Executive Intent

ONE

ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

A FEW HOURS LATER

U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Kai Raydon expertly sailed across the command module and precisely attached himself to the commander’s console with perfectly placed touches of Velcro sneakers. He still remembered what it was like to float around in zero-g-what most Earth-bound folks called “weightlessness”-for the first time. It simply took practice to get used to the fact that there was no gravity to help you orient your body-every action has to be counteracted with an opposite action. It took a lot of banging around, but Raydon, a longtime veteran of space flight and working in space, was more accustomed to moving around in zero-g than he was in terrestrial one-g.

The main screen at the commander’s station showed an eight-place split videoconference view, with his image in the lower right corner, and he studied his image for a few moments to make sure he looked presentable. He knew that hair had a tendency to look tangly and get rather dirty during long tours of duty in space, so he always kept his hair buzz-cut short, even when he returned to Earth. Raydon was trim and fit, thanks to a daily resistance workout regimen, especially on Armstrong Space Station, and he was careful to regulate his diet while in space to avoid loss of muscle tone and fluid imbalances. The schedule was demanding up here, but there was always time for exercise; that was one of the most important lessons he taught the young astronauts assigned to Armstrong.

The other videoconference windows were still vacant; Raydon was the first to arrive in the virtual conference room. The windows were labeled with the names of where the feed was originating: PNSA, SECDEF, CJCS, SECNAV, SECSTATE, DCI, and CNO, all the national security bigwigs, and little old Kai Raydon, the only Air Force guy. He wouldn’t be surprised if this meeting started late, given the shitstorm that was brewing down on planet Earth.

He checked the secondary commander’s monitor, which showed the latest satellite video feed of the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush, now motionless in the South China Sea. Smoke still covered the aft half of the carrier, although he couldn’t see flames anymore. “Seeker, what’s the latest on the Bush?” he asked on intercom.

“Fires are under control and the casualties have all been evacuated, sir,” Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas, the senior noncommissioned officer and chief sensor operator aboard Armstrong Space Station, replied.

“Casualty count?”

“Same as last report, sir: fifteen dead, thirty-seven wounded, nine critically. Five jets and three choppers lost.”

“Damn,” Raydon muttered. “Freakin’ Chinese squids. They want to play in Carnegie Hall-now they’re center stage.”

Twenty minutes past the scheduled start time, the videoconference got under way, presided over by the president’s national security adviser, Conrad Carlyle. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Richard Cowan, read the latest report on casualties and condition of the George H. W. Bush. “I think we were very fortunate the Sea Whiz got that missile,” Cowan concluded, using the common nickname for the Close-In Weapon System, or CIWS. “If it hit at the speed it was traveling, even with no warhead, it could have possibly sunk the Bush.”

“Sink it?” Carlyle exclaimed. “A single missile? Doesn’t an aircraft carrier weigh over ninety thousand tons?”

“But traveling at eight times the speed of sound, the momentum of that missile would be enormous,” Cowan explained. “Our engineers calculated it could’ve exceeded a tenth of the total weight of the carrier.”

“And remember, the Russian hypersonic missiles used in the Holocaust had one-kiloton nuclear warheads on them,” Secretary of Defense Miller Turner added. Turner, like Carlyle and Chief of Staff Walter Kordus, was a longtime friend and confidant of President Joseph Gardner, and everyone else in the room knew that the “clubhouse cabinet’s” thoughts and opinions would certainly be transmitted directly to the White House in no time. “Any evidence at all that those missiles had nuclear warheads on them?”

“None at all, sir,” Cowan said. “No warhead of any kind, except perhaps a flight-data transmitter, as the Chinese claim.”

“That doesn’t make me feel one bit better about this,” Carlyle said, shaking his head. “Why in the hell were the Chinese flying a jet with hypersonic antiship missiles near our carrier?”

“Freedom of the seas, Conrad,” Secretary of State Stacy Anne Barbeau said. Barbeau, the former senior senator from Louisiana and former Senate majority leader, was a glamorous and ebullient personality who took great pride in politically destroying anyone who tried to dismiss her as a brainless bimbo, even when she played the bimbo card to the max. Everyone knew she had strong White House ambitions, and no one wanted to get in her way when she eventually made her move. “We’re free to sail near their shores; they’re free to fly toward our ships; we’re free to intercept them, try to turn them away, and shoot their butts down if they look like they’re going to attack.” She turned to the chief of naval operations. “What I want to know, Admiral Cowan, is what were the American fighters doing out there that made those missiles fire off?”

“Standard operating procedures for any surface combatant, especially a carrier, is to keep unidentified combat aircraft at least two hundred miles away, ma’am,” Cowan said. “In my opinion, that’s too close-I’d like to make it five hundred miles. In any case, our intercept pilots have a gradually escalating cascade of maneuvers they are authorized to do to turn a suspect aircraft away: They fly close to the aircraft, fire guns, do high-speed passes, and do other maneuvers to show the bad guys we’re serious. The last option is to attack.”

“So your Hornets do this maneuver, this ‘handstand’ as you call it, to try to…what? Scare the other guys away?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And does it usually work?”

“Very few bad guys stick around after we fire a cannon burst a few feet away from their cockpits,” Cowan said. “The Chinese plane just kept on coming. They even fired their cannon in return.”

“So what was this handstand maneuver that caused the missiles to dislodge from the Chinese fighter?” Barbeau asked. “Was this a deliberate contact between two planes?”

“A handstand is just a scare tactic, ma’am,” Cowan explained. “It directs a jet blast down on the other guys’ plane from a few yards away. It’s surprising and maybe momentarily disruptive, but it’s not dangerous to similar-size aircraft-and the Chinese fighter is…was…much bigger than the Hornet. It’s certainly not enough to dislodge a missile from a jet-especially an armed missile.”

“So you’re saying the Chinese fighter crew deliberately fired those missiles at the carrier?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Cowan admitted. “But I find it hard to believe that the missiles dislodged, powered themselves up, fired off, and locked onto the Bush all by themselves.”

“Wouldn’t they need to know where the carrier was before launch?” Carlyle asked.

“Not necessarily, sir,” Cowan replied. “Some antiship cruise missiles can be self-guided by radar to attack any large target; shorter-range missiles use electro-optical sensors and datalink the images back to a controller to pinpoint a particular target. Russian-made cruise missiles can do both. Such missiles can then be fired in the general direction of their targets, or programmed to patrol an area where the targets might sail into, and then lock on and attack.”

