“No, I don’t think we need to yet,” Trevino decided. “Kostroma is only a few light-minutes away. They could probably respond to a message from us. And if they did, then Lincoln could turn around.”
“Lincoln’s a Washington-class ship, so…”
“Ah, you’re right,” Trevino realized. Lincoln would have to continue on to Dirac. A Space Command warship flying all the way out to L3 at its top speed would need to refuel before leaving the station. They couldn’t just turn around now. They wouldn’t dock until 1315Z, fifteen minutes after Kostroma was due to arrive, but he’d still have to wake the acting director and tell him about it. First, he decided he would contact both ships.
RFSS Kostroma
0815Z, 24 December 2065
“Colonel, we have an incoming voice message from Dirac Station,” reported Lieutenant Erkan.
“Voice, not text?”
“Yes, sir. Time-lateness on this is… under three minutes.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Lieutenant Erkan switched his console’s audio to the bridge’s speakers.
“Supply Vessel Kostroma, this is Dirac Station,” came Mike Trevino’s voice. “U.S. Space Command has reported to us that an attempt to contact you at 0613Z failed. However, Dirac Station has continued to receive automated status reports from you as per normal since that time, so we’re assuming solar interference for the loss of communications with Earth. SPACECOM has also dispatched a warship to investigate the discrepancy. USS Lincoln will arrive in the vicinity of Dirac around 1300Z. Please confirm receipt of this message via voice comms, over.”
The MAKs all looked to Terzi. “Alright, we expected an inquiry about the communications loss with Earth,” the Colonel said to the others on the bridge, “but a warship coming out to Dirac? None of our plans accounted for that. Lieutenant, get the ship’s captain back up here. We’ll have him reply to Dirac that our communications are working normally, and that we’ll contact the Lincoln ourselves.”
“Wait,” interrupted Demirci. “Let’s think through this. Colonel, I don’t think we should bother contacting the warship. They’re going to arrive at Dirac only minutes after us, no matter what we say to them. Those warships use Rydberg-aneutronic fusion reactors for long-distance travel, and when they’re near Earth their fuel is limited for safety reasons. They can’t come out as far as the station without needing to refuel with exomatter pellets once they’re at the station.”
“We must try to ward them off or delay them,” Terzi replied. “A SPACECOM military vessel arriving at Dirac just after us? They could jeopardize our mission.”
“Perhaps not. We should dock a good fifteen minutes before they can. And I don’t think the crew on those ships have firearms any more than do the people on Dirac. We can control their access to the station.”
Lieutenant Erkan looked at Demirci and tapped his finger on the comms console. Dirac would be expecting a reply soon.
“Think a few moves ahead, Doctor,” said Terzi. “We can keep them out of the station, but then what? Their ship is armed even if their crew is not. They can keep us from escaping.”
Escape isn’t going to happen, Demirci reminded himself. But these thugs don’t know that.
“Then we’ll have to take the warship as well,” the doctor replied, to Terzi’s obvious surprise. “We should be able to do it, going through their airlock after they arrive. They’ll have to dock at the Labs since we’ll already be docked at the Hub. While I’m in the Labs section with Major Yilmaz’s team, and before you gather hostages and set up the gas bombs in the Hub, will you be able to spare some of your men for a temporary third team to surprise them and seize their ship?”
Terzi and Yilmaz both looked at each other, and nodded.
“Very well. I hate dividing us from two teams to three, but you’re right. We must take that warship,” Terzi said. “Lieutenant Erkan... grab that Russian captain from the wardroom and bring him here. Have him reply that our communications are working normally, and that all’s well and we’re expecting to arrive on time. They can deal with talking to that warship. Major Yilmaz, gather your team here on the bridge. We’ll need to talk about improvising our mission to seize the Lincoln.”
CHAPTER 8
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
McLean, Virginia.
