"Our various opponents," she whispered. "They've been responding in fairly inscrutable ways. The Americans, for instance, with that ridiculous raid on Afghanistan. They had suspicions that the Khaldun footage was doctored. We even gave them hints. But they went ahead anyway. Malcolm wants you to try to predict things like that. And, of course, perform the odd little job like the one in the tunnel back there—"
Larissa was cut off when the entire ship suddenly shook more violently than it had at any time since I'd been aboard. I spun toward the tinted transparent panel in the hull near the bed and saw dim, eerie light outside: apparently, we'd once again climbed to a very high altitude. Against the mists of the stratosphere and the darkness of space beyond I could see dozens of glowing objects streaking toward us. Most of them were fairly small, I saw as they passed; but some, as they approached, grew to a considerable and disturbing size.
A second explosion lit up the sky around us and rocked the ship again, knocking me off the bed. When I righted myself I saw that Larissa was already halfway into her bodysuit and had one hand to her throat, activating the surgically implanted communicator that linked her to Malcolm. "Yes, Brother dear," she said, looking more annoyed than concerned at the peril into which we'd suddenly been thrown. "I can see them — it would be a little difficult not to. I'm on my way to the turret now with Gideon. Tell Julien to divert whatever power he can to the external fields — you know how damned unpredictable these things are."
I started to hurry into my own clothes. "What's happening?" I said, trying to match her calm.
"Our admirers in the Defense Department," she muttered, looking outside. "One of their pilots must've caught sight of our ship in Afghanistan. Looks like they've deployed their whole collection of toys: EKVs, LEAPs, ERIs — there's even an SBL out there."
"Larissa," I said, doing up my coveralls, "arcane acronyms really aren't going to reassure me right now."
Even in the midst of such an attack — or perhaps because of it— Larissa became playful and coy: "No, but you'll need to memorize these things, Doctor," she said, giving me a quick kiss. "Believe me, there will be a test." She began to point around the sky at the streaking objects. "Lightweight exoatmospheric projectiles, or LEAPs — they're the smaller ones. Then there are the extended range interceptors, or ERIs, and the exoatmospheric kill vehicles—"
"EKVs," I said, watching the wild display outside.
"And the really troublesome bastard," she finished, pointing to some sort of satellite or platform in the distance. "An SBL— space-based laser. All part of THAAD, the 'theater high-altitude area defense' against ballistic missiles. You know, the Star Wars nonsense." She grabbed my hand, and we rushed out into the corridor.
"How accurate are they?" I said.
"It's not their accuracy we have to worry about," Larissa answered, moving toward the ladder that led up to the ship's turret and the big rail gun inside it. "The THAAD boys have never managed to hit anything intentionally. But that doesn't keep them from throwing all that firepower around the atmosphere like they're in some kind of high-tech spitball fight — and an accidental hit could do real damage."
We reached the ladder and started up. "It's a little like skeet shooting," Larissa said with a laugh as we entered the turret to find Eli Kuperman waiting for us. "And don't worry, they're all unmanned vehicles, so you won't actually be killing anybody." She climbed into the seat of the rail gun and smiled at me in a devious way that hours earlier would have seemed very disconcerting.
Now, however, I found myself smiling back.
CHAPTER 21
As Larissa began to direct the rail cannon's fire in every direction, pounding away with glowing bursts at the midsize and larger interceptors that were being sent against us (the ship's magnetic fields deflected the smaller ones), the stratosphere was lit up by dozens of explosions, as well as by the indiscriminate but no less dangerous fire of the space-based laser. My job during the encounter was to help Eli try to determine just which long-range radar station was giving our position away to the American THAAD command. Apparently there were only a few monitoring sites sophisticated enough to be able to thwart our ship's stealth technology by doggedly fixing on the confusing combination of wave reflections and absorptions that the vessel was orchestrating (and that the Americans had presumably tagged as ours after they'd made visual contact in Afghanistan). Using the banks of equipment in the turret, Eli — operating in that cool but no less energized and sometimes even jovial manner that I now accepted as normal for everyone on board the ship — finally determined that a remote English base was the most likely culprit. His hypothesis was confirmed by Leon Tarbell, who, working on a lower deck, managed to intercept and descramble a series of communications between the English and American air forces.
We needed to know all this, Eli explained, because now that our ship was definitely being tracked, once we dropped back down out of the stratosphere, we could expect to be greeted by more conventional but no less deadly air ordnance than was currently being thrown against us. If we could determine what and whose planes they were going to be, Colonel Slayton could program our ship's computers to fly in an appropriately evasive pattern at a requisite speed. Eli seemed quite confident that this represented no overwhelming challenge, and as we talked over the prospect of going up against warplanes — be they human- or computer-piloted — I found myself being infected by his eager, slightly piratical enthusiasm.
This surprising reaction was only heightened when the ship's alert system went off, letting us know that we were beginning to descend and needed to get ready for a new and perhaps deadlier kind of action. Our enemy now would be not some antiballistic missile system that since its deluded inception had been destined for failure, but attack craft fully intent on shooting us down. Apparently there had been other such encounters; indeed, according to various radio transmissions intercepted by Tarbell in months past, Malcolm's ship had assumed a sort of mythical status among the world's air forces and navies. And given the very powerful ordnance that the warplanes of such countries as England and the United States were now routinely carrying, along with the skill of the pilots who both flew them personally and — as in the case of the American raid on Afghanistan— guided them from the remote safety of theirs ships and bases, escape had sometimes been a near thing.
So it would be on this occasion. As we dropped into the cloudy skies over the North Sea near the fifty-ninth parallel, we were almost immediately intercepted by Royal Air Force fighters. The planes struck dark, angular silhouettes against the setting sun, giving them a very intimidating appearance. When I turned to Larissa, I saw her sizing them up with a nod and a defiant smile; but concern was evident in her look, as well.
"Gideon," she called to me, "see if you can find out what's happening forward, will you?" She clutched the control handles of the cannon tightly but did not fire. "My brother doesn't like to use lethal force in situations like this, but if those things don't actually have pilots I'm going to indulge myself…"
Rushing down the ladder and through the corridor, I entered the nose of the ship to find Malcolm and Colonel Slayton at the control panels, Slayton calmly but quickly tapping information into one of the guidance terminals. "They're the new Joint Strike Force ultra-stealth models," he said. "First-day-of-war, highly survivable aircraft, armed with AIM-10 Predator missiles that can carry biological, nuclear, or conventional warheads."
"Manned?" Malcolm asked.
"I'm afraid so. They haven't worked the kinks out of the remote guidance system on this model, yet." Slayton turned to give Tressalian a very serious look. "We may not be able to get out of this without returning fire."