Lash-Up

24 High Ground, Part I

The experience of the launch filled Ray’s senses. Every part of him, inside and out, was affected by the unbelievable sound, the intense vibration, and the acceleration that continued seemingly forever.

Early in their training, there had been time for each of the flight crew, except Steve Skeldon, who was already a pilot, to have one flight in a high-performance jet, with Biff in the front seat, coaching and explaining. He put each of them through a series of high-g turns, both so they could experience the sensation and so the flight surgeon could make sure the crew could tolerate the acceleration of a space launch. “You’ll be lying in your chair, not sitting up, for the launch,” Biff had explained to Ray as he pushed the fighter through another six-g arc. To Ray, the world seemed to be taking on a red tinge, and his vision was blurred.

“Lying down is the best way to handle acceleration, so we won’t have to worry about red-out,” Biff explained. “It will feel like there’s a giant on your chest, but your body will do what’s needed. Just take shallow breaths.”

After they landed, Ray was almost too tired to climb out of the cockpit. “Maybe now you won’t whine about the weight training,” Barnes teased as he helped Ray down the ladder. “Your body is going to be pummeled in ways it has never experienced before and was never designed to handle. The best way to cope is to be in top physical condition, like me,” he said, smiling broadly and striking a bodybuilder pose.

That had been right after Ray had been picked to be part of the crew, and the experience had stuck with him, not only as a motivator for the physical training but also as a question in the corner of his mind: What will it be like?

Ray watched the timer slowly tick off the launch burn, one slow second at a time. To throw the Chinese off, and make it as difficult as possible for them to do anything during their ascent, Barnes opted for the equivalent of a “combat takeoff,” which meant a four-g burn for seven minutes. They could have gone up even more quickly; Defender’s two Aerospike engines had the smash for four and a half g’s, but they’d have less fuel when they reached orbit, and they would need that fuel to maneuver.

Four g’s felt like plenty, especially when it lasted not just for a short turn in an aircraft but for four hundred and twenty continuous seconds. One corner of Ray’s mind said something about “time dilation,” but the acceleration pushing him down was much more immediate. He found himself wanting to take a deep breath, in spite of Biff’s advice, and fought the urge. The suit provided all the oxygen he needed. He forced himself to relax, to accept the increased sensation of weight.

A controller built into the chair’s armrest let him scroll through the displays and operate the controls, but just moving a finger on top of the selector button required a deliberate effort. Still, he was the flight engineer, and he methodically stepped though the screens, watching for trouble. It helped pass the time.

Biff watched the crew, checking each member for signs of g-loc: gravity-induced loss of consciousness. He didn’t expect anyone would have that much trouble during the ascent, but it wasn’t wise to make such an assumption — the majority of the crew hadn’t gone through the full-up astronaut training, and their acceleration was faster than a traditional shuttle launch. Turning his head to look over his shoulder to check on Ray was more than a little unpleasant. Barnes had forgotten just how much he hated the continuous acceleration. The physical sensation was not new to him, of course, but his mind was also filled with the responsibility he held — mission commander. He tried to take comfort in his training as an astronaut and combat pilot, but the rules were different. All the rules. Not just the acceleration, but sensors and weapons as well. He’d drilled himself mercilessly in the simulators, never sure if it was enough. Now he’d find out. At least he didn’t have to pull lead.

Ray focused on the board, letting his body do unconsciously what he couldn’t tell it to. All the systems were working well, although they’d have to deploy the sensors to really check them out. They’d traded payload for time and overengineered the shock mountings. He had a feeling that would pay off.

Engine cutoff was a bigger surprise than the acceleration. The sudden absence of weight wasn’t obvious from inside the cockpit. There was no loose gear to float in midair, and of course they were firmly strapped in, so nobody rose out of their chair. But it still was easy to tell. Ray’s inner ear told him, in a high, panicky voice, that they were falling, that it was a long fall, that the sudden stop would be painful …

Biff’s only advice on avoiding space sickness had been to avoid sudden head movements. Moving disturbed the fluid in the inner ear, so Ray held his head as still as possible. But the sensation just went on and on, and Ray’s brain engaged in a spirited argument with his inner ear. Strangely enough, his stomach did not join the discussion, which might have tipped the balance. Ray focused his thoughts on the chair he sat in, the displays, the straps that held him in place, and it seemed to work.

Similar discussions were being held elsewhere in the cabin. Andre Baker was in charge of opening the bay doors and extending the laser turret. He was doing it one-handed, though. He’d opened his helmet and was holding an airsick bag over his mouth. Ray couldn’t tell if Andre had actually used it, and didn’t want to know.

