The Kremlin Strike

Forty-One

President Farrell entered the crowded Situation Room at a rapid clip. He waved the men and women who’d started to rise to greet him back down into their seats and took his own place at the head of the table. Besides his top national security advisers, Patrick McLanahan and Kevin Martindale were physically present. A video link to Battle Mountain showed other members of the Scion and Sky Masters team listening in — including Brad, looking much the worse for wear, Nadia, Hunter Noble, and Peter Vasey.

“Okay, y’all,” he said briskly. “Time’s short, so we need to move along fast.” He turned to Admiral Scott Firestone, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Let’s start with what your folks at the Pentagon and Space Command have come up with, Admiral.”

“Yes, sir,” Firestone agreed. “At its core, the plan we propose is simple: We put a large fragmentation warhead aboard the Delta IV rocket being prepped out at Vandenberg. And then we launch this warhead into a four-hundred-mile-high retrograde orbit with an inclination of 128.4 degrees.” He looked around the table. “If all goes well, that ought to place it on a collision course with Mars One, which is orbiting in the opposite direction.”

“And then you plan to detonate the warhead,” Farrell realized.

The admiral nodded. “Exactly, Mr. President. This explosion should create a large cloud of shrapnel, right in the path of Mars One. Any fragments that strike the Russian space station will do so with a combined velocity of close to thirty-four thousand miles per hour, inflicting lethal damage.”

That created a pleased stir throughout the Situation Room. It was easy to imagine the devastation that would be caused even by a single shard of metal hitting at such speed, let alone by many.

Farrell noticed one man shaking his head. “You see a problem, General?”

“Oh, it’s a great plan,” Patrick McLanahan said forcefully. “Except for just one little thing: it won’t work.” He leaned forward. “We’d have to detonate that warhead far around the curve of the earth from the oncoming Russian station — thousands of miles away. Because otherwise, Mars One will simply destroy our Delta IV in flight with its long-range plasma rail gun.”

Firestone shrugged. “So?”

“The Russians still have satellites up, Admiral,” Patrick reminded him. “Even if we don’t. So they’ll detect our rocket launch and the detonation in real time. Mars One will have plenty of warning, which would allow the station to maneuver safely out of reach of most of our expanding and thinning shrapnel cloud. Once that’s accomplished, their defensive lasers can easily deflect or vaporize any larger fragments that might pose a risk.” Seen through the clear visor of his life-support helmet, his expression was grim. “Given all of that, the odds of scoring a genuinely damaging hit are far too low. We might as well toss a lit firecracker at a charging grizzly bear in the hope that pieces of the scorched wrapper will smack into both eyes and blind it.”

“And earn a disemboweling swipe of its claws in return,” Farrell said directly.

Patrick nodded. “All pain for no gain whatsoever.”

Farrell looked closely at him. “I assume you’re not arguing that we sit back and do nothing, General?”

“I am not, Mr. President,” the older McLanahan answered. “Unless we take out that Russian space station, and damned soon, we might as well start negotiating the terms of our surrender.”

“Surrender to a murderous thug like Gennadiy Gryzlov? Hell no. Not on my watch,” Farrell growled.

“No, sir,” Patrick agreed. “Fortunately, my analysis of the available intelligence suggests that Mars One does have one weakness. A weakness we can turn to our own advantage.”

“What kind of weakness?” Farrell demanded.

“A severe shortage of electrical power,” Patrick told him. Speaking carefully, he talked them through the reasoning that led him to conclude that the Russians had lost their power generator — almost certainly a revolutionary compact fusion reactor — aboard the one Energia-5VR heavy-lift rocket they’d lost after launch.

Admiral Firestone looked thoughtful. “Assuming that’s true, what are the tactical implications?”

“Without a working reactor, Mars One’s ability to fire its energy weapons must be severely restricted,” Patrick explained. “Once fired, its plasma rail gun and lasers can only be recharged with power diverted from the station’s solar panels — and even then at a comparatively slow rate.”

“So launching an attack when Mars One crosses into the earth’s shadow—”

“Should significantly limit the amount of firepower the Russians can employ against our strike force,” Patrick agreed.

“To what extent, exactly?” Andrew Taliaferro, the secretary of state, asked carefully.

Patrick shrugged, a gesture amplified by his motor-driven exoskeleton. “I can’t give you exact figures. But my best guess is that Mars One can store enough energy in its supercapacitors and battery packs for roughly two or three shots from that plasma rail gun… and twelve to sixteen short bursts from each of the two Hobnail lasers.”

His words were met first with stunned silence and then with open consternation.

“Good God, man,” Taliaferro said in shock, speaking for the others. “Even if you’re right, that’s more than enough firepower to make any assault futile. Sending spacecraft, even Sky Masters spaceplanes, up against that station would still be a suicide run.”

“Not quite,” Patrick said, with quiet determination. “The trick will be to throw enough potential targets into orbit to drain those supercapacitors and batteries. If we can do that, some attackers should survive long enough to close with and board Mars One.”

Farrell saw his advisers exchange appalled glances.

This time it was the CIA’s director, Elizabeth Hildebrand, who spoke up. “With respect, General McLanahan,” she said quietly. “Where are you going to find trained personnel crazy enough to try that kind of space banzai charge?”

On the large wall screen, Brad, Nadia, Boomer, and Vasey sheepishly raised their hands. “That would be us,” Boomer said solemnly.