5:20 a.m. (1020Z), 24 December 2065
Diandra Stone was running late. The National Security Advisor had never been casual about punctuality, but being late for this meeting was particularly grating, given the timetable she was now under. The two men waiting for Stone kept their own tight schedules, even at five a.m. on Christmas Eve, and now time was getting short. Their plans were finally in motion, but a wrinkle had developed. Probably not a critical problem, Stone figured from what she knew of it, but an issue to discuss nonetheless.
Stone’s car parked itself in front of the ODNI building, and she hopped out before her bodyguard could even catch up. She waved at him to remain as she walked briskly through the front doors. The three would only have an hour to meet before they all had to head to the White House for a seven a.m. brief in the Situation Room. And the three would need to reach a consensus on how they would interpret recent events for the president, and on what they would recommend to her. Not much time.
It was the wrong decision, Stone thought for the hundredth time, that the president had not been brought in on the Plan. It would eliminate so much uncertainty about their ability to carry it out. Stone argued in favor of including her ever since she became part of the small cadre herself. But even now, eleven months after Inauguration Day, the others still did not trust the new president enough. Stone wondered if they ever would.
As Stone approached the director’s office, she saw the other two already waiting for her: Eli Drennan, Director of National Intelligence, and Erik Stendahl, Secretary of Defense. She knew the discussion wouldn’t be a problem for the ever-logical Stendahl. Drennan was another matter. “My apologies, gentlemen,” she announced as she entered the room. “I was already at my office, not my residence.”
“Follow us,” Director Drennan replied. The three walked out of the director’s office and down the hall to the Executive SCIF. Like most of the building the director’s office was also supposed to be a sensitive compartmented information facility, certified as impervious to eavesdropping, but Drennan still did not trust it for discussing the Plan. Unlike his office, no visiting guest had ever set foot in the SCIF down the hall. It was an elongated cube, resting a meter off the floor on top of a scaffold, physically detached from the rest of the building. Its six walls were coated in three separate layers of electronic dampening measures, making surveillance impossible even if someone pressed a listening device against the outside wall. It was battery-powered, contained its own ventilation system, and had no electronic access to anything else in the building. Anyone walking inside had to pass through an access chamber and be scanned at a molecular level. The chamber would detect any unauthorized electronic devices, from contact lenses down to medical nanosensors coursing through the bloodstream, and temporarily neutralize them.
“Alright, Erik,” Drennan began as the three sat down. He spoke to the Defense Secretary, the man he had come to nickname The Robot. “You called this meeting. What do you have?”
“There’s a potential impediment to the raid phase. One of our warships in space, USS Lincoln, is on its way to Dirac right now. Admiral McKenna and the ship’s captain learned of the incident at Engels after a SPACECOM watchstander saw the news about it. He then contacted Kostroma in person and got suspicious about the lack of reply. Lincoln’s ETA to Dirac is at 1315 Zulu, fifteen minutes after Kostroma is scheduled to dock.”
Eli Drennan grit his teeth. “Are you fucking kidding me? A potential impediment? Erik, this could ruin the whole goddamn thing! I thought your warships were accounted for. Aren’t they supposed to be on fifteen minutes’ notice to respond to orders?”
“All the active duty ones,
yes. The Lincoln was in dock for weapon upgrades through the holidays, so she was technically inactive. Jerry McKenna reasoned that the ship could get out to Dirac and have a look at Kostroma and get back within twelve hours.”
Drennan looked into Erik Stendahl’s eyes, wanting him to stop thinking what he was no doubt thinking. Secretary Stendahl tried to have Admiral McKenna included in the Plan, or at least part of it, a number of times. But the other two always vetoed that idea. McKenna just wasn’t senior enough, and neither Drennan nor Stone had ever met him.
“And you couldn’t recall the ship, Erik?” Drennan replied. “We’re at DEFCON Four. Hell, Space Command is at REDCON Three. There’s an international crisis going on. Couldn’t you have ordered McKenna to keep the ship in orbit without informing the president?”
