Colonel Higgins nodded. This was the right place for using the Behemoths. He just hoped he would not lose them by doing so.
Blue light filled the large but cramped command compartment in MC ABM #3. Officers and enlisted personnel sat at their stations, checking their screens.
Commander Bao held a receiver to his ear. The Marshal’s orders came through the line firmly and quietly: “Destroy the American satellite.”
Commander Bao of the Mobile Canopy Anti-Ballistic Missile Vehicle #3 hung up the phone. He was a middle-aged man with a stomach ulcer. He kept a bottle of a thick medicine in a compartment under his chair.
The ulcer came because of his insistence on perfection, he believed. His vehicle had the best rating in the military and he planned to keep it that way. Bao knew the crew considered him a martinet, a perfectionist. That was fine with him. All his life his mother had taught him to be the best. He had achieved perfection in every endeavor: in piano playing, in Ping-Pong and in mathematics during his school years. Just as China outperformed every other country, so Bao would outperform the other MC ABM commanders. That included in how he instructed the others. For example, he had never raised his voice with them because that would indicate nervousness.
When one was the best, one had nothing that could make one nervous.
The ulcer now bit him with a twinge of pain. Commander Bao ignored it for the moment as he began to issue orders in a calm voice.
Each of the personnel put on huge headphones with noise cancellation technology. They had to in order to survive the next few minutes.
Bao checked with Tracking and got on the intercom with Power and Fuel. The operators from each told him they were ready. He checked his watch.
“Twenty seconds,” he said. As he said it, he meant neither nineteen seconds nor twenty-one seconds. He demanded perfect precision from everyone, including himself.
The small hand of his high-grade watch ticked away. Precisely twenty seconds later, green lights appeared on his board.
“Are we still tracking?” Bao asked into his microphone. His lips were too close and he heard blowing sounds in his ears.
“Yes, Commander,” the Tracking Officer said.
“Give me power,” Bao said.
In the other two links of the tier-system, chemical rocket fuel pumped into the magnetic-propulsion turbine—MPT. The whine was unbelievable and it quickly rose to a painful volume.
Commander Bao and his team in the laser unit winced or scrunched their faces. Firing the laser never got easier. The compartment shook and rattled Bao’s teeth. He pressed them together. For some unaccountable reason, his mouth had been open. That was a mistake. He noted it and told himself never to make that mistake again.
“Aim the focusing mirrors,” he said. He heard his voice as weak and small in his headphones, but he heard it. That was the amazing thing. Chinese electronics was the best.
Outside the three-trailer MC ABM system, the focusing mirror aimed into space. Inside the command compartment, Tracking followed the American satellite.
“Fire,” Bao said.
The MPT’s output combined with the stored battery power and pumped the laser with a strategic level of energy. A heavy beam speared into the atmosphere and climbed at the speed of light into space.
Precision targeting ensured the beam hit the enemy recon satellite. The wattage was too much for the spacecraft’s armored skin. Titanium melted away. The hellish laser devoured inner electronics. In a second of time, the irresistible Chinese weapon destroyed the American eye in the sky.
“Shut down the laser,” Bao said. “We have achieved success.” Immediately, the horrible whine of the MPT lowered. Bao’s ulcer bit once more.
Glancing from side to side, seeing that his crew personnel were busily engaged, Bao opened the compartment under his chair. He grabbed the bottle of gooey blue liquid. Twisting the cap, he took a slug, swallowing rapidly. The medical fluid took its time going down. That was fine. It would ease the stomach pain and help him operate at peak efficiency. He was the best, and he planned to win the top laser unit award so he could add to the plaques on his wall in his house. It would make both his wife and his mother proud.
Colonel Higgins stood behind the CP sergeant, watching the screen with downloaded imaging from the satellite. A second later, the image went blank. After a half-second, the sergeant tapped the screen, switching it back to radar. A few enemy aircraft appeared, but the majority of the enemy appeared to have vanished as if swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle.
The captain shouted.
“What happened?” Stan asked. Was this Chinese sabotage? Did they have deep penetration commandos outside in the tank park? The thought tightened his chest.
“The satellite is down,” the captain said.
“Did Space Command spot anything approaching it?” a CP officer asked.
The captain shook his head. “The Chinese must have used their best battlefield laser they had to knock it down.
“There’s heavy jamming, sir,” the sergeant said. “Those damn Anchors are pouring it out. We’re practically radar blind.”
I’m useless here. I should be with my men. “Captain,” Stan said. “I’m heading for my tank.”
The captain nodded absently.
“Good luck,” Stan said.
“The same to you, sir,” the captain said, with his face aimed elsewhere.
Stan strode to the CP door. It was heavy, and a MP eased it open. Stan sprinted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. The blast door was closed. Stan shoved it open and closed it behind him.
The stars blazed tonight and the moon looked huge in the sky. Snow covered the Behemoth Tank Park and covered the anti-radar netting hiding each giant vehicle.
Stan kept sprinting. He didn’t know how much time was left. The seventeen big vehicles rumbled with sound. The engines were massive. They needed to be to move the three hundred tons of reinforced steel.
Stan’s tank was like the others. It was fifteen meters by six by four and mounted 260cm of armor. It had nine auto-cannons, seven auto-machine guns and an onboard radar and AI to track enemy missiles and shells. Given enough flight time, the Behemoth could knock down incoming missiles and most shells aimed at it. Whatever came close had to survive forty beehives launchers. Those fired tungsten flechettes, a spray of shotgun-like metal that often knocked down or deflected an enemy projectile enough to skew its impact against the heavy armor. It was the super-thick armor and the sheer mass of beehives that was supposed to make the Behemoth more than a big, expensive target.
Stan climbed outer rungs to the commander’s hatch up top. He knocked on the steel portal. A second later, it popped open, and Jose looked at him. The man wore his lucky scarf around his neck.
“I was wondering when you’d show up for the fun,” Jose said.
Stan’s mouth was too dry to reply. The run combined with worry had winded him. Stan squeezed through the hatch, closing it, keeping in the compartment’s warm air. Soft green light lit the compartment.
He opened channels with the CP captain as he settled into his commander’s chair.
The images had begun to reappear. The U.S. Air Force had switched to high-flying stealth drones to provide real-time intelligence.
Stan watched spellbound on his commander’s screen. If those drones reached I-70—
“Slick bastards,” Jose muttered from his location. “Thought you could trick us, huh? But we know you’re there.”
“What’s that behind them?” the captain asked someone in the CP.
Stan noticed it on his screen. Yes, farther back appeared new blips, hundreds of them.
“Looks like the Heron bombers, sir,” the CP sergeant said. “They’re using the big boys tonight.”