Nestled inside the specially constructed cocoon cockpit, Major Frank Mitchell patiently waiting for his moment. His gloved hand tightly gripped his throttle, thumb poised over a red button.
“Are you green?” the co-pilot of the SR-75 mother craft asked him.
Mitchell had had his eyes on nothing else for the past ten minutes, but he swept them over the gauges one last time. “All green.”
“Free in five,” the co-pilot informed him. “Four. Three. Two. One.”
Mitchell felt the weightlessness as the hydraulic arms let the Thunder Dart go and he lost the G-force of the SR-75’s constant acceleration. The sky below was light, but he was so high he could easily see the curvature of the Earth ahead. This was his third time piloting the Thunder Dart, although he had over 3,000 missions in the simulator. But no simulator could make up for the feel of free falling at 125,000 feet with an initial forward velocity of almost 5,000 miles an hour. Above, the SR-75 slightly turned and disappeared from sight.
Mitchell’s thumb closed on the red button. He was slammed back in his seat as the pulse engine kicked in. Pulling back ever so slightly, he angled the nose of the Thunder Dart up five degrees. Mitchell looked out the cockpit. He could see that the edges of his craft were already glowing red from heat, but that was normal. Even at this altitude there was enough oxygen molecules to cause friction. The specially designed titanium alloy hull could handle the heat as long as he maintained positive control of his craft.
He looked up higher and saw the blackness of space. He glanced down at the flight path outlined in red on his computer screen. The triangle symbolizing his craft was slightly to the right of center of the path marked in green. Mitchell edged the stick to the left just a tad and centered out.
“I’m on-line with all my systems,” Jimmy said. “Anything changes, we’ll know.”
Jimmy was seated across from her, his laptop open, the line in the back jacked into the central network to allow him to directly access those satellites that channeled the radioactivity and electromagnetic data.
She was seated behind her own desk. A small joystick was next to the keyboard, waiting for her control. She picked up the baseball cap with the astronaut wings and placed it on top of her gray hair.
Jimmy looked at her and smiled. “Ready for warp speed, helmsman?”
Conners grinned. “Ready.”
“All systems go,” Major Mitchell said into his oxygen mask. The small triangle in his screen was dead center. The altimeter read 155,000 feet, over 27 miles high. Mitchell knew the air was so thin outside that even the pulse engine was having problems now.
He looked down once more. There was the faintest trace of a flashing red circle at the very center of the display.
“Acquisition initiated,” Mitchell reported. His free hand went palm down on top of a flat display. The face was specially designed for the pressure glove, each button an exact match.
“Arming MHV.” Mitchell had the process memorized and his fingers worked the code perfectly. He felt the slightest of stutters in the pattern of pulses from the PDWE.
“Insure you get both beacon and trajectory lock,” a voice ordered in his ear.
“Roger that,” Mitchell said. His fingers pressed down. A series of numbers came up on the right top side of the display. “I’m turning on the MILSTARS beacon. Beacon on. MHV is locked on MILSTAR beacon. Locked as primary.” He watched as the red circle stopped flashing and became steady. His thumb pressed down on another panel. “Ground, do you have control?”
A woman’s voice came back. “This is Ground. I have control.”
“Ready to fire,” Mitchell said.
“Fire.”
“Firing.” Mitchell’s thumb pressed down on the button on top of his control stick.
Underneath the belly of the Thunder Dart explosive bolts fired, separating the MHV from the body of the aircraft. Less than eight feet long and only eight inches in diameter the MHV was the result of eight generations of anti-satellite (ASAT) development. It’s own very sophisticated and miniaturized pulse engine kicked in once it was clear of the Thunder Dart and it angled up toward space.
Major Mitchell had the MHV on his screen as he banked his own craft ever so slightly and began a carefully calculated descent back toward earth. “MHV running smooth and clean,” he reported.
Patricia Conners knew the MHV stood for miniature homing vehicle. And she could see the same image from the rocket as the nosecone fell away, allowing the built-in infrared imaging scope to go active. It filled the entire screen of her computer.
“There!” Jimmy said, pointing at a very small dot in the center of the screen. “That’s MILSTARS 16. The MHV is homing in on the satellite’s secure beacon so there should be no problem of a hit.”
Conners hand hovered over the joystick, just in case.
In the nose of the HMV rocket, the guidance computer had the exact location of MILSTARS 16 beacon; the same beacon that the space shuttle used to find and dock with the satellite to refuel it every two years. The beacon was normally silent, except when activated with a special access code, much like the landing lights at a remote airfield were activated by an incoming airplane signaling on a certain FM frequency.
The nose also held an infrared camera. The camera was sending to Conners a picture of MILSTARS and the golden glow growing around it.
“What is that?” Jimmy asked.
“I don’t know,” Conners said. Her hand was now resting around the manual control. “But it looks a lot like what took out Bright Star.”
“Oh, man!” Jimmy exclaimed as the glow expanded. “How does it know the HMV is inbound?”
“The radio,” Conners’ free hand was typing into her keyboard even as she said it. “I’m going to shut down the radio link from the HMV to Thunder Dart.” She hit the enter key as her other hand tightened around the joystick. “I have control of HMV,” she announced into the headset.
Jimmy quietly stepped back. He knew that Conners was now controlling an eight inch diameter missile traveling at 4,000 miles an hour toward a target less than twenty feet wide. There were forty, tiny, solid fuel booster rockets lined around the circumference of the rocket that she could fire to alter the course but this was like threading a needle stuck in a mailbox by leaning out a car at 60 miles an hour.
“Thirty seconds out,” Conners announced.
The golden glow was growing. “Oh, boy!” Conners muttered, trying to think with one part of her brain, even as she kept the small dot indicating the MILSTARS satellite centered. “Jimmy, tell Thunder to-” she paused as a golden fireball separated from the main aura and raced to the right.
“Stick with the MHV!” Jimmy yelled.
Major Mitchell saw what Conners saw. He immediately slammed down on his throttle, feeling the PDWE engine pick up the pace.
He had no idea how quickly the fireball was coming. He could still see the curvature of the earth ahead and his altimeter read 112,000 feet.
“Get out of there!” he heard the woman yelling in his headset.
“Damn right,” Mitchell muttered to himself, then he pushed right on the stick. The Thunder Dart began turning, but Mitchell had no idea whether he was avoiding the danger or not.
A second later he knew it was not. He felt his skin begin to crackle and a golden light suffused the cockpit. Mitchell slammed his fist down on a red lever. The entire cockpit shell of the Thunder Dart separated from the main body of the plane, slamming Mitchell against his shoulder harness with such force that he blacked out.
“Come on, come on,” Conners whispered as the MILSTARS satellite rapidly grew on the screen in front of her. The numbers in the upper right hand corner raced down as the rocket ate up the distance. As the time hit three seconds out, she pulled back on the trigger.