by gerald hall
“What is that?” A curious Alyssa asked.
“From what I understand, the station is going to be launching something back to Earth.”
“Something returning to the Alliance?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Colin suspiciously replied. Alyssa didn’t inquire any further either.
Chapter Sixteen:
Space Station Freedom
High Earth Orbit
March 1, 2045
As the gravity drive shuttle Hercules continued to push the huge space station away from Earth’s gravity well and towards the waiting Martian transport ship Renown, the senior NASA scientist onboard, Doctor Heather Armstrong, felt considerable unease. She watched the shrinking image of Earth in out of the space station’s main observation dome and wondered what would be happening next. Less than two months earlier, she had been ordered to fold the space station’s massive solar array and prepare to the space station for transport to Mars.
A few moments later, she turned and half-floated her way back to the space station’s main control center where Major Tyler Evans was making his final preparations for the space station’s final act before leaving Earth orbit. Doctor Armstrong could hear Major Evans talking on the radio to someone on Earth as she arrived.
“Ground control, is it confirmed that we are now out of range of the Islamist anti-satellite weapons?” Major Evans said.
“Roger, Freedom. You may execute Operation Fire Suppression now.” Came the reply from someone who sounded like they were in the military.
“What are you about to do, Major Evans?” Heather quickly asked, the concern evident in her voice.
“Hopefully, we are about to prevent one of the madmen down there from initiating another nuclear autumn. If we are lucky, we might just give our friends that we have left behind a fighting chance against the Islamists at the same time.” He calmly replied
“I hate that we are using this station as a weapon.”
“Ma’am, this station has been a weapon even since the First Event. There have just been very few people who knew about it. But now, the Islamists have demonstrated that this station is just too vulnerable in Earth orbit. The Islamists ‘broke the rules’ when they began to shoot at our satellites in orbit.
We have no need for the Thor orbital bombardment projectiles where we are going. But we might just do some good with them as we are leaving this world,”
Then the Air Force major punched in a series of commands into a special console and spoke one more to the others on the ground.
“Ground control, Fire Suppression executed.”
A moment later, scores of ten-meter long, tungsten and depleted uranium long rod projectiles were ejected from a module at the far end of the space station. This particular module had been kept off limits to almost all personnel on the space station ever since the mysterious expansion to what had been the International Space Station appeared in the aftermath of the First Event.
These projectiles fired their own thrusters and began to deorbit in precise patterns over Asia, Europe and even a few places in Africa as well as a handful in South America. The scientist and science fiction author Jerry Pournelle who had originally called concept ‘Thor’ had proposed this kinetic orbital bombardment system many years earlier. It was intended to be able to strike strategic targets on short notice without the need for using nuclear warheads. Instead, they used the sheer kinetic energy of a large long rod projectile to penetrate and destroy its target.
Similar weapons that had been deployed from the various Project Gemini satellites quickly joined the Thor projectiles from the space station. Together, literally hundreds of projectiles sped down through Earth’s atmosphere towards their targets. At the same time, a lesser number of much smaller objects also deployed from the same satellites. These projectiles raced towards other pinpoints elsewhere in orbit.
Observers on the ground saw long streaks of light coming downward as the weapons closed onto their targets. One by one, every known enemy nuclear weapons site, every strategic missile silo, every possible weapon of mass destruction production facility was hit and destroyed. Other projectiles began to hit airfields and army depots, destroying warplanes and causing ammunition depots to erupt in massive fireballs of secondary explosions. All of the space launch facilities in Russia, China, North Korea, and elsewhere outside of the Eastern Alliance were also targeted for destruction. The remaining projectiles then began to strike at the Arab Brotherhood and Pacific Caliphate’s command and control centers. Hundreds, if not thousands of their key leadership personnel were injured and killed in those final strikes.
Yet, not a single one of those projectiles had a warhead at all. All of the destruction was purely based on the kinetic energy of the descending projectiles, so there was little collateral damage outside of the secondary explosions of the weapons depots and airfield fuel tanks.
The impact points were actually very difficult to see from orbit because they were so small and precise in their effects.
“Confirming successful strike, Freedom. Good job.” Was received about twenty minutes after the Thor strike began.
“Any idea as to terminal effects, Ground Control?” Major Evans asked.
“We are conducting post-strike assessment right now. Our best guess is that we were over ninety-five percent successful in eliminating the Islamist’s nuclear strike capability. We also believe that we were over seventy percent successful in eliminating the other military assets that were targeted, Freedom.”
“Thank you, Ground Control. Good luck, down there.”
“Thank you, sending our prayers to you. We all wish you a safe journey to Mars, Freedom.” Came the reply from Earth. Both Heather and Tyler could clearly hear a note of sadness in that reply though.
“The leaders of the Arab Brotherhood and Pacific Caliphate are going to be furious over what we just did to them.” Heather remarked pointedly.
