“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.
ONE
One must wager on the future.
– ELIE WIESEL
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
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.