“But what about your fiance and your—?”
“Boomer, I said, shut the hell up and fuck me, and do not stop until it’s morning,” Moulain said as the elevator doors slid open. “I’ll explain it to…to…oh hell, whatever his name is, in the morning. Remember, Captain, I outrank you, so that’s an order, mister!” It was obvious that issuing orders was just as much of a turn-on for her as flying the hypersonic spaceplane.
CHAPTER TWO
One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.
The command module was the center of activity aboard Armstrong Space Station, and it was here that Patrick McLanahan attended the video teleconference with select members of President Gardner’s national security staff: Conrad F. Carlyle, the President’s National Security Adviser; Gerald Vista, the Director of Central Intelligence, who had remained in his post from the Martindale administration; Marine Corps General Taylor J. Bain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Charles A. Huffman, Air Force chief of staff; and Air Force General Bradford Cannon, commander of U.S. Strategic Command and — until the details could be worked out by Congress and the Pentagon — the theater commander of all U.S. space operations and responsible for training, equipping, and directing all space combat missions. Hunter Noble — a little bleary-eyed after not very much sleep, both because of the time difference and because of Lisa Moulain — was linked in to the teleconference via satellite from the command post at Constanta Air Base.
Patrick and Master Sergeant Valerie Lukas were floating in front of the wide-screen high-definition teleconference monitor, secured by Velcro sneakers to the bulkhead of the command module. Patrick kept his hair buzz-cut short, but Lukas’s longer hair floated free on either side of her headset’s crossband, giving her a weird wolverine-like appearance. “Armstrong Space Station is online and secure, sir,” Patrick announced. “This is Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan, commander, High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Elliott Air Force Base, Nevada. With me is U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Valerie Lukas, noncommissioned officer in charge of this station and the sensor operator on duty at the time of the attack in Tehran. Joining us via satellite link from Constanta, Romania, is Air Force Captain Hunter Noble, chief of manned spaceflight operations and hypersonic weapon development, High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. He was the officer in charge of the attack mission over Tehran and the designer of the SkySTREAK missile that was used in the attack. He returned to Earth yesterday after completing a reconnaissance aircraft insertion mission over eastern Iran, which we will brief you on later.”
“Thank you, General,” General Taylor Bain said from the “Gold Room,” also known as the “Tank,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff conference center on the second floor of the Pentagon. As was the case of most officers in the post — American Holocaust United States, Bain was young for a four-star Marine Corps officer, with dark brown hair trimmed “high and tight,” a ready smile, and warm gray eyes that exuded trust and determined sincerity. “Welcome, everyone. I believe you know everyone here. Joining us from the White House is National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle; and from Langley, the Director of Intelligence, Gerald Vista.
“I first want to say that I’m pleased and frankly more than a little amazed to be talking to you, General McLanahan, aboard a facility that just a few short years ago was considered little more than a Cold War relic at best and a floating money pit at worst,” Bain went on. “But now we’re considering putting hundreds of billions of dollars into the next five budgets to create a space force centered on that very same weapon system. I’m convinced we’re seeing the beginning of a new direction and future for the American armed forces. Captain Noble, I’ve been briefed on your incident yesterday, and although we need to discuss your judgment skills I’m impressed with how you handled yourself, your crew, your fellow airmen, and your craft. I believe it was yet another example of the amazing capabilities being developed, and the future path we’re on looks incredible indeed. But we’ve got a long way to go before we take that journey, and the events of the past few days will be critical.
“First, we’re going to get a briefing from General McLanahan on Armstrong Space Station and his operational tests recently run, and Captain Noble’s incident over the Black Sea. We’ll discuss a few other matters, and then my staff will prepare our recommendations to SECDEF and the national security staff. I’m sure it will be a long uphill fight, both in the Pentagon and up on Capitol Hill. But regardless of what ensues, Patrick, I’d like to say ‘job well done’ to you and your fellow airmen — or should I say, fellow ‘astronauts.’ Please proceed.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick began. “On behalf of everyone aboard Armstrong Space Station and our support crews at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, Elliott Air Force Base, and Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, thank you for your kind words and continuing support.”
Patrick touched a button that presented photographs and drawings in a separate window to the videoconference audience as he continued: “A brief overview first: Armstrong Space Station was constructed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is the military version of the much smaller NASA Skylab space station, built of spent Saturn-I and Saturn-IV rocket fuel tanks joined together on a central keel structure. Four such tanks, each with over thirty thousand cubic feet of space available inside, form the main part of the station. Over the years other modules had been attached to the keel for specialized missions or experiments, along with larger solar panels for increased power generation for the expanding station. We can house as many as twenty-five astronauts on the facility for as long as a month without resupply.
“The station hosts several advanced American military systems, including the first space-based ultra-high- resolution radar, improved space-based global infrared sensors, advanced space-based global communications and high-speed computer networking, and the first space-based anti-missile laser system, code-named ‘Skybolt,’ designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles from space. The station’s space-based radar is a sophisticated radar system that scans the entire planet once a day and can detect and identify objects as small as a motorcycle, even underground or underwater.
“The destruction of our strategic command and control systems and ballistic missile defense sites by the Russian Federation’s air attacks against the United States highlight the need for a capable, secure, and modern base of operations to conduct a wide spectrum of vital defense activities, and Armstrong Space Station is that facility,” Patrick continued. “The station is now the central data collection and dissemination hub of a network of satellites in high- and low-Earth orbits linked together to form a global reconnaissance and communications system, continuously feeding a wide array of information to military and government users around the world in real time. The station and its supporting reconnaissance satellites can track and identify targets on the surface, in the sky, on or under water, underground, or in space, and it could direct manned and unmanned defenders against them, like a space-based multifunction combat control system.
“The state-of-the-art systems aboard Armstrong Space Station give it other important capabilities that complement its primary military function,” Patrick went on. “In case of war or natural disaster, the station can serve as an alternate national military operations center, similar to the Air Force’s E-4B or Navy’s E-6B Mercury airborne command posts, and can communicate with ballistic missile submarines even while deeply submerged. It can tie into radio and television airwaves and the Internet worldwide to broadcast information to the public; act as a nationwide air, maritime, or ground traffic control center; or serve as the central coordination facility for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The station supports the International Space Station, acts as a space rescue and repair service, supports numerous scientific research and education programs, and is, I believe, the inspiration for a general reawakening to the exploration of outer space for young people around the world.
“Currently, Armstrong Space Station hosts twelve systems operators, technicians, and officers, set up very much like the combat crew aboard an airborne command post or sensor operators aboard a radar aircraft. Additional crews are brought aboard as necessary to run specialized missions — the station has accommodations for another dozen personnel, and can be expanded quickly and easily by attaching additional modules brought aloft by the shuttle, the SR-79 Black Stallion spaceplane, the Orion crew expeditionary vehicle, or remotely piloted launch
