the laser, particularly if there was a need to deflect or vaporize space junk in a collision course with the station. Its use on an emergency was at the sole discretion of the station commander. Sitting behind the controls of the GPATS laser, Sergei activated the search and tracking radar, which, in conjunction with the tracking systems of three reflectors positioned in geosynchronous orbit 23,000 miles above the Earth, had the capability of detecting and tracking anything in orbit. Sergei went to work, commanding the laser's search and tracking system to scan the space along an east-to-west elliptical orbit of 274 kilometers in perigee and 150 kilometers in apogee with an inclination of 63.4 degrees--the orbit of Russia’s latest Cosmos surveillance satellite, currently Russia’s eyes over the border between Chechnya and Dagestan to the north. Sergei adjusted the system's sensitivity to filter out objects smaller than ten feet in length. It took an additional minute before the search and tracking system came back with an object roughly the size of a school bus. Sergei Viktor Dudayev smiled. I see you. His fingers moved almost automatically, selecting an energy setting, width of beam, and duration of event. Giving the controls one last inspection, he commanded the laser to fire. The hydrogen fluoride chemical laser gun, receiving its power from massive solar-rechargeable batteries, created a high energy beam of light, which streaked across space to one of three reflective mirrors in geosynchronous orbit. The fifty-foot-diameter segmented mirror, actively cooled by a steady flow of liquid hydrogen running below its reflective surface, and whose angle had already been determined by its radio link with GPATS, deflected the beam with only a four percent loss in energy. The beam continued on its new trajectory, which abruptly ended when it came in contact with the laminated twenty-four-carat gold skin of the Cosmos orbital reconnaissance satellite. Although the beam only remained in contact with the satellite for a few seconds, the laser’s energy changed into intense heat, slicing through the skin, evaporating the metal, and instantly frying the sophisticated electronics housed in its core. Before manning the workstation controlling the warheads, Sergei used the keys to extract the launching codes from the safe next to the system. He activated the system and spent a few minutes typing the thirty-characters-long codes, working through several menus and levels of security. Another set of codes allowed him to move down the encrypted system until he reached the directory where the launching software resided. A few more key strokes and the 21-inch Sony color monitor displayed a list of warheads, labeled UNSC15ktSN001 through UNSC15ktSN030 in cyan on a black background. He placed an index finger, trembling from excitement, over a spring-tensioned trackball--a mouse didn't work well in zero gravity--bringing the cursor to the BLU-85 warhead SN# 001. Sergei’s plan, which he had secretly worked out two weeks prior to his launch with Nikolai Naskalhov, an aide to the president of Chechnya was simple: gain control of the warheads as a hammer against the Russian troops threatening to invade Chechnya. The destruction of the Russian satellite had been Sergei’s message to Moscow that the people of Chechnya now had an ally high above the clouds. As he now gained control of GPATS, another message was being delivered to the Kremlin: unless the Russian 157th armored division retreated from the border with Chechnya, he would release a warhead over an undisclosed location. More demands would follow. The adrenaline rush making it difficult to swallow, Sergei clicked the button beneath the trackball. He wanted to activate the warheads and have them ready for launch at a moment’s notice. The UNSC15ktSN001 warhead turned magenta, and a message appeared:
UNSC15KTSN001 HAS BEEN SELECTED INSERT VALID UNSC ACCESS CARD TO ACTIVATE ****** 00:59 ******
A slot opened beneath the monitor and a red LED began to blink next to it. Sergei froze. Insert Valid United Nations Security Council access card? Why would he need one when he had already logged into the system and entered all the authorization codes successfully? Confused, Sergei glanced at the screen again. It now read:
UNSC15KTSN001 HAS BEEN SELECTED INSERT VALID UNSC ACCESS CARD TO ACTIVATE ****** 00:55 ******
And a second later,
UNSC15KTSN001 HAS BEEN SELECTED INSERT VALID UNSC ACCESS CARD TO ACTIVATE ****** 00:54 ******
The Russian's soft eyes widened in fear when he realized the system would not let him start the launch sequence unless he inserted a UNSC access card in the slot within the next fifty-four seconds. The UNSC had added a safety feature that he didn’t know existed, and if the system was as secured as he expected it to be, he would probably only get one chance at inserting the card before the computers would lock him out. But where do I-- You idiot! The station commander! The card! He glanced at the screen once more.
