Executive Intent (5 page)

Although the payloads of the S-9 and XS-19 spaceplanes were small—just six and nine thousand pounds respectively, far less than the now-retired Space Shuttle and the Shuttle's replacement, the Orion crew module, expected to be in service in three to five years—the spaceplanes accomplished what the Shuttle's designers could only dream about: quick, reliable, and frequent access to space. Orbital flights and dockings with the International Space Station and Armstrong Space Station, America's military space platform, were routine; passengers could be flown halfway around the planet in less than two hours; graduates from civilian and military pilot schools could now select “Astronaut” for their next assignment.

Hunter Noble had left the Air Force to work with private industry when it became apparent that President Joseph Gardner wasn't committed to the military use of outer space except as a support arm of the U.S. Navy. Although there was little money for space other than in satellite communications and surveillance, there was still money for research and development of other space systems, and that's where Boomer wanted to be. Today's flight was going to demonstrate one of those new technologies.

“Gipper Range Control, this is Midnight One, I show two minutes to release,” Scott Bream radioed. “Checklist is complete up here.”

“Copy that,” the senior controller at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site in the Kwajalein Atoll responded. “Range is clear and ready.”

“Range is clear, SC,” Bream reported to Boomer. “Release program up and running.”

“Checked,” Boomer said. “Counting down, thirty seconds to go.”

“Select computer control to ‘AUTO,'” Bream reminded his spacecraft commander.

“Nah, I think I'll hand-fly this one,” Boomer said.

“The test program called for ‘AUTO' maneuvering.”

“I asked about it, and they said it was okay.”

A moment later: “Midnight, this is Casino, select ‘AUTO' maneuvering, Boomer,” the chief engineer of Sky Masters Inc. and builder of the test article, Dr. Jonathan Colin Masters, radioed from the company headquarters in Las Vegas. Masters was an executive vice president and chief of design for Sky Masters. “Don't screw around now.”

“C'mon, Doc,” Boomer protested, “it'll be okay.”

“Boomer, if we didn't have half the Pentagon watching, I'd say okay,” Masters said. “Switch it to ‘AUTO.' You can fly the reentry and landing.”

“You're all as bad as the military,” Boomer said. He sighed and configured the mission computer as necessary. “Maneuvering mode set to ‘AUTO.' Where's the fun in that?” Moments later hydrazine maneuvering jets arrayed around the Midnight spaceplane came to life, which stabilized the craft during release and would maneuver the spaceplane away from the test article after release.

“Bay doors already open…maneuvering complete…payload locks released, extender arms powering up, standing by for release…now,” Bream reported. They heard a low rumble behind them as the extender arms lifted the payload out of the cargo bay, then several short
bangs
as the thrusters maneuvered the payload ahead and away
from the Midnight spaceplane. “Payload in sight,” Bream radioed back to Sky Masters headquarters. “It looks good.”

The payload was the experimental Trinity mission module, a twelve-foot-long robotic multimission spacecraft with a rocket booster in the rear; maneuvering thrusters; a guidance, datalink, and sensor section in the nose; and three chambers inside. Trinity was able to reposition itself into different orbits, detect and track other spacecraft, rendezvous and even refuel with a spaceplane or the Armstrong Space Station, and deploy and retrieve packages stowed in its mission chambers.

“Lost sight of it,” Bream reported as the craft moved away in its own orbit. “Cargo-bay doors closed, the spacecraft is secure.”

“That's the way I like every flight—boring and secure,” Boomer said. He checked the flight computer. “Looks like thirty minutes to our orbit transfer burn, and then three hours until we chase down Armstrong. Wish we could be down there to watch this thing light off.”

R
ONALD
R
EAGAN
B
ALLISTIC
M
ISSILE
T
EST
S
ITE
, K
WAJALEIN
A
TOLL
, P
ACIFIC
O
CEAN

T
HAT SAME TIME

“We're just two minutes to release, everybody,” Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for Space Ann Page announced as she lowered the headset, which allowed her to listen in on the communications between the Midnight, range control, and Sky Masters headquarters. “C'mon over here for the best view.”