Farrell felt suddenly humbled. All four of those people were younger than anyone else involved in this debate. They came here today with most of their lives still ahead of them. Two of them weren’t even American citizens. And yet there they were, ready and willing to risk all they had in the service of the United States and the world’s other free nations. Nadia, especially, had already paid a high personal price for her dedication and courage. He felt a pressing urge to find some way for this deadly cup to pass them by.

He turned to Patrick. “I understand your plan, General. What I don’t understand is why we should risk so many precious lives in what’s bound to be a high-risk assault to capture this Russian space station. Wouldn’t it be wiser to use the same tactics — multiple launches to run those enemy energy weapons out of power — but with unmanned weapons instead? Why not just blow Mars One to hell from a safe distance?”

From the carefully controlled anguish he read on the other man’s face, he knew he’d struck a chord.

Martindale laid a hand on Patrick’s metal-reinforced shoulder. “I’ll take this one,” he murmured. “Put bluntly, Mr. President,” he said, “we need to seize and hold that Russian space platform because it’s painfully obvious that Moscow has leapfrogged us in certain key technological areas — including sophisticated energy weapons and, probably, fusion power generation. Unless our scientists and engineers get a good solid look at some of these devices, we’re likely to lag behind the enemy for years… with disastrous consequences.”

Coolly, he swept his gaze around the crowded table, watching as his arguments hit home. Then he turned back to Farrell. “Gryzlov isn’t likely to back off, no matter what happens to his first military station. Even if we destroy Mars One, we may face the beginning of a prolonged struggle in space, one that will be fought with ever-more-sophisticated weapons. To have any chance at all of winning this conflict, we simply must capture Mars One intact.”

Farrell considered his words and nodded slowly. “You’ve made your point, Mr. Martindale.” He frowned. “I don’t like it one goddamned little bit, but I’m not going to make the same mistake as some of my predecessors by assuming I can ignore reality in favor of my own hopes and dreams.”

He swung around to face Patrick squarely. “If I give the go-ahead, when can you set your operation in motion?”

“Speed is absolutely critical,” the older McLanahan said. “But to have any chance at all, our assault has to be timed very precisely to meet certain key requirements.”

“Which are?” Farrell asked.

“First, we’ve got to launch our spaceplanes at a moment when the enemy station’s solar arrays aren’t generating power.”

Admiral Firestone shrugged. “Mars One passes through the earth’s shadow on every orbit, doesn’t it?”

Patrick nodded. “Yes, but we also need to select a period of darkness that won’t expose our spaceplanes to salvos by Russia’s S-500 SAMs and MiG-31-launched missiles during their boost phase. That narrows the range of suitable orbits considerably.” He looked at Farrell. “Plus, if it’s at all possible, I want to time our attack to minimize the number of important American and allied targets Mars One could strike with its ground-attack weapons before we capture or destroy it.”

“So, not when that space station is passing right over Washington, D.C., for example?” Farrell suggested with a quick, wry smile.

“Or Warsaw. Or London. Or any number of other places,” Patrick agreed. Then he motioned toward the screen showing Brad and the others watching intently. “And, maybe most important of all, it will take time to train our assault force in simulators… and to jury-rig the weapons and other equipment they’ll use in this mission.”

He brought his attention back to the president. “With all that in mind, our first window to go opens in less than two hundred hours.” Impatiently, he overrode the sudden babble of protest from around the room. “I know that isn’t much time,” he said flatly. “But that’s also likely to be our only window. The clock is ticking. Right now new intelligence from Scion strongly indicates the Russians are already prepping a replacement fusion reactor for launch from the Vostochny complex.”

Patrick leaned forward, fixing his eyes on Farrell. “Either we go before that reactor is operational,” he said grimly, “or we don’t go at all.”

Live feeds from around the complex were displayed on the control center’s wall-sized screens. One showed the inside of the huge Energia assembly building. Technicians wearing red hard hats and blue-and-black uniforms clustered around the massive rocket’s still-separate engine and payload stages. They were inspecting each with care — checking for even the slightest signs of any mechanical or electronic glitches. Only when those checks were complete would they begin the intricate task of mating each stage to its companions to form a finished space vehicle. No one at Vostochny wanted to see a repeat of the disastrous launch from Plesetsk.

Launch director Yuri Klementiyev checked the digital timer displayed above that screen. It was counting down the time toward the new Energia-5VR’s planned lift-off. He glanced at his deputy, who was standing beside him. “Well, Sergei?”

“We’ll make it,” the other man said confidently. “Our assembly team is on schedule, maybe even a little ahead. Even if the preflight inspection turns up problems, we have a built-in margin.”

“Not much of one.” Klementiyev felt like his nerves were frayed. Moscow seemed to think he could run this launch complex as though it were a commuter railroad — firing off rockets into space on order, to a timetable dictated by the Kremlin.

To hide his worries, he turned his attention to the other two wall screens. They were focused on Pads 5 and 7, seven and nine kilometers respectively from the control center. Floodlights illuminated the Soyuz-5 rocket on each pad. They were already surrounded by gantries and fueling towers. The top stage of each Soyuz contained a single-seater Elektron spaceplane, with its wings and tail folded inside a protective shroud.

Gennadiy Gryzlov and Colonel General Leonov were not taking any chances this time. When the new fusion reactor reached orbit, it would be escorted by armed Russian spacecraft all the way to Mars One.