A moment later, as Krozkov pondered this, Veronin played into his hands.

  “I tell you, Krozkov, that the next step is your responsibility. You will give the order, as you did when you fired on the S-7, but if you order Gogol-1 to destroy the American base, then it had better be successful. If it is—then I will consider arming the other battle stations.”

  * * *

  Chance woke up in a military hospital, lying on his back. Machines connected to electrodes on his bare chest hummed and softly beeped. There was an IV in his right arm. He looked at his left shoulder and arm and, with relief, saw that nothing was amputated. It was heavily bandaged around a puckered suture where they’d cut into him. He wondered if they’d had to put some pins in to keep his shoulder bones working.

  Kinda funny, he though. Not long ago he’d visited Harley Spencer in a hotel room, and the guy was hooked up the same way. Now they’d traded places. Spencer was back in his comfortable hiding hole, with his services restored.

  Chance’s mouth tasted like burnt rubber, and his eyesight was fogged. He couldn’t feel much pain—they’d put a pump on his shoulder, which picked up incipient pain signals and responded with exactly measured doses of the anesthetic.

  I’ve got farmer’s tan, Chance thought. His arm was brown up to where his shirtsleeves started, where it became pinkish white. He tried moving his fingers and they responded. That was good, too.

  Looking around, he saw that he was in a pale-blue cubicle, sealed off from another bed by a white partition. What, he didn’t merit his own room?

  “The pricks,” he muttered.

  “That you in there, chief?” Frelling called from the other side of the partition.

  “Frelling? You hurt bad?”

  “I lost about six inches of intestine, but they say I’ll heal up. Feel like shit, though. How about you?”

  “Better than I deserve.” He winced. Funny how self-condemnation could become self-pity. Maybe it was defensive, anticipating what was coming. He figured he was going to be raked over the coals for his failure to stop Rowell before he killed Fisher, two MPs, and General Carney.

  “Hell, you deserve a medal, chief. You found Rowell and stopped him. With that guy in place, you think Base One would be safe? Much less the S-7.”

  “Any news about that?”

  “No one’s come by to say anything, but I only woke up an hour or so ago. I checked WorldTalk. News is being really mysterious about the S-7. Most likely the Pentagon’s keeping everyone in the dark. Far as I can tell, Base One hasn’t been attacked again, but I’d be kinda surprised if they just backed off.”

  Chance nodded. “Krozkov’s behind this, and he doesn’t like to give up. They’re gonna be looking for a way around the interceptors.”

  I’m talking too much, he thought. The drugs.

  “Anyone else in here with us?”

  “Nope. Just you and me.”

  “Christ. My roommate.” Damn, but he craved a glass of beer and a cigarette. He noticed a nicotine patch on his left arm. That wasn’t gonna make it.

  There was a familiar ringtone from the stainless-steel table to his right. His hand-screen there.

  Reaching out, he winced with a flash of pain from the motion, and retrieved the screen, unfolded it with one hand.

  “Chance.”

  “Sandy?” It was Sylvia Blackwell. CIA director. Likely calling to tell him he was under investigation for the fuck-up that left four men dead, including a three-star general. “You’re answering the phone?” she said. “You can’t be too bad off.”

  “No ma’am, not bad. They seem to have sewed me together. I only woke up a few minutes ago.”

  “Your nurse tells me you have some broken shoulder bones, but they got the bullet out and the surgeon thinks the shoulder will be functional, more or less, in a few months.”

  Why not just out-and-out ask her? “Did you call to ask for my resignation, ma’am? I was sort of mentally composing it.”

  “Resignation? Don’t be ridiculous. You stopped Rowell. I’m the one told you to hold off—I wasn’t sure you were onto anything, and I thought if he was a Russian asset, he might have a partner we could pull in, too.” There was a brief silence, then she said, “No, it’s on me. I waffled. We should have just picked him up. Carney was in denial about the whole thing, though. I think Rowell was whispering to him that we were responsible for his son’s death.”

  “The General’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Chance paused, thinking that his opinion of Carney had gone way up, at the last moment of the General’s life.

