Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (16 page)

           
“I’m not
talking about orders from
Washington
.
This idea is mine. As I think you know, I have a good deal of discretionary
authority when it comes to the operation of this station. I use it to avoid waste,
accelerate research and development and make this station the most effective
military unit of its kind. At least that’s what I try to do. But it’s been my
feeling that Armstrong’s great potential has been going to waste. We spend more
energy on systems to defend ourselves than we do on providing a necessary
strategic warning or tracking capability for Space Command. Now we have an
opportunity to provide that capability, so I need input from you. Let’s hear
it.”

           
“It’ll eat
up tons of fuel,” Marks put in. He made a fast mental calculation. “It’ll mean
sideslipping the station... at about nine hundred miles every hour.”

 
         
“So?”

           
“So!”
Saint-Michael had to work to hide a wry smile—he had just activated Marks’s
mental microprocessors....

           
“Sir, it
takes three hundred pounds of liquid hydrogen and oxygen a week for station
attitude adjustments—which equates to approximately three hundred miles worth
of movement. You’re proposing to move the station nine hundred miles laterally
an hour. That’s an extra nine hundred pounds of propellant
an hour.
That’s”—a slight pause —“twenty-one thousand, six hundred
pounds of fuel
per day.
One- third of
a shuttle cargo flight full of fuel—one-fourth of an Agena-Three vessel....”

           
“If the
proposal is approved,” Saint-Michael said, “there’ll be a two-per-week resupply
sortie. An Agena-Three unmanned cargo module can supply us with four day’s
worth of fuel.”

           
“Why an
elliptical orbit, General?”
Walker
asked. “An elliptical orbit only gives you a look once a day at most. An equatorial
orbit will give you a look several times a day.”

           
“I did some
wagging on the computer,” Saint-Michael said. “A
one-hundred-and-fifty-nautical-mile equatorial orbit will place us over two
thousand miles from the recon target area. That’s the space-based radar’s
extreme range limit. I believe it’ll be worth the extra fuel to set up an
elliptical orbit, especially if it’s adjusted for earth rotation —an equatorial
orbit can’t be adjusted.”

           
Saint-Michael
stepped back to his chart, pointing toward the rectangle marking the recon
target area. “It’ll be dicey,” he said quietly. “Even without the threat of a
Soviet invasion of
Iran
or a U.S.-USSR confrontation, we’ll be orbiting over the worst possible place
on earth. We’ll be flying almost directly over the
Soviet Union
’s
primary antisatellite unit at
Tyuratam,
and the
Sary
Shagan
Missile
Test
Center
on
Lake
Baikash
, where the Soviets
supposedly have an active antisatellite and antiballistic missile laser—”

           
“Not
‘supposedly,’ General,” Ann put in. “A laser powerful enough to blind
satellites definitely has been in operation there for twenty years. The
intelligence reports are underestimates. The Russians have a functional
antisatellite laser system at Sary Shagan, maybe powerful enough to damage this
station.”

           
“There’s
little chance of that, Dr. Page,”
Jefferson
said. “This
station is heavily armored. After all, that’s why it’s called
Silver
Tower
. The titanium-silver armor is
stronger than—”

           
“Jake, the
nickname is sort of outdated,”
Walker
interrupted. “Only the original pressurized modules have the armoring, not the
add-on center beam, radar arrays, fuel tanks or solar arrays.”

           
“Right,”
Ann said, “that laser at Sary Shegan could slice through every unprotected
device like butter.”

           
There was a
moment of silence, then Saint-Michael turned to Colonel Marks. “
Wayne
,
could the electrolysis unit handle seven extra thousand gallons of water per
day?”

           
“Easy,”
Marks said. “The unit was designed for a station twice the size of
Silver
Tower
.” The electrolysis unit,
powered by the huge solar arrays, converted Silver Tower’s fuel—plain
seawater—into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Radiators, perpetually facing away from
the sun toward the minus-three-hundred-degree coldness of space, then condensed
the gases into liquids for storage, or pumps simply sent the gases into the
station’s four positioning engines to adjust the station’s orbit and attitude.
One unmanned Agena-Three supply tanker carrying sixty thousand pounds of water
from earth would be enough for satellite, shuttle, and hypersonic plane
refuelings and full station operation for a month.

           
“General,
will moving the station interfere with any further Skybolt tests?” Ann asked.
“I’ll be ready for another free beam-test in three days. If things go well I’ll
be ready for another Agena-Three live-fire target test in a week.”

           
Saint-Michael
paused. “Sorry, Ann, but I have to recommend to Space Command that the Skybolt
test be postponed for now. We’d be sure to catch hell for firing the laser so
close to the
Soviet Union
’s ICBM fields.”

