Part 26 (2/2)
There was an intercom b.u.t.ton in the frame retaining the wall of gla.s.s. Bethany Johnson, the brigadier general commanding the 21st s.p.a.ce Wing, with responsibilities including Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, pressed it. ”Five minutes. Look sharp, people.” She was a wiry black woman of average height, with wide-set eyes behind wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. Johnson had none of Bauer's ex-pilot, good-ole-boy swagger; she'd risen through Air Force ranks on the unglamorous logistical side until s.p.a.ce Command began offering operational opportunities to women. Her demeanor conveyed endless determination. Releasing the b.u.t.ton, she turned to Kyle and Ryan Bauer, her guests. ”Any requests for the auxiliary screens?”
”Can you project our wayward satellite and the target?” Kyle asked. ”Absolutely, optically and in pseudocolored IR view. No radar, of course . . . by your rules. We wouldn't want to risk your AIs, should they be real, knowing we're watching.” This particular masersat was visible to radar, although it hadn't been before the Twenty-Minute War. That this bird appeared on radar was one more reason to believe it was out of commission. Johnson nodded to her aide, who whispered urgently into his headset mike. The side screens came alive. On Kyle's right appeared an unmanned s.p.a.cecraft of obvious human design: gold-foil-covered (except for its solar-cell wing) and boxy, with nozzles and instruments and antennas jutting in all directions. The telescopic image was blurry, details lost to atmospheric s.h.i.+mmer. A picture-in-picture shot rendered the same satellite as imaged by infrared sensors. The computer-generated colors were indicative of incident sunlight absorbed by the satellite and reradiated, and of heat generated and emitted by internal operations. The satellite jittered and tumbled, the flames from random firings of att.i.tude jets unmistakable in the IR view. Only in close-up were the tumbling and corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g motions visible; at the coa.r.s.e resolution of the front screen, the satellite's blue track was arrow-straight.
”Thanks,” said Kyle. The left screen showed another s.p.a.cecraft, whose flowing curves screamed of an alien origin. The hull had paired bulbous sections, suggesting the segmented body of an insect. The sections struck him as subtly mismatched, as though dissimilar machines had been fused. Whether that perception had any validity, he couldn't begin to guess. But forget guessing-the operation culminating today was part of a systematic process. In due course, if all went according to plan, an artifact like this would become available for dissection.
And Captain Grelben's plans? If Kyle had miscalculated, today's actions would trigger dormant Krulchukor AIs. The Atlantis fireball came unbidden to his mind's eye. Packed jumbo jets were as vulnerable to masers. Was it wiser to let sleeping weapons of ma.s.s destruction lie?
The Krulchukor satellite also tumbled slowly. Its wings, presumed power-generating solar panels, met the hull at quite different angles. ”The masersats don't all look bent, do they?” ”Only a few are asymmetric; the irregularities that do occur all differ,” said Ryan. ”Best guess is it's battle damage. The laser probably wasn't on one spot long enough to sever a strut, just to soften it. And check out the IR view, how the bent wing's surface radiates heat so unevenly. I'm guessing our Russian buddies melted some solar cells.”
That would be before another alien satellite slagged the Russian ground-based ABM laser. They were rehas.h.i.+ng familiar facts, running out the clock. Kyle's stomach churned. His head swiveled from image to image: target and probe.
”Colonel,” said Johnson to her aide. ”Three minutes to closest approach. Would you do a synopsis for our guests?” ”Yes, sir!” Arnold Kim, a Korean-American with close-cropped gray hair, towered over his commanding officer. ”General Bauer, Dr. Gustafson, we'll start on the main screen. You see seven parallel tracks, running pole to pole.” On the display, those tracks tipped about twelve degrees to the north-south axis-the effect on the ground track of Earth's rotation. ”Each orbit has three enemy satellites, equally s.p.a.ced, appearing on their track as colored dots. The orbits are also evenly separated; that's one every fifty-one and change degrees of longitude. All twenty-one satellites circle at the same alt.i.tude, about twenty-three hundred miles. Every spot on Earth is in sight of several weapon platforms at all times.”
The scenario was familiar: VIPs visit from Was.h.i.+ngton, and the attention-starved a.s.sistant belabors the obvious. Killing time was one thing; missing the action-even though everything was being captured for replay-was another. The translucent timer superimposed over Antarctica decremented below two minutes. ”I've got it, Colonel. Green dots for satellites believed to be disabled, like that one.” Kyle pointed. ”Red dots for enemy satellites thought still to be dangerous.” As the next encounter will be . . .
if we get that far. ”Yellow for the birds we're unsure of. That includes the three that have never been seen to fire, presumed defective.”
”Yes, sir.” The tone conveyed disappointment at thunder stolen.
Ryan Bauer glowered disapprovingly at Kyle. Too brusque, interpreted Kyle. By way of amends, he
tossed out a question for which he needed no answer-and for which the reply should be brief. ”But the blue track, Colonel, on the intersecting path across the alien orbits?”
”Our innocent, helpless visitor, sir.”
”Sixty seconds.” The advisory came over the intercom, presumably from someone in the control room
beneath.
Kim whispered again into his mike. Sensors monitoring the satellites panned back; the s.p.a.cecraft now appeared together in the side displays. Both s.p.a.cecraft tumbled, the boxy one also jittering about seemingly at random. It defied mere human abilities to extrapolate whether a collision would occur-although, on the world map, the blue and green dots had merged. A text window popped up in a corner of the close-up, the value thus revealed dancing up and down without leaving the vicinity of
ninety percent. The inset infrared view of the alien craft stayed cool-there was no sign of masers preparing to fire.
