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again.
Thinks about the shuttle's cargo, the cryogenic pods containing billions of
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the mutant spaceborn viruses tailored to destroy the epidemic called viral
Huntington's, the cure into which Tempel has sunk part of its massive research
budget for eight years.
Pony Express buffets as it strikes the shuttle's slipstream. The shuttle is
vast, 200
meters long, occupying half of the forward view from the delta's canopy,
pounding through the atmosphere at twice the speed of sound.
He's been over the shuttle specs, and it's immensely strong, with multiple
redundancy built in, able to absorb implausible amounts of damage. Cowboy
figures he'll have to shoot it down about eight times over, and he's got less
than two minutes before touchdown at Vandenberg.
Microwave squawks from Nevada batter his sensors. Cowboy ignores them. First,
he thinks,
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d.txt the thrusters. The shuttle can out-accelerate him if he doesn't cripple
it. He falls into the shuttle's trough, decelerates, fires a radar-homer.
Pushes the delta into the sun again.
"What's that signal?" one of the shuttle pilots asks, his passive sensors
having picked up the radar pulse from the missile. His answer comes soon
enough. Flame blossoms at, the shuttle's base, among the clustered rockets.
"Himmel!" says the same voice. Cowboy pushes another radar-homer out of its
fairing.
"Ground, this is Tempel one-eight-three. Report we are under attack..." The
boy twigs fast, Cowboy thinks. The second missile plunges into the shuttle's
stern and sends molten metal spewing through the thruster compartment. Cowboy
is already feeding alcohol into the afterburners, slamming back into his couch
again, diving under the target. The shuttle is twisting, trying to make its
escape. Too slowly, too big to miss.
"Tempel one-eight-three, say again?" Ground doesn't seem to be very quick on
the uptake.
Cowboy looses another missile in the direction of some cargo doors and pops
out his dorsal minigun turret. Thirty-millimeter rounds riddle the shuttle's
belly. If he knocks out enough hydraulics, they won't be able to drop their
landing gear, and even if the shuttle gets away, it might crash on landing.
Sparks stitch a bright trail along the shuttle's vast belly as pieces of alloy
shielding are torn apart. Freon pours like mist into the sky from broken
coolant veins. The pilot isn't waiting for the people on the ground to figure
things out; he's making maximum use of his maneuvering thrusters and flaps,
and is dropping like an elevator, trying to swat the delta with his entire
craft. Cowboy dodges easily, fires a missile into a riddled part of the ship,
and hopes it will cause structural damage. His dorsal minigun is empty and he
retracts the turret.
He burns forward along the massive ship, inverting himself, the belly gun
slamming out of its faired hatchway. He begins firing the minigun up into the
command section, aiming for the control crystal and the pilot. An oxygen tank
explodes with a puff of frigid gas. He can see electricity arcing between
broken cables. He fires another missile into the wreckage and suddenly the
shuttle's frame screams in pain, a sound Cowboy hears as attenuated shock
waves that rock the
Express. Pieces of metal begin peeling off from the base of a fifty-foot
canard, little bits of chaff whipped by the thundering slipstream.
"She's coming apart under us," the pilot reports, and it's true. Pony Express
twists out of danger as the canard rips away, as hydraulic fluid spurts like
arterial blood into the air. At
Mach two there isn't much leeway for a shape that loses its aerodynamics. The
shuttle lurches, slews to one side, begins to crumple.
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"Tempel one-eight-three..." the pilot begins, but then there's a final,
echoing click as the transmitter flattens against a wall of air and suddenly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]