           
“General,”
she said quietly, too quietly, “we all worked
very
hard to advance this project ahead of schedule after the first
partial-power test failed. In my opinion, sir, a successful Skybolt test should
claim higher priority than an unsolicited recon mission.”

           
“Your
comment is noted, and now—”

           
“Then I
have your assurance, General, that my objection will be given equal weight with
your own arguments when you make your proposal to Space Command.”

           
“As
commander of this station I’m obliged to include recommendations and advice
from all members of my crew. I am
not
,
however, required to give assurances to
anyone ”
He turned to Colonel Marks. “
Wayne
,
I’d like you to double-check my figures on the proposed orbit and fuel calculations.
Colonel Walker, get together with
Wayne
and set up a rough resupply schedule system using both shuttle and Agenas.” He
took a deep breath. “Dr. Page, please outline the delays in your program and
any potential problems caused by the delays.”

 
         
He scanned the faces around him. “I
want the data ready for encryption and transmission by tomorrow morning. I’ll
propose the station repositioning for three days from now.” He looked directly
at Ann, who didn’t blink.

           
“That’s
all.” The group filed out, a few talking briefly with Saint- Michael before
leaving. Ann made sure she was the last to talk with him.

           
“This plan
comes as quite a surprise, General. I thought we had made a commitment to the
Skybolt project.”

           
“That
hasn’t changed, Ann. I’m not canceling Skybolt. But Armstrong Station is an
operational military base, a tactical unit first and foremost. I’ve been
supplied with information about a situation that could develop into a direct
threat against the
U.S.
I’ve studied the available information and I’ve formulated a response for
consideration and approval by headquarters—”

           
“But what about—?”

           
“Ann, you
can believe me or not, but I’m telling you I will not cancel Skybolt.”

           
Okay, okay,
she thought. Better not press him any further. In fact, better try to cool it.
She had to live with these guys. And, when you thought about it, her future was
in Saint-Michael’s hands....

 
          
USS
CALIFORNIA

           
“Dammit,
Cogley,” Captain Matthew Page said, “I don’t want copies of
Nimitz’s
transcript of the satellite
messages. It takes an extra halfhour for them to relay the messages to us and
for Comm to type them out nice and pretty. Half of
Asia
could get blown up in a half-hour. We’ve got our own FLEETS AT terminal; I want
copies of the transmissions from that.” Cogley nodded and turned but Page
grabbed his arm. “Cogley, give me those messages you have. It’s better than
nothing. Tell Comm I want updates every half-hour.”

           
Cogley
scurried away and returned a few moments later to fill Page’s coffee cup.
“Thanks. Now tell Comm to start earning their salaries or I’ll keel-haul them.”
Cogley disappeared.

           
Page took a
sip of coffee, looked skyward. “See that, Ann?” he said, half-aloud. “I call
him other things besides ‘Dammit Cogley.’”

           
It was the
first time he had thought of his daughter since leaving
Oakland
,
and the realization hurt him.
My daughter, the astronaut.
She had been on the evening news half a dozen times and in the newspapers
constantly.
A laser expert.
Smarter, more famous,
better paid and certainly better looking than her old man.

           
He felt a
lurch from an errant wave and his eyes quickly scanned the digital inertial
sea-motion gauges and the computerized compensating equipment on the master
bridge-console. All functioning normally. The
Arabian Sea
could be a wild place sometimes—even without the interference of other people’s
navies.

           
At least
Ann didn’t have to deal with twelve-foot waves, he thought. They didn’t have
waves in space. He remembered reading about a “solar wind” powerful enough to
move huge space stations, and micrometeorites that could slice through steel.
It sounded much more dangerous than the sea.

           
He had
always wanted to ask his daughter about things like the solar wind and
micrometeorites but just never did. Funny—whenever he saw his daughter, he
never thought of asking her about lasers, or space, or physics. She was a
world-class scientist, one of the nation’s best. She could probably write a
book about the solar wind. But whenever he saw her, she was his
daughter—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

           
You’re an
old idiot, Page told himself. You’ve never let her know how proud you are of
her, how happy you are about her success. You see her maybe twice a year and then
it’s always “get me a beer” or “help your mother” or “when are you going to
come down to earth— joke—and crank out some grandkids?”

           
He went out
onto the catwalk and took in the clean, crisp salt breeze and the sounds of
waves crashing against the bow of his eleven-thousand-ton guided-missile
cruiser. Off in the distance he could just make out the massive outline of the
Nimitz
as it launched another pair of
F/A-18D fighters on a night patrol. The
California
was positioned as the “goalkeeper,” the
largest and most powerful ship cruising except for the main carrier in the
battle group. The
California's
eight
antiaircraft guided-missile launchers, two 127-millimeter guns, eight Harpoon
antiship missile launchers, four 324-millimeter nuclear torpedo tubes and eight
ASROC antisubmarine missile launchers were the last layer of protection for the
ninety-one-thousand-ton carrier and her thirty-six hundred crewmembers.

