Silver Tower

CHAPTER 36

Without power, Silver Tower was little more than a fifty-billion-dollar orbiting mausoleum. Air could not circulate, module pressurization could not be maintained because of the leaks in the hull. Electronic carbon dioxide scrubbers were inoperable, and old-style lithium hydroxide carbon dioxide scrubber canisters were much less effective without air being circulated through them. The attitude thrusters that kept the station on a proper orbit were useless without computer control.

The station was suddenly deaf, dumb and blind. But days before, right after arriving back on Armstrong, Saint-Michael and his crew had prepared for another attack, and safeguarding backup power sources had been their first priority. They'd labeled their makeshift control panel the "planter box" because it had been constructed using one of the command module's green plant box. Saint-Michael didn't know whatever happened to the dirt. Even now it resembled a planter box, sprouting a dozen thick bundles of wires, some ending in round twist-lock junction caps or ribbon-cable snap connectors, and others looping back around through the box and out along cable conduits to other parts of the command module.

This was no computer terminal or sophisticated electronic relay center; the circuits were the wire bundles themselves. As for the switches, if a wire junction was plugged into another, the switch was "on." If it was unplugged, it was "off." They had labeled each wire bundle with descriptions of where the wires led and what they did. Saint-Michael anchored himself now to the Velcro deck and began unplugging, watching for the last connector to snap into place and the lights to flicker on in the command module.

He reached down to his spacesuit control panel and clicked on the stationwide interphone. "Ann, how do you copy?"

"I can hear you, Jason."

"Switch to air-to-air with me." He switched to A/A on the comm control. "Marty? How do you read?"

"Loud and clear, General. You missed a Fourth of July barn-burner out here. Those Russian spaceplanes sparkle when you hit 'em with the laser. You all done with your fireworks? Can I come back in to pick up my fares?"

"You can come back in but we're not leaving. It may be crazy, but we're going to try to reactivate the station again."

"One problem, General. That last Russian missile took out your master fuel cell. Where are you going to get the power? I'm pretty good but I can't figure out how to jump-start Silver Tower from Enterprise."

"What about the solar arrays? Can you see them out there? What's their status?"

"Stand by." A few moments later Marty came back on channel. "Looks bad, General. I can't even find half of the arrays. Three and four are still attached but they're collapsed against the keel. It would take an army of techs and a shuttle a week to repair them if it's possible."

Silence, then Ann clicked on channel. "Jason, I might have an answer… We still have a power source on this station bigger than all the fuel cells and solar arrays put together. I'm talking about the MHD reactor."

"You mean you can hook the reactor into the station power circuits?"

"Why not? Until Kevin Baker and I fixed it that's what it was doing all by itself. I can undo some of the fixes we did, reverse the power relays and send MHD power from Skybolt back through the ignition circuits to the station batteries. The battery transformers and overload protectors should be able to protect the batteries from overvoltage damage. All you have to do is route battery power from the emergency bus to the station main bus and we should be able to use the MHD reactor to charge the batteries."

"Sounds too simple," Saint-Michael said, his irony lost on Ann for the moment. "Well, let's do it."

Marty said, "And I can tether Enterprise to the keel and transfer to—"

"Negative," Saint-Michael said as he began to pull apart consoles in the command module. "I want you to get in contact with someone on earth, tell them our situation and request a rescue sortie soon as possible."

"That'll be a trick," Marty said. "I never did fix Enterprise's TDRS."

"So use UHF standby radio. The Dakar-Ascension earth stations will be your best chance, or Yarra Yarra in Australia. Keep trying. I don't know how much longer our air is going to last… You copy that, Marty?"

The GL-25 cruise missiles sped south of the Tropic of Cancer, still without being detected — any ships larger than small fishing vessels had long since abandoned the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, like townfolk in the Old West scattering off the main street as the sheriff and the outlaws began squaring off. Two of the cruise missiles had guidance-system malfunctions and automatically crashed themselves into the sea, but the rest were precisely on course, speeding toward the twenty American naval vessels now only five hundred miles away. Three hundred miles from the outermost escort vessel the missiles began their preprogrammed descent back to low-altitude cruise mode, a maneuver designed to duck under the extreme farthest range of any maritime radar.

The inertially guided missiles had been programmed as if all of the Nimitz's escorts were still arranged in a protective circle around the carrier. If the fleet had remained in the same defensive formation as when the missiles were programmed some twelve hours earlier, the missiles might never have been detected until it was too late. The target-run point, at which the missile's homing radar would be activated, was designed to allow for movement of the fleet; but the planners had to work under the assumption that the fleet would stay together and not change course by more than a hundred miles after launch. Secrecy meant everything to the success of the Soviet missile strike.

