A Vial Upon the Sun

by James Codlin

  The professor looked down at himself in abject horror. “For the love of all that is holy, I need a new suit!”

  *

  Carolina stood outside the Kourou space center and marveled at her accomplishment. Looking at the teeming gantry, her heart pounded. Never before, and certainly never again, would she have this amount of power at her disposal. She inhaled deeply and basked in the moment. The men who had financed this operation were likely sitting in San Juan Diego and drinking champagne, congratulating themselves on what a fine job they had done. Perhaps they were even discussing the next phase of their plan, where the bastard king would air his broadcast and “convince” the rebels to relinquish the nuclear weapon to his control, making him a hero to the people of Spain and the Latino Union.

  Further strengthened by the partnership that the king had formed—an unholy alliance with the head of the godforsaken Catholic Church and the ill-gotten capitalistic might of Waro Moto—Carlos VII would be just short of a god.

  She could never let that happen.

  With one act, Carolina could destroy the tyranny of the Latino Union, cripple the Catholic Church, and behead one of the largest corporations in the world. The people of South America would be freed, and the resulting chaos would allow true revolution to take hold and spread among the poor and the oppressed. As the catalyst of the revolution, she would lead the people as they united and went forth to cleanse the continent of the power structures that had kept them down for so long.

  She breathed in deeply again and smiled.

  It was time to make history.

  *

  Carolina burst into the space center’s control room, followed by twenty revolutionary soldiers who fanned out around the space. The foreign scientists and engineers working at their consoles looked up, startled.

  “Get the rocket ready for immediate launch,” Carolina ordered the chief engineer.

  “What?” the Russian demanded, yanking off his reading glasses.

  “We’re launching it.”

  “It is meant to be a credible threat, not an actual launch. I have to consult with—”

  “Launch the fucking rocket!” she shrieked. The ring of soldiers around the walls of the room clicked off the safeties on their weapons and glared at the engineers.

  The chief engineer slowly stood, trembling. “All right, people,” he said, voice shaking. “Let’s get it done. Checklist for a hot start and quick launch. Clear the gantry.”

  A Klaxon began to bleat. The engineers scrambled to their designated consoles, throwing open manuals, consulting tablets of handwritten notes, and punching lighted buttons. Through the large windows facing Launch Pad Three, they could see warning lights flashing and vehicles racing out to the missile. The gantry tower suddenly looked like an overturned anthill, seething with frenetic movement.

  A door into the control room flew open. Carolina turned to face Guillerme Portier, the president pro temp of Free Guiana.

  “Commander, is this some kind of drill?” Portier demanded. “My people are still on that gantry!”

  “No, this is a launch,” she replied, turning back to the engineer.

  Portier grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around. “That was to be our shield of protection against reactionary forces.”

  “Yeah, well, things have changed,” she said, flicking her eyes down to his hand on her shoulder. “Now get out of my way and do not ever touch me again.”

  “There are thousands of people on that tower!” Portier cried. “I need time to get them off.”

  Carolina glanced at her watch. “Fifteen minutes tops,” she said.

  Panic flooded the man’s eyes, and he raced out the door.

  “How long?” Carolina demanded.

  “Thirty minutes, maybe more,” the engineer responded, throwing a stack of papers on the floor.

  “Fourteen,” she said. “Get it off in fourteen minutes.”

  The engineer stared at her.

  “Move!” she yelled in his face. Carolina turned to look out the blockhouse windows. She saw a car speeding to the base of the gantry tower. Portier got out and started climbing the steel stairs three at a time. There was a silent tableau on each level of the gantry as people gathered around Portier, listened intently to what he said, and then began streaming down the gantry stairs.

  *

  The Japanese scientific team and the Russian missile engineer toiling in the clean room at the top of the gantry froze when the alarms began blaring. They were perspiring in spite of the air conditioning pumping into the space.

  After an initial burst of puzzled and fearful chatter, their leader pulled a phone from his pocket and gestured for everyone to calm down. He dialed a number, and after a few moments his call was answered.

