Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

“Is this an orbital or ballistic event?”

“Can’t call it yet, ma’am. It depends on if they’ve got a third stage. It’ll be close either way.

Climbing through two hundred miles and still accelerating.”

“If this is a terr strike it could be they’re throwing a gravel bucket, ma’am.” Valdez commented.

A gravel bucket was a crude antisatellite weapon, an aeroshell loaded with ball bearings or buckshot or, literally, pea gravel fired into a crowded orbit to cripple or destroy commercial and research satellites. It had been a tactic terrorists had tried unsuccessfully a time or two before.

“Let’s view that as our best-case scenario,” Judith shot back. “Project the impact point of a ballistic trajectory given he doesn’t quite have the steam to make orbit.”

“Projecting…” Valdez’s voice lifted an octave. “Impact point somewhere in the United States.”

“That’s our worst case! All stations! Go to War Mode Three! Bring up all defense layers! Stand by to engage incoming!”

On an isolated spot on the western coast, within sight of the breaking waves of the Pacific, a great slab of concrete lay warming in the morning sun. Pockmarked with small hexagonal steel panels and surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain link fence, it appeared totally bland. Totally innocuous.

But, suddenly, dazzling red strobe lights began to pulse atop each of the fence posts and a piercing hi toned warning siren reverberated off the surrounding golden-grassed hills. Should any of the Vandenberg Defense Base garrison be in the vicinity of the slab, they would know to get the hell away with all possible speed.

In the still, crystal-thin air sixty thousand feet above the forests of Southwestern Oregon, a titanic shark-shape cruised slowly, driven by the huge contrarotating propellers at its tail. Well above even the wispy mare’s-tail clouds and the turbulence generated by the Siskiyou Mountains, the laser defense stratellite circled on its robotic sentry-go.

It was an unmanned robotic dirigible; fully three times the length of a football field… it had been hovering on-station for over a month with more than a month before its next recall and servicing.

Under standing operating conditions, it drew its power from the layer of flexible solar cells covering the broad back of its gas envelope by day and from the silicon accumulators built into its composite framework by night. Its mission, like that of the other battlestrats on the western point defense line, was to hold and wait for a call to arms.

Now that call had come and the perfect mirror in the airship’s dorsal turret glinted like a glaring eye, the exotic compounds fueling its single, huge, chemical oxygen-iodine laser stirring in their cells.

The object centered in the screen window was now above the Black Eye sat imaging it. The glowing exhaust bell behind it flickered and died, leaving it a tiny glinting cylinder against the stars.

“We have confirmed booster burnout… Target is no longer under power… Johnston Island and Hawaii both have positive surface tracks now….”

“Do we have orbital velocity?” Judith demanded.

“Assessing… altitude now two hundred and fifty miles… We are not seeing a third stage plume… Target is reaching apogee…Target is descending! It hasn’t made orbit. We have a ballistic event!”

“Code target Ballistic One! Do we have an impact point?”

On the lower half of the Alpha display the western third of the continental United States glowed pale pink. “Impact potential anywhere in the Western U.S.”

“Do we have a mechanism assessment? Is that a bomb or a slug?”

“Inadequate data to assess,” Valdez replied. “Could be either one, ma’am. Do you wish to advise Homeland Security?”

“Make it happen. Commence continuous data feed.”

That was one decision she wouldn’t be burdened with, the call on informing the populace. The grim truth was that an attack from space simply came in too fast. By the time you could tell the public where to run from and where to run to, it was too late to run at all. And a general continental alarm could trigger a panic reaction with a potentially greater and more widespread loss of life than the simple eating of the strike. But then Judith’s duty lay in stopping the strike in the first place.

“Commence scepter firing track! Is the senior control officer available yet?”

“He’s in Denver at the Bowl, ma’am. Not currently a factor.”

“Then it’s us. Advise the National Command Center that we are engaging the incoming. Go to real time on all data feeds! Scepter boards, when the Vandenberg arrays acquire, you may commence firing!”

The sun exploded over the horizon, the package and the dawn racing toward each other. The western coast of the United Slates edged over the horizon, defining itself through the atmosphere haze. The projectile continued its arcing kill toward the coast, accelerating once more, now under the insistent pull of gravity.

But with the opening of line of sight came the opening of line of fire and the intent focused search of millimeter wave radars.

“Major, we have target acquisition out of Vandenberg! Scepter flight one is up! Scepters two and three on Flash Green standby!”

“Very well. Kill the incoming!”

At the Vandenberg scepter pad, the chirping alarm tone became a solid five-second scream of final warning. Then a silo hatch blew away and a slender pencil shape lanced upward, thrown into the air by the compressed gasses of the Cold Fire launching system. A hundred feet over the pad, metastate propellants ignited with a crashing crackle and a fantail of shimmering white flame. At a thousand feet up came the thunderclap of a sonic boom as the interceptor rocket sliced through the sound barrier at twenty Gs, the shock waves blasting a scattering of unlucky sea birds out of the sky.

Two additional missiles followed at four-second intervals on the kill-me-three-times principle.

In a literal heartbeat they were out of sight over the western horizon, leaving three die-straight contrails behind to distort gradually in the ocean breeze.

The Alpha screen had gone to the western approaches tactical display with all position hacks eliminated save for the incoming hostile and the three scepters climbing to meet it.

“Impact point revision! Northern tier states and California coastal targets eliminated! Impact point somewhere in the Rocky Mountain States or Western plains area!”

“How many battlestrats can get a firing angle?”

“Oregon Bravo and Cali Alpha and Bravo.”

“Uncork ‘em and set a point defense track. Valdez, do we have any idea about what that damn thing is yet?”

“Negative. If it’s a kinetic slug or a metastate warhead, it’s pretty big. If it’s an atomic weapon, it’s pretty damn big! We can’t get a mass deceleration analysis until it hits atmo.”

“Let’s hope we won’t have to bother. Scepter impact in five… four… three… two…”

Aboard the plummeting projectile, a guidance computer made the final time and distance calculations of its short, active existence, unaware that it was doomed to destruction in a matter of seconds. A final command series was issued. A gas charge blew away the shroud panels covering the three primary projectiles. A second burst of CO 2kicked the three identical sisters out of their cradles within the warhead bus to go their independently guided ways. Also released were several chaff pads intended to confuse the antiballistic missiles the package’s creators had known would be aimed at them.