Vaughn Heppner: Invasion: China

“Let’s finish this,” Paul said. “No mercy. Kill everyone inside and then we demolish the place.” After that, he would radio a place in Manchuria and tell them, “Mission accomplished.”

Anna watched with awe and growing trepidation. The big screen showed a satellite map of China. The last PBW station winked offline. They were gone, all of them. Despite everything the Chinese could do, the powered armored Marines had worked as well as hoped, maybe even better. She prayed the men could escape on their lifters and reach American lines. It would be a pity if they died now.

Everyone down in the bunker stood and cheered, including Director Harold. She’d never seen him this animated. The Chinese no longer had any particle beam cannons to protect themselves. Well, she took that back. The Chinese Navy still had three battleships that mounted PBWs. Those weren’t going to stop America’s hypervelocity missiles, though, so they didn’t really count.

Was this truly the beginning of the end of civilization? If America used its ICBM arsenal to burn China, wouldn’t that start a nuclear winter, worsening the global cooling even further? This was terrible. Hong would launch his ICBMs in retaliation. He had to. Some of those missiles would get through America’s strategic defenses. The ABMs had never been designed to be perfect, just to stop most of the enemy’s attack.

Anna watched Director Harold. He lowered the fist he’d been pumping into the air. He straightened his tie before turning to his comm-chief. “Give the order,” Harold said. “Tell them ‘Code Linebacker Three.’”

Anna shivered. The end was near, very near. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

With an assault rifle in his hands, Sergeant Jake Higgins walked the perimeter of their defensive area. Destruction loomed everywhere he looked, miles of rubble, of ruined buildings. At least the oil cloud was long gone. That had been bad. He’d dug black snot out of his nose for days.

The sun appeared from behind a cloud. Jake realized it was going to be another hot and muggy day in southern Manchuria.

He shifted his body armor, thinking about taking it off for once. No, that’s not a good idea . The Chinese might bombarded them with artillery just for kicks or maybe to make sure they were awake. For the past few days, it had been quiet. But you never knew. He wondered when the fighting would heat up again. For sure, he’d like a break from it, maybe for another fifty years or so.

He heard a crunch of gravel, and the shift of a boot. “Do you hear that?” Chet asked from behind.

In fact, Jake did. He looked up, turning toward the American back area. Holy cow, would you look at that. Someone launched a big one, a sleek missile roaring flames as it headed up.

“Why’s it so near the front?” Jake asked.

“Who knows?”

They watched the big missile. The thing climbed fast.

“Never seen one that looked like that before,” Jake said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Chet said. “A missile’s a missile.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Nothing ever changes.”

Jake shielded his eyes from the sun, watching the missile climb into the clouds. He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that Chet was dead wrong about this one. The missile felt different. It felt… pregnant with possibilities.

He shook his head, and he shifted his body armor, beginning to scratch his chest. Just how long would this war last? With a twist of his head, he tried to spot the missile, but it was gone, going to whatever destiny lay in store for it.

The TRX-3000 Hypervelocity Missile Jake had seen lift off reached Mach 18 as it flew for its target. Chinese ABM radar arrays easily gained lock-on. Heavy antiballistic-missile lasers speared true, touching the skin of the TRX-3000. The laser systems failed to move quickly enough, however, to keep the hot beam on target. The laser slid off the fast-moving missile, unable to heat the surface enough to produce a telling effect.

The TRX-3000 continued on its flight path, too fast for anyone to get a real grip. Sonic booms littered its way. There was nothing quiet or easy about the missile. Speed, baby, the thing moved at the speed of final justice.

Panic raced through the Chinese Missile Defense network. They had to get this Mach 18 vigilante and the others just like it. If they didn’t—

BEIJING, CHINA

In horror, Shun Li watched the wall image. Chinese technology showed the ABM lasers as red light, although in reality they were invisible to the naked eye. The beams could hit the missile, but never for long enough to destroy the thing.

“It’s too fast,” the chief technician told the Chairman.

Hong paced back and forth before the wall image. The Lion Guards watched him, and Shun Li detected nervousness among them. Clearly, the guards feared a highly agitated Leader.

With a snap of his fingers, Hong turned around. His eyes seemed to shine as he said, “I have it. We must explode nuclear weapons before them. That will do something. It must.”

No one said a word.

Hong pointed at his chief military aide. “Alert the—” He frowned. “Who should we call?”

The military aide stammered.

“We must call someone!” Hong shouted. “We must launch nuclear weapons and knock down these missiles with the blasts.”

“P-Perhaps if we use tactical nuclear weapons—” the aide said.

“Yes, yes,” Hong said. “Find the locations of the tactical launchers and order the officers to time the nuclear ignitions so the warheads explode in front of the hypervelocity missiles. I can’t think of anything else that will work.”

“At once, Leader,” the aide said, tapping his console and sending the messages.

The TRX-3000 Hypervelocity Missile first launched in Daoyizhen, Liaoning Province, screamed for its targeted destination.

Antiaircraft guns put up a withering blockage of exploding shells, dotting the flight path with black marks in the air. A piece of shrapnel got lucky, striking the warhead cone of the descending TRX-3000. That destroyed the triggering mechanism, making it a dud nuclear warhead.

At Mach 18, the TRX-3000 proved to have excellent targeting precision. The giant missile stuck the generating plant of the ABM laser station. The impact blast of the speeding missile shook the concrete housing. It began a friction fire as wires and generating equipment began to burn with intense heat.

For the moment anyway, the strategic ABM laser system lacked power. It would take weeks of frantic work to rebuild a new generating plant. But it was repairable instead of an irradiated pile of rubble. The antiaircraft guns had saved the main laser housing, but it would be offline for quite some time to come.

A nuclear fireball from a different TRX-3000 obliterated the Guiyang Strategic ABM laser system. The defenses there failed to destroy the American missile. Thus, it too went offline, and it would stay so until someone built an entirely new plant.

“Ready?” Paul shouted. He’d opened his faceplate so he wouldn’t have to use the radio. The knee didn’t hurt so much now, as the painkillers numbed the agony.

He, Romo and others gripped an upside-down lifter. The Taiyuan PBW Station had ceased to function. They’d left it, backtracking to the landing zone, using markers to the dropped lifters. This was the last one.