Post by Admin on Mar 21, 2021 19:22:07 GMT
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Introducing Liberty Belle
From E-Man #5, November 1973, the introductory story named Liberty Belle, Freedom's Star
It had started out as a normal day for Caroline Dean, owner and CEO of Dean Fashions, one of the world's largest fashion empires. Today she was working in the New York City office of Superb Styles Modeling agency. She had been interrupted by a gangster named Albert Carr, who worked for the biggest NY criminal syndicate. The Syndicate wanted in on her empire; she declined, politely but firmly. An unconscious Mr. Carr was carried out by Tina and Pidge, two of the models, when Maryanne, her personal assistant, announced that she had a Red Phone call directly from the President.
It had started out as a normal day for Caroline Dean, owner and CEO of Dean Fashions, one of the world's largest fashion empires. Today she was working in the New York City office of Superb Styles Modeling agency. She had been interrupted by a gangster named Albert Carr, who worked for the biggest NY criminal syndicate. The Syndicate wanted in on her empire; she declined, politely but firmly. An unconscious Mr. Carr was carried out by Tina and Pidge, two of the models, when Maryanne, her personal assistant, announced that she had a Red Phone call directly from the President.
"You've got top secret clearance for the Sky Spy mission. Fly to Cape Kennedy at once! And, let me make one thing perfectly clear, Ms. Dean: your country NEEDS you! Now, more than ever!"
Within an hour, she was on a military jet to Cape Kennedy, piloted by Air Force Captain Perkins, in her Liberty Belle persona on a top secret mission!
At the the Cape, she revealed to the general in charge that her orders were that he give her every cooperation, and she was raced to the boarding area for the Skylab III mission, where the three astronauts were about to board their Apollo capsule as the countdown approached T minus 15 minutes. Liberty Belle pulled astronaut Major Richard Neal out of line and accused him of being Comrade Kalovsky, an enemy of freedom. (No country of origin is given...) Kalovsky fired his specially-tuned laser ray projector at her but she dodged, kicked it out of his hand and knocked him out in two blows. He claimed that the laser ray would incinerate her into undetectable powder, but instead it hit the metal wall of a launch pad building with no effect.
Liberty Belle ordered the countdown suspended. After a thorough 10 minute mission briefing and an equally thorough 10 minute physical, she donned the special space suit stored at the Cape just for her, and boarded the Apollo capsule as a replacement for Major Neal. Colonel Dr. Leonard Joyce, the mission commander, tried to abort the mission but it was too late. When they reached Skylab, Liberty Belle proved her Skylab qualifications by ably assisting in the docking maneuvers between the capsule and space station, and as soon as they boarded and doffed their spacesuits, she proved easily able to maneuver in zero gravity.
Dr. Joyce finally demanded to know why she had replaced Neal; she revealed that he had been an enemy of freedom, and that Skylab was in imminent danger of attack by Sky Pirates.
<see you next issue!>
At the the Cape, she revealed to the general in charge that her orders were that he give her every cooperation, and she was raced to the boarding area for the Skylab III mission, where the three astronauts were about to board their Apollo capsule as the countdown approached T minus 15 minutes. Liberty Belle pulled astronaut Major Richard Neal out of line and accused him of being Comrade Kalovsky, an enemy of freedom. (No country of origin is given...) Kalovsky fired his specially-tuned laser ray projector at her but she dodged, kicked it out of his hand and knocked him out in two blows. He claimed that the laser ray would incinerate her into undetectable powder, but instead it hit the metal wall of a launch pad building with no effect.
Liberty Belle ordered the countdown suspended. After a thorough 10 minute mission briefing and an equally thorough 10 minute physical, she donned the special space suit stored at the Cape just for her, and boarded the Apollo capsule as a replacement for Major Neal. Colonel Dr. Leonard Joyce, the mission commander, tried to abort the mission but it was too late. When they reached Skylab, Liberty Belle proved her Skylab qualifications by ably assisting in the docking maneuvers between the capsule and space station, and as soon as they boarded and doffed their spacesuits, she proved easily able to maneuver in zero gravity.
Dr. Joyce finally demanded to know why she had replaced Neal; she revealed that he had been an enemy of freedom, and that Skylab was in imminent danger of attack by Sky Pirates.
<see you next issue!>
Note: you can read the full story summarized above online in comic book format online. Click on the link below, then scroll down to the splash page showing a blonde action heroine in a red-white-and-blue costume fighting a guy in a spacesuit and click on it; this will open the story and you can click through!
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Ionic Problems
"Major Neal was an enemy of freedom, Dr. Joyce... and I am here now because Skylab III is almost certain to be attacked by SPACE PIRATES!"
"What?! Space Pirates! That's absurd!" Joyce sputtered. "Why would they wait until we arrived to 'attack'? Skylab has been uncrewed since mid-September; they've had 8 weeks during which they could have taken over with nobody to stop them!" He paused for a second. "Wait! They think the phony Neal is with is! It must have something to do with his secret project!"
She nodded approvingly. "That's it, exactly, Dr. Joyce. The Ionic Thruster Project. As you know, Majors Garrett and Gibson were building the Ionic Thrusters during the past Skylab missions. The Ionic Thrusters, when completed, will be a propulsion source that uses virtually no fuel and is powerful enough to keep Skylab from falling out of orbit. The real Major Neal was scheduled to complete the project and incorporate the latest advancements, which he developed on Earth during the past few months but that can only be tested in orbit. The phony Major Neal was scheduled to kill you and Captain Pangue, and then complete the project - and then welcome the pirates aboard!"
Joyce grabbed a tabletop to keep from floating away and then nodded violently. "I know about the Thruster project! But it's hard to believe that someone would kill..."
She cut him off. "You may not know that the thrusters are designed to be dismounted once they are completed. Just think about how valuable those would be, stolen from Skylab and mounted on, say, a space vessel similar to the Shuttle. It would be able to fly in air or space at incredible speeds, and even escape Earth's gravity field entirely! What a deadly bomber it would make - faster than the fastest fighter, able to approach from orbit beyond the range of any anti-aircraft weapons, drop bombs on any target, and then escape unscathed back to orbit."
