Stephen Coonts - Combat

“Are you watching it, too? I don’t know what we saw earlier. This one looks real enough.”

The experience of the launch filled Ray’s senses. Every part of him inside and out was affected by the sound, which had faded, and by the acceleration that continued seemingly forever.

One far corner of Ray’s mind said something about “time dilation,” but the acceleration pushing him down was much more immediate. He found himself struggling to take a deep breath, although he’d been taught to take shallow breaths. The mask gave him all the oxygen he needed. There was nothing for him to do during the ascent, and he forced himself to relax, to accept the weight.

Biff watched the crew and hated the acceleration. The physical sensation was familiar to him, but his mind was filled with the responsibility he held. Mission commander. He tried to take comfort in his training as a combat pilot, but the rules were different. All the rules. Not just movement, but sensors, and weapons as well. He’d drilled himself mercilessly in the simulators, never sure if it was enough. Now he’d find out. At least he didn’t have to pull lead.

Ray focused on the board, letting his body do unconsciously what he couldn’t tell it to. All the systems were working well, although they’d have to deploy the sensors to really check them out. They’d traded payload for time and overengineered the shock mountings. He had a feeling that would pay off.

Risking a small movement, he touched a switch on his jury-rigged hand controller and checked the tactical display. Two screens simultaneously displayed a side and overhead view of the situation. The Chinese intercept vehicle, marked TL1 on the display, was above them, but eastbound. They had launched to the north, into a polar orbit. Its high velocity would make it difficult, no, almost impossible, to attack Defender .

General Shen knew that as well. And there were other problems. He pressed his point over the link to Xichuan. “If we try to intercept Defender on the next orbit, the T’ien Lung will be out of our view for over an hour. We can’t tell what the Americans will do to it during that time.

“Instead, we should use it to kill another GPS satellite. Their orbits are fixed, and it’s got plenty of energy for the intercept. I’ll attack Defender with my weapon instead.”

“It’s our last shot,” Dong countered. “Shouldn’t we use it to kill a GPS satellite? Two kills in one day, both while Defender is supposed to be protecting them, will be even a bigger embarrassment.”

Shen disagreed. “Better to destroy Defender . We may have missed with the Long March, but that doesn’t change the value of the target.”

It was Shen’s decision to make, but he wanted Dong to agree. His people would now have to handle the two vehicles, although only for a short time. Although he knew they could, the general asked, “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Dong admitted.

“Then tell them to prepare. We’ll be firing in less than five minutes.” He raised his voice for the last sentence, and the staff in the center hurried to obey.

“One more thing,” General Shen added. “Tell Beijing we need to initiate the special attack.” Shen lowered his voice without trying to sound conspiratorial. Security was so tight even his launch staff didn’t know about it.

“Good,” Dong answered, sounding relieved. “Liang has been after me to use it since the first launch this morning.”

Jenny noticed it first. She ran the whole Center, but without communications, there was no Center. Consequently, she dedicated one of her displays to continuously monitoring the data links from dozens of other sites. These included command centers like NORAD and the NMCC, radar-tracking stations, and intelligence aircraft orbiting off the China coast. The Battle Center had no sensors of its own, but took the data from all these sources and created the global situation display.

The audio beep and the flashing red icon had her immediate attention. She called one of the controllers on her headset. “Carol, check on the link to Kwajalein. We’ve lost the signal.”

No sooner had the controller acknowledged her order than another link went red, this time the one to Pearl Harbor. Used to looking for patterns, she instantly compared the two, but could see no similarity. Pearl was a command site.

She started to detail another of her small staff to check out the link to Hawaii when a third one went red, this time in Ascension, and then others, coming so rapidly it was hard to count.

“Admiral, we’re losing all our sensors!” Jenny tried to control the panic in her voice. She started to listen to Schultz’s reply when Carol cut in with a report on the Kwajalein tracking station.

“I’m in voice comms, Jenny. They say the gear’s fine, but they’re under electronic attack. Someone’s hacking their controller.”

“That’s impossible,” Jenny exclaimed before realizing how silly that sounded. She paused, examining the situation, then suggested, “Their filters must be down. They’re supposed to reject anything that’s not encrypted.”

“They say this stuff is encrypted,” Carol explained, “at least well enough to get through the filters.”

“We’ve got another launch,” a different controller reported. “This time from Gongga Shan.”

Jenny saw the track appear on the globe and checked the sensor log. The detection had been made by an Air Force surveillance aircraft, one of several off the coast. So far they hadn’t been …

The globe, smoothly rotating in the center of the room, suddenly stopped, then moved jerkily before freezing again. What now?

Even as she switched her headset to the computer staff’s channel, Chris Brown, the head of the computer section, reported. “We’re being flooded. Someone’s sending bogus tracking data over the links.”

“The filter’s aren’t stopping it?” Jenny asked.

“Not all of it.”

Jenny walked over to Brown’s console and watched him analyze the false information being sent from supposedly secure sites. “Here’s the header data on one that got through. It’s good.”

“They’re not all getting through the filters?”

“No, about one in ten makes it.” He tapped his console, bringing up another stream of data. “This one has a similar header, but the encryption isn’t quite right, and it was rejected.”

“But the ones that do get through are enough,” he continued. “They force our system to chew on each for a while before rejecting it, and for every real packet, we’re getting dozens of these fakes.”

“Jenny, I need to know what’s happening.” Admiral Schultz’s voice in her headset was soft, but insistent. She looked across the open space at the admiral, who met her gaze expectantly.

“We’re under electronic attack, sir, through our tracking stations. It’s sophisticated. They not only deny us sensor information, but they’re piggybacking bad data on the links to bog us down.”

“How do we block it?”

She sighed. “I’ll have to get back to you, sir.”

Chris Brown had been listening to her conversation with the admiral, and spoke as soon as she signed off. “It’s completely down now. We just lost sensor processing.”

They were still setting up when Jenny called. The pilots, Scarelli and Skeldon, had opened the bay doors, then Andre Baker, the weapons officer, extended the laser turret above the bay. While the specialists readied their gear, Ray watched power levels and the health of the data link.