Future Weapons of War

Sweat Pit.

“You should have a pretty quiet watch coming up,” Pederson commented, dialing an activity schedule onto a workstation screen. “Three up, one down. Arianspace is launching an Arian 7 out of French Guiana, a cargo transfer vehicle to the EU space station. Milk run. The Japanese Space Agency is also putting up their new Mercury lander. A sea-base launch south of Okinawa, weather permitting.”

“Maybe the third time will be the charm,” Judith mused, glancing down at the screen.

“Maybe, but I ha’ ma doots. And the University of Stockholm is putting an auroral research microsat into polar orbit. An air launch over the Baltic.”

“And the down?”

“Comsul Brazil has given up on that wonky telecom platform they bought from the South Africans. They’re bringing it in over the South Atlantic and I think they’re hoping the wreckage will land on Pretoria.”

“Any suborbital flights on the board?”

“Both Vegas and Palmdale are down with weather. Virgin Space has an Australian tourist jump scheduled. The usual turnaround on the Southern Cross run, Perth to Brisbane and back.”

“Right, anything else I should know about?”

“A T alert from National Security.”

Judith frowned. “We haven’t had one of those for a while I’m pleased to say.”

The decades-long Global War on Terrorism was winding down, not with a bang but a whimper.

The new and more sophisticated generation of Islamic youth was no longer impressed with the rantings of the mullahs and the last of the oil sheiks had better things to do with their dwindling petrodollar reserves than support radicalism. But there were still a few greybeards in the Mideast with enough hate and money to make trouble. As a point of greater concern, as the supply of suicide bombers had dried up, the radicals had turned to techno-mercenaries and their more sophisticated brand of death for hire.

“Anything specific for us?” she inquired.

“No specifics at all,” Pederson replied with a shake of his head. “Just the usual ‘spike in terrorist commo, possibly a precursor to some act or actions.’ You know the drill. Keep your eyes open.”

“Got it.” Judith came to parade rest and spoke the formalism. “Major Pederson, I stand ready to relieve the duty officer.”

Pederson stood and returned the salute with equal formality. “Major MacIntyre, I stand relieved.” He lifted his voice. “All stations, be advised Major MacIntyre now has the duty. Carry on!”

Pederson snatched up his laptop case and was out through the light-and-sound lock a few moments later. Judith settled herself in the duty officer’s chair, still warm from Pederson’s body, and logged the watch change, verifying herself in with a pass of her palm over the hand print ID plate.

No matter how often she performed this act she still felt a shiver. There simply was no more critical post for a comparatively junior officer to hold in the structure of the U.S. Defense Force. This had been a point of some concern when the operational format of the Sweat Pit had been developed.

But for routine watch operations, no rank higher than major was required. And in the first few minutes of a crisis, rank wouldn’t be a factor, actions would.

* * * *

Sadakan felt his pressure suit constrict around him as the suborbital stood on its tail and screamed toward the Southern Cross. The Voyageur had been totally gutted, the passenger seats, sound insulation, even the life support and internal pressurization systems gone, so that every ounce could be put into the payload. He didn’t even have landing fuel aboard; he’d have to glide in with a dead engine. But that only made things more interesting.

He was dead-on in the groove, climbing through fifteen thousand meters in full afterburner and at twice the speed of sound. The gridwork street blaze of Kota Baharu was off his port wing and the glittering line of demarcation between the Malaysian coastal villages and the darkness of the South China Sea was passing beneath the Voyageur’s belly. He knew he was plainly visible on the local defense nets but certain people had been influenced to not see his passage.

The fuel display bars on the methane tanks dipped toward zero and the booming thunder of the afterburner cut out as he passed through twenty thousand meters. The stars weren’t twinkling anymore.

They were running out of burnable atmosphere. It was almost time for full conversion.

Flame out. The jet engine stalled and went silent. The ballistics computer mulled course and trajectory and for the first time Sadakan heard the steering thrusters thump, supplementing the enfeebled effect of the control surfaces. The Voyageur continued to coast upward, losing velocity to gravity.

Then WHAM!

Hydrogen peroxide and hydrazine met in the gut of the rocket drive and Sadakan was smashed back into the pilot’s seat by the g-load hammer blow.

* * * *

A twentieth century military tradition that lingered on into the twenty-first was the large chrome coffee urn on the table beside the operation room’s entryway. Judith was just stirring a French vanilla creamer into her first cup of the watch when she received a quiet hail on her command headset. “Major, you might want to have a look at this. We’ve just acquired an uncoordinated target.”

Master Sergeant Nick Valdez was the senior NCO of the oh four to oh ten hundred watch and he held the seat of honor in the pit, the outer-ranked workstation immediately before the Alpha display.

Valdez had been at this job since Cheyenne Mountain had been concerned about airplanes. He was the wise old dog who was used to break in the new duty officers and that had included Judy Maclntyre. She slipped her coffee into the cup holder on her chair arm and dropped down from the central station, coming to stand behind Valdez.

“Call the target, Sergeant.”

“A High Sentry contact over the South China Sea, just east of Malaysia,” the senior systems operator replied. “Thermal flare assessed as a rocket exhaust plume on a ballistic trajectory, bearing oh six one five and climbing through angels eighty, just going hypersonic now.”

Looking up, Judith studied the red target box blinking amid the computer graphics’ continent outlines and the interweaving web of orbital tracks.

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