It was a balmy and tranquil day on the water, but that didn't prevent several observers from shakily stepping across the deck, holding on to railings and bulkheads. Ann felt as if she were on a cruise ship instead of a barge, and the heat and humidity that was obviously upsetting some of the observers felt heavenly to her. Fifty-nine years of age, auburn hair almost completely gray now, and with so many lines and wrinkles that she was actually considering cosmetic surgery, Ann Page nonetheless felt these were the best times of her life.

“Are…are you quite sure we're safe, this close to the target area, Dr. Page?” a pale-faced congressional staffer asked. He was sweating so badly that she thought he had fallen overboard. “How far did you say we were?”

“Four miles,” Ann replied. “I won't lie to you, Mr. Wilkerson: Our previous tests were very good, but not perfect. We're launching from a platform ninety miles in space, traveling over seventeen thousand miles an hour, shooting at a wobbly target that is also spinning at nine hundred miles an hour—that's how fast the Earth rotates. The projectiles are unguided—we use mathematics to do the aiming. That's why the weapon is designed only for large-area or slowly moving targets. Only a computer can make the calculations, and if they're wrong…well, we probably won't feel a thing.”
That certainly did not make the young staffer look any better, and he turned away as if looking for an unoccupied place to vomit into the ocean.

“It's a pretty humid day out, as I'm sure you've noticed, so we should see a very impressive sight as the projectiles descend,” Ann said. “Sixty seconds to go. The projectiles are not overly noisy, but if you're sensitive to loud noises you may want to put on your hearing protectors.” Most of the women put on ear protectors; most of the men did not.

“I've seen your presentations and animations, Miss Undersecretary,” a Navy lieutenant commander commented, scanning the instrumented target barge with a pair of binoculars, “and I still don't see how we can invest so much money in this economic climate in such a limited, futuristic concept. It's a waste of resources.”

“Thirty seconds, everyone,” Ann said. “It's true it's not a legacy weapon nor very sophisticated, Commander, but as you'll see, it's certainly no lightweight. As for being futuristic…well, in ten years I believe weapons such as this will be commonplace. Few heard of GPS before the 1991 invasion of Iraq; by the second invasion of Iraq, it was already indispensable. Here we go.”

“‘Mjollnir.'” The naval officer sneered. “Couldn't you find a good ol' fashioned American name to give it, Miss Undersecretary?”

“It's pronounced ‘me-ole-ner,' Commander, not ‘muh-joll-ner,'” Ann corrected him, “and we do have an American name for it, although it's rather long, so we just learn to say ‘Mjollnir.' And please call me Ann, okay? Stand by.”

The observers stared out into the ocean. Everything was perfectly still, and the only sounds were the waves gently tapping on the sides of the barge. Nothing happened for several moments. The Navy officer lowered his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. “Did it work, Dr. Page?” he asked irritably. He looked at his watch. “It's been almost fifteen seconds since—”

Suddenly there was an impossibly loud
ccrraacckk
like the world's largest thunderclap had just erupted directly overhead. For those observers who hadn't closed their eyes, there appeared in the sky over the target several streaks of white vapor, like a searchlight beam had been turned on. The target barge disappeared in massive geysers of ocean water and clouds of steam towering several hundred feet into the sky. The white vapor streaks seemed to hang in the air for several moments, finally beginning to dissipate in the gentle tropical breezes. Moments later, another massive
boom
rolled over them as the sound of thousands of tons of seawater instantly turning to steam crashed over them.

“What…was…
that
?” someone asked, as if he hadn't listened to any of the briefings on the weapon.

“That was Mjollnir, ladies and gentlemen: Thor's Hammer, the next generation of land, sea, and space-attack weapons delivered from Earth orbit,” Ann Page said proudly. “Each payload releases a spread of four reentry vehicles, but what you saw was just
one
. The reentry vehicles are guided at first by satellite but then switch to infrared or millimeter-wave radar terminal guidance; it can automatically pick out preprogrammed targets or it can be steered by operators anywhere in the world or in space aboard Armstrong Space Station. The warhead that hit the target was nothing more than a five-hundred-pound chunk of titanium, but traveling at fifteen thousand miles an hour, it had the explosive impact of two
tons
of TNT. Mjollnir is simple, inexpensive if launched from an orbiting military base, cannot be intercepted or decoyed, and does not violate any existing space weapon treaties.