Secretary of State Barbeau shook her hands and closed her eyes. “Hold on, everyone, hold on,” she said irritably. “We’re getting off track here. My bottom-line question: Does anybody here honestly believe the Chinese would deliberately fire a hypersonic missile at a U.S. warship in peacetime?” No one replied. “Good. I happen to agree, so we can move on from here. However it happened, I believe it was an accident. I’m going to ask the Chinese foreign minister to demand a formal inquiry and full analysis of the incident, and to have U.S. experts involved every step of the way to the maximum extent possible. China is a pretty closed society, and their government and military even more so, but I expect full cooperation. Case closed.”

Admiral Cowan’s eyes had narrowed into angry slits. “Excuse me, ma’am, but the case is not closed. What about the casualties, the damage to the carrier-”

“What about the loss of that Chinese fighter and its crew, Admiral?” Barbeau retorted. “We lost more, so they should pay? They fired the missiles, so they’re the bad guys? Excuse me, Admiral, but this ‘handstand’ maneuver sounds to me like showing off, not defending the carrier. It’s like Tom Cruise flying upside down over the MiG in Top Gun-he did it just because the MiG pilot was starting to piss him off. If we’re all agreed it was not deliberate, then the Chinese pilot flew toward our carrier just to piss us off. Is that a reason to blast him with engine exhaust and cause him to almost flip upside down and possibly dislodge those missiles?”

“Our SOP is to do everything necessary to divert a possible hostile target away with nonlethal means before resorting to lethal force-”

“Your men have their SOPs when they’re out there in harm’s way, Admiral-it’s for you and the national command authority to decide what they are and if they’re being properly performed, not me,” Barbeau said. “I know your men don’t have the luxury of sitting in a nice comfy chair and calmly debating things when they’re looking down the barrel of a gun thousands of miles from home, when the only dry landing strip and hot meal is a four-acre hunk of floating steel that might end up at the bottom of the South China Sea at any moment.

“But now we’re in my battlefield, Admiral, not yours. If we’re all agreed this was a tragic accident and not deliberate”-Barbeau paused, then pointed at each window in her videoconference monitor, querying each participant-“and we are all still agreed, are we not…?”-she waited a few breaths: still more silence-“that it was an accident, then we investigate fully to prevent such accidents from happening again; we issue the sincerest of apologies; and we move on. You start asking for reparations, or justice, or payback, and it tells me you don’t really believe it was an accident. If that’s the case, Admiral Cowan, you’d better tell me right now.”

The chief of naval operations looked as if he was going to continue the argument; then, like a balloon slowly losing air, his shoulders slumped, he folded his hands, and made an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“Thank you, Admiral,” Barbeau said. “Now I have something to work with. One more question: Where did that Chinese fighter come from? Was it on a patrol mission, some kind of test, or is there any possibility that it could have been launched on a strike mission?”

“I can give you the answer to that, Madam Secretary,” Kai Raydon said.

“Who is this?”

“General Kai Raydon, commander of Armstrong Space Station, Air Force Space Defense Command,” Kai responded. He typed in commands on his console’s keyboard, and the image on a new videoconference monitor changed to another trio of naval vessels. “You’re looking at live pictures of the People’s Liberation Army Navy Project 190 aircraft carrier, named the Zhenyuan, accompanied by two underway replenishment vessels on either side of the carrier. We’ve been monitoring the Chinese carrier since it sailed within five hundred miles of the Bush and observed the fighter launch.”

“Who are you again, General?” Barbeau asked. “Where are you?” She turned to Secretary of Defense Turner. “Is he one of yours, Miller?”

“General Raydon commands Armstrong Space Station, the Air Force’s orbiting space reconnaissance and communications platform,” Turner replied. “Where are you exactly right now, General?”

“Two hundred and twelve miles over Argentina, sir, falling eastward at seventeen thousand six hundred miles per hour.”

“‘Falling’? You’re falling?” Barbeau exclaimed.

“Spacecraft in Earth orbit aren’t floating, Madam Secretary, and they aren’t being propelled-they are pulled to Earth by gravity like any other object,” Kai explained. “At our altitude and speed, however, we never hit the Earth as we fall because we speed past Earth as we continue to fall toward it.”

“I’m sure I don’t understand any of that, General Raydon,” Barbeau said, “so I’ll defer to your expertise. You saw the fighters launch from that carrier?”

“Armstrong is the hub of an extensive network of communications-and-surveillance satellites that cover the entire planet twenty-four/seven. If any American military unit goes into possible danger, the Air Force watches it from space. We’ve monitored the Chinese carrier almost continuously in real time since it left port.”

Barbeau nodded. “It sounds impressive,” she said. “Any unit, anytime, anywhere?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Raydon responded. “If we don’t have a satellite constellation ready to observe, we can set one up PDQ. If a satellite breaks, we can fix it. We can tie into a network of satellites and unmanned surveillance aircraft that fills in a pretty complete picture of every carrier battle group, surface-action group, and Marine Expeditionary Force deployed around the world, plus major exercises and other deployments. And if something needs blowing up, we’re developing the capability of blowing it up from here faster than you can imagine.”

“Naval support is a top priority for the Air Force these days, isn’t it?” Barbeau remarked with a slight smile. She knew that the increased emphasis on naval operations, especially carriers and multipurpose submarines, was a sore point with many services, especially the Air Force, whose budget was the hardest hit.

“Yes, ma’am, it is,” Raydon said. “They badly need the help, after all, and we’re happy to assist.”

“Go on without the editorial comments, General,” Turner said.

“Yes, sir,” Raydon said, suppressing a smile.

The space thing was back, Stacy Barbeau thought as the space general blathered on about all the stuff his station could do. President Joseph Gardner had vowed to kill the space station and spend the money on more carriers. The carriers were indeed on order-she had procured at least two to be built in her home state of Louisiana, thanks to her intimate relationship with the president-but the Air Force’s push for space was apparently still going strong. That was a very interesting development indeed…“Tell me about this Chinese aircraft carrier, General Raydon,” she interrupted without knowing or caring what he had been talking about. “You said that’s a live picture?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s a nighttime shot of the carrier performing a night underway replenishment-a very tricky maneuver for any carrier navy, and a very impressive feat for China ’s very young carrier navy,” Raydon said. “The Project 190 carrier was laid down three years ago in Novosibirsk, Russia. It was meant to be Russia’s second carrier and first true angled-deck catapult-equipped supercarrier-they had been using ‘ski-jump’-equipped carriers before this-but China made Russia an offer it couldn’t refuse.”

“ Russia actually sold its aircraft carrier to China?”

“Military cooperation between the two has been increasing over the past ten years at least,” National Security Adviser Carlyle said. “I wouldn’t say it’s as close as it was in the sixties, but it’s an easy way for China to quickly and easily build a world-class military.”

