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“Maybe.” The injured man tried to form a fist but gave up as the agony made tears well up in his eyes. “Let’s just get in the car and go after her.”
“What was she doing, anyway? She was close by.”
“I don’t know. I don’t care, either.” The injured man growled. “But that bitch is going to pay.”
Chapter 7
ISS-2, International Space Station 2
Three Hours After the Event
“Houston? Houston, can you hear us? Jacksonville? Can anyone hear us?”
“Anything?”
Ted Wilkins shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s like the satellite relay system is gone.”
Jackie Frey looks back out the window as she watches the surface of the earth. “The fires are spreading. There’s smoke all across the panhandle now.”
“What could be going on? We had comms until, what? Three hours ago?”
Jackie nods. “I think so.”
“Got anything yet?” Commander Devin Palmer drifts into the room, reaching out and grabbing onto a handhold to stop his forward momentum.
“Nothing yet. I think something’s wrong with the TDRS. I’m getting nothing from any of the satellites. No static, no keepalive signal, no nothing. It’s like they’re just… gone.”
“I was able to get a visual lock on four of the relay satellites and seven others in higher orbits. They all appear dead, though.”
“Dead?”
“They’re tumbling. Orbits are destabilizing. Some’ll burn up in a few days. Probably a few weeks for the others I saw.”
Ted’s eyes widen as he realizes what Devin is saying. “Did someone send them kill commands?”
Commander Palmer shrugs. “No clue.” He looks over in the corner of the room. “Did you try the emergency radio bands?”
Jackie nods, still looking out the window. “For an hour straight. No response. There’s plenty of static out there but nobody’s transmitting on anything that we can pick up.”
Commander Palmer gently pushes himself toward the window and whistles at the sight of the southeastern United States below. “Look at that smoke out in the gulf. Are those rigs that are burning?”
Jackie nods again. “I think so.”
“Holy hellfire. What’s going on down there?”
“Uh… Commander Palmer? You want to come take a look at this?” Ted wipes his arm across his brow, his nervousness and trepidation growing by the second.
“What’s going on?”
Ted points to an image on the screen of the laptop he’s working at. “I just saw a flicker in the O2 tank sensors. They were showing empty for a split second, then they were back. Then there was a surge in the main computer controls, like it was working overtime for a minute before going back to normal.”
“Hm.” Commander Palmer pulls himself in front of the computer as Ted drifts to the side. “You run a diagnostic?”
“Not yet. This happened just now, when you two were talking.”
Commander Palmer taps on the keyboard, paging through the software that shows readouts on all of the systems running on the space station. At first glance everything appears normal, at least until Palmer starts digging deeper into the systems. Strange fluctuations in pressurized tanks, voltage changes in key electrical systems and seemingly random spikes appear in the main computer system.
Twice the size of the ISS, the ISS-2 has been online and manned for six months and has already served as host to several civilian and politician visits and countless scientific experiments. The original ISS is still in orbit, though it is unmanned and offline, with plans to decommission it in the works. Only three astronauts—all American—are onboard the ISS-2, though five more were scheduled to arrive from Venezuela, Russia and China within the next four to six weeks. Being slightly understaffed on the ISS-2 has not proven to be a problem for the three astronauts as they have had many automated and upgraded systems at their disposal, making the ISS’s systems look primitive in comparison.
