Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

At one time such a fire plume could only have meant one thing. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, there could be a number of possibilities.

“Do we have a launch point?”

“Negative, ma’am. It was a midair ignition, either an air-launched booster or a suborbital. But there’s nothing on the boards for that sector. No microsat launches, no research flights. No tourist jumps.”

“Any chance at all it could be that Virgin Space out of Australia?” Judith knew the answer to that already but it was the easiest remote possibility to eliminate.

“No way, Major. Way too far north and way off sched.”

Which might not necessarily mean anything. Even with the latest of twenty-first century telecommunications at their disposal, there was still the phenomenon of the one dumb son of a bitch not getting the word.

This could be a suborbital operator making a test flight. Or a honeymooning couple with a spontaneous desire to see the sun rise from the edge of space or even a rich hobbyist trying for a new altitude record with his latest home-built.

But the South China Sea in the wee smalls of the local morning was a damn peculiar time for any of those things.

“How are we tracking this?” she inquired.

“High Sentry thermographics only, ma’am.”

“Let’s drop down to a Low Sentry and get a closer look at this guy.”

“Can’t do it, ma’am. We got a dead zone. We won’t have Low Sentry coverage over that area for another…three and a half minutes.”

That snapped Judith’s head up. The High Sentries were the big Distant Early Warning birds hovering in geosynchronous orbit twenty-four thousand miles out. They held the entire Earth’s surface under continuous 24/7 coverage. But they were limited to detecting major energy events like rocket plumes or large fires or explosions. For more precise intelligence, the Low Sentry reconsats, just skimming the Earth’s atmosphere in polar orbit, were required. But even the U.S. defense budget couldn’t provide for enough Low Sentries to cover every square inch of the planet up close and personally for every moment of the day.

Biting her lower lip, Judith studied the Alpha display. When one spent enough hours in the Pit, one developed an eye for the orbit flow. Without having to call up the available assets overlay, she could “see” this event was taking place at a moment when the United States had a hole in its overt surveillance of the Pacific Rim.

Judith became aware of voices behind her, the first members of the new duty watch were starting to file through the light and sound lock. That finished the equation. An uncoordinated target appearing at a time of minimal coverage and just at the turbulence of a shift change. If she hadn’t come in those few minutes early…Words taken from an old thriller novel put a chill down her spine. Once is happenstance. Twice is circumstance. Three times is enemy action.

“All hands! Stay on your stations! Do not, I repeat, do not change the watch! Go to War Mode One. Advise the National Command Center we are declaring a possible inbound hostile!”

At mach six and soaring through ninety thousand meters, the Voyageur’s rocket engine went silent.

Sadakan relished the ecstatic moment. He was in free fall now, well short of orbital velocity but approaching true space at the apex of his ballistic leap. The curvature of the Earth was readily apparent, and the atmosphere glowed silver along the eastern horizon, a harbinger of the dawn that was still far away for the surface dwellers below.

But he had little time to sightsee, no matter how inspiring the vista. He must stay precisely on the timeline. Reaching forward with a pressure-stiffened glove, he keyed the sequence initiator into the onboard computer. Aft of the cockpit he felt the soundless vibration of the cargo bay doors powering open along the spine of the suborbital. Clamps released and thrusters fired, shoving the Voyageur out from under its payload.

Tilting his helmet back, Sadakan could see the package driving away above the canopy in the starlight, a blunt-nosed cylinder with an exhaust bell at its rear. It was fully autonomous now and Sadakan could see it bobbling slowly, hunting on its gyros for its firing angle and finding it.

The Voyageur shuddered, buffeted by the gas burst as a broad bell of flame spewed from the package’s solid fuel booster. It flashed away, dwindling to the glowing dot of its engine throat in seconds, a moving star amid the fixed.

The on-board computer cleared. Its preset program had run its course. Now it was all back in Sadakan’s hands and he could see his destination rolling toward him from the east, the islands of the Philippine Archipelago, outlined like black velvet cutouts on the pewter sheen of the sea.

“We have a staging event!” Valdez reported. “We have a positive track on a second exhaust plume. Definite emissions variance over the first!”

Damn it! She had to see! “Do we have any additional imaging assets yet?”

Valdezlooked over his shoulder at his duty officer. “We now have a Black Eye with angle, ma’am,” he said cautiously. “Delta Spade Zero Niner has just come over the local horizon.”

Judy understood the loaded question in his voice. If she committed a Black Eye, she would be sticking her foot deep into major international mojo.

The Strategic Space Command’s stealth satellite fleet was a diplomatic sticking point for the United States, the cause for many a protracted screaming match on the floor of the UN. Many nations, primarily those who lacked stealth satellite technology, vehemently protested their use as an unwarranted threat to other nation’s space travelers.

The United States continued to launch the stealth birds while stolidly refusing to confirm or deny their deployment. But the SSC duty officer who “opened” a Black Eye without a valid justification would be falling on his or her professional sword.

But this was just the scenario the Black Eyes were intended for, to trap an enemy who thought he had a clean sky overhead. And there was something else, something her father had told her upon her graduation from what had then been the Air Force Academy. He had been old fashioned wet navy but he had known war, the genuine article. “Honey, you are in this job either to protect your country or to protect your ass. Decide now!”

“Stealth Control, go active on Delta Spade Zero Niner.”

Some two hundred miles above the Central Pacific, a black spindle-shaped object the size of a large SUV blossomed like a flower. Segments of its RAM composite shell peeled back revealing the concealed antenna arrays and lens clusters. Sensor booms and communications antennas swung outboard and locked and Delta Spade Zero Niner pivoted swiftly around its gyro table, aiming downward.

They could see them now, as visual images windowed up in the corners of the Alpha screen, the smaller projectile being pushed by a half dome of fire, the larger, sleeker vehicle dropping in a controlled fall back toward the Pacific.

“We have a manned suborbital starting an unpowered decent from the staging coordinates.”

Valdez reported. “Designating target as Manned Zero One. It looks like one of those new French boats.”

“Why am I not surprised? Get a lock on him!” Judith yelled across the Pit to the secondary tracking console without resorting to her command headset. “Stay on that guy! Get me his landing point!”

“Primary package continuing to climb under power along a ballistic trajectory,” an intelligence SO interjected. “It’s a solid fuel booster… data annex assessing target ID now. Exhaust spectrograph indicates a ninety percent probability it’s an Egyptian National Aerospace Hotep B upper stage. A commercial booster. Acceleration indicates a payload in the half-ton range.”