Captain Doug Pangue, the pilot of the Skylab III mission, joined in, horror in his voice. "You're right, that would be deadly! Something our enemies would definitely be ready to kill to obtain. There's nothing our military has that could touch it!"
She nodded, floating gently toward the ceiling, where she pushed off toward the control panel. "There's more. One of the things Major Neal claimed to have discovered recently - the reason he was killed and Kalovsky inserted in his place - was that with only minor modifications, an Ionic Thruster can be modified to launch Ion Torpedoes - each as powerful as an atomic bomb! There are three Thrusters on board - suppose the Space Pirates mounted two of them on their vessel for propulsion, and modified the third as a weapon? What could stop them from destroying the capital cities of every other nation but their own - and then ruling the world?"
The other two astronauts were by now appropriately appalled and worried. "So, what do we do? We can't escape - the Ionic Thrusters are not completed yet and are currently useless," Dr. Joyce asked almost desperately. "And we don't have any weapons to resist." He thought for a second, and then continued reluctantly. "We can rig the place to blow up by remote control, get in the capsule and leave and then send back a radio signal!"
"I suppose we can do that as a last resort, Dr. Joyce," Liberty Belle agreed reluctantly. "If we have the time. Still, I'd rather fight the pirates - and beat them!"
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Incoming
She stopped her slow flight by grabbing the back of one of the seats at the control station, gracefully rotated her body, and pushed off the chair to drift slowly towards the equipment lockers where they had stowed their spacesuits and the single personal gear bag each was allowed.
"As for weapons, you are about to be surprised. I weigh a lot less than you big strong guys, so NASA allowed me to pack some extra gear in my bag - and my spacesuit is specially designed. Military Intelligence has been anticipating something like this ever since the theft last year of the X-20 Dyna-Soar prototype 2 years ago." She used a forefinger against the lockers to bring herself to a stop, then opened hers, and while holding the handle with one hand, she unsealed her bag with the other.
"For starters, there's this!" She pulled out a hand weapon, with standard pistol grip under a bulky cylinder, pointedly holding it by the barrel and not the grip. "This is what Kalovsky planned to use to 'dispose of' the two of you."
"Are you NUTS?" Joyce demanded. "If the hull gets punctured, we could die in seconds!"
"I know about the dangers of explosive decompression, Dr. Joyce, and so did Kalovsky and the organization he worked for," Liberty Belle replied reassuringly. "This is a 'laser ray projector', specially tuned to disintegrate organic matter only, into 'undetectable powder', as he put it. It's totally ineffective against anything else."
"You know, Len," Pangue spoke up, "A weapon like that would be really useful in space against invaders!"
"I'd like to test it first..." the mission commander spoke cautiously.
"Agreed, if we have time, and we can crush it and send it out the disposal chute to burn up on reentry if you still think it's dangerous," Liberty Belle smiled and nodded, then her tone turned more serious. "If we have time..."
But maybe they were out of time... a loud alarm, followed by a recorded voice announced over the station's internal PA system: "BLAAATTTT!!!!! BLAAATTTT!!!!! Radar alert! Radar alert! Incoming! Meteor detection radar has detected a potential danger incoming." It continued to repeat. For the first five repetitions it was painfully loud, easily loud enough to awake a sleeping astronaut, and then it dropped in volume to just a loud yell.
Liberty Belle pulled open each of her teammates' lockers and started their spacesuits floating toward them, then began donning her own. It was standard procedure - at the first sign of danger, SUIT UP! And only after suiting up, then investigate... Both her teammates also donned their suits, and then the three moved to the control station to see what else their instruments could tell them. Doug touched a control and the volume of the alarm dropped even further, but it would continue to remain audible and repeat until one of the astronauts flipped open the small cage over the button that would reassure the station's computer that they danger was past.
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Outgoing
Radar showed them something about the same size as the station approaching them very slowly from the end opposite where their capsule was docked. The TV cameras pointed in that direction gave them a good view of an approaching space plane.
"It sure looks like the Dyna-Soar!" Doug yelped, followed by a scream of profanity directed at the blankety blank enemies of freedom and their gosh darned spies. "If we ever get back to Earth, I'm going to look that damn Kolsovsky up in prison and put him in the infirmary for years!"
"The must figure Kolvosky has already taken you guys out! They're probably trying to contact him by radio right now," Liberty Belle guessed. "Do you have a scanner? You should talk to them and tell them that Major Dean had a heart attack and he's unconscious. Otherwise they might just blast us out of the sky!"
"We're not well equipped to talk to unexpected visitors, unless they're using a standard channel," Joyce replied ironically. "We didn't expect to get many callers. I'll see if they can hear us. But what can we do except surrender?"
"Try and keep them from occupied, Dr. Joyce. I'm going out through the capsule; maybe I can figure out a way to take out their pilot. Meanwhile, here's something for you guys." She handed them each a hand weapon, again with a pistol grip in the middle of a cylinder, bigger around and over twice as long as the organic laser projector. "Keep your suits on! These babies can blast through an inch of steel in a second! But they use a lot of power really fast - 5 shots maximum."
Joyce grabbed the microphone for the transmitter designed to talk to Earth. "This is Colonel Joyce of the US Air Force, in command of the NASA Mission Skylab III to the approaching space vessel. Please halt your approach and identify yourself. Continuing your approach will be interpreted as an act of aggression." He sounded calm and in command; Liberty Belle approved. She began squirming through the 3' diameter access tunnel back into the Apollo capsule.
Going 'out through the capsule' was dangerous. The side hatch on an Apollo capsule was designed to be sealed before blastoff and never opened manually again; when the capsule splashed down, an explosive release would blast it away. If she blew open the hatch up here, it would be deadly to reenter the atmosphere in the wounded capsule - with only the resources on the station, they couldn't possible seal it tight enough to protect them from the super heated plasma fireball that that would burn as hot as a star just below their heat shield as they fell through the atmosphere. So they would have to take command of the pirate ship - or wait for the US to send a rescue rocket. Belle wasn't willing to wait!