UNSC15KTSN001 HAS BEEN SELECTED INSERT VALID UNSC ACCESS CARD TO ACTIVATE ****** 00:47 ******
Sergei jumped off the chair and propelled himself to the entrance of the GPATS module, floated across Unity, and into the Habitation Module. Shoving aside the American floating next to the galley, he reached the end of the long, cylindrical compartment, halting his momentum by holding on to the edge of the sleeping compartment. He tugged at the chain around the neck of the dead station commander, but it didn't give. Beads of sweat lifting off his forehead, the Russian raised the chain over his victim’s head. Holding the electronic card in his left hand, he kicked his legs against the side of the sleeping compartment, propelling himself back toward Unity. He miscalculated his zero-G flight, crashing his right shoulder against the edge of the passageway. The impact deflected his forward momentum, sending him floating out of control inside Unity. Wasting precious seconds, ignoring the pain, Sergei clawed at anything within reach to regain control, grabbing on to a built-in handle next to the hatch connecting Unity to the cupola. In the process, he let go of the card, which floated toward his feet. In one swift motion, Sergei snagged the chain, pulling the card to his chest. Kicking his legs against the cupola's control panel, he shot himself through the D-shaped entry of the GPATS module, reaching the workstation a moment later.
****** PROCEDURE VIOLATION ****** TIME LIMIT EXCEEDED. SYSTEM RESET IN PROGRESS ****** 167:59:54 ******
Procedure Violation! He had missed the window by six seconds! Sergei tried to insert the badge but the slot was already closed. He tried to type a command to reset the system manually, but the system would not respond. The keyboard was locked. He tried the power switch on the side of the machine, but it did not have any effect. The system was obviously designed to bypass all exterior input after such violation, and it would remain like that for 168 hours--one week--before it would let him try again. Sergei was familiar with procedure violations, and the only way to reset the system before the stated time was by entering a special access code known only by four people in the world: The U.S. President, the Russian President, the British Prime Minister, and the General Secretary of the United Nations. The procedure was implemented as a safety measure against exactly this type of intrusion. One week was usually enough time to get either a shuttle or a Russian Soyuz packed with armed United Nations forces up here. During his last six months of training at Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Sergei had seen a platoon of UN Security Forces in similar zero-G training exercises. While Sergei trained to use a screw driver in space, the soldiers practice zero-G warfare tactics. But fortunately for Sergei, he still had a chance of pulling this off. It just would take a little more time and a hell of a lot more nerve. Moving up the module to the laser station, Sergei quickly verified his access to the laser. Unlike the warheads, the laser system could never be locked--as long as the user had the right authorization codes. Otherwise the station ran the risk of getting damaged by space junk. He moved over to the back-up warhead-deployment workstation, next to the one he had locked. Sergei tried his luck at gaining access to the warheads' directory. He got the message:
SYSTEM LOCKED BY OTHER USERS PLEASE TRY AGAIN IN 167:58:42
Frowning at his own stupidity, but grateful that at least he could defend himself and prevent anyone from getting near the station, Sergei deactivated the system and floated back to the habitation module, where he prepared a coded message that he sent to a mobile tracking station in Chechnya ten minutes later, when the International Space Station flew over the Caucasus Mountains. The reply from his controller was very clear: hold your ground. Regain control of the warheads and advise when Sergei was in a position to launch. He would be provided with a priority list of targets at a later time. Right now control of the ISS played a significant role in the on-going discussions with Russia, providing Chechnya with bargaining leverage against the Russian armored divisions gathered at its border. He was also told that the hearts of the Chechen people were with him at this time. Afterwards, Sergei dragged the bodies of the four astronauts across Unity and into the hyperbaric airlock, which provided an effective and safe mean for the transfer of crew and equipment between pressurized and unpressurized zones. He gave the interior of the compartment a visual check to verify that all airlock equipment--including the two AMEX AX-5 EVA hard suits and all power tools--were safely secured, before floating back up into Unity. Closing the hatch, he used the small control panel next to the hatch to depressurize the airlock from the normal atmosphere inside the station of 14.7 pounds per square inch (PSI) to 0.5 PSI. As Sergei remotely opened the airlock's exterior hatch, the pressure differential between the vacuum of space and the low pressure of the airlock sucked the four astronauts out of the airlock and into free space. Sergei closed the exterior hatch, repressurized the airlock, and headed back to the Habitation Module. Although he felt partially victorious for coming so close to accomplishing his life-long goal of seeking revenge against the enemies of Chechnya, the cosmonaut couldn't help a wave of guilt. After all, this had been the very first time that he had taken another human life. As much as his mind tried to justify his actions, the plain fact remained unchanged. He had killed four innocent astronauts--people that he knew well after training together for over two years. Sergei stared at his brown eyes in the small mirror by the module's personal hygiene station. There is no turning back now. Closing his eyes, Sergei saw Nikolai Naskalhov's round face. He remembered Nikolai as he told Sergei of the pain inflicted on the Chechen people by the Russians. The rapes, the killings, the abuses, the humiliation, the agony his people had endured for so long while the Americans stood by, while the rest of the world stood by. But Sergei also remembered the feeling of retribution that radiated from Nikolai’s burning stare. The presidential aide had suffered as much as many Chechens but was willing to sacrifice everything to strike back, to stand up for his people. Filling his lungs with the purified air of the Habitation Module, Sergei Viktor Dudayev watched his reflection in silence.