Secretary Stendahl nodded patiently. “I could have, but how would I explain that to McKenna? Lincoln has a degraded strike capability until she’s done with her overhaul. The directed energy cannons are all non-operational during their upgrade time. She’s isn’t much use for the ship as anything other than as a decoy, and I wasn’t going to countermand the admiral’s orders and tell him to keep one ship around as opposed to investigating a possible threat to Dirac, or a distressed ship. For one thing, that would create too much suspicion towards me, given what’s about to happen at Dirac. Also, that’s not a decision for me to make. McKenna has operational control over his ships. An order from me wouldn’t even be direct to him, it would go through SPACECOM. I can’t micromanage like that without everyone questioning why.”
“Besides, Eli, Lincoln isn’t likely to bring back any news from Dirac about what’s going on there,” Stone chimed in. “After the officers in the Situation Room gave me the heads up about the Lincoln, I ran through the timetable. It’ll be close, but like Erik said, the raid will already have begun fifteen minutes before the Lincoln can arrive there. And there was nothing in SPACECOM’s message there to hint that that’s what’s about to happen, thank God.”
“Actually, thank Admiral Martin,” Stendahl continued. “And, even if Lincoln does manage to dock, they won’t be able to stop your man from accomplishing his mission. The raiders will have a head start, and they’re armed. Lincoln’s a spacecraft, so the only firearms they have onboard are handheld stun guns. Not much of a match if they try to fight it out.”
“Even if they tried to flee with the news instead of intervening, and they won’t, Dirac’s relay satellite will go down around the same time,” Stone said. “It’s doubtful they’ll get far enough to transmit anything back to Earth. The raid will be over and done in about thirty minutes, and the blast will take Lincoln with it.”
“Remember, the physicist up there with those commandos is not ‘my man’,” Drennan sighed. “General Candemir is ‘my man’. The physicist Demirci came up with the details for this raid idea, but he only knows that he’s working with Candemir and other rebels in his own country. He knows nothing about us.” Drennan scoffed at his colleagues. “You both want to stay the course, I presume? You bring me this news, but you’re not interested in activating any contingency plans?”
Stone looked at Stendahl, and both nodded. “Right. At least not yet. There’s not much choice anyway. It’s tragic that Lincoln will be more collateral damage, but its presence shouldn’t present much of a risk. And even if it all goes to hell out there and the Plan fails, we’ll still have full deniability.”
“Ah, deniability for us. Wonderful,” Drennan groaned. “And how much use will that be when we try to come up with an alternate plan after this one flies south? We may never get a perfect opportunity like this again. General Candemir will be exposed, and the Iron Wolves will scour every inch of Turkey, rounding up dissidents. Same with the Caliphate. We’ll have nobody left to work with! And the war will eventually start under some other circumstances we can’t control. It’s inevitable. Not to mention that the war isn’t even our top priority. Destroying Dirac is still the most urgent thing, because of that fucking gadget they’re building there. Goddamn starry-eyed scientists don’t even realize that they’re about to upend the whole world.”
“That’s your top priority, Eli,” Stendahl said, “and apparently yours too,” he said to Stone. “The war is my higher priority. We may have other options to deal with the gadget on Dirac. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here by discussing what-ifs. We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. Right now let’s just get ourselves straight before we go see the president.”
Drennan nodded. “Fine. Alright, how about this… we put on an optimistic face and downplay the cable breaks in the Mediterranean. We agree with our analysts that the HM are responsible for it, and we invoke Turkey in particular, but we say that they’re probably a probe on their part, meant to test our reaction rather than a precursor to a larger move. Unless, we say, and we’ve got to emphasize this, something else happens within the next two days. By then, the two cables in the Med should be repaired. But that missile is going to light off an hour or so from now and destroy Dirac’s relay satellite. After that happens, we don’t even mention the idea that the HM is testing us. We mea culpa on the cables and tell her that the HM are moving against our space capabilities, and the DA needs to upgrade to DEFCON Three. She’ll go along with it. Half the country thinks she’s too weak towards the HM anyway. She’ll want to shore up her political support. Then, after Dirac blows, or should I say if it blows, she’ll be primed to order a first strike.”