  “I heard him tell Rowell he wasn’t going to give him any interceptor codes, and the bastard had a gun to his head. I’d be dead if he hadn’t tackled the guy at the last moment. Rowell killed him for that. The General had sand.”

  “He’ll be remembered for it.”

  “I don’t feel like I… well, maybe I should resign.”

  “Don’t do it for me. No one’s blaming you. I want you in the loop, for now, even if it’s from your hospital bed.”

  “Any news on SubOrbital 7?”

  “They’re working on carrying out their new orders. That’s all I can tell you on this line. But… those Rangers had better act fast.”

  * * *

  “We’re in position for the first maneuver, Captain,” Faraday said.

  “Good,” Mayweather responded as Burkett came into the flight deck and hooked his harness—adapted from EVA equipment—into the hastily-rigged stability netting. As the officer with the most space-navigation experience, he’d be staying there. Mayweather’s specialty was ground combat.

  Burkett peered through the windshield. The sun was behind the Earth at the moment, so he could see a few stars—and there was the Russian battle station, glinting in moonlight. Gogol-1 was still too distant to see its details with the naked eye, but he’d studied it via digital telescopy. The S-7 was moving slowly closer to the battle station.

  “Computer is picking up radar from Gogol-1,” Strickland said.

  “Figures they’d be tracking us,” Burkett said. “Radiometrics sharp? They’re not jamming us?”

  “Nope,” Faraday said. “Computer and my own eyes tell me the radiometrics are sharp. We’re on the right declination, right attitude, thirty-out.”

  Burkett nodded. It was a concern: radiometric navigation, a sort of three-dimensional GPS in orbit, was the key to moving around in space. The Russians had signed a treaty disallowing radiometrics jamming, and apparently whoever had designed Gogol-1 hadn’t gotten permission to ignore the treaty.

  “Everything’s set up,” Mayweather said. “I better take my seat. Lieutenant Burkett’s in command of the operation, but you’ll hear from me on headset.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Faraday said.

  “Copy, sir,” Strickland said.

  Mayweather moved out to his seat and strapped in as Burkett braced himself against the inner cornering bulkheads of the flight deck.

  “Why’d they cheap out on putting a third seat in here?” he asked, watching the seconds to burn tick off on the navigation console. Thirty-three seconds… thirty-one…

  “Something about payload mass, keeping everything small as they could,” Faraday replied. “Real reason—maybe keeping unnecessary people out of the flight deck… sir.”

  Burkett smiled at the small dig. “We’ll see who’s necessary. Burn one when ready.”

  “Burning one in three,” Ike said. “Two…”

  He thumbed the burn tab and the attitudinal rockets on the upper part of the S-7’s nose fired for exactly 1.4 seconds, while rockets on the forward underside fired for 0.5 seconds. The combined burns tilted the orbcraft to aim directly at Gogol-1.

  “Burn two,” Burkett said, firming up his hold, and he felt the jolt as Faraday started the burn.

  Burn two was the big one. The main engine, big thrusters going briefly full bore, would rocket them toward Gogol-1. As Burkett held on against the inertia, he could see the battle station expanding in the windshield. It was shaped like a fairly conventional octagonal-cylinder, without the usual fanned-out solar panels. Gogol-1 was about the size of a nuclear submarine, Burkett thought, and the comparison was disturbing. Its launch tubes were tilted down at Earth now, below Burkett’s line of sight.

  As they approached, Gogol-1 changed its orbital attitude, shifting to bring the launch tubes up toward the S-7.

  “They’re trying to get a bead on us, Lieutenant,” Faraday said, switching off the main engine. “Maybe we should perform our maneuver, uh, sir?”

  “Not quite yet,” Burkett said, but it was going to be tricky. He hoped that Dhariwal and Magonier had calculated this as precisely as they claimed.

  As the S-7 rushed closer, the octagonal appearance of Gogol-1 became more complex, some sections bigger than others, until it looked almost like a camshaft floating in space. There were the openings of the launch tubes, four of them; blade-like metal shields slipping aside, the missile tubes irising open as he watched. Like eyes opening to look right into the flight deck of the orbcraft.

