Starfire (53 page)

“S-500S ‘Autocrat' Echo-Foxtrot-band search radar from Xichang Spaceport swept us,” Christine reported. “Ever since the Russians set up the S-500S in China, they've tracked and sometimes locked us up on radar when we pass overhead. I think it's just calibration or training—it's just a long-range scan. Nothing ever happens.”

“ ‘Locked us up,' eh?” Kai muttered. “Anything beyond just a scan?”

“Once in a while we'll get a squeak of a 30N6E2 India-Juliet band missile-guidance uplink radar, like they've fired a missile at us,” Christine said, “but all signals disappear within seconds, even the search signals, and we don't detect a motor plume or missile in the air—it's obvious they don't want us to think they're steering an interceptor toward us, using radar or optronics or anything else. It's all cat-and-mouse crap, sir—they shoot us radar signals to try to frighten us, then go silent. It's bullshit.”

“Bullshit, huh?” Kai said. “Report if it happens again.”

“Yes, sir,” Christine replied.

Kai was silent for a few moments, thinking hard. “Christine,” he said, “I want some detailed imagery of that S-500S unit. Give me a narrow-beam SBR scan from our big radar. Max resolution.”

Christine Rayhill hesitated for a moment, then commented, “Sir, a spotlight scan could—”

“Do it, Miss Rayhill,” Kai said tonelessly. “Narrow-beam scan, max resolution.”

“Yes, sir,” Christine said.

Things were quiet for about sixty seconds; then: “Sir, detecting S-500S target-tracking radar, appears to be locked on to us,” Christine said. “Azimuth, elevation, and range only—no uplink signals.” It was precisely what she had been concerned about: if the S-500S battery detected that they were being tracked on radar from Armstrong, they might think they were under attack and could retaliate.

“Designate target and send to Combat, Christine,” Kai ordered. “Continue scanning.”

There was a bit of confusion in Christine's voice: this was certainly no big deal, not worth a target ID badge. “Uh . . . designate target Golf-one, sir,” she replied after entering commands into the attack computer. “Target locked into attack computer.”

“Command, this is Operations,” Valerie reported. “Verifying that target Golf-one is locked into Combat. Two Hammers ready from Kingfisher-09, one remaining, forty-five seconds until out of engagement envelope.”

“Verified,” Kai said. “Christine, warn me if the target's designation changes.”

“Wilco, sir,” Christine said. Her palms started to get a bit sweaty: this was starting to look like a prelude to—

Suddenly the signal identification changed from
TARGET
TRACK
to
MISSILE
TRACK
. The shift was instantaneous, and it didn't stay on the board for more than one or two seconds, but it was long enough for Christine to call out, “Command, I have a missile tr—”

“Combat, Command, batteries released on Golf-one,” Kai ordered. “Repeat, batteries released.”

“Batteries released, Roger,” Valerie said. “Combat, target Golf-one, engage!”

A Kingfisher weapon garage almost four thousand miles away from Armstrong—although Armstrong Space Station was much closer to the target, the missiles needed time and distance to reenter Earth's atmosphere, so a Kingfisher weapon garage farther away got the tasking—maneuvered itself to a computer-derived course, and two Orbital Maneuvering Vehicles were ejected from the weapon garage thirty seconds apart. The OMVs flipped themselves over until they were flying tail first, and their reentry rockets fired. The burns did not last too long, decelerating the spacecraft by just a few hundred miles an hour, but it was enough to change their trajectory from Earth orbit to the atmosphere, and the OMVs flipped back over so their heat-protective shields were exposed to the onrushing atmosphere.

As the spacecraft entered the upper atmosphere, the glow from friction burning the air changed colors until it became white-hot, and streams of superheated plasma trailed behind each vehicle. Tiny hydraulically controlled vanes and maneuvering thrusters on the tail of the OMV's body helped the spacecraft make S-turns through the sky, which helped not only to increase the time they had to slow down through the sky but also to confuse any space tracking radars on their intended target. One of the steering vanes on the second OMV malfunctioned, sending it spinning wildly out of control, mostly burning up in the atmosphere, and what was left went crashing into the Siberian wilderness.