           
Dammit, he
thought, why feel guilty about speaking your mind? Deep down he couldn’t help
feeling that Ann had no business being on a space station or flying in a
contraption like the Space Shuttle. Both were dangerous enough without the
Russians screaming about them being a threat. And what was wrong with asking
for a few grandchildren? Ann was an only child. It would be nice to have a few
rug rats around after the navy dry-docked him in a few years.

           
Chief Petty
Officer Cogley ran up to him now and held out a computer printout.
“Message traffic from the
Persian
Gulf
, sir.”

           
“I’m not
asking too much, right, Cogley? But no. She’s gotta go off and play spaceman.
Big deal.”

           
“Your
daughter, sir?”

           
“What? What
about my daughter?” Page snapped himself back to the deck of the
California
and
Cogley wisely decided not to pursue whatever the captain had been muttering
about.

           
“Three
point ships from the
Brezhnev
battle
group heading south for the
Strait of Hormuz
,” Cogley
read. “Space Command thinks they’re exiting the Gulf for an early force
rotation. The carrier
Brezhnev
herself is hanging back for now. We’ll be able to wave bye-bye to them as they
exit the
Gulf
of
Oman
.”

           
For a brief
instant Captain Page’s mind registered the words “Space Command,” but he didn’t
make the connection and assumed Cogley was referring to the air force....
They’re all the same, aren’t they? he liked to say. “Thanks, Cogley. Keep the
reports coming.”

           
Dark clouds
raced across the skies, but Captain Page looked up and stared at the sky as if
his daughter Ann could look back down at him.

           
“Well,
daughter, for once I’m damn glad you’re tucked away up there....”

 
          
TYURATAM,
DZEZKAZGAN
PROVINCE
,
USSR

 
          
For the third time that hour
General-Lieutenant Alesander Govorov, rested a hand near a clear
plastic-covered control panel on the master control board. He was careful to
double check that the plastic cover was still in place, but he could not
prevent his hand from moving toward the three switches recessed beneath the
cover. Slowly, almost reverently, he tapped the plastic above the switches and
imagined the results.

           
Switch one:
Activation of an electromechanical interlock that absolutely committed a launch
and attack on the target selected by the tracking computer. Even if an
explosion or massive power failure cut power to the entire launch complex, the
Gorgon missile’s internal circuitry could still successfully process an attack
on the target. Activation of the switch also set off several warning alarms
through the antisatellite missile-launch complex and would automatically
transmit warning messages to the
Space
Center
headquarters at Baikenour,
to the Kremlin, and to several alternate command and control centers throughout
the
Soviet Union
.

           
Switch two:
Fully automatic launch preparation. Final inertial guidance corrections, final
target processing, opening of the missile silo’s twin steel muzzle shutters,
retraction of all service ports, arms, and umbilicals, and preparation of the
twin one thousand decaliter chemical reagent vessels for the turbo-powered
cold-launch mixing process.

           
Switch
three: Launch commit. The four underground turbopumps would force-mix a sodium
carbonate slurry with nitric acid in a large steel vessel under the silo,
yielding huge volumes of nitrogen gas in seconds. The reaction vessel would
store and compress the gas until the pressure reached one million kilopascals,
then force the neutral gas into the silo. The gas would spit the
twenty-thousand-kilogram Gorgon missile nearly twenty meters above the silo,
where the missile’s exhaust gases would not scorch or damage the silo on
first-stage motor ignition. In less than fifteen minutes another missile would
be hauled in place and made ready for launch.

           
Govorov
could almost see the numbers on the computer monitor displaying the results. A
long first-stage bum as the SAS-10 missile plowed through the thick atmosphere.
A high-impulse second stage to accelerate the missile to orbital speed. A
third-stage orbit-correcting bum, followed by steering bums and thruster course
corrections.

           
Then, close
in. Acceleration to nearly three times the speed of sound—but there would be no
sonic booms: the missile would be hundreds of miles above the atmosphere in
space by then. Random maneuvers, some as much as forty degrees off, all with
the Gorgon tracking system locked in. Then impact, explosion, destruction. The
SAS-10 carried a one-thousand-kilogram high explosive flak warhead. Small by
any ballistic-weapon standard but devastating to an orbiting target. Without
the firmness of the earth to cushion or protect it, destruction would be total.

           
Good-bye,
American Space Command Brigadier General Jason Saint-Michael. Good-bye, Space
Station Armstrong. The pieces of your station will create hundreds of new
shooting stars every night for weeks.

           
But the
plastic cover remained over the three master-launch control keys, and the
numbers on the computer monitors showed exactly as they had been showing for a
