officer at Soltanabad, Wolfgang Zypries, replied. “But seconds after we initiated the attack we lost contact.” Zypries was a German laser engineer and scientist and formerly a colonel in the German air force. Unknown to him, Zypries’ longtime girlfriend was a Russian spy, hacking into his computer at home and transferring volumes of classified material to Moscow. When his girlfriend informed him of who she was and that the German Militarischer Abschirmdienst, or Military Screen Service’s counterespionage group, was on his tail, he allowed himself to be whisked off to Russia. Darzov immediately plied him with everything he desired — money, a house, and all the women he could handle — to work on improving and mobilizing the Kavaznya anti-spacecraft laser system. After over five years’ work, he was more successful than even Darzov dared to hope.
“The spacecraft appears to be descending rapidly,” Zypries went on. “We suspect our optics were blinded when the spacecraft fired its retrorockets.”
“You did brief me that might happen, Colonel,” Darzov said. To avoid detection they had decided to use a telescopic electro-optical acquisition and tracking system and keep their extreme long-range space tracking radar in standby. They locked onto the American spaceplane seconds after it crossed the horizon and tracked it with ease. As they hoped, it had not started its descent through the atmosphere, although the highly magnified image showed it was indeed turned in the proper direction to begin slowing down, flying tailfirst. It was still in the perfect position, and Darzov ordered the attack to commence.
The next step in the laser engagement was to hit the target with a higher-powered laser to measure the atmosphere and apply corrections to the main laser’s optics, allowing it to focus more precisely on the target before firing the main chemical-oxygen-iodine laser. Darzov and Zypries decided, since the spacecraft was turned in position to fire its retrorockets, to use the main laser itself to make its own corrections in order to engage more rapidly.
“The crew was obviously expecting an attack,” Zypries said, “because they fired their main engines seconds after our laser hit. We were able to maintain contact for about fifteen seconds, but the optics were still fine- focusing so we were probably only laying sixty percent power on their hull. Then the optronic system broke lock. They must be squishing their crewmembers like bugs inside that thing — they are decelerating at three times the normal rate. I am tracking them on infrared scanners but that’s not precise enough for the main laser, so I need permission to use the main radar to reacquire and engage.”
“Are they still in range and high enough to engage?”
“They are at one hundred thirty kilometers’ altitude, sixteen hundred kilometers downrange, decelerating quickly below seven thousand eight hundred meters per second — they are dropping like a stone, but they are well within the laser’s engagement envelope,” Zypries assured him. “The structure of that spacecraft must be incredibly strong to withstand that kind of stress. They will be in the atmosphere soon but they will not be able to fly away fast enough now. I will get him for you, General.”
“Then permission granted to continue the attack, Colonel,” Darzov said immediately. “Good hunting.”
“Five point seven Gs…twenty-two K feet per second…seventy-five miles…five point nine Gs…” It seemed to take forever for Terranova to grunt out each readout. “Passing seventy miles…sixty-five miles, reaching entry interface, crew, ‘leopards’ cutoff.” The G-forces suddenly were reduced, followed by a chorus of moans and swearing from throughout the spacecraft. Macomber couldn’t believe he hadn’t passed out from that sustained pressure. He still felt the deceleration forces as the spaceplane continued to lose energy, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was when the “leopards” were firing. “Crew, report.”
“You guys okay?” Macomber asked the others in the passenger module. “Sing out.”
“S-Two, I’m okay,” Turlock said weakly.
“S-Three, okay,” Wohl responded, sounding as if nothing at all had just happened. The jarhead bastard was probably sound asleep through it, Macomber thought.
“S-One is okay too. SC, passengers are okay, everything back here’s in the green. That was some ride.”
“Roger that,” Moulain said. “The laser looks like it’s broken lock for now. We’ve initiated maneuvering to entry interface attitude.” The Black Stallion began to turn so it was nose-forward again, then pitched up to forty degrees above the horizon for atmospheric entry, presenting its bottom heat shields to the onrushing atmosphere to protect the ship against the heat built up by friction. “MC, let’s brief the approach.”
“Roger,” Terranova said. “We’ve passed the terminal alignment cylinder for Baku, so I’ve programmed in Herat, Afghanistan, as our landing site. We are still on max-energy descent profile, and Herat is fairly close — around thirteen hundred miles — so we have plenty of energy to reach the base. In sixty seconds the airflow pressure will be great enough for the adaptive surfaces on the Stud to take effect, and we’ll shut down the reaction control system, transition to maximum-drag profile, and deviate east over Turkmenistan to stay away from Soltanabad. Once we pass one hundred thousand feet we can transition to atmospheric flight, shut down the ‘leopards,’ start up the turbojets, and head down on a normal approach profile.”
“How much gas do we have, MC?” Macomber asked.
“After we start up the turbojets, we’ll have less than an hour of fuel, but we’ll be gliding in at around Mach five so we’ll have plenty of energy to get rid of before we need the turbojets,” Terranova replied. “We’ll start securing the thrusters and get ready to secure the ‘leopards’ so when we—”
“They hit us with radar at almost a
“It’s the Kavaznya radar, crew,” Patrick McLanahan said. “The range of that thing is incredible, and now it’s mobile.”
“What do we do, Odin?” Lisa Moulain cried on the radio. “What do I do?”
“The only choice you have is to roll the spacecraft to keep the laser energy from focusing on any one spot for too long,” Patrick said. “Use the reaction control system to roll. Once your mission adaptive system is effective, you can use max bank angle to fly away from the laser and do heading changes as much as possible to keep the laser off you. Dave, I need you to launch the Vampires from Batman Air Base and knock out that laser site! I want Soltanabad turned into a smoking
“They’re on the way, Odin,” Luger responded.
But as the seconds ticked by, it was obvious that nothing Moulain could do was going to work. They were getting almost constant overtemperature warnings from dozens of spots on the hull, and some began reporting leaks and structural integrity losses. Once Moulain accidentally looked directly at the laser light shining through the cockpit windshield and was partially blinded even though they both had their dark visors lowered.
Terranova finally muted the threat warnings — they were doing them no good anymore. “Frenchy, you okay?”
“I can’t see, Jim,” Moulain said on the “private” intercom setting so the crewmembers in the passenger compartment couldn’t hear. “I glanced at the laser beam for a split second, and all I see are big black holes in my vision. I screwed up. I killed us all.”
“Keep rolling, Frenchy,” Terranova said. “We’ll make it.”
Moulain began nudging the side control stick back and forth, using the thrusters to turn and roll the spacecraft. Terranova fed her a constant stream of advisories when she was going too far. The temperature warnings were almost constant no matter how hard she tried. “We’ve got to jettison the passenger module,” Moulain said, still on “private” intercom. “They might have a chance.”
“We’re way over the G-force and speed limits for jettison, Frenchy,” Terranova said. “We don’t even know if they’ll survive even if we slowed down enough — we’ve never jettisoned the module before.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Moulain said. “I’m going to initiate a powered descent to try to slow us down enough to jettison the passenger module. We’ll use every drop of fuel we have left to slow us down. I’ll need your help. Tell me when we’re ass-end backward.” She gently rolled wings-level, then with Terranova’s assistance turned the Black Stallion so they were flying tailfirst again. On full intercom she spoke, “Crew, prepare for max