At a hundred thousand feet altitude, the protective shrouds around the OMVs broke free, exposing a two-hundred-pound tungsten-carbide projectile with a millimeter-wave radar and imaging-infrared-seeker head in the nose. It followed steering signals from its weapon garage until the radar locked on to its target, then refined its aiming, comparing what it saw with its sensors with the target images stored in memory. It took only a fraction of a second, but the images matched and the warhead locked on to its target—the transporter-erector-launcher vehicle of an S-500S surface-to-air missile system. It struck the target, traveling almost ten thousand miles an hour. The warhead didn't need an explosive warhead—hitting at that speed was akin to being armed with two thousand pounds of TNT, completely obliterating the launcher and everything else in a five-hundred-foot radius.

“Target Golf-one destroyed, sir,” Christine reported moments later, her voice muted and hoarse—that was the first time she had destroyed anything in her entire life, let alone a fellow human being.

“Good job,” Kai said stonily. “Trev, I want a two-person team to suit up and begin prebreathing, going on six-hour emergency standby duty. The rest of the off-duty crew can stand down from combat stations. Eyes and ears open, everybody—I think we'll be busy. What's the status of Starfire? How much longer?”

“I don't know, sir,” Casey Huggins responded from the Skybolt module. “Maybe an hour, maybe two. I'm sorry, sir, but I just don't know.”

“As quickly as you can, Miss Huggins,” Kai said. He hit a button on his communications console. “General Sandstein, urgent.”

T
HE
K
REMLIN

M
OSCOW
, R
USSIAN
F
EDERATION

A
SHORT
TIME
LATER

“Those American bastards struck my spaceport with a missile from space!”
Zhou Qiang, president of the People's Republic of China, thundered through the secure voice teleconference link. “I am going to order an immediate launch of a nuclear ballistic missile against Hawaii! If they kill a hundred Chinese, I am going to kill a
million
Americans!”

“Calm yourself, Zhou,” Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov said. “You know as well as I that if you launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, or anything that looks like one, anywhere near the United States or its possessions, they will retaliate with everything they have, against both our nations. They are on a hair trigger now, thanks to your attack on Guam.”

“I do not care!” Zhou snapped. “They will regret the loss of one Chinese a thousand times, I swear it!”

“My commanders on the ground say that your S-500S battery locked on to the space station with missile-guidance radar,” Gryzlov said. “Is that true?”

“Then I suppose you know that the Americans locked on to the S-500 launcher with their microwave weapon?”

“I know they scanned you with a simple synthetic-aperture radar, Zhou, the space-based radar mounted on the station itself,” Gryzlov said. “I have technicians and intelligence men on the ground there, remember? They know exactly what you were scanned with. It was not the directed-energy weapon. They obviously meant to goad you into responding, exactly like your stupid ill-trained men did.”

“So are they now trying to goad us into widening the conflict, to turn it into a nuclear exchange?” Zhou asked. “If so, they are succeeding!”

“Calm yourself, I said, Zhou,” Gryzlov repeated. “We will respond, but we must be patient and plan this out together.”

“This is all because of your foolhardy attack on their spaceplane, is it not?” Zhou asked. “You tell me to be calm, but then you do an insane act like destroy one of their spaceplanes! We tracked those fighters and your antisatellite weapons. Who is the crazy one now? You want to prohibit unauthorized spacecraft from overflying Russia? That is even more crazy! What has gotten inside your head, Gryzlov? You are even more unstable than that idiot Truznyev before you.”

“Do not talk to me about insane acts of war, Zhou!” Gryzlov retorted. “We are lucky we are not at war with the United States after that crazy General Zu attacked Guam!”

