SubOrbital 7

by John Shirley

Genres: Space Exploration

Synopsis

A routine rescue mission leaves a team of US soldiers, rescued hostages, and a prisoner trapped above Earth in a suborbital craft, in this cinematic action-packed near-future thriller, perfect for fans of Tom Clancy and Jack Carr



"This is the kind of book that gives military SF a good name." Financial Times



Lieutenant Art Burkett is called up to take part in a rescue mission. Three scientists have been kidnapped by the terrorist group Thieves in Law.



The rescue is swift. Art and his team return to military craft SubOrbital 7, intending to return to safety with hostages rescued and prisoners in tow. But Thieves in Law are not the only people looking for them. Art and his team must fight an ever-growing threat before time runs out for them, and possibly for the rest of the world.

Release date: June 6, 2023

Publisher: Titan Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

PROLOGUE

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

Professor Frederic Dupon strolled beside the Rhone River on a cool night in May. He was walking home from the neuronics lab, and watching the moon rippling on the water. Thoughts of frontal lobe stimuli scans gave way to wondering if he could get his pretty neighbor Hilda to come out and gaze at the moon with him. Didn’t full moons have some sort of romantic effect?

He had never subjected the claim to a scientific test.

Dupon heard a soft motor noise, caught a peripheral glimpse of something slinking up closer, long and specter-white. He turned, frowning, and saw an ivory van pacing him, its windows impenetrably black.

His mouth went dry and he hurried on, walking faster. The electric van kept pace. It was almost silent. The only other sounds were the lapping of the waves against the retaining wall and the distant rumble of a jet.

Dupon stopped, to see if the vehicle would pass him.

It did.

And then it suddenly nosed into the curb, blocking his way.

The professor froze, remembering a smartband call from Hans Quorgasse.

“Dupon,” the EuroIntel operative had said, “your work has attracted interest in the East. You will need additional security.”

“What do you know of my work?” Dupon asked in irritation. “It is classified!”

“I know about the spaceflight applications. We’re sending some people to support Kessid security.”

Dupon relaxed. The van must contain the men from EuroIntel. As much as he loathed such skullduggery, at that moment it seemed reassuring.

The back of the van opened, and a drone emerged, about the width of a bicycle’s handlebars. It hovered, running a scanning laser over him.

“Professor Dupon?” a filtered voice said. Before he could respond, however, another voice emanated from the drone.

“It’s him you idiot,” the second voice said. “Just do it.”

A screech of tires caused Dupon to jump. A second vehicle pulled up — a long black car. Two men clambered out and drew sidearms. One was Quorgasse, from EuroIntel. The other flashed a badge.

“Professor, get in!” he barked.

Before Dupon could react, quick coughing sounds came from within the van, accompanied by a stuttering of muzzle flashes. The two newcomers sprawled backward as their skulls shattered with a precision that became a bloody mess on the hood of the car. Their lifeless bodies crumpled to the ground.

That did it. Dupon turned to run. He heard the hum of the drones following.

Something hissed, and he felt a stinging on the back of his neck.

Tranquilizer darts… fired by drone…

He kept moving—another three steps, and then his legs turned to rubber. He lurched face-forward to the sidewalk.

When he hit the concrete, he thought, dreamily: This is what it feels like to shatter my nose…

 

ONE

ARMSTRONG, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES
FIFTY MILES FROM PHOENIX

Art Burkett drove the Chevy Hydro all too slowly through the Cactus Flats suburb of Armstrong. He’d have driven much faster if it wasn’t a Saturday afternoon. The streets were bubbling with kids.

Boys raced on electric skateboards and scooters. Two girls played drone-ball in the middle of the street, one throwing the ball, the other directing a drone to catch it. For a distracted moment Burkett thought he saw an orbcraft soaring above, but then he spotted a smiling dad showing his son how to operate the flying model of a spaceplane.

Maybe get Nate one of those…

His house was part of this development—anyway, it used to be his house, before Ashley insisted on the separation. Technically he was still the co-owner, but it didn’t feel that way. The first lieutenant lived on the Army base now—SubOrbital Base Three, a good eighteen miles away from the housing project they’d lived in for four years. Rangers quarters for officers weren’t bad, but they weren’t home.

