Starfire

by Dale Brown

  Sergei Tarzarov picked up the telephone at the other side of Gryzlov’s office, listened, then put it back. “President Phoenix for you, sir,” he said.

  “That did not take long,” Gryzlov said. He motioned for those in the room to pick up dead extensions so they could listen in on the translation, then picked up the phone on his desk. “What is it, Mr. Phoenix?”

  “It wasn’t a directed-energy weapon, Mr. President,” Phoenix said through a translator. “It was a college engineering project, a space-based solar power plant. And that airplane wasn’t shot down by Starfire—it lost control while trying to evade an Air Force patrol helicopter after it had violated restricted airspace, several minutes after the test was terminated. I don’t know where Secretary Barbeau got her information, but she’s wrong, and you were misguided to believe it. She’s campaigning for president, and she wants headlines.”

  “Wait.” Gryzlov hit the hold button and turned to those in the room with him. “Well well,” he said, “Phoenix starts this conversation with an attempt at an explanation. This could be interesting.”

  “He could be willing to negotiate,” Tarzarov said. “Let him give something, and then you give something in return.”

  “The hell you say, Tarzarov,” Gryzlov said angrily, but with a smile on his face. “I will not give one inch to this weak-kneed excuse for a head of state.” He hit the hold button again. “Are you saying Barbeau is lying, Phoenix?” he asked, no longer using Phoenix’s title or even addressing him as “Mister”—Phoenix’s opening move was a defensive one, and Gryzlov wanted there to be no doubt about who was now in control of this situation.

  “I’m telling you the facts, Mr. President: Starfire is not a directed-energy weapon,” Phoenix said. “It is an experimental space solar-powered power plant designed by some California engineering students. The Skybolt free-electron laser was deactivated. The students’ experiment was to beam electricity from space to Earth. That’s it. The small plane crashed because its pilot was stupid, not because it was hit by the maser. The solar power plant is not a threat to anyone on the ground and will certainly not disable airplanes, elevators, trains, or anything else. You’re creating a panic over a harmless college experiment. Neither that project nor the space station is any threat to you.”

  “Phoenix, I simply do not believe you any longer,” Gryzlov said. “You can do one thing only to restore my faith in your words: detach the laser module from the space station immediately. If you do this, I will not implement the enhanced restriction of Russian airspace, and I will enter in negotiations with you to create a permanent treaty on space weapons. All I care about is offensive weapons in space that might be a threat to Russia. Perhaps I received bad information about the nature of the device, but it still does not alter the fact that you have used the Skybolt module to shoot directed energy at the surface of the Earth, and that cannot be tolerated.”

  Gryzlov noted the long silence on the other end of the line; then: “I will consult with my advisers, Mr. President,” Phoenix said finally.

  “Very well,” Gryzlov said. “You have two days, Phoenix, and then Russia will defend its airspace and low Earth orbit as we would our motherland, with every man, woman, and child, and every weapon in our arsenal, at our disposal. That I promise, Phoenix.” And with that, he threw the phone back onto its receiver.

  Sergei Tarzarov put the dead extension back on its cradle. “I think he will do as you ask and detach the laser module from the military space station,” he said. “He will certainly concede that. May I suggest—”

  “No, you may not, Tarzarov,” Gryzlov interrupted. He turned to Minister of Defense Sokolov and Chief of the General Staff Khristenko. “I will give the Americans their two days to detach that Skybolt module from the space station, and I will allow them to fly manned capsules to their space station only if they inform us of their exact flight path and destination before launch, and if they do not deviate from that flight path by as much as a degree or meter. If they do not inform us, or if they deviate from their flight path, I want the spacecraft destroyed. The spaceplanes will be engaged whenever they come within range of our weapons.”

  “What about details of their cargo or passengers, sir?” Foreign Minister Titenov asked.

  “I no longer care what they might be carrying,” Gryzlov said. “From now on I am assuming that every spacecraft launched by the Americans carries a space weapon and is a danger to Russia. The Americans and that spineless president Phoenix are liars and a danger to Russia. I will treat them like the enemies they are, I will not concede anything, and I will work from the assumption that America is just waiting for the right opportunity to strike, so we must be ready to strike first.”