The Dyna Soar prototype had a single-pilot cockpit and room for four men more in the cargo bay. They had needed to leave room for Kalsovsky to return with them, so likely there were four pirates aboard that vessel, Captain Sable and three crew. They were probably armed with the organic laser projectors. They wouldn't be expecting resistance, and definitely not a boarding party, even of only one!
But of course, once she blew out the hatch, she would be facing the biggest danger of all... an untethered space walk the length of Skylab and then across to the pirate ship. No human astronaut had ever before space-walked without a tether! Somehow, the thought of facing the armed pirates was no longer quite so troublesome!
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Space Walk
"WHAT?" a deep male voice, loud and sounding startled in response to Joyce's hail. "This is..." a longer than conversational pause. "This is... Captain Spacedog Sable, pilot and commander of the..." another long pause "...the armed corvette Space Shark. I demand to speak with Major Dean. Now, or I'll destroy Skylab!"
Captain Pague snorted and started quietly humming a once-popular song, 'Dead Man's Curve' by Jan and Dean. None of the other listeners appeared to notice.
"If you destroy Skylab, you won't be able to speak with Major Dean, will you?" Joyce replied sardonically. "In any case, you can't speak with Major Dean anyway. Damned rookie mistake - he bashed his head on the ceiling like he'd never been in free fall before, and started having convulsions. We had to sedate him."
In the capsule, Liberty Belle, who was listening to the exchange via her spacesuit radio, smiled to herself at Joyce's story. She strapped into the command seat and fired her own laser through the observation ports, and listened sadly to the diminishing sigh of air rushing into space. This capsule was definitely no longer useful for re-entry. She flipped back the safety cage over the hatch detonation switch and toggled it. She felt but barely heard the explosion as the last wisps of air rushed out after the hatch was blown away. Before she exited, she turned off the radio transmitter in her helmet and cautiously tested the experimental EVA features designed into her special spacesuit. The variable strength electromagnets in the palms of her gauntlets, polyens (armor protecting the knee joints) and soles of her boots worked. She cautiously fired each of the hand-held pistol-like thrusters, each connected to a special propellant tank at the waist of her suit, and then she was ready. Ready to be the first human astronaut to perform an untethered space walk!
'Not exactly how you dreamed of becoming famous, is it, hot stuff?' she laughed in her head, as she unstrapped and then cautiously wriggled out the hatch.
Suddenly, a powerful transmission from Mission Control overrode anything the local opponents had to say.
"This is General Edwin York, commander of the Skylab mission. Captain Sable, I demand you withdraw, in the name of the United States military. Or we will find you and you WILL pay for any atrocities you commit today!"
"Why, General Eddie, how mean of you!" Sable mocked with a laugh. "Nothing YOU can do to help. So, you will shut up from now on, or I will destroy the Skylab and kill the crew!"
"General, please, don't interrupt again. Let the men on the spot handle this!" Joyce used his own best command voice.
"Harrumph!" York harrumphed, loudly. "Go ahead, Colonel Joyce. Good luck to you. And, Sable, remember - my men are safe or your life is forfeit!" Vey quietly he added, "I'll join the hunt for you myself, and when we find you..."
"Just shut up and go away, General!" Sable cut him off, but didn't sound quite as self-assured as he had seconds ago.
Liberty Belle activated the palm and boot sole electromagnets and pulled herself out of the capsule, executing a gymnastic maneuver like a slow flip to get her feet on the hull of the capsule without releasing her grip with her hands. There was enough steel and nickle in the hull materials of the capsule that if she moved cautiously, she wouldn't be thrown off into space. She knew she would be using the maneuvering thrusters soon enough; no use launching herself by accident!
Joyce and 'Sable' were still arguing over the radio; apparently Sable hadn't seen the hatch cover she had blasted open zooming away, eventually to burn up in the atmosphere. "I am sending two of my men aboard through the fore airlock to confirm the condition of Major Dean. They are armed. You will assist them with whatever they require."
"That is an act of piracy!" Joyce warned.
"Ah, you finally get it..." Sable laughed. "Took you long enough. Yes, I am the first of a new breed of man - the Space Pirates. And you are the unfortunate first to face this new breed. Prepare to be boarded!"
"Hold on," Joyce snapped back. "We've only been aboard for an hour, and dealing with Major Dean's self-imposed medical emergency during that time. We haven't had time to power up and check most of the on-board systems yet. It will take at least 20 minutes to prep the fore airlock for use!"
"You're stalling, but it won't do you any good. No help can reach you from Earth for a day at least. You have 20 minutes. If the lock isn't ready by then, we'll blast our way in..."
"And destroy us, you've used that line before." Captain Prague cut him off, sounding theatrically bored with the whole threat thing.
But suddenly, the threat took on real meaning. On their TV monitor, the astronauts in the control room could see part of the Space Shark's fuselage split, as each half slowly swung back to reveal the interior of the space plane's fore cargo bay. A platform rose out of the cargo bay, and mounted on the platform was an incredible mechanism... a long rail which passed through the center of dozens of rings, all of which were connected to a box at the rear end of the platform by a dense rat's nest of heavy cables.
Prague instant shouted, "A RAIL GUN! Concealed in the cargo bay!" He sounded more fascinated than scared, but he was no longer pretending boredom.
"Ah, I've heard that you appreciate advanced weaponry, Comrade Captain. Yes, it's a railgun. Just think of what it will do to you if you force me to use it!" Sable was clearly proud of his weapon! "Powered by a miniature nuclear reactor, it fires soccer-ball-sized solid steel projectiles and in the vacuum of space, these projectiles are easily accelerated instantly to over 2 miles per second. One such projectile would smash through the feeble hull of your Skylab, crash through anything inside in milliseconds and tear out the other side without even slowing down! With a rate of fire of one projectile per second, I can easily rip your precious station to shreds in a minute!"
Belle realized she didn't have time to slowly and cautiously walk the whole length of the Skylab. She had to reach the Space Shark before the railgun was fired.