“What else has Russia been selling to China?”

“You name it, Madam Secretary,” Carlyle said. “Naval weapon systems, long-range precision-guided weapons, spacecraft, maritime attack, air-launched missiles-big-ticket, relatively low-tech, high-volume items.”

“Is this carrier a threat to us?” Barbeau asked. “Is it like our carriers?”

“It is a monster, on a par with any of the world’s carriers with the exception of America ’s,” Raydon went on. “It is over nine hundred feet long, two hundred and fifty feet wide, and has a seventy-five-thousand-pound displacement fully loaded. It features two aircraft elevators, four steam catapults, almost thirty-knot top speed, and forty fixed-and rotary-wing aircraft aboard, including thirty-two former Russian Sukhoi-34 advanced fighter-bombers ruggedized for catapult and tailhook operations. Total crew complement is four thousand sailors, and it usually embarks a company of special operations forces. Because it was designed for ‘greenwater’ operations, within easy reach of supply ports, it does not have a nuclear power plant, although the 190 has been deployed as far as East Africa in support of Somali antipiracy missions, which means the Chinese have gotten very good at long-range naval operations with extended supply lines.”

“But it can’t match an American carrier, right?” Barbeau asked. “It’s smaller, and they only have one? We have twelve, plus its escort ships, and are building four more.”

“The 190 is China ’s second carrier-they have a smaller carrier, purchased from Iran, that’s been used to train crews on carrier ops,” Carlyle said. “But a Chinese carrier shadowing an American carrier battle group is emblematic of a growing trend: China is building its ability to project naval power far beyond its home waters in order to protect its business interests around the world, protect shipping lanes, and counter American hegemony.”

“American hegemony?” Barbeau asked with playacted southern-belle innocence. She knew exactly what that term meant, but she wanted to hear the military’s spin on it. “What are the Chinese worried about? We’re not at war-we don’t even compete with them. We buy billions of dollars of their goods, and they buy trillions of dollars of our debt. China is under no threat of invasion from anyone I’m aware of, except perhaps internally, and they employ very effective anti-insurgency intelligence and interdiction forces to eliminate unrest.”

“The situation is plain and simple, Madam Secretary: the U.S. Navy is the world’s best, and the second-and third-string players don’t like it and will do anything they can think of to bust us up,” Raydon said.

“Thank you, General Raydon, but I can take it from here,” Carlyle said. He spread his hands and nodded. “But as the general said, Stacy, China depends on exports-selling their goods to every corner of the globe, sent mostly by oceangoing vessels. Everywhere they go, in every ocean and sea near any major port of call anywhere on the planet, they are confronted by the same thing: the U.S. Navy. They know the Navy patrols and controls the world’s sea-lanes, and has the power to deny access to anyone if they so choose.

“Therefore, China wants a blue-water navy to challenge American dominance and protect its interests around the world,” Carlyle went on. “They bought themselves an aircraft carrier from Russia and are undergoing a massive crash training course to make it fully blue-water operational. Additionally, we know they’re placing ground-launched ballistic hypersonic antiship missiles in their sea-launched ballistic-missile submarines’ operating areas and sea-lanes near their shores as a warning to our survey ships and hunter-killer sub patrols to stay away-”

“And now they’ve engineered this so-called accidental launch as another warning: Your carriers are at risk, so stay away,” Raydon said. “They say it was an accident, and we’re buying into it.”

“Thank you, General Raydon,” Barbeau said irritably. “If there’s nothing more you have for us, you can resume your duties up there…wherever you are.”

“Over the South Atlantic now, ma’am,” Raydon said. “I do have one more comment to make regarding China. Their new manned space station, the Golden Wing Ten, maneuvered itself into an almost mirror orbit recently. We’re still separated by altitude and distance, but it clearly is a hostile move on their part.”

“I don’t understand, General,” Miller Turner said. “What’s hostile about this? The so-called Chinese space station is a couple of space capsules docked together with a central engineering and mating module. There are only four Chinese astronauts aboard.”

“It demonstrates some important capabilities, sir: the ability to maneuver, to be refueled, and to track another spacecraft with accuracy,” Raydon said. “Moving a spacecraft into a different orbit requires a lot of fuel, and unless the fuel is replenished, the service life of a satellite is greatly shortened when it’s moved, especially to the degree this one has been. It’s a relatively simple task now to maneuver within striking distance of Armstrong Space Station.”

“‘Striking distance’?” Carlyle remarked. “You mean, deliberately collide or attack the space station?”

“Why else would you send a spacecraft on nearly the same orbit, sir?” Raydon asked. “We don’t know that much about the Golden Wing Ten. The Chinese tell us it’s to expand their knowledge and experience in orbital operations, but that’s about it. We speculate that it’s akin to our early Gemini-Agena spacecraft docking missions, where we learned docking, handling, and equipment-transfer procedures that we eventually used on Skylab, lunar, Shuttle, and International Space Station missions, but again, we’re making excuses for the Chinese that are not backed up by any evidence. We should-”

“We’re completely off the topic here, gentlemen,” Stacy Anne Barbeau interrupted, “so let’s save this discussion for another time, shall we? We’re agreed that the Chinese missile launch was most likely accidental; we want to participate in a full-scale investigation; and we’d like the Chinese to stay away from our carriers and point their missiles in some other direction. In return, we’ll pledge to use less aggressive maneuvers to warn foreign pilots to turn away, in order to avoid possible damage that might result in accidental launches. Can I go to the president and recommend this course of action to him?” Kai Raydon looked as if he was going to raise his hand, but no one else said anything, so Barbeau said quickly, “Thank you for your inputs, gentlemen. My staff will follow up with each of you for details for the report to the president, and I’ll call if I have any more questions. Thank you.” And her videoconference window disappeared.

“Thanks for the good work, General Raydon,” Secretary of Defense Turner said. “Please pass along your full report of the Bush incident to Air Force as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” Kai responded, and signed off.

“Opinionated SOB, isn’t he?” National Security Adviser Carlyle remarked. “Seems that flying…or according to Raydon, falling…through orbit in a space station gives you the right to say whatever happens to be on your mind.”

“They’re doing great work on a shoestring budget, Conrad,” Turner said. “Every time they go out and capture, repair, refuel, and reorbit a satellite, they save us about a hundred million dollars compared to the cost of launching a satellite from Earth.”

“If he shoots his mouth off at Barbeau again like that, he’ll be beached faster than any rocket ship,” Carlyle said. “After putting up with McLanahan for so long, Barbeau’s not going to let another cocky space cowboy stay put.”

