Finished with his duties some time ago, a dazed Captain Han stood to the side. He watched operations in the large Nexus Central Command Underground Station. Green-jacketed operators at various stations used touch screens. Standing behind them, Space Service officers cursed or stared fixedly at the TVs. Others spoke into receivers.
“There, sir,” an operator said. “If you’ll look up on the big screen….”
Han turned his attention to the Nexus’s big screen, tracking the flock of ASBMs approaching the invasion fleet. Red blips had ASBM numerals under them. One winked out, a kill by a SM-4.
No one cheered yet. It was much too early for that.
The fleet was a cluster of blue-colored blips that cruised just south of the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan Peninsula.
“Make certain the pilots are alerted,” the Air Commodore said.
Han noticed yellow blips. The majority of them circled the blue blips. They were Type Nine laser-planes on combat air patrol around the fleet. A few yellow blips moved away from the Kamchatka Peninsula of Siberia and toward the fleet. They would likely be far too late for the battle. The planes used short-ranged lasers, at least short as compared to the strategic ABM lasers.
“Where are the space-mirrors?” Han asked. “Why don’t we use them?”
A tech watching beside him whispered, “What was that, Captain?”
“Why aren’t we using our space-mirrors, bouncing our ABM lasers off them to destroy these ASBMs?”
“The Americans had the foresight to attack and de-calibrate the mirrors,” the tech replied.
Han nodded sagely. The Americans had fallen behind in the technological race, but they were still cagey.
More ASBM blips began to wink out on the big screen. That still left far too many. They would surely destroy the supercarriers, the heart of the fleet’s offensive power. That would end the invasion before it began. How would the Chairman and the Ruling Committee react to that?
“Why aren’t our Type Nine planes firing yet?” the Air Commodore asked.
“Range, sir,” one of the nearest operators said. “In another thirty seconds—”
“That’s cutting it too fine,” the Air Commodore said, as he stepped closer to the big screen. The Air Commodore arched his head to look up as he clenched his fists.
“Sir!” an operator said. “The Tritons are entering the atmosphere. The terminal phase has begun and the enemy warheads are maneuvering.”
Han didn’t know how anyone could make sense of the big screen. It was a blizzard of lines and colored blips. He noticed that lines stabbed from the yellow blips. The lines connected to the fast-moving red blips. There was less than two minutes to impact.
The Triton warheads with their semi-maneuverable vehicles and advanced guidance systems zeroed in on the supercarriers or anything that looked or gave the electronic signature of a giant ocean-going vessel.
High in the atmosphere, however, were the Type Nine COIL anti-ballistic planes flying combat air patrol. Each plane had a medium-ranged-powered laser, much weaker than China’s strategic ABM lasers. The plane’s lasers were chemical-powered as compared to the heavier pulse-lasers ringing China.
Each Type Nine was as large as a Chinese cargo airbus used to transport a main battle-tank to distant theaters of war. Each Type Nine used a COIL weapon: a chemical oxygen iodine laser. The beam was infrared and therefore invisible to the naked eye. A mixture of gaseous chlorine, molecular iodine with hydrogen peroxide, and potassium hydroxide fed the laser. A halogen scrubber cleaned traces of chlorine and iodine from the laser exhaust gases. The focusable beam was transferred by an optical fiber, and it speared through the atmosphere at the Triton warheads.
The COIL planes represented China’s entire fleet, kept aloft by tankers. The scale of the operations was immense and impressive.
The Type Nine COIL planes continued to stab their lasers at the last warheads. The SM-4 missiles and the COIL beams had destroyed ninety-three percent of the attack. Now, the few American warheads to survive the journey began to strike with fantastic results.
Admiral Ling gazed out of the ballistic glass on the supercarrier’s bridge. Something flashed down from the heavens. There was a brighter flash on the horizon. Ling stood frozen for a moment. Then he turned to a computer screen.
There was a sweaty, frightened odor on the bridge as the crew waited for life or death.
“No,” Ling groaned.
“They destroyed a carrier,” an operator whispered.
“Look, sir,” an excited operator told Ling. “The next one hit a camouflaged destroyer.”
The
Admiral Ling didn’t laugh. He was glad the next warhead had missed another carrier. Yes, the last hit was good for China and the invasion fleet, but not good for the sailors on the destroyer. They had pulsed signals, trying to electronically mimic a carrier. The crew had paid the ultimate price for their success.
A terrific explosion occurred nearby.
Stricken, Admiral Ling looked up. “Was that another carrier?”
“…no, sir,” an operator said. “I think the warhead hit a fuel tender.”
Admiral Ling nodded sickly, waiting for it to be over. How many more ships would the Americans hit?
There was yet another explosion, another massive spot on the horizon. Everyone on the bridge waited. Ling was finding it hard to breath.
“Another fuel tender, sir,” an officer said.
Ling nodded.
Then a horn blared. It was the AI Kingmaker’s way of saying that the ASBM attack was over.
“We did it,” the XO told Admiral Ling. The man grinned. “Soon it will be our turn to attack the Americans.”
Admiral Ling became thoughtful. They had survived with most of the fleet intact. Rubbing his stump of a left shoulder, Admiral Ling sighed. His fleet was headed toward the tip of the Aleutian Islands. The invasion of Alaska was about to begin.
“Professor” Stan Higgins checked his watch. He had ten minutes to talk to his dad. Then he had to hightail it to the National Guard Depot. The news yesterday about the Chinese Fleet had frightened everyone at school.
Stan sat in a cubicle with ballistic glass and a phone before him. The door in the other room opened. His dad wore orange prison garb and was flanked by a guard. Mack looked around in confusion.
It hurt to see his dad like this. His father stooped more and his leathery skin sagged on his face. The worst was his cloudy eyes and that his wrists were handcuffed. What was the reason for that?
Stan banged on the glass to get his dad’s attention.
Instead of gaining that, a guard in the visitor’s room told him, “Hey, don’t hit the glass. If you do it again your time is over.”
Stan hunched his shoulders. He waved to his dad. The guard with Mack grabbed his dad’s arm. Big Mack Higgins flinched. More than anything else, that put a pit of pain in Stan’s gut. What had the guards done to his dad to make that happen? His father was a brave man, not easily frightened.
One of these days, Stan would like to face off with Jackson, both of them with nightsticks. Jackson was bigger and might have more training with the sticks, but Stan would jump at the chance to have a fair fight without the law involved. Then they would see what happened.
His dad sat down on the stool in the other cubicle. Stan picked up his phone and smiled. The cloudiness was still in his dad’s eyes.