  NINE

  Gun battles are caused by outlaws, and not by officers of the peace.

  —JOHN F. KENNEDY

  ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, OVER NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

  THAT SAME TIME

  President Phoenix replaced the phone on its cradle. “That went swimmingly,” he murmured wearily. He was heading north to Portland, Oregon, for his next day of campaign stops. “You guys hear all that?” he asked into his video teleconference camera. All three participants in the video teleconference—Vice President Ann Page, National Security Adviser William Glenbrook, and Secretary of Defense Frederick Hayes—responded in the affirmative. “I screwed the pooch. I should’ve called you guys up and asked your opinion before I authorized the Cal Poly students to use the nuclear generator. Thanks to Barbeau, Russia thinks I just fired a death ray. I don’t feel as if I have any choice here, guys, but to detach that Skybolt module. Thoughts?”

  “I would’ve advised going ahead with using the MHD generator test if you had asked me beforehand, Mr. President,” Ann said. “All we did was allow the Cal Poly students to demonstrate their technology—we didn’t fire a space weapon. Starfire is not a space weapon, no matter how much Barbeau and Gryzlov say it is.”

  “The question now is: Do we think Gryzlov will dare attack if we fly a spaceplane over Russia?” the president asked.

  “He’s taking steps to try to convince us that’s exactly what he’d do,” Glenbrook said. “Launching that Elektron spaceplane into an intersecting orbit with the space station? That was a deliberate action.”

  “They were miles apart,” Hayes said. “There was no danger of collision.”

  “But a miscalculation of just a few seconds and things could have been far worse,” Ann said. “Bill is right: it was a deliberate and dangerous action.”

  “You mentioned something else that happened before that flyby episode, didn’t you, Fred?” the president asked. “What was it?”

  “Before the Russian spaceplane flew past Armstrong Space Station, we observed it fly very close to a malfunctioning Russian satellite,” Hayes said. “While we watched, we noticed the satellite suddenly breaking apart.”

  “The spaceplane attacked it? With what?”

  “The preliminary data on the event was from radar images, and they did not spot any projectiles such as the Scimitar hypervelocity missiles they have used before,” Hayes said. “We’ve asked the Air Force to look back through images from the Space-Based Infrared Satellite system taken during the incident to see if they can detect a laser.”

  “A laser?” the president exclaimed. “A satellite-killing laser on a spaceplane?”

  “Very possible, sir,” Hayes said. “We’ve had plans for small satellite-killing lasers for a long time, as have the Russians—it’s possible they’ve mounted one in the cargo bay of an Elektron spaceplane.”

  “We could sure use something like that now,” Ann said.

  “We opted for the Kingfisher attack satellites, ma’am, because they could carry antisatellite, antiballistic-missile, and ground-attack weapons, whereas the laser satellites couldn’t attack targets on Earth,” Hayes said.

  “Are we in agreement that the Russians at least appear to be ready, willing, and able to attack our spacecraft?” the president asked. His
question was met with silence and a lot of somber faces. “I tend to agree, guys: Gryzlov is angry, and he’s psychotic, and with that Starfire test he’s seen his opportunity to push the issue of space weapons—and he could very easily have world opinion with him. He could attack one of our spaceplanes and argue that he was provoked into doing so.” He looked at the stunned faces on the videoconference screen. “Anyone think that Gryzlov is going to negotiate any of this?”

  “He’s already told the world what he’s going to do,” Glenbrook said. “He’s invoked the safety of his entire nation—he’s even told his citizens to take shelter when the station flies overhead! Anything less than Skybolt becoming a meteorite would not be acceptable. He’d look weak if he started negotiating.”

  “What are my military options? Fred?”