  “Lieutenant…” Strickland cleared her throat. “Sir, they’ll think we’re going to ram them,” she said breathlessly. “They’ll open fire!”

  The orbcraft was within two kilometers now. Burkett had it worked out in his head. They had only a handful of seconds left.

  “Sir?”

  And it was… now.

  “Burn three, and release the towage!”

  “Burning!” Faraday called out, and the upper AC thrusters rumbled. The S-7 tilted and fired a braking thruster. They slowed—Burkett was afraid his stability rig would snap with the force—and the two modules they towed behind them were carried with forward momentum over the top of the S-7.

  “Release!” Burkett called. Faraday hit the transmitter that remotely unbuckled the second towage cable.

  “Released!” The second module rushed forward over the S-7, heading at Gogol-1.

  “Incoming!” Strickland said, almost a shout, as Gogol-1 launched missiles.

  “Burn four!” Burkett shouted.

  The main engines roared. Already tilted downward, the S-7—still pulling one of the modules—rocketed under Gogol-1. The released module from N-22 continued on the orbcraft’s original course, essentially slingshotted toward the enemy. A split second later two Russian missiles rocketed past the S-7, but Burkett knew the AI-guided projectiles would change course and pursue their target.

  He watched the view from cameras they’d attached to the exterior of the big module—cameras that were little more than the astronautics version of GoPro—showing the Russian battle station beginning to fill the frame.

  Closer. Closer…

  “Twelve seconds to impact!” Faraday said. “They’ll try a burn to dodge it—”

  “Detonate in three!”

  “One, two—”

  The pilot pressed the transmitter button. The plastic explosive, standard Ranger issue, detonated inside the module, igniting the tanks of liquid oxygen-hydrogen fuel. With the oxygen that inflated the modules feeding the explosions, the blasts filled the camera frame with red fire for a split second before the cameras became shrapnel—along with the metal parts of the inflated modules, the Japanese tools Burkett had deliberately left floating inside, and the spare nuts and bolts they had taped to the explosives.

  The screen went black.

  “End burn four!”

  Burkett worried that they might get hit by stray debris from the blast, but they were already several klicks out. In fact, the S-7 was heading with unnerving rapidity toward deep space.

  “Enemy incoming has changed course, accelerating to pursue us.”

  “End burn four. Fire retros,” Burkett said.

  It was a nervy move. They were slowing to let the missiles catch up to them.

  “They’re two klicks out,” Strickland called. “One!” A half-second pause. “Nearing impact!”

  “Release, burn, and detonate!” Burkett said.

  The towage was released directly in the missiles’ path. Faraday waited two seconds, accelerated with the main engine, then waited one more—and transmitted the detonate signal. The plastic explosives in the final module detonated, setting off the third oxy-hydrogen tank, and the missiles were consumed in a ball of fire laced with spare parts and shattered module bands. They exploded, visible in the aft camera view as twin balls of white fire that instantly blinked out in the vacuum of space.

  The S-7 was still accelerating—going unnervingly fast, considering they were headed out away from Earth—and yet shrapnel overtook them, clattering on the rear engine cowl.

  “We hit just now?” Mayweather asked over headset.

  “Shrapnel, sir,” Burkett said. “Lang, Andrews, Dorman, Dabiri—check for damage.” They acknowledged on the headset, but Burkett barely took notice. He was already issuing orders.

  “Ike, burn retros, set a course for their zenith, fifteen klicks out. Then brake into synchronous orbit and we’ll see what damage we did to the Russian station, if any.”

  How many missiles do they have on that thing?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  How many missiles are left, Lieutenant Batkin?” Andrei Arsov asked as he vacuumed his own vomit out of the air.

  “Can’t you count?” Second Lieutenant Batkin asked, the question coming with a snort of contempt as he rose up from his gunner’s seat. “Four remain!” Batkin, a squat man whose wide face seemed incapable of anything but a scowl, liked to lord it over Andrei, who was a junior lieutenant, even though the second lieutenant’s rank was only higher by a very slim margin.

