Stephen Coonts - Combat

He didn’t have to say that the media were also spreading their net. Television and the Internet were already full of rumors — the attack had been scheduled but called off for political reasons, that the entire exercise was just a bluff, that the U.S. had backed down because of the risk of excessive casualties, and others more fanciful. U.S. “resolve” had been shattered.

General Shen Xuesen stood quietly, calmly, watching the bank of monitors, but wishing to be on the surface. He had a better view of the operation from here, but it did not seem as real.

It was their fifth time, and he could see the staff settling down, nowhere as nervous as the first launch, but China was committed now, and her future hung on their success.

Everyone saw the short, solidly built general standing quietly in the gallery. In his early fifties, he’d spent a lot of time in the weather, and it showed. An engineer, he looked capable of reshaping a mountain, and he had Gongga Shan as proof. It was a commander’s role to appear calm, even when he knew exactly how many things could go wrong, and how much was at stake, both for him and for China.

Shen had already given his permission to fire. The staff was counting down, waiting until they were in the exact center of the intercept window. The ‘Dragon’s egg’ sat in the breech, inert but vital, waiting for just a few more seconds.

The moment came as the master clock stepped down to zero. The launch controller turned a key, and for a moment, the only sign of activity was on the computer displays. Shen’s eyes glanced to the breech seals, but the indicators all showed green. He watched the video screen that showed the muzzle, a black oval three meters across.

Even with a muzzle velocity of four thousand meters per second, it took time for the egg to build up to full speed. Almost a full second elapsed between ignition and …

A puff of smoke and flame appeared on the display, followed by a black streak, briefly visible. Only its size, almost three meters in diameter, allowed it to be seen at all. Shen relaxed, his inward calm now matching his outward demeanor. His gun had worked again.

“Hatching,” reported the launch controller. Everyone had so loved the egg metaphor that they used the term to report when the sabots separated from the meter-sized projectile. Designed to hold the small vehicle inside the larger bore, they split and fell away almost instantly. Effectively, the projectile got the boost of three-meter barrel but the drag of a one-meter body.

Speed, always more speed, mused Shen as he watched the monitors. The crews were already boarding buses for their ride up the mountain to inspect the gun. Other screens showed helicopters lifting off to search for the sabots. Although they could not be used again, they were marvels of engineering in their own right and would reveal much about the gun’s design.

The goal was eight kilometers a second, orbital velocity. First, take a barrel a kilometer long and three meters across. To make it laser-straight, gouge out the slope of a mountain and anchor it on the bedrock. Cover it up, armor and camouflage it, too. Put the muzzle near the top, seventy-nine hundred meters above sea level. That reduces air resistance and buys you some speed. Then use sabots to get more speed. You’re halfway there. Then …

“Ignition,” announced one of the controllers. Put a solid rocket booster on the projectile to give it the final push it needed. “She’s flying! Guidance is on-line, sir. It’s in the center of the basket. Intercept in twenty minutes.”

General Shen had seen the concept described in a summary the Iraqis had provided of Supergun technology after the American Persian Gulf War. American technological superiority had been more than a shock to the People’s Liberation Army. It had triggered an upheaval.

The Chinese military had always chosen numbers over quality, because numbers were cheap, and the Politburo was trying to feed one and a half billion people. They’d always believed that numbers could overwhelm a smaller high-tech force, making them reluctant even to try. Everyone knew how sensitive the Americans were to casualties, and to risk.

But if the difference in quality is big enough, numbers don’t matter anymore. Imagine using machine guns in the Civil War, or a nuclear sub in WW II. Shen and his colleagues had watched the Americans run rings around the Iraqis, suffering trivial casualties while they hammered the opposition.

So the Chinese army had started the long, expensive process of becoming a modern military. They’d bought high-tech weapons from the Russians, fortunately willing to sell at bargain-basement prices. They’d stolen what they couldn’t buy from Western nations. They’d gotten all kinds of exotic technologies: rocket-driven torpedoes for their subs, exotic aircraft designs.

It wasn’t enough. Running and working as hard as they could, they’d cut the technology lag from twenty to fifteen years. They were following the same path as the West, and it would just take time to catch up.

General Shen had seen the answer. He’d seen a vulnerability, then planned, convinced, plotted, and argued until the Politburo had listened and backed his plan. If your opponent strikes at you from above, take away his perch. Take away that technological edge.

Build a prison camp deep in the mountains, in a remote spot in southern China. Send the hard cases and malcontents there. The State has useful work for them. Watch the prisoners dig away the side of a mountain. You need a rail line to the nearest city, Kangding, 250 kilometers southwest. That had been a job in itself. Then add army barracks, the launch-control center, and SAM and AAA defenses. It had taken years before it looked like anything more than a mistake.

Meanwhile, design the “T’ien Lung,” or Celestial Dragon, to fly in space. And design a gun, the biggest gun in the history of the world, the Dragon’s Mother, to fire it. Such designs were well within the grasp of the West, but they were barely possible for China’s limited means. Her civilian space program had provided a lot of the talent, as well as a convenient excuse for foreign study and purchases.

“Control has been passed to Xichuan,” the senior controller announced. “Intercept in ten minutes.” A look of relief passed over his face. If a screwup occurred after this, it was their fault, not his.

Shen longed to be in two places at once, but the gun was his, and Dong Zhi, the scientist who had actually designed the Dragons, was at the space complex. Xichuan handled China’s civilian space program, and they had the antennas to watch the intercept.

Everyone in the room watched the central display, even though it was only a computer representation. Two small dots sat on curved lines, slowly moving to an intersection point. Then the screen changed, becoming completely black, with the characters for “Terminal Phase,” displayed in one corner.

General Shen Xuesen smiled. He had insisted on the television camera for terminal-phase guidance. Not only was it hard to jam, it made the result understandable. Seeing the target grow from a speck to a shape to a recognizable satellite had made it real, not only for the leadership who had watched the tests, but for the people who had to do the work, who fought the war from so far away.

The image was a little grainy, because of the lens size, but it also had the clarity of space. He could see the boxy, cluttered body of the American GPS satellite, and the outspread solar panels, each divided into four sections.

The controller started counting down as the image slowly expanded. “Five seconds, four, three, two, one, now.” He uttered the last word softly, but triumphantly, as the image suddenly vanished. A few people clapped, but they’d all seen this before, and most didn’t feel the need now.