Airman Lance Irving enjoyed midwatches. It was the only time he was certain he would be left alone.
The USS
Irving saw the lights of the USS
Irving was reasonably certain that the operations specialist in CDC would have already noticed the change in the cruiser’s course, but standing orders called for him to report his observations. With all the electronics and link systems in use, the Navy still relied on the old Mark One Mod Zero eyeball for a sanity check on radars and computers. Irving keyed his sound-powered phone. “Surface Plot, Port. Aspect change on the cruise ship.”
A laconic “Roger, got it” came back immediately. “That cruise ship is the
“Yeah, I bet.”
Oh, sure, he was trying. He spent numerous hours on the flight deck, trying to pick up what was going on. But everyone was moving so fast in so many directions at once! And the aircraft — in his most private moments, he would admit that being around them on the flight deck terrified him. The stories of sailors who got caught up in the jet blast and went overboard, or, even worse, were sucked into the jet engines and ground up like chopped liver, kept him awake at night. The nightmares were becoming increasingly terrifying. As much as he wanted to be part of the gang, he found himself more and more often thinking longingly about the quiet office jobs on the ship — a disbursing clerk, a yeoman, perhaps an aviation supply rating — something civilized, a job that dealt with people instead of tons and tons of hot, screaming metal.
Irving scanned his sector of the ocean, his binoculars focused and attentive. Although he might not have been suited to be a plane captain, that didn’t mean he was a slacker. No, someday soon he would screw up his courage and tell the chief just how he felt about being on the flight deck. And, from the expression he’d seen on the chief’s face today, his confession might not be that much of a surprise.
Groshenko stood in the center of the ship’s command center, one deck below the flight deck. Much of the tactical chatter around him made little sense, but the calm professional tones were evidence of a highly trained and competent crew. Unprepared crews, like soldiers, either panicked or got belligerent. There was a peculiarly distinctive tone of voice that walked the line between tension and confidence that was the hallmark of anything done well.
Despite his personal dislike of the ship’s commander, Captain First Rank Bolshovich, Groshenko had to admit that the man appeared to be competent. A command was always a reflection of its commander, an infallible window into the inner workings of its most senior officer. Perhaps they would never be friends, but they would be comrades in arms.
Finally, the last checklist was completed, the last pre-operational test performed. The circuits fell silent. The tactical officer turned to look at Bolshovich. “All systems ready, sir. Request weapons free.”
The silence was palpable. Every warrant officer at a radar screen seemed to be holding his breath. Bolshovich let the tension build for a few moments, and Groshenko felt a familiar flash of irritation. It was one thing to take time to consider one’s decision, another entirely to grandstand.
“Weapons free.” Groshenko’s voice was pure confidence, and the bracing effect on the crew was immediately evident, the surge of adrenaline palpable.
“Weapons free, aye-aye.” The tactical officer turned back to his console and clicked his communications circuit. “Special units, you are weapons free. Execute operational test two three.”
Groshenko thought he could hear a hum build within the hull of the ship, but it was so faint as to be virtually undetectable to his untrained senses. He glanced at Bolshovich and saw him nod.
Two indicators on a small makeshift panel flashed yellow, then green. The monitor mounted high in one corner of the compartment flashed a line of light so brief in duration that at first Groshenko thought it was his imagination.
“Again,” Boshovich ordered. The panel lights flashed again, and this time Groshenko was certain he saw the spear of light on the monitor.
The hum stopped. The compartment was silent.
To the men and women who monitored her, the satellite was known as Betty Lou. She was located at an altitude of five thousand miles and maintained a geosynchronous position just north of Hawaii. She was an older satellite, one not equipped with some of the newer downloading capabilities of later ones, but she had been in place for fifteen years and had proved to be exceptionally reliable.
Just before dawn, Betty Lou’s sensors picked up a flash of light lancing upward from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was a blue-green spear, its beam tight, focused, and unusually stable. It pulsed just once, the duration measured in milliseconds.
Betty Lou recorded the event, buffered it, and squirt it out to a monitoring station located at Naval Station Pearl Harbor. There, the satellite data was digitally transformed into a picture, given a quick look by both the duty officer and a photo-intelligence specialist, then sent out to the numerous civilian and military units that relied on the data daily.
Four microseconds after Betty had downloaded the data, the laser pulsed again, this time sweeping a tight beam across her outer shell. The effect was instantaneous and disastrous. The beam of light smashed into Betty Lou’s solar panels, instantly disrupting the delicate crystalline layers. It heated up the metal casing of the satellite, destroying control circuits designed to work in the subzero temperatures of outer space, then proceeded to fuse the delicate, if antique, circuitry inside her. Within the first few moments of the light striking the pitted and dull hull of the satellite, Betty Lou was reduced to a chunk of space debris.
Just as Irving was starting to sweep the forward segment of his area, the sky cracked in half. An arrow of blue light shot up from the horizon and divided the sky into two equal parts. It seemed to go on and on forever, as high as the eye could see. The light stunned his dark-adapted eyes. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.
He grabbed the sound-powered phone hanging around his neck and depressed the transmit button. “Deck, port lookout, reporting a blue light in the sky,” he said, his words tumbling over one another. Just what the hell had it been? There had been nothing like that in his lookout indoctrination training.
“Port, we saw it!” a voice said sharply. “Keep your eyes peeled, okay?”
It had looked like one of the lasers he’d seen at a concert recently, except that the ones at the concert had been red and yellow. Had there been blue or green lights? He wasn’t sure. But it had been the same sharply defined beam, the same blinding brilliance. He keyed his mike again. “Deck, port. It looked like a laser.”
“That’s what we think it was,” the voice said. “And for future reference, the—”
The man’s voice cut off abruptly. There was a chorus of clicks on the line, as others listening waited for the
