Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  The crew all looked at their displays, expecting to see a line over Gongga Shan. Ray cursed his luck. Intel had firmly assured him that they would be able to launch before the Chinese sent up another ASAT vehicle—maybe by less than an hour, but they needed that time to get into position.

  Then Ray saw it was from Jinan, farther to the north. The thin red line grew slowly, angling east and steadily climbing in a graceful curve. He heard a controller announce, “It’s faster than a T’ien Lung.”

  “A bigger gun?” wondered Ray amazedly.

  “No, that’s their manned space center,” replied Barnes. “It has to be a standard booster. But what’s on top?”

  “We can’t wait to figure that out,” Schultz said. “We’ll continue with launch preparations while Intelligence tries to sort it out.”

  It was less than five minutes later when Schultz interrupted their preparations again. With only a few minutes until ignition, Ray knew it would be important news.

  “The launch was from their Jinan space complex, and the telemetry is consistent with a Long March 2F booster. That’s the vehicle they use for manned launches, but it’s moving too fast for a manned spacecraft. We think it has a much smaller payload.”

  “Aimed at us, no doubt,” Barnes remarked. “An orbital SAM.”

  “Aimed at what they thought was us,” Schultz replied. “That fireworks display was more useful than we thought.”

  “With that much energy, they may still be able to engage us,” Ray countered.

  “And with what?” asked Barnes.

  “Probably another T’ien Lung,” guessed Ray. “But it could be modified.”

  “Nukes?” Barnes didn’t look worried, but some of the other crew did.

  “Anything’s possible.”

  Schultz asked, “Are we go or no-go? We can hold on the pad.”

  “With that thing waiting in orbit for us? No way,” Ray responded. Suddenly he remembered he was out of line. Barnes should be the one answering. He looked at the major. “I recommend we go, sir.”

  Biff nodded, then looked at the rest of the crew. All were silent, but they all nodded yes.

  “They’re still aiming at something that isn’t there. Let’s go now, before they get a chance to regroup. We’re go,” Biff answered firmly.

  Gongga Shan 0605

  General Shen had left the INN webcast on, in the hopes that some additional information might be added, but after running out of ways to repeat themselves, they’d just started speculating. While amusing, it wasn’t very useful.

  He was in an unusual, in fact unique, situation. The projectile was ready, it had been for almost ten minutes, but they were not firing. Technicians sat idle, the gun crews crouched in their launch bunkers, and they waited. Xichuan was still waiting for Defender to appear on their tracking radars, while the interceptor raced to their best guess of its future position.

  Shen found himself drawn to the INN show. Much of the material shown was coverage of the war. Most was propaganda, but the coverage was extensive. He learned a few things Beijing would certainly forbid them to discuss …

  “FLASH. This is Mark Markin, in Miramar, California.” Markin’s familiar image replaced the physics professor who had been explaining Defender’s engines.

  “We are receiving many, many reports of a spacecraft launch from inside the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.” Markin looked and acted rattled and confused.

  “Our reporters at the scene and numerous civilian sources have reported another launch just a few minutes ago. They described the noise as ‘shattering,’ much, much louder than the event earlier this morning. What?”

  Markin looked off to the side, then answered, “Good, put it up.” “Here is an image of the launch taken by a local resident who grabbed his camera when he heard the noise.” The picture showed a blue sky with an angled white pillar, almost a cone, across two-thirds of the frame. A small arrowhead sat on top of the pillar.

  Markin’s voice said, “We’re going to enhance the picture.” A box appeared around the arrowhead, and Shen watched as it expanded, then rippled, and finally sharpened. Individual pixels gave it a jagged look, but he could see swept-back wings, and make out clusters of flame at the base.

  “Get me Dong!” he shouted to the communications chief, then stared at the image on the screen. “Somebody print that out,” he ordered, as the chief handed him a headset.

  “Are you watching it, too? I don’t know what we saw earlier. This one looks real enough.”

