To Hold Up the Sky

by Cixin Liu

  Marshal Levchenko nodded. “I can believe that. They say humanity knows more about the moon than the bottom of Earth’s oceans. But the deeper beauty in space and nature you talk about still can’t stop wars. No one could have understood that beauty more than Einstein, and didn’t he advise the creation of the atomic bomb?”

  “Einstein made little progress in his later research, largely because he became too involved in politics. I won’t go down the same path as him. But, Papa, when it’s necessary, I’ll do my duty too.”

  Misha observed the exercise for five days. The marshal didn’t know when his son first met Kalina; the first time he saw them together, they were already conversing on familiar terms. They were talking about stars, about which Kalina knew a considerable amount. Seeing an untried youngster like Kalina already wearing a major’s star for her Ph.D. left the marshal feeling a little offended, but other than that, she’d made a fine first impression.

  The second time Marshal Levchenko saw Misha and Kalina together, he discovered there was already a deep sense of closeness between them. Their topic of conversation surprised him: electronic warfare. They were standing by a tank parked not far from the marshal’s jeep. Due to their topic of conversation, they didn’t seem concerned with privacy.

  The marshal heard Misha say: “Right now, your department has been focusing on only high-level pure software like the C3I, virus programs, the digital battlefield, and so on. But have you considered that this might leave you holding a wooden sword?” Seeing Kalina’s surprise, Misha continued, “Have you put thought into the foundation they’re built upon? The physical layer at the bottom of the seven layers of protocol defined by the Open Systems Interconnection model? Civilian networks can use fiber optics, fixed lasers, and the like for media and communication. But the terminals in a military-use C3I network are fast-moving and unpredictably located, so only EM waves can keep them in communication. And you know how EM waves are as fragile as thin ice under jamming.…”

  The marshal was quite shocked. He’d never talked about these things with Misha, and his son would never have snuck a look at his classified documents, but here Misha had neatly and clearly laid out the same considerations that he’d come up with over the years!

  Misha’s words had an even greater impact on Kalina. She even shifted the direction of her own research to create an electromagnetic jamming unit code-named “Flood.” It fit into an armored vehicle, and could simultaneously emit strong EM jamming waves ranging from three kilohertz to thirty gigahertz, drowning out all EM communication signals outside the millimeter radio range.

  The first weapons test at one of the Siberian bases had sent a whole swarm of officials running over to protest. Flood had cut off all EM wave-based communication in the nearby city: cell phones found no reception, pagers fell silent, televisions and radios lost all signal. The impact on finance and stocks was disastrous; the local officials claimed astronomical losses.

  Flood was inspired by a type of EMP bomb that utilized high explosives to create a powerful electromagnetic pulse within a one-use wire coil. As a result, Flood created shock waves like a rocket engine, shattering nearby windows in its trial. This meant that it could only be remotely operated, and its crew had to wear anti-microwave-radiation protective gear even though they were two or three kilometers away.

  Flood had raised fierce debate in the armaments department and the electronic-warfare command. Many thought that it had no practical value; using it in a limited-scope battlefield would be like using a nuclear bomb in a street-to-street battle, devastating friend and foe alike. But under the marshal’s insistence, two hundred Flood units had been mass-produced. Now, in the central command’s new electronic-warfare strategy, it would take center stage.

  That his son had fallen for a woman in the army had deeply surprised Marshal Levchenko. He assumed at the time that Misha’s feelings for Kalina overlooked her occupation. But Misha later brought Kalina home on a few occasions. The first time, Kalina wore a pretty dress; when Marshal Levchenko walked close, he overheard Misha tell her, “You don’t have to dress up for us. Wear your uniform next time, I know you feel more comfortable in it.” That disproved the marshal’s original theory. Now he understood that Misha fell for Kalina to some extent because she was a major in the army. He felt again what he felt that first morning of war training. The major’s star on Kalina’s shoulder now seemed incomparably beautiful.