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Learning Experience
As long as she'd been in confined spaces, able to see walls, floor and ceiling around her, Belle's extensive training as an astronaut in the mid-sixties had left her easily able to deal with zero gravity. But after she carefully released the edges of the hatch and stood up straight, and saw the disk of the Earth filling most of the sky 'above' her head without any nearby walls to reference, the universe whirled around her, leaving her dizzy and swaying. For an instant she was disoriented, on the edge of panic, and feeling sick.
Her hindbrain was screaming at her: "YOU'RE hanging head down 270 miles above the Earth!!!!" and her astronaut and scuba training were also screaming: "You can die if you hurl in your helmet!!!"
'My feet are DOWN! C'mon, Dean, you're trained for this! You are NOT upside down!! Look DOWN at your feet! Think about your mission!'
She turned her head down and forced her eyes open, so she could see not much except her boots resting solidly on the hull of the capsule. She then carefully and slowly raised her head until she could see Skylab's fuselage in front of her - the smaller cylinder of the docking adapter close to her, and past that, the much larger cylinder of the joined instrumentation unit and orbital workshop. The helmet limited her field of vision, so she couldn't see the giant, shining Earth! Her orientation shifted involuntarily again - now she was lying on her back, looking up at a tall tower, and it was night, with brilliant stars filling the sky above the tower. And her task was to climb that tower.
'I CAN do this!' she reassured herself. 'I MUST do this!' If necessary, she could magnetize her palms and poleyns and crawl 'up' on her hands and knees, like a spider or a fly - but how much better if she could fly?! 'More dignified, too!' she sniffed mentally.
She took a pistol-thruster in each hand, turned off the boot sole magnets, aimed one pistol behind her and gently pulled the trigger. A thin steam of vapor shot from the barrel, glittering in the brilliant sunlight though she couldn't see the stream behind her, and she was moving - 'flying' straight up, a few feet away the face of the 'tower' that Skylab had become. She had to concentrate intently and use both pistols to guide her flight to avoid all the projections from the hull, such as radio antennae and open hatches for observation or venting of waste. The concentration on the task at hand helped keep her instinctive fear of this very strange environment at bay.
Halfway to the 'top' she passed four several very solid-seeming scaffolds, spaced evenly around the cylindrical body of the station. On top of each scaffold, mounted on a swivel, was one of the unfinished experimental prototype Ionic Thrusters, cylinders with a rocket nozzle at one end and a rounded nose at the other.
Belle was starting to feel more comfortable in the environment - in fact, floating weightlessly upward next to this tower reminded her strongly of a favorite memory from a scuba vacation in the Caribbean a few years ago: ascending effortlessly through crystal clear water from a deep dive near the wall of an underwater canyon, the ocean floor far under her feet! Though she didn't turn her head to look, she could still feel the looming Earth, giant and close - but now it was behind her, no longer below her and pulling her to her doom! She was heartened, and used her propulsion pistols carefully to increase her speed.
She quickly approached the end of her 'flight', the 'fore' end of Skylab. She carefully used her pistols to slow down, and then she magnetized the palms of her gauntlets and poleyns and was drawn back to the hull on hands and knees. She crept forward slowly and looked past the end - and suddenly, instead of peeking over the top of a tower, she seemed to be lying on her back again, looking up at the bottom of the Space Shark from less than thirty feet away as it maneuvered carefully closer to the fore hatch! Only this time, the feeling of disorientation was much shorter. She was getting used to the orientation switches and they were definitely proving useful, as each reorientation provided her with a familiar mental framework that was appropriate for the next task at hand. And the familiar scenarios helped her hold back her instinctive fear of falling that was induced by zero gravity!
The formerly flat underside of the sky plane's fuselage was covered in scaffolding, almost certainly planned for mounting the soon-to-be-stolen Ionic Thrusters! The normal reentry procedure for a space plane, unpowered descent at speeds that engulfed the vehicle in star-hot plasma, would vaporize this exposed scaffolding and almost certainly destroy the Space Shark; the 'pirate' organization behind Captain Sable must be very certain that the Ionic Thrusters would provide the space plane with the power it needed to make a slower, powered, controlled and much cooler re-entry.
For the first few minutes of her space walk, over her helmet radio, she'd heard Colonel Joyce giving a status report to Ground Control, complete with the details of Major Dean's medical condition, interrupted by demands from Sable to know when the hatch would be operational. Thankfully, General York and Ground Control had remained silent the whole time, giving no further provocation to the pirate. Then Captain Prague had managed to inform her about the railgun and the open cargo bay. And now it seemed that Sable would be stalled no longer - either that damned hatch was operational NOW and open in five minutes or his team would cut their way in! Joyce reluctantly agreed.
Liberty Belle planted her feet on the hull, crouched slightly, turned off the electromagnets, and pushed off towards the underside of the Space Shark.
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
The Waste Products Hit the Air Recycler
Dr. Joyce practically yelled: "Captain Sable - we've completed the power up process to the point where we can open the fore hatch. The airlock is only large enough for one man at a time; your 'crew' will need to take turns. Once inside, there is a crawlway that extends through the recycling unit to the orbital workshop. Captain Prague will meet your men at the exit from the crawlway and show them to the 'infirmary' unit where they can observe 'Major Dean'. Hell, if you want, Prague will even help them shove Dean back into his spacesuit and out the lock so you can take that traitorous rat away with you! Or shove him out WITHOUT a suit!"
Nobody believed that this was what would really happen... but the men in the Skylab had to play along to buy time, and put their faith in Liberty Belle. If she couldn't prevent Sable from using the railgun, they were sure the pirate captain would shred the station sooner or later, no matter what they did, and even if they survived the shredding, they'd be doomed to die when the air in their suits ran out. But at the very least, both Joyce and Prague were determined that they would arrest and use whatever force was necessary to detain any pirates that boarded Skylab, and if Sable destroyed it anyway, he'd be killing his own crew. Once they were unable to produce the phony 'Major Dean' the waste products would hit the air recycler - that was their own deadline and they would be ready. They did have surprise on their side - there were supposed to be no weapons aboard Skylab. The pirates might be expecting knives, but not lasers! And they had their own secret weapon - Liberty Belle!