  Defender 0605

  The experience of the launch filled Ray’s senses. Every part of him inside and out was affected by the sound, which had faded, and by the acceleration that continued seemingly forever.

  One far corner of Ray’s mind said something about “time dilation,” but the acceleration pushing him down was much more immediate. He found himself struggling to take a deep breath, although he’d been taught to take shallow breaths. The mask gave him all the oxygen he needed. There was nothing for him to do during the ascent, and he forced himself to relax, to accept the weight.

  Biff watched the crew and hated the acceleration. The physical sensation was familiar to him, but his mind was filled with the responsibility he held. Mission commander. He tried to take comfort in his training as a combat pilot, but the rules were different. All the rules. Not just movement, but sensors, and weapons as well. He’d drilled himself mercilessly in the simulators, never sure if it was enough. Now he’d find out. At least he didn’t have to pull lead.

  Ray focused on the board, letting his body do unconsciously what he couldn’t tell it to. All the systems were working well, although they’d have to deploy the sensors to really check them out. They’d traded payload for time and overengineered the shock mountings. He had a feeling that would pay off.

  Risking a small movement, he touched a switch on his jury-rigged hand controller and checked the tactical display. Two screens simultaneously displayed a side and overhead view of the situation. The Chinese intercept vehicle, marked TL1 on the display, was above them, but eastbound. They had launched to the north, into a polar orbit. Its high velocity would make it difficult, no, almost impossible, to attack Defender.

  Gongga Shan 0610

  General Shen knew that as well. And there were other problems. He pressed his point over the link to Xichuan. “If we try to intercept Defender on the next orbit, the T’ien Lung will be out of our view for over an hour. We can’t tell what the Americans will do to it during that time.

  “Instead, we should use it to kill another GPS satellite. Their orbits are fixed, and it’s got plenty of energy for the intercept. I’ll attack Defender with my weapon instead.”

  “It’s our last shot,” Dong countered. “Shouldn’t we use it to kill a GPS satellite? Two kills in one day, both while Defender is supposed to be protecting them, will be even a bigger embarrassment.”

  Shen disagreed. “Better to destroy Defender. We may have missed with the Long March, but that doesn’t change the value of the target.”

  It was Shen’s decision to make, but he wanted Dong to agree. His people would now have to handle the two vehicles, although only for a short time. Although he knew they could, the general asked, “Can you do it?”

  “Yes,” Dong admitted.

  “Then tell them to prepare. We’ll be firing in less than five minutes.” He raised his voice for the last sentence, and the staff in the center hurried to obey.

  “One more thing,” General Shen added. “Tell Beijing we need to initiate the special attack.” Shen lowered his voice without trying to sound conspiratorial. Security was so tight even his launch staff didn’t know about it.

  “Good,” Dong answered, sounding relieved. “Liang has been after me to use it since the first launch this morning.”

  Battle Center 0615

  Jenny noticed it first. She ran the whole Center, but without communications, there was no Center. Consequently, she dedicated one of her displays to continuously monit
oring the data links from dozens of other sites. These included command centers like NORAD and the NMCC, radar-tracking stations, and intelligence aircraft orbiting off the China coast. The Battle Center had no sensors of its own, but took the data from all these sources and created the global situation display.

  The audio beep and the flashing red icon had her immediate attention. She called one of the controllers on her headset. “Carol, check on the link to Kwajalein. We’ve lost the signal.”

  No sooner had the controller acknowledged her order than another link went red, this time the one to Pearl Harbor. Used to looking for patterns, she instantly compared the two, but could see no similarity. Pearl was a command site.

  She started to detail another of her small staff to check out the link to Hawaii when a third one went red, this time in Ascension, and then others, coming so rapidly it was hard to count.

  “Admiral, we’re losing all our sensors!” Jenny tried to control the panic in her voice. She started to listen to Schultz’s reply when Carol cut in with a report on the Kwajalein tracking station.