These were big houses, all from the same developer, with some variation to break up the architectural monotony. Burkett thought the minor differences so predictable they were just as monotonous, but the development had been built fourteen years ago, in 2027, and its inhabitants had given it character. People painted the houses distinctively, put up quaint little lawn sculptures, seasonal flags, their own choices in foliage—trees, rose bushes, small palms, and desert plants in Spanish-style pots.

The tract mostly housed military families or locals whose businesses catered to the armed forces. There was USAF Sergeant Carlson, in jeans and T-shirt, working in his driveway on a classic muscle car from the 1970s. Carlson glanced up from beneath the hood of the Trans Am and waved at him, and Burkett waved back. He and Carlson had both served in the Second Venezuelan War, and Carlson had flown the heli for Burkett’s team, dropping them over a coca plantation with two other squadrons of the 75th Airborne Rangers.

Burkett tried to steer his mind away from that memory, but he seemed to see again the pink-gray dawn light outlining glider chutes, attracting heavy fire from the cartel-funded nationalists camped at the plantation. “Slim” Mersener and Gabrielle Velasquez, shot to pieces on both sides of him before they even hit the ground. Gore, blossoming in the sky.

Feldman’s armor protected him some—he only lost an eye, and a lot of the feeling in the right side of his body…

Don’t think about that. There’s the house.

My house, and not my house, he thought bitterly, pulling up in front. Ashley didn’t want him pulling into the driveway. Said it blocked her little Hydro II, but it was more than that, or so Burkett suspected. It was symbolic.

“You don’t get a place in my parking space, Art, until you change your mind.”

Stepping out of the car, Burkett walked up the driveway. He felt a buzzing in his shirt pocket, and grimaced. This was his day off, he was fresh in his civvies, ready for miniature golf with his son. So naturally…

Stopping at the front porch, he took out the phone—aware that Ashley was watching him through the front window—and

read the text.

PER USSPACECOM, IC2, 1LABURKETT: R-INTEL ORDERS:
RETURN TO OPS 3 WITHOUT DELAY, SADDLE UP FOR QRF
BRIEFING & DEP PER. GEN. CARNEY, USAR

“Dep.” Deployment.

They were going up.

“QRF” for Quick Response Force, a loose usage of the term considering their style. Another time Burkett would have welcomed these orders. The team had been kept on tenterhooks for weeks, prodded by hints about a deep-insert covert op in Eastern Europe. He’d been feeling that inner keenness, that welcome tension, since the first briefing, and was more than ready for the mission.

But not today.

“Well, what’s the word?” Ashley asked. She stood on the other side of the screen door, arms crossed, gazing calmly at him with her crystal-blue eyes. She was trying to keep her expression neutral, but Burkett thought he saw sadness in the set of her mouth. Or was that anger?

“Deployment.” Burkett sighed. “Report immediately.”

She snorted. “Really?”

“Yeah, Ashley,” Burkett said. “Really.”

Crisply attractive, slim, long-legged, and tanned, Ashley was five-nine to his six-two, wearing shorts and a peach-colored blouse. Her silky blond hair was short on the sides now, with a ruffled spikiness on top. He missed the long blond hair that had fallen past her shoulders. That style had said “relaxed.” This new one was fashionable and pretty but off-putting—at least to Burkett.

Message received, Ashley.

Now she had a Māori-style tattoo as well, resembling a bracelet around her right wrist. The skin still slightly red and puffy around the ink. He decided not to ask her about the tat. Burkett reached out and opened the screen door. The text wasn’t classified so he showed it to her. She glanced at it and gave a quick nod.

“The Army has unerringly shitty timing,” she said. “As usual.”

“Dad!” It was Nate, coming up behind his mom. Eight years old, he had her slimness, her blond hair, and blue eyes, but he had the faint makings of the craggy planes of Burkett’s face. Looking

around his mother, the boy looked worried, glancing questioningly at Ashley as she continued to block Art’s way at the door.

“Hey, Private First-Class Nate Burkett,” Art said, forcing a smile. “What’s up?”

“Gettin’ ready to go.”

Burkett gave his son a rueful look. “Afraid something’s come up.” His heart sank as he said it. He handed Nate the phone. The boy peered at the message.

“Saddle up?” the boy said. “Now?”

“Yep,” Burkett replied, “and you know how it is with the Army. When they say jump, I gotta jump. It’s in my contract.”

“A fifteen-year-old recruitment contract,” Ashley said dryly. “That has to be renewed next year.”

