Orbital: This is the Future of War (Future War Book 3)

by FX Holden

  There was no way around it. He would need to bring Arsharvin in on his suspicions. The GRU officer had a way of getting things like this done without causing too many … unintended consequences.

  “OK, this is not going quite as I intended,” Meany said, staring down the line at the image of the US Space Force pilot at the other end.

  “I get that a lot, Flight Lieutenant,” O’Hare said. “And we may be in different armed forces, but it’s Captain to you.”

  “Apologies, ma’am,” Meany said, but not like he meant it. He pronounced it marm.

  “I just want you for your missiles, Flight Lieutenant,” O’Hare told him. “Otherwise, this is my mission, and you will be under my command.”

  Meany had been given the contact details for his opposite number in US Space Force and arranged a time to video conference with them that was about 8 a.m. in the Cape and about 3 p.m. in Lossiemouth. Firstly, his opposite number was a woman with two studs in her nose, three earrings he could see (probably more he couldn’t), and a tattoo of some sort of vine or orchid that rose out of her collar, up her neck and curled around her ear. That was okay; he wasn’t exactly a poster-boy himself. Secondly, she was Australian. Serving in US Space Force, but definitely Australian. He was cool with that too. He wasn’t racist either. But before they had even got past the pleasantries, the woman at the other end was telling him that this may be a joint forces mission, but she was the one with a spacecraft in orbit with a lock on the Russian bogey as they spoke and if he wanted a piece of her action he could just get his ‘big black phallic space liner’ into position, shake hands with her X-37 to synch targeting data, arm his missiles and then do as she said.

  “I am happy to confer with my Squadron Leader, ma’am,” Meany said with heartfelt insincerity. “But I doubt the higher-ups in the RAF will be overly chuffed with the idea of putting their Skylon under the command of a…” Jumped-up Aussie mercenary – yes I read your file, ‘Captain’ O’Hare, “… of a foreign power, on its first combat mission,” he said.

  “Do they want to get their precious Skylon blown to glittering shards, Flight Lieutenant?”

  “With respect, ma’am, I hardly think…”

  “Because that bloody satellite nearly took me out and I am the best damn pilot in anyone’s Space Fleet,” O’Hare said. She leaned forward. “Including yours. Plus, I am willing to bet it has other tricks up its sleeve.”

  Now she had Meany’s full attention. “Sorry, Captain, is there some new intel you are able to share?”

  “No intel, just a feeling, Flight Lieutenant.”

  “A … feeling.”

  She sat back and crossed her arms. “Would you send a hundred million dollars’ worth of killer satellite into orbit and only arm it with two 30mm pea shooters?”

  “The 30mm Gryazev-Shipunov autocannon is hardly a peashooter, ma’am,” Meany pointed out. “But it was probably only intended to deal with space junk.”

  “A system intended to deal with ‘space junk’ doesn’t lead a moving spacecraft and keep firing as it moves away, Flight Lieutenant,” she said.

  “Granted, ma’am.”

  “Plus those things are the size of a small space station. If they carried space to space missiles, they probably would have used them against us. But if they have room for two 30mm autocannon with electro-optical targeting systems, then they could also have room for lasers, chaff or flare dispensers, electronic countermeasures…”

  “All that is possible, but I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not sure I see this as an argument for subordinating our unit to your command,” Meany said. “I see this mission as pretty straightforward. We rendezvous, take targeting data from you, get in position and triangulate the Groza, then we monster it violently.”

  O’Hare laughed. “I saw my mission as pretty straightforward too. I went in forewarned thanks to your intel about the Russian close-in weapons system. And it nearly cost me B for Bertha.”

  “B for…”

  “My X-37,” O’Hare explained. “Russia spent a lot of time, money and effort putting its Groza system into orbit and it appears willing and ready to defend it. We need to assume this mission will be anything but straightforward and plan accordingly. And that requires a clear chain of command.”

  “I’ll have my Squadron Leader call your Colonel, Captain,” Meany said in surrender.

  “You do that, Flight Lieutenant,” the woman said and cut the call without another word.