  “I’m in voice comms, Jenny. They say the gear’s fine, but they’re under electronic attack. Someone’s hacking their controller.”

  “That’s impossible,” Jenny exclaimed before realizing how silly that sounded. She paused, examining the situation, then suggested, “Their filters must be down. They’re supposed to reject anything that’s not encrypted.”

  “They say this stuff is encrypted,” Carol explained, “at least well enough to get through the filters.”

  “We’ve got another launch,” a different controller reported. “This time from Gongga Shan.”

  Jenny saw the track appear on the globe and checked the sensor log. The detection had been made by an Air Force surveillance aircraft, one of several off the coast. So far they hadn’t been …

  The globe, smoothly rotating in the center of the room, suddenly stopped, then moved jerkily before freezing again. What now?

  Even as she switched her headset to the computer staff’s channel, Chris Brown, the head of the computer section, reported. “We’re being flooded. Someone’s sending bogus tracking data over the links.”

  “The filter’s aren’t stopping it?” Jenny asked.

  “Not all of it.”

  Jenny walked over to Brown’s console and watched him analyze the false information being sent from supposedly secure sites. “Here’s the header data on one that got through. It’s good.”

  “They’re not all getting through the filters?”

  “No, about one in ten makes it.” He tapped his console, bringing up another stream of data. “This one has a similar header, but the encryption isn’t quite right, and it was rejected.”

  “But the ones that do get through are enough,” he continued. “They force our system to chew on each for a while before rejecting it, and for every real packet, we’re getting dozens of these fakes.”

  “Jenny, I need to know what’s happening.” Admiral Schultz’s voice in her headset was soft, but insistent. She looked across the open space at the admiral, who met her gaze expectantly.

  “We’re under electronic attack, sir, through our tracking stations. It’s sophisticated. They not only deny us sensor information, but they’re piggybacking bad data on the links to bog us down.”

  “How do we block it?”

  She sighed. “I’ll have to get back to you, sir.”

  Chris Brown had been listening to her conversation with the admiral, and spoke as soon as she signed off. “It’s completely down now. We just lost sensor processing.”

  Defender 0620

  They were still setting up when Jenny called. The pilots, Scarelli and Skeldon, had opened the bay doors, then Andre Baker, the weapons officer, extended the laser turret above the bay. While the specialists readied their gear, Ray watched power levels and the health of the data link.

  He’d noticed the problems a few minutes earlier, but had concentrated on the systems at his end. The thought of the Battle Center going down left him feeling very alone.

  Her message clarified the situation but didn’t help solve it. “Ray, we’ve lost sensors. We’re under attack down here.” Her words chilled him, but he forced himself to be silent, to listen. She explained the problem, but its effects were obvious. They were on their own. She could not say when they’d be back on-line.

  Suddenly Ray felt vulnerable. Somewhere below, another T’ien Lung was climbing toward them.

  Biff Barnes looked at the display screens. They were flat and two-dimensional, nothing like the Battle Center’s fancy displays. He selected different modes, looking at projected paths and engagement envelopes.

  He ignored the new threat, somewhere below them. They could do nothing about it, so he’d decided to work on the one target they did have.

  Ray looked over at Barnes studying the display. “They’ve missed their chance at us. They’ll have to go for a satellite.”

  “I agree,” Biff responded. “Look at this.” He sent the plot to Ray’s console. It showed the remaining GPS satellite tracks and the area covered by the Chinese tracking radars.

  “The easiest one to reach is number eighteen, here.” He highlighted one of the satellites. “If they make a course change anytime in the next half hour, they can nail it. They’ll be able to watch the intercept, as well.”

  Barnes waited half a moment while McConnell studied the screen. Ray nodded slowly. “All right,” the engineer replied. It was almost a question.

  “We’re taking it out,” Biff stated. “Right now. Before it gets any farther away. Before TL2 shows up to ruin our morning. Pilot, align us on TL1. Crew, engage TL1.”

