Orbital (Station Breaker Book 2) Read online

  Orbital

  Station Breaker II

  Andrew Mayne

  AndrewMayne.com

  Contents

  Preface

  1. Dead Drop

  2. Catching Air

  3. Aerodynamic

  4. Down Under

  5. Debrief

  6. Down to Earth

  7. Severance

  8. Jettison

  9. Truth

  10. Deep Six

  11. Insiders

  12. Target Practice

  13. Laser Police

  14. Infiltrator

  15. Chinese Knock-Off

  16. Night Bird

  17. Sino Space

  18. Puzzle Box

  19. Interior

  20. Squatter

  21. Hazardous

  22. Rad

  23. Outsiders

  24. Testify

  25. Operative

  26. Passenger

  27. Habitat

  28. The Hotel

  29. Insecurity

  30. The Lab

  31. Update

  32. Science Fair

  33. Illumination

  34. Space Shoes

  35. Downlink

  36. Lifeguard

  37. Footfall

  38. Impatient

  39. Undercover

  40. Confidence Man

  41. Device

  42. Happy Hour

  43. Mission Control

  44. Protocol

  45. Tour

  46. Damage Control

  47. Signal

  48. Ejecta

  49. Pressure

  50. Target

  51. Specimen

  52. Outpatient

  53. Housecall

  54. Revelations

  55. Inpatient

  56. Command

  57. Search Party

  58. Insight

  59. Exit

  60. Cold Case

  61. Re-entry

  62. Detour

  63. Inside Man

  64. Necessary Measures

  65. Decompression

  66. The Farm House

  67. The Pool

  Thank you!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Andrew Mayne

  Copyright © 2017 by Andrew Mayne

  v 1.3

  1.20.17

  AndrewMayne.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Dedicated to my parents.

  Preface

  All of the technology described in this book is either currently being tested on the launch pad or in advance stages of development.

  This is a story of the very near future.

  One

  Dead Drop

  So, uh, I think I have a bullet lodged into my ribs. My air supply is going to give out at any moment. I have a nuclear bomb strapped to my back and my re-entry vehicle is basically a rubber raft that’s never been tested with human cargo. On the plus side, this really is probably the most baller way anyone could possibly die. So there’s that.

  Of course, if this inflatable heat shield catches fire and I burn up like a Nazi robbing the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark as I hit the atmosphere at 20,000 miles an hour, nobody is going to be talking about the totally awesome way I bought it.

  Nope. They’ll be worried about the several kilos of plutonium dispersed into the atmosphere forming a vapor trail a hundred miles long, potentially creating the worst human-caused natural disaster since...um...hell. Maybe this one will take the number one slot.

  You could say that today is going to be filled with a lot of firsts.

  Focus, David. You’re being a little bit of drama queen. You don’t know if the bullet is actually in you or grazed the inside of your spacesuit. Besides, since you shoved that tire plug in there, you’ve hardly felt a thing.

  Second, you’ve got plenty of air to last until you make landfall – okay statistically speaking, sea-fall. So, you’ll either become a radioactive cloud or taking in a deep breath of fresh air before you drown.

  Third, it’s not like the nuclear bomb can blow up. You threw away the trigger. If anything could set it off, you’d already be dead.

  Fourth, they tested this inflatable heat shield dozens of times with crash dummies. And four out of ten times they didn’t come back to Earth melted. That’s almost fifty percent, which means I have exactly a hundred percent chance of either living...or dying.

  And fifth, if you really care what happens to the world after you make the ultimate sacrifice, chances are the plutonium will just form a thick metal ball inside its casing and sink to the bottom of the ocean where it’ll be a bit of a radiation hazard, but nothing that’ll kill people – unless you count mer-people.

  You got this.

  “David? How are you doing?” says a voice from thousands of miles away.

  Laney Washburn was a space blogger just twenty-four hours ago when I showed up at her house and she got recruited for a mad mission to steal a nuclear bomb from a Russian space station. This was after I had escaped from there once already and gone on a little international crime spree as I tried to keep one step ahead of Russian MiGs, assassination squads and some US intelligence agency double agents that thought it would be fun to drop me out of a helicopter. Fun times.

  “Laney, I’m doing fantastic,” I reply.

  “You’ll get through this. In about five minutes you’re going to start feeling some resistance as the atmosphere gets thicker.”

  “What? Did I sound sarcastic? No seriously. I think I’m totally at peace with whatever happens.”

  “Great. But we’re going to see you through this. I’m going to put Captain Baylor back.”

  “No...don’t go, Laney. I want you to be the one to talk me through this.”

  “David, I’m not qualified.”

  “Yes, you are. If there’s something important they have to tell me, you can do it.”

  “Well...your telemetry looks good for re-entry.”

  “But...”

  “Er...we don’t know the weight of the nuclear device and our tracking on you is a little imprecise.”

  “So you have no idea where I’m going to land...”