“Speaking of the space station, I got the initial report from Air Force about a test of a new space weapon,” Turner said. “They call it Mjollnir, or Thor’s Hammer, a system that reenters titanium bars through the atmosphere at thousands of miles an hour. They hit a small ship-size target from a hundred miles in space with one big metal bar. They had a bunch of congressional staffers observe the hit-I guess it really watered their eyes.”

“The ‘Rods from God’ actually worked, eh?” Carlyle remarked idly.

“Blew the hell out of the target. Direct hit.”

“Mil, I gotta admit: The space stuff is cool, and I’m sure the Air Force’s recruiting numbers are going through the roof, but there’s not any money in the budget for Rods from God or any more space stuff,” Carlyle said dismissively. “The president wanted aircraft carriers, Congress said yes, so there’s going to be aircraft carriers.”

“I know, Conrad, I know,” Turner said. “Building four more carrier battle groups has sucked up every available dollar out of the next ten defense budgets. But I’m already getting queries from Congress about the space stuff. When the word gets out about this incident in the South China Sea and then the success of this space-weapon test, the obvious questions will arise: Why are we building carriers that are so vulnerable?”

“We, especially the president, have the answer: The carriers are the ultimate in power projection,” Carlyle said. “You park an aircraft carrier battle group off someone’s coastline, and the negotiations start soon afterward. And they’re far more versatile than space-based assets. The space guys watched the incident in the South China Sea, but what could they do about it? Even if they had the Rods from God, or even that big laser they used to have up there, would they have sunk the Chinese carrier in response? The president is making the right decision, Mil.”

“The Air Force undersecretary in charge of space, Ann Page, is really pushing this new Space Defense Force thing,” Turner said. “Now that the Thor’s Hammer project is unclassified and apparently successful, she’ll be pressing a military presence in space even harder.”

“That’s her job,” Carlyle said. “But she was brought into the Pentagon so we could monitor and control her public comments. She can talk all she wants, but she still has to support the president and the administration as long as she’s in that post. If she doesn’t toe the line, we’ll make sure she’s disgraced as well as dismissed. It’s your job to make sure she stays on the right side.”

“I know that, Conrad. I’m just giving you a heads-up. We may be building carriers like crazy, but space is not going away.”

ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

THE NEXT DAY

“Attention on the station, hostile spacecraft detected, all personnel to emergency posts!” Senior Master Sergeant Valerie Lukas announced on the PA system. “Time to possible collision, seven minutes! All posts, report when configured for station defense and damage control!”

Kai Raydon was on his way from the latrine cubicle when the alert came, and he propelled himself across the large command module faster than he had ever done before. “Why do these things always happen when I’m in the latrine?” he muttered. “Report.”

“Pirinclik has detected liftoff of a large rocket from an unknown launch site in southern Russia, designated E-1,” Lukas said, referring to the U.S. Air Force’s AN/FPS/79 space tracking radar facility in Turkey. “Confirmed by DSP and SBIRS-High. E-1 does not appear to be going into orbit, but is on a very high-altitude, very high-speed ballistic path.”

“Aimed at us?”

“Yes, sir,” Lukas said. “Time to impact, six minutes.”

“No announced launches of any kind?”

“No, sir.”

“Then it’s a bad guy,” Kai said. “Designate E-1 as hostile. Are we tracking it yet?”

“Negative, sir. Our tracking radar and Doppler are off-line.”

“Perfect. Pirinclik still have it?”

“They’ll lose it in ninety seconds,” Lukas responded. “Globus-2 and Diego Garcia aren’t tracking. Shemya might pick it up about sixty seconds before impact.”

“They attacked at the perfect moment-right where our space surveillance coverage is the worst,” Kai said. “Okay, we’re down to our own infrared and optical sensors. Let’s have a look. We’ll have Pirinclik aim the sensors for acquisition.”

The large multifunction display between Raydon and Lukas changed from a radar graphic of the launch to a split-screen view of Earth. The left split showed Earth as a cool gray mass in the background, with flashes of light here and there from lightning and reflected sunlight, which computers were attempting to tune out as much as possible. The right split showed Earth through a telescope, set for wide field of view as it searched for the incoming missile.

“Four minutes to impact,” Lukas reported.

“C’mon, guys, find the sucker,” Raydon said.

“Too much background clutter…”

“Try manually tuning,” Raydon said. “The computers are tuning out the background clutter-tune for the target.”

Lukas switched the infrared sensor’s tuning to manual, and the left side of the monitor flared almost to complete white as the energy being radiated by the Earth washed out the heat-sensitive sensor. Seeker carefully adjusted several controls until the background faded, then began tuning even more carefully. “The sensor slaved to Pirinclik’s radar-it’s gotta be right in front of us, and hotter than hell,” she murmured. “Anything on the camera?”

“Nothing yet.”

“You’ll find it, Seeker,” Raydon said. “Countermeasures?”

“Standing by, sir,” the officer in charge of the station’s active defenses replied. “All systems active.”

“Three minutes. Pirinclik radar lost contact.”

“Seeker?”

“It’s gotta be cooler than I’m expecting,” the Air Force senior master sergeant said. “Unslave the camera and search separately in case I’m way off.”

“You’re not,” Raydon said. “Relax and find it.”

“Damage control parties in position, sir.”

“Copy.” On the stationwide intercom he said, “All personnel, two minutes to-”

“Got it!” Lukas crowed. “It’s cold, not hot-they must’ve figured out a way to cool it off to make it harder to pick up on infrared.” She immediately slaved the camera to the infrared seeker and zoomed in. The visual image showed a simple black bullet-shaped object. “It looks like a payload, not the entire rocket-it must’ve already staged.”

“Countermeasures ready?”

“Defensive systems ready, sir.”

Raydon punched in instructions in his computer keyboard, then opened a red-covered switch and activated it, giving commander’s authority to fire weapons. “Attention on the station, countermeasures under way. Permission to engage, Seeker. Shoot when ready.”

“Radiating now.” Lukas entered commands into her computer, activated her own authorization switch, and hit a keyboard button. Moments later, an alert flashed on the monitors. “Automatic tracking failed,” she announced. She grasped a joystick handle on the right side of her console and squeezed the slewing lever, which brought up a set of crosshairs on her camera monitor. Adjusting the field of view with her left hand while watching the monitor, she carefully placed the crosshairs on the target and squeezed a trigger. “Targeting lasers firing…COIL activating.”

Mounted below the pressurized modules of Armstrong Space Station, in the place where the controversial Skybolt magnetohy-drodynamic antiballistic-missile laser had been mounted, was a simple boxlike structure with several articulating turrets around it. Small targeting lasers shot from the turrets began tracking the incoming target, precisely measuring distance and bearing.

