Shadow Command

PROLOGUE

“Stand by…ready…ready…begin climb, now,” the ground controller radioed.

“Acknowledged,” the pilot of the Russian Federation’s Mikoyan-Gurevich-31BM long-range interceptor responded. He gently eased back on his control stick and began feeding in power. The twin Tumanski R15-BD-300 engines, the most powerful engines ever put on a jet fighter, barked once as the afterburners ignited, then quickly roared to life as the engines’ fuel turbopumps caught up with the massive streams of air flooding inside, turning air and fuel into raw power and acceleration.

The pilot’s eyes darted back and forth from the power gauges to the heads-up display, which showed two crossed needles with a circle in the middle, similar to an Instrument Landing System. He made gentle, almost imperceptible control inputs to keep the crossed needles centered in the circle. His inputs had to be tiny because the tiniest slip or skid now, with his nose almost forty degrees above the horizon and climbing, could result in a disruption of the smooth airflow into the engine intakes, causing a blowout or compressor stall. The MiG-31, known as “Foxhound” in the West, was not a forgiving machine — it regularly killed sloppy or inattentive crewmembers. Built for speed, it required precise handling at the outer edges of its impressive flight envelope.

“Passing ten thousand meters…Mach two point five…fifteen thousand…forty degrees nose-high…airspeed dropping off slightly,” the pilot intoned. The MiG-31 was one of the few planes that could accelerate while in a steep climb, but for this test flight they were going to take it higher than its service ceiling of twenty thousand meters, and its performance dropped off significantly then. “Passing twenty K, airspeed below Mach two…passing twenty-two K…stand by…approaching release speed and altitude…”

“Keep it centered, Yuri,” the MiG’s backseater said over intercom. The needles had drifted slightly to the edge of the circle. The circle represented their target tonight, transmitted to them not by the MiG-31’s powerful phased-array radar but by a network of space tracking radars around the Russian Federation and fed to them by a nearby data relay aircraft. They would never see their target and would probably never know if their mission was a success or failure.

“It’s getting less responsive…harder to correct,” the pilot breathed. Both crewmembers were wearing space suits and full-face sealed helmets, like astronauts, and as the cabin altitude climbed, the pressure in the suit climbed to compensate, making it harder to move and breathe. “How…much…longer?”

“Ten seconds…nine…eight…”

“Come on, you old pig, climb,” the pilot grunted.

“Five seconds…missile ready…tree, dva, adeen…pazhar! Launch!”

The MiG-31 was at twenty-five thousand meters above Earth, one thousand kilometers per hour airspeed, with the nose fifty degrees above the horizon, when the ship’s computer issued the launch command, and a single large missile was ejected clear of the fighter. Seconds after ejection, the missile’s first-stage rocket motor ignited, a tremendous plume of fire erupted from the nozzles, and the missile disappeared from view in the blink of an eye.

Now it was time to fly for himself and not the mission, the pilot reminded himself. He brought back the throttles slowly, carefully, and at the same time started a slight left bank. The bank helped decrease lift and bleed off excessive speed, and would also help bring the nose down without subjecting the crew to negative G-forces. The pressure began to subside, making it a bit easier to breathe — or was it just because their part of the mission was…?

The pilot lost concentration just for a split second, but that was enough. At the moment he let a single degree of sideslip creep in, the fighter flew through the disrupted supersonic air created by the big missile’s exhaust tail, and airflow through the left engine was nearly cut off. One engine coughed, sputtered, and then began to scream as fuel continued to pour into the burner cans but the hot exhaust gases were no longer being pushed out.

With one engine running and the other on fire, with not enough air to restart the stalled engine, the MiG-31 launch aircraft was doomed. But the missile it fired performed flawlessly.

Fifteen seconds after the first-stage motor ignited, it separated from the missile and the second-stage motor fired. Speed and altitude climbed quickly. Soon the missile was at five hundred miles above Earth, flying at over three thousand miles per hour, and the second-stage motor separated. Now the third stage remained. High above the atmosphere, it needed no control surfaces to maneuver, instead relying on tiny nitrogen-gas thrusters for maneuvering. A radar in the nose of the third stage activated and began looking at a precise spot in space, and a second later it locked onto its quarry.

The missile didn’t have enough speed to begin orbiting the Earth, so as soon as the second stage separated it began its long fall, but it didn’t need to orbit: like an atmospheric anti-tank missile, it was falling in a ballistic path toward a computed point in space where its quarry would be in mere seconds. The predicted path, programmed well before launch by ground controllers, was soon verified by on-board targeting computers: the target’s orbit had not changed. The intercept was just as planned.

Twenty seconds before impact, the third stage deployed a fifty-yard-wide circular composite net — well above the atmosphere, the net was unaffected by air pressure and stayed round and solid even though traveling several thousand miles an hour. The net was an insurance policy against a near-miss…but this time, it didn’t need it. With the third stage solidly locked onto the target, and with very little need for hard jarring maneuvering because of the precision of the launch and flight path, the third stage made a direct hit on its intended target.

“Impact, sir,” the technician reported. “No telemetry received from the test article.”

The commanding general in charge, Russian Air Forces chief of staff Andrei Darzov, nodded. “But what about the flight path? Was it affected by the improper launch parameters?”

The technician looked confused. “Uh…no, sir, I do not believe so,” he said. “The launch seemed to go perfectly.”

“I disagree, Sergeant,” Darzov said. He turned to the technician and affixed him with an angry glare. An angry look was bad enough, but Darzov kept his head shaved to best reveal his extensive combat injuries and burns across his head and body, and he looked even more fearsome. “That missile went far off-course, and it may have locked onto an errant satellite by mistake and attacked it.”

“Sir?” the technician asked, confused. “The target…uh, the American Pathfinder space-based surveillance satellite? That was—”

“Was that what we hit, Sergeant?” Darzov asked. “Why, that was not in the flight test plan at all. There has been a horrible mistake, and I will be sure it is investigated fully.” His features softened, he smiled, then clasped the technician’s shoulder. “Be sure to write in your report that the missile went off-course because of a sideslip in the launch aircraft — I will take care of the rest. And the target was not the American SBSS, but our Soyuz target spacecraft inserted into orbit last month. Is that clear, Sergeant?”