“I know. But once they began striking at our space-borne assets, President Harper felt that they no longer had a choice. She knew that it was only a matter of time before this station would also be targeted as well. But we had to wait until Mars could send us a ship to transport the station to safety first before we could use Thor.
I pray that we got enough of the Islamists’ nuclear capability so that the Alliance’s anti-missile defenses will be able to handle the rest. None of us want to see another nuclear autumn happen down there again. Hopefully, we also destroyed their ability to hit any more of our satellites at the same time we eliminated many of their orbital assets. We are going to need our remaining satellites to keep working and the ability for the Martian gravity drive shuttles to continue to save people in danger from the Islamists very badly.”
‘I suppose that you are right, Major. But I never wanted to be part of a war. All I wanted to do is study our world and all of the others out there beyond Earth. I have only been interested in the science, not in politics or anything like that.”
“Once upon a time, one of America’s Founding Father’s said that he studied war, so that his children could study science and that their children could then study art. It is my hope that my children will get to study the sciences like you have done and that my grandchildren can then be able to study art, literature and music in the worlds that we create for them, free from war and strife.”
“I pray that you are right, Major.”
Three hours later. Emir Suparman Asegaff, the leader of the Pacific Caliphate, looked down upon the wrecked building that had been officially the Singapore headquarters of the Caliphate. It took only one of the Thor projectiles to completely collapse the massive office building.
“Now, you understand why we kept telling everyone that we were impregnable underneath the bottom of that skyscraper. We knew that eventually our ‘headquarters’ would be targeted by the Americans.” The emir told his Aide de Camp, Adi Alatas, who was standing next to him.
“So this was meant to be a decoy all along?”
; “Yes, our real work was done a couple of kilometers away in another building that no one would have expected.”
“But several hundred people died in this building after it collapsed after being hit from space.”
“Yes, Adi. They are all safely being comforted in Allah’s buxom now. The Americans will not dare do this again after so many civilian deaths.”
“Perhaps they will not need to. Our nuclear missiles that we obtained from the Chinese, Russians and North Koreans are all gone now, along with all of the space launch facilities in Asia.” General Mohammed Tonga, the leader of the Caliphate military reported as he also stood there watching what a single Thor projectile had done to a thirty-story reinforced concrete skyscraper.
“They do not matter now anyway. The American infidels will not launch nuclear weapons against us anyway for fear of causing another worldwide cooling event. Our forces are now already in control of the American West Coast. Soon, we will be advancing eastward to conquer the last major infidel state.”
“Our allies did not fare so well, I think.” Adi remarked.
“No, the leadership of the Arab Brotherhood did not heed our warnings concerning the headquarters. They liked their amenities all too well and made it very easy for them to be located by the infidels. Mohammed al Hussain Sultani thought that his air defenses would protect him from the infidels. Now, he and his lieutenants all lie buried under tons of rubble.
While we would have had to deal with him and the Brotherhood eventually, it was a shame that Sultani’s leadership had been decapitated. It would have benefited us to have his mujahedeen bleed the infidels a bit more first so that our warriors would have fewer to deal with.” Asegaff said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“It will take some time for the Brotherhood to reorganize.” General Tonga noted.
“Yes, it will. But by then, we will have conclusively demonstrated our supremacy over both the Brotherhood and the infidels. After that, we can look towards the future.”
“Speaking of the future, Your Excellency, we are going to have to find some way to launch some more satellites of our own. At the same time that the infidels launched their strike against our ground installations, they also struck at our orbital assets.”
A very concerned Asegaff knitted his brows. He had planned on this strike against the satellites that had proven to be so valuable to both sides to be a one sided affair only.
“What did we lose, General?”
“Apparently, the infidels had secretly placed anti-satellite weapons in orbit. At the same time that they launched their kinetic bombardment weapons, they also launched their anti-satellite weapons. We did not see any explosions around our satellites. But suddenly, most of our communications, navigation and reconnaissance satellites began to leave their orbits and plunged back towards Earth. We tried every option to regain control of our satellites but failed.
We believe that these infidel weapons matched orbits with our satellites. Then the enemy weapons attached themselves to our satellites and used their rocket engines to push our assets out of orbit.”
“How much is this going to impact our operations, General?”
“We have virtually lost all of our ability to provide satellite targeting for any of our weapons. Communications is also much more difficult as well. We will have to rely upon undersea communications cables far more now. Finally, we have lost all of our ability to look down and see enemy movements. We will now have to use aircraft with cameras and fly over enemy positions to take photos of the infidels. Those flights will probably mean the loss of many of those aircraft to infidel gunners.”
“Inshallah...” Was all that the leader of the Pacific Caliphate said in reply.