But the doors were opening. Both his displays and the sensations transmitted through the deck and the chair told him so. The laser turret also extended properly, thank goodness. It was a simple arrangement — just electric motors lifting the turret assembly clear of the cargo bay — but with no chance for a “shakedown cruise,” every successful function, no matter how small, was a victory for Ray and all the people who had worked so hard on building Defender. He tried to remember how it felt, so he could tell his people, and Dawson’s as well.

He touched a switch on his hand controller and shifted from the systems to the tactical display. Two screens simultaneously displayed a side and overhead view of the situation. The Chinese intercept vehicle, marked TL1 on the display, was above them, but eastbound. They had launched Defender to the east in a following orbit, but it was already lower and thus slower than the Chinese vehicle. It was still accelerating, ascending into a higher orbit. The Tien Lung’s high velocity would make it difficult to attack Defender. Of course, the same applied to Defender’s intercepting TL1.

General Shen had studied the intercept math as well. There were choices to be made. He pressed his point over the link to Xichang. “If we try to intercept Defender on the next orbit, the Long March Tien Lung will be out of our view for over an hour. We can’t tell what the Americans will do to it during that time. Their ascent was faster than a traditional space shuttle launch; the engines on Defender are quite powerful. We clearly underestimated the vehicle’s abilities. Instead, we should use the Long March weapon to kill another GPS satellite. Their orbits are fixed, and the weapon has sufficient energy for the intercept. I’ll attack Defender with the Dragon’s Mother instead.”

“But General, that’s our last shot for a week,” Dong countered. “Shouldn’t we use it to kill a GPS satellite? Two kills in one day, both while Defender is supposed to be protecting them, will embarrass the Americans.”

Shen disagreed. “It’s far better to destroy Defender, Doctor. We may have missed with the Long March, but that doesn’t change the value of the target. If they lose the spacecraft, that’s all they have. There’s nothing else that can stop us.”

It was Shen’s decision to make, but the general wanted Dong to agree. Dong’s people would have to handle the two intercepts simultaneously, but for only a short time. Although Shen knew they were capable, the general asked, “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Dong admitted.

“Then tell them to prepare. We’ll be firing in less than five minutes.” He raised his voice for the last sentence, and the staff in the center hurried to obey.

“We’ll be ready for the complex maneuver, General. I won’t let you down again,” replied Dong. Then, with a contrite voice, he added, “I must apologize for my failure, General. I was wrong about the first launch, and my poor judgment has placed us in this awkward position.”

Shen wasn’t surprised by Dong’s admission; the senior engineer had an impeccable reputation for honesty. But it still wasn’t easy for a man of his stature to say it. “Don’t concern yourself with that any longer, Zhi, the Americans fooled us all. One more thing,” General Shen added quickly. “Tell Beijing we need to initiate the special attack.” Shen lowered his voice without trying to sound conspiratorial. Security concerning the “special attack” was so tight that even his launch staff didn’t know about it.

“Good,” Dong answered, sounding relieved. “Liang has been after me to use it since this morning, when we were fooled by that false launch.”

Jenny noticed it first. She ran the whole BMC, but she always kept one eye on the communications display that monitored the data links. Without the crucial information those links passed, there was no way to manage the battle. They’d be blind. Consequently, she dedicated one of her displays to keep track of the data links from dozens of sites worldwide. These included command centers like NORAD and the NMCC, radar-tracking stations, and intelligence aircraft orbiting off the China coast. The BMC had no sensors of its own but took the data from all these sources and created the global situation display.

The audio beep and the flashing red icon grabbed her immediate attention. She called one of the controllers on her headset. “Carol, check on the link to Kwajalein. We’ve lost the signal.”

No sooner had the controller acknowledged her order than another link went red, this time the one to Pearl Harbor. Used to looking for patterns, she instantly compared the two but could see no similarity. Pearl Harbor was a command site; Kwajalein a radar station.

She started to detail another of her small staff to check out the link to Hawaii when a third one went red, this time in Ascension Island, and then others, coming so rapidly it was hard to count.

“Admiral, we’re losing all our sensor data links!” Jenny tried to control the panic in her voice. She started to listen to Schultz’s reply when Carol cut in with a report on the Kwajalein tracking station.

“I’m in voice comms, Commander. They say the gear’s fine, but they’re under electronic attack. Someone’s hacking their network controller.”

“That’s impossible,” Jenny exclaimed before realizing how silly that sounded. She paused, examining the situation, then suggested, “Their firewall must be down. They’re supposed to reject anything that’s not properly encrypted.”

“They say this stuff is encrypted,” Carol explained, “at least well enough to get through the firewall.”