Liberty Belle concentrated on the slowly approaching scaffolding - she didn't want to be sickened by yet another bout of disorientation, dizziness, and nausea! She used her pistols to slow, activated the magnets in her gauntlets and grabbed a strut, which stuck to her palm. In seconds she was clambering over the scaffold to the rear of the space plane, and she started to swing out and around the trailing edge of the starboard wing - and cursed loudly and creatively when she discovered that the thermal insulation bricks covering the hull of the Space Shark were non-magnetic.
'Good thing my helmet transmitter is OFF!' she thought thankfully. 'Who knows WHAT Sable might do if he unexpectedly heard a woman right now! I guess I'm not going to be able to crawl across the wing - back to flying! Note to self, don't look up!'
This time, the Earth wouldn't be above her; there would be nothing but black space going on forever, threatening to suck her away into its depths! 'Nothing to worry about, I'm probably humanity's number one expert in flying untethered in a space suit by now! Just another hobby of mine!' She smiled at her thoughts, then turned her attention back to her mission.
Once again, short puffs of vapor glistened in the bright sun as she gently rose above the starboard wing. And she was thrilled to see that the Space Shark's rear cargo bay was just starting to split open. 'Back to hiding... but at least the waiting around is done with!'
She quickly slipped back beneath the wing so she wouldn't be spotted by the team of pirates that was about to exit from the hold. The space plane was shuddering slightly to the mechanism that was opening the clamshell doors. It took about two minutes to slowly swing them fully open; she waited an extra minute after the shuddering stopped, then carefully peeked back over the wing... three spacesuits, each trailing a long flexible cable, had floated out of the open cargo bay and were moving away from her, proceeding slowly towards the station's fore airlock, the cables apparently unreeling as they floated farther away.
The three pirates were unskilled at maneuvering in space; they frequently bumped into each other or flew off in random directions, depending on their tethers to bring them to a stop and short bursts from their hand-held propulsion devices to get them moving in the right direction again. Two of the cables were already twisted together, which further hindered the maneuvering of those two pirates. As soon as they had started moving, over her radio she heard some faint swearing in a language she wasn't familiar with, apparently rebroadcast from Captain Sable's control cabin, because it ended abruptly. She flicked through the channels her own suit could receive, trying to find the one they were using but no luck - she hoped maybe the Skylab's own receivers could be tuned to that channel so the crew, and Mission Control, might hear them. Their conversation might help identify them later. Even if Skylab's own crew failed to survive this incident...
'Hey, hot stuff!! STOP IT with that 'fail to survive' thinking! What kind of a 'secret weapon' thinks that way? Time to get your cute rear in gear!' She zoomed into the rear cargo bay - there were seats for four men and it was empty. She thought about cutting the tethers, then, 'Not yet, C.D. But it's a good idea; don't forget it!'
Each seat fronted a simple control panel; three toggle switches, each with labels in two languages and pictographs. 'Open Cargo Bay Door,' she grinned at that one; it reminded her of a favorite movie. 'Fill with air / evacuate', 'Intercom'. Space Pirate Crew member doesn't look like a highly skilled, highly paid job!'
She slipped out of the rear bay and into the front. Next to the mechanical mechanism that raised and lowered the railgun platform, there was a similar control panel to those in the other bay, slightly more complex, with four switches instead of just three. The platform sat atop a single column with a row of teeth inset; the teeth meshed with a gear on th end of a driveshaft which stuck out from another box, and a cable ran from that box to the presumed reactor. 'Easy enough to figure out - and wreck!' she chuckled in satisfaction.
She then studied the railgun closely. The center rail, made of a slick ceramic material, had a groove like the ball return at a bowling alley and it was partially enclosed by a cylinder composed of a lot of individual rings, set closely together. Each ring was thick and heavy and connected to two heavy wires which ran towards a big bulky box; near the box the wires twisted together into a heavy cable what passed through a sealed port into that box. 'That box must be the tiny nuclear reactor Sable is so proud of,' Belle deduced. 'The rings are electromagnets; the wires carry the electricity that energizes the magnets.' There were several controls on the reactor - 'Railgun power on/off', she read. 'A button for 'single shot', another for 'rapid fire'. A wide smile lit her face. 'This is going to be WAY too easy!'
She moved back to the lift control panel and flipped the fourth switch. 'Raise / lower railgun'. That's the one I want! Lower away!' She flipped the switch and was gratified when the platform jerkily began moving back into the cargo bay.
She couldn't hear it yet, but on the radio channel between the Space Shark's pilot and crew, the waste products started hitting the air recycler! Sable was demanding to know what the frup his crew was doing with the railgun, and the crew was screaming back that they had no idea what he was talking about.
Belle popped up out of the bay and observed that all three space-walking pirates were clipped with shorter tethers to the cleats next to Skylab's fore hatch for just that purpose. Two were spinning helplessly and getting wrapped up in their tethers, apparently as the result of careless, rapid motions. The third was holding fast to a cleat, looking back toward the Space Shark and gesticulating wildly. The American's couldn't hear him, but he was screaming about the figure he could see in the cargo bay!
A sweep of her laser cut the longer tethers of the three spacewalkers so that they could no longer just climb back to the Space Shark hand over hand. Back in the bay, the railgun was now fully retracted.
She looked at the power meter on her laser - it was almost empty. 'Hope I have enough power for just one more blast!' she thought, as she took aim at the power cord for the lift. She pulled the trigger and fired at the lift cord; The laser blasted strongly for a half-second, then flickered out with her finger still tight on the trigger. There was a brilliant blue-white flash like a nearby lightning bolt, and when she could see again, the cord was severed and a red warning light was flashing on the side of her laser - it was out of power!
She switched her helmet transmitter back on. "Dr. Joyce, this is Liberty Belle. I've taken the rail gun out of action! Right now there are 3 men clustered around the fore hatch - unless you let them in, there's nowhere for them to go 'cause I cut their tethers. You guys deal with them - I'll take care of Sable!"
Flying waste products indeed!