  JANUARY 6TH, MOSCOW THEATER OF OPERATIONS

  Powerful electromagnetic waves gathered rapidly above the battlefield, at last becoming a mighty typhoon. After the war, people would reminisce: In the mountain villages far from the front line, they saw the animals fidget and stir, agitated; in the city with its enforced blackout, they saw induction trigger tiny sparks along the telephone wires.

  * * *

  As part of the Twelfth Army transferring from the eastern front to the west, the armored-car corps was advancing urgently. Their lieutenant general stood by his jeep parked at the roadside, watching his troops hasten through the snow and dust with satisfaction. The enemy’s air raids had been far less intense than predicted, allowing his forces to travel by day.

  Three Tomahawk missiles tore overhead, the low buzz of their jet engines crisp in the air. A moment later, three explosions sounded in the distance. The correspondent by the lieutenant general’s side, his static-filled earpiece useless, turned to look in the direction of the explosion. He cried out in surprise. The general told him not to make a big deal out of nothing, but then a battalion commander beside him urged him to look, too. So he looked, and shook his head in confusion. Tomahawks weren’t 100 percent accurate, but for three to land in an empty field, more than a kilometer from each other, really was a rare sight.

  * * *

  Two Su-27s flew five kilometers above the battlefield in an empty sky. They had belonged to a larger fighter squadron, but it had run into a skirmish with a NATO F-22 squadron above the sea, and the planes lost contact with the others in the turmoil of battle. Normally, regrouping would have been easy, but now the radio was down. The airspace that had seemed so small as to be cramped to a high-speed fighter plane now seemed as vast as outer space. Regrouping would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The lead pilot and his wingman were forced to fly wingtip-to-wingtip like stunt fliers to hear each other’s wireless messages.

  “Suspicious object to the upper left, azimuth 220, altitude 30!” the wingman reported. The lead pilot looked in that direction. The earlier snow had washed the winter sky clean and blue, and the visibility was excellent. The two planes ascended toward the target to investigate. It was flying in the same direction as them, but much slower, and it didn’t take long to catch up.

  Their first good look at the target was a bolt out of the blue.

  That was a NATO E-4A early-warning aircraft. For a fighter-plane pilot to encounter one was like seeing the back of their own head. An E-4A could monitor up to one million square kilometers, completing a full sweep in just five seconds. It could locate targets two thousand kilometers from the defensive area, providing more than forty minutes of advance notice. It could separate out up to a thousand EM signals within one thousand to two thousand kilometers, and each scan could query and identify two thousand targets of any kind, land, sky, or sea. An early-warning aircraft didn’t need the protection of escorts when its all-seeing eyes allowed it to easily avoid any threats.

  That was why the lead pilot naturally assumed it was a trap. He and the wingman searched the surrounding sky carefully, but there was nothing in the cold, clear sky. The lead pilot decided to take a risk.

  “Ball lightning, ball lightning, I’m going to attack. Guard azimuth 317, but be careful not to leave range of sight!”

  Once his wingman flew in the direction he thought most likely for an ambush, he activated the afterburner and yanked at the controllers. Trailing black exhaust, the Su-27 lunged toward the early-warning aircraft above like a striking cobra. Now the E-4A discovered the approach
ing threat and turned to rush southeast in an escape maneuver. Magnesium heat pellets popped from its tail one after another to disrupt heat-seeking missiles, the trail of little fireballs looking like bits of its soul startled out of its mortal shell. An early-warning aircraft before a fighter plane was as helpless as a bicycle trying to outrun a motorbike. In that moment, the lead pilot decided that the order he’d given the wingman had turned out to be terribly selfish.

  He followed the E-4A from above at a distance, admiring the prey he’d caught. The pale blue radar dome atop the E-4A was lovely in its curves, charming as a Christmas ornament; its broad white chassis was like a fat roast duck on its platter: so tempting, yet too lovely to violate with knife and fork. But instinct warned him not to drag this on any longer. He first fired a burst with the 20 mm cannon, shattering the radome, and watched scraps of the Westinghouse-made AN/ZPY-3 radar antenna scatter across the sky like silver Christmas confetti. He next severed a wing with the cannon, then at last lashed down the fatal blow with the 6,000 rpm double-barreled cannon, cutting the already tumbling and falling E-4A in two.