  “We haven’t exhausted all our options, Mr. President,” Secretary of Defense Hayes said resolutely. “Not by a long shot. The free-electron laser aboard Armstrong Space Station and the Kingfisher weapon garages are the best options to take out the Elektron launch sites, MiG-31D bases, and S-500S antisatellite missile launchers, sir. If we deploy the entire Kingfisher constellation, we can hold every Russian antispacecraft site and spaceport at risk twenty-four/seven. The Russians have deployed the S-500 air defense weapon at their launch sites, but they can’t touch a Thor’s Hammer precision-guided projectile coming in from space at ten thousand miles an hour—and of course Skybolt flies at the speed of light. If it gets into position and lets loose, it can’t be stopped.”

  The president thought about that for several moments—it was obvious he wasn’t comfortable with using the space-based weapons. “Other options, Fred?” he finally asked.

  “The S-500 changes the game, sir,” Hayes said. “The only other nonnuclear options are attacks by our six remaining B-2 stealth bombers, and cruise missiles launched from our few B-1 and B-52 bombers, plus ship-launched nonnuclear cruise missiles. To attack the Russian and Chinese spaceports, it means overflying Russian and Chinese territory—our nonnuclear cruise missiles have a range of only seven hundred miles, which means we could hit a few of those S-500 sites but not the spaceports. The S-500 is capable against both stealth and subsonic low-flying cruise missiles, highly capable against B-1 bombers, and deadly to a B-52.”

  “What would the chances be for the cruise missiles and stealth bombers, General?” Vice President Page asked.

  “No better than fifty-fifty, ma’am,” Hayes said. “The S-500 is that good. Our air-launched cruise missiles have twice the range of the S-500, but the S-500 is mobile and can be moved and set up quickly, so the chance of an inertially guided cruise missile targeting just a set of geographic coordinates at the battery’s last known position and getting one is not very good. The extended-range version of the Joint Air-Launched Standoff cruise missile has an imaging infrared sensor, so it would be more capable against mobile and pop-up targets, but it’s subsonic and the S-500 would be very capable against it. The twelve refurbished B-1 bombers we obtained are good, but we don’t have experienced crews yet. B-52s would have zero chance. They would have to get past the Russian’s primary air defense system, the S-400, and then take on the S-500s protecting the spaceports and launch sites.” He turned to the president. “The space weapons are our best option, sir. We shouldn’t deactivate the Skybolt module—in fact, my recommendation is to activate Skybolt and the Kingfisher satellites already in orbit, send up spaceplanes, and have them place the garages that are in storage back into their orbits to complete the constellation.”

  It was obvious the president didn’t like that recommendation. “I don’t want the Russians taking potshots at our spaceplanes, Fred,” he said after a long moment of consideration.

  “They could still do that if we detached the Skybolt module, sir, and then we would’ve given up a major weapon system that could help fight off an attack on the station or the weapon garages.”

  The president nodded. “How long will it take to deploy the Kingfisher garages back into orbit?”

  “Several weeks, sir,” Hayes said after consulting some notes on his tablet computer. “The garages are being stored on Armstrong. They would have to load the modules aboard a spaceplane, then either wait for the proper moment or fly into what is called a transfer orbit to get into the proper position to insert the module into its orbit.”

  “And the Russians will be observing this activity the whole time, I suppose?”

  “Undoubtedly, sir,” Hayes replied. “They can see as well as anyone what orbits need to be occupied in order to complete the coverage—all they have to do is monitor those orbits. In the meantime, they can place S-500s and MiG-31Ds in the right places to take shots at the garages whenever they please, and of course they can do that now with Armstrong—in fact, we believe they have as many as six S-500s and MiG-31Ds with antisatellite weapons targeted against Armstrong right now in its current orbit. If we move the station’s orbit, they simply move the antisatellite weapons wherever necessary.”

  “So Armstrong is vulnerable to attack?” the president asked.

  “The Hydra COIL defensive laser is operational, and the Kingfishers currently in orbit and the Skybolt laser can be activated fairly quickly,” Hayes replied. “Each Kingfisher garage carries three antisatellite weapons as well as three land-attack projectiles. I believe the station can defend itself very well once all systems are back online.” He spread his hands. “After the two-day deadline, the Russians would see that we have not disconnected Skybolt, and that’s when we see if they make good on their threat.”