  Arsov was bleeding from a wound in his forehead. He’d gotten a smack from a bulkhead when they’d been knocked about by the Americans. The first and middle fingers on his left hand were broken, and he was using his right to vacuum vomit.

  When the blast and shrapnel hit the Gogol-1, the battle station had gone into a spin—hence the nausea, the broken fingers, and battered head. Only the commander’s considerable skill had managed to stabilize the battle station once more.

  Batkin was unhurt, Andrei noticed. He had been strapped into a gunner’s seat at the time. They had no actual guns, only missiles, which were Batkin’s responsibility. There were some small arms, and a broken laser cannon that had fried itself when they’d tested it on orbital debris.

  “My head feels like it’s still being banged on the bulkhead, Lieutenant,” Arsov said. “So I can’t count very well, right now. Also, this vacuum is getting clogged.”

  “Then give it up and get back to your battle position,” Batkin said brusquely.

  Arsov snapped the little vacuum onto its wall hook, turned away from the aerial sludge of the last of his breakfast, and pushed toward the radar station. His “battle position” was pointless, really. There were two radar stations at opposite ends of the station, and his was broken. Its transmitting cone had been shattered in the attack.

  He lowered himself into the seat, which was partly sunken into the deck like the other operations seats, and buckled himself in. Pointless though it was, it was a relief to just sit here, held by straps.

  What was going to happen to them? He himself had stopped a breach in the hull—Andrei just happened to be near the spray sealant, and was able to use it even as the strong current of air tugged him toward the void. If he hadn’t been there, they might all be dead now. He had also used an extinguisher to stop an electrical fire. Despite his battered head and broken fingers, he had done these things.

  No one had taken note, but he was too tired to care.

  How had he gotten himself into this? Philosophically, he was a man of peace. Andrei never wanted to come to a battle station. He wanted to work in commercial astronautics. Moving payloads in space, or perhaps debris cleanup or EVA work on satellite maintenance. That was his dream, but he hadn’t enough training to be hired by commercial space companies.

  The only way he could afford to get the training was to join the Russian Orbital Army. He’d succeeded in being transferred into the ROA because he knew a good deal about the theory of orbital work, and they were short on skilled men.

  But this? Somehow, he had ended up here, trying to kill people down below, in a place called Colorado. He worried every day—if day was the word—that they might cause a nuclear war. He might be up here, looking down on the nuclear explosion that took out Vladivostok. Knowing that his mother and his sisters were burning.

  Even if that didn’t happen, when were they going to get relieved? When would they be back on Earth? There was no talk of resupply, no plan to abandon the station and return home.

  There were four of the small but powerful missiles left, and two quite theoretical, untested orbital mines. They had food for perhaps another week, and how much breathable air? It was already quite stale—and now it was polluted by smoke. The Commander wouldn’t say how much oxygen remained.

  There were seven men still alive. Sergeant Filipov was dead. The shrapnel that had penetrated the hull had bounced around inside and ended in his skull. Lieutenant Grosha was dead—the sudden spinning of the battle station had flung him against the corner of a heat regulator, and it had snapped his neck. Lukin had a broken arm, Malinov a shattered knee. They had been given morphine.

  Andrei had received none.

  I am feeling sorry for myself, he thought. I must accept my fate and do my duty. He remembered the line from the station’s namesake, the novelist Gogol, often quoted by Commander Volsky when things seemed rough: “There is still gunpowder in our flasks!” But how could things get any worse, short of the hull suffering a major breach?

  Such a breach could happen. The Americans might well be back.

  “Well, Arsov,” Volsky said as the commander’s shadow fell over him. His voice was guttural. “Have you nothing to do but stare at your knees that way?” There was not much reproach in his words, however. Despite his gruff voice and weathered face, his outthrust lower lip and fierce black eyes, the commander was actually a man capable of empathy.

  Volsky floated down, holding onto a panel of the radar tuner, so that he came into a sort of weightless squat beside Andrei. The right sleeves of his uniform jacket and shirt were cut away, and there was a bloodied bandage on his upper right arm.