  What a charmer, Meany thought to himself as the screen went blank. His brief had been to ‘enhance transatlantic relations.’ He was pretty sure Karen ‘Bunny’ O’Hare had not been given the same brief.

  As she went to bed on Sunday evening in her small apartment in Moscow, Roberta D’Antonia was also thinking about enhancing relationships. Specifically, her new relationship with Chief Scientist Anastasia Grahkovsky. The woman had apparently fed her a line of complete cazzate. And she had been made to look and feel a fool. As far as Roberta could see, there had been no meteor strike, anywhere in the world, in the last 36 hours. Yet Lapikov had been adamant that further strikes were planned.

  There had been a minor tsunami in the Pacific, a hurricane off the Azores, seismologists had reported a tremor in the desert in Western China, but not a word about a meteor strike. Neither had she picked up any news reports of anything out of the ordinary in or around Lincoln, Nebraska.

  Which was a relief in a way because it meant that US authorities had (rightly it seemed) ignored her urgent warning. Or her own service had not thought it worthy of passing on to their allies. No matter, their lack of reaction, together with clear skies over Nebraska, meant her cover was still intact. No midnight run to Warsaw for her.

  Yet.

  D’Antonia made a mental note to follow up with Grahkovsky. She was owed an explanation by the woman with the frightening visage at the very least, and if she was contrite, a few crumbs of truth might emerge.

  D’Antonia realized she felt almost disappointed that tomorrow would be Just Another Monday. Perhaps she had been playing this game for too long. Perhaps her subconscious was telling her it was time for a change. But to what? She no longer had the urgency, but she had the money and the resources to disappear tomorrow if she still wanted to; fall off the grid and start again wherever she wanted, as whoever she wanted to be.

  But she was a woman who needed a purpose, not just a vague desire for change. She needed direction.

  Major-General Yevgeny Bondarev had been given very clear direction by the commander of the 15th Aerospace Forces Army, Colonel General Oleg Popovkin.

  “You will not allow the damned Americans to sneak up on one of my Grozas again, Bondarev. I don’t care whether you need to put the weapons officers on every Groza on 24-hour alert, but you will do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Is that clear?” his commanding officer had said.

  Whatever it takes? Bondarev had taken Popovkin at his word. He had commandeered an additional mission control center at Baikonur and in the space of 48 hours had repurposed it to house 12 eight-man weapons system teams, one for each operational Groza. Their only job was to monitor the space around their Groza and respond to any threats. Their rules of engagement were proportional to the threat the Americans had shown they now posed – engage any and all foreign military targets within a fifty-mile radius.

  Using Popovkin’s authority, he had also secured the cooperation of the Navy, which had allocated him command authority over the PL-19 Nudol missile systems on two of its Lider-class stealth destroyers. The Nudol was capable of destroying objects in low earth orbit up to an altitude of 950 miles, and each Lider carried four of the powerful Nudol missiles. The units available to him were placed both conveniently and inconveniently: one was currently making a ‘friendship call’ in Havana, Cuba, which gave it coverage of the sky over a large part of the US eastern seaboard. The other, however, was in transit from a patrol of the North Sea west of Greenland and would not be where he needed it – covering the sky over West
ern Europe – for at least three days. Lider-launched Nudols were only a last resort, though, and Popovkin had told him this option could only be used on his authority. The launches could be easily tracked; there would be no hiding them. The world would know the US and Russia had gone to war in space.

  He did have one slightly more discreet option. As head of Titov Space Test Center, he had command over a squadron of 15th Aerospace Forces Army Mig-41S high-altitude interceptor aircraft, which could be used to launch the Vympel RN-S anti-satellite missile. The Vympel carried a 40 lb. warhead, was designed to be launched from an altitude of 51,000 feet, and could reach a speed of 1,865 mph (Mach 2.8), engaging targets up to 500 miles altitude. His Mig-41Ss were based at Akhtoobinsk in Southern Russia, but he had ordered one flight to be deployed to Kalaikunda Air Force Station, a joint Indian-Russian cooperation base in West Bengal, and a second flight to Tripoli in Libya. These gave him at least some cover for Groza units as they crossed the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

  He was reviewing his defensive posture on a tablet in his office, struggling with how to achieve at least some coverage of Western Europe until his second Lider destroyer could get into position in the Baltic, when there was a knock on his door and Arsharvin stuck his head around.

