“Yes, that must be true. So we must spot and destroy him before he launches a nuclear torpedo. Afterward, we will find the American transports and annihilate the lot of them.”
“What about the American drone, sir?” the captain asked.
“I fail to understand your question,” Ling said.
“We can destroy it.”
“Yes,” Ling said.
“Perhaps we should wait, Admiral,” the captain said. “We might make them think we don’t know it’s there.”
“I doubt it,” Ling said. “It seldom pays to act with delicacy in these affairs. Brute force prevails. Hmm… I should think the Americans would deploy their THOR missiles soon.”
“Because of one small drone, sir?” the captain dared ask.
Ling allowed himself a soft chuckle. It made the command center personnel uneasy. He recognized the signs.
“Consider,” he told the captain, speaking to all of them now. “The Americans are attempting an amphibious invasion. How can they do that when we have the superior fleet? Because they have another weapon system. Yet what system could they employ so far from home? Their anti-ship ballistic missiles? No, I doubt that. What then? Why, their vaunted THOR missiles. Captain, destroy the drone and alert Chinese Space Command. We must stop the THOR missiles before they begin to fall on us.”
“And the American submarine?” the captain asked.
“We will begin using nuclear depth charges,” Ling said. He hated them, but they were useful. He could not allow China to lose any more of its precious aircraft carriers.
Darius’s head dipped as his eyelids drooped. He was tired. He’d been up for two watches already. He knew he should—
“Captain Green!” Khan shouted.
Darius’s head snapped up. A smaller man might have lurched to his feet. Darius found that his bulk helped keep him calm. He’d never told anyone else his secret, but he was sure it was true.
“At ease, mister,” Darius said.
Khan faced him. “The Chinese took out our drone, sir.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“They must know we’re here,” Khan said.
“I agree, sir,” the Chief said, a square-faced fellow from Kansas.
Darius dug sleep from his eyes with this knuckles. They were big and scarred from fistfights in his youth, with visible skin cracks in them. He nodded. What they said made sense. “Listen closely,” he said. “We’ll launch… three hunter-seekers. Then we turn around and—”
“We can’t lead them to the Task Force, sir,” the Chief said.
Darius’s eyes opened wider. What was this? Did the Chief second-guess him in front of the crew? Why did the man do it now all of a sudden?
He didn’t like my order earlier. Was it a mistake?
He couldn’t take it back, so there was no use worrying about it. Darius locked stares with the Chief. The man wasn’t backing down, though, and stared right back at him. Instead of getting angry, Darius turned away and thought deeply.
This was more than face, more than black and white animosity. He captained a submarine. Before Allah, that was an important responsibility. He wondered what his uncle would have done.
“Thank you, Chief,” Darius said. “I have considered your words.”
The crew watched him. His next order would determine many things.
“We have to launch our data, both to the Task Force and to Space Command. Afterward, we dive as deep as we can go. Then we crawl toward the enemy. If I’m right, there’s a shooting match starting. We have to work in and pop up later, and put a nuke up their Chinese asses.”
No one smiled. It was too grim a topic. If they could do that, launch the nuclear-tipped torpedo… none of them might live to talk about it.
“We joined the service to fight the enemy, gentlemen,” Darius said. “Sometimes, that means risking everything.” He watched them. Khan and he were Muslims. Allah could help a man die well, particularly during a fight. What about the others? Could they die well?
“Carry out my orders,” Darius said, and he stood. If anyone tried to second-guess him now—no, the crewmembers went about their tasks. Therefore, he opened his fist and let his fingers relax.
Alarms rang underground as General Foxx of the C and C THOR Missile Station burst through the door. They were deep in an abandoned mine shaft, the chamber well lit and cooled by massive air conditioners.
Men and women sat at their terminals, studying incoming data and checking with Space Command.
Foxx studied his tablet, rereading the latest text. The data links were tenuous, from a destroyer on the edge of the Tasman Sea, back to a message ship, to Antarctica and then to a relay station in South Africa.
“What code is—?” General Foxx never had a chance to finish his words. It was Code Red, ultra-priority. “You know what this means, people. We’re going to burn up satellites to get a fix on the Chinese carriers. This one is for real. Harris, how many are in range of—”
“One bundle, sir,” Harris said.
“Just one? That’s too bad. How long until its—”
“Two hours, sir,” Harris said.
Foxx nodded. He was a slender man. A year and a half ago, he’d been a colonel running an experimental unit. Now he was a general with a war-winning weapons system. It was time to get to work.
Two American sensor satellites packed in stealth sheathing were passing Australia west to east at longitude south 30 degrees and 45 degrees respectively. The signal from Lexington, Kentucky bounced along towers to a hidden relay satellite over the mid-Atlantic to Senegal. From there, through various towers, it reached South Africa and shot to another hidden satellite over the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Once they acted—revealing themselves—the space assets would have a short shelf life. Whatever they had to do, they had to do quickly.
One sensor satellite moved over the curvature of the Earth before the signal originating in Lexington could reach it. So it remained hidden in its stealth material. The other satellite at 30 degrees south received the message. Its AI recognized the code and ordered the satellite to burst out of its sheathing. Immediately, it used powerful radar and other sensor arrays and found the Chinese carrier group in the middle of the Tasman Sea.
The satellite used a communications laser, sending the data back to the object that had woken it. Seconds turned into minutes. Then the carrier group down below reacted to the intruding satellite.
Chinese destroyers Rose Petal and Green Lily activated their defense grids, arming MIR-616 Standard Missile 4Bs. Fifteen seconds later, two weapons blasted off, one from each destroyer.
Each improved SM-4B was seven meters long. Each had a wingspan of two meters and an operational range of seven hundred kilometers. Its flight ceiling was one hundred and eighty kilometers—twenty more kilometers than its previous version, deployed in 2032.
INS semi-active radar from the Sung tracked the American satellite.
Each SM-4B missile used a solid-fuel Aerojet booster. The first one roared out of human eyesight, heading for space. As the first stage rocket fell away, the second stage dual thrust rocket motor took over. More targeting data reached the missile as it rapidly climbed out of the atmosphere. Once in space, the third stage MK 136 solid-fueled rocket motor used pulse power.
The American satellite lacked defensive measures. It merely collected data on the fleet, sending it west toward the middle of the Indian Ocean.
On the first SM-4B missile, the third stage separated. The lightweight exo-atmospheric projectile sent the kinetic warhead at the target. Seconds ticked away, and the warhead struck the sensor satellite. The SM-4B transferred one hundred and thirty megajoules of kinetic energy to the object, more than enough to obliterate it.