But one ship, the USS Mississippi, was no longer with the Nimitz group. After the Backfire bomber attack, the Mississippi had been ordered to the area of the Backfire-Tomcat dogfight to search for Russian survivors. It had taken several hours to steam north to where the battle had taken place, and they stayed in the area for some eight hours rescuing a handful of survivors and retrieving bodies. When they started back toward the Nimitz to retake their place in the cordon they were a hundred miles out of position. Which put them three hundred miles south and west of the first of the GL-25 cruise missiles…

Commander Jeffrey Fulbright, captain of the Mississippi, was on the bridge trying to warm his insides with a fresh cup of coffee. "Those Russians were really scared of us," Fullbright was saying to Lieutenant George Collene, the deck officer. "I guess they thought we were going to put fire to their fleet. Credit doses of negative propaganda."

"Or good old-fashioned fear of retaliation, sir," Lieutenant Collene said. "If I had just tried to bomb an enemy vessel I'd sure as hell think twice about getting on their ship afterward."

Fulbright glanced at the young officer, closed his right hand into a fist. "Wouldn't you just love to go down there and properly welcome those sonsofbitches to the USS Mississippi?"

Collene looked at his captain over the top of his glasses. "That, sir, is what their political officers tell them we do."

"So let's not disappoint them —"

"Bridge, CIC. Radar contact aircraft bearing zero-four-zero true, range two-eight-seven nautical miles. Fast-moving, heading south."

Fulbright picked up the phone. "CIC, this is Fulbright. Got an ID on 'em?"

"Negative, sir."

"Feed me the numbers." He lowered the phone and called to the deck officer. "Lieutenant, steer heading zero-four-zero true. Make it zero-six-zero. We'll try to cut them off, whatever they are. Make flank speed. Let's go take a look."

"Zero-six-zero true, flank speed, aye, sir." Collette repeated the command to the helmsman, who repeated it to Collene, steered the ship to that heading, made the speed change to engineering and then read off his instruments to Collene when the course and speed were set.

"On course zero-six-zero. We are at flank speed, showing two-seven knots, sir."

"Very well."

"Bridge, contact one now two-six-five miles, bearing zero-four-five. We have a rough altitude estimate of angels ten and descending. Speed estimated six-zero-zero knots."

"Any identification beacons? IFF?"

"No codes, sir."

"Lieutenant, steer zero-nine-zero, maintain flank speed. I want—"

"Bridge, CIC. Radar contact aircraft two, range two-six-zero nautical miles, bearing zero-three-eight, fast-moving, same heading south as contact one. Speed and altitude the same as contact one."

Fulbright swore and picked up a second phone. "Communications, this is the bridge. Get Nimitz on FLEETSATCOM. Advise him of our contacts. Broadcast warning messages on all emergency frequencies to all aircraft on those contacts' course and speed. Tell them to change course and stay clear of all vessels in this area or they will be fired on without further warning—"

"Bridge, CIC. Radar contact aircraft three, range two-four-zero, bearing zero-three-zero, moving below angel's five. Same course and speed as the… Now radar contact four, same course and speed… looks like a stream of them, sir. New contact five…"

"Discontinue reports, radar, I get the picture," Fulbright said. "Lieutenant, sound general quarters."

There was irony in the station's near-destruction: if the command module had not been as torn up as it was by the previous Soviet attack it would have taken hours, perhaps days, to trace all the wiring and circuitry leading from Skyboltt and the MHD reactor to the station's banks of batteries. As it was, the main, emergency and essential power buses, and the connecting point between the power supply and the circuit powered by it, were all now readily accessible.

Saint-Michael's job was to connect the backup power system to the main bus. Finally he stood up from the planter box, clicked on his interphone, and told Ann that he was ready. She reported finishing the rewiring in the Skybolt control module, so he switched the channel to air-to-air and raised Marty. "We're going to fire up the reactor, Marty. Stand by."

"Roger, General … hey, wait a sec, I'm picking up UHF broadcasts from … the Seychelles, or someplace like that. It sounds like the navy. Something's up…"

"Okay, listen in and give me a report later. We're going to fire her up and see what happens."

Ann maneuvered herself to the one control panel in the entire module that was illuminated. It was a simple switch that would allow power from the backup batteries to flow to the ignition circuits. "Jason, when I start up the reactor it'll go full bore until I get power to my main reactor controls. I only hope the batteries can handle it… "

"Look at it this way: if something goes wrong we can't be in any worse shape than we are now. Any explosion will be out on the keel where the batteries are. Plug 'em in."

