Space Station Down, page 5
She heard a sound behind her. Turning, she saw Farid soar through the portal, aiming straight at her. Desperately, Kimberly held up the flashlamp, squeezed her eyes shut, and stabbed at the power switch.
She felt a staccato of hot flashes on her face and through her closed eyes sensed a bright red pulsating flare. The afterimage glared in her vision as she opened her eyes and bounced off the far wall of the module.
Farid screamed a loud, guttural screech, his hands clasped over his eyes. Bakhet was bent over double, wailing and pawing at his eyes. Kimberly twisted and kicked out, trying to get past Farid while he was temporarily blinded.
He randomly flailed out with both hands, trying to grab her. Trying to make herself as small as possible, Kimberly ducked beneath him, but as she flew past she felt his clawlike hands rake down her back. Her momentum changed, and for an instant she thought she wouldn’t reach the vestibule. She reached out and hit the hard metal edging of the hatch and bent her body through the portal and into the next module.
Now inside Node 2 she made a hard left into the JPM, still blinking at the searing afterimage of the flashlamp. Behind her she heard Farid and Bakhet talking; calmer now, they were regrouping, starting after her again, only seconds behind.
As Kimberly entered the JPM she realized she’d never be able to jury-rig a weapon quickly enough to stop them. She’d have to hole up, somehow barricade herself inside the Japanese module until she had the time to gather her wits and prepare for another tangle with the murderers. And this time, she hoped, she’d be better prepared.
As she flew through the vestibule into the Japanese module she spotted a VAJ—a vacuum access jumper—rolled up and secured by the hatch. It gave her an idea, and she rapidly raced through the pros and cons of it. At first she dismissed it out of hand, but the more she thought about it the better it sounded.
Her entire decision-making process took less than a few seconds, but she knew exactly what she had to do. She reached out and grabbed the tie that held the VAJ.
BARRICADED
Clutching the VAJ to her chest, Kimberly pulled herself into the Japanese module. She quickly unfastened the vacuum access jumper and unrolled its metal hose. It spread out in midair, writhing slightly like a weightless snake.
Kimberly turned to the vestibule.
There was a two-foot clearance between the hatches of Node 2 and the JPM. If she could evacuate the air in the vestibule after closing the hatches on either side, there was no way the intruders would be able to get to her. Kimberly mentally calculated that with the size of the ISS hatch, the 14.7-psi air pressure pushing against the 176,400 square inches of hatch area would exert nearly twelve tons of force, keeping the hatches closed.
She raced through the checklist attached to the VAJ, knowing that she had only a few seconds to act. Better get it right the first time, she told herself.
First she closed the Node 2 hatch. She unstowed the crank handle, rotated it out, and started twirling the lever like crazy. When it stopped she moved it back, then went through the JPM’s hatch and shut it by grabbing the quick release handle. It closed with a satisfying clang.
Okay. Next step is to evacuate the vestibule.
Kimberly uncapped the pressure equalization valve, grabbed the VAJ, and connected its green fabric-covered metal hose to the experimental vacuum manifold, leading to the vacuum of space.
Through the small viewport in the hatch she saw Farid suddenly appear. She hoped the seals were tight, but she didn’t have time to worry. If they got in they’d kill her, she knew, and she thought she’d rather die in the cold vacuum of space than have those two bastards slit her throat.
She pushed off for the laptop and rapidly typed in the necessary commands, calling up a schematic of the JPM module and opening the valve to the vacuum outside.
With a barely audible whoosh the air in the vestibule connecting Node 2 with the JPM was released to space.
Kimberly saw tiny crystals of ice swirl around the outside exit as the humid air expanded and instantly froze in the cold grip of vacuum. They looked beautiful, like a sprinkling of fairy dust. She thrilled at the sight, and even more so at the realization that her plan had actually worked.
In the back of her mind she felt grateful that the ISS was the first complex vehicle designed from the ground up to be operated through computer graphical interfaces instead of hardwired mechanical control panels, allowing any laptop to operate the station. Maybe I’ll be able to take advantage of that to gain control of the station again, she thought.
She realized she was hurting. Dull, sullen pain throbbed in her hip and her arm. She saw Farid still at the Node 2 hatch. He pounded against the glass but she couldn’t hear anything across the vacuum interface of the vestibule. He glared through the thick window, his eyes wild. Spittle spewed from his mouth, his nostrils flared.
Kimberly was too tired to face him. She hurt too much. She floated up and away from the hatch’s viewport. She was effectively barricaded from the murderers; she was safe in the JPM—for the time being. They couldn’t open their hatch to get to her, and even if they got themselves into an EVA suit, the spacesuits were much too large for the JPM airlock, which was designed to expose small experiments to vacuum. It was barely big enough for the second-generation suit Kimberly had stowed in the module.
She caught a glimpse of movement in Node 2, down where the pressure release valve to the vestibule was located. Floating slowly upward to get a better view, she saw that Farid was trying to open the pressure equalization valve. Kimberly drew back, wondering if the idiot wanted to kill all of them.