“We’ve got another launch,” a different controller reported. “This time from the Gongga Shan complex.”

Jenny saw the track appear on the globe and checked the sensor log. An air force surveillance aircraft, one of several off the Chinese coast, had made the detection. So far they hadn’t been …

The globe, smoothly rotating in the center of the room, suddenly stopped, then moved jerkily before freezing again. What now?

Even as she switched her headset to the computer staff’s channel, Chris Brown, the head of the computer section, reported, “We’re being flooded. Someone’s sending us tons of bogus tracking data over the links.”

“Our firewall isn’t stopping it?” Jenny asked.

“Not all of it.”

Jenny walked over to Brown’s console and watched him analyze the false information being sent from supposedly secure sites. “Here’s the header data on one that got through. It’s good.”

“But they’re not all getting through the firewall?”

“No, about one in ten makes it.” He tapped his console, bringing up another stream of data. “This one has a similar header, but the encryption isn’t quite right, and it was rejected.”

“But the ones that do get through are enough,” he continued. “They force our system to chew on each for a while before rejecting it, and for every real packet, we’re getting hundreds of these fakes.”

“Jenny, I need to know what’s happening.” Admiral Schultz’s voice in her headset was soft, but insistent. She looked across the open space at the admiral, who met her gaze expectantly.

She answered over the headset. “We’re under electronic attack, sir, through our tracking stations. It’s sophisticated. They not only deny us sensor information, but they’re piggybacking bad data on the links to bog us down.”

Schultz’s face had a hard frown on it; they hadn’t anticipated that the firewall security would be compromised. “A parting gift from Mr. Chung, no doubt. How do we block it?”

Jenny sighed. “I’ll have to get back to you, sir.”

Chris Brown had been listening to her conversation with the admiral and spoke as soon as she signed off. “It’s completely down now. We just lost sensor processing.”

They were still setting up when Jenny called. The pilots, Scarelli and Skeldon, had opened the bay doors. Then Andre Baker, the weapons officer, extended the laser turret above the bay. Sue Tillman was running a systems check on her sensors. While the specialists readied their gear, Ray watched power levels and the health of the data link.

Ray had noticed the problem a few moments ago but had concentrated on checking the systems at his end. The thought of the BMC going down left Ray feeling very alone.

Jenny’s message clarified the situation but didn’t help solve it. “Ray, we’ve lost sensors. We’re under electronic attack down here.” Her words chilled him, but he forced himself to be silent, to listen. She explained the problem, but its effects were obvious. They were on their own. She could not say when they’d be back online.

Suddenly Ray felt vulnerable. Somewhere below, another Tien Lung was climbing toward them.

Biff Barnes looked at the display screens. They were flat and two-dimensional, nothing like the command center’s fancy displays. He selected different modes, looking at projected paths and engagement envelopes.

While their link to the BMC still worked, the information was becoming stale, based on the contact’s past movements, not its current position. If the new vehicle maneuvered, they’d get no warning.

Without the BMC’s information, they were nearly blind, but only nearly. Defender had its own sensor systems, radar, EO, and IR, but their range was limited to line of sight. The Tien Lung that had just been launched from Gongga Shan was below their horizon, on the other side of the world. They’d have to depend on voice reports from the ground while Jenny and her team sorted out the data link problem.

Barnes ignored the new threat. They could do nothing about it, so he’d decided to work on the one target they did have.

Ray looked over at Barnes studying the display. “They’ve missed their chance at us. They’ll have to go for a satellite.”

“I agree,” Biff responded. “Look at this.” He sent the plot to Ray’s console. It showed the remaining GPS satellite tracks and the area covered by the Chinese tracking radars.

“The easiest one to reach is SVN seventy-five, here.” Biff highlighted one of the satellites. “If they make a course change anytime in the next half hour, they can nail it. The Chinese will be able to watch the intercept, as well.”

Barnes waited half a moment while Ray studied the screen. He nodded slowly. “Concur,” the engineer replied. It was Biff’s call, but it never hurt to have someone check the math.

“We’re taking it out,” Biff stated. “Right now. Before it gets any farther away. Before TL2 shows up to ruin our morning. Pilot, align us on TL1. Crew, stand by to engage TL1 with the laser.”

Ray watched the stars and Earth spin slowly as Scarelli oriented the open bay so it faced toward the Chinese spacecraft. The distance was a problem, but at least they didn’t have to maneuver to keep the target in Defender’s limited weapons arc.

Sue Tillman, the sensor officer, went from busy to extremely busy. She fiddled with the radar settings, then chose one of a number of search patterns for the radar to follow. Everything had to be done manually, and that took time.

