Lash-Up

12 Rumors

The smoke was still swirling out of the muzzle when they left the command bunker. The party was small, just General Shen and President Pan. Their aides followed at a discrete distance.

Pan Yunfeng was the President of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary, a point General Shen continually reminded himself of as he answered the same questions he’d answered dozens of times before.

It was impossible to speed up the large cannon’s firing rate. The ablative lining inside the barrel had to be replaced after each launch. During tests, two-thirds of the projectiles had been damaged when the lining was reused, and there had been one near burn-through. Better lining would be more durable but required exotic materials that were unavailable in sufficient quantity.

No, assigning more men would not get the barrel relined more quickly. Although a kilometer long, it was just three meters in diameter, so only a limited number of men could work inside. Furthermore, all the old lining had to be removed and the barrel surface cleaned before each section of new lining could be installed. To ensure a good seal between the ablative panels, one section had to be completed and inspected before the next could be added.

Unlike many of China’s leaders, Pan was relatively young, in his late fifties. His hair was jet-black, and there was an energy about him that had been missing from some of the other men Shen had dealt with. His impatience personified the feeling of the entire Chinese Military Commission’s leadership. Why was it taking so long?

Now Pan stood on the side of the mountain, nudging one of the used liners with his shoe. The ten-square-meter section was one quarter of a circle, and several centimeters thick. The outside was smooth, marked with attachment points and dimples, which Shen explained allowed for some flexing as the projectile passed.

The inside curve of the liner told the real story. The concave metal surface showed hints of the former mirror polish, but the heat and corrosive propellant gases had pitted the lining. Some of the pits were deep enough that a man’s fingertip could easily fit in them. The different layers that made up the lining were visible, a mix of metal and ceramic and advanced fibers.

“Dr. Bull came up with this solution,” Shen had explained. “The best steel in the world can’t withstand the forces generated inside such a barrel when it fires. Instead, we just replace the liner after each launch.”

“Which takes a week,” the president remarked with a sour face.

“It’s not wasted time, Comrade President. We use the necessary pause to do maintenance on the control system, test the breech, even improve the antiaircraft defenses.” He pointed to a nearby hilltop, a new excavation on the side holding a massive billboard radar antenna.

“That radar is part of a new bistatic system designed to detect stealthy aircraft. We’ve also increased the depth of the surface-to-air missile belt and added more standing fighter patrols.”

Later, in the general’s office, Pan had questioned Shen even more, looking for any way to shave even a day off the interval between launches.

“We’re concerned about the time it’s taking, General. In any long-term campaign plan, we have to assume the enemy will take some action to counter ours. So far, the Americans have reacted as we expected. But I’m still concerned that the longer this goes on, the more likely they will depart from our expectations.”

Shen listened respectfully. “I’ve seen the intelligence reports. I’m expecting that the Americans will do something eventually, of course, but by then we will have already won the first battle. In a few months, we will have our upgraded version of the Tien Lung ready. And when you approve the construction of the second Dragon Gun, we will be considerably less vulnerable.”

“But what measures have you taken in the meantime?”

“You know about the Long March booster modifications to lift a more traditional antisatellite kill vehicle. And our intelligence services are blanketing the Americans and their allies.” Shen tried to reassure the official. “All we have to do is deny them the use of space. It’s easier to shoot spacecraft down than it is to put them up. Have the Americans tried to replace any of the lost satellites? Have they launched any satellites at all since we started our campaign?”

Pan didn’t answer, but Shen knew they both saw the same information from the Ministry of State Security’s Second Bureau, China’s primary intelligence organization.

Shen pressed his point but was careful to keep his tone respectful. It didn’t pay to argue the party’s top official into a corner. “The Americans don’t have any good choices. They’ll either lose their valuable satellites or publicly acknowledge our rights as the regional power in East Asia. I think they’ll wait until the last possible minute to do so, but they’ll refuse to accept the inevitable for as long as they possibly can. When they do realize they’re backed into a corner, they’ll give in. Either way, America is weaker, and we become the ascendant power in this part of the world. No, Comrade President, time is on our side.”

The call came while Ray was inspecting the hangar. He’d been walking around Defender, née VentureStar, watching the small army of engineers and technicians as they labored to finish assembling the vehicle. The shift supervisor flagged him over to his office, lifting the phone handset high. It was Schultz’s voice, sounding resigned. “They’ve done it again. Check CNN.”

Ray brought up the CNN Web site on the shift supervisor’s unclassified computer. “… have confirmed the latest Chinese claim, made less than fifteen minutes ago. Another ‘American targeting satellite’ has been destroyed, and the Chinese renewed their promise to do the same to every American satellite unless they ‘acknowledge China’s regional interests.’”