When the object was in range-about two hundred miles, or just forty seconds to impact-the main weapon activated. The structure contained the Hydra, a five-hundred-kilowatt Chemical-Oxygen-Iodine Laser, or COIL, a smaller version of the two megawatt COIL aboard the YAL-1 Airborne Laser and the AL-52 Dragon antiballistic-missile laser aircraft. Chlorine and hydrogen peroxide were mixed under high pressure, instantly producing highly energetic oxygen, which was compressed by nitrogen and mixed with iodine, creating laser light. The light was amplified by mirrors and optics into a beam and sent to a beam director and through an adaptive-optics focusing mirror, which sent a nickelsize spot of intense laser light on the target.

As soon as Lukas pulled the trigger to activate the COIL, they could see tiny sparkles of light around the target-but it wasn’t from the laser. “Maneuvering thrusters-the sucker’s maneuvering,” Lukas said.

“Stay with it, Seeker,” Raydon urged her. “Nail that sucker.”

“I’m not sure if I have a coherent beam without auto tracking-”

“The targeting lasers didn’t malfunction, only the main turret,” Raydon said. “You’re the tracker now. Get it!”

Lukas released the trigger when the computer told her the laser volley had ended; she had to wait ten precious seconds until she could fire the next volley. “Sure would like to have another COIL up here,” she said.

“We’re lucky to have the one,” Raydon said. “Get ready for a second shot. All personnel, brace for impact and report any damage to me immediately.”

As soon as the computer said she could fire again, she pulled the trigger and sent another burst at the target. “It has a pattern,” she said. “I’ve got you now, sucker.” Carefully matching the target’s gyrations, she was able to keep the COIL beam on target long enough for the laser to burn a hole in the target’s thin skin with just seconds to spare…

…and as the beam drove itself through the target, it broke apart and showered Armstrong Space Station…with a cloud of paper confetti, traveling at eighteen thousand miles per hour but causing no damage.

“Good job, Seeker,” Raydon said. Lukas safed the COIL and secured her station, then let herself go limp in zero-g, being careful to use a towel to wipe away the sweat before it floated off her skin and became both a nuisance and a hazard. “Telemetry says you had the beam on target for three-point-eight seconds. I’d say that would be enough to take down a real antisatellite weapon.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lukas said. “But I wish we could do an auto engagement one of these days so I could sit back and watch the Hydra work.”

“What fun is that?” Raydon asked with a smile. On the stationwide intercom he spoke, “All personnel, exercise target successfully destroyed in a visually acquired, manual-track engagement with the COIL. Inspect your stations for any signs of damage, secure from emergency stations, and submit postexercise reports to me as soon as possible. Thank you, everyone. Good job.”

“Midnight One to Armstrong,” Hunter Noble radioed from the XS-19 Midnight spaceplane, which had launched the target at the space station for the test. “Just want to be sure you guys were still breathing air and not space dust.”

“Successful visual-manual engagement, Boomer,” Raydon replied. “The confetti was a cute touch.”

“Thought you’d like it, General.”

Raydon switched the monitor at his station to the constant feed of telemetry he received from all of the spacecraft under his control, including the Midnight spaceplane. “Come on in to refuel and we’ll load you up for a return to Roswell.” Spaceport America, located at the former Roswell Industrial Air Center in southern New Mexico, was America ’s first private-commercial facility dedicated to supporting manned spaceflight-many of the supply rockets sent to the space station were launched by commercial companies from there. Because of its rather isolated location and twelve-thousand-foot runway, it made a good place to land from space without disturbing too many residents with sonic booms. “Hope you don’t mind doing another trash run.”

“Anytime, General,” Boomer said. “Any chance I get to fly the spaceplanes, even if it’s just haulin’ trash, I’ll take it. FYI, the major will be doing this approach and docking, so don’t be surprised if you feel or hear something hit the station in a couple hours.”

“Thanks, Boomer,” the copilot, Air Force Major Dana Colwin, interjected. Colwin was a thirty-year-old former Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber pilot and aeronautical engineer, and had completed military astronaut training only a few months ago. She still wore her jet-black hair long, and preferred Dallas Cowboys baseball caps under her headset to keep her hair under control in zero-g.

It would take almost two hours for Boomer and his copilot to catch up with the space station. “I’ve got a project I need you to do while we’re waiting to rendezvous, Colwin,” Boomer said.

“Sure,” she replied. “What is it?” Boomer called up several pages of computer routines that he had downloaded from Armstrong Space Station and sent the list to Colwin’s multifunction display. “All this? This’ll take me hours.”

“Nah. They’re diagnostic programs. When the first program finishes, it’ll direct you which ones to do next. The results all get beamed to the station, but unfortunately the computer won’t automatically select the next program to run, so you have to babysit it. Wake me when we’re five minutes out.”

“Wake you?”

“I’m going to inspect the cargo bay, and then I’m going to take a nap in the air lock.”

“A nap? Are you kidding?” But Boomer unstrapped, gave her a wink, then floated though the cockpit and entered the air lock.

The dark-haired, brown-eyed astronaut shook her head in amusement. “Okay, Noble,” she muttered, and got to work running the diagnostic programs. Hunter Noble always seemed so hyper during every flight she had been on with him, hardly ever appearing to need a nap-but she thought nothing about it and got to work. He still checked in every fifteen minutes as required, but she couldn’t see that guy actually napping back there. Oh well-spaceflight sometimes really takes it out of you, she thought, and Noble was by far the busiest pilot in the unit.

About ninety minutes later the intercom clicked on: “How’s it going, Colwin?”

“If you don’t mind me saying, Boomer, this is mind-numbing busywork,” she replied. “Tire-pressure histories? Hydrazine-container electrostatic checks? A monkey can do this.”

“If it seems like it’s just busywork, Colwin, you’re right…because it was just busywork.”

“Say again?”

“I needed you distracted so I could finish prebreathing and suiting up.”

“Suiting up?”

“You’re fairly new with the spaceplanes, Colwin, but you’ve done several automatic dockings, observed a few manual dockings, practiced many times in the simulator, and we have plenty of fuel, so I think it’s time you did a manual rendezvous with the station.”

“A manual rendezvous? Are you nuts?”

“You have been practicing in the simulator, haven’t you? I guess we’ll find out shortly. I’ll be watching from outside.”

“From outside…?”

“Just don’t jostle me around too much, Colwin. Relax and do it nice and easy. Don’t cheat and turn on the computer-I’ll be checking the flight-data logs. Outer hatch coming open. Break a leg, not the spaceplane.” The large red “MASTER CAUTION” warning light flicked on, and the message OUTER HATCH UNSEALED appeared on the computer monitor.

