Don Pendleton - Dark Star

“Can you set the SAM batteries of the Farm to do that?” Price asked.

After a moment Kurtzman nodded. “Yes,” he said hesitantly. “But we’d have to replace the blacksuits with a master computer, and that would take at least a week.”

“Useless then.” Brognola sighed, grinding a fist into his palm. “But we better send out the word about the overlapping salvos in case somebody else can do it. Maybe the U.K. They have a lot of automation in their defense systems.”

“Consider it done,” Tokaido said, already typing madly.

“Have there been any demands from these people yet?” Kurtzman asked, reaching for his mug. Upon finding it empty, he pushed away from the workstation and headed toward the kitchenette. “Any requests to release prisoners, transfer money to a Swiss bank account, get troops out of the Middle East, anything at all?”

“No,” Brognola stated. “And that’s the part that scares me the most.”

“Agreed,” Price said. “It means that these people are not planning to negotiate for anything, but simply seize what they want. And who can blame them? As of right now, nobody can stop them.”

“That is not quite correct, Barbara,” Wethers said slowly, leaning back in his chair. “I have been studying the videos of these attacks, and been running some rough calculations. They can’t fly.”

“Are you kidding?” the woman asked.

“Not at all,” the distinguished professor replied, pulling a briarwood pipe out of his shirt pocket and tucking it comfortably into his mouth. Smoking was forbidden in the Computer Room, but he found chewing on the stem highly inducive to the thinking process. “If the X-ships are using a standard LOX-LOH fuel, and we know this for a fact, then they simply cannot generate enough power to fly as fast and as far as we know they do.” He shifted the pipe to the other side of his mouth. “Which sounds like a contradiction, but is not. What it means is, they’ve somehow augmented the combustion.”

“Any idea how?” Brognola asked, feeling out of his element. He was a cop, not a scientist.

“Indeed, yes,” Wethers replied with a wan smile. “There have been some NASA experiments to increase the power of a standard shuttle engine by boosting the ignition with microwaves. Now these have worked in a laboratory, but failed on the launch pad. A microwave impeller can indeed increase the power of a rocket engine several times, more than enough to accomplish what we’ve seen.”

“So why haven’t we done that?” Price demanded impatiently.

“Because the intense magnetic fields would soon kill the crew,” Wethers said. “That is, unless there is sufficient shielding to protect them. But that would weigh so much it’d completely neutralize the boosting effect.”

“If you boost the engine, the crew dies,” Kurtzman said thoughtfully, starting a new pot of coffee. “So either the crews of the X-ships are all suicides, or they have no idea what the engines are doing to them.”

“This could give us some critical leverage to turn one of the terrorists when we find the people behind these attacks,” Brognola said.

“Personally, I’d rather simply blow off their heads,” Price stated. “But it’s more important to stop these lunatics.”

“How does it kill them?” Kurtzman asked. “Damage to the brain tissue, destroys the nervous system, or invokes artificial leukemia?”

“Leukemia,” Wethers stated. “Exactly the same as the technicians who work on improperly shielded power lines and cheaply built electrical substations, but on a much more intense level.”

“Really? How soon would it affect them?” Brognola demanded. “If we’re talking years…”

“At the levels of power necessary to boost a ten-story spacecraft, I’d say no more than a few days at the most.”

“At least that gives us a place to start,” Price said.

“Unless each crew only does one mission,” Wethers amended. “Then another team takes control of the ship…no, wait, that would be a logistical nightmare. The terrorists might have hundreds of refueling depots hidden around the world, but to also have each one staffed with a reserve crew is ridiculous.”

“Could the ships be fully automated?” Price inquired. “Computer operated with no live crew?”

“Impossible,” Kurtzman countered. “Good work, Hunt. Start looking into whatever would be needed to build the microwave…beamers?”

“Impellers.”

The man gave a curt nod. “As you say, impellers. Carmen, check into any large purchases of antileukemia medicine purchased within the past month.”

“I’ll also look for any shipments that have gone missing, or been stolen,” the former FBI agent added from behind the VR helmet, her gloved hands rapidly opening and closing files.

“In the meantime, I’ll access the logs of the NSA Keyhole satellites to try to find out where the ships first launched from,” Kurtzman stated, heading for his workstation. “If we can pinpoint their place of origin, that could tell us—”

Suddenly a printer set against the wall started humming and pushed out a single sheet of green-tinted paper. Changing direction, Kurtzman rolled toward the machine, but Price got there first.

“The FBI was checking the two American companies trying to build SSO transports and found only smoking ruins,” she stated. “The working models, blueprints, schematics—everything is destroyed.”

Brognola bit back a curse. So far, the terrorists were way ahead of them, with Stony Man playing catch-up and doing a poor job. “What’s the official story?”

“That each airfield was struck by lightning, which caused a wildfire.”

The big Fed grunted. That was close enough to the truth for the present. But pretty soon somebody was going to figure out the truth and then it would be chaos in the streets. “Were there any survivors?” he asked hopefully.

“Lots. As soon as they get out of the hospital, the FBI will debrief them.”

“I’ll want a copy of those reports.”

“No problem, I’m already in their system,” Kurtzman replied, the FBI emblem fading into view on his computer screen. “As soon as there is something, I’ll have a blacksuit deliver it to your office.”

“Don’t bother, I’m here for the duration,” the big Fed replied, going to the wall and claiming a spare chair.

“What’s the status of the field teams?” Price asked, glancing at the clock on the wall. “It’s been over an hour since we sent the recall signal.”

“No response yet,” the cyber wizard replied gruffly, looking at a submonitor. “Which means they’re either in the middle of a fight or have gone silent.”

“Or they’re dead.”

There was no possible reply to that, so everybody in the room continued with their work. But the air seemed a little bit colder now as the people pointedly ignored the clock on the wall, the frenzied typing suddenly sounding painfully similar to machine-gun fire.

Fayetteville, South Carolina

A cool rain fell across the sprawling military base, washing the red clay dust from the side of the stout brick buildings.

“Here we go!” a burly sergeant shouted, gnarled fists resting on his hips. “You have five minutes, then we leave without you!”

Bursting into action, the elite troop of Marine specialists dived off their bunks and scrambled across the barracks, grabbing duffel bags and yanking on unmarked jackets to cover the handguns riding in their shoulder holsters. There were no sirens to announce the intentions of the combat troops, only a small red light flashing above the exit to signal the call to war.

Through a rain-smeared window, the sergeant could see the brilliant columns of combat searchlights sweeping the stormy clouds, and he knew that a dozen radar globes were probing the sky far beyond the range of visible sight. The balloon had gone up only minutes earlier, but already the gate to Fort Bragg was closed and locked, a full platoon of armed soldiers in body armor standing guard, along with a pair of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The Bradleys were angled toward one another, forming a narrow channel too small for any truck or car to get through, and spike strips had been laid in case somebody tried to ride a motorcycle through or around the imposing the blockade.