Part 27 (1/2)

squeaky-wheeled cart laden with soda cans, bottled water, an ice bucket, and a cookie platter. He left as

unceremoniously as he'd entered.

”Healthier than my usual celebratory libations. Thanks, I guess.” Bauer grabbed a c.o.ke. ”So, Lieutenant.

Will the next bit go as smoothly?”

The attention of two generals and a presidential advisor, plus, for all the junior officer knew, the fate of human civilization on his narrow shoulders . . . Davis broke into a sweat. A quaver in his voice, he pointed at the main screen. The timer still floating over Antarctica decremented toward the next mission milestone. ”Thirty minutes, sir, and we'll know.”

* * * The commandeered NRO satellite continued its seemingly random att.i.tude-jet firings. Pitch, yaw, and roll slowed dramatically, without altogether stopping. With no obvious indication of being under control, it reduced its tumbling enough for onboard sensors to reestablish with precision its orientation and position. Every few seconds it took a fresh IR reading of a remote patch of the southern Pacific.

The satellite likewise gave no overt indication when the message for which it waited was received. It was scanning for a large fire, unmistakable to its infrared sensor. The nonexistence of that oil-slick blaze was unambiguous-and an absence could not be correlated by a hostile AI with subsequent events. The nonrecall authorized the spysat to execute the next routine in its uploaded navigational program: rendezvous with a second orbiting alien artifact.

The new target was armed and presumed extremely dangerous. * * * Through the fiber-linked, surrept.i.tious eye of a telescope far from Cheyenne Mountain, the hurtling spysat was seen to perform a series of brief att.i.tude-jet firings. Pitch, yaw, and roll largely damped out.

The men and woman in the VIP viewing room, all spectators at this point, stared at the wavy, grainy image. The main parabolic antenna on the s.p.a.cecraft spun three times around its mounting post.

Three rotations meant ”target acquired.”

”Well done, again, Lieutenant.” Bauer slapped the embarra.s.sed young man on the back.

* * * ”Now it gets interesting.” Kyle studied a side screen. This masersat's wings looked identical; both were tipped to catch the maximum sunlight. In the infrared view, stripes on the s.p.a.cecraft rippled and flowed, like a beast languorously flexing its muscles.

The spysat on his left had resumed its manic tumbling. Infrared revealed more seemingly ineffectual engine firings. Sensors caught a flurry of heat bursts, longer at first, and then trailing off to sputtering. In the end, the solar panel pointed straight down to Earth, twenty-three hundred miles below. It sure looked, thought Kyle, as though the probe halted its spin with the dregs of its fuel. Here's hoping any AI on the target agrees. In truth, the tanks remained one-third full.

The countdown timer on the map display forecast rendezvous in six minutes.

”What's next, Lieutenant?” Bauer perched on the edge of the viewing room's oak table.

Davis gulped. ”More waiting.”

A red spot bloomed on the masersat's IR image, and the estimated collision probability plummeted.

”That hot spot's no maser,” said Bauer. ”What happened?”

”It's moving,” answered Kyle. ”Now to answer the big question: was it sidestepping a suspect visitor? Or was it a coincidence, an ordinary orbit-maintenance maneuver?”

The spysat they did not dare to radio so near to its target obeyed its programming-and the absence of

an at-sea fiery abort signal. Its engines sputtered anew, and its path changed. The collision probability

climbed. The two craft came close enough to be viewed on the same screen.

On the spysat, fuel pumps toiled. Safety interlocks in the original software had been overwritten from the ground, allowing pressure to mount behind closed fuel-line valves. Other unorthodox reprogramming had retracted the heat-dumping radiator panels. Streaming sunlight, unfiltered by atmosphere, drove heat into the seemingly crippled satellite. Heat seeping into the fuel tanks raised the temperature of the contents, and the pressure of the vapors within.

The masersat pivoted toward the approaching s.p.a.cecraft. Reddening of the IR image revealed waste heat from torrents of power being routed. ”Weapon charging.” Kyle spoke more to unclench his teeth than in expectations of conveying information. ”Something on board learns fast . . . maneuvering once didn't help, so it's preparing more active measures.”

”Funny thing.” Ryan's eyes gleamed. ”We can learn, too.”

The spysat's earthward-hanging solar panel served as an impromptu anchor, the gravity gradient holding

steady the satellite's orientation. Solar heat continued to flood in. When fuel-tank pressures exceeded a preset level, the onboard computer opened the valves.

Overpressurized fuels gushed into the att.i.tude jets' combustion chambers. No spark was

needed-monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide ignite on contact. In such over-spec quant.i.ties, that ignition was spectacular indeed. A fireball erupted, its IR image painfully bright. (This bang is our doing! thought Kyle. See how you like it.) The explosion turned the NRO's expensive satellite into tons of shrapnel.

IR sensors flared. Fragments blazed as they were blasted by the maser. But too many pieces were headed

toward the masersat, from too close . . .

The Krulchukor satellite twitched as the wave of debris struck. Holes gaped in the solar panels and hull.

The IR view flashed and sparkled, as metallic shards shorted out circuitry. Then the whole room flashed crimson-the catastrophic discharge inside the masersat of stored energy meant to be pumped out through the masers.

When tearing eyes could again focus, no satellites were on-screen.Kyle steadied himself against a wall. His heart pounded. The only change to the situational map was two dots removed. No alarms meant no retaliatory strikes. ”The bad news is, we've confirmed the masersats have the capacity to act independently.”

”The good news is, we can still, at least sometimes, out-think them.”

Eighty-seven days later, a barrage of reprogrammed ballistic missiles, launched in a synchronized attack from safely submerged American boomers, overwhelmed the eleven Krulchukor satellites thought most