“Where are you, Noble?”

“I’m just halfway out the hatch, enjoying the view.” Armstrong Space Station was about two miles away, sunlight reflecting off its silver antilaser covering, which gave the station its nickname “ Silver Tower.” “Once you’re down to less than three-meters-per-second closure rate, I’ll hop outside on the tether and use the suit’s thrusters to watch away from the ship.”

“I feel like going to less than three mps right now, Noble.”

“We’ve got plenty of fuel, Colwin, but not all day,” Boomer said. “You can do this. You need to do this for spacecraft-commander certification, and you know you want this. Let’s do it.”

“This your idea of fun, Noble?” General Kai Raydon radioed from Armstrong Space Station.

“I think Colwin’s ready, General.”

“You’re in charge of pilot training, Noble,” Raydon said, “so you’re responsible for these little unplanned unannounced evolutions of yours. If the major dings up my station or the spaceplane, you might as well stay out there.”

“Copy loud and clear, sir. She’ll do fine.”

As Boomer watched from the upper hatch, one by one he saw the thrusters on the nose release tiny jets of hydrazine exhaust. Colwin used the spaceplane’s control stick and trim switches for directional control to make it easier and more intuitive, but steering a spacecraft wasn’t like flying an airplane because orbital forces dictated the path, not flight control surfaces or aerodynamics. Although the thrusters could make minor altitude corrections, “up” and “down” were controlled by forward velocity-slowing down always meant losing altitude, speeding up always meant increasing altitude, and you had to be ready to correct anytime you made a velocity change. There were other nuances as well. In space, there was in reality no such thing as a “turn”-you could either move laterally into an entirely different orbit, roll along the longitudinal axis, or you could yaw the nose in a different direction, with the actual orbital flight path unchanged.

Normally the flight control computer controlled all of these subtleties, but computers failed quite often, so spaceplane pilots were expected to manually fly and dock the spacecraft with control, confidence, and precision before being fully certified as spacecraft commanders. Apart from a fully manual reentry and power-off landing, manual dockings were the most difficult and nerve-racking for pilots, and they practiced doing them quite often in the simulator.

Maybe it wasn’t quite fair to unexpectedly lay this on her, Boomer thought, but it was time to see if she had what it took to qualify as a spacecraft commander. A lot of pilots stayed as mission commanders, perfectly happy to be second in command and let the computers and someone else accept all the responsibilities. Boomer was determined to separate the real spacecraft commanders from the mere pilots as soon and as safely as possible.

The cargo-bay doors were open, and he did a quick inspection of the cargo bay for any signs of damage or debris from the target release. “Cargo bay appears secure,” he reported. “Colwin, keep the bay doors open and I’ll get into the station from the air lock after you cross over.”

“Roger,” she replied, her voice cracking and monotone.

He exited the cargo bay, made his way back to the entry hatch, then looked “upward” to admire the Earth. He could watch it for hours, for days. He saw Africa beneath them, thunderstorms erupting along the Mediterranean coast near Libya; the incredible vastness of the Saharan wastelands; even the little crook in the Nile River where Luxor and the Valley of the Kings were located. Then in moments, the landmarks disappeared from view, but were replaced by even more treasures: Crete, Sicily, the impossibly blue Mediterranean, Greece, the Balkans, now Anatolia.

He always made a point on every space walk to marvel at the planet called Earth. It really was a spaceship, he reminded himself: every erg of energy, every element, every resource, every life-giving and life-sustaining particle except sunlight was already there, on that little sphere, save for a few stray atoms sent smashing in from the solar wind or from comet dust. Since the planet’s formation, the chemicals, elements, molecules, and compounds that created life had always been there, and they would never die, just be transferred into a different element, a different compound, or a different form of energy. Humans could probably kill all life as we knew it, but all the elements to rebuild life would remain on that little rock until the sun incinerated the planet in a cataclysmic supernova.

Colwin was closing nicely with the space station, now probably five hundred meters away. When Boomer saw the forward thrusters fire, he carefully eased himself out of the hatch, using the tiny nitrogen thrusters on his space-suit backpack to propel him forward enough to ease the strain on his tether. “About four minutes to go, Colwin,” he radioed. “You’re doing fine.” More thruster jets, but this time he saw jets in one direction, followed immediately by spurts in the opposite direction that seemed to push the spaceplane in the opposite direction instead of just countering the first push. “Ease up on the thrusters,” he said.

“I am.”

The docking cradle on the space station resembled a giant garden hand spade. Colwin’s job was to maneuver Midnight into position on the spade, after which a grapple underneath the craft would gently grasp the spaceplane and a transfer tunnel would be moved into position on a separate beam beside the main entry hatch. Since the Space Shuttle was retired, these days the Midnight spaceplane was the largest craft to dock on the cradle, so there was plenty of room to spare, but if the spaceplane was not perfectly in the center and not perfectly level, the grapple might not latch, the transfer tunnel might not seal tightly enough on the air lock, and the umbilicals that would service the aircraft might have to be manually attached by a spacewalker.

Boomer disconnected himself completely from the Midnight spaceplane when he knew he had plenty of thruster fuel in his space suit to reach an entry hatch on the station. He stowed the tether in its reel and made sure the hatch from the air lock to the cargo bay was secured, then eased himself away from the spaceplane. “I’m clear of the air-lock hatch,” he radioed. “Clear to close the main hatch and pressurize the air lock.” He watched-yes, with a little pang of panic, since now he was completely on his own-as the hatch closed and locked. “You’re a solo space pilot now, Colwin.”

“Roger,” Colwin said in a slightly squeaky voice.

Boomer maneuvered himself toward the front of the docking cradle, where he could watch the spaceplane enter the spade, being careful to keep out of Colwin’s sight so she wouldn’t be distracted. “How is she doing, Noble?” Raydon radioed on the secondary frequency so Colwin couldn’t hear them.

“Very slow and cautious, but I can’t fault her for that,” Boomer replied.

“Think this was a good idea, you leaving her alone like that?”

“Back when I was at MIT getting my Ph.D. I remember when my Aero Club instructor pilot at Hanscom Air Force Base told me to pull my Piper Warrior over so he could hop out and I could do my first solo,” Boomer said. “He didn’t give me any warning-one minute he was sitting there, and the next minute the seat was empty.”

“Every pilot experiences that.”

