Stephen Coonts - Combat

“Roger, Houston. Stand by for first OMS burn,” said Diane as she armed both Orbital Maneuvering System engines, vital to perform orbital insertion. With its current altitude of eighty nautical miles and inertial velocity of 24,300 feet per second, Endeavour flew a very unstable suborbital trajectory, which would bring the orbiter directly within the range of the ISS’s laser. In order to boost the orbiter to a safe orbit fast, one long OMS thrusting burn would be made instead of the usual two. The OMS engines consisted of two pods, one on each side of the upper aft fuselage on either side of Endeavour’ s vertical stabilizer.

“OMS burn in five … four … three … two … one … now!”

In each OMS engine, highly pressurized helium forced both hydrazine propellant and liquid oxygen down to the reaction chamber at great speed. The chemicals clashed in a hyperbolic reaction, creating the necessary outburst of thrust. The temporary silence gave way to yet another roaring blast. Diane felt a mild pressure forcing her against her flight seat as the OMS engines, providing a combined thrust of twelve thousand pounds, began to accelerate Endeavour .

“Mark fifteen seconds, Houston. All systems nominal. Helium pressure’s 3700 PSI on both tanks. Propellant and oxidizer pressure looks good,” reported McGregor.

“We copy , Endeavour.”

Three minutes and twenty seconds later the OMS engines shut off, and Diane nodded approvingly. Orbital insertion had been as accurate as anyone could have hoped. Endeavour flew a stable orbit 180 degrees out of phase with the ISS, and on an intercept course with the Titan payload, which Endeavour would reach in another five hours.

“ Good job , Endeavour.”

“Thanks.”

In reality, besides initiating the single OMS burn, her contribution to the mission had been next to none.

But that changes now , she reflected as she unstrapped her safety harness and watched McGregor do the same.

“What do you think so far?” she asked.

“Well,” he responded as they floated side by side behind the seats, “I just hope we can attach that mirror to the RMS arms.”

“One thing at a time.”

She removed her helmet, and her shoulder-length hair floated above her head. She wore a pair of small diamond earrings.

Diane used a single arm motion to push herself gently to the aft flight-deck station to open the payload bay doors and expose the vital heat radiators to space. The radiators, used by Endeavour’ s environmental-control system, dissipated the heat generated by the orbiter’s equipment and also the heat accumulated on Endeavour’ s skin during the ascent phase.

That accomplished, Diane dived through one of two interdeck hatches on the flight deck’s floor down to the crew compartment, where Colonel Frank Ward and his three warriors, dressed in matching all-black uniforms, had already unstrapped themselves from their seats and were going over a diagram of the space station.

Three of the lockers on the forward section of the crew module, opposite the airlock, were already open, exposing a number of black boxes marked with bright yellow codes.

Colonel Ward raised his head and briefly made eye contact with Diane Williams before motioning one of his men to close the lockers.

Since their brief chat at the firing room a couple of days before, the colonel had kept conversation with the former Marine colonel to a minimum, and that suited Diane just fine. The less interaction she had with him or his men, the happier she felt. Jake was right. All she had to do was get Ward and his team close to the ISS, and then move out until it was safe to return. The rest was up to them.

“Everything okay, Commander?” asked Ward.

“No problems, Colonel. You and your men made it fine?”

“Yes. Smooth ascent.”

“Good. I know you and your men are taking all the necessary precautions with your special payload, including whatever it is you have stored in those lockers. I’m sure you realize the danger involved if the air inside the crew module is contaminated. You do remember Apollo 7, right? The fire inside the capsule that incinerated three astronauts?”

Ward gave her a long stern look before saying, “All of my equipment was approved by NASA, Commander. Why don’t you stick to your job and I’ll stick to mine?”

“Fair enough,” she responded, as Ward lowered his gaze back to the large blueprint floating in between the four Space Marines. Diane checked her watch and looked over to McGregor making his way through a hatch from the flight deck. “Start prebreathing in two hours, Gary.”

McGregor also checked his watch before nodding. Prebreathing 100 percent oxygen was required prior to a space walk to remove nitrogen from his bloodstream. Inside the airlock, they breathed a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen at a pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch, the same as sea level. But once inside a space suit, McGregor would breathe pure oxygen at a reduced pressure of only four PSI — the pressure required by the Extravehicular Mobility Unit suit for ease of limb movement during EVA without excessive physical effort. The rapid drop in pressure around his body would cause bubbles of nitrogen to form and expand in his bloodstream, causing severe nausea, cramps, paralysis, and even death — the same problem faced by scuba divers when surfacing too quickly following a deep underwater session.

Diane headed for the changeout station to the right of the airlock, and, extending the privacy curtain, she changed out of her crash suit and into the blue coveralls standard for shuttle missions.

She floated back up to the flight deck. She wanted to run some tests on the RMS arms. Its proper functionality was paramount to the mission.

The Flight Control Room was located on the third floor of the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Capsule Communicator (CapCom) Jake Cohen sat back on his swivel chair in the rear of the large room, where almost thirty flight controllers for this mission worked behind console computer displays arranged in rows of six or seven across the entire length of the room. A few projection screens on the front wall displayed different mission-related information, including a world chart that plotted Endeavour ’s location in orbit and actual television pictures of activities inside and outside the shuttle, like the view of Earth on the screen to the right of the world chart, and a view of the payload bay on the screen to the left. Other displays showed critical data such as elapsed time after launch, or the time remaining before the next maneuver, which in Endeavour’ s case was the time to rendezvous with the Titan target.

Jake removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and loosened his tie. So far, so good. Being CapCom was an important but quite stressful responsibility, particularly since he had to pretty much live inside Mission Control for the duration of the flight. But like his predecessors, going all the way back to the Mercury Program of the early sixties, Jake understood the significance of him being here. He was the primary voice that the crew aboard Endeavour heard after launch. He was their primary contact while the astronauts traveled in space at over twenty-four times the speed of sound. In his hands, and in the hands of the Flight Director (called Flight) sitting to Jake’s immediate right, rested the responsibility of making sound split-second decisions and passing them on to the crew in space in an emergency. CapComs and Flights have been doing basically the same thing for over forty years: assisting countless crews on countless spacecraft accomplish their missions and return home safely.