ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
THAT SAME TIME
A warning tone sounded in the command module, which immediately got everyone’s attention. “SBIRS-High recording a thermal blossom, sir,” Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas reported. She typed some instructions into her computer and carefully read the response. “Looks like it’s in the harbor at Aden, Yemen.”
“Okay,” the station commander, U.S. Army Colonel Alan Camerota, weakly responded. Camerota, just forty years old and looking even younger, was Kai Raydon’s replacement while the general was on scheduled rest and reacclimation back on Earth. An Army strategic air defense engineer and weapons designer, Camerota had trained as a Shuttle and Orion mission specialist for three years but had never been selected for a mission. As one of the experts on the Trinity interceptor vehicle, he had supervised the deployment of the Kingfisher weapon garages, but always from Earth, not from space-but now, with Raydon grounded for at least a month, he had been selected to command Armstrong Space Station as his first and long-awaited time in orbit.
As the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for-you might get it. Despite years of training and rigorous physical conditioning, weeks in the neutral buoyancy tank at NASA, many hours in the “Vomit Comet” zero-g training aircraft, and a careful diet, Camerota found to his great disappointment that zero-g did not agree with him-and that was putting it mildly. He was using anti-airsickness drugs, both chemical and herbal, and he also used acupressure wristbands and blood-cooling patches on the neck, but after two days in space he was still battling airsickness-his stomach would just not settle down. It was getting to the point where his performance might be affected. He was determined to overcome it, but for now his body was calling the shots.
“Can we get a look at it, Master Sergeant?” Camerota asked.
“We have Kingfisher-Six overhead in nine minutes and Kingfisher-Two within oblique view in seventeen minutes,” Seeker replied. She looked at Camerota and noticed his “barf bag”-a specially designed receptacle with a one-way valve that prevented emesis from flying back out in zero-g-was out and at the ready. “You okay, sir?”
“I’m fine,” Camerota said, but he looked anything but fine.
“I can get Major Faulkner up here.” Former Marine Corps F-35 pilot Major Jessica “Gonzo” Faulkner was the senior spaceplane pilot on the station while Hunter Noble was back on Earth, and she had been training at the commander’s console when not flying or training other pilots-she was, in Seeker’s opinion, by far the best-qualified station commander if Camerota couldn’t continue.
“I said I’m fine, Master Sergeant,” Camerota said as convincingly as he could. “Notify me when Six is in range. What does SBIRS say it is?”
“Stationary dot, very hot burst but cooling off quickly-most likely a large explosion,” Lukas said. “Could be a missile launch, but SBIRS didn’t detect a track.”
“Notify Space Command and STRATCOM,” Camerota said. “I also want to…” And then he paused, gurgled a bit, then threw up in the barf bag.
“Sir…?”
“I said I’m okay, Master Sergeant,” Camerota said irritably, wiping his face with a towel. “Do we have any naval sensors we can tap into, or any local news coverage, some other way we can…” He gurgled again, fighting off another wave of nausea; he seemed to be having a great deal of trouble orienting himself, as if his seat were slowly spinning. “Dammit, if I can just hold myself steady here, I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll try for both, sir,” Seeker said. “Six should be in range in a few minutes.” She tried scanning for radio or TV broadcasts, but there was nothing but static from all of the known channels. “Nothing on the civil broadcast frequencies. That’s odd. You know, sir, we couldn’t receive any UAV imagery from around Mogadishu or even fly UAVs out there because the Chinese were jamming all the frequencies.” She turned to Camerota. “The Chinese task force reinforcing their ships in the Indian Ocean was supposed to be taking on supplies earlier today in Aden. Maybe we should…”
…and as she turned, she saw Camerota floating before her, belly up, his mouth open, hands on his throat in the classic “I’m choking!” signal, with a haze of vomit encircling his head and his face turning deep blue. She stabbed the “ALL-CALL” intercom button: “Medics to the command module immediately, emergency. Major Faulkner, to the command module immediately.” She then detached herself from her console and propelled herself over to Camerota. His mouth and throat were packed tightly with nearly solid vomit. The barf bag was open and the contents were coming out-the one-way valve must have failed, and Camerota must have inhaled a throatful of vomit and passed out.
Alarms and warning beeps began sounding one after another, but Seeker ignored them as she maneuvered herself to help Camerota. As she began scooping out vomit from his throat, Jessica Faulkner floated into the command module, followed by the crewman on medical detail. “Jesus, Seeker, what happened?” Faulkner shouted as the medic took over for Lukas and got busy inserting a resuscitator tube into Camerota’s throat.
“He choked on some vomit, I think,” Lukas said. “My God, he’s passed out. I’ll help Crawford. Ma’am, get on the console and find out what all the alerts are about.” She had to maneuver Camerota against the lower bulkhead and restrain him with both of their bodies Velcroed down to be able to do cardiopulmonary respiration on him.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Faulkner asked as she scanned the monitors. “A possible missile launch and explosions all around…where is this? Somalia again?”
“ Aden, Yemen,” Seeker said. “We detected a big thermal event in the harbor. Kingfisher-Six should be overhead soon.”
“I got it,” Faulkner said. The interceptor platform was already above the target’s horizon, so Faulkner entered commands to slew the garage’s imaging infrared and telescopic electro-optical sensors on the initial explosion and zoom in. “Holy cow, it’s a warship!” she exclaimed. “Looks like it’s sinking by the stern.”
“Where is it?”
“Looks like a frigate, moored on a refueling platform in the harbor.”
“I hope it’s not one of the Chinese ships that were supposed to refuel at Aden,” Seeker said. “What about the other events?”
“Checking.” Faulkner entered commands to zoom in on the other alarms. “More explosions. Looks like at an airport. It looks like…whoa, holy cow, I just saw another explosion, and a jet just zoomed by the picture! I think it’s an air raid!” She zoomed out again, then focused in on other targets. “Lots of pretty localized explosions.” She looked over her shoulder at Camerota. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s breathing,” Seeker said. Camerota’s eyes were open, but they were spinning dazedly; he was badly disoriented. Other crewmembers floated over to help, so Lukas detached herself from the bulkhead and reattached herself to her seat at the sensor console. She took a few moments to study the entire area around the city, then punched in instructions on her console. An intelligence map of the city superimposed itself on the frozen sensor image, with various buildings and places identified.
Seeker adjusted the map’s size until it perfectly matched the image. “I think it’s definitely an air raid, ma’am,” she told Faulkner. “This is a coastal defense gun and missile emplacement; this is an air defense missile site; this is where the local broadcast center is. Whoever hit these places wanted to take out all of the area defenses and shut down communications.”
“And I’ll bet I know who did it,” Faulkner said. She used the commander’s console to zoom the image out until the Chinese flotilla was in sight, then zoomed in. Taken just moments before, the image showed fighters lined up on the catapults waiting to launch and even fighters still on the arresting cables waiting to taxi clear. “Pretty freakin’ incredible,” she said, shaking her head. “First Somalia, and now Yemen?”
“I’ll bet that ship burning in the harbor is a Chinese warship,” Seeker offered, “so this might be retaliation for a suicide attack. The Chinese went after air and coastal defenses and command-and-control centers…”
“Softening them up for another land invasion?”
“That would be my guess, ma’am,” Seeker said. “I’d better make sure SPACECOM and STRATCOM have these images.”
“I need to talk with the boss,” Faulkner said. She donned a headset and entered instructions into her computer to activate an encrypted voice link, then spoke: “Armstrong to Raydon, secure.”
21 ST SPACE OPERATIONS SQUADRON, ONIZUKA AIR FORCE STATION, SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA
THAT SAME TIME