“You've just seen the future, ladies and gentlemen,” Ann went on, driving her point home now that it appeared the spectators were regaining their senses. “We have already established a military base and a global communications and reconnaissance network in space; we have several families of spacecraft that provide America with anytime-anywhere access to space; and now we are
developing effective weapons to not only defeat America's enemies but defend our new space-based infrastructure. It's ready—all we need to do is put it all together and set it in motion.

“It's time to make the commitment to secure the high ground for the United States of America. That's why I'm spearheading this effort in Congress and the Pentagon to formally stand up the U.S. Space Defense Command and build this true twenty-first-century force. I'm asking for your help and support. Thank you very much. I'll be pleased to answer any questions you might have.”

The congressional staffer meekly raised his hand. Ann smiled and pointed to him. “Uh, Miss Secretary…?” he began.

“Yes, sir, what's your question?”

The staffer put his hand down, smiled…then his skin turned green, his eyes rolled up inside his head, and he whirled around and vomited over the side of the barge.

A
RMSTRONG
S
PACE
S
TATION

A
FEW HOURS LATER

U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Kai Raydon expertly sailed across the command module and precisely attached himself to the commander's console with perfectly placed touches of Velcro sneakers. He still remembered what it was like to float around in zero-g—what most Earth-bound folks called “weightlessness”—for the first time. It simply took practice to get used to the fact that there was no gravity to help you orient your body—every action has to be counteracted with an opposite action. It took a lot of banging around, but Raydon, a longtime veteran of space flight and working in space, was more accustomed to moving around in zero-g than he was in terrestrial one-g.

The main screen at the commander's station showed an eight-
place split videoconference view, with his image in the lower right corner, and he studied his image for a few moments to make sure he looked presentable. He knew that hair had a tendency to look tangly and get rather dirty during long tours of duty in space, so he always kept his hair buzz-cut short, even when he returned to Earth. Raydon was trim and fit, thanks to a daily resistance workout regimen, especially on Armstrong Space Station, and he was careful to regulate his diet while in space to avoid loss of muscle tone and fluid imbalances. The schedule was demanding up here, but there was always time for exercise; that was one of the most important lessons he taught the young astronauts assigned to Armstrong.

The other videoconference windows were still vacant; Raydon was the first to arrive in the virtual conference room. The windows were labeled with the names of where the feed was originating: PNSA, SECDEF, CJCS, SECNAV, SECSTATE, DCI, and CNO, all the national security bigwigs, and little old Kai Raydon, the only Air Force guy. He wouldn't be surprised if this meeting started late, given the shitstorm that was brewing down on planet Earth.

He checked the secondary commander's monitor, which showed the latest satellite video feed of the aircraft carrier USS
George H. W. Bush,
now motionless in the South China Sea. Smoke still covered the aft half of the carrier, although he couldn't see flames anymore. “Seeker, what's the latest on the
Bush
?” he asked on intercom.

“Fires are under control and the casualties have all been evacuated, sir,” Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas, the senior noncommissioned officer and chief sensor operator aboard Armstrong Space Station, replied.

“Casualty count?”

“Same as last report, sir: fifteen dead, thirty-seven wounded, nine critically. Five jets and three choppers lost.”

“Damn,” Raydon muttered. “Freakin' Chinese squids. They want to play in Carnegie Hall—now they're center stage.”

Twenty minutes past the scheduled start time, the videoconference got under way, presided over by the president's national security adviser, Conrad Carlyle. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Richard Cowan, read the latest report on casualties and condition of the
George H. W. Bush
. “I think we were very fortunate the Sea Whiz got that missile,” Cowan concluded, using the common nickname for the Close-In Weapon System, or CIWS. “If it hit at the speed it was traveling, even with no warhead, it could have possibly sunk the
Bush
.”

“Sink it?”
Carlyle exclaimed. “A
single
missile? Doesn't an aircraft carrier weigh over ninety thousand
tons
?”

“But traveling at eight times the speed of sound, the momentum of that missile would be enormous,” Cowan explained. “Our engineers calculated it could've exceeded a tenth of the total weight of the carrier.”

“And remember, the Russian hypersonic missiles used in the Holocaust had one-kiloton nuclear warheads on them,” Secretary of Defense Miller Turner added. Turner, like Carlyle and Chief of Staff Walter Kordus, was a longtime friend and confidant of President Joseph Gardner, and everyone else in the room knew that the “clubhouse cabinet's” thoughts and opinions would certainly be transmitted directly to the White House in no time. “Any evidence at all that those missiles had nuclear warheads on them?”

