April

by Mackey Chandler

  "What can we do then?" April wondered.

  "Kill them," Happy supplied from the back.

  * * *

  "You're right. We should have struck them days ago," The Secretary of Defense admitted to the President. Go ahead. Nuke 'em." He offered with a wave of his hand. "I had no idea they could hurt us this badly. I would have sworn they couldn't really hurt us at all. You can have my resignation," he offered. "No need for a fancy document. I'll write it by hand right now," he pulled an old fashioned paper pad closer to him and took out a pen.

  "No. It has gone way past regrets and resignations," Hadley explained, motioning the guards to move in on the Secretary. When the guards took the man out they almost had to carry him. They had a hand on each side under his arms and he was slumped, broken. Head hanging forward. He didn't object or look back and the guards seemed almost embarrassed. The new head of Space Command would not be led away by guards. He had been back in Cheyenne Mountain, when the Happy Lewis and Home Boy broke the mountain into gravel.

  * * *

  The two missiles climbed away from North Dakota, to the east, ahead of Home as they passed over the North American Continent. "Do you have a projection where they are targeted?" Ajay asked Heather, watching the replay of the launch which had been automatically sensed by thermal signature and caught on video. She leaned forward and inquired of Allen seated at the console. The newest of several new militia members from Dave's shop, working with radar and other detection systems and manning their Singh projector defenses.

  "Yes, us," Allen informed them tersely. "They will overtake us before we do another full orbit. It will catch us out over the Pacific. Unless they have some special kind of warhead, which doesn't produce much of a EMP, I'd say they are in danger of sacrificing quite a bit of the electronic infrastructure, of the Hawaiian Islands. Of course if they hit us over Europe or Asia, they'd have a whole new war on their hands. And after what we have done to them, they aren't equipped to handle a war with Liechtenstein, much less China. He thought of something else and punched some keys on the computer. "Neither of our ships will come close enough to engage them either. The Earthies timed it all out carefully."

  "Well, we made a mistake ignoring the missiles. I didn't think they'd use nukes on us. Tell the ships to start taking out all their strategic missile fields now, as a priority. The horse is out of the barn though with these two. Do you think we'll be able to stop them?"

  "I'm sure we'll hit them. The question is how far out? The Happy Lewis took out a radar sat, which was a similarly difficult target and it took her a couple thousand shots at an average range of a bit over six hundred kilometers. However what worries me, is a lot of nuclear munitions are fail fused, to detonate if they are damaged."

  "Oh, if the shot passes right through the plutonium kernel, or the implosive charges it will keep it from working. A hit elsewhere on the warhead will probably be sensed and cause it to detonate. The theory of failure fuzing being it might as well go off early and perhaps cause some damage, rather than try to get closer once we've demonstrated the ability to hit it."

  "Is there anything else we can do before they come around and catch up with us?

  "No." Heather replied. "I wish I'd asked if it would be safe to slow our spin down for a few days. It would put less stress on the station, if we do take some damage. But we don't have time to do it now, anymore than we could duck. Most everybody has their suits on or handy. I don't have any, but if you have lead underwear it's time to put it on," she joked.

  Jon appeared on a small inset frame on the screen they were all watching. "Heather did one of our ships hit San Diego, last pass or two?" he asked, all concerned.

  "Yeah the Home Boy was coming back to stand down for a day, but with the missile launch, they delayed returning until we intercept them and it's safe to come in. So last pass they took out all kinds of naval facilities in San Diego, as a target of opportunity."

  "Well I think you better look at a North American news feed." Jon said, waiting.

  Heather called up Disney News on another display, since they were based in California. The scene was a mobile cam shot. The scroll at the bottom of the screen said San Diego / Imperial Beach and - LIVE - in the upper corner. They were in the middle of a street and there was a funny wall behind the newscaster. It didn't make any sense, until she realized the street continued off into the distance starting from the top of the funny little wall. Something had sheared the earth across the street and dropped one side almost a half meter.

  There was all sorts of trash and debris scattered on the sidewalks, even some spilled further out into the street. Then she realized all the sparkly stuff was broken glass. There were some poles for traffic lights and utilities and a couple advertising signs at the intersection in the background and they were all leaning over at about the same angle, maybe ten degrees to the right. A few cars were stopped in the distance sitting crooked in the street and there were people standing around outside them, with the car doors hanging open.

  "- no warning at all from seismic scientists, despite recent successes in their forecasts." the newsperson was saying. The whole scene jerked again suddenly and the young man with the microphone sprawled, throwing his hands up awkwardly to catch himself. He didn't fall with the grace of an athlete. He was saying something, but the roar of the earthquake drown it out. The camera carrier was obviously more athletic and went down with much more control than the newsie. There was a hash of interference lines laced in the feed, but it was still viewable. The poles in the background whipped back and forth. Down the street, material could be seen falling off the building fronts. Already, there were a couple of plumes of smoke rising into the clear sky. The pavement was so close, it was obvious the camera person was shooting lying down. The newsie had a trash barrel roll up against him, trailing papers and sandwich boxes, but he got up on his hands and knees, starting to get up. Just then a really violent jerk rolled him over, the opposite direction to his first fall, barrel following. It was strong enough to slide the camera handler across the dry pavement. Behind the rolling newsie, the wall of dirt subsided abruptly, below the pavement closer to the camera, adding a lower note to the roar. Now the near street was higher and the street beyond the line had fallen away, with a haze of dust rising to obscure the scene. The newsie was a real trooper. He still had his microphone clamped in one hand when the feed was lost and they went back to the studio. EARTHQUAKE IN SAN DIEGO, said the scrolling headline behind the studio news desk.