  “Is now a good time, Major-General?” the GRU Colonel asked with an innocent expression.

  “Since I ordered you to report, you can assume so,” Bondarev said, pushing his tablet aside and indicating a chair in front of his desk. “You had better have news for me. I was just reviewing the assets I have available to cover our world-spanning Groza system in case of an all-out attack, and they are not impressive. We not only have gaps in anti-satellite missile coverage over the southern Indian and Pacific Oceans, but I can’t even cover Western Europe or the West Coast of North America.”

  Arsharvin frowned as he sat. “Was this not considered when we deployed Groza?”

  “Yes, and it was not prioritized because Groza has limited defensive capabilities of its own, and I was promised that there would be at least six Nudol-armed Lider destroyers available for tasking within a year of deployment.” He jabbed a finger down on his tablet. “We are only six months into full deployment, the Americans have already tried to knock down one of my Grozas, and there are only two upgraded Liders available. Add to that, it has been implied I should not even use them unless I want to be held responsible for starting World War Three, in space.”

  Arsharvin looked pained. “I wish I had good news for you, Yevgeny.” Then he brightened. “Or perhaps I do. Let me start with China.”

  “The Korla attack?”

  “What Korla attack?” Arsharvin asked, winking. “There were a few reports of a meteor strike on social media, but the Chinese government quickly shut down their Weibo and WeChat systems in the Xinjiang Province to get control of the information flow, and international media organizations barely even reported on it. Our sources inside the Chinese government tell us there is no indication that they suspect Russian involvement in the strike yet. For now, they are treating it as an orthodox meteorite strike.”

  “The compressor plant?”

  “Will be offline for several months, at least. An emergency meeting of the Chinese Ministries of Energy, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance was called to discuss the disruption to oil and gas supplies from the Tarim Basin two days ago and officials were told urgently to seek international suppliers to make up the shortfall. Mozprom should be getting a call any day now. Plus, they are desperate for parts for their gas turbines and even talking of buying used engines from Aeroflot, which is a bonus we hadn’t planned on…”

  “They are not fools,” Bondarev warned him. “The Saudis openly blamed us for the Abqaiq attack and distributed photographs of Groza missile fragments to anyone and everyone who would listen. It will just be a matter of time before Beijing sends a team to Riyadh to compare any fragments they have found in Korla with the Abqaiq meteorites.”

  “And by then the oil and gas will be flowing from Kazakhstan straight to Shanghai and any retaliation the Chinese can dream up will be inconsequential. They won’t be able to renege on any contracts they sign with Mozprom because their economy will go into recession if they are starved of oil and gas – no one else can guarantee such a fast, reliable and almost unlimited supply.”

  “I cannot share your patriotism-fueled optimism, Colonel. If you are trying to cheer me up, you will have to try harder,” Bondarev said.

  Arsharvin leaned toward a small table sitting between Bondarev’s guest chairs, on which sat a small samovar and some cups. He poured himself a cup of steaming tea, added some honey and helped himself to a biscuit, looking around himself pointedly as he did so.

  “No, there is no vodka,” Bondarev told him. “If that was your good news, what is the bad?”

  “It is not bad, per se,” Arsharvin demurred. “Though the mood you are in…”

  Bondarev sighed. “Go on.”

  “Well, you fended off the Americans this time,” Arsharvin said. “But our sources inside US Space Force say they are preparing to launch a new X-37C from the Cape, about two weeks from today.” He shrugged. “They will soon have two armed spacecraft in orbit for the first time. Two weeks more and they could have three in orbit. If we weren’t at war up there yet, we soon will be, General.”

  Bondarev was quiet a moment. When he spoke, his tone was grave. “The Russian Aerospace Forces are no stranger to war, Tomas.”