  After a brief introductory exchange and confirmatory passwords, the team leader held his phone up over his head, letting the alarms speak on his behalf. He brought the phone back to his ear and politely asked for his superior at Moto Electric to please confirm that what they were hearing was some sort of drill or test of the alarm system.

  He was placed on hold.

  While he waited, he smiled anxiously at his underlings, trying to project confidence. I’ve got this all under control, his beaming face conveyed while his stomach churned. His team looked up at him, their eyes never leaving his face as they awaited his report.

  After an eternity, he heard a series of clicks. A sterner voice came onto the line.

  “Hold for Waro Moto,” it said.

  The team leader straightened up, almost to attention, and his eyes widened. His team exchanged nervous glances.

  Moments later, Waro Moto’s sharp, familiar voice cut through the surrounding noise with the clarity of a dog whistle that only the team leader could hear. “From the sounds I am hearing, things have gotten out of hand in Kourou. Disable the rocket.”

  “What?” the scientist whined.

  “Disable it! Make sure it can’t launch.”

  “Launch? Is that what the alarms are about?”

  Moto’s voice boomed from the tiny speaker. “Stop talking and get that rocket disabled in the next thirty seconds!” There was a pause. “But make sure we can still repair it.”

  The scientist stood gaping at the men in white coats around him. Like a flock of startled birds simultaneously fluttering into the air, the scientists scrambled for the gantry staircase. The discarded cellular phone lay on the floor with Moto’s voice bleating, “Hello? Hello? Disable that damned rocket, do you hear me?”

  *

  Pope Pius strode rapidly up and down the aircraft’s small aisle, murmuring prayers of supplication. King Carlos watched Moto, his own anxiety mounting.

  “Are we far enough from San Juan Diego?” he asked.

  Moto looked at him with disdain. “Yes, king, your royal ass is very safe. It’s a small warhead that will only destroy the Latino Union’s federal zone and the immediate city. Nothing else.”

  “But this part wasn’t planned,” the pope whimpered.

  Moto shrugged. “In a lot of ways, this is better. The warhead’s destruction will leave a power vacuum. The Spanish king will be alive and well, and will take up the fallen reins of government. Yes. I think that works well.”

  “What about Ishikawa?” Carlos asked.

  “We need to find him and kill him,” Moto answered.

  “And what about the reaction of the rest of the world when I take over?” King Carlos demanded. “The nuclear weapon was to be my trump card.”

  Moto was lost in thought for several seconds. “While making the Latino Union a nuclear power would have been a good thing, a single warhead wasn’t going to deter the superpowers from interfering for very long. Instead we will have worldwide sympathy as your acts of kindness stabilize a third of the world and prevent it from descending into utter chaos. The Americans will only care that economic stability is reestablished so that its precious financial markets are able to regain the ground that will be lost in the initial aft
ermath of the nuclear attack. All the while, we will work to tighten your grip on the continent using the tools and infrastructure that are already in place, as well as the vast fortune you have at your disposal.”

  He looked up at the fearful pope.

  “Your Holiness, you will have a terrified populace looking to you for spiritual guidance and leadership. I trust that this will provide a great opportunity for you to spread the influence of the Inquisition and usher in the new rule of God on earth.”

  The pontiff stared at Moto and then slowly nodded as he pondered the possibilities.

  “Yes,” Moto said confidently to his co-conspirators, “I believe that this will all work out just fine.”

  *

  Carolina turned to the Russian chief engineer. “How long?” she demanded.

  “We can’t—look, there are interface problems with the guidance computers, a warning light on the—”

  “Ten minutes,” she said. Carolina gestured nonchalantly at the soldiers surrounding them. “My friends with the rifles want it off in ten minutes.”

  The Russian ran from console to console, frantically exhorting his colleagues to keep moving.

  The steel door crashed open and Guillerme Portier sprinted back in. He reached out as if to grab Carolina’s shoulders, thought better of it, and retreated a step. “More time, Commander, please give me more time to get my people off the gantry!”