Ann touched the switch and closed her eyes. "Here goes everything."

The Soviet attack on the Nimitz carrier group was going as planned.

Five minutes after the last GL-25 cruise missile hit its initial point, the Kiev and Novorossiysk attack carriers began launching the first of a dozen Sukhoi-24 Fencer supersonic bomber aircraft off their ski-ramp launch platforms toward the American vessels. Each swing-wing bomber, a synthesis of technology borrowed from the American F-111 and British Tornado strike bombers and modified for carrier operations, was armed with four "launch and leave" AS-N-16 laser-guided antiship missiles, a thirty-millimeter cannon and an undercarriage pod with twelve laser-guided missiles. The missiles would be used to attack random targets as the fighters left the target area.

The bombers' task was to penetrate the Nimitz's outer fleet protection immediately after the GL-25 cruise missile attack, when the fleet would be at its weakest, and attack the Nimitz itself with its high-explosive antiship missiles. Using their advanced jammers and flying only a few meters off the water, the Fencers would be hard if not impossible to spot after the havoc of the cruise-missile strike. On, withdrawal the fighters had the weapons to pick off any targets of opportunity.

In the opening activity after the Mississippi sounded the alarm, the Fencer launches from the Kiev and Novorossiysk went almost unnoticed.

The missile-frigate FFG-48 USS Vandergrift was the first naval vessel to feel the impact of a Soviet GL-25 missile. She was the northernmost antisubmarine ship protecting the Nimitz, and because she was primarily an antisubmarine vessel her anti-air capabilities were limited: she carried only one Mark 13 antiaircraft missile launcher on her forward deck. Although the Nimitz rebroadcast the Mississippi's warning for all her escorts it was impossible for the Vandergrift to defend itself against the attack. Once the oncoming missile had acquired and locked onto the frigate with its homing radar, it accelerated to nearly mach two for the last thirty miles of its flight and hit the Vandergrift square in the center of her helicopter hangar before she could fire a shot. The frigate was nearly sawed in half…

Some escorts fared better, but one by one a path was being cleared by the GL-25s that led straight to the Nimitz herself. The Aegis-class cruisers were set to confront the Arkhangel carrier group to the west and were not positioned for such a massive assault from the north. Though the newer, faster Standard-ER and the new NATO Valkyrie vertical-launch missiles did a credible job against the oncoming swarm, the older Standard missiles could barely keep up.

The GL-25s were winning. Although only one ship was killed for every three GL-25s, the northern escorts were giving way to the Soviet attackers.

"Get as many Tomcats airborne as you can, Captain," Admiral Clancy said over the phone to Air Ops. "I want two air patrols to counter the Arkhangel to the east. The rest head north with the Hawkeye radar planes and find those damned cruise missiles. Keep four Tomcats and two Hornets on alert… Yes, that's right, only four. If we don't chase down those cruise missiles it won't matter how many we keep in reserve."

"Aye…"

The sound of staccato thunder penetrated the noise of the flight deck below Nimitz's bridge. Edgewater and Clancy hurried over to the port observation deck, and saw one of the northern escort vessels lighting up the night with a spectacular rocket display, rapid-firing missiles. "Bridge, CIC. Shiloh engaging hostile targets. " Shiloh was one of four Aegis-class antiaircraft vessels operating with the Nintitz assigned to protect the carrier's northern flank.

As the message was transmitted to the bridge an explosion lit the horizon, silhouetting the entire five-hundred-thirty-two-foot cruiser. There was no fire, no magazine explosion, and the sudden glare subsided. "Got 'em," Edgewater said. "Shiloh must've tagged the cruise missile—"

Edgewater was cut off by a boom that erupted just across the flight deck from their observation position. At the same time a loudspeaker blared, "Collision warning, all hands, collision warning…

The direct phone to CIC rang, but Clancy had no chance to answer it before a blinding flash and a wall of fire washed over the flight deck of the Nimitz, thick clouds of oily smoke obscuring everything, even the enclosed bridge. "Damage report, all decks," Edgewater shouted but from behind the heavy steel wall of the bridge. "All decks—"

Another explosion, this time on the flight deck itself. One of the F-14s ready to launch had caught on fire, the loudspeaker was calling for fire crews and crash crews on deck…

The phone rang again. This time Clancy snatched it up. "Bridge."

