It took a huge effort of will, but somehow President John D. Farrell restrained himself from giving Gennadiy Gryzlov a full broadside of all the masterful profanity he’d learned over the years he spent working side by side with Texas oil roughnecks — tough-minded men whose language could sometimes blister paint. Besides, he thought grimly, swearing at the Russian son of a bitch would only be a distant second best to physically kicking the shit out of his smug face.
“I make no apology whatsoever for destroying your spaceplane,” Gryzlov said icily over the secure video link with Moscow. “The evidence is quite clear, despite your country’s pitiful efforts to deny it. Your Sky Masters S-19 Midnight attacked Mars One without provocation, and my cosmonauts acted in self-defense.”
Farrell snorted. “Using weapons your own foreign minister denied were even aboard that supposedly peaceful space station.”
Gryzlov shrugged. “Foreign Minister Titeneva was… ill informed.” His gaze sharpened. “Fortunately for Russia, others saw the probability of American aggression and took sensible precautions.”
Farrell decided to let that piece of total bullshit slide, for now. It was just barely possible that the crew aboard Mars One had panicked, mistaking the recon nanosats launched by Brad McLanahan and Hunter Noble for weapons aimed at them. But one unintended clash in orbit could not justify the ongoing destruction of America’s most vital reconnaissance satellites.
When he said as much, Gryzlov only sneered. “Why should I order my cosmonauts to stop now? For too long, your nation has arrogantly asserted its right to operate unchallenged in space with illegally armed spacecraft. You have spied on other countries, openly and without shame. You have destroyed Russian satellites and spacecraft. You have even conducted vicious attacks from space against civilian and military targets, both on the ground and at sea. Now I tell you plainly, those days are over.”
“You’d better get one thing straight,” Farrell warned flatly. There was a time for the polite circumlocutions of ordinary diplomacy and there was a time for plain talking. “There is no goddamned way my government will sit back and let y’all walk all over the United States. Stacy Anne Barbeau’s policies of appeasement and weakness are yesterday’s news. Keep pushing us and you’re liable to end up spitting teeth.”
Gryzlov smiled thinly. “Do not make threats you cannot back up, Mr. President. It is unseemly, even embarrassing. Whether you understand it yet or not, the world has shifted beneath your feet. Now, thanks to the powerful weapons and revolutionary technologies aboard Mars One, Russia dominates space. And we will exercise this power as required to protect our people and our national interests from American aggression.”
Seeing the fury rising on Farrell’s broad, square-jawed face, Gryzlov held up a conciliatory hand. “Nevertheless, despite our overwhelming military superiority, I am willing to offer you certain guarantees. First, as an assurance Russia is not planning to conduct a nuclear first strike, we will refrain from destroying your early warning satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Nor will we eliminate your GPS navigation satellites, which are so crucial to both your military and civilian sectors. Nor, for the time being, will Mars One target your civilian space-based communications networks.”
“How truly kind,” Farrell said acidly.
“Yes, I think so,” Gryzlov agreed, not even trying to hide his amused contempt. His expression hardened. “But I caution you not to mistake my restraint for weakness. From this moment forward, all other American or mercenary Sky Masters military spacecraft detected in orbit will be engaged and destroyed without further warning. The same goes for all of your so-called civilian imaging satellites. Russia will no longer tolerate any further spying from space against its national territory, armed forces, or economic interests.”
Farrell stared at him in outraged disbelief. “That sounds a hell of a lot like you’re imposing a total blockade on low Earth orbit.”
Gryzlov shrugged. “Call it what you will.” He smiled. “In the future, certain peaceful civilian payloads may be allowed into space… but only after thorough inspection — either by my government or by trusted international authorities.” He reached out a hand to the controls on his desk. “There is no basis for further discussion of these points, President Farrell. I have won… and you have lost. Accept this reality while the cost to you and your fellow countrymen is still so low.”
The video link went dark.
For a moment, Farrell sat motionless, with his head bowed slightly. He felt like the whole weight of the world had just come crashing down on his shoulders. Intellectually, he’d known serving as America’s president and commander in chief would be the most difficult challenge he had ever faced. But until now, he hadn’t fully felt the burden of office — the realization that his decisions would directly affect the lives and freedoms of more than three hundred million of his fellow countrymen… and those of hundreds of millions more around the world. Especially when it was starting to look as though they might face a real no-win situation.
Not feeling so high-and-mighty now, eh, J.D., he thought, are you? Then he gave himself a good swift mental kick in the pants. He’d asked the voters to dump Stacy Anne Barbeau out of the Oval Office on her ass, and they’d obliged. So it was time for him to man up and do his damnedest to fulfill the oath he’d sworn at his inauguration.
With a deep frown, Farrell looked up at the expectant faces around the room. He’d summoned his national security team to sit in on Gryzlov’s call — figuring it made more sense for them to hear the volatile Russian leader in person than to rely on reading a sterile transcript later. “Well,” he said heavily. “There you have it. Setting aside that bullcrap about us firing first, the Russians aren’t bothering to hide their intentions. We’re smack-dab in the middle of a shooting war in space.”
“Except right now the Russians are the only ones doing any shooting,” Andrew Taliaferro, the secretary of state, commented dryly.
Grimly, Farrell nodded. “That’s about the size of it.” He looked down the table at Admiral Scott Firestone, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “What is the current military situation, Admiral?”
“It’s bleak, Mr. President.” The short, stocky man didn’t pull any punches. “In just the past several hours, we’ve already lost three key reconnaissance spacecraft — a Topaz radar imaging satellite, a KH-11 optical imaging satellite, and one of the navy’s Intruder SIGINT satellites. These satellites were destroyed by fire from that Russian orbital platform. All of them were at least a thousand miles from Mars One when they were hit, and in radically different orbits. This indicates we face a previously unknown Russian weapons system, one with enormous range and the ability to strike targets with astounding speed.”
Farrell leaned forward. “How fast, exactly?”
“Based on the elapsed time between the instant we detect a light pulse, or flash, on the space station and the moment we lose contact with a satellite, we estimate something on the order of six thousand miles per second.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Farrell muttered. He turned to Lawrence Dawson, his science adviser. “What’s your assessment?” he asked the astrophysicist.
“I concur with former president Martindale and retired general McLanahan,” Dawson said. “This new weapon is most likely a plasma gun. In fact, based on the images collected by our spaceplane before it was destroyed, I believe its design is very similar to one we explored ourselves in the late 1980s and early 1990s — in the MARAUDER plasma-rail-gun program. If so, our satellites are being struck by toroids of superheated plasma moving at incredible speed. Such a strike would inflict lethal thermal, impact, and EMP damage.”