“I know, but I thought I was such hot shit impressing the instructor that I never thought about soloing,” Boomer said. “Then when it happened so suddenly, I never felt more scared and alone. I sat there until the ground controller told me to taxi for takeoff or park it back on the ramp. I finally shook it off, flew once around the pattern, and landed. I was scared shitless, but I did it.”

“This is a whole lot different.”

“If she screws up, they’ll say it was the wrong decision,” Boomer said. “But she won’t.”

Boomer had his doubts as he watched the Midnight slide forward into the cradle-he thought Colwin could’ve gotten it a little straighter and perhaps a little lower, and she was certainly slow-but eventually she got it into position. The nose of the XS-19 contacted the large docking “donut” dead center and barely recoiled as the 170,000-pound spacecraft came to a stop. “Zero closure rate, Armstrong,” she announced. “Grapple ring extended, ready for capture.”

“Noble?” Raydon asked over the secondary frequency.

“She’s a little off longitudinally and a little high, but I’ll bet she’s dead in the center,” Boomer said. “Grab her and reel her in slowly.”

The cradle’s grapple moved and contacted the spaceplane’s grapple ring on the first try. “Good contact, Midnight,” the cradle operator reported. “Spacecraft moving to secure position.” It took longer than normal, but eventually the Midnight spaceplane was hauled down onto the cradle. “Spacecraft secure. Extending transfer tunnel and umbilicals. Well done, Major Colwin.”

“Thanks, guys,” she replied a little weakly. “And, General, Boomer, thanks for trusting me to do this.”

“Good job, Major,” Raydon said.

“You’re welcome, Colwin,” Boomer added. “Just don’t forget to unlock the cargo-bay air-lock hatch for me when you deplane.”

“Roger.” Boomer watched as a deplaning module motored along the service beam beside the Midnight and a transfer tunnel extended and fastened onto the spaceplane. A few moments later: “Transfer tunnel shows secure in place. Clear for pressure test.” The tunnel was pressurized to be sure it was securely in place and sealed and so there was no difference in pressure between the station, tunnel, and spacecraft. A few more moments later: “I show pressure steady.”

“Checks, pressure equal and steady,” the deplaning module technician responded. “Clear to open your hatch, Major. Welcome back.”

“Hatch coming open,” Colwin said. A moment later: “Inside the tunnel…main entry hatch secure, Boomer.”

“Thanks, Colwin. Armstrong, I’m entering Midnight’s cargo bay. I’ll depressurize the air lock, come inside, repressurize, and unsuit before I come up. You can disconnect the tunnel and bring Colwin aboard.”

“Copy that, Boomer,” Raydon replied.

Boomer waited until he could see Colwin through the windows in the deplaning module, took another look at the incredible spectacle around him, then floated into Midnight’s open cargo bay. As the transfer tunnel began to retract back up into the deplaning module, Boomer hit a switch to depressurize the air lock, heard the pumps sucking out the air for reuse, then when completed, grabbed the hatch handle…

…and it wouldn’t move. He tried again-no use. He looked up at the deplaning module. “Colwin, are you sure you unlocked the air-lock hatch for me?” he radioed.

He could see Colwin’s smiling face in the window of the deplaning module as the tunnel completed retracting. As the module began moving away down the service beam toward the station, Dana Colwin waved, then replied with a question of her own: “How does it feel to be suddenly left all alone in space, Noble?”

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE NEXT DAY

“Why do I get the feeling, Mr. Secretary,” Ann Page asked as she was shown to her seat, “that this is my ‘come to Jesus’ meeting?”

Secretary of the Air Force Salazar “Sal” Banderas smiled and nodded as he returned to his chair. Standing in front of their chairs, arrayed around the conference table in the meeting area adjacent to the secretary’s office, were General Charles Huffman, the Air Force chief of staff, and General Robert Wiehl, commander of Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, and dual-hatted as U.S. Space Command chief. “I guess you could say it is, Dr. Page,” Banderas said. “You know everyone here, yes?”

“Of course, Mr. Secretary,” Ann said as she shook hands with all the men in the room. They respectfully stayed standing until Ann took her seat, even Banderas. She noticed that copies of the two latest reports she had submitted to the secretary of the Air Force were before each of them, along with other reports-contrary opinions, no doubt.

“Dr. Page, I’ll get right to it: If what you’ve said in these reports is even half true, I’m completely blown away,” Banderas said. “Two successful back-to-back tests of space-based weapons. I’m impressed. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” Ann said. “I assure you, the results are accurate, and my conclusions and recommendations for follow-on funding, development, and deployment are as well.” She looked around the table, trying to gauge the opinions and positions of the others, but they were all too politically savvy to allow their facial expressions or body language to reveal their thoughts…not yet at least. “My office runs out of R-and-D money for the Trinity weapon series soon. Most of the funding came from the Martindale administration, canceled programs, and funds borrowed from other areas. I’m requesting an increase in funding for 2014 through 2020 and a supplemental for the rest of this fiscal year and for the next.”

“To do what, Dr. Page?” General Huffman asked. He opened her report to a tabbed page. “You want to spend twenty billion dollars this next fiscal year plus ten billion a year for the next ten years to launch forty-eight ‘weapon garages’ into low Earth orbit, armed with these Trinity kill vehicles? That’s twenty percent of our current budget! Where in the world did this plan come from?”

“The plan came from a continuing request from Congress for persistent, global, rapid strike following the destruction of the manned bomber and land-based intercontinental ballistic-missile forces after the Russian bomber attack on the United States, General,” Ann replied. “President Gardner’s response was to add four aircraft carrier battle groups over the next ten years at a cost of ten billion dollars a year.”

“It’s proven technology at less cost, Ann,” Banderas commented.

“But it doesn’t fulfill the mandate, Mr. Secretary,” Ann said. “Even with sea-launched cruise missiles, which our adversaries are better able to detect and destroy, the Navy can hold less than thirty percent of all strategic targets in Russia and China at risk. Even against those targets we can reach, even a sixteen-carrier fleet could take days to be in a position to attack, and then its ability to attack is affected by environmental conditions. And as we saw just recently, the carrier is becoming more and more vulnerable to a wider array of threats.”

“The argument’s been made that long-range strike is no longer necessary,” Banderas said flatly. “After the American Holocaust, strategic attack was all but killed off.”

