Then, after they’d docked, she’d somehow have to get to Node 2, where the port for berthing with an unmanned commercial spacecraft was located, and let the astronauts into the station—all while making sure that Farid and Bakhet were kept at bay, so the “rescuing” astronauts could come aboard. Otherwise, what could they do if they couldn’t get into one of the berthing ports? Ram the ISS?
That wouldn’t do any good.
And the astronauts in the modified Dragon capsule couldn’t leave their vehicle and spacewalk to the station. The Dragon wasn’t like one of the old Gemini or Apollo capsules, where the astronauts wore spacesuits into orbit and could open their hatch to the vacuum of space, exit their spacecraft, and perform an EVA. The new commercial capsules were designed solely to dock with the station and not open directly to vacuum. The astronauts had to enter the ISS through a berthing port if they wanted to get on board.
So in any case, Kimberly figured she’d eventually have to confront the two terrorists face-to-face. And if MCC couldn’t brainstorm a weapon for her to use, then she’d have to whip one up herself, either now or later.
She pushed away from the bags and stopped her momentum by grasping the frame that anchored the data acquisition equipment. She peered at the storage device. Still nothing. Her feet rotated up and she felt her heart thumping with frustration. Come on, guys! Where’s the patch?
So what would she do if she left the safety of the JPM? First she’d have to separate the two, perhaps by making a feint and tricking them into thinking she was somewhere else after she’d left the JPM. And just like her original plan to ambush them after they’d passed through one of the modules, she’d have to quickly surprise and disable the first one, then somehow overpower the second. It was a gamble, but with her speed and ability to maneuver in zero-gee, Kimberly thought she could pull it off.
And with what little time she had left, she knew she’d have to.
But what would she do even if she did manage to overpower them?
One of them, probably Farid, had gotten into the ISS system and was preventing her from rotating the station by 180 degrees and turning the deorbit into a re-boost. That was a software problem, not hardware. Since all the station functions were controlled through the graphical interface, it wasn’t as though there was a physical knob she could turn, or a valve like she’d find back on Earth to twist. There was simply nothing physical she could do to solve the problem.
She raced through different scenarios in her head, following various logic trees and coming up with possible outcomes, and she didn’t like any of the answers.
What if the MCC didn’t come up with a usable patch, or what if they needed to have direct access to the station’s 1533 system in order for her to regain control?
Or what if their patch simply didn’t work?
She couldn’t just sit around and wait for the U.S. Cavalry to ride up and rescue her. If it turned out that the software patch didn’t work after she’d installed it, and the entire twelve hours had already passed, then it would be that much harder for her to boost the ISS back up to a stable orbit. Maybe impossible.
Then a flash of memory reminded her of a motto from the military construction battalions of World War II: The impossible we do right away; the miraculous takes a little time.
I’ll have to do the impossible, Kimberly said to herself. And do it right away.
She wondered how much of the thrusters’ propellants those guys had used. She knew she could always tap into an emergency propellant reserve by shunting propellants from the two docked Soyuz capsules. She wouldn’t have any propellants left to return to Earth at that point, but it really wouldn’t matter if her other option was doing nothing and allowing the ISS to deorbit and crash. And if she waited too long to act, the station would be at such a low altitude that all the propellant on board wouldn’t be enough to boost it back up to a stable orbit.
Kimberly glided over to the PCS laptop and pulled up a schematic of the nontraditional sensors. It looked as though the two were in Central Post, at the other end of the station. They must be satisfied that they’d engaged the thrusters, and that she remained holed up in the JPM, too terrified to put up a fight.
Grimly, she pushed over to the hatch and grabbed Shep’s knife from where she’d stored it after reentering the JPM. She peered out the viewport while tightly grasping the ultrasharp tool. The data acquisition system remained silent.
She couldn’t do anything physically to stop the ISS from deorbiting; she was wholly dependent on a software solution. And that had to come from the patch transmitted by MCC to regain access to the thrusters—unless she could force one of the terrorists to do it.
She was convinced it was Farid who’d locked her out of the station’s controls; if he’d taken away her access, maybe with the right motivation he might give it back to her.
She’d first have to take out Bakhet, then turn her attention to Farid, keeping him lucid enough to … encourage him to remove the block he’d placed on her access.
Encourage him with Shep’s knife. It wouldn’t be pretty, and just the thought of what she might have to do made her feel nauseous.
Unbidden, a memory of something her father had told her long ago surfaced in her mind: The essence of evil is that it leads good people to perform evil deeds. Could I really carve up Farid to save the station? To save millions who might be slaughtered? To save my own life?
Kimberly nodded bleakly. I’ll have to, she told herself. There won’t be any other way.
Time was running out. And although the two of them had supposedly been trained in the Israeli Defense Force’s Krav Maga, Kimberly told herself that she could outmaneuver them.
If she didn’t, the station would continue to fall Earthward. And if it crashed that would not only be the end of the International Space Station, but it would also be the kiss of death for America’s space program.
And her death, as well.
She couldn’t wait any longer for MCC or anyone else to solve her problem.
Time for a showdown.
NASA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scott hung around the Administrator’s office as Patricia Simone signed off on the freshly typed news release. He waited until the last person headed for the door, and closed it softly when only the Administrator and her Chief of Staff, his friend Mini Mott, remained.
Simone went to her desk as she said to Mini, “Patch me in to the ISS over the Ka-band voice link. I need to explain to Kimberly everything that’s going down here.”
“Again, do you think that’s wise?” The diminutive Marine shot a glance at Scott. “She’s likely to try to take matters into her own hands and not wait for the software fix.”
Simone drew herself to her full height, several inches taller than Mini. “She’s one of our top people in the astronaut corps. She won’t go rogue.”
“She took the initiative to barricade herself in the JPM,” Mini replied. “That was out of the box.”
“That was plain survival. Her life was at stake, for God’s sake. If she’d done anything else she’d be dead now.” Simone shook her head as she sat at her desk. “She won’t go off script.”
“I’m … not so sure about that,” Scott said slowly.