He could certainly try to open the valve, she knew, but the air would have to rush completely out of both Node 2 and the entire ISS before they could even open their own hatch. And even if they did that, they still couldn’t open her hatch to the JPM: try as they might there was twelve tons of pressure pressing her module’s airlock hatch against the vacuum.
Kimberly realized that there was a slight chance they could get through, though. Not impossible, yet an incredibly small chance, and they’d have to be awfully quick—and lucky: The viewports were 8 inches in diameter, ¾-inch-thick glass, with two panes separated by 2 inches. If they tried to smash the viewport on her hatch they would have to shatter their Node 2 window first, probably using the titanium prybar. That would repressurize the vestibule while the air in the entire ISS would start escaping via the VAJ hose. Then they’d have to smash the JPM hatch window, which would rapidly decompress the JPM while they attempted to enter the module and go after her.
The decompression would happen so fast that it would probably kill them before they could accomplish whatever they had planned for the ISS.
So they’d kill her but they’d also end up dying themselves. In the time it would take them to get into the JPM most of the air in the whole space station would be forever lost to space, and they would all end up dying.
So why would they even try?
Unless their real purpose for this insane attack was only to kill everybody on board, including themselves.
But why try to do that? It would have been much easier just to sabotage a few resupply rockets than to go to all the trouble of getting two radicalized cosmonauts on board the ISS. It just didn’t make any sense.
On the other hand, Kimberly thought, with two murderers imperiling the whole ISS by trying to evacuate the air in the vestibule, nothing made much sense.
She saw both Farid and Bakhet gesticulating wildly in Node 2. She still couldn’t hear what was going on, but it looked as though they had discovered that the air in Node 2 was escaping into space. They probably also realized that by the time they’d be able to get to her, the air supply throughout the ISS would be totally gone.
Again Farid turned to the hatch. He pounded angrily on the thick glass plate, but Kimberly still couldn’t hear any sounds. His eyes bulged out and his face turned so red it looked as if all the blood in his body had welled up to his head. He shook a fist at her.
Kimberly slowly floated down until her nose nearly touched the JPM’s viewport. They were only two feet apart, but separated by the tons of force clamping the two hatches shut.
As Farid raged on, his face red and contorted, his arms flailing, Kimberly’s mind raced, trying to think of what she could do to stop the two, no matter what they had in mind. They wanted to kill her, she knew, but what else? What was their final objective?
Before she turned away from the viewport she kept her face stone cold, showing no emotion except icy, frigid contempt as she stared them down.
Then as slowly as she could she moved her right hand in front of her face, gradually closed it into a fist, and then, millimeter by millimeter, raised her middle finger until it stood fully upright.
She pushed it to touch the viewport. As Farid’s eyes widened at the obscene gesture, Kimberly mouthed a silent Fuck you.
ASSESSMENT
Obviously furious, Farid pounded harder on the viewport but Kimberly couldn’t hear a sound because the vestibule was in vacuum. If the situation weren’t so deadly serious, she thought, this could be a great physics demonstration to beam down to school-kids, showing the need of an atmosphere to transmit sound waves.
Kimberly turned her back to the viewport, realizing that she had little time for speculation. She pressed her hand against her hip and winced. The bleeding had stopped but it hurt like hell. The hip was bruised as well as cut. Her arm was bruised, too, and she knew that it was going to be sore.
She pushed off and found a small first aid kit. While bandaging the hip, she tried to assess the situation.
She was safe for the time being. As long as she kept the VAJ attached to the bleed-off port, the vestibule would remain in vacuum, and the enormous force of both Node 2’s and the JPM’s 14.7-psi atmosphere would keep the hatches tightly sealed.
She glanced through the JPM for a quick inventory. She had plenty of air, electrical power, and heat to survive. There was only one laptop in the module; she remembered that the guys had borrowed the other three for Robert’s EVA. But from the one, she could control nearly all the functions of the ISS’s systems. Farid shouldn’t be able to cut off any of the JPM’s vital systems, she thought. Kimberly remembered from Farid’s bio that he had been a computer specialist, and she assumed that he had kept his skills current. He might even know the onboard systems better than I do, she worried.
Her eyes rested briefly on the water and meal pouches that she’d kept in the JPM for when she was too involved running experiments to go out and eat with the rest of the crew. I’m set for food, she told herself. And she’d be able to use nearly any of the sealable experiment containers to hold her bodily wastes when she had to relieve herself.
In a perfect world she’d be able to think of some way to overpower the two intruders, but she realized that in reality she might be in this situation for the long haul—maybe even as long as it took for the next mission to reach the ISS. Or sooner, she mused, if the people on the ground were considering a rescue flight.
Which reminded her that now that she had the basics to survive, her top priority was to communicate with NASA.
She floated over to the American laptop and tried to access the comm link.
Nothing.
She tried various options, individually accessing each of the four downlinks, but couldn’t get a response from any of them. She tried to connect with the satellite cross-link. Still nothing.
Kimberly drew in a breath. Farid must have already disabled the system. Probably his first priority, after murdering the crew. So does that mean that NASA doesn’t even know I’m still alive? They probably don’t even know that the rest of the crew’s been murdered.
