“Tri . . . dva . . . odin . . . zapusk . . .” the launch-center master controller announced. The spaceplane shuddered, then shook, then rumbled as if it were going to shake itself to pieces, but then the cosmonaut felt the hold-down towers separate. The rumbling stopped, and very soon the G-forces started to build as the Angara-A7P booster began its ascent.
“Main thrusters at one hundred percent power, all systems nominal,” reported the lone cosmonaut. Colonel Mikhail Galtin was the number one active cosmonaut in the Russian Federation and commander of the astronaut training corps at Star City near Moscow. He was a twenty-two-year veteran of the Soviet and Russian space corps, with four public trips to space, including the first transfer from one space station to another. He also had several flights into space with classified projects, including two military space stations based on Salyut-7 and Mir. But he was known in cosmonaut circles as a member of the design team, one of the first spaceplane pilots, and now the most experienced pilot of the Elektron spaceplane, the only spacecraft specifically designed as an attack plane—a space-borne fighter.
Galtin was a protégé of the then–Soviet union ’s most gifted and skillful cosmonauts since Yuri Gagarin: General-Lieutenant Alesander Govorov, Colonel Andrei Kozhedub, and Colonel Yuri Livya. Govorov was the true pioneer, the father of the Soviet union ’s Space Defense Force, the first military branch in the world dedicated to manned space operations in defense of the homeland. No military cosmonaut stepped aboard any spacecraft unless Govorov had done it first, even if it was just another copy of an Elektron or Salyut. Kozhedub and Livya were the “Red Barons” of the Soviet union ’s Space Defense Force, Govorov’s wingmen on attack missions, and feared adversaries in space or on Earth. Galtin was just a young trainee when these space giants had taken on the United States and Armstrong Space Station in combat.
The Elektron spacecraft occupied the top stage of the Angara booster, mounted vertically atop the booster with its tail and wings folded, within a protective shroud that would open after orbital insertion and allow the spaceplane to fly free. Although Galtin had plans for a two-seat version of Elektron, all of the spaceplanes now flying were single-seaters, and they were the only spacecraft in the world that flew just one passenger into space.
In less than ten minutes, Galtin was in orbit. He performed several functional checks of his Elektron spaceplane and its payload while he waited for his objective to come into range.
“Elektron One, this is Control,” the mission controller radioed about two hours later. “Range to Kosmos-714 is inside one hundred kilometers.”
“Acknowledged,” Galtin said. He activated Elektron’s radar, and a few seconds later found his objective. “Elektron One has radar contact.” Kosmos-714 was an electronic eavesdropping satellite that had malfunctioned and had been in a decaying orbit for several years—it would make a perfect target. It was in a different orbit than Galtin’s; their orbits would cross about five kilometers from each other at their closest point.
As was the case for any fighter pilot, it was necessary to do a little gunnery practice every now and then.
Galtin entered commands that opened the cargo-bay doors atop the fuselage and extended a large canister, called Gvozd’ or “Hobnail,” from its stowed and locked position. At fifty kilometers he entered commands into his autopilot that would take control of the Elektron’s attitude thrusters and rotate the spacecraft to track the satellite as it passed by. The two spacecraft were converging at over thirty thousand kilometers per hour, but that wouldn’t matter for this weapon.