  “Uh...maybe Australia...ish?”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “Or the Philippines.”

  “Okay. I’ve never met a Filipino I didn’t like.”

  “Um...Indonesia?”

  “That’s where they have the islands with Komodo dragons?”

  “Yes...”

  “Okay. I can manage one of those.”

  “You’ll probably land in the water though.”

  “Right. Sharks. At least I have a raft.”

  “Actually, you’ll need to bail out and use the parachute in the pouch.”

  “Uh, yeah. I was wondering what this lumpy thing was. I’m going to put it on now.”

  “Good idea.”

  Of course I knew that. I just want the room full of people down there to feel a little bit of the excitement I’m going through.

  I have to swing the nuclear device to the front of my spacesuit in order to get the parachute on my back. Fortunately there are all kinds of harnesses and straps to hold onto. Originally designed for a space-based SEAL team, they thought of most of everything.

  It’s too bad my ride up here – a bullet-shaped stealth capsule – didn’t have its own heat shield. At least then I could ride back down inside something that I could prete
nd was giving me an extra layer of protection.

  Since it was covered in a special material designed to absorb light and radio frequencies, it was the exact opposite of a heat shield and had to be abandoned. It was also really, really small. At least here I’m out in the open air...um, vacuum.

  “We’re going to lose contact with you at some point as you re-enter since your radio won’t make it past the ionizing atmosphere around you.”

  “Yeah...about that. How do we know I won’t burn up like a potato in a microwave?”

  “Technically they just explode.”

  “Right. Stupid question.”

  “And the stealth suit you’re wearing has a higher heat resistance than iCosmos ones.”

  iCosmos was the company I worked for until I stole not one, but two of their spacecraft. Technically the first one was more of a detour and the second I kind of sort of had permission.

  Where does space end and the atmosphere begin? I can tell you definitively; right about now.

  The trick with re-entry is slowing your speed from about 20,000 miles an hour to a more manageable Mach 1 or 2 where you can parachute to safety.

  The reason spacecraft burn up in the atmosphere and you don’t go in for a leisurely stroll, is all about velocity. If you’re moving thousands of miles an hour you’re bumping into lots and lots of air molecules creating friction.

  Too much friction and you’ll burn up whatever it is that you’re riding back down to Earth inside – and ultimately yourself. This is what happened to the Space Shuttle Columbia. A damaged heating tile let a super hot jet of air inside the wing that destroyed everything in seconds.

  No fancy tiles for me. Right now I’m strapped to an inflatable round disc that looks suspiciously like something you’d find at a redneck pool party.

  It’s starting to vibrate as I begin to skim the upper atmosphere. This means it’s time to keep my head down and choose a god to pray to.

  “David? How are you doing?”

  “Would you stop asking me that?”

  “Sorry. They just want to make sure you’re okay. Alright, that’s dumb now that I think about it. How about you tell me a story?”

  “Want to hear about the first time I flew?”

  Two

  Catching Air

  I was ten years-old the first time I really flew. I’d been in airplanes before and would take the stick of one a few years later when an ex-Top Gun instructor let me hitch a ride. But the first time I remember the feeling of being aloft, soaring through the sky of my own accord, was when I took a home-built soap box racer down a hill and over a ramp.

  I made the cart using lawnmower wheels, two-by-fours and a seat from a bass boat. To steer it, I used a piece of rope tied to either end of the front axle that pivoted on a bolt I drilled through the wood.

  The ramp was a piece of rotted plywood I pulled off a neighbor’s tomato garden fence and propped up on some old tires.

  Had any sane adult seen this scrawny kid dragging the cart up the steep hill and noticed the chalk line I’d drawn to mark out my path, they would have put a stop to it and had me see a shrink for suicidal tendencies.

  But this was no death wish. It was a life wish – if there is such a thing.

  I’d seen some older kids jump their BMX bikes off a ramp. I decided I’d do the same with a vehicle of my own design. I called it Davey’s Comit. Which was stupid on two accounts: I didn’t know comet wasn’t spelled like “vomit” and nobody called me “Davey,” not even my prodigious inner monologue.

  There were no witness to what I did that day – which also means that had the attempt gone horribly awry, I’d have been laying on the pavement with a broken neck for hours.

  After dragging the cart to the top of the hill I took a seat in the plastic chair and put on the flimsy helmet intended for a kid going zero miles an hour on a skateboard. But hey, I’d spray painted it silver and only got some of the paint on my fingers and hair.

  Looking down the hill at the ramp, it seemed like a tiny shingle on a gingerbread house. I went back to my old neighborhood a few years ago. While the hill wasn’t as long as my memory, it was every bit as steep.

  When I lifted my Keds from the ground and let gravity pull me, the going was slow at first. My lawnmower wheels weren’t exactly Pirelli’s.

  Soon enough, I began to pick up speed. I quickly passed the point where I could bail out and avoid a nasty scrape or sprained wrist.

