Dale Brown - Executive Intent

“Radiating now.” Lukas entered commands into her computer, activated her own authorization switch, and hit a keyboard button. Moments later, an alert flashed on the monitors. “Automatic tracking failed,” she announced. She grasped a joystick handle on the right side of her console and squeezed the slewing lever, which brought up a set of crosshairs on her camera monitor. Adjusting the field of view with her left hand while watching the monitor, she carefully placed the crosshairs on the target and squeezed a trigger. “Targeting lasers firing…COIL activating.”

Mounted below the pressurized modules of Armstrong Space Station, in the place where the controversial Skybolt magnetohy-drodynamic antiballistic-missile laser had been mounted, was a simple boxlike structure with several articulating turrets around it. Small targeting lasers shot from the turrets began tracking the incoming target, precisely measuring distance and bearing.

When the object was in range-about two hundred miles, or just forty seconds to impact-the main weapon activated. The structure contained the Hydra, a five-hundred-kilowatt Chemical-Oxygen-Iodine Laser, or COIL, a smaller version of the two megawatt COIL aboard the YAL-1 Airborne Laser and the AL-52 Dragon antiballistic-missile laser aircraft. Chlorine and hydrogen peroxide were mixed under high pressure, instantly producing highly energetic oxygen, which was compressed by nitrogen and mixed with iodine, creating laser light. The light was amplified by mirrors and optics into a beam and sent to a beam director and through an adaptive-optics focusing mirror, which sent a nickelsize spot of intense laser light on the target.

As soon as Lukas pulled the trigger to activate the COIL, they could see tiny sparkles of light around the target-but it wasn’t from the laser. “Maneuvering thrusters-the sucker’s maneuvering,” Lukas said.

“Stay with it, Seeker,” Raydon urged her. “Nail that sucker.”

“I’m not sure if I have a coherent beam without auto tracking-”

“The targeting lasers didn’t malfunction, only the main turret,” Raydon said. “You’re the tracker now. Get it!”

Lukas released the trigger when the computer told her the laser volley had ended; she had to wait ten precious seconds until she could fire the next volley. “Sure would like to have another COIL up here,” she said.

“We’re lucky to have the one,” Raydon said. “Get ready for a second shot. All personnel, brace for impact and report any damage to me immediately.”

As soon as the computer said she could fire again, she pulled the trigger and sent another burst at the target. “It has a pattern,” she said. “I’ve got you now, sucker.” Carefully matching the target’s gyrations, she was able to keep the COIL beam on target long enough for the laser to burn a hole in the target’s thin skin with just seconds to spare…

…and as the beam drove itself through the target, it broke apart and showered Armstrong Space Station…with a cloud of paper confetti, traveling at eighteen thousand miles per hour but causing no damage.

“Good job, Seeker,” Raydon said. Lukas safed the COIL and secured her station, then let herself go limp in zero-g, being careful to use a towel to wipe away the sweat before it floated off her skin and became both a nuisance and a hazard. “Telemetry says you had the beam on target for three-point-eight seconds. I’d say that would be enough to take down a real antisatellite weapon.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lukas said. “But I wish we could do an auto engagement one of these days so I could sit back and watch the Hydra work.”

“What fun is that?” Raydon asked with a smile. On the stationwide intercom he spoke, “All personnel, exercise target successfully destroyed in a visually acquired, manual-track engagement with the COIL. Inspect your stations for any signs of damage, secure from emergency stations, and submit postexercise reports to me as soon as possible. Thank you, everyone. Good job.”

“Midnight One to Armstrong,” Hunter Noble radioed from the XS-19 Midnight spaceplane, which had launched the target at the space station for the test. “Just want to be sure you guys were still breathing air and not space dust.”

“Successful visual-manual engagement, Boomer,” Raydon replied. “The confetti was a cute touch.”

“Thought you’d like it, General.”

Raydon switched the monitor at his station to the constant feed of telemetry he received from all of the spacecraft under his control, including the Midnight spaceplane. “Come on in to refuel and we’ll load you up for a return to Roswell.” Spaceport America, located at the former Roswell Industrial Air Center in southern New Mexico, was America ’s first private-commercial facility dedicated to supporting manned spaceflight-many of the supply rockets sent to the space station were launched by commercial companies from there. Because of its rather isolated location and twelve-thousand-foot runway, it made a good place to land from space without disturbing too many residents with sonic booms. “Hope you don’t mind doing another trash run.”

“Anytime, General,” Boomer said. “Any chance I get to fly the spaceplanes, even if it’s just haulin’ trash, I’ll take it. FYI, the major will be doing this approach and docking, so don’t be surprised if you feel or hear something hit the station in a couple hours.”

“Thanks, Boomer,” the copilot, Air Force Major Dana Colwin, interjected. Colwin was a thirty-year-old former Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber pilot and aeronautical engineer, and had completed military astronaut training only a few months ago. She still wore her jet-black hair long, and preferred Dallas Cowboys baseball caps under her headset to keep her hair under control in zero-g.

It would take almost two hours for Boomer and his copilot to catch up with the space station. “I’ve got a project I need you to do while we’re waiting to rendezvous, Colwin,” Boomer said.

“Sure,” she replied. “What is it?” Boomer called up several pages of computer routines that he had downloaded from Armstrong Space Station and sent the list to Colwin’s multifunction display. “All this? This’ll take me hours.”

“Nah. They’re diagnostic programs. When the first program finishes, it’ll direct you which ones to do next. The results all get beamed to the station, but unfortunately the computer won’t automatically select the next program to run, so you have to babysit it. Wake me when we’re five minutes out.”

“Wake you?”

“I’m going to inspect the cargo bay, and then I’m going to take a nap in the air lock.”

“A nap? Are you kidding?” But Boomer unstrapped, gave her a wink, then floated though the cockpit and entered the air lock.

The dark-haired, brown-eyed astronaut shook her head in amusement. “Okay, Noble,” she muttered, and got to work running the diagnostic programs. Hunter Noble always seemed so hyper during every flight she had been on with him, hardly ever appearing to need a nap-but she thought nothing about it and got to work. He still checked in every fifteen minutes as required, but she couldn’t see that guy actually napping back there. Oh well-spaceflight sometimes really takes it out of you, she thought, and Noble was by far the busiest pilot in the unit.

About ninety minutes later the intercom clicked on: “How’s it going, Colwin?”

“If you don’t mind me saying, Boomer, this is mind-numbing busywork,” she replied. “Tire-pressure histories? Hydrazine-container electrostatic checks? A monkey can do this.”

“If it seems like it’s just busywork, Colwin, you’re right…because it was just busywork.”

“Say again?”

“I needed you distracted so I could finish prebreathing and suiting up.”