“I could say the same about your father's cruise-missile attack on the United States itself!” Zhou shot back. “Ten thousand, fifteen thousand Americans vaporized? One hundred thousand wounded? Your father was—”

“Tread carefully, I warn you, Zhou,” Gryzlov spat menacingly. “Be careful of your next words if they even remotely concern my father.” There was complete silence on the other end. “Listen to me, Zhou. You know as well as I that the only American nonnuclear weapons that can reach our spaceports and other antisatellite launch sites are either cruise missiles launched from penetrating bombers or weapons launched from their military space station or weapon garages,” Gryzlov went on. “The military space station is the key because it controls all the weapon garages, uses its space-based radar for surveillance and targeting, and has the Skybolt laser, which is impossible to defend against. It must be disabled or destroyed before the Americans employ their weapons.”

“Disabled? Destroyed? How?” Zhou asked.

“We must pick the perfect time when the maximum number of Russia and China's antisatellite weapons can launch simultaneously,” Gryzlov said. “The station has self-defense weapons, but if we can overwhelm them, we could succeed. My defense minister and chief of the general staff will inform me of when the American space station is in perfect position, and then we must attack at once. The station's orbit is well known. They changed it recently for the Starfire microwave-laser test, and they may change it again, but we will watch and wait. When the orbit stabilizes, we attack with everything that is in range.

“But I need your commitment, Zhou: when I say attack, we attack with every weapon in range, simultaneously,” Gryzlov went on. “That is the only way we can hope to disable or destroy the military space station so it cannot retaliate against us, because if it does, it can destroy any target on the planet at the speed of light.”

There was a very long silence on the other end of the secure connection; then: “What is it you want, Gryzlov?”

“I need the precise description, capabilities, status, and location of each and every antisatellite weapon system in your arsenal,” Gryzlov said, “including your antisatellite missile submarines. And I need to establish a direct secure connection to each site and submarine so I can launch a coordinated attack against the American military space station.”

“NÄ­ tā mā de
fēngle?”
Zhou shouted in the background. Gryzlov knew enough Chinese expletives to know he'd said “You fucking crazy?” From the interpreter, he instead haltingly heard, “The president strongly objects, sir.”

“Russia has many more antisatellite weapons than China, Zhou—if I sent you a tiny bit of our data, you would be quickly overwhelmed,” Gryzlov said. “Besides, I do not think your military or your space technicians have the capability to coordinate the launch of dozens of interceptors spread out across thousands of miles belonging to two nations against a single spot in space. We are much more experienced in orbital mechanics than China.”

“Why do I not just turn over all the launch codes to all of our nuclear ballistic missiles to you, Gryzlov?” Zhou asked derisively. “Either way, China is dead.”

“Do not be a fool, Zhou,” Gryzlov said. “We have to act, and act quickly, before the Americans can place more weapon garages in orbit and reactivate the Skybolt laser, if that drivel about the college students' microwave laser replacing the free-electron laser is to be believed. Give me that data—and it had better be accurate and authentic—and I will determine the exact moment when the maximum number of antisatellite weapons is in range to strike at Armstrong . . . and then we will attack.”

“And then what, Gryzlov? Wait until American nuclear missiles rain down on our capitals?”

“Kenneth Phoenix is a
weakling,
as are all American politicians,” Gryzlov spat. “He attacked that S-500 site knowing we would retaliate. The minute he fired that microwave laser from the station, he knew the station would become a target. He did both thinking we would not respond. Now I have responded by destroying his spaceplane, and he has a choice: risk intercontinental thermonuclear war over this, or forfeit the military space station for peace. He is predictable, cowardly, and sure to be emotionally crippled. He is nothing. There is no threat to either of our countries except nuclear war if Armstrong Space Station is destroyed, and I do not believe Phoenix or anyone in America has the stomach for any kind of war, let alone a nuclear war.”

Zhou said nothing. Gryzlov waited a few moments, then said, “Decide
now,
Zhou, damn you!
Decide!
”

TEN

The God of War hates those who hesitate.

—E
URIPIDES

I
N
E
ARTH
ORBIT
,
THIRTY
MILES
FROM
A
RMSTRONG
S
PACE
S
TATION