"Bridge, this is Crash One. We had a cruise missile explode right off the port side. One elevator, one catapult, one CIWS and one Sea Sparrow launcher out. One F-14 caught by collateral damage, two casualties. No casualty reports from below decks yet."

"Get me word soon as you do." Clancy phoned to CIC as Edgewater picked himself off the deck. "CIC, what's the story down there?"

"Soviet missiles all round us, Admiral," Commander Jacobs, senior CIC officer, told him. "Our close-in weapons system got that last one just before it hit. Shiloh was blind after the missile that almost got them… No way they could knock it down… Stand by, sir." And a moment later: "Message from the Bronstein."

The Bronstein was a thirty-year-old antisubmarine frigate positioned as the innermost antisubmarine warfare vessel astern of the Nimitz and carrying only a three-inch gun and a close-in Gatling gun for self-defense. "She's still under way but listing badly and calling for help."

"Better dispatch three HH-65 Dolphin helicopters with engineers and rescue gear to help," Clancy said, glancing at the surface radar to assess the position of the rest of his escorts. "We'll use all the Dolphins for rescue if necessary; if there are subs around, we're really in a world of hurt."

"Aye, sir. "

"That was too close," Edgewater said. "With Shiloh out of commission we're going to be playing tag with more of those missiles pretty damn soon. Should we place Hue City up to the north to replace Shiloh?" The USS Hue City, the first U.S. vessel to be named after a battle from the Vietnam War, was Nimitz's westernmost Aegis-class ship.

"We've got no choice," Clancy said. "A blind Aegis cruiser is no help to us—"

"Admiral, message from CIC. Our Tomcats are reporting enemy aircraft one hundred fifty miles east of the Ticonderoga." Ticonderoga, the most heavily armed vessel in the support group, was cruising the "point" between the Nimitz and Arkhangel. "No report yet from Ticonderoga. The Tomcats are—"

"Collision warning. All hands, collision warning."

Saint-Michael had just given the order for Ann to hit the switch that would send power from the backup batteries to the Skybolt ignition circuits when a huge explosion hit like a wrecking ball against the outer hull of the command module. Smoke billowed from a half-dozen spots in the debris-clogged module, quickly becoming so thick that the general could no longer see.

As Ann called out to him, trying to find out if he was okay, he half-floated, half-crawled to the jury-rigged control panel and activated a switch that depressurized the command module into the connecting tunnel. Almost immediately the smoke was gone as the last bit of air left on the station rushed into space. "I'm okay," he said, moving back to the SBR control console. "I had to depressurize the—"

Ann heard a barely audible intake of breath. "Jason?"

"My… head… He reached down to his chest-mounted spacesuit control panel and checked to be sure the pressurization switch was still on EMER.

"Jason… I'm coming across."

"N-no." The pain was a knife, but he thought he could fight it off without feeling as if he would lose consciousness. "Stay there… He refocused his eyes on the planter-box power junction. "It looks like the STIR dropped off line. It's not tracking. I'll try to reset the auto-track circuit… Marty, what do you see out there?"

"One of the batteries on the keel exploded," Schultz replied. "Blew right off and hit the command module."

Saint-Michael wedged a small flashlight against his helmet to steady its beam into the planter box. He fought to concentrate against the surge of pain. "Damage?"

"Negative."

He finally managed to find the wire bundle from the autotrack circuit to the main bus and unplugged it. He had no way of monitoring the circuit, no way of knowing if just unplugging the thing would reset it or if it had suffered any damage or was permanently burned open.

With unsteady fingers he plugged the wire bundle connectors back in. "All right, Ann," he said. "We'll give it one more try…

Another blinding flash of light off the port side of the Nimitz, but this one was accompanied by a ball of flame that rolled up from the deck of the Shiloh. The heat and the concussion even from miles away could be felt by the whole Nimitz crew.

Edgewater, feeling the intense heat, understood it meant the death of Shiloh. "Bring Callaghan, north alongside her," Clancy ordered, wiped the sweat from his forehead and stared for a moment at his smoke-blackened hand. "Have the destroyer help transfer the wounded. Have them take over the anti-air duties until Hue City moves into position. Air Ops, bring Bravo flight north to help find those Soviet aircraft. Looks like Arkhangel's getting into the act."