  “Gryzlov has already gone on international television—if he backs down, he loses face in the eyes of the whole world,” National Security Adviser Glenbrook said. “He could do a minimal attack to try to look serious . . .”

  “Gryzlov doesn’t strike me as a guy who would do something halfway,” Ann said. “I don’t think he’s concerned about losing face—the guy is just plain maniacal. I think if he decides to go, he’ll go all-out.”

  “What would we lose if we lost Armstrong, Fred?”

  “Fourteen personnel, including the two college students,” Hayes said. “A multibillion-dollar investment. Several different weapons and sensors with advanced capabilities. We’d still have control of the weapon garages from U.S. Space Command headquarters, however.”

  “Armstrong is a pretty powerful presence, sir—it’s like an aircraft carrier sitting off someone’s coast,” Glenbrook added. “If we lost it, that could paint a very ominous picture around the world. We wouldn’t be totally defeated, but definitely taken down a few notches.”

  Ann could see the absolute agony in the president’s face as he struggled with the decision. “Sir, the main thing we’d lose is the high ground,” she said. “Gryzlov wants it, and he’s hoping we’ll just hand it over to him. I believe Armstrong has the weaponry to fight off a Russian attack. I don’t want to knuckle under to Gryzlov’s bullying. Starfire is not a space weapon and it doesn’t threaten Russia. Gryzlov can’t dictate what we do with our forces. What’s he going to demand next—we do away with all of our nuclear subs and aircraft carriers because they might threaten Russia? My suggestion: Tell the bastard to go pound sand.”

  “Shit,” Phoenix muttered. This was the moment he had feared all of his presidential life: the future of the republic, dependent on the words he might utter moments from now. Yes or no, go or no go, attack or not attack. If he ordered his forces to stand down, they might survive to fight another day. If he ordered his forces to escalate and prepare to fight, that’s probably exactly what they’d have to do very soon.

  “I hate to knuckle under to Gryzlov, guys,” he said after a long moment’s consideration, “but I feel I have no choice. I want the Skybolt laser deactivated and the module detached from Armstrong Space Station.” Glenbrook and Hayes looked relieved; Ann looked dejected. “What are we left with on the station after Skybolt is deactivated, Ann?”

  “The Skybolt laser module has a few targeting sensors a
nd lasers that will be off-line when the module is detached,” Ann replied, “but station will still have the Hydra short-range laser, the Trinity modules that are stored on station’s truss, and the weapon garages of the Kingfisher constellation already in orbit.”

  “All defensive weapons?”

  “The Trinity modules each contain three land-attack reentry vehicles and three antisatellite vehicles,” Ann said. “Those could be considered offensive weapons. Sir, I wish you’d reconsider your decision,” she added. “We can’t deactivate every military system Gryzlov wants.”

  “Unfortunately, I made the decision to allow a military weapon system to be used for that college experiment,” the president said. “A lot of people are making up stories, expressing outrage and horror, and threatening war, but the fact remains that I decided to turn a college experiment into a weapon. I have to live with the consequences. Shut it down and detach it, Fred.”

  “Yes, sir,” Secretary of Defense Hayes said.

  “Mr. President, I would like to go to station to help deactivate Skybolt,” Vice President Page said.

  “What?” Phoenix’s eyes bugged out in absolute shock. “That request is denied, Miss Vice President! That station is already in Russia’s crosshairs, and it could come under attack at any moment!”

  “Sir, no one knows more about that module than I do. I spent three years designing it and two years building it. I know every circuit and rivet, because I personally drew them by hand on a real drawing board and did everything but operate the soldering iron and riveter myself.” The president didn’t look convinced one bit. “One more ride in space for the old lady. If John Glenn can do it, I sure as hell can. What do you say, sir?”

  The president hesitated, studying Ann’s smiling face carefully. “I’d rather have you close to the White House or out campaigning for our reelection, Ann,” he said, “but I know Skybolt is your baby.” He shook his head woefully, then nodded. “I might be crazy for doing this, but your request is approved. The first president, first Secret Service agent, first teenagers, first paraplegic, and now the first vice president in space, all in one year. My head is spinning. God help us.”