  The Su-27 wheeled downward to follow the halves in their plunging descent. The pilot watched crew and equipment fall from the hold like chocolates from a box, a few parachutes blooming against the sky. He remembered the battle earlier, the sight of his comrade escaping from his hit plane: an F-22 had purposely flown low over the parachute, swooping past, three times, to knock it over. He’d watched as his comrade dropped like a stone, disappearing against the white backdrop of the ground.

  He forced back the impulse to do something similar. Once he regrouped with his wingman, the pair abandoned the area at top speed.

  They still suspected a trap.

  * * *

  The two weren’t the only aircraft separated from their unit. A Comanche armed attack helicopter from the US Army First Cavalry Division flew with no target in sight, but its pilot, Lieutenant Walker, felt a rush of adrenaline all the same. He’d transferred from an Apache to the Comanche recently, and had yet to adjust to this sort of attack helicopter with troop-carrying capabilities, an innovation from the end of the previous century. He was unaccustomed to the Comanche’s lack of foot pedals, and he thought the headset with its binocular helmet-mounted display wasn’t as comfortable to use as the Apache’s single sight. But most of all, he wasn’t used to Captain Haney, the forward director sitting in front of him.

  “You need to know your place, Lieutenant,” Haney had told him the first time they met. “I’m the brain controlling this helicopter. You’re a cogwheel in its machinery, and you’re going to act like one!” And Walker hated nothing more than that.

  He remembered the retired navy pilot who’d toured their base, a WWII vet pushing a hundred years old. He had shaken his head when he saw the Comanche’s cockpit. “Oh, you kids. My P-51 Mustang back in the day had a simpler control panel than a microwave today, and that was the finest control panel I ever used!” He patted Walker’s ass. “The difference between our generations of pilots is the difference between knights of the sky and computer operators.”

  Walker had wanted to be a knight of the sky. Here was his opportunity. Under the Russians’ berserk jamming, the helicopter’s combat mission integration system, the target analysis system, the auxiliary target examination and classification system, the RealSight situation imager, the resource burst system, whatever, they were all fucking fried! All that was left was the two 1,000-horsepower T800 engines, still loyally churning away. Haney normally earned his spot with his electronic gewgaws, but now his incessant orders had gone silent with them.

  Haney’s voice came through the internal mic system. “Attention, I’ve found a target. It seems to be to the left and front, maybe by that little hill. There’s an armored-car unit that seems to be the enemy’s. You … do what you can.”

  Walker nearly laughed aloud. Ha, that bastard. What he would have said in the past was, “I’ve found a target at azimuth 133. Seventeen 90-series tanks, twenty-one 89-series soldier convoys, moving toward azimuth 391 at an average speed of 43.5 klicks per hour and an average separation of 31.4 meters. Execute the AJ041 optimized attack plan and approach from azimuth 179 at a vertical angle of 37 degrees.” And now? “It ‘seems’ to be an armored-car unit, ‘maybe by’ that little hill.” Who the hell needed you to say that? I saw it ages ago! Leave it to me, because you’re useless now, Haney. This is my battle, and I’m going to use my ass for an accelerometer and be a knight! This Comanche’s gonna fight like its namesake in my hands.

  The Comanche charged toward its open target and launched all sixty-two 27.5-inch Hornet missiles. Walker watched rapt as his swarm of fire-stingered little bees buzzed happily toward their target, swamping the enemy in a sea of fire. But when he turned to fly over the results of the encounter, he realized that something was wrong. The soldiers on the ground hadn’t tried to conceal themselves. Instead, they stood in the snow, pointing at him. They seemed to be cussing him out.

  Walker flew closer and clearly saw the destroyed armored car’s insignia for himself: three concentric circles, blue at the center, white in the middle, red on the outside. Walker felt as if he’d dropped into hell. He started cussing, too.

  “You son of a bitch, are you blind?!”

  But he still had the wisdom to fly away in case the enraged French returned fire. “You son of a bitch, you’re probably thinking of how to pin the blame on me in military court right this moment. I’m telling you here, you won’t get away with this. You were the one in charge of identifying targets, are you clear?”