  Nam-Kah had come in, just in time to see the newsman roll away with the big shock. "I'm afraid we may be responsible for that." She admitted. "It seems as unlikely it's a coincidence, same as the lunar quake."

  "Whatever you do," Jon told them, "don't let them fire on Los Angeles, unless they absolutely need to in self defense."

  "Are they as prone to quakes?" Heather asked.

  "If anything even more so," he assured her. "If it did this to San Diego, hitting LA may bust off Baja and the lower coast and send it all sliding into the Pacific." It was only a slight exaggeration.

  Another one of Dave's men was speaking with Allen on his screen and the two of them were not looking happy at all. Allen turned his seat around and spoke up to address them all. "I've been having one of our men scan all the North American news channels to see what the coverage was like of our strikes. Interested?

  "Let's hear it Allen. What do they say?" Jon asked.

  Looking down at a print out he made on a clip board, he started going down it with his index finger. "There was a story about nobody being able to contact their family at work, at Cheyenne Mountain on the local news. The story never repeated and the reporter has not been on the air since. Now the regular news program is announcing there is a lock down at the facility, due to the embargo of Mitsubishi 3 and nobody will be permitted off base until the emergency is over."

  "The local stations anywhere around the missile fields we have destroyed, are just off the air and all the roads around them
are sealed off with troops, anywhere from twenty to fifty miles away."

  "The station we just watched in San Diego, had a short news piece asking why the carrier group due in to dock soon, was turned back out to sea, when there are no hostilities reported anywhere in the Pacific. The news anchor who reported the story worked a couple more shows and then was reported to be gone temporarily due to a sudden illness." "The station at Kansas City where we smeared Boeing, just suddenly had an entire new news room staff appear today. I could go on but I think you get the picture," he said grimly.

  "They're crazy," Heather insisted. "There's no way they can just stonewall and pretend there's not a war going on. We've hit way too much to cover up."

  "Apparently they don't think so. We haven't cut the power grid, or taken the local broadcast off the air in big cities. People cut off in rural areas don't know why their satellite TV or net access doesn't work, unless they have a shortwave radio and listen to a foreign station. How many people do that anymore? People in the cities hear what they are allowed to hear and don't know anything is wrong unless they are real close to a military base. Even then, we aren't using a weapon which blasts the base with a big fireball, visible for miles and miles. We just punch holes in the important stuff."

  "Sometimes we may start a fire. But a lot of bases are far from any big population centers and anyway, it might just look like a fire. Fires do happen regularly after all, without us. If there are planes mysteriously damaged on the ground, are people going to assume it was done from orbit? Probably not I'd guess. They could say it is sabotage."

  "If somebody with family on a carrier stops sending e-mails, how much fuss will they make? They don't want to raise a stink and then when it turns out OK they've damaged their relative's career. It probably wouldn't be the first time they've been treated strange by the service anyway. No, I can see them getting away with it for entirely too long. We may have to hit some targets picked just for public visibility," Allen concluded.

  * * *

  "We have obligation," the Prime Minister concluded. "They were fired upon from our territory, by our nominal ally, even if it was against our wishes. And they acted with considerable restraint. They actually apologized to us, for the necessity of firing in return."

  The Interior Minister spoke to them quietly. "The seismic monitors are very clear, quite intense seismic activity started abruptly, upon the destruction of the carrier and settled down gradually. The activity is very deep too, not at all superficial. The same thing was documented to happen at the Alaskan site and there is far more activity world wide than normal. It can be no coincidence. Something about their weapon stirs the very bowels of the Earth. We are very fortunate we did not suffer sudden release of the fault stresses as they did in San Diego. There are thousands of faults uncharted. Who knows where it will let loose next?"

  They all soberly considered the fact Japan sits on a long line of intense seismic and volcanic activity, from North to South - a major vulnerability with this new weapon. It could shake their nation to pieces.

  The Defense Minister hesitated. The weapon they were considering using, could as easily remove Mitsubishi 3 directly as a threat, instead of protecting them. They scared him, but he just couldn't think of any way to propose it, that had even a glimmer of morality attached to it. The only case he could make was it avoided provoking the Americans. If he destroyed a habitat named Mitsubishi, he expected their government would fall within days from the domestic outrage.

  Instead he made a short bow from his seat, which almost incorporated a western nod of acknowledgment. "I agree. I am reluctant to demonstrate our ability, but it is the only proper thing to do," he gave orders over his personal com, without delay.