”Thirty seconds.” The numbers continued to bounce, but the trend toward 1.000-certain collision-was
unmistakable. ”Twenty seconds . . . fifteen . . . ten.”
The human satellite zigged once more, impelled by yet another seemingly random firing of an att.i.tude jet. The s.p.a.cecraft suddenly diverged; the numbers dropped in a blur towards zero. To whistles and
claps and cheers of approval, in the viewing gallery above and the control room below, blue and green dots on the big screen separated.
Kyle extended a hand in congratulations to their relieved-looking host. ”Well done, General.”
* * * How many alien weapons still functioned? Were those that had survived potentially hostile? What might induce an attack? Without answers, it was impossible to know whether the Krulirim were, from beyond the grave, still capable of trapping mankind on Earth. s.p.a.ce missions that had come to seem routine could now provoke truly frightening retribution. From the Atlantis explosion to the destruction of underground missile silos, the dangers of a s.p.a.ce-based siege were all too apparent.
Today's maneuver had probed one of the masersats whose behavior had changed since the Twenty-Minute War. It tumbled along its path, where before it had maintained an orientation toward Earth. Its looping course was slowly deviating from the orbit it had once precisely shared with two other alien satellites-unlike those neighbors, it no longer performed the occasional maneuvers that would compensate for the perturbations from solar wind, lunar drag, and slight irregularities in the Earth's ma.s.s distribution. Its presumed solar wings no longer pivoted to track the sun, sharply diminis.h.i.+ng the amount of solar power it could be acc.u.mulating. Observed by ground-based infrared sensors, it exhibited far less variability in heat distribution than most other alien satellites. And it had lost its one-time invisibility to radar.
If this satellite was, in fact, irreparably damaged, it ought not to respond to a flyby. With luck, none of the undamaged masersats would notice a flyby of this derelict, or if they did notice, consider the close encounter reason to react. The challenge, when the stimulus most likely to provoke an automated attack was a missile launch, was to somehow approach their prey. Kyle's insight had been that launch would be avoided, if (and it was a big if) an already on-station s.p.a.cecraft could be repurposed. With Ryan Bauer's ungentle prodding, s.p.a.ce Command offered a spysat. It was higher than most surveillance platforms, put there to test technology for observations from heights unreachable by the primitive missiles of rogue states.
The earthly concern that had motivated the expensive orbiting test bed now seemed quaint. The spysat had been launched scant months before the arrival of the Consensus, with fuel for a five-year mission. It was owned by the National Reconnaissance Office, the supersecret agency whose very existence remained cla.s.sified throughout the Cold War. No doubt not having paid for the satellite made it easier for s.p.a.ce Command to offer it up. Kyle's scheme involved far more maneuvering than the NRO's mission planners had had in mind-but he didn't object to spending onboard fuel profligately. What mattered was that the spysat's...o...b..t was about right, that its instrument suite included an IR sensor, and that the manufacturer had a good simulation program for modeling the satellite's response to engine burns.
The wide separation between masersats gave ample opportunities to send signals, without fear of detection, to human-built satellites. Soon after Kyle's barbecue, a new navigation program was beamed to the spysat. Two days later, the satellite's att.i.tude jets began firing erratically. Fuel sufficient for eighteen months' normal orbit-tweaking was burnt in seconds, sending the s.p.a.cecraft tumbling wildly and slightly raising the apogee of its...o...b..t. From time to time, its...o...b..ard controls seemed to have some success in regaining stability, in reorienting the solar panel so that the batteries could be recharged-and then the sporadic engine firings would resume.
The episodic engine burns, however unconventional, were not random-but, it was hoped, observant AIs would infer equipment failure from the satellite's haphazard course. Eighty-six and a fraction orbits later, the wobbling satellite, its fuel half gone, had barely missed a Krulchukor satellite showing every appearance of inoperability.
* * * ”Phil Davis here is the wizard who coded the navigation program.” The gangly lieutenant was one of the officers General Johnson invited to the viewing gallery after the rendezvous had pa.s.sed safely. His blue eyes, beneath a single caterpillar-like brow, darted about the room.
”Excellent job, Lieutenant.” Kyle gestured at the side display still showing the initial target. The human spysat had receded from this view. ”Brilliant programming.” Praise only made the young man's nervous ocular motions increase. Kyle sighed inwardly: his words were sincere. ”Did you have any questions, Lieutenant?”
Davis glanced at his feet. His scuffed shoes, however unmilitary, evidently instilled confidence. ”Yes, Dr. Gustafson. I was given a navigation problem to solve, under rather odd constraints. What, exactly, were we hoping to accomplish?”
Short, and to the point. ”We were gathering data. Your calculations”- Kyle had in mind the probability estimate that had briefly overlaid the scene-”showed a very high likelihood our wobbly bird would impact the alien craft. If a functional AI were watching, don't you think it would've gotten the masersat out of the way before our last-moment zig?”
c.o.c.king his head, Davis considered the alien craft. ”A working AI and control of its own propulsion. It's much the worse for wear.”
”I concede that ambiguity, but the larger conclusion is unchanged. In the Twenty-Minute War, we
clobbered this thing enough that it can't defend itself. That raises my confidence about other masersats we thought disabled.”
There was a soft knock, a pause, and the door swung partway open. A steward backed in, tugging a
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