  Carolina casually looked at her watch. “Oh… yikes. Less than eight minutes. You’d better hurry.”

  “Stop the launch, for God’s sake! Just a few more minutes, that’s all we need!”

  “You have the same amount of time as the rest of us have,” she said, shrugging and turning to check the launch sequence status on the display board.

  Portier grabbed her and spun her back around to face him. “Children, old people—you put them there, you! Stop the launch—”

  Commander Delta smoothly put her pistol to the politician’s head and pulled the trigger. The blast brought an anguished, startled cry from the technicians in the command center. They stopped their work and stared at Carolina and the dead man at her feet.

  “I’ll kill every one of you!” she shrieked. “Launch it!”

  Pandemonium ensued. Men were crying as they threw switches and cut off blinking warning lights while Carolina periodically checked her watch. She glanced at a monitor and saw that the French soldiers had been freed from the base of the rocket and were helping civilians get off the gantry.

  She rolled her eyes at the absurdity of their efforts and glanced back down at her watch.

  “Five minutes!” she shouted.

  *

  “What the hell is going on?” General Mello demanded. His command post buzzed around him and he held his cellphone to his ear. First, forces loyal to President Ishikawa had gained control of an entire wing of the presidential complex, and then that disaster had been quickly followed by reports he was getting from French Guiana that the rocket in Kourou was about to be launched, with San Juan Diego as the target.

  Waro Moto’s voice dripped with calm condescension. “General, the reports you are panicking about are untrue. King Carlos and I have been in recent contact with both Commander Delta and my own people, and nothing is happening in Kourou other than the implementation of the plan as scheduled. You are reacting to wild rumors. I thought you were better than that.”

  Mello seethed. “Even so, I am going to order the LU fighters in the area to—”

  Moto’s voice rose to a shout, “General, you make damned sure those fighters don’t go anywhere near the rocket! It’s too important for the cause! One rogue act of stupidity by your men and it will all be for nothing! We’ve already had one of your idiot fighter pilots refuse to take a direct order from his president to shoot down the Iberia plane. We cannot have men taking matters into their own hands! Do not send the fighters!”

  As Mello listened to Moto rant, a wide-eyed intelligence officer handed the general a photograph. Mello processed it for a few moments, then shouted into the phone. “I just got handed confirmation, Moto! She’s going to launch, goddamn it, and I’m at ground zero!”

  “No, she’s not,” Waro retorted. “I paid for her tin pot revolution.”

  “Moto, I’m in the crosshairs and you’re somewhere safe! The fighters are going in!”

  Mello cut off the connection.

  *

  On the monitor she saw the last of the civilians and freed Foreign Legion soldiers running away from the base of the rocket.

  “Fifty seconds,” Carolina announced. Men traded shouts. One collapsed, clutching his chest, apparently suffering a heart attack.

  The chief engineer was everywhere at once, issuing orders, resetting switches on panels, and yelling at technicians.

  “Twenty seconds!” Commander Delta called. The stench of sweat and fear permeated the control room.

  “Ten seconds!” she cried. Someone ran toward the blockhouse door in a desperate attempt to flee but was casually shot by a revolutionary soldier.

  Carolina stood over the Russian chief engineer, who was slumped over his console. His right hand shook as though palsied while he punched a bank of status lights for the scores of systems activating the Ariane 6. His index finger flipped up the guard covering the toggle switch labeled FEU, the switch that would deliver the electric charge to the solid fuel motors, light the rocket engines, and send the missile into the sky on a ballistic arc, briefly into space, and then falling under power to deliver a nuclear holocaust to the people of San Juan Diego.

  “Time’s up,” Carolina said. “Fire it!”

  “I can’t—there’s an anomaly of the—”

  “Fire it!” she demanded.

  “Don’t you see, there’s—”

  Carolina put her gun against his temple. “Launch it! Launch the fucking rocket! Fire it! Fire it!”

  The engineer let out a long shriek and threw the toggle switch. Carolina looked through the window and saw smoke and flame pouring out of the nozzles of the rocket engines. She smiled.