She moved back to the lift control panel and flipped the fourth switch. 'Raise / lower railgun'. That's the one I want! Lower away!' She flipped the switch and was gratified when the platform jerkily began moving back into the cargo bay.
She couldn't hear it yet, but on the radio channel between the Space Shark's pilot and crew, the waste products started hitting the air recycler! Sable was demanding to know what the frup his crew was doing with the railgun, and the crew was screaming back that they had no idea what he was talking about.
Belle popped up out of the bay and observed that all three space-walking pirates were clipped with shorter tethers to the cleats next to Skylab's fore hatch for just that purpose. Two were spinning helplessly and getting wrapped up in their tethers, apparently as the result of careless, rapid motions. The third was holding fast to a cleat, looking back toward the Space Shark and gesticulating wildly. The American's couldn't hear him, but he was screaming about the figure he could see in the cargo bay!
A sweep of her laser cut the longer tethers of the three spacewalkers so that they could no longer just climb back to the Space Shark hand over hand. Back in the bay, the railgun was now fully retracted.
She looked at the power meter on her laser - it was almost empty. 'Hope I have enough power for just one more blast!' she thought, as she took aim at the power cord for the lift. She pulled the trigger and fired at the lift cord; The laser blasted strongly for a half-second, then flickered out with her finger still tight on the trigger. There was a brilliant blue-white flash like a nearby lightning bolt, and when she could see again, the cord was severed and a red warning light was flashing on the side of her laser - it was out of power!
She switched her helmet transmitter back on. "Dr. Joyce, this is Liberty Belle. I've taken the rail gun out of action! Right now there are 3 men clustered around the fore hatch - unless you let them in, there's nowhere for them to go 'cause I cut their tethers. You guys deal with them - I'll take care of Sable!"
Flying waste products indeed!
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...
Back on Earth they were scrambling to launch the SLR Sky Lab Rescue vehicle. SL R was a modified Apollo capsule which required only two crew, but could return to Earth with three additional passengers. SL R was designed for rescue missions, not to fight Space Pirates. It would take months to outfit the vehicle with weaponry, but General York had some plans for addressing that issue.
"Lieutenant O'Neill will be the pilot, and I want Colonel Austin as crew. And I want the launch as soon as Austin can reach the Cape!" he ordered sternly to his staff. "And include some vacuum-capable weapons in that capsule. So get going!"
These two together would be the most deadly assault team that could be delivered to orbit on short notice. Air Force Special Recon / Black Ops Lt. Jack O'Neill was becoming legendary as one of the toughest warriors the Air Force had ever produced. Colonel Steve Austin was an ex-astronaut who had been severely injured 6 months ago in the crash of an experimental lifting body aircraft. He had been "rebuilt" in an operation that replaced his right arm, both legs and left eye with "bionic" prosthetics that gave him enhanced strength, speed and vision. He was currently working in Houston as part of the ground crew for the Skylab mission; a fast Air Force jet could have him at the Cape in a couple of hours.
"Sir," one officer responded respectfully, "Switching Captain O'Neill's assignment from Skylab backup pilot to SL R is easy." Several of the aides laughed at the notion of anything to do with O'Neill being easy. "He's at the Cape and trained on the vehicle. But Colonel Austin has just been released from 6 months of rehab here in Houston and he still sometimes has accidents due to problems controlling his new prosthetics. He hasn't had any training in using his new powers in zero gravity yet. And nobody knows if his bionics will even work in zero-gravity."
"Then he'll get on-the-job training!" York barked. "I read the report of yesterday's zero-g training flight, and they reported no issues! Get him to the Cape fastest, and have SL R ready to launch 10 minutes after he's suited up!"
The aide knew better than to contradict his boss - but he'd read that same report. Yesterday's training had exposed Austin to zero-g conditions for the first time since his bionics had been installed - for less than an hour. He'd been warned to severely limit his actions during the zero-g sessions, as nobody wanted to be aboard a plane if he accidentally burst through the hull while they were a dozen miles high and already falling earthward at a hundred miles an hour! So while there had been no reported malfunctions, it hadn't been a strenuous test of his new bionics, either.
"If Austin's bionics work in zero gravity, I feel sorry for those pirates!" one of the aides said to another as they rushed off to get everything in motion.
"Even if Austin isn't useful, I STILL feel sorry for them," his mate replied. "Have you ever met Jack O'Neill?" He laughed and rolled his eyes, then hurried off to the communication center to notify the Cape to prep O'Neill as the pilot of the SL R vehicle. Good luck to them!
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Belle Turns Up the Heat
"WHO IS THAT WOMAN?!?!?" Sable roared. "You have been trying to trick me! I will DESTROY YOU!"
"Check your instruments, Blackbeard, and your rear-view mirror if you got one!" Belle laughed. "I suggest, though, that you DON"T fire the railgun!"
Sable _did_ have TV cameras in the cargo bays, but he never used them - why bother? He switched the railgun camera on - and gasped in shock... the business end of the rail was maybe 10 feet from the back of his command chair.
"I thought that seeing your railgun pointed at your back might quiet you down a bit! Now it's my turn... this button that says 'Fire railgun', I wonder if it really works?" She place a finger gently on the button. "Wonder if you'll feel anything? I'll bet not."
"What do you want? Please be very careful!" Sable sounded very conciliatory...
The two men on board Skylab laughed. "Hey, Jolly Roger, sound's like you are about to be 'hoist by your own petard'. You know that means 'blown up by your own bomb', right?" Pangue crowed. "Pretty appropriate for a pirate, don't ya think?"
"Now, Doug, we shouldn't be making fun of the misfortune of others," Belle scolded her fellow astronaut flippantly. "But you're right, what could be more appropriate than the first space pirate dying in space?"
"What do you want?!" Sable sounded desperate.
"You have a spacesuit, right, Captain Kidd? I want you to suit up and come out!" Liberty Belle ordered. "And make it snappy, Cappy!" She paused a second, then continued, trying to make her tone as dismissive as possible., "Don't worry, Colonel Joyce - the day I can't take some dumb pirate with one hand tied behind my back, well, I'll retire! But that sure won't be today!" She laughed, disparagingly. "Five minutes, Captain Hook! Don't make me even madder by forcing me to cut my way in and pull you out like a sardine!"
