Invasion: Alaska

target them during boost phase or in space during mid-flight, which could last as long as twenty-five minutes. Space-based mirrors high over China would help them shoot over-the-horizon. America also had a laser defense system. It would likely stop the majority of China’s ICBMs, if that day ever came.

Each country’s high-powered lasers also routinely burned down enemy satellites that attempted to fly over their country on spy missions. It was much harder for the Americans to snoop on China with recon satellites than, say, twenty years ago, when it had been routine. China also found it difficult to spy on America via recon satellites. One answer had been to launch powerful boosters to send the spy satellites into higher and higher orbit.

Captain Han had heard rumors about a Moon base. The Moon would make an excellent warfare platform against the Earth, since it held the high ground. It was much easier raining objects down on the Earth than sending objects up from the surface, especially to attack the distant Moon.

Captain Han had thought about applying for a berth on the new Moon base, but construction was still a good five years from the implementation stage. By then he hoped to be married.

“Captain!” the general said over the intercom.

“I’m working on it,” Captain Han said, lacing his voice with concern. He smirked. This couldn’t be easier.

The Osprey blinked red on the grid of his screen. It was no longer in the corner, but nearing the center. Over the center four squares was a target symbol. Once the enemy satellite was in that, he would depress a button.

He glanced at his timer. That should occur under five minutes.

After the minutes had passed, the general said over the intercom, “Kill it.”

Captain Han wanted to activate his microphone again and whisper one word: Patience. He was certain the general would not enjoy a captain telling him that, however. The general wanted the Osprey dead, didn’t he? Then he should let Ur-dominator do his work without interruption.

“Captain,” the general said. “The recon satellite is in position.”

Stung that anyone should tell Ur-dominator his business, Captain Han activated the microphone. “Respectfully, sir, this is an Osprey e7b3 model. It’s the Americans’ most heavily armored recon satellite. I do not simply wish to wound it, but destroy its capacity to scan.”

“It’s moving!” someone shouted in Nexus Command.

Nodding and feeling vindicated, Captain Han took a moment to glance at his favorite girl. Oh, he’d love to run his hands over those legs. One of these days—

“If it escapes, Captain,” the general said, “there will be severe repercussions.”

“Escapes?” Han asked. “Not from me, sir.”

Han didn’t know if the Osprey had a flee program or if an American operator now steered it away from him. In twenty-eight seconds, it wouldn’t matter. Given its flight path, the amount of fuel an Osprey carried, and its known engine size, there were only a few vectors that would make sense in its flight.

Therefore—Captain Han twitched his gloved fingers. The signal stabbed into space at the speed of light. The Red Thunder missile obeyed orders like the good robot it was. Han watched his screen. The red dot wobbled, seemed to veer slightly left, and then it fairly leaped into the center of his four target-symbol squares.

“You are mine,” said Han, as he blew through the gap between his two front teeth.

He depressed a button. The kill signal beamed from the tower in Mukden and into space. In seconds, the radio signal reached the box-like missile. Deep inside it, a fuse burned out. The delay lasted four more milliseconds. Then eight hundred and thirty-one kilometers above the surface of the Earth, the Chinese missile exploded. The four point three kilogram explosive expelled over ten thousand pellet-sized pieces of shrapnel in all directions. Fifty- seven of those pellets tore into the Osprey. Seventeen pierced the armor and destroyed the delicate recon equipment. The American satellite continued to exist, but as a torn piece of junk, unable to fulfill its mission.

In Mukden, fifty-meters below the ground in an old coalmine, Captain Han sagged back against his chair. A perfect kill—he’d done it again. He was Ur-dominator and no one could defeat him.

PLATFORM P-53, ARCTIC OCEAN

Paul Kavanagh didn’t know anything about the burning carriers in San Francisco Bay. Nor was he aware that high above him in Low Earth Orbit, a Chinese satellite-killer had just destroyed an American Osprey.

The effectively destroyed Osprey continued its orbit and would soon fly over the North Pole. Its cameras and radar would have swept over the oil rig frozen in the Arctic ice. It would have scanned, but not anymore. Therefore, the activity several kilometers from the oil rig was presently hidden from any American or any oil company personnel.

On the pack ice, Paul Kavanagh trudged in his snow boots. It was cold, dark and lonely. In the distance winked the derrick lights, the only manmade structure for a thousand miles. Wind blew across the bleak landscape, occasionally blowing dry snow like sand across a desert.

Paul wore a fur-lined hood, a parka and thick gloves. He carried a flashlight in one hand and used a radar-gun in the other, checking the depth of the perimeter ice. Today, he took a wide circuit around the rig. He searched for unlikely cracks or pressure ridges, which would indicate “plates” of ice grinding against each other. Grinding ice- plates built up pressure ridges just as the pushing continents had once caused mountains to rise into existence.

This far north, the ice froze hard and it froze thick. At first, it had been a terrible feeling, knowing that he walked across the Arctic Ocean. There was no land anywhere nearby, just ice. If suddenly the sun should appear and melt the ice….

It was a foolish but atavistic fear, nearly impossible to root out completely. It was foolish because for one thing, the sun couldn’t appear for months. It wasn’t even winter yet. For another thing, even if it would appear, it lacked the heat to melt polar ice. Well, a sudden solar flare might give the sun enough heat to melt the ice. But a flare that large would also burn out almost all life on the planet just as had occurred in the old movie Knowing.

Paul scowled as he clicked the trigger, aiming the radar-gun at the ice.

Red Cloud is giving me makeshift work, hoping I get lost out here. The Algonquin wants me dead.

Paul halted and blew out his cheeks in frustration. Hooking the radar-gun onto his belt, he slid his rifle’s strap from his shoulder. He carried an old M14 rifle, a relic.

“In case you chance upon a polar bear,” Red Cloud had told him.

Yeah, right. Paul would have rather carried a big revolver with heavy caliber bullets. He certainly wasn’t going to spot a white bear at a distance. What was he supposed to do, lie down on the ice and sniper the polar bear to death? A heavy revolver or a machine pistol to pump bullets into the beast, that’s what he needed. This old rifle was only good for one thing: punishment detail, which is clearly what Red Cloud meant perimeter duty to be.

Paul wouldn’t have minded if he’d gotten full pay, and if he could have stayed here for another four months. He’d been fined, working at half pay as he waited for the mechanic to repair the plane’s engine. At half pay, he hadn’t even made enough yet to cover his various expenses.

I didn’t shoot your friends during the war, Geronimo. Why take their deaths out on me?

Paul blinked in frustration at the ice. Of all things, it appeared as if Murphy was going to stay, but not him. Paul could hardly believe it.

Staring up at the stars, Paul stood there, surprised. The stars were beautiful. He craned his neck and stared, his gaze scanning back and forth, taking in the immensity of the universe. Slowly, a feeling of awe began to overtake him. I’m just a speck in the universe, a tiny mote crawling over the surface of a spinning rock.

His problems suddenly didn’t seem so big. Compared to the size of the universe, his anger almost seemed foolish. He felt small and insignificant. It was a bad feeling. Then it hit him, a terrible feeling of loss. It had felt this way the first couple of days after Cheri had told him she wanted a divorce.

Mikey…Cheri…why am I not at home with you? Why did we ever get divorced?

Paul Kavanagh shook his head. He wanted to start over. He wanted to get it right for once. What do I have to do differently? Where had his life gone wrong? Had it been before Quebec or after it? Maybe it had been in continuation school. Maybe it had been before that.