“I think the same was said before the American Holocaust, sir,” Ann said. The American Holocaust was a Russian sneak attack using supersonic low-yield nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on American antiballistic-missile defense launch and radar sites, intercontinental ballistic-missile launch control centers, and long-range bomber bases. The attack killed several thousand persons, injured hundreds of thousands more, and in effect destroyed America ’s land-based nuclear deterrent. America ’s counterattack took place shortly thereafter, when Patrick McLanahan led a force of the surviving B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers to capture a Russian air base in Siberia, from which he staged search-and-destroy missions throughout Russia that destroyed the majority of Russia ’s fixed and mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The attacks left the two countries with a rough parity of nuclear-armed long-range missiles-the United States had its fourteen Trident ballistic-missile submarines, which had not been attacked (although it was widely believed that Russia had a follow-on attack mission ready), and a handful of long-range bombers, and Russia had two dozen surviving ICBM launchers and a handful of nuclear submarines. The world breathed a silent sigh of relief because now everyone saw the unspeakable horror of nuclear war, and all nuclear nations pledged to work to mothball all of their remaining nuclear weapons and delivery systems so the nightmare was never repeated.

“And now you’re proposing to create another arms race, Ann-this one in space,” Banderas said. “We put forty-eight weapon garages in orbit; China launches sixty; Russia launches a hundred. They start putting nukes in their garages; we modify our garages to attack their garages; they do the same to theirs. That’s a race we don’t need to start.”

“That race is already under way, sir,” Ann said. “Both Russia and China are stepping up their space launches; China has a space station aloft that they admit is being used for military research. Every nation knows that space is the ultimate high ground, and that the United States is way ahead in space technology. They will do one of two things: cooperate or compete.”

“Most countries are cooperating, Madam Secretary,” U.S. Space Command General Wiehl said. “With the Shuttle retired, we rely on the Russians almost every month for spacelift to the International Space Station.”

“I know that, General, and it worries me,” Ann said. “What if the Russians decided not to send Soyuz to the ISS anymore?”

“They wouldn’t do that, Doctor,” Wiehl said. “ Russia has invested a lot into the ISS, and they usually have one or two cosmonauts aboard. They rely on us as much as we rely on them.” But the sharpness of his rebuttal showed Ann that perhaps the question worried him more than he let on.

“Let’s get back to Dr. Page’s proposal,” Secretary Banderas said, glancing at his watch. “Twenty billion to put forty-eight…you called them ‘garages’? What’s in this ‘garage’?”

“Each weapon platform carries an infrared sensor, a tracking and targeting radar, electro-optical surveillance cameras, maneuvering engines, control and communications systems, and six Trinity kill vehicles-a mix of three antiballistic missile and defensive missiles, and three Mjollnir reentry vehicles,” Ann said. “The platforms are small enough to be placed into orbit with smaller boosters like Athena Two, Taurus, or the Midnight spaceplane, and they’re designed to be reloadable from manned or unmanned spacecraft.”

“Why forty-eight of these garages? Can it be done with fewer?”

“The number is based on commercial communications satellite structures that provide continuous global coverage, sir,” Ann said. “At an orbital altitude of about two to three hundred miles, which makes them easily accessible by our spaceplanes for servicing, there will be at least six platforms continuously overhead almost every spot on the planet.”

“So six garages with three antiballistic-missile interceptors-assuming some aren’t used to defend the garages themselves-is just eighteen interceptors able to respond at any moment to an attack,” Wiehl said. “Doesn’t sound like that many.”

“If we’re being attacked by more than eighteen enemy missiles-especially nuclear ones-we have a serious problem that wouldn’t be solved by twice as many interceptors, General,” Ann said with a wry smile. “The antiballistic-missile portion of the system is, of course, part of a layered system that includes boost-phase and terminal defenses.”

She turned to Secretary Banderas. “Sir, you’ve said it yourself many times: the Air Force has to do more with less; we have to field multi-role systems. The platforms are much more than just for space-based weapons. The sensors on board each platform and the integration of their data with other space assets through Armstrong Space Station will be invaluable to operators around the world. This network will provide real-time infrared, radar, and optical imagery to all users-even the Navy.” She leaned forward and opened her hands. “That’s the way we sell it to Secretary Turner and the White House.”

“This is a benefit for the Navy? That’s how we sell it?”

“The president is an unabashed Navy advocate,” Ann said. “He and SECDEF both believe that the Navy is the preeminent military power of the United States of America, and that every other service, especially the Air Force, is a support service. If that’s the way they want to see us, that’s fine. But let’s design a support mission that suits us, not fit in with how they see us.”

Secretary Banderas thought for a moment, then, as Ann breathed a sigh of relief, nodded. “I like it, Ann,” he said. “Global look, global persistence, global availability, with self-protection and antiballistic-missile capabilities-and run by the Air Force.”

“I think we’ll have real problems with the land-attack option, sir,” Chief of Staff Huffman said. “Even though these Mjollnir space weapons don’t technically violate any treaties, the whole idea of weapons raining down on top of you from space will spook a lot of people, possibly including the president.”

“Then we’ll downplay the land-attack thing at first,” Banderas said. “The missiles-”

“We call them ‘orbital maneuvering vehicles,’ sir,” Ann said.

The secretary of the Air Force nodded approvingly. “I like that,” he said. “Not ‘kill vehicles,’ not ‘missiles’-‘orbital maneuvering vehicles.’ OMVs. Okay, the OMVs are on board for self-protection and for ballistic-missile defense. The land-attack weapons are possible future development spirals. When can I get platforms upstairs, Ann?”

“The sensor packages and network integration was completed some time ago-the weapon interfaces have just completed R and D,” Ann replied. “We can build and launch one, perhaps two spacecraft a month. Within a year we can have sixty percent coverage and one hundred percent coverage within two years.”

Banderas nodded. “Excellent. We’ll meet to discuss where the money will come from, but because we’ll pitch this as a naval support system, we might be able to siphon some bucks out of the Navy. So what are you going to call it, Ann?”

“I thought of several names, sir,” Ann said, “but given the way we’re going to pitch this to the National Command Authority and Congress as a naval support system, I’ve narrowed it down to one: Kingfisher. The Navy won’t be as intimidated by a more globe-dominating name. Cute brightly colored little birds-the marine variety dive below the surface after fish.”

Banderas shook his head and got to his feet. “You learn something new every damn day, I guess,” he said with a smile. He held out a hand to Ann, and she shook it. “Thank you, Dr. Page. You’ve done some incredible work. We’ll see about selling this to the powers that be and get a supplemental authorization. After what happened to the Bush, I think they’ll be responsive to a system that puts more eyes out there over the horizon.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ann said. “Another question: standing up the Space Defense Force-”

“Don’t even go there, Ann,” Banderas said. “This sell is going to be tough enough without recommending forming an entire new military entity. We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t turn into a Navy program after all. Let’s get the thing built and in orbit before deciding what color to paint it, okay?” He shrugged his shoulders and added, “And the way the Air Force is faring these days, that color will probably be battleship gray.”