There it was—the thorn in their marriage. He wanted to re-up. She didn’t. Ashley thought he was crazy not to take a civilian job, one that had been on offer for months now, at triple his current salary. Security consultancy, no risk. Nobody shooting at him.

“You should’ve been a captain years ago,” she continued. “A silver star, two bronze stars, five purple hearts, more combat leadership than…”

Never shouting, laying it out coolly. An assistant prosecutor for seven years, she had all the arguments down. Ashley taught a law class at Armstrong Community College, and wanted to go for a full professorship somewhere, but didn’t feel as if she could do it with Burkett gone so much. Not when there was a damned good possibility he wouldn’t come back from one of these deployments.

Nate poked around on Burkett’s phone, looking a little sullen. Burkett gently took it back.

“You know how it will be when you get to the base, Arthur,” Ashley said. “They’re just going to make you wait. Why don’t you and Nate—”

“No, Ashley,” he said. “Last time I pulled that they sent a drone to find me. The S-7 is always fueled and ready.”

“What you gonna have to do on this mission, Dad?” Nate asked, squinting up at him with his head tilted, his mouth squiggled like he was trying not to cry. Burkett went down on one knee and hugged him. The boy put his head on Burkett’s shoulder.

He felt a twisting feeling of shame at letting his son down.

Get a grip, he told himself.

“Nate, it’s a combat deployment,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you, except that I’m going to be super, crazy, way-way careful, and the people I’m going with are going to watch my back. They’re the best, son.” He leaned back to look into Nate’s eyes. “Listen, the instant I’m back, I’m going to apply for special furlough and we’re gonna do a lot together…” Mentally adding, if your mom allows it. “But right now, I’ve got to go. Rangers always stand ready.”

Burkett gently drew away from the boy, stood up, and stuck out a fist. Lower lip quivering, Nate dutifully fist-bumped him back. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Burkett turned to Ashley.

“We’ll talk when I get back.”

“Yes,” she said, crossing her arms. “We will.”

“What are the odds of a hug, Ash?”

Her eyes glinted at the edge of tears. Suddenly she reached out, hugged Burkett—once, and quickly—her arms taut on his shoulders. She never said it aloud, but he knew what she was feeling.

This time is it. This will be the one.

Oddly enough, he hoped it was the real reason for the separation. That would mean she still loved him. Ashley pretended it was about money and her career, but she had knowingly married a Ranger. He figured she was afraid he’d leave her a widow and Nate fatherless.

But what if he was wrong? What if there was some other reason? Something he didn’t know about.

She drew back and took Nate’s hand.

“Come on, Nate. Me, you, and Jerry’ll go to the PCS picnic. There’s some fun stuff set up.”

“Jerry?” Burkett said. “You and Jerry have plans?” He kept his voice level.

She rolled her eyes. “Police Community Services picnic, Art. I told you about it a week ago. We’re doing the face-painting booth for the kids.”

Jerry. Sheriff’s Deputy Gerald Baker. A vet and an old friend, but one who often let his eyes linger on Ashley. Maybe, Burkett thought, it really is time to leave the Rangers.

But not yet.

“Right,” he said. “The picnic.” Burkett took a deep breath, winked at his son, gave Ashley all the smile he could manage, and walked back to the car, feeling like he’d just slung a hundred-pound rucksack on his back. As he pulled out and drove slowly away from the house, he passed a familiar black SUV.

Jerry didn’t look his way.

Growling to himself, Burkett wove through the obstacle course of children and families and out to the desert highway.

Now he pressed down on the accelerator.

SubOrbital 7 was waiting to take him, his captain, and a squad of men into orbit for a black-op insert. In less than three hours he might be in a battlefield on the other side of the Earth.

Burkett pushed the car to eighty-five, driving down the long

straight highway that split the desert. To either side, cacti were effulgent with thick yellow blooms, almost glowing in the bright sun, and in the distance red-stone outcroppings rose with a curious wind-carved grace. Sometimes Burkett savored the view, but now he focused on the necessary mental acrobatics. Changed his inner center of gravity, turning to fully face the mission.

Closer to the base, his inward shift was almost complete. Through the gate, past the checkpoint. By the time he had changed into his ACU—Army Combat Uniform, complete with the Rangers tab—he was mission-ready. It was something a Ranger learned. Especially an officer bound for combat.