  * * *

  There was a pretty good chunk of the total home militia, assembled in the makeshift command center, in the Lewis North Hub cubic. They had two big screens showing the camera view of the projector telescope and the radar off the South hub radar. Looking back along their orbital path, the mottled arc of the horizon was mostly browns to the North and some blue to the South. They were looking at Asia below, but there was too much haze and clouds to pick out a familiar shape. No point in zooming in on the optical screen, because the warheads chasing them would not be visible even at the highest magnification.

  "They should be coming over the theoretical horizon in about a minute. I'll put the clock in the corner." Allen told them. They will still be on a tangent line which cuts through the atmosphere on both sides, from a surface point somewhere in the Middle East."

  "When can you start shooting at them?" Dave asked for them all.

  "As soon as we have a radar return, we can start firing. They will be somewhere behind us over the Mediterranean and if we don't hit them they'd catch us somewhere East of Hawaii, but well before we are over the West coast of North America. The Home Boy is well ahead of us and the Happy Lewis is behind the trailing horizon, but inclined away from the missiles. We are sending these feeds to the Home Boy now and they'll change orbit to join the Lewis and share the data if we are hit."

  "What are their orders if we are destroyed?"

  "If you are gone you can't give us any orders." The feed from The Home Boy came back, with Eddie speaking to answer Jon. "If you are gone we plan to blast the snot out of every fault line on the North American Continent and in China, until they're emulsified like they went through a blender. I mean not a wall standing anywhere, if it can be done. They say the last time the New Madrid fault really let loose, the Mississippi ran backwards. It should be something to see, even from orbit. That's the price they'll pay if Home is gone." Nobody had any ready reply.

  The counter ran down to the zero point where the missiles should be at the theoretical horizon. It would be a little before they came from behind enough atmosphere to see. They all tried to picture what Eddie had described doing, would mean below. Most of them wouldn't really want a few hundred million killed to avenge them, but it was true, if they were gone they couldn't stop Eddie. Their eyes all shifted to the radar and waited. When the numbers had climbed back up to twenty seconds, the radar acquired a target and a yellow icon appeared on the radar screen, with a small bracket beside it on the screen filled with changing data. Almost immediately another icon appeared beside it, actually touching with a similar bracket. The projectors had been programmed to fire as soon as they had a radar target and the count of their cycles immediately started scrolling up in a box in a corner of the screen. The first digit a blur as it added twenty a second. They fired on the missiles for a long handful of minutes, everyone watching in grime silence and they were still far back over the western Pacific, right about where the terminator was, when both icons on the screen changed to flashing red and all the data numbers zeroed out and then disappeared. What caught their eye and swung every head around though, was the other screen's view through the telescope.

  A ragged edged black circle, surrounded by glaring white, had appeared in the upper left corner of the screen, as the photo sensor in the telescope burned out from the light input. Also leading away from the halo of glare, a distinct thin thread of light was drawn from the upper atmosphere, back down to the land below. The clouds were sparse and they could see enough shape to tell it was the southern extremity of the Japanese Islands. The terminator had gotten far enough west now, so the outline of the island was plain and the line went straight to the Southern part of Kysushu, where Japan had extensive space resources in Kagoshima.

  The glare and brilliant thread faded away, but the black blob remained now permanently on the feed. The sensor was not just temporarily overloaded, it had a patch burned off its surface by the intensity of the flare.

  "Hoy Chi Mama!" Eddie's voice rang through on the com. "What the heck nailed those suckers? We're turned with the view ports looking back at you. We were both looking down at the screens and it still left us with purple flash blobs floating in front of our eyes. We'll be OK, but what a shock. At least I don't see any ionizing radiation c
ount on our boards"

  "I don't know." Allen admitted. "I guess we're not the only ones with some secret weapons. See you when you come around. See how many of those missiles you can get before they try this again. We're still here OK," he added as Home Boy, much lower and faster, was about to go over the horizon ahead of them.

  "Home - you still there?" The Happy Lewis was coming over the opposite horizon behind them, all worried. "We saw a flash just over our horizon, that lit the whole arc of the atmosphere up bright yellow and then faded out over two or three seconds. Are you guys OK?"

  "We're OK Lewis. We appear to have received a little help."

  "We got the flash on video. Wait until you see it." There was a pause. "You mean it wasn't you guys set them off?"

  "We might be better off not saying anymore, in case someone can crack us," Jon said. "You'll understand when you see our video. Make a few more passes on their missiles and come on home. You both need a rest and I don't think anybody will be shooting at us again very quickly. Maybe it's time to let the Norté Americanos stew a little, before we do much more."

  April looked at the black circle permanently seared in the telescope sensor, until they could replace it. Japan was almost gone now, over the horizon behind them on the edge of the screen. "I know one thing," she informed all her friends. "It's a damn good thing we didn't go to war with Japan." They all looked at the blob and pictured a line from the mystery weapon ascending to vaporize Home, instead of the missiles. How many passes of Japan could their ships have made before this weapon swatted them out of the sky? Nobody disagreed with April.

  Chapter 34

  The scooters both docked late that evening and the crews took a break, but they were worried enough at having both together as a target, that two of Dave's men took the Home Boy off, to park it at a higher orbit for safety, while the Happy Lewis was home. They slipped away as soon as it was provisioned with basics and while over the Pacific, as they thought there were no NA radars active there now.