“None at all, sir,” Cowan said. “No warhead of any kind, except perhaps a flight-data transmitter, as the Chinese claim.”

“That doesn't make me feel one bit better about this,” Carlyle said, shaking his head. “Why in the hell were the Chinese flying a jet with hypersonic antiship missiles near our carrier?”

“Freedom of the seas, Conrad,” Secretary of State Stacy Anne Barbeau said. Barbeau, the former senior senator from Louisiana and former Senate majority leader, was a glamorous and ebullient
personality who took great pride in politically destroying anyone who tried to dismiss her as a brainless bimbo, even when she played the bimbo card to the max. Everyone knew she had strong White House ambitions, and no one wanted to get in her way when she eventually made her move. “We're free to sail near their shores; they're free to fly toward our ships; we're free to intercept them, try to turn them away, and shoot their butts down if they look like they're going to attack.” She turned to the chief of naval operations. “What I want to know, Admiral Cowan, is what were the American fighters doing out there that made those missiles fire off?”

“Standard operating procedures for any surface combatant, especially a carrier, is to keep unidentified combat aircraft at least two hundred miles away, ma'am,” Cowan said. “In my opinion, that's too close—I'd like to make it
five
hundred miles. In any case, our intercept pilots have a gradually escalating cascade of maneuvers they are authorized to do to turn a suspect aircraft away: They fly close to the aircraft, fire guns, do high-speed passes, and do other maneuvers to show the bad guys we're serious. The last option is to attack.”

“So your Hornets do this maneuver, this ‘handstand' as you call it, to try to…what? Scare the other guys away?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And does it usually work?”

“Very few bad guys stick around after we fire a cannon burst a few feet away from their cockpits,” Cowan said. “The Chinese plane just kept on coming. They even fired their cannon in return.”

“So what was this handstand maneuver that caused the missiles to dislodge from the Chinese fighter?” Barbeau asked. “Was this a deliberate contact between two planes?”

“A handstand is just a scare tactic, ma'am,” Cowan explained. “It directs a jet blast down on the other guys' plane from a few yards away. It's surprising and maybe momentarily disruptive, but
it's not dangerous to similar-size aircraft—and the Chinese fighter is…was…much bigger than the Hornet. It's certainly not enough to dislodge a missile from a jet—especially an
armed
missile.”

“So you're saying the Chinese fighter crew
deliberately
fired those missiles at the carrier?”

“I don't know, ma'am,” Cowan admitted. “But I find it hard to believe that the missiles dislodged, powered themselves up, fired off, and locked onto the
Bush
all by themselves.”

“Wouldn't they need to know where the carrier was before launch?” Carlyle asked.

“Not necessarily, sir,” Cowan replied. “Some antiship cruise missiles can be self-guided by radar to attack any large target; shorter-range missiles use electro-optical sensors and datalink the images back to a controller to pinpoint a particular target. Russian-made cruise missiles can do both. Such missiles can then be fired in the general direction of their targets, or programmed to patrol an area where the targets might sail into, and then lock on and attack.”

Secretary of State Barbeau shook her hands and closed her eyes. “Hold on, everyone, hold on,” she said irritably. “We're getting off track here. My bottom-line question: Does anybody here honestly believe the Chinese would deliberately fire a hypersonic missile at a U.S. warship in peacetime?” No one replied. “Good. I happen to agree, so we can move on from here. However it happened, I believe it was an accident. I'm going to ask the Chinese foreign minister to demand a formal inquiry and full analysis of the incident, and to have U.S. experts involved every step of the way to the maximum extent possible. China is a pretty closed society, and their government and military even more so, but I expect full cooperation. Case closed.”

Admiral Cowan's eyes had narrowed into angry slits. “Excuse me, ma'am, but the case is
not
closed. What about the casualties, the damage to the carrier—”

“What about the loss of that Chinese fighter and its crew, Admiral?” Barbeau retorted. “We lost more, so they should pay? They fired the missiles, so they're the bad guys? Excuse me, Admiral, but this ‘handstand' maneuver sounds to me like showing off, not defending the carrier. It's like Tom Cruise flying upside down over the MiG in
Top Gun
—he did it just because the MiG pilot was starting to piss him off. If we're all agreed it was not deliberate, then the Chinese pilot flew toward our carrier just to piss us off. Is that a reason to blast him with engine exhaust and cause him to almost flip upside down and possibly dislodge those missiles?”

