a speeding cruise missile three meters long and with a wingspan of less than a meter from the return of the water less than five meters below it. It had slaved an optical CCD telescope to the radar image for use as a visual target system and kept the target locked on despite both the target’s flight north at five hundred miles per hour and the space station’s drift southeast at its orbital velocity of nearly 18,000 mph.
And finally and perhaps most remarkably, it had fired the station’s laser and held the beam dead on its tiny target for the seconds necessary to burn through the missile’s hull and destroy it. Hecate was only a half-megawatt laser, and much of that energy was lost in the turbulence of the Earth’s atmosphere below; the Hecate AI had used backscatter from the laser beam on the target to continually correct the beam’s output and aim, keeping it locked on until the target was destroyed.
“Looks like we’ve got a winner, Fred,” he said. “Find me another target before we complete this pass.”
“You got it, sir. I’ve got another launch, same site, at one minute five seconds ago, bearing three-five-two…”
Dahlgren peered again into the hooded screen, watching as the AI software lined up the next shot. Like shooting fish in a goddamn barrel.
“Shepard, Shepard, this is Cheyenne Mountain,” a voice called over his jumpsuit’s com speaker.
“This is Shepard, Colorado,” he replied. “Go.”
“Shepard, we have an orbit change for you, execution in…seven minutes. Drop what you’re doing and get set for a burn.”
“Ah…Colorado,” Dahlgren said. “We have a target ready for lock-on—”
“We copy that, Shepard, but this can’t wait. Secure your gear and stand by to copy the burn parameters. Over.”
“Roger that.” Damn! What could be so all-fired important? That cruise missile streaking north out of Cuba was going to come down someplace, and people were going to die. Shepard couldn’t intercept all of the missiles, but it could stop a bunch, each time it passed overhead. The idea was to force the bad guys to stagger their launches to times when Shepard was below the horizon, and give the air-defense boys time to regroup.
But evidently, Cheyenne Mountain had other things in mind.
Shepard MOP was not exactly a spaceship. It had all of the maneuverability of an elephant in free fall. Still, a rack of strap-on B-30 maneuvering thrusters attached to the external tank’s framework gave them the ability to change orbit within certain fairly narrow parameters, enough to pass over a particular target on the ground at a specified time. If Colorado wanted them to engage in a burn within the next few minutes, it was because they had a particular destination in mind, one with a fairly narrow access window. That argued that they were trying to manage an orbital rendezvous.
Seven minutes wasn’t much time. The Hecate laser was a delicate piece of equipment, and parts had to be strapped down before any delta-v maneuver.
“Let’s hump it, Fred,” Dahlgren called. Together, they began securing the laser. Two hundred miles below them, the cruise missile continued streaking north, just a few feet above the Gulf of Mexico.
EIGHTEEN
SATURDAY, 9 JUNE: 1929 HOURS GMT
Office of the President
White House Basement, Washington DC 1529 hours EDT
The president looked a lot older now than he had the last time Admiral Gray had seen him, less than twenty-four hours before. The familiar, easy, politician’s grin, the engaging and confident manner, both were gone. Markham was slumped into the big executive’s chair behind the desk, head supported on one hand, eyes bleak as he stared at the muted images flickering across the wall screen to his right. Net News had gotten back on the air again this morning, despite the cruise missile strike that had taken out its broadcast antenna in Silver Springs.
“So?” Markham’s voice was muffled by his hand. “How are we holding, CJ?”
“We’re doing better than we expected, Mr. President.” Gray laid a folder on the president’s desk. “Our air-defense forces, air national guard, naval air groups, and other assets, we estimate, have accounted for approximately four hundred cruise missiles, or roughly sixty-five percent of what they’ve thrown at us so far.”
“You’re saying over two hundred missiles have gotten through.”
Louis Harrel, standing at Gray’s side, nodded. “Two hundred fourteen, as of the latest count, Mr. President.”
On the big wall screen, Carlotta Braun’s dark features stared down at the three men, her too-red lips moving soundlessly. Abruptly, the scene shifted to an aerial view of Washington. The Mall was visible, a long green rectangle reaching toward the familiar, white-domed majesty of the Capitol Building. Something—a tiny, white something like a child’s glider—was streaking along the Mall, chasing its own shadow on the ground. In a heartbeat, it streaked past the Air and Space Museum, passed Fourth and Third Streets and the Capital Reflecting Pool, and arrowed squarely into the Capitol’s west side, detonating inside the Rotunda.
The explosion blew out windows, pieces of stone wall, and several Greek columns. The Capitol steps, mercifully, were empty of people, but the blast flipped several hydrogen-fueled cars parked on the drive below and lashed nearby cherry trees with hurricane winds. For an agonizing several seconds, nothing more happened. Then the huge dome seemed to settle slightly, cracked, then collapsed inward as chunks of white stone crashed down in a billowing avalanche into the gutted center of the building.
Braun’s face reappeared, lips moving.
“They’ve been showing that same damned news clip for three hours now,” President Markham said bitterly. “Can’t they find some other piece of death and mayhem to bombard the public with?”
“This must be playing holy hell with national morale,” Harrel said.
“It is,” the president agreed. “And the answer is, what? Invoke government censorship?”
“This is war, Mr. President,” Harrel said.
“Those days are long over,” the president said. “Even if we could censor the netnews—and I’m not sure we could—the people would just get their news from outside the country, and you know the spin they’re putting on things.” He gestured at the screen. “At least they know they’re getting an honest account here, and we’ll need that when the tide turns.” He looked at Gray.
“We can expect a turning, can’t we, Admiral? Please tell me there’s a bright side to all of this.”
“We expect a break in the attack soon, Mr. President,” Gray said. “Our estimates of the number of missiles in their stores suggest they can’t keep up this level of bombardment for much longer. They’ll need time to rearm and reequip. The likeliest scenario has them announcing a dramatic cessation to the bombardment after today or possibly tomorrow, and giving us a chance to think things over. Their ultimatum still stands. They’ll want some kind of a reply to that.”
“And if we don’t?”
Gray shrugged. “They’ll continue the bombardment, I suppose, until we comply.”
“There
