“You don’t have to do this,” Paul whispered.
Red Cloud gave him a ghost of a smile. “We are brothers of the ice. Where you fight, I fight.” He turned to the captain. “I will don a winterized suit.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Bullard said. “What about you others? Do any of you have balls, or are you a bunch of sissies who want to wait for the boy-raping Chinese to come and squeeze you?”
“Are we walking out to meet them?” asked Paul.
“Not a chance. We have a few Marine choppers. We’ll use those to put you down at exactly the right spot.”
“I have one request after we’re done,” Paul said.
“Name it.”
“I want to use your radio to patch through to California to talk to my wife and kid.”
“If you’re alive after the little skirmish, you have my word on that.”
Paul nodded, deciding he liked the blunt captain. He wasn’t so happy about going back on the ice, but the vision in his head of Murphy staring out of the cat’s window didn’t give him much choice on the matter.
The pack ice high over Prudhoe Bay was at the extreme range of the ABM lasers in China, at least while using their protected space-mirrors. Those mirrors were situated over China’s heartland, thereby keeping them well out of range of all American weapons except for killer satellites. The ABM lasers had shot down every high-flying, long- distance GPS drone the U.S. Air Force had sent up in this region. It took time, however, for the Chinese to locate a newly-launched drone.
The latest GPS drone now flew at the edge of the North Slope, miles high in the atmosphere. Through passive thermal and infrared sensors, it spotted the hovertanks. They moved rapidly across the frozen Beaufort Sea as they approaching the Alaskan coast.
The drone’s remote-controller activated its radar to get an exact fix on the hovers. Because of the radar, it discovered the Chinese fighters flying combat air patrols to the rear of the hovertanks and the bombers farther behind them. The remote-control station was in Fairbanks, Alaska. The ice-age blizzard over Anchorage was less powerful here, making it possible to use the runways. The controller waited for C-in-C Sims to make his decision from the CP in Anchorage.
General Sims examined the data, he said, “This is it: the attack we’ve been dreading.” He lowered his chin onto his chest as he thought through the implications. When he raised his head, he said, “Launch the Reflex fighters.”
“How many of them, sir?” his Air Chief asked.
Sims spoke softly as he said, “All of them.”
The Air Chief swiveled around to stare at him.
Half the nation’s Reflex air-superiority fighters had been flown to Fairbanks. Fighter was a misnomer, as each jet was larger than a Galaxy cargo plane. Each carried an ultra-hardened mirror on the bottom of the aircraft, the
The primary function of Chinese COIL planes and American Reflex fighters was to destroy theater and tactical nuclear missiles during flight. The secondary function was to destroy cruise missiles. Lastly, they targeted enemy aircraft and drones.
The Reflex fighters lifted from Fairbanks and climbed into the atmosphere, gaining the needed height. Then the nearest ABM station was called and its giant pulse-laser readied.
The first battle for the North Slope began fifteen minutes later. A strategic ABM laser in Xing Province of China stabbed its beam into the heavens and reflected off a space-mirror. In seconds, it cut down the American recon drone.
Nine and a half minutes later, the American Reflex fighters struck back. The giant station outside of Fairbanks shot its ferocious beam off the first airborne mirror. Like a banking billiard ball, the laser flashed across the state and over the pack ice. The first pulse stabbed into the Arctic night and burned down a Chinese fighter. The second pulse missed, while the third blinded a Chinese pilot, causing his J-25 Mongoose to veer off-course. Those pulses caused a warning light to flash inside the first Reflex fighter, telling the crew that the mirror had taken damage. With each proceeding pulse-strike, the odds would increase of a burn-through against the plane. The ABM station was informed of this as the pilot banked the giant plane and began the long approach back to base. The next airborne reflex mirror moved up, and the sequence started again.
Unaware that the Americans only possessed a handful of reflex planes, the Chinese fighters on CAP over the hovertanks engaged afterburners. They hit the deck, jinking wildly and speeding back to base. It meant that for a short time, anyway, the hovertanks lacked air cover.
General Shin Nung shook his head as his radio officer informed him of the fleeing Mongooses, those that had been carefully winterized for fighting in the Arctic Circle.
“Let them go,” Nung said. Outside, the pack ice flashed past in a blur. It was dark and the stars glittered in amazing profusion. All around him roared a little over a hundred hovertanks. Behind followed thirty sleds with extra fuel, supplies and infantry. The formation was spread across the ice, moving like a winter armada of dark ships.
The hover’s engine-whine made speech difficult inside the vehicle. It was why Nung and his officers wore headsets over their ears and spoke into microphones.
“Sir!” shouted his communications officer, who watched a screen. “American strike-craft are zeroing in on us.”
“Of course they are,” Nung said. “It’s why they used their lasers to chase off our covering fighters.” He nodded. The Siberians had lacked such sophisticated hardware as the Americans possessed, but his tanks back then hadn’t been outfitted with such advanced munitions.
“Tell the troops to form up in a hedgehog formation and load their guns with Red Arrow anti-air rounds.”
Twelve minutes later, the American bombers made their charge, screaming across the ice from the front and two sides.
By now, the hovertanks had edged closer together by lance and by troop. Three hovertanks made a lance. Three lances made a troop.
As the Americans launched their air-to-ground missiles, the advanced defense radars on the hovertanks achieved lock-on. With the radars, the hovertanks used a new Interlock fire control system. It allowed twenty or more hovers to form into a single, anti-air defense, concentrating missiles, cannons and machine guns for attack. Once vulnerable to mass destruction from air, hovers and tanks created deadly destruction zones in a range up to 3000 meters. In lance volleys, 76mm guns fired Red Arrows rounds. The rocket-assisted shells whooshed upward after the American bombers.
There were hits all around. American missiles zoomed low and slammed into hovertanks. On the ice, hovers exploded into blazing fireballs, showering melting plastic, Kevlar, burning aluminum and bloody body-parts. Meanwhile, smoking bombers crashed from the sky. As it impacted, each bomber disintegrated into a mass of shrieking metal and splashed jet-fuel. The pack ice groaned as it splintered. Then red-hot sparks caused ignition so the fuel blazed fiercely, sometimes melting through the ice and exposing the dark water underneath.
Nung watched his screen as outer cameras recorded the bright points of destruction. Here more than elsewhere, the modern rule of combat prevailed. What one saw, one could kill. This was going to be costly. He struck his armrest. He—
“Sir!” the communications officer shouted. “The bombers are breaking off.”
General Nung sat up in his command chair. Was it possible the Americans possessed so few aircraft that they were unwilling to trade planes for hovers? On impulse, he lurched up to the commander’s hatch. Raising it, he shoved his head into the plastic-covered copula. It was colder up here, but the plastic bubble quickly filled with the