As Edgewater turned to issue the orders, Clancy picked up the phone to CIC, at the same time looking out through hazy oily smoke at the burning Aegis-class cruiser on the horizon. Another secondary explosion sent a mushroom of flames skyward. He waited until the sound of the explosion, rolled across the Nimitz a few seconds later before speaking. "What's the tally, Commander?" He almost didn't want to know. "Valley Forge, Vandergrift, Arkansas and your old Persian Gulf flagship Lasalle," Jacobs said, his voice flat. "All badly damaged or destroyed. Vandergrift… was lost with all hands. Sorry, sir."

Sorry… just sorry as hell… Would it have happened if the armchair boys hadn't held the tight leash on him for so long…?

Two Aegis cruisers dead… it was worse than Clancy had thought. Without the anti-air coverage provided by the two cruisers, they were almost sure to suffer even heavier losses. In another hour — maybe minutes — the whole fleet could be destroyed… "We've got eighteen casualties ourselves," Jacobs forced himself to go on. "There's a hundred injured and we've lost both waist catapults, one elevator and all our port-side guns and rockets. May have problems recovering planes on the landing strip: the first set of arresting cables is fouled up. He paused. Then: "Orders, sir?"

Orders? Any orders he gave at this point would be too little too late. But orders were what admirals gave. Good, bad, too late… okay, at least he would not make it easy for the Russians. He'd give them the fight they wanted…. "Call battle staff to the bridge," Clancy said. "We've got to get the wagons in a circle—"

The loudspeaker blared: "Collision warning, all hands, collision warning."

"Portside, Admiral," Jacob's voice was blaring at him but seemed strangely remote, like a surreal movie dream sequence…. Port side, heading right for us…"

Clancy stared out the bridge through broken window panes. His rational head told him that he wouldn't be able to see the missile, traveling low and fast and just skimming the waves, but he stood there anyway, as though mesmerized. "Hard port, flank speed," Edgewater was shouting now. "Signal the fleet that Nimitz is maneuvering to port… "

But the missile kept coming, splitting the air at supersonic speed, seeking its target, and an end to its long, lethal journey.

Skybolt fired. Saint-Michael's body felt as though it had burst into flame. The pain was a weight, crushing him.

A flash of light in the command module changed to a yellow glow, as if the module were a piece of burning phosphorous. A high-pitched whine blared, louder and louder, undiminished by helmet or earphones. The module, exposed to open space now, should have felt icy cold but instead it felt as if it were a boiling cauldron.

Through it all he thought he heard a pounding from somewhere beneath him, growing more insistent as he fought to stay conscious. Then a piece of some long-destroyed console broke free and slammed into the side of his helmet, deciding the fight for him. Everything — the pain, the heat, the sound — mercifully snapped off.

Back on Nintitz there was a flash of light, a split-second of pure whiteness like a powerful flashbulb going off. Clancy blinked. Was that what death was like? A quick flash? Poof and out?

A magnum explosion now roiled the sea into foam not a half mile from Nimitz's scarred port side. The concussion from the blast hit the Nimitz, rattling the ninety-one-thousand-ton vessel like a rick of straw in the wind, but…

But that was all. Noise, rolling thunder, then dead silence. "What the hell…?" The admiral picked up the phone again. "Clancy here. What the hell happened out there? Did the missile self-destruct?"

"Damned if I know, Admiral," Jacobs said. "We got hit with a powerful energy surge just before that last explosion. Knocked a lot of our stuff into standby. Radars, comm, sonar — everything was bumped off the line… We just now got it back. Could someone have popped a nuke off up there?"

"Well, if it were a nuke I think we'd be on our way to the bottom or to the moon. Get a poll of the other ships—"

Off the bow about ten miles in the distance, he saw what appeared to be a perfectly straight arc of lightning slice across the dark sky. Its flash was like lightning, except Clancy had never seen a straight lightning bolt before…

This one terminated in a huge fireball with tongues of flames shooting out in all directions. The fireball flared to an enormous size, lighting the ocean like a second sun, then disappeared.

"There it goes again, Admiral," Jacobs said from down below. "Another glitch, we're resetting now—"

"Wait a minute… wait a minute…"

"There's another one, sir." This from a damage-control seaman on the bridge, pointing back toward the northwest. "They're all around us, like some damn crazy lightning storm. "

"That's not lightning," Clancy said, beginning to understand. He stared up into the night sky, shaking his head slowly at the thin clouds and hazy stars. "That, gentlemen, is our guardian angel… "

For the next few minutes the scene around the Nimitz was eerie, unearthly, near-supernatural. A straight lightning bolt would flash, followed by a fireball near the sea. A few times the lightning would strike the sea, sending a geyser of steamy water a hundred or so feet into the air; then another bolt would strike and a fireball would erupt again.