2 Wearing a one-piece blue coveralls, Mission Commander Diane Williams sat in the rear of one of three firing rooms on the third floor of the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Control Center (LCC), a four-story building located south of the Vertical Assembly Building, where shuttles were mated to External Tanks and to Solid Rocket Boosters prior to their roll-out to Launch Complex 39. Running a hand though her short, brown hair, the forty-five-year-old astronaut of three previous shuttle flights watched the start of her flight's countdown, initiated with a Call to Stations at T minus twenty-four hours. The retired Marine aviator crossed her arms, which looked as thin as they were when she was in the military, but without the firmness of daily exercise. She watched LCC technicians run orbiter checkouts from their workstations by using complex algorithms that monitored and recorded the pre-launch performance of all electrical and mechanical systems and subsystems aboard Endeavour. The workstations, linked to the large-scale Honeywell computers one floor below, sent an array of commands to thousands of sensors inside the orbiter. The sensors measured specific parameters and relayed the information back to the workstations for comparison against safety limits stored in the Honeywell's memory banks. The cycle of information and checks would continue non-stop until seconds after lift-off, when control of the mission would be handed off to Mission Control in Houston, Texas. "What do you think of our new passengers, Diane?" asked Gary McGregor, the thirty-seven-year-old astronaut of one previous shuttle flight scheduled to be Diane's Mission Pilot. McGregor, a former Air Force Captain and F-16 pilot, was a short man, almost four inches shorter than Diane's five-ten, with black hair, a carefully-clipped mustache, and brown eyes that widened as he grimaced, something McGregor had been doing a lot since the change in mission plans two days before. Diane glanced at the four "Space Marines," the term adopted by astronauts when referring to the selected team of UN Security Council forces trained to operate in zero gravity. "Look like your average tough hombres," Diane replied with a shrug, her slim brows rising a trifle. "I hope they can handle it up there." McGregor nodded. The four soldiers, wearing all-black uniforms, stood roughly thirty feet to Diane's left. Their eyes were trained on a sixty-inch projection screen on the left wall of the firing room, displaying an Titan-IV rocket slowly lifting-off Pad 40. The Titan carried a large segmented mirror left over from the Strategic Defense Initiative days. Diane's first priority after reaching orbit would be to chase and rendezvous with the Titan' payload and connect the large mirror to the end of two Remote Manipulator System arms--the fifty-foot-long shuttle robotic arm used to deploy satellites--to protect Endeavour from a potential laser discharge by the Russian terrorist aboard the ISS. Timing was of the essence to complete the mission successfully, before the Russian regained control of the warheads. Diane had to deploy the mirror before the terrorist realized that Endeavour had been launched, and he used the laser to destroy the shuttle just as he had the Russian Cosmos satellite. There was a risk of detection, but NASA had minimized it by programming the mission software aboard Endeavour to achieve an orbit 180-degrees out of phase with the space station, meaning that the orbiter and the station would be on the same circular orbit, but at opposite ends, with the Earth in between, until Endeavour was properly shielded. In addition, to prevent the terrorist from destroying any other satellites, NASA, in conjunction with the Department of Defense, had disabled the mirrors in geosynchronous orbit, and also the Brilliant Eyes search and tracking satellites used by the laser's tracking system to zero-in on a target. The laser's range of operations had been reduced to detecting and engaging objects within the station's visual horizon. The UNSC had also considered firing Anti-Satellite (ANSAT) missiles at the ISS to distract the terrorist while Endeavour dropped off the Space Marines. That approach, however, carried the risk of a missile slipping through and destroying the station. The ANSAT option then became a last resort if the shuttle mission failed to prevent the terrorist from gaining access to the warheads. But by the time we get that close, the mirror will protect the shuttle, she thought, as the Titan broke through the sound barrier and continued its ascent undisturbed. Diane glanced back at McGregor, who for the past day had began to show signs of stress. "You okay?" she asked. The native of Tulsa, Oklahoma brushed a finger over his mustache as his eyes stared in the distance. "I’ll be fine." Diane tilted her head toward the UNSC soldiers. "We just have to get those guys close enough to the station. The rest is up to them. Pretty straight forward." McGregor didn't respond right away. The current mission plan, after attaching the mirror to the robot arm, called for Diane and McGregor to pilot the shuttle to a concentric orbit six miles above the ISS during the night portion of the orbit, when the station's large solar panels were idle and the laser system drew its power from its back-up batteries. The terrorist would probably detect the incoming shuttle and most likely blast away with the laser against the shielded orbiter until it ran out of power. Afterwards the UNSC soldiers would use a prototype Lockheed boarding vehicle, currently being loaded into Endeavour's payload bay, to reach the hyperbaric