The lieutenant finally reported, “I’ve got a hit with the radar, one five one miles, bearing three three zero degrees relative by eight zero degrees elevation. Changing to track mode.” A few moments later, she said, “Track established.”

Checking another display, she reported, “IR confirms target is being tracked.”

Ray suppressed the urge to express his satisfaction at the gear actually working.

By rights, the detection should have been automatically tracked and evaluated. But systems integration takes valuable design time. Instead, it was all done semiautomatically with a lot of help from a trained operator, and with each second the target moved farther away.

Captain Baker, the weapons officer, didn’t miss a beat. He’d slaved the laser to the data sent by Tillman’s radar. “Ready,” he reported, as calmly as if he was reporting the weather.

Ray had seen the seven-ton laser turret tested on the ground. The motors made an unholy whine. Now, there was no sound, just a slight vibration felt through the ship’s structure, as it tracked the target.

“It’s at the edge of our envelope,” Ray reminded Barnes.

“And I figured out what that envelope was,” Baker responded. “We’re good.”

Biff ordered, “Shoot. Five shots.”

Ray felt more thuds and vibrations as pumps pushed chemicals into a combustion chamber. The intense flash of their ignition “pumped” the chemical laser, and a two-megawatt beam angled out and away.

Inside Defender, Ray watched five seconds come and go. Sue Tillman, looking disappointed, turned to look over at Captain Baker.

The weapons officer watched a spectrograph slaved to the laser mirror. “Nothing,” he reported.

Set for five shots, the laser automatically fired again. Ray watched a TV camera set to cover the bay. Puffs of vapor left the combustion chamber, and he could see the turret slowly moving, but it was a silent combat.

Both Baker and Tillman spoke this time. The army officer announced triumphantly, “I’ve got an aluminum line.” The laser had caused part of the target to glow. Baker’s spectrograph had seen that light, and told him what elements that part was made of.

Tillman confirmed, “IR’s up now. It’s a lot hotter than before.”

But it’s still there on radar?” Barnes asked.

She nodded. “Affirmative. Trajectory’s unchanged.”

“Continue firing.”

The third and fourth shots, five seconds of intense energy, also struck the Chinese vehicle, but with no better results than before. Ray fought the urge to fiddle with the systems display or remind Barnes that the target was growing more distant with every shot.

They’d spent a lot of time trying to decide how they would know when they’d actually “killed” a target. You couldn’t shoot down something in space, and at these distances, they couldn’t see the effects of their attacks.

During the fourth shot, Biff asked, “Sue, can you measure how fast the temperature is rising?”

“No, sir. The equipment’s resolution isn’t that fine, and the target is pretty far away. Physics says it can’t radiate heat away as fast as we’re adding it, but we’re also adding less heat with each shot, because of the increasing distance.”

By the time she answered Barnes’s question, the fifth shot of the salvo had been fired as well. They’d used up almost half the magazine, but the mission commander didn’t wait a moment. “Keep firing. Another five.”

Well, they were here to shoot down Chinese ASAT vehicles, Ray thought. He tried to stay focused on his monitors, watching for signs of trouble. It would be hell if a mechanical failure interfered at this point.

Tillman saw it first, on the second shot of the new salvo. “IR’s showing a big heat increase!”

“Spectrograph’s full of lines!” Baker reported triumphantly. “I’ve got silicon, nitrogen…”

“Secure the laser!” Biff ordered. “Silicon means the electronics, and nitrogen’s either solid propellant or the explosive warhead.”

“There’s also hydrogen and plutonium,” she added, her voice a little unsteady.

Barnes nodded as if he’d expected it. “After all, they planned to use that vehicle against us. The GPS satellite was a fallback option.”

Ray shuddered at the thought of a nuke aimed at him.

“Multiple contacts. Radar shows debris as well,” Tillman confirmed. Defender’s radar would have no trouble distinguishing individual pieces of wreckage.

“It’s a kill,” she announced formally, with satisfaction. Sue Tillman also handled voice communications with Edwards, and she said, “They’re cheering in the BMC!”

Ray noted the time. They’d been up half an hour.

“It’s gone, General!” The communications tech handed him the headset. Shen listened to Dong’s report quietly. The Americans had destroyed the special Tien Lung. They’d made the kill at long range, on an opening target. Apparently, the cyberattack on their communications system had not affected them enough.

Shen worked to control his surprise and disappointment, making his face a mask. Defender had proved itself. Now more than before, it was vital that the second vehicle destroy the American spacecraft. Unfortunately, there was nothing more he could do to ensure its success. Like countless commanders before him, Shen could only wait for the dice to stop rolling.