/A copy to the General Headquarters
Of the 3rd Galactic directory
19-55.
Mars 18 a.c.
Commander of 156th squadron of 1U Fleet,
Colonel yagd Kokum Yohoud.
***
The earth, covered with glittering scales of cirrus clouds, decorated with scrolls of ocean cyclones seemed to be a figment of someone's whimsical fantasy.
Slowly spinning around like a huge lazy ball, it seemed, it took dense blackness from deep space and spread it on its surface in various colors and shades of blue, from smoky, white and blue on the edge of the atmospheric film, to dark ultramarine over the ocean breaks.
Awakening continents slowly crawled out on the sunlit side, showing spots of deserts, forests, wormholes of megalopolises, negligent strokes of Islands and zigzags of coastlines.
Pilot of the shuttle "Independence" Lieutenant of the SAS air forces, Ronald Whitehouse sighed deeply and not paying attention to this magnificent picture, rubbed his neck on the collar of his spacesuit:
– When it comes to it, nothing ever turns out! – He put a krypton cutter that has not yet cooled off, in his backpack, circled around the bent bracket that jammed the docking rim of the rescue capsule, and perched on the edge of the shunting engine.
Aiming, he slung a piece of the rod from a broken solar battery from hand to hand, and brandished:
– Geronimo!
A blow.
The bracket trembled slightly, but didn't move an inch.
The astronaut himself flew off to the whole length of the tether on an impact and, after he had stopped the indiscriminate tumbling with great difficulty, began to maneuver the back pack, attempting to re-approach the odious piece of iron:
– Hey, Mackliff, Mackliff, hey! I can’t do it. We should try something else. Maybe we can descend with the Germans?
Air crackled, and the nervous voice of John Mackliff, the flight engineer, came through:
– The Germans are in no better conditions than us. Depressurization of the capsule. All of their life support systems have failed. Ronald! If you don't straighten out this piece of iron shit, we are going to die, damn it!
Prickly shivers ran down Whitehouse’s back; the indicator of the sleeve altimeter showed indifferent figures-«334».
Only three minutes ago the altimeter was showing 335, 5 miles at perigee. "Independence" was falling down rapidly, narrowing down the number of turns of orbital rotation. Having miscalculated the power of the back pack jet, Whitehouse hit the casing of the radio telescope, broke the sun visor of his pressure helmet and having made a ridiculous flip, found himself on the other side of the Shuttle.
At the right side of ‘Independence’, like a dark sprout, the streamlined hull of the German military ship ‘Das Rhein. WN-4962’ was sticking out.
An authentication check box of the Euro-Asian Community contrastingly stood out on its black armor.
Six hours ago, when ‘Das Rhein’ started a complex maneuver on the selection of the supply container in close vicinity to the research Shuttle, one of its shunting engines broke down.
At high speed the armored nose pierced the belly of ‘Independence’, which was covered only by sunshield.
The blow was terrible.
The right solar battery and the wall-mounted fuel storage containers have been torn off from the shuttle; the shield of the aerodynamic braking was messed up, a valuable telescope was broken to pieces, the rescue capsule was damaged, almost all of the flight control systems were deactivated, and the equipment for ozone-plasma synthesis, intended for ozone input into the atmosphere was broken as well.
Jean Dunois, the flight supervisor and George Fujieka, the second pilot were killed because of depressurization of the laboratory and the engine compartment.
Dick Aidem, the general major of the SAS air forces, received multiple fractures, concussion of the brain and now was lying unconscious in the control room under the supervision of the navigator – Alexander Dybal.
The German ship was less damaged.
However, everything that had been fixed in it without welding, was swept away from its places by inertial acceleration; the clamp bolts were cut from the storage batteries, as well as the main and local computers, propulsion systems, aiming systems, food containers, not to mention personal belongings of the crew, rubbish, rags and oil from the broken gyroscope that appeared out of nowhere…
All of these things were sadly floating inside the battle station that now looked more like a garbage truck, rather than a military ship.
The Germans were all alive, but two of the four officers had fractures and the board gunner Wolff Lawyer Hoffman was in a comatose state.
Otto Franz Eichberger, the navigator of «Das Rhein», who was performing the duties of a doctor, having examined the Lieutenant just sighed:
– Poor Hoffman, he can only be saved on Earth, in a special ‘Raumwaffe’ hospital in Dusseldorf.
Several minutes after the collision, having lost the opportunity of using their engines and in a state of shock, ‘Independence’ and ‘Das Rhein’, sharply started to de-orbit and began to fall.
A few minutes later, having lost contact with the outer world, people realized that there was no possibility to use their rescue capsules and from the thought of it they winced; this was not just a heavy accident: it was a disaster.
For the last two hours Whitehouse has been shaking the bracket, Mackliff has been trying to somehow establish the external communication, and call the repair vessel on duty.
All the while three Germans were consistently working on sealing their capsule.
Now, seated on the cracked telescope casing «Hubble-514», Whitehouse was a doleful observer of their vain efforts to hammer in the titan-stratum fiber into the microscopic cracks by melting them with krypton.
The titanium was bubbling, forming small spheres of an unpleasant brown that burst like soap-bubbles on the rough armor plating, leaving quickly evaporating blots.
At the same time, it was clear that only the astronaut in a pale blue commander’s space suit worked well, and the other two could barely move.
The one, who was meticulously melting the titanium fiber in equal intervals of time, most likely had a broken left arm; it was hanging like a whip.
The other only stirred when an instrument box slipped out of his hands and he had to catch it frantically.
– Listen, Mackliff, do you know what they are doing? Mackliff, hey! Did you fall asleep? Hey!’ – Whitehouse knocked his hand in a dirty white glove on a box of internal communication, which has been finally disturbed; and heard a voice of the flight engineer in response, that sounded muffled like in a dungeon:
– Yes, I can hear you. Who are you talking about?
– The Germans of course, damn it!
– Oh well…They must be messing around with their capsule, like us.
– They are caulking it, like an ancient boat with titanium fiber!
– So are they making progress?
– Seriously? Have you lost your mind, John? Will titanium fiber stand the temperature of atmospheric friction? What about the buffing? I have a feeling that they are doing it only because they want to be engaged in some sort of activity. Perhaps it is easier for them to await their deaths like that.
– Well you do not even try. You are so lazy you will not even wait for your death.
– There is finally a teacher for me! This is insanity. It’s madness to be engaged in this work.
– Of course this is crazy. They are total morons. It is clear as a noonday. They managed to bump into us in void space. I would understand if this happened at zero orbit, because it is crammed with satellites, transports, spotters and other junk waiting for liquidation. – Mackliff coughed and fell silent. You could hear him grinding something and breathing heavily.
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