  Every pebble in the asphalt jostled my suspension-free kart. It soon became just one steady staccato rhythm as my velocity increased.

  The tiny ramp grew larger at a fast pace as I fought with the cords to keep the nose of Davey’s Comit straight along my chalk line.

  I’d designed my ramp carefully, accounting for the distance between the front and rear axle. When I hit it, my forward motion was gradually changed into upward momentum.

  The impact was anything but smooth, but it didn’t stop me. Hell no. I was a bat out of hell – on lawnmower wheels.

  I remember the front of the kart leaving the edge of the ramp and could feel the precise moment in my ass when the back wheels left. I was goddamn airborne!

  Twenty feet? Fifty? It felt like I was jumping the Grand Canyon.

  Yes, when I went back to measure how far I’d gone, there were clear indentations only 29.5 inches from the ramp to where my rear wheels actually landed back on Earth. But don’t tell me I didn’t make a giant leap.

  The landing was just the beginning. While the ramp was at the edge of the pavement, the hill still continued down through the Montgomery family backyard.

  I slid down their green lawn picking up even more speed.

  At some point one of my front wheels came lose and the end of the wooden axle dug a furrow into the grass.

  Did I come to a stop? No, sir. Davey’s Comit proceeded to spin around as it plummeted down the hill in sideways cartwheels.

  Eventually the inertia was too much and I was thrown from my craft.

  I pulled my arms in and rolled with it until I came to stop. I laid there, arms stretched out, watching the world spin around me as my inner ear tried to process what the fuck I just went through.

  I just stared up at the sky, seeing right through the clouds. Past the blue of the atmosphere and straight into space.

  I saw stars, not the dizzy kind that tell you your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. These were the real ones. Surrounded by planets and asteroids and mysteries.

  In my mind’s eye, I was seeing space.

  How far did that ramp jump take me?

  I couldn’t tell you.

  I still haven’t landed.

  Three

  Aerodynamic

  MOTHER OF GOD!!! My heat shield is vibrating so much I think my brain is going to snap from my spine and turn to apple sauce in my skull.

  If going down in the Unicorn space capsule last time was like being a penny in a dryer, this is like being a penny in a dryer inside a tilt-a-whirl in a hurricane during an earthquake as the world gets sucked into a black hole.

  Heat shield? It’s a goddamn inflatable raft. There’s no top to this thing. I can see damn stars out the side of my visor!

  Man was not meant to do this.

  If I could time travel back to that kid on the hill I’d knock his lawnmower wheels off and tell him to go inside and play video games for crying out loud.

  “DDDDDDAAAAAAAAVVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDD?????” says Laney’s scratchy voice over the comm.

  I start to speak but my teeth are chattering so much much I’m afraid I’m going to chip them. Instead, I manage to hum something.

  Oh crap. I thought the vibration was bad. Now there’s the weird high pitch wailing sound like air blowing air over an open bottle. Must be demons. Has to be. No other reasonable explanation.

  Lord Satan, I accept! Just stop the noise!

  Nope. He still won’t shut up.

  Oh crap! I see fucking flames shooting up over the edge of the raft!

 
Wait? Is that flames or ionized air? Flames mean my Space Raft of Ultimate Doom is deteriorating underneath me and I’m seconds away from burning alive. Ionized air means I’m one giant goddamn neon sign in the sky.

  “LLLLLLLAAAAAAANNNNNNNEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY?”

  Not even static. That means the channel is being blocked by the electric charge of all those electrons whoring it up around the air molecules I’m battering with my space raft.

  But it could be fire too...

  I take a whiff and smell the scent of fear and stupidity as I realize I’m trying to smell something outside my spacesuit.

  How the hell did they let me be an astronaut in the first place?

  Oh, right. I was the dumb guy that volunteered to be the guinea pig they tested all the stuff they didn’t want killing the real astronauts. Letting me into space was more of an oversight.

  Oh crap. I can see a pinkish red glow all around me now. I totally feel tingly. Heck, is this the way to Asgard?

  How much longer? I forgot to check my wrist display before I re-entered the atmosphere. Jesus Christ. I just re-entered the atmosphere – on a damn raft.

  Okay, do the math in your head, David. How fast were we traveling? About 17,000 miles an hour give or take. Alright, how long does it take to slow down? Um, what’s my weight and the surface area of this heat shield? Beats me.

  Okay. So let’s just wait a while. Hopefully the folks down at Ops realize what kind of idiot they’re dealing with and will chime in once I can actually get a radio signal.

  Shoot, how long has it been? I have to be going a mere 10,000 miles an hour right now. I should probably wait until I’m at 1,000 before I bail out.

  Is it getting hot in here?

  Holy cow! I can feel the heat from the glowing wall of fire all around me! It’s like every damn Arby’s heating lamp in the world is trying to fry my ass.

  They said this suit could deal with the heat.

  They also said it had never been tested and Congress shut down the program.