Her face set in a grim mask, she used the PCS laptop to call up the carbon dioxide and oxygen monitors throughout the station. She scanned the readouts for anything out of the ordinary, trying to find a hint of where the two men were.
Have they slept at all? she wondered. They might be computer geniuses, able to understand the ISS operating system at the machine level, but they were still human. And they’d been through much more physical stress and activity than she’d been through, from the launch of their Soyuz capsule to the murders of the other crewmen. Which meant that even if they were relying on uppers or other drugs to keep them going, they’d eventually crash and have to sleep it off.
Kimberly was hoping that they thought that since she was holed up in the JPM they’d have time to get a little rest before they painstakingly tried to track down why the thrusters wouldn’t operate. And she hoped that although one of them might stand guard while the other one slept, the one staying awake wouldn’t be operating at a hundred percent; he’d be sleepy as well.
They may have put up computational roadblocks to prevent her from stopping them, but she bet that they wouldn’t expect her—a woman—to go at them physically.
She found what she was looking for in the computer’s data. There. The CO2 monitor in Central Post had ticked upward. That meant that at least one of the terrorists was in there. But she also saw that the O2 level was above ambient, meaning that the guy was using less oxygen than normal. That’s the guy who’s sleeping!
Now where was the other one? Just outside the JPM, standing guard? That’s where she would be, in case she tried to escape. But these guys by their very nature wouldn’t think that a woman would have the guts to go after them, so the other one was probably somewhere else in the station. But where?
Just in case, Kimberly pushed off to the JPM viewport. She looked into Node 2 and the adjoining Columbus module from as many angles as she could, and she didn’t see any sign of either one of them. So where was the SOB if not in Node 2 or Columbus? Node 3? The U.S. lab?
She floated back to the laptop and studied the CO2 and O2 levels again. She couldn’t find any obvious signs of where he might be, so she called up an electrical power system diagram of the ISS circuitry. Aha! The EPS showed there was electrical activity in Node 3, the Tranquility module. In the zero-gee toilet. One of them was using the bathroom!
Her heart started to race. If she moved quickly enough she’d have a chance to leave the JPM and surprise him.
And introduce him to Shep’s incredibly sharp knife. Fatally.
* * *
Murphy’s Law, Kimberly thought. If anything can go wrong with my plan, it will go wrong. And there was too much at stake for her to screw up. The other terrorist might awake from his nap unexpectedly. Or the one using the toilet might be in there just to make her think he’s indisposed. A dozen other things could go wrong.
But she had to do something. She couldn’t sit here in the JPM like a frightened baby. Sooner or later they would figure out how to regain control of the thrusters. Sooner or later they’d force the ISS into a fatal plunge down to Earth.
Sooner, not later, Kimberly knew.
She needed another weapon, in addition to Shep’s knife. She’d have to bring a backup, something that could incapacitate them until she could either restrain them or kill them. What could she use?
The Russian flashlamp had worked well enough, but it was now somewhere back in one of the Russian modules. And in any case it would have to be recharged, and she certainly didn’t have the time for that. Whatever her choice was, it had to be something here in the JPM, something she could use, or jury-rig, and quickly.
She glanced around the module. There were still bags of equipment attached to the walls, but she didn’t have the time to rummage through them. Looking back at the electrical activity in the Node 3 toilet, she saw that it had gone up again. He was probably trying to acquaint himself with how to use the john.
Kimberly looked frantically down the JPM axis. What could she use? Her eyes lit on the experiment table. Anything there? She had put the data stream from the Air Force Academy’s crystal growth experiment on a repeating loop after embedding her steganographic message for help, and the rest of the equipment was now dormant—
Of course! The 98 GHz traveling wave tube that excited the crystal’s molecular resonances! She pushed rapidly to the table, put out a hand to stop her motion through the air, and grabbed the portable source. She turned back to the laptop. She’d recharged the miniaturized millimeter-wave device while breaking down the experiment, so she could send her plea for help over the data stream to PAYCOM. With the traveling wave tube now fully charged she’d have juice enough to get off several shots.
Kimberly remembered the searing heat she’d felt when her arm caught the sub-terahertz beam. Must be what it’s like to be cooked in a microwave oven, she thought. Only worse. Scott had made fun of her when she’d told him about the experiment, teasing that she’d be the first to deploy a directed energy gun in orbit, and if the United Nations ever learned about it, the U.S. could be accused of breaking the international treaty prohibiting the deployment of weapons in space. Their argument over that had foreshadowed their divorce.
Reaching the PCS laptop, Kimberly quickly ran through the graphical interface and closed the valve from the JPM to the outside vacuum. Then she physically disconnected the metal VAJ tube from the vestibule separating the JPM from Node 2 and allowed air to flow back into the vestibule, releasing the enormous force that had held the JPM and Node 2 hatches closed.
She felt her face growing warm as she steeled herself for battle. Quietly, she opened the JPM hatch and waited for a moment as she peered into Node 2. No one was in there. She opened the connecting hatch as silently as she could.
Holding Shep’s knife in one hand and the millimeter-wave source in the other, she quickly pushed into Node 2, then turned for the U.S. lab as she headed for Node 3, ready to take out the killer. First she’d incapacitate him by blasting him with the pain-inducing sub-terahertz beam, and while he was stunned, either confine him or slit his throat.
And then she’d go after the one who was sleeping.
* * *
Kimberly shot down the Node 2 axis and entered the U.S. lab. She’d seen no one in the Columbus module and her focus was on getting to Node 3 and the zero-gee toilet as quickly as she could.
She could almost feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins. She’d have only one chance at this and if she failed she’d be signing a death warrant not only for herself but for an uncountable number of people when the ISS impacted the Earth.
And in the back of her mind she realized that she’d also be putting an end to the human exploration of space.
She floated through the U.S. lab, her hands getting slick with sweat. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind that she’d be able to use the 98 GHz source to incapacitate the first terrorist; that could be accomplished at a distance, she wouldn’t even have to be close, in case he tried to stop her. All she needed was a line-of-sight and she’d be able to bathe him with a nonstop agony of incredibly hot pain.
But would she be able to kill him with Shep’s knife when she was up close and personal, and do it before he regained his senses? Would she be able to follow through and actually kill him?