Stephen Coonts - Combat

His Chechen contacts had been right in assessing the Americans. They were sending a shuttle his way in an attempt to regain control of the station before Sergei could release any of the warheads.

But they do not know what kind of enemy they are facing.

Floating cleanly through the hatch connecting the Hab Module to Unity, Sergei kicked his legs against the padded wall to his right and cut left to snug his short frame through the opening leading to the GPATS module. The screen of the proximity radar, which filled the space three hundred miles around the station with energy, showed an approaching space vehicle. The computers had already identified it as the Space Shuttle Endeavour .

At Houston Space Center, Jake Cohen watched the image displayed on the huge projection screen in the front center of the Flight Control Room on the third floor of the Mission Control Center. The telescopic lens of the camera McGregor had attached to the starboard edge of the segmented mirror captured the image of the ISS in the distance. It looked like a white dot with multiple white lines extending like tentacles. The dot was the core of the station, where all the modules interconnected. The lines were the sections of the scaffoldlike booms supporting the gigantic solar panels. At this moment those panels were not powering the station because the Earth was now positioned between the ISS and the Sun.

Jake clenched his jaw and simply waited for the laser attack that he feared would follow soon.

“We’re here, Colonel. Stay in your seats until we’re safe,” Diane said over the intercom while still strapped to her seat. Her left hand was glued to the Rotational Hand Controller (RHC), the center stick located in between her legs, which controlled the attitude verniers on the nose and the OMS engine pods. By simply moving the RHC as she would an airplane control stick, vernier rockets in the nose and rear of the orbiter would fire to move Endeavour in the desired direction.

A backward glance and she saw McGregor still in front of the aft crew station, right hand on the RMS controller.

“We’re gathering our equipment,” Ward said over the intercom from below.

“No, no. Stay in your seats. Keep your equipment secured.”

“We can’t. There isn’t enough time.”

“But there is no telling how the orbiter is going to take the lase—”

A blinding flash, followed by a powerful jolt. The orbiter suddently went into uncontrollable gyrations.

Dear God!

“Keep that mirror taut against us, Gary!” Diane screamed, realizing a moment later that the laser had either partially struck the nose of the orbiter, or its energy level was far greater than Los Alamos had predicted. Endeavour’ s nose was not only blackened, but a number of heat-protection tiles were missing while the rest appeared charred. The laser had damaged the nose’s rotational verniers. Two of them were firing sporadic bursts of—

A second laser flash engulfed the orbiter, this time without the direct protection of the mirror as Endeavour tumbled across space.

An explosion rocked the orbiter, followed by an even larger blast that sent powerful stress waves across the entire fuselage. Warning lights came alive on the control panel as a second explosion rocked the shuttle. The laser must have sliced through the exposed skin of the orbiter, damaging subsystems.

“Smoke! We’ve got smoke down there!” screamed McGregor from the aft crew station.

Diane turned around and watched black smoke coiling up from the crew module. The smell of cordite assaulted her nostrils.

“The HEP!” she screamed as her fears became reality. “A charge must have gone off!”

“Jesus, what are we going to—” said McGregor.

“Remain at your post!” she commanded, while her right hand applied forward and right pressure to the RHC to get Endeavour’ s upper side facing the station again. The orbiter, however, would not respond, as the nose verniers continued to fire at random, making it impossible for her to offset their thrusts with the aft verniers.

“Colonel Ward? Colonel Ward? Do you copy?” she said over the intercom.

Nothing.

“Colonel? Colonel?”

No response.

“Let me go down there and check it out,” McGregor said.

“Remain at your post!”

The smoke was now beginning to fill the flight deck, but it was not as thick as it first looked. Most of it was already being sucked out by the air-revitalization subsystem, which was still operational after the explosions.

But smoke was the least of Diane’s problems. Endeavour was still dangerously exposed to the ISS, and she could not bring it back under control.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

“We’ve heard , Endeavour,” came Jake’s voice. “You’re showing multiple failures of the payload-bay door system, rotational verniers, and—”

“Houston, I’m having a hard time correcting the orbiter’s attitude,” Diane said, as she began to move her hand toward an overhead panel, where she planned to switch from General Purpose Computer control, to manual control of the Orbital Maneuvering System engines. But her hand never made it. Instead both arms got thrown forward from the fierce explosion that followed the intense light of a laser beam that caught Endeavour broadside.

In a blur, Diane saw a cloud of thermal-protection white tiles bursting off the orbiter’s starboard wing. Several crashed against the front and side windowpanes.

“The mirror is loose!” screamed McGregor.

Diane looked up, through the upper windowpanes, and instead of seeing the black supporting frame of the mirror, she saw stars.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“The starboard RMS has broken loose from the payload bay. The mirror’s off to the side! I still got ahold of it with the port RMS, but it’s no longer shielding us!”

“Jesus Christ,” she mumbled as the nose verniers ran out of fuel.

Black-and-white tiles, the Earth, and the stars flashing across her field of view, Diane glanced at the array of warning lights between CRT#1 and #2, and noticed the PAYLOAD CAUTION and the HYDROGEN PRESSURE warning lights on the red. At least the OMS engines and the aft RCS thrusters are still healthy , Diane thought as her left hand reached down for the Rotational Hand Controller. Now that she did not have to fight the damaged nose verniers, she had a chance to stabilize the orbiter before using the OMS engines. She could not attempt an orbital burn until the shuttle had achieved the proper attitude; otherwise, the burn would simply send Endeavour into even more uncontrollable gyrations.

“Get that mirror under control, Gary!”

“Working on it!”

Her hand applied forward right pressure to the RHC. This time the orbiter responded, but sluggishly because it was operating on only a partial set of rotational vernier engines.

“Houston, Houston, this is Endeavour . I’m bringing the orbiter under control. OMS burn in ten seconds. Eight … seven … five … three … now.” She threw the switch, expecting to feel the slight acceleration from the OMS engines.

Instead, a powerful explosion thrust Diane into her restraining harness. A side view of McGregor’s body flying past her and crashing against the front windowpanes brought images of dummies inside automobiles during crash tests. The explosion shook the entire vessel as the CRTs on the center control panel burst in a radial cloud of glass that reached Diane’s face before her own hands.

She screamed as razor-sharp glass rushed past her and crashed against the aft crew station of the flight deck.