“I agree,” Stone replied. “She’ll probably reach those conclusions anyway, especially after she sees the blast wave. But let’s be ready with a contingency plan for this afternoon, in case the raid fails or if it drags on so long that we assume it’s failed. And the contingency will be this… we bring her in on it.”
Drennan sprung forward to speak, but Stone cut him off. “Before you say anything, Eli, hear me out. We won’t even mention the gadget to her unless we have to. And as far as the war goes, we don’t start with an appeal to her strategic thinking and the need to preclude a bigger, less controllable conflict. She spent her campaign talking about human rights and diplomacy. Talking to her about strategic pre-emption won’t work. Instead, we force her hand by emphasizing the exposure of General Candemir and his organization. We tell her that not only has he already begun moving the Seventh Arrow to oust the Silvers, but that his plans are irreversible now. It’s do-or-die time for him. And we mention that underground elements in the Caliphate are ready to start a coup in Jeddah as well. And we insist that there will be widespread revolt against the Silvers in Ankara, and popular American support for a strike against the HM. When we present the Plan as irreversible, and that any chance of success will be lost if she doesn’t go along with it, she’ll be forced into accepting it. She may yell and call us traitors and might fire at least one of us, but she’ll be forced to go along.”
Drennan glared at them. “That idea relies on wishful thinking. You keep telling me she’s tougher and more ruthless than she seems, but I still doubt it. I think she’s only ruthless in the political arena. I don’t know if she’ll do what must be done in terms of statecraft.”
“She put all three of us into our jobs, didn’t she? Like I said, we’ll be forcing her to choose between two bad options. I’ve known her for years. She’ll opt for the less bad one. She’s practical enough for that, I assure you,” Stone said.
Secretary Stendahl nodded in agreement. “Besides, she won’t try to expose us afterwards. We have our threat ready to go. Also, most of the public would never believe that a scheme like this existed without her knowledge. She’d lose more credibility than she gained.”
Director Drennan took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled. “Alright. Like you said, that’s a backup option. In the meantime, let’s go brief her on the cables situation in the Med. And if either of you are religious like your Admiral McKenna up there,” he said, sneering at Stendahl, “you’d better pray that the raid goes off as planned.”
CHA
PTER 9
USS Abraham Lincoln
0850Z, 24 December 2065
Six hundred of Lincoln’s nine thousand metric tons came from the dense armor plating covering its bow. This plating, behind which all the extendable features of the cylindrical ship were retracted during high-speed transits, was a high-grade titanium alloy coated with an electrified layer of graphene. But the armor wasn’t there to keep the ship safe from enemy fire; it was there to mitigate the damage posed by dust and small rocks which might strike the ship during, for example, a 0.1c sprint around the Sun to Dirac Station.
“This feels crazy,” Beth Yamada said. “It’s almost like turbulence.” Like almost everyone else in the C2C, she instinctively stared towards the main viewscreen as if she might catch a glimpse of a meteoroid impact if the ship’s luck was bad enough to suffer one.
“We’ll be fine,” Pierce said. “This intermittent rumbling is from our forward shields. Impacts from the occasional mote of dust are inevitable.”
“I read about it during high-g training. Still, I thought it was an exaggeration. You expect space to be a vacuum.”
“Only in a relative sense. There’s always some minute quantity of dust. Not to mention meteoroids.”
“How big a hit could we take, ma’am?”
Pierce smiled. “At this speed, I’d say any rock the size of a marble would do us in. The rules of kinetics can be pretty simple.”
“It’s good to see you keeping a cool head about this, ma’am.”
“I’ve done it once before. Everybody spent the hours bracing for impact on that trip also. I imagine it’s like how submariners feel whenever they have to dive down towards the limit of crush endurance, when at any moment a section of the hull might buckle and cause disaster.”
“That sounds about right, Captain.”
“No, this is actually worse,” Pierce said, still grinning. “Bubbleheads would still have a second or two to notice their hulls breaching before they’re dead. If the Lincoln flies into a rock big enough, we’ll come to a spectacular end before any of us sees a thing.”
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