airlock of the ISS, neutralize the terrorist, and regain control of the station. It was a simple plan, but the Marine in Diane knew that military missions didn't always go as planned. And McGregor knew it too. Fortunately for everyone, the Lockheed boarding vehicle, a top-secret Air Force project that was being readied for space at the processing facilities of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), was scheduled for launch in six weeks aboard Atlantis. Now CCAFS personnel were working in conjunction with the Launch Complex 39A team to swap payloads. Endeavour's original payload, two commercial satellites and one Department of Defense (DOD) satellite, had already been loaded back into its payload canister and returned to the Vertical Processing Facility. CCAFS personnel now transferred their secret cargo from the payload canister to Endeavour's payload bay. The operation was scheduled for completion in another two hours. McGregor shook his head. "I'm Air Force, Diane. I know how these last-minute missions usually go . . ." he lowered his voice a few decibels. "I mean, we had no dry runs here. No simulation time on this type of approach. We're banking everything on being able to connect that damned mirror to the RMS arms, and also on being able to control the arms and the shuttle attitude verniers to keep that mirror shielding us. What if something goes wrong? Do you know what that laser can do to the orbiter? And how about that classified Lockheed vehicle we're carrying? Do you know how to use it? And what's that special cargo labeled 'UNSC Classified' in the lockers of the crew compartment? Do you know?" Diane shook her head slightly while giving McGregor a slanted glance, pushing out her lower lip in a resigning pout. "Neither do I." "That's not our concern, Gary. We've been given a mission. Those guys have theirs. Period. You served in the military, didn't you? What we're doing's called following orders." McGregor frowned. "How do you manage to keep it all straight in your head?" Diane shrugged and looked away. Her mind had already formulated the answer: California. Many years ago. During a training exercise outside the Marine's El Toro Air Station, her F/A-18D Hornet had flamed out, sending her jet into an uncontrollable spin. She had managed to eject in time but injured her back when a gust of wind swung her parachute into the side of a hill. Diane closed her eyes. She remembered the base’s doctor, a petite woman with a heart-shaped face, a pointy nose, and enormous round black eyes wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope hanging from her neck. She introduced herself as Dr. Lisa Hottle, a physician assigned by the base’s commander to look after her. Dr. Hottle explained to Diane the crippling consequences of her spinal cord injury and the possibility of walking again but only after undergoing extended physical therapy. The Marine aviator immediately withdrew into the tears. Life had dealt her a cruel hand. For the weeks that followed Diane fell into a state of depression. The Marine Corps sent a battalion of psychiatrists to help her cope with the drastic changes in her life, but nothing helped. Late one evening, Doctor Hottle came into Diane's room to check on her condition. Diane, barely acknowledging the doctor, gazed at the stars through the window next to the dresser. Instead of taking Diane's pulse, Dr. Hottle simply stood at the foot of her bed staring at Diane. So, you're feeling sorry for yourself? Doctor Hottle asked. Before Diane could reply, the petite doctor unbuttoned her blouse and reached behind her back, lowering her padded brassiere. The sobering revelation struck Diane with the force of a jet on afterburners as she stared at her breast-less chest, a pink scar traversing Doctor Hottle's upper chest from armpit to armpit from a double mastectomy. You simply go on, my dear Diane. You simply just . . . just fight with all you’ve got and go on with your life. Diane had not only learned to walk again, but within six months of the accident she was back on a Hornet. A year later she had joined NASA and became a shuttle astronaut. As the Titan rocket shot high above the clouds, Diane Williams let the memories fade. Although she considered this mission the most important of her life, that experience long ago had given her a new perspective in life. Diane checked her watch. "Looks like the Titan is going make orbit, and that means we're going up too. See you in a few." Diane headed toward the entrance of the firing room, walking by the Space Marines. "All set, commander?" asked the senior UNSC officer, a black ex-Army colonel by the name of Frank Ward, his booming voice matching his six-foot-three height and 240 pounds of solid muscle. Ward had been in a bad mood ever since NASA got news of the killings aboard the station. His man aboard the ISS had apparently failed to prevent the terrorist from gaining control of the station. The UNSC had come down hard on Ward, drilling him on every aspect of his operation, questioning his team’s capabilities to carry out the assignment for which the UNSC spent over twenty million dollars per year in equipment and training. Now Ward and his team were under extreme pressure to recover the station and save whatever was left of their reputation. She grinned at the bald colonel with the powerful chest and equally strong arms and legs. A pair of piercing brown eyes stared back at Diane. "We’re ready, colonel." "Are you certain? This mission is far too important." "We’re always ready, colonel. Are you?" Ward raised a brow and said, "We'll be there." "Good. See you at the launch pad."