The correspondent’s face was replaced by a press conference, while his voice added, “In response to growing pressure to act, U.S. defense officials today announced a new program.”

Ray’s heart sank to the floor. Had some fool decided to take them public? Automatically, without thinking, he started pacing, while still watching the display.

The official at the podium spoke. “To deal with this new threat to American commerce and security, an Aerospace Defense Organization has been established under the direct command of General Michael Warner, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. The other services will also take part. Its mission will be to defend American space assets against any aggression. Here is General Warner, who will take a few questions.”

By now Ray was walking quickly, almost jogging, making a beeline to Schultz’s office. In the background Ray heard Warner assuring the press that he had no intention of taking over NASA.

The admiral saw Ray and waved him in, with one eye still on the screen. The rest of the admiral’s attention was on the phone. “I appreciate the need for security, Mr. Secretary, but the effects on staff morale should have been considered. A little warning would have let us brief them. And I must have your assurance this will not affect our resources. Thank you. I’ll call tonight, as always, sir. Good day.”

Schultz hung up, almost breaking the little handset as he slammed it into its cradle. “Peck assures me this new organization is a blind, designed to distract attention away from us.”

“And reduce some of the heat DoD’s been taking,” Ray added cynically.

“For about one week, I’ll bet.” Schultz agreed. “As soon as the Chinese shoot down another satellite, they’ll be all over the good general, asking him why he hasn’t done something.”

“And what about resources?” Ray asked, concerned.

“Well, he’s going to need people, and money, and I have a hunch Warner’s going to take his charge seriously. I’d have to agree with him, too. I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of a guy. So he might get people or gear we need.”

Ray asked, “Well, can we draw on his program? Use it as a resource?”

Schultz sharply disagreed. “No way. We don’t want any links with them at all. It’s bad enough they went public with this so soon. We might be able to hang the inevitable rumors concerning Defender on this new organization, but any contact between the two organizations carries the risk of being traced back to us. And if we start poaching, we’ll make enemies. We may have the highest possible priority, but we can’t throw our weight around with impunity. We’ve already used a two-by-four on Matheson; it’s not wise to smack everyone who pushes back with a sledgehammer. There are people in every branch of the government who would love to see us fail, if they knew what we were really trying to do.”

Ray sighed. “I’ll put a notice on the splash page, and I’ll speak personally to every department head, especially security.”

Schultz’s attention was drawn to the wall display. A new piece, labeled “Reaction,” was on. A congressman was speaking on the Capitol steps to a cluster of reporters. Schultz turned up the volume. “… done the math, this new Aerospace Defense Organization will have to act quickly or we’ll have nothing left to defend.”

The classroom was chock-full of new people, most of them Geoffrey Lewes’s civilian support personnel. He stood in the back, leaning up against the wall, anxiously waiting for the security brief to be over and done with so he could get them started on their duties. For the past two days, Lewes had only had sixteen army quartermasters assigned to him, and while they were fantastic workers, there just weren’t enough of them to meet all the growing requirements being placed on his department.

The Defender project workforce had expanded greatly during the last two days, to nearly one hundred and fifty engineers, technicians, and administrative personnel, and Mr. McConnell estimated it would be twice as large by the end of the following week. Add in the army and Marine security detachments and Lewes was looking at feeding and providing other services for almost fifteen hundred people when all was said and done. Even with a full staff of seventy-five civilian and military personnel, they were still going to be bustin’ their rumps to keep up.

The former concierge smiled as he surveyed the class; he had some awesome plans for these new people. At first, the job had seemed daunting, but once he got started, his old habits as a first class petty officer kicked in, and he started delegating responsibilities to the army NCOs. They were good people and had risen to the occasion, allowing Lewes to do some long-range planning. Now, he had the manpower to bring some of those plans to fruition.

Lewes saw that the security presentation was starting to wind down. He knew he’d be up soon, and he started thumbing through the papers on his clipboard. A whispered, frustrating sigh escaped his lips; he’d left the duty roster back in his office. Brilliant, Geoff, he thought. That’s what I get for only having three cups of coffee. Lewes signaled the briefer that he had to leave and would be back in five minutes. A quick nod from the security officer had Lewes bolting from the classroom.

Arriving at his office, Lewes found a young man inside, rummaging around his desk, looking for something. Irritated by the intrusion, Lewes challenged the individual. “Excuse me, but is there a reason why you’re trashing my desk?”

The young man looked up, startled by Lewes’s appearance, but he recovered quickly and explained. “My apologies, Mr. Lewes. I’m Glenn Chung. I’m with IT support conducting the system install. I was looking for your installation order to see what network access you’re to have here.”

“Network access?” questioned Lewes, his ire subsiding. “To my understanding, Mr. Chung, I’m only to have NIPRNET access, since I’m outside of the SCIF.”