Chapter Seventeen:
Advanced Technical Research Laboratories
Hebes Chasma, Mars
March 25, 2045
Itzak Clark had been born in America but had immigrated to Israel as a child with his parents at age eight. Armed with a natural gift for machinery and mathematics, Itzak excelled in school and eventually went back to America at age sixteen to attend the engineering school at Georgia Tech. He quickly completed his undergraduate studies and received a scholarship for his doctorate at MIT.
After completing his education, Itzak returned to Israel and completed his mandatory term of service in the Israeli Defense Force. At the same time, he began to work for Israel Aerospace Industries. Itzak did considerable work on several missile systems including the Israeli space launch vehicle.
It was only natural that when the opportunity came for some Israelis to travel to the colony at Hebes Chasma, Itzak immediately volunteered and was accepted for a Martian entry visa. Itzak traveled to Mars accompanied by his wife Maria and his two children. They had been there about two years when the Third Event occurred.
When the worldwide conflict against the jihadists continued to turn against the West, Itzak often expressed a concern that even with more gravity shuttles being produced in America, there would not be enough capacity to carry more than a tiny fraction of potential refugees from Earth to Mars. It just took too long for the large intrasystem space transports to get back and forth from Mars.
There had been talk about setting up a small installation on the Moon. But production facilities to build habitat modules were very limited in number. The expansion of the colony at Hebes Chasma was taking up all of the available production of those valuable pieces of technology. Studies of the moon had found that there was enough water stored at the poles, hidden inside underground chambers and still frozen on the dark side to support a lunar base. But people needed a place to live in on the lunar surface first.
Arthur Wheeler, the inventor of the gravity drive and designer of the eight gravity drive shuttles doing such sterling work for the Martian colony was busy on one of his many projects when the tall, thin dark-haired Israeli engineer came in for a chat.
“Hello, Arthur. How are you doing today?” Itzak warmly asked.
“Busy as usual. But I still have time to talk to a friend. What’s up, Itzak?”
“I was thinking about something that we have talked about several times before. Remember our discussions about setting up a lunar settlement as a way station for people heading for Mars and to provide a permanent settlement for others?”
“Sure. We just couldn’t figure out where to put everyone. The Eastern Alliance has a small lunar facility now that they set up with our help. What we need are existing air-tight modules that are during and large enough to hold dozens of people at a time so that we can expand upon the existing lunar outpost. Earth never had a lot of facilities capable of building something that could handle the rigors of space and support a large number of people. With the destruction of so many of the technological wonders by the jihadists, the shuttering of most of the production facilities and the death of the skilled workers who worked at them, there just isn’t any means to build more, Itzak.” Arthur sadly outlined.
“I might have an idea on how we can quickly set up facilities on the moon for some of the refugees rather than taking them all the way here to Mars. Such a facility can be a sort of staging area for people coming to Mars or it can be permanent in its own right. The most important part is that we might already have built them in significant numbers.” The Israeli engineer nonchalantly said.
That got Arthur’s attention right away.
“I’m listening. Tell me more, Itzak.”
“You’ve been using your gravity drive shuttles to move habitat and industrial modules from the production facilities in America, England and Israel into orbit for transfer to your big transports. When you do this, you use a heavy-duty lattice framework to support the modules on the nose of each of your shuttles. Can this framework be modified to lift other things as well?”
“Sure. We can carry most anything that my shuttles can get underneath.”
“I thought so. Now, your shuttles’ drive system is a lot more powerful than what is required to generally move the modules
being pushed into orbit and beyond, aren’t they?”
“Well, except for the prototype shuttle which is a lot smaller than the others, absolutely. We’ve got a lot of overload capacity built into the larger ships just in case.
“Well, we have hundreds of examples of something that is basically airtight, designed with life support systems already and generally very available. At least fifty of them, if not more, also have a fully functional nuclear reactor power system inside.”
Arthur thought for a few seconds until it finally hit him as to what Itzak was referring to.
“You are talking about submarines, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my friend. The nice part is that you don’t even need to build anything to allow your shuttles to get under them. Your shuttles are designed to operate underwater, as I seem to remember. So all you have to do is ‘fly’ down under each submarine and lift them right up out of the water and into space.”
“This is brilliant, Itzak. I should have thought about it myself. But we will have to do a lot more than just lift up a submarine and dump it onto the lunar surface.” Arthur said with growing excitement.
“Of course. We would have to network them all together and do a couple hundred other modifications to them. But once we start getting those boats up there, the rest of it is not nearly as difficult.”
“You might be understating the difficulty just a little bit, Itzak. But your basic concept is incredible. I also like the idea that we will be preventing these valuable assets from being used against our friends on Earth by the Caliphate. But I do see a couple of problems.
I can lift one of the smaller submarines with a single shuttle pretty easily. It would be a short, compact package. But with one of the larger nuclear boats, I won’t be able to do that because the submarine’s hull is not longitudinally stiff enough. When the shuttle lifts her out of the water from a single point at the center of gravity, the boat will bend at that point and break her back.