As spectacular as the sight looked to the men aboard the Nimitz and her support vessels, it was even more impressive to the pilot of the lead Soviet Sukhoi-24 bomber, who was viewing it out his windscreen. While trying to concentrate on radar indications, threat-warning receivers and strike-radar returns, his attention was being diverted outside to the strange flashes of light that kept dancing out of the sky. Several times a minute the clouds would erupt in a circle of light and then a streak of fire would lance down and hit the ocean. Almost each time there was an answering explosion — apparently the explosions were not happening on any of the American ships. The whole phenomenon reminded him of a meteor shower, the most dazzling meteor shower he or anybody else had ever seen…

As the Soviet strike force approached the outermost American escorts, the flashes of light began to form eerie pillars of fire that seemed to block their path like a shimmering curtain pulled toward them. At the same time the intermittent threat-warnings from the American carrier-based fighters began to diminish. Had they managed to run under the F-14 Tomcats?

Suddenly the lead Sukhoi pilot's cockpit was filled with a flash of fire and light. He struggled for control of his bomber, watching with disbelieving eyes as the radar altimeter, which measured the distance between the belly of the bomber and the deadly waves below, dipped almost to zero.

The formation was in abrupt disarray. The curtain of flashing light was now surrounding them, and one of the twelve Sukhoi bombers had simply blown itself apart. The other bombers had broken ranks to recover from the shock of the explosion, and now, less than a hundred kilometers from the first escort ship and less than two hundred kilometers from the Nimitz, the strike package had virtually come apart: the precisely coordinated strike formation had suddenly turned into a gaggle of uncoordinated solo attackers. A few of them even climbed out and headed back the opposite way toward the Arkhangel, appearing to their fellow attackers like enemy aircraft and heightening the confusion.

The Ticonderoga got off a few shots at the bombers, but the strikers had been dispersed before they reached the Aegis ship's lethal range. The crew of Ticonderoga could only look on in awe as the mysterious curtain of light moved eastward into the night.

When the lightning bolts subsided, the air felt cleaner, colder, quieter. Even the smoke from the fires and exploding missiles seemed to dissipate. A few of the Nimitz's escorts blew their horns in celebration — of what, they couldn't possibly be sure. Even Admiral Clancy felt like tooting a horn. "Launch the Intruder tankers to refuel the fighters we sent after those cruise missiles," Clancy told Air Ops. He spoke slowly, as if afraid to disturb the mystical air that seemed to surround the fleet and the bridge. "We'll need to keep them airborne until we get the deck cleared off. As soon as possible get Kilo flight on deck to change over with the eastern patrols." He turned to Edgewater. "I want a battle-staff meeting and a full report on the status of the group in thirty minutes. "

He put a hand on the captain's shoulder and clasped it tightly. "And get me a damned radio. I want to make a call to a certain damned space station that's been looking over us."

The sealed chamber in which the Stavka. VGK, the Soviet Supreme High Command, was meeting was deadly quiet. The general secretary sat at the head of the triangular table, staring blankly. "Strike," he said. "Destroy the Nimitz. Launch the nuclear AS-15 cruise missiles from Tashkent, or the SS-N-24 missiles from the attack submarines. Destroy the Nimitz."

Then the whispers and muted voices began: "The American laser could intercept anything.

"What if the laser strikes the Arkhangel…?"

"The space station Armstrong can vector in American B-52s and can steer cruise missiles… "

"We must have time to evaluate this… this new development, sir," Czilikov said, abruptly riding over the sotto voce murmurs of disbelief and dismay. "We've no available ground-launch satellite interceptors, no spaceplanes… so we can't destroy the space station, not yet. And it holds the high ground — in more ways than one, he thought — against the Arkhangel carrier group. We can't send a strike force without risking the Arkhangel."

"I will not accept it," the general secretary said, glaring at Czilikov. "I will not retreat. I will not have this nation denied access of the seas—"

"Sir, we control Iran and the Persian Gulf—"

"Oh? Control it with what? And for how long? It is only a matter of time before the Americans move in again…"

"If we withdraw, the situation remains as it is. If we advance against the Nimitz without further dealing with the space station Armstrong, we risk everything."

The general secretary sat back, stared at the shaken generals ranged about him. Once, he thought, there had been a man sitting at this table who'd not been afraid to take on a challenge. A man who, like himself, would not even consider accepting defeat. Was another like him out there somewhere? He had to hope and believe so.

Otherwise the Americans would have scored a victory far more important than the military one. They would have stolen the future..