“Agreed, sir. But my work plan says I need to install a SIPRNET machine as well. Since that didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, I started looking for the install order to see what it had down.”

Pressed for time, and with the conversation fueling his impatience, Lewes walked over to his computer terminal and grabbed a sheet of paper taped to the tower. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked tersely, offering the paper to the young man.

Chung took the paper, scanned it briefly, and, as his face turned a nice shade of red, he said, “Yes, sir. That’s it.” He scanned it quickly. “And it doesn’t mention a SIPRNET machine, which is good. Now that that’s cleared up, I can have your unclassified machine hooked up and running in about thirty minutes.”

“That’s fine,” replied Lewes as he grabbed the duty roster from the jumbled piles. “I’ll be meeting with my new personnel for the next half hour, so I won’t need my office. Just do me a favor and don’t destroy the rest of it, please!”

Rutledge walked into his office wearing a huge smile. Not only did he get some face time on national television, the president had actually adopted one of his proposals. It didn’t matter that he had shotgunned numerous vague ideas out to the public in his press statements. When all was said and done, he only had to point to the one that had been adopted. Yes, Congressman Rutledge was in a fine mood.

“That went better than I expected,” Davis observed, pleased with his boss’s performance. “Your tone was spot-on, and I loved that you didn’t take credit for the idea on TV, gives the president a little room to maneuver, while at the same time the Washington insiders know who came up with it first.”

“Yes, it did go well. But we can’t rest on our laurels, Ben,” stressed Rutledge. “I’ll want a concept-of-operations brief for this new Aerospace Defense Organization from the air force as soon as possible. They probably don’t have one fleshed out yet, so give them until Wednesday; then you can start nagging them.”

Davis wrote down the date in his day timer, circling it with red marker. He’d give the Air Force Congressional Liaison Office a call once he and Rutledge were through.

“In the meantime, we must continue to go about the people’s work. What’s on the docket for the rest of the day?” asked Rutledge, still quite pleased with himself.

“Since I didn’t have a firm time for the news release, I kept the afternoon pretty light,” Davis said as he glanced at his copy of the daily schedule. “The only item left is the Regal Composites issue. And before we start, I received yet another e-mail from Tony Partlow, the company’s president. He’s demanding that you look into why his air force contract has been suspended. He claims the lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, is refusing to take delivery of the first shipment of components and, more importantly, won’t pay him for work completed. Partlow said he had to buy new equipment and hired on more people to fulfill the order, and he still has those bills to pay.”

Rutledge frowned; he was easily aggravated when a large corporation like Lockheed Martin bullied a much smaller company in his district. This was especially true of DoD-related contracts, as there were only a few companies in the 3rd district that had successfully broken into that market.

“Did Lock Mart provide any rationale for their actions?” demanded the congressman.

“Not really. All Partlow was told was that the air force had suspended the contract, and everything was on hold until further notice.”

“That’s damn odd. Are there any air force programs in that much trouble to warrant suspension?”

Davis shook his head. “Not that I know of, Tom.”

“How much is the contract with Regal Composites worth?”

“According to air force records, Regal has a ten-million-dollar contract to supply small composite components to Lockheed Martin for a classified program.”

“Ten million dollars!?” howled Rutledge. “That’s decimal dust!”

“That may be true in the grand scheme of things,” remarked Davis sternly. “But in Kearney County, it is one of the largest DoD contracts, and to your constituents, it is certainly not a trivial matter.”

Rutledge acknowledged his aide’s reproach with a simple nod. Davis was, of course, quite correct. The congressman had to look at this issue from the perspective of the people he represented, not from the overall national level. Sighing, Rutledge faced Davis and said, “All right, Ben, get with the Air Force Congressional Liaison Office and find out what program got suspended and why.”

“Yes, sir. Immediately,” Davis replied and turned to leave.

“Ah, Ben, one more thing. When did this suspension occur?”

Davis paused to think. “Three or four days ago, I believe. I can verify the date after I look at Partlow’s e-mail trail.”

“Please do so,” ordered Rutledge. “If it is only a few days ago, then also ask the air force if the suspension had anything to do with the stand up of this Aerospace Defense Organization. The money to fund this new entity has to come from somewhere, and I have a sneaking suspicion General Warner is scouring the programmatic countryside for low-hanging fruit to get his new command started.”

Davis’s eyes widened as Rutledge laid out his argument. “Yes, of course! The two events are too close together for it to be just a coincidence!”

“I don’t believe in coincidences when it comes to politics, Ben,” responded Rutledge coldly. “These events must be connected. I need you to find me some proof they are. Follow the money, Ben.”