  In 2017 Saudi Arabia signed a 110 billion US dollar arms deal with the USA, which included the purchase of an advanced anti-ballistic missile defense system. It called the system ‘Peace Shield,’ and when all components were in place by 2029, Saudi Arabia claimed to have the most comprehensive anti-ballistic missile defenses in the Middle East, superior even to those of Israel. Peace Shield comprised 17 remote-controlled air/ground radio communications sites fielding Lockheed Martin AN/FPS-117 long-range phased array, 3-dimensional air search radars and six portable Northrop-Grumman AN/TPS-43 3-dimensional tactical air search radar units. At the pointy end of these search and track systems were a Raytheon Improved HAWK air defense missile system, a Raytheon MIM-104 Patriot air defense missile system, Oerlikon Contraves Skyguard 35mm Twin Cannon Short Range air defense systems, and a truck-mounted Lockheed Martin Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile defense system.

  Still, the Saudis were not satisfied, especially as Iran got closer and closer to becoming a nuclear power. They had ground-based systems for intercepting missiles, but radar systems could be easily targeted. Mobile launchers could be attacked by cruise missiles or from the air. Peace Shield lacked a fallback air-to-space interception capability. In 2025, three years before Iran conducted its first successful nuclear weapons test, Saudi Arabia purchased the intellectual rights to the Vought Aerospace ASM-135 anti-satellite missile – a technology the US had abandoned in the early 1990s. A two-stage missile that could be fired from under the centerline of one of the newer Saudi F-15SA aircraft, it was a proven hit-to-kill missile with an infrared homing seeker that could operate independently of any ground signal, so that even if a THAAD missile interception failed, or the rest of the Peace Shield network was destroyed, the Saudis had a viable high-altitude intercept fallback option.

  After forty years of improvements to the avionics of the F-15 and with the assistance of a French aerospace company, by 2033 Saudi Arabia had ten of the ASM-135-armed F-15s in the field. Two patrolled the air over Saudi Arabia at all times, each armed with one of the 2 million US dollar missiles which Saudi Arabia called Sahm, or ‘Arrow.’

  Captain Amir Alakeel regarded the duty of escorting the Sahm-armed F-15s as possibly one of the most boring peacetime duties any fighter pilot could be assigned. And after the last few weeks of tensions, culminating in his successful attack on the Iranian frigate Sahand, such patrols were a complete anti-climax even in a time of armed conflict.

  ‘Armed confli
ct.’ War by any other name. But Iran and Saudi Arabia had not declared war, and diplomats of a dozen nations were being kept busy to avoid the conflict escalating, while it seemed to Alakeel that Russia was doing everything in its power to do the opposite. In addition to the fighter aircraft it had positioned in Egypt and Iran, and already based in Syria, Alakeel had learned this morning that Russia had just announced it would be sending the landing ship Azov, escorted by two Grigorovich guided missile frigates from its Black Sea fleet, into a Persian Gulf already teeming with Saudi, Iranian, US, British and European warships, all of which were ostensibly there to ‘protect their national interests’ by escorting merchant shipping through the Straits of Hormuz.

  The Azov was not a ship you would use to protect merchant shipping. It was a ship you would use to invade a neighboring country. Its NATO designation was ‘LST’ or Landing Ship Tank. Built in Poland and delivered to Russia in the 1990s, a Rapoucha II-class LST like the Azov could transport 12 troop carriers or three main battle tanks, 400 troops, or 500 tons of cargo. Several would be needed to support a full-scale invasion of Saudi Arabia by Iran, but that was exactly what Russia had done during the Syrian conflict. Sending the Azov into the Gulf at a time when Iran was speaking of obliterating Saudi Arabia with nuclear fire was an unmistakable political signal – Iran had the biggest standing army in the Middle East, and repositioning the Azov said Russia would be there to transport it if needed.

  Sending it into the Gulf in the company of two of the newer Grigorovich missile frigates was also a signal that Russia did not intend to see the Azov attacked in the way the Sahand had been. The Grigorovich was equipped with the latest Fregat M3M anti-drone optimized air-search radar system, and bristling with close-in weapons systems ranging from multiple six-barreled 20mm rotary cannons to man-portable data-linked Verba anti-air missiles ideal for engaging small low-flying targets.