  “Maybe … maybe we’ll still have the chance to make up for our mistake,” Haney said timidly. “I found another unit, right across—”

  “Fuck you!” Walker said.

  “They’re definitely the enemy’s this time! They’re exchanging fire with the French!”

  Walker perked up at that. He steered toward the new target and saw that the enemy force was primarily infantry without much armored-vehicle strength. This did support Haney’s assessment. Walker launched his last four Hellfire missiles, then set his double-barreled Gatling gun to 1,500 rpm and started shooting. He felt the comfortable vibration of the machine gun through the chassis, watching as it scattered snow and powder like ground white pepper over the enemy skirmish line on the ground. But the intuition of a veteran armed helicopter pilot warned him of danger. He turned, only to see a soldier standing on a jeep fire a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to his left. Walker frantically shot off magnesium heat pellets as lures and swung backward for evasive maneuvers, but too late. The missile, trailing cobwebs of white smoke, had punched into the Comanche right under the nose.

  When Walker woke from his brief explosion-induced concussion, he found that the helicopter had crashed in the snow. Walker scrambled desperately from the smoke-filled interior, bracing himself against a tree that had been severed neatly at waist height by the propeller. When he looked back, he could see the remains of Captain Haney in the front seat, blasted into a pulp by the explosion. When he looked forward, he saw a band of soldiers running toward him with submachine guns raised, their Slavic features clear.

  Shaking, Walker dug out his handgun and set it on the snow in front of him. He dug out his Russian phrase book and began to clumsily read out his surrender.

  “Y-ya postavil svoye oruzhiye. Ya voyennoplennym. V Zhenevskoy konventsii—”

  Walker took a gun butt to the back of his head, then a boot to his belly. But as he collapsed into the snow, he was laughing. They might beat him half to death, but only half. He’d seen the eagle insignia of the Polish army on the soldiers’ collars.

  JANUARY 7TH, MINSK, NATO COMBAT OPERATIONS CENTER

  “Get that goddamn doctor over here!” General Tony Baker roared.

  The gangly military doctor ran over.

  “What the hell went wrong?” Baker demanded. “You’ve messed with my dentures twice and they’re still buzzing!”

  “I’ve never seen anything like
it, General. Maybe it’s your nervous system. How about I give you a shot of local anesthetic?”

  “Give me the dentures, sir,” said a major on the staff, walking over. “I know how to fix them.” Baker took out his dentures and set them on the major’s proffered paper towel.

  According to the media, the general lost his two front teeth when his tank was hit during the Gulf War. Only Baker himself knew that this wasn’t true. That time he’d broken his lower jaw; he’d lost the teeth earlier.

  It had been at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, during the Mount Pinatubo eruption, when the world around seemed to be volcanic ash and nothing else. The sky was ash, the ground was ash, the air was ash, too. Even the C-130 Hercules that he and the last of the base personnel were about to board was coated with a thick layer of white. The dim red of magma glimmered intermittently in the gray distance.

  Elena, the Filipina office worker he had been sleeping with, tracked him down after all this. The base was gone, she said, and she’d lost her job. Her house was buried under ash. How were she and the child in her belly supposed to live? She pulled at his hand and begged him to take her to America. He told her it was impossible. So she took off a high-heeled shoe and whacked him in the face, knocking out two of his teeth.

  Where are you now, my child? Baker wondered, gazing at the gray ocean. Are you living out your days with your mother in the slums of Manila? In a way, your father is fighting for your sake. Once the democratic government takes over in Russia after the war, NATO’s vanguard will be at China’s borders, and Subic Bay and Clark will once again become America’s Pacific naval and air bases, even more prosperous than they were last century. You’ll find work there! But most importantly, under NATO’s pressure, those Chinese just might give you folks what you’ve wanted for so long: those beautiful islands in the South China Sea. I’ve seen them from the air: snow-white coral surrounding the brown sand, like eyes in the blue sea. Child, those are your father’s eyes.…