  Ray watched the stars and the earth spin slowly as Scarelli oriented the open bay so it faced toward the Chinese spacecraft. The distance was a problem, but at least they didn’t have to maneuver to keep the target in Defender’s limited sensor arc.

  Sue Tillman, the sensor officer, went from busy to extremely busy. She fiddled with the radar settings, then chose one of a number of search patterns for the radar to follow. Everything had to be done manually, and that took time.

  The lieutenant finally reported, “I’ve got a hit with the radar, 151 miles, 330 relative, 80 degrees elevation. Changing to track mode.” A few moments later, she said, “Track established.”

  Checking another display, she reported, “IR confirms.”

  Ray suppressed the urge to comment on the gear actually working.

  By rights, the detection should have been automatically tracked and evaluated. But systems integration takes valuable design time. Instead, it was all done manually, and with each second the target moved farther away.

  Captain Baker, the weapons officer, didn’t miss a beat. He’d slaved the laser to the data sent by the Tillman’s radar. “Ready,” he reported, as calmly as if he reporting the weather.

  Ray had seen the seven-ton laser turret tested on the ground. The motors made an unholy whine. Now, there was no sound, just a slight vibration felt through the ship’s structure, as it tracked the target.

  “It’s at the edge of our envelope,” Ray reminded the major.

  “And I figured out what that envelope was. Shoot six shots.”

  Ray felt more thuds and vibrations as pumps pushed chemicals into a combustion chamber. The intense flash of their ignition “pumped” the chemical laser and a two-megawatt beam angled out and away.

  Inside Defender, Ray watched five seconds come and go. Sue Tillman, looking disappointed, turned to look over Captain Baker.

  The weapons officer watched a spectrograph slaved to the laser mirror.

  “Nothing,” he reported.

  Set for five shots, the laser automatically fired again. McConnell watched a TV camera set to cover the bay. Puffs of vapor left the combustion chamber, and he could see the turret slowly moving, but it was a silent combat.

  Both Baker and Tillman spoke this time. The army officer announced triumphantly, “I’ve got an aluminum l
ine.” The laser had caused part of the target to glow. Baker’s spectrograph had seen that light, and told him what that part was made of.

  Tillman confirmed, “IR’s up now. It’s a lot hotter than before.”

  “But it’s still there on radar?” Barnes asked.

  She nodded. “Trajectory’s unchanged.”

  “Continue firing.”

  The third shot, five seconds of intense energy, also struck the Chinese vehicle, but with no better result than before. Ray fought the urge to fiddle with the systems display, or remind Barnes that the target was growing more distant with every shot.

  They’d spent a lot of time trying to decide how they would know when they’d actually “killed” a target. You couldn’t shoot down something in space, and at these distances they couldn’t see the effects of their attacks.

  During the fourth shot, Biff asked, “Sue, can you measure the temperature rise?”

  “No, sir. The equipment’s resolution isn’t that fine. Physics says it can’t radiate heat away as fast as we’re adding it, but we’re also adding less heat with each shot, because of the increasing distance.”

  By the time she answered Barnes’s question, the fifth shot of the salvo had been fired as well. They’d used up almost half the magazine, but the mission commander didn’t wait a moment. “Keep firing. Another five.”

  Well, we’re here to shoot down satellites, Ray thought. He tried to stay focused on his monitors, watching for signs of trouble. It would be hell if a mechanical failure interfered at this point.

  Tillman saw it first, on the second shot of the new salvo. “IR’s showing a big heat increase!”

  “Spectrograph’s full of lines!” Baker reported triumphantly. “I’ve got silicon, nitrogen … .”

  “Kill the laser!” Biff ordered. “Silicon means the electronics, and nitrogen’s either solid propellant or the explosive warhead.”

  “There’s also hydrogen and plutonium,” she added, her voice a little unsteady.

  Barnes nodded as if he’d expected it. “They were gunning for us.”