“You’ve got to be more ready than the non-coms and the enlisted men,” Major Corliss had told him, when he first got his first platoon. “Because you’re going to lead those men right into the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

 

TWO

SUBORB BASE THREE
ARIZONA

Burkett put on his tan beret—something he wore for briefings, not combat—and reported to what Captain Randall Mayweather liked to call the “ready room,” though the term originated with aircraft carrier pilots.

This ready room was a rectangular conference structure occupying a small corner of the enormous hangar for the S-7 and its one-hundred-eighty-meter side wingspan mothership. The SubOrbital 7 was there, a taut metallic presence that always seemed to be watching and waiting to be taken to the sky.

Like the old-school ready rooms, there was a central table cluttered with printout checklists, coffee cups—and something new. It looked like a weapon.

The team was already there, in their digital cammie Army combat uniforms, with tactical trousers bloused into their boots and patrol caps on their heads. Captain Mayweather, dressed in ACU, was standing by the conference table in close colloquy with Lieutenant Colonel Baxter. Mayweather was a burly man with graying brown hair, a lined, weathered face, hawkish brown eyes under heavy brows. As ever, he looked friendly in a detached kind of way.

In addition to officers, there were eight men and two women in the insert team. Some of them leaned against the walls, others sat in rickety metal chairs, talking, laughing. Most of them were nervous, but psyched for action. Burkett knew six of these soldiers well—battlefield well—but a couple of them were first-timers for a SubOrbital mission insert.

Even so, they all had Ranger combat experience, and they’d all been schooled in the S-3—the smaller SubOrbital trainer. In addition to being Airborne, the six were certified astronauts.

Lt. Col. Talley Baxter was standing by the briefing screen. An older, broad-shouldered Black man in an Army Service Uniform and beret, he was the base’s Drop-Heavy commanding officer. Baxter clapped the Captain on the shoulder.

“Got a hot one for you, Randall.”

“Suits me, sir.”

Baxter looked around. “Team S-7,” he bellowed in a deep voice, cutting through the chatter, “shut up and listen up!”

Everyone fell silent.

“As much as I’d prefer to go with you today,” Baxter went on, “I’m going to be putting out some fires at the Pentagon. We have some burning finance issues.” Funding was always an issue for Drop-Heavy. While the public knew about the craft themselves, they were explained away as “experimental,” deployed in tests and used only in scientific studies.

The Army’s SubOrbital vessels were unspeakably expensive, their cost hidden from the public in the black budget. Their true purpose was known only to a few. This was a constant worry to the secretive Congressional subcommittee that signed off on the program.

“For this mission, you’ve got three new team members,” Baxter went on. “Lieutenant Burkett worked with Alexi Syrkin on a North African paratrooper drop a few years before he signed on with us. Alexi’s an experienced SubOrbital

hand, transferred over from S-9.”

Leaning against a wall, Syrkin gave them a nod.

“We’ve also got Second Lieutenant Kenneth Carney.” Baxter nodded in the direction of a spindly officer standing with his lips pursed, his hands clasped behind him, looking like a man waiting to have a medal pinned on. Unusually pale for a combat officer, he had a bright new M-20 modular pistol on his hip.

General Roger Carney’s kid.

Burkett frowned. He hadn’t been forewarned about the transfer. Another lieutenant? Carney was redundant, and he wasn’t a Ranger. They’d been known to bring Delta Force or a SEAL along on a Drop-Heavy, if the mission called for a specific skill set, but those guys were special forces. Lieutenant Carney was regular Army.

“Finally, meet Sergeant Destiny Andrews,” Baxter said. “I believe he served with Lieutenant Burkett in South America.”

Burkett nodded at Andrews and got a salute in return. Standing with arms crossed near the door, Des Andrews was a tall, husky, mixed-ethnicity American. A real Ranger. Definitely more promising than Ken Carney. Burkett had read Andrew’s file when they’d worked together on a mission in Venezuela. Classical music scholarship with a minor in military history. Andrews left the scholarship behind after just two years, for the Army. Not a normal path for a Ranger, but Burkett hadn’t been headed for the military himself, back in the day.

He’d figured on a career as a mining engineer, like his old man.

A small-arms-fire specialist, Des consistently won intraservice target shooting competitions. After Venezuela he’d served in three black ops missions in southern Turkey. Silver Star, Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts. Applied for the Army branch of Space Command, took to astronautics so quick they fast-tracked him for SubOrbital Drop-Heavy. There’d been a good deal of fast-tracking after SubOrbital 12 had crashed in the Pacific. No survivors.