Glenn Chung yawned and stretched his weary body. It had been a very long day, and he was dog-tired. He would have normally been asleep by now, but he still had some work to do. He waited patiently as his roommate finished his snack, gathered his tools, and left for his shift. It had been a simple task to adjust the master list to get the two of them on alternate work schedules. Chung now had eight hours of uninterrupted time to finish his report and send it off to his “other” boss.

As soon as the trailer door to their room had closed, Chung jumped from his chair and carefully peered out the window. He waited till his roommate was out of sight, then locked the door and turned off most of the lights. Walking over to his dresser, he retrieved a small lockbox and opened it. Inside were half a dozen four-gigabyte secure flash drives. Grabbing one, Chung made a mental note to put in a request for more. He also picked up an envelope that contained a single piece of paper with Vietnamese characters on it. Returning to his desk, he plugged in the flash drive, entered the next password on the sheet, and began writing his report.

Shortly after the Edward Snowden revelation in 2013 that the NSA had successfully managed to monitor massive amounts of e-mail traffic, the Chinese intelligence service forbade its deep moles from using electronic means to deliver the fruits of their collection activities. Even encrypted e-mails, over a period of time, would have drawn unwanted attention to their operatives. So, the Ministry of State Security’s Second Bureau fell back on the old Cold War tactic of using dead drops to transfer the data back to mainland China.

While this method had its own risks, they were judged to be less risky than any form of digital transmission. The risks were also mitigated by the use of encrypted, secure flash drives and languages other than English or Mandarin, in this case Vietnamese. So even if the flash drive were intercepted, determining its contents would be extremely difficult.

Chung brought up the Vietnamese character list and started typing, grimacing as he began his report. Even though he was fluent in the Vietnamese language, it was still slowgoing using a Western QWERTY-style keyboard with an on-screen overlay. But once he got started, it became easier, and his speed increased. He had to go through this mental recalibration every time he wrote in Vietnamese, which he usually did when writing letters to his father. Even though Chung’s family originally hailed from Vietnam, they were of Hoa descent, a Chinese ethnic minority despised by the indigenous population.

His family had been driven out of Vietnam during the short and bloody border war with the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Like hundreds of thousands of others, the Chungs were “encouraged,” at gunpoint, to migrate back to China. Many of his father’s family didn’t survive the forced relocation, and the bitterness of the father had been handed down to the son. The younger Chung became fascinated with his ancestral past and developed a passion for all things Chinese. He dove into his studies of the history and culture of China with the same enthusiasm that he had for computers. When the Chinese intelligence service contacted him with a job offer, he was a willing recruit.

Chung summarized the movement of the VentureStar from its storage hangar on the Edwards main base to Building 151. The security personnel had taken extreme measures to hide the transfer, and Chung was confident that it was done during a gap in Chinese overhead-imagery passes. The last line was a bit gratuitous, but Chung was well aware that marketing one’s abilities was a necessary evil, even in espionage.

He then provided an overview of the personnel roster, stating that of the 148 people involved with the project, approximately 105 were engineers and technicians — mostly senior ones. Furthermore, it was expected this number would double within the week. The security forces were growing even more rapidly, with at least two company equivalents providing physical security. A USMC general, last name Norman, had recently visited the facility and held discussions with the U.S. Space Force commander to enlarge the security contingent even further.

Chung then described the two main rumors as to VentureStar’s mission. The first was that the vehicle was needed because of its lift capacity. Supposedly a new GPS satellite was being designed at Air Force Plant 42 to incorporate stealth features and possibly armor. Supposedly this made the satellite too heavy for current U.S. space-lift vehicles to put more than one in orbit at a time. VentureStar was to carry multiple satellites to rapidly reconstitute their constellation. Since this mission was openly and freely discussed, Chung didn’t think it was likely. Furthermore, as he had just left the Skunk Works, there had been no discussion at all of a heavily modified GPS satellite to make it more survivable.

The other rumor, and in Chung’s opinion the more likely one, was that the VentureStar was being modified to become an armed space vehicle. The presence of a large number of laser engineers, and the fact that the VentureStar was placed in the hangar formerly used by the Airborne Laser Program, strongly suggested a laser-based armament. The new name of the vehicle, Defender, was also highly suggestive. He closed by adding that more definite information should be available in a few days.

After adding some scanned images of the U.S. Space Force’s organization charts and an annotated Google Earth image outlining the facilities, Chung closed the flash drive. Double-checking to see that the data had been properly encrypted, he placed the flash drive in a small plastic faux rock and e-mailed his handler that a pickup would be waiting at the new primary drop point on the fifteenth hole of the Muroc Lake Golf Course. Even though the golf course was on Edwards AFB, it had been opened to the public in 2011. All one needed to do to gain access to the base was to schedule a tee time; a pass would be waiting for you at the main base entrance. It was very convenient for Chung and his associates.