  Through the thick blockhouse windows Carolina could hear the roar of millions of pounds of thrust. One by one the gantry arms swung aside and the giant steel clamps holding the rocket to the pad released. First slowly, then accelerating rapidly, the gleaming white spear shot upward on a plume of fire and smoke.

  The first nuclear weapon fired on a civilian populace since Fat Man was falling through the skies toward Nagasaki was on its way to its target.

  *

  The duty executive at the Moto Electric control center near Tokyo said, “Yes, Moto-san,” when the special encrypted circuit directly from Waro Moto activated.

  “Make sure nothing interferes with that rocket. It must hit its target.”

  “Yes, Moto-san.”

  The controller broke the seal on a checklist in front of him and opened it. “Satellite?” he barked into his headset microphone.

  “Primary, secondary, and backup links to all three satellites are viable,” came the crisp reply.

  “Radar?”

  “Repeaters activated, control circuits established.”

  “Radio comm?”

  “All transmitters and receivers are under our control.”

  “Weapon systems?”

  “Intercept and override circuits viable.”

  “Aircraft simulator?”

  “Manned, intercept, and override circuits viable.”

  “Checklist complete,” the executive said.

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO

  Lights on the electronic countermeasures panel of the Latino Union EC-10 airborne command post blinked crimson and alarms sounded. Hawk Leader, the pilot in command of a formation of two R-5 Relâmpago fighters, called through the radio, “North Star, we have visual of launch, visual of launch. Are we clear to strike?”

  High-pitched voices screeched back and forth from the command post aircraft to LU satellites to antenna arrays in San Juan Diego. There was a babble of demands, retorts,
arguments, and curses—and suddenly the satellite link, controlled by a bank of microprocessors manufactured by Moto Electric, disconnected. Radar screens on the EC-10 and the repeaters back at the situation room in San Juan Diego went blank, and the earphones went silent.

  The command and control element was out of the loop.

  Major Vega, Hawk Leader, had already turned toward the rising flame clearly visible below him. His air-to-air missile head-up display on the canopy showed green lines undulating back and forth, then snapping into a cross as a tone sounded through the pilot’s helmet, indicating that the missile was locked in his sights.

  “North Star, Hawk Leader, am I cleared to fire?”

  “Hawk Leader, North Star has lost radar and satellite com with the Situation Room. Stand by one.”

  Vega considered the communications procedures dictated by the positive command and control doctrine, which required him to wait for orders. On the other hand, he was also trained to think and to take initiative. “Hawk Leader is locked on. Locked on and going for the kill.”

  “Hawk Two, I’m right behind you, Hawk Leader.”

  The Relâmpago jets, with their autopilots now linked with the missile fire control system, banked steeply and nosed over, dropping straight toward the rising plume. Hawk Leader tightened his grip on the joystick, moving his thumb to the weapons launch button. The tone continued and the crossed lines remained fixed.

  “Hawk Leader has tone, firing one, firing one. Now firing two.”

  His thumb moved slightly, and the electronic signal shot from the fire control computer to the missiles mounted on rails under each wing. In a nanosecond, the computer transferred data to the guidance system, telling the air-to-air missile the relative speed and distance of the target, the wind, the air temperature and density, and the initial intercept course to the Ariane 6. During that same nanosecond, the computer microprocessor, a product of Moto Electric, queried the navigation positioning satellites overhead—three satellites that had been manufactured under the strictest Japanese industrial standards relentlessly applied to all products of Moto Electric. Those satellites were simultaneously receiving a speed-of-light radio transmission that had originated from Tokyo and now transferred a code embedded in the position data to Hawk Leader’s fire control computer. The computer flashed the positioning data through its redundant Moto Electric microprocessors that converted the binary bits to updated position information and decoded the additional data. These last few bytes overrode the program sequence that was holding the air-to-air missile firing until the latest target and launch platform position information was reconciled, jumped ahead in the sequence to the program step that directed an electrical impulse to the missile warheads, and detonated the high explosives.