So what are Farid and his fake tourist cohort, Bakhet, trying to do? she wondered. None of this made any sense. She’d understood that Farid had been a valuable member of the crew on his last mission three years ago: quiet, bright, quick to learn. He must know every system and computer network on board. Kimberly understood that she was facing a true insider, one who knew the ISS as well as she did. Maybe better.
Three years ago Farid must have suspected that his stint on the ISS would probably be the last time he’d be in space. The missions didn’t come cheap, and if it hadn’t been for the Russians throwing the Kazakhstanis a token bone of allowing them a flight every so often, Kazakhstan would never have had a man in space.
So why would the Kazakhstani cosmonaut turn on them? Neither Farid nor his comrade Bakhet had spewed any religious ranting. Had he been radicalized in the past three years? Was that why he’d turned into a cold-blooded killer?
And who was this supposed billionaire Qatari tourist, Bakhet? He and Farid are obviously in cahoots, but what are they up to? What are they trying to do?
And what can I do to stop them?
They’d physically dominated all the Russians and Americans aboard the ISS, so she knew she’d have to use her brains to defeat them rather than brawn. She had to come up with a plan to either best them, or give herself enough time to make it to the newly docked Soyuz—or perhaps even their escape vehicle, the extra Soyuz—to get back to Earth.
But whatever their motivation, whatever their purpose, Kimberly knew there would be no reasoning with them. She’d seen what they could do and knew full well that no amount of logic was going to change their minds. She mentally raced through the probabilities and kept getting the same, inevitable answer:
It was either her or them.
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, ISS CONTROL CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS
Low, urgent voices swirled all around Scott Robinson as he sat at the ISS CAPCOM console. He’d just been patched through to the President’s cabinet meeting.
Spread around him, the ISS control center looked like a barely controlled bedlam. Next to Scott a hundred men and women were busily, frantically working their consoles, each person desperately focused on understanding what had happened aboard the space station and what was currently going on.
Scott tuned out all that commotion and focused his attention on the phone, unconsciously tightening his earphones as he spoke into his throat microphone. “Mr. President, this is Lieutenant Colonel Scott Robinson, today’s CAPCOM—NASA’s astronaut liaison to the ISS.”
The President’s voice came through Scott’s headphones, sounding rushed, impatient, not at all like what Scott had previously heard at the State of the Union or other speeches.
“Colonel, Administrator Patricia Simone tells me you can bring us up to speed on exactly what happened on the International Space Station.”
“Yes, sir,” said Scott. “I can relate the activities up to the moment that communications were cut.” He quickly summarized the events that he remembered, drawing out the details of cosmonaut Ivan Vasilev’s brutal murder, as well as his decision to cut the public feed to NASA TV.
The President asked, “Has anyone else died?”
“We’re working on that, Mr. President. All four comm links and the satellite relay have been cut, but we’re still receiving information over the data links used for onboard science experiments.”
“Do you know if there are any survivors?”
“Not yet. We’re trying to patch into the ISS systems through the data links—basically hack into the sensors that are located throughout the station to find the location of any astronauts or cosmonauts. These are sensors such as temperature—”
“Will you be able to distinguish between the astronauts,” the President interrupted, “and these … terrorists?”
Scott shook his head. “No, sir; that’s highly unlikely. But we may be able to tell how many people are on board and where they’re located. We may even be able to tell from the amount of carbon dioxide present if the individual is large or small, depending on the amount and rate that CO2 is being generated—but those readings may also be an indication of a high level of exertion.”
The President didn’t respond, although Scott heard a muttered discussion on the other end of the line; low murmurings in measured voices.
A familiar voice came over his headphones. “Scott, Patricia Simone here. Were you able to identify if both Farid and the tourist, Adama Bakhet, were responsible for the murders over the video link, or was it just Farid?”
Straightening, Scott replied, “We’re not sure, ma’am. We didn’t get too much footage before the link was severed, but we’ve already sent what we have to NASA Headquarters. And our folks in the image analysis group in Building A here at JSC are poring over what didn’t appear on NASA TV’s public feed; we’ll shoot HQ a copy of the details as they come up.”
The President came back on the line. “And I assume that Johnson Space Center knows of no motivation for this attack.”
“That’s correct, sir. We were caught just as flatfooted as everyone else. We’re sending all the psychological data we have on the two to Headquarters, as well as working with our colleagues in Russia.”
“So we don’t know why this happened, how they pulled it off, or even if there is anyone still alive on board the ISS.”
“That’s correct, Mr. President. But again, we’re working on it.”
The line was muffled as another discussion appeared to take place among the cabinet members. Then the President resumed, “I’m ordering other agencies to work with NASA, to determine what happened, to recommend possible options for bringing communications back to the ISS, and to recommend any other action. The NSA and DoD will be contacting your center shortly for the latter two, and the CIA about the former. I’ve directed that all their tools be placed at NASA’s disposal. In the meantime, you are to keep Patricia informed of any changes on the ISS, or if you discover any motivation for this heinous crime. My top priority now is to find out if there are any astronauts or cosmonauts still alive on the ISS and what it will take to help them. Understand, Colonel?”
