Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (14 page)

           
“There it is,
Skipper.” Saint-Michael maneuvered himself around to the screen and anchored
himself on the Velcro carpeting.

           
It was an
Agena-Three cargo spacecraft, one of the small fleet of unmanned modules used
to resupply the American and European space platforms. This one had been fitted
with detection-and-analysis equipment as well as sensors to record laser hits
made against it. The Skybolt computer had already been programmed to consider
this Agena “hostile.” For the next three hours the Agena would follow a track
similar to the track a Soviet ICBM would follow from launch to impact in the
United
States
.

           
“Altitude?”

           
“Five
hundred on the nose.”
Jefferson
pointed to the object’s
flight data readout, which had just appeared
.“
We
should be picking up its identification beacon any sec—” An extra three lines
of data printed themselves just under the flight data block, identifying the
newcomer as an Agena-Three unmanned spacecraft launched from Vandenburg and
belonging to the United States Space Command. The information remained on the
screen for three seconds,
then
disappeared as the
computer squelched off the identified.

           
“Bring it
back,” Saint-Michael said.
Jefferson
punched two buttons
on his keyboard, rolled a cursor over to the spot where the blip had been and
pushed a button. The Agena’s blip and data block returned.

           
“Skybolt
hasn’t keyed on it yet?” Saint-Michael asked.

           
“Negative.”

           
“Maybe it
squelched it out.”

           
“Skybolt
doesn’t squelch out any targets,” Colonel Walker reminded Saint-Michael. “It’s
supposed to track and evaluate everything detected by the SBR. If it’s
considered hostile, it’s supposed to act.”

           
“Maybe
Skybolt wasn’t reprogrammed to consider it a hostile,” a technician, Sean
Kelly, said.

           
“Or maybe
Skybolt is screwing up,” Saint-Michael said.
Jefferson
nodded in agreement,
then
keyed his interphone mike.

           
“Skybolt,
this is Control
. .

 
         
Saint-Michael grasped his shoulder.
“Don’t, Jake. Let’s see what Skybolt does.”

           
“Go ahead,
Control,” Ann replied.

           
Jefferson
looked at Saint-Michael, then at
Walker
.
Walker
shrugged, silently deferring
to his commanding officer. “Disregard,”
Jefferson
said,
and clicked off his mike.

           
The group
watched as the Agena spacecraft marched across the screen. The SBR tracked it
easily.

           
“Still
nothing?” Saint-Michael asked.

           
“Not yet,”
Jefferson
said.
“Target on course.
Thirty seconds to midcourse
transition....”

           
Suddenly
the station’s warning horn blared, crowed three times; then a high-pitched
computer-synthesized voice announced: “Attention on the station. Tracking hostile
contact. Tracking hostile contact.”

           
“About
thirty seconds late, but it finally found it,”
Walker
said.

           
“Skybolt
transmitting warning message to Falcon Space Command headquarters, sir,” the
communications officer reported. A pause, then: “Falcon acknowledges.”

           
“So we have
a machine fighting our battles for us,” Saint-Michael muttered. “Damn thing
even makes radio calls.”

           
“Attention
on the station”—the computerized voice. “Impact prediction on hostile contact.
Impact prediction on hostile contact.”

           
“It’s
finally figured out what’s going on,” Saint-Michael said. “Well, let’s see how
well it reacts.”

           
“Coming up
on midcourse transition,”
Jefferson
reported. “Thirty
seconds to simulated warhead-bus separation.”

           
The Agena
would not actually release any warheads, but the spacecraft’s orbit had been
sequenced like a real ICBM to monitor Sky- bolt’s performance. The goal was to
destroy the ICBM as early as possible, either in its very vulnerable boost
phase or at the latest at the apogee—the ICBM bus’s highest altitude in its
ballistic flight path. Once past apogee the target would become increasingly
difficult to hit.

           
“Skybolt
had better damn hurry,”
Walker
said. “The thing will MIRV any second....”

           
Abruptly
every light aboard
Silver
Tower
dimmed. The station’s backup power systems snapped on. Warning horns blared.

           
“MHD
reactor activated,” someone in the command module called out.

           
“Skybolt’s
not tracking the Agena,”
Jefferson
reported. He checked
his instruments, squinting in the sudden gloom of the command module. “Still
not tracking....”

           
The rest of
his sentence was lost in a deafening blast. It was as if a huge bolt of
lightning had just burst directly beneath them. The entire command module felt
warm, and flesh crawled.

           
“Laser firing
Jefferson shouted. “Firing
... again ... again ... still firing... !”

           
Walker
grasped a handhold—although the station did not move, the sudden burst of
energy surging through the station made it feel as if the whole
five-hundred-ton facility was cartwheeling. “Skybolt’s still not tracking the
target,” he shouted. “It’s firing, but not at the Agena.”

           
Saint-Michael
swung around to another technician near the connecting hatch to the research
module. “Any hits, Bayles?”

           
The tech
shook his head. “Clean misses. Sensors not recording any energy levels at all.”

           
“Damn.
Discharge inhibit,” Saint-Michael ordered. Immediately, the crackle of
electricity and the sound of lightning ceased. Slowly the cabin lights returned
to normal.

           
Saint-Michael
put a finger on his mike button, expecting the next call....