“Our SOP is to do everything necessary to divert a possible hostile target away with nonlethal means before resorting to lethal force—”

“Your men have their SOPs when they're out there in harm's way, Admiral—it's for you and the national command authority to decide what they are and if they're being properly performed, not me,” Barbeau said. “I know your men don't have the luxury of sitting in a nice comfy chair and calmly debating things when they're looking down the barrel of a gun thousands of miles from home, when the only dry landing strip and hot meal is a four-acre hunk of floating steel that might end up at the bottom of the South China Sea at any moment.

“But now we're in
my
battlefield, Admiral, not yours. If we're all agreed this was a tragic accident and not deliberate”—Barbeau paused, then pointed at each window in her videoconference monitor, querying each participant—“and we are all
still
agreed, are we not…?”—she waited a few breaths: still more silence—“that it
was
an accident, then we investigate fully to prevent such accidents from happening again; we issue the sincerest of apologies; and we move on. You start asking for reparations, or justice, or payback, and it tells me you don't really believe it was an accident. If that's the case, Admiral Cowan, you'd better tell me right now.”

The chief of naval operations looked as if he was going to con
tinue the argument; then, like a balloon slowly losing air, his shoulders slumped, he folded his hands, and made an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“Thank you, Admiral,” Barbeau said. “Now I have something to work with. One more question: Where did that Chinese fighter come from? Was it on a patrol mission, some kind of test, or is there any possibility that it could have been launched on a strike mission?”

“I can give you the answer to that, Madam Secretary,” Kai Raydon said.

“Who is this?”

“General Kai Raydon, commander of Armstrong Space Station, Air Force Space Defense Command,” Kai responded. He typed in commands on his console's keyboard, and the image on a new videoconference monitor changed to another trio of naval vessels. “You're looking at live pictures of the People's Liberation Army Navy Project 190 aircraft carrier, named the
Zhenyuan,
accompanied by two underway replenishment vessels on either side of the carrier. We've been monitoring the Chinese carrier since it sailed within five hundred miles of the
Bush
and observed the fighter launch.”

“Who are you again, General?” Barbeau asked. “Where are you?” She turned to Secretary of Defense Turner. “Is he one of yours, Miller?”

“General Raydon commands Armstrong Space Station, the Air Force's orbiting space reconnaissance and communications platform,” Turner replied. “Where are you exactly right now, General?”

“Two hundred and twelve miles over Argentina, sir, falling eastward at seventeen thousand six hundred miles per hour.”

“‘Falling'? You're
falling
?” Barbeau exclaimed.

“Spacecraft in Earth orbit aren't floating, Madam Secretary, and they aren't being propelled—they are pulled to Earth by grav
ity like any other object,” Kai explained. “At our altitude and speed, however, we never hit the Earth as we fall because we speed past Earth as we continue to fall toward it.”

“I'm sure I don't understand any of that, General Raydon,” Barbeau said, “so I'll defer to your expertise. You saw the fighters launch from that carrier?”

“Armstrong is the hub of an extensive network of communications-and-surveillance satellites that cover the entire planet twenty-four/seven. If any American military unit goes into possible danger, the Air Force watches it from space. We've monitored the Chinese carrier almost continuously in real time since it left port.”

Barbeau nodded. “It sounds impressive,” she said. “Any unit, anytime, anywhere?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Raydon responded. “If we don't have a satellite constellation ready to observe, we can set one up PDQ. If a satellite breaks, we can fix it. We can tie into a network of satellites and unmanned surveillance aircraft that fills in a pretty complete picture of every carrier battle group, surface-action group, and Marine Expeditionary Force deployed around the world, plus major exercises and other deployments. And if something needs blowing up, we're developing the capability of blowing it up from here faster than you can imagine.”

“Naval support is a top priority for the Air Force these days, isn't it?” Barbeau remarked with a slight smile. She knew that the increased emphasis on naval operations, especially carriers and multipurpose submarines, was a sore point with many services, especially the Air Force, whose budget was the hardest hit.