Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

The lines of shivering football fans pushing their way into the huge, enclosed stadium saw a thin needle of bright light streak across the sky. A moment later the thunderous boom of the shock wave followed, rolled across the sky and shattered a quarter of a million dollars worth of glass across the Denver metroplex.

Some fans looked up fearfully at the faintly glowing streak against the vivid blue of the winter sky and wondered. The majority shrugged and went back to debating the odds of Denver over Memphis.

The last sister impacted in open farm country south of the Denver suburb of Aurora. Converted into a jet of plasma and molten metal, it drilled a hundred and fifty feet into the earth before spraying off bedrock, leaving a trail of fused glass behind, the heavy prairie soil absorbing its radiation pulse.

Mr. and Mrs. Roger Hablton, driving home from a church service in Aurora, had their Ford Bioboss pickup truck blown off the adjacent county road by the concussion. After receiving treatment for minor cuts and bruises they would be released from the hospital later that day.

The Alpha screen held an image being downloaded from another Low Sentry reconsat. It showed a snow-covered field with a circular, bare-earth crater punched in it, a dissipating cloud of steam and a silver pickup truck lying on its side in a ditch.

Judith Maclntyre didn’t try to restrain her trembling now, she just hugged herself against it, locking her jaw against the chattering of her teeth.

No one in the Sweat Pit was cheering. Maybe that would come later.

Sergeant Valdez took a deep breath. “We have an open ground impact. No explosive or nuclear event. No detectable surface radiation. No appreciable casualties or material damage.”

Judith lifted her head. “Verify the impact point with Homeland Security,” she was pleased with the sound of her voice, almost steady. “Advise National Command Center we are showing no further incoming on our boards.”

She forced her arms down from her self-embrace, making each finger straighten. “Tracking, do we still have a positive fix on the manned launch vehicle?”

Gliding a high performance delta without engine power was a major challenge, but Muhammad Sadakan had managed it brilliantly, at least in his own opinion. He came in over his recovery island, velocity and altitude fat, popping his flaperons to lose speed and hasten his descent.

He circled twice, then caught sight of the double row of chemical light sticks that had been set out to mark the runway. Swinging wide with the last of his reserve energy, he lined up for the landing.

The runway itself was another challenge. A military field dating back to the Second World War, it had served as a support facility for a copper mine for a number of decades. But the mine had closed and the Philippine jungles had reclaimed both the mine and the airstrip.

Its isolation had made it perfect for Sadakan’s employers. They had brought in the native work crews to reclear and patch the runway and the foreign specialists to refuel and rearm the Voyageur.

With his night vision visor flipped down, Sadakan floated the suborbital over the tree-fringed end of the strip, keeping the nose high with the canards. The wheels touched and he popped the drogue chute, pumping the brakes hard.

There was some vibration and a heavy pothole jolt or two but the Voyageur rolled to a stop well short of the runways far end. Men started to run toward him from the edge of the jungle and the trucks followed, the fuel tankers, the crane lorry and the transporter carrying the package for the return flight.

This time round he’d be dropping his load on the big Israeli nuclear power plant south of Tel Aviv.

Sadakan popped the canopy and flipped open his suit visor, taking a deep breath of the humid night air. There was no fear in the night. They’d be in and out long before the Philippine authorities would be able to react. His employers had purchased a generous quantity of slow on the local market.

The imaging on the Alpha screen had shifted, real-timed in from the Low Sentry that had just arrived in the sky above the Philippine archipelago. The hole over the Pacific was closing and they had full coverage back.

“The watch officer at the National Command Authority on the Gold Line for you, ma’am. And the complex commander. We’re still sealed and he’s stuck outside the Alpha gate.”

“Tell them we have an incident under way and to stand by.”

The reconsat was scanning in the thermal range. Its cameras showed a runway inset in the jungle with a group of men and vehicles clustering around a small delta-winged suborbital that glowed white with residual reentry heat.

“Sergeant, are there any occupied structures in the immediate vicinity of that airstrip?”

The image windowed back to a wider coverage.

“Nothing within at least ten ks, ma’am. They picked themselves one very lonely place.”

“That was very convenient of them,” Judy said mostly to herself.

“Major,” the voice from the communications station was insistent. “We got the White House Situation Room on now!”

“Tell them to stand by!”

Once she answered the outside world, her role in this crisis would irreversibly change. She would be just another link in a chain of command. The responsibility and the decision-making would pass on to the generals and the statesmen. But for now, for this moment, Judith Anne MacIntyre was still the person at the bottom of the Sweat Pit. She was the one who carried both the shield and the sword. The defender and the nemesis.

“Sergeant Valdez, do we have any attack sats in position?”

“Yes, ma’am, we do. Black KAT Able Spade Two-Five.”

Kinetic Attack Satellite Able Spade Two-five blew away its stealth shroud, its metastate sprint engine hurling it toward the dark surface of the Earth below and toward an isolated island in the western Pacific. The tightly packed swarm of kill darts it released were kin to the three sisters that had targeted the Superbowl. Only these weapons were no garage-made patch-togethers. These were the genuine article, swifter, more sophisticated and vastly more accurate.

They were also smaller, each dart weighing only ten pounds.

But there were two hundred of them.

The patch of jungle boiled and flamed in the satellite imaging. There was no longer an airstrip there. There was no longer anything there.

“Stand down from War Mode Three and unseal the mountain. All stations, well done. Resume the shift change. However, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest you all hang around. We’ve all got a lot of debriefing to do. Communications, open the channel to the White House Situation Room.”

Major Judith Anne MacIntyre glanced down at the cup of coffee in the cup holder of the command chair, the one she had drawn for herself several lifetimes ago.

She touched it. It was still warm.

“Now you’re going to meet the most important friend you’ll ever have,” the sergeant said.

We were standing far away from the main training camp. The ground was covered in patches of dry, flat grass, desperately trying to hold onto its green color but fading quickly to brown. Kind of like our uniforms. I rolled my eyes to look at my fellow recruits on either side of me. Right now our most important friend would have been a tall glass of cold water, or an air conditioner.

A sweat bead dropped off my forehead and past the front of my eye. I kept myself from wiping my brow; we were supposed to stand perfectly still while at attention.

“Do you want to know who that friend is?” the sergeant asked.