"I will come out... it will take a few minutes." Sable spoke slowly, and seemed unsure of himself. During that time, Belle was sure he'd be looking for a weapon of some kind! "Please don't destroy the Space Shark! I helped build her, and have been her only captain." It sounded to Bell like he was making an honest plea. Some captains loved their vessels as much as or more than they loved themselves - Sable was at least trying to portray himself as one of those. Of course, it could be a ploy, but she'd keep it in mind.
While they had been talking, Liberty Bell had been exploring the cargo bay. There was big steel box spot welded to the deck of the cargo hold, clearly not part of the original design, held closed by several latches which weren't designed to be operated by the clumsy gauntlets of a space suit. She opened the pouch around her waist which contained her special tools and pulled out a survival knife with a sturdy 6" 154CM steel blade, one edge ground sharper than a razor and the other set with teeth like a saw blade. She used the blade to flip open the latches, and picked through the tools, careful to not send them spinning away in zero g. She selected a mallet, about 14" long with what appeared to be a 5 pound head. "This could _easily_ shatter the face plate of his helmet!" she spoke softly, as if musing to herself. "And check THIS out!" She easily picked up a heavy duty sledge hammer, though she moved slowly - wouldn't want to give it too much momentum in this environment, at least, not accidentally. Much more loudly, "BIG hammer - must be 20 pounds. I'll bet I can smash through the front port with this, if I need to!"
She lightly energized the magnet in her polyens and touched the steel mallet head to her right knee joint, then turned her attention to learning to use the sledge hammer in zero gravity. She smashed the big hammer into the wall and floor of the bay several times for practice. With her boots magnetized to the deck, she was able to swing it fairly easily, but controlling the rebound took work! After a few swings, she was moving more confidently in zero g than she'd been even after her extensive training.
'It's great being the fastest learner I know! Maybe I can work for NASA as a zero g trainer when I get back! Of course, that means I DO have to get back! I can think of SO many ways he could turn this situation into a stalemate I can't win!' she fretted. 'I hope he's scared enough of me shooting the rail gun that he's not thinking too well. Murphy, please let more things go wrong for him than for me!'
Well, she wanted him fretting. 'Maybe I can turn up the heat a little?' Sable would have been terrified at the evil smile that crossed her face at that thought, if he could have seen her face, that is!
"Say, Cap'n Hook, what do you suppose will happen if I open Door Number 1 here and you don't have your helmet on?" She moved to the hatch between the front compartment and the cargo bay, started tugging on the big lever that locked the hatch shut. It began to more, and then on the other side he grabbed it and tried to force it back into place. She could have pulled harder, but she let him win their tug of war. "Guess you're not ready for the vacuum yet? Suppose instead, I fly up and smash through your windshield?"
She carefully flew out of the cargo bay to the nose of the Space Shark, where she tapped gently on the windshield with the hammer. Inside she could see the pilot, quickly putting on his helmet.
"Very good, Cappy! I'll meet you in the cargo bay - don't be late!"
He turned frantically toward the window, and made a defiant hand gesture; she only laughed. "Another minute, Long John, and I start wrecking your ship!" She jetted back to the cargo bay, where she turned her boot magnets up full and slammed the big hammer to the deck, harder than before. Even though she couldn't hear it, she could feel the shudder of the deck through her suit, and she was sure he could feel the impact as well.
She opened a hatch in the bay floor; the cramped space below was filled with wiring and she could see a lot of tubes and pipes as well. "Say, I wonder what would happen if I started cutting some of the wires and cables through here?"
"Devil woman! Cease your senseless sabotage! I am evacuating the cabin now - and wasting almost a day of air!"
Outside, over the cabin, she could actually see the stream of air blowing out the top of the Shark as the water vapor in the air froze into a line of tiny crystals within six inches of the valve - a geyser of glittering ice crystals that quickly dissipated. She laughed at her mental image of a dolphin expelling a blast of water through its blowhole after a deep dive! After the air was exhausted, the lever on the hatch started to move again, and she could feel a faint rumbling through the deck.
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Introducing... the Orbital Wrestling Federation!
Something blasted out from the opening hatch - a fast moving glob of glistening bubbles that expanded as it surged toward her. It splashed against the front of her suit, and some of the glittering foam froze instantly on the visor of her helmet, making it difficult to see.
She was knocked backward and up and out of the hold, tumbling as she went. She felt like she was spinning backwards, head to heels, so she reached above her head, aimed her propulsion pistol behind her, and fired a blast as she scraped her other hand across the visor - and then she felt the clanging impact of another body colliding with her. Sable wrapped his arms around her and held her suit in a tight embrace, helmet to helmet, face plate to visor. Bell was staring at the pirate's bearded face, now showing his teeth in a vicious snarl.
"Now, witch, you shall pay!" he barked.
For just a moment Sable seemed float away as he loosened the grip of his arms. The pirate's thighs continued to wrap around Belle's knees, holding her tightly as she squirmed to get away. His partial retreat had only been designed to free his arms, though. One lifted high, and she could see well enough to distinguish that he held a sword in his hand, just before he slammed the pommel on the basket into her visor, snapping her head back with the impact. He swung his arm up again, while the other curled about Belle's neck.
"Hold your head still," the pirate snarled. "I'm finishing this."
Liberty Belle knew that would be the literal truth unless she acted quickly. The polycarbonite visor was strong and tough, but it would hold out only so long against the battering of the metal pommel.
She brought up the heel of his gauntlet against Sable's helmet, straightening her arm and pushing the pirate's head back. Sable rocked his head to one side, disengaging her arm, and brought the pommel of his sword down a second time.
Belle snatched at the tube that connected Sable's propulsion pistol to the tank of compressed gas it fired, then grabbed it with her other hand as well. She wrapped it around both her gauntlets, then began to pull them apart, straining to tear the tube in two. The muscles of her arms lumped and tightened painfully, her jaws clenched and she felt the blood rush to her temples. Sable, his mouth twisted in fierce joyful anticipation, ignored everything but the incipient panic showing on the face of his victim behind the transparent visor, and once more brought the pommel down. A small cracking star appeared where the metal had struck. Then something else gave and the universe seemed to go mad!