The incident was a puzzle still unsolved.

“I’ve given Captain Mayweather your orders,” Baxter went on, “and he’ll relay them to you. Now I’ve got to go spin my wheels in DC—trust me, you got the easier assignment.” There was chuckling at that. “This mission was upgraded to urgent, just in the last few hours. It’ll be combat hot, and it’s got to go down fast. Stay sharp! Keep your heads down and your eyes up.” He straightened and saluted them. Everyone went to attention and snapped the return salute.

Baxter nodded to Mayweather, and strode from the room.

The captain tapped his interface and the wall screen showed a map of Eastern Europe. A single country was highlighted, shaped like a mock of the Italian boot, but smaller and thicker, toe pointed west.

“Moldova,” he said, “a republic with more than its fair share of corruption. It’s crammed in between Romania and Ukraine. It’s landlocked, but not far from the Black Sea. Our target is here.” He tapped the hand-screen and a glowing spot pulsed on the map. “The Moldovan Plateau, in a remote corner of the Edinet region—not much there. Our target: St. Basil’s Monastery. Built in the seventeenth century, abandoned in the nineteenth. Briefly used as a prison in the twentieth century. It’s a big fortress-like stone fortification, easy to defend.

“It’s a prison all over again for three men who were kidnapped a little less than a month ago. The hostages are Professor Frederic Dupon, a Swiss national; Dr. Jacques Magonier, French national; and… Hold on…”

“Third one,” a voice said from the door, speaking in a soft Texas accent, “is Lucius Dhariwal, PhD and Masters in physics. Born in Burbank, California, parents from Pakistan. MIT scientist.”

Everyone turned to look.

Sandy Chance was framed in the doorway, slouching casually, hands in the pockets of a wrinkly charcoal blazer, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. The CIA operative was a middle-aged man with short, graying blond hair under a Houston Astros baseball cap. Small blue eyes behind rimless glasses, dominated by a prominent drink-reddened nose. He toyed with the cigarette he wasn’t permitted to smoke here, as he went on.

“There was a fourth hostage, Loren Johansen from the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He died in captivity—a heart attack, if our source is correct.”

“Glad you found some time for us,” Mayweather said dryly. “Sandy Chance, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, for the sake of the few who didn’t know. “Our sometimes-friend at the CIA.”

“Always Drop-Heavy’s friend,” Chance said. He put the unlit cigarette in his mouth, then plucked it out again. “When I’m allowed to be. You want me to finish the briefing, Captain?”

“You were supposed to do the whole thing,” Mayweather said, gesturing for him to take the place in front of the big screen

“Unavoidable delay.” Chance sauntered in, taking a flexible hand-screen from an inside pocket. He unfolded it, tapped it a few times, then said, “SubOrbital wouldn’t be involved if these guys were just hostages held for ransom. Sure, money was demanded, some even paid, but that’s just a cover. These men were kidnapped because of what they know, not what people will cough up.

“This particular cadre of the Eastern European crime syndicate,” he continued, “‘Thieves in Law,’ if you can believe it, is controlled by Moscow. We call them ‘TiL.’ They’re working for the Russian GRU, though only some are aware of it. Normally they’re just thuggish, heavily armed, greed-crazed gangsters infesting Bulgaria and Serbia, with tentacles across Eastern Europe. In this case their puppet master is one Vladimir Krozkov, a top GRU spymaster and a big deal in Moscow. Plays footsy with leading high-dollar oligarchs.

“Krozkov’s point man in TiL is Mikhail Ildeva—the Bulgarian mob boss of this cadre. He’s a man with many skills and specialties, including sex trafficking, counterfeit money distribution, drug smuggling, and extortion.”

Ildeva’s a Bulgar, Burkett thought, and so is Syrkin. Probably why Syrkin was transferred to S-7 specifically for this mission.

Chance gestured with his futile cigarette. “The cash paid to release the prisoners—a release that’ll never happen—is the TiL’s fee, along with anything Krozkov wants to kick to them. We think Ildeva’s been taking Moscow money for a while now.” He paused, stared at his cigarette, shook his head, and went on.

“The prisoners at St. Basil’s were working on different classified projects that relate to the orbital military—all of which can be applied by Moscow’s Orbital Army. ...