           
“Control,
this is Skybolt,” Ann said over the interphone. “The laser’s being inhibited in
your section. Check your controls.”

           
“I ordered
the stop,” Saint-Michael said.

           
“Why?”

           
“Because it
wasn’t hitting anything.”

           
Silence.
Saint-Michael watched his crewmen slowly relaxing from the tumult of Skybolt’s
first bursts and the multiple alarms it had set off. “Station check,” he said,
forcibly trying to control his own accelerated breathing.

           
“Skybolt is
ready for another series,” Ann reported.

           
“Agena
target is well past MIRV transition,” technician Kelly said. “It’ll go out of
range in sixty seconds.”

           
“Let’s wait
until the second orbit, Ann,” Saint-Michael said. The techs in the command
module showed they agreed with the decision by wiping sweat from foreheads and
reaching for water bottles.

           
“But, sir—”

           
“The target
is almost out of SBR range. You’ll get another chance soon.”

           
A long
pause, then: “I’m clearing off, Control.”
Walker
looked over at his commander and smiled.

 
         
“She didn’t sound happy,”
Walker
said.

           
“I’m not
celebrating, either. God, I didn’t know that thing made so much racket. Did we
sustain any damage from the power drop?”
Walker
checked with the four techs in the command module. “No damage, sir. I didn’t
expect that drop either, but it makes sense. The MHD reactor needs a big jolt
to get started.”

           
“But not
from the main station batteries,” Wayne Marks put in. “Skybolt’s battery is
charged from the solar arrays, but it’s supposed to cut off before MHD ignition.”

           
“Can the
voltage spike suppressors handle it?”

           
“I don’t
see why not. I’ll check everything out before the next test series.”

           
Saint-Michael
nodded and maneuvered over to the Agena-monitor- ing panel. “I really would’ve
been happier if the laser had hit its target     ”

           
At which
point Ann entered the command center and without a word to either Saint-Michael
or Walker, reached across
Jefferson
’s shoulder and
punched up the target-sensor summary on his console.

           
“Where’s
the hit summary?” She scrolled through the timed readouts,
then
turned on
Jefferson
. “I
said,
where are the hit records?”

           
“That’s
it, Ann,” Saint-Michael said. “Skybolt didn’t hit the target.”

           
“What the
hell do you mean?”

           
“I mean, it
didn’t hit. Skybolt never even tracked the target. It spotted it thirty seconds
after it appeared on the SBR, but it never locked on.”

           
“But it
fired.
Thirty pulses, seventy-five
millisecond bursts, one hundred kilowatts on the
dot”

           
“Ann....”

           
“Skybolt
can’t fire unless it’s tracking a target. It announced detection. It projected
the flight path. It computed the track and fired....”

           
“But it
never locked on,”
Walker
insisted.
“The skipper inhibited discharge when he was told Skybolt wasn’t tracking and
that no hits were detected. That’s a proper precaution, you’ve got to admit.”

           
Ann punched
a few more pages on the computer screen, finally convinced herself they were
right. “I don’t understand. Everything checked out. The laser worked
perfectly....” She turned to Saint-Michael. “Well, we’ll try it again in forty
minutes. We’ll nail it for sure this time.”

           
Saint-Michael
nodded. “But I’ll keep the beam inhibit on until we see that Skybolt has locked
onto the target.”

 
         
“That’s
really not necessary, sir.”

           
“Ann, I
can’t allow that laser to fire into space indiscriminately. I don’t know where
it went. It could be a hazard—”

           
“A
seventy-five-millisecond burst of only one hundred kilowatts is no hazard.”

           
“At close
range it could be. There’s obviously a glitch somewhere. Skybolt is getting an
erroneous tracking signal and firing when it shouldn’t. For all we know we may
have hit someone’s satellite.”

           
Ann looked
deflated, said nothing.

           
“And that
power surge was completely unexpected,” Saint-Michael added.

           
“Power
surge?”

           
“You didn’t
notice it?”
Walker
said. Ann shook
her head. “It dimmed all the lights and almost took out all station power. The
backups kept the main power from dumping.”

           
“But
Skybolt has its own batteries. It doesn’t draw on station power at all....”

           
“Well, in
this case it did.”

           
“That’s
impossible....”

           
“Ann,”
Saint-Michael said. “What we’ve been saying is the truth. Skybolt didn’t track
the target until nearly thirty seconds after it appeared on radar. It never
locked onto the target. It drew off station power to activate the MHD reactor,
it fired without locking onto anything and it failed to hit the target.
Period.” He ignored her high dudgeon. “I’ll allow a second test firing, but
only after engineering confirms that our suppressors and power backups can
handle another surge. If they can’t assure me that this station’s equipment
won’t suffer any damage, the tests are over until the problem is corrected. If
we go ahead with the test, I’ll maintain a command-beam discharge- inhibit
until I see a positive target lock-on. If I don’t see a lock-on to the
designated target, the test is over.”

           
“General!”

           
“All clear,
Dr. Page?” Saint-Michael accented each word.

           
Drop dead.
“Clear,
sir.” She slid past
Saint-Michael and Walker and headed back to the Skybolt control module, the two
officers watching her half-glide, half-jump through the connecting hatch.

           
“She’s been
working sixteen, twenty hours a day on that thing,”
Walker
said. “I’d be pissed, too, if my pride and joy had just flunked out.”