The high pressure tube tore apart and an uncontrollable stream of highly compressed carbon dioxide jetted out of the tube. The tube whipped around like an insane snake, and Belle was slammed around inside her suit first this way, then that, in violent reaction to the mad and uncontrolled acceleration. Sable yelled in surprise and panic and his grip loosened, and the two almost spun apart, but Belle held on grimly to one of the pirate's ankles.
As the jetting stream slackened, Belle went up his opponent's leg hand over hand. The chance whippings of the stream had left them even without any perceptible spin. With the end of acceleration, to the combatants everything seemed still, almost as still as death. But that was an illusion; over Sable's shoulder, Belle could see Skylab and the Space Shark, receding more rapidly than she'd moved during her entire space walk so far. They were alone and in danger of becoming lost in space, the two of them.
Belle was behind the pirate now with her legs wrapped around his waist. She spoke softly and grimly. "So, Captain Sable - if I push off, you'll just keep going, and it won't be long before you run out of air and then burn up during reentry. Or will you burn up first? Are you ready to find out? Surrender - and stop struggling, and I'll tow you back. Keep fighting, and I'll just let you go!"
The pirate reached down and grabbed one of her ankles. "To space with you, you scupper," he yelled. "I'll just finish you, and when you're done, I'll use your pistol to get back."
"I don't think so," Belle replied coolly. She grabbed the mallet, which was still magnetized to her right knee, and quickly tapped the head against HIS visor. "This hammer can hit a LOT harder than the hilt of your sword. I'll bet I can crack open your helmet on the first try." She tapped the visor gently twice, the second time a bit harder than the first. "Want to bet?"
Sable tried to twist free, but Belle held on grimly and pulled the hammer back. This time she banged the metal above his forehead, much harder than she'd tapped the visor. "Last chance, buster. Next one breaks the glass, and after that, you'll be breathing vacuum."
He was tense for several seconds, and then she felt him relax. "What do you want me to do?"
"First - throw away the sword." He did. "Thank you. Just think, some kid might see it burn up in the atmosphere, think it's a shooting star, and make a wish. I hope her wish comes true!" She thought for a second. "Now, hold both hands above your head." She pulled a coil of rope from the pouch at her waist - special rope that remained strong and flexible in the environment of space. "Now don't move, while I tie you up."
"Why should I trust you to not kill me?" he demanded, trying to sound defiant.
"All I have to do is push you away - and I haven't done that yet. Don't see that you have any choice. I don't plan on killing you - unless you force me to. So you'll just have to relax and trust me while I try to get us back to Skylab before your air runs out."
It took a while. She tied his wrists together, than tied wrists to ankles, then added a long tether. Then she used her new space-flying skill to get them both moving. She aimed at the end where the damaged Apollo was docked. The tube connecting the capsule to the station was just barely wide enough to wiggle through. He wouldn't be able to pop out and instantly cause trouble.
Caroline Dean, Freedom's Star
Rescue? Who Needs a Rescue?
Once Sable surrendered, it was over except for the details - but there were a lot of details.
What to do with their prisoners? Captain Prague figured that one out.
"Put them in the bilge!" he snorted gleefully. "Then send them back to Earth in the SL R capsule." Skylab didn't have any waste recycling facilities; instead reusing an empty oxygen tank from one of the original Saturn rockets that had put much of the station into orbit. "The sewage tank's less than half full - plenty of room left for four pirates in space suits! SL R should be here in less than half a day - they can put up with wading around in sewage that long!" It wasn't actually as gross as the idea sounded - in the cold of space, everything in the waste tank was frozen solid. It was evacuated and separated from Skylab by an airlock; it seemed about as escape proof a prison as one could get in orbit. The individual pirates were allowed to enter Skylab one at a time, they were disarmed if necessary and fed, then sealed back into their suits and shoved unceremoniously through the waste lock.
How would they get back?
Their original launch vehicle needed repairs just to be air tight, and Prague doubted that any repairs performed in orbit would make it proof against the re-entry plasma fireball. SL R was bringing a new hatch and ports, and they could likely make their original launch vehicle air-tight - but any irregularities on the surface of the capsule they created when sealing the new port and hatch would be weak points where the plasma might burn through, and none of the astronauts had any desire to see just how hot it might get if that happened!
"Colonel Austin has simulation training on the X20 and experience flying lifting bodies," General York suggested from the ground. "Suppose Prague and O'Neill bring back three of your prisoners, while the three of you, Col. Austin, and 'Captain' Sable return in the Space Shark?" That sounded good to Joyce, Prague and Liberty Belle. Sable initially objected, but changed his mind when other less pleasant alternatives were presented - like remaining alone in orbit until a second SR R vehicle could be prepped to launch (a couple of weeks estimate) or making the rough ride through reentry with four men crammed into the space in the SL R capsule that was uncomfortably crowded already with the design limit of three.
He even agreed to spend a few hours coaching Col. Austin on the controls of the Shark, and he enthusiastically joined the work team that removed the scaffolding from the underside of the Space Shark, as the Ionic Thrusters were still incomplete; without the specialized knowledge of Major Dean, none of the other astronauts felt comfortable finishing the work on them.
With the prisoner situation squared away and their ride home assured, the original crew even found time for some science - with Liberty Belle pitching in as she had promised and ably performing all the tasks that had originally been assigned to Major Dean, except for working on the Ionic Thrusters. SL R arrived on schedule, with O'Neill in particular announcing his disappointment that the pirates had already been subdued, and Colonel Austin perhaps secretly relieved that he wouldn't have to put the extra capabilities of his bionics to any strenuous tests in micro-gravity - at least this time! The three prisoners were loaded onto the SL R capsule and O'Neill and Prague returned it safely to Earth. And a few days later, with about 80% of the Skylab 3 science objectives completed successfully, Austin piloted the Space Shark back to Earth and a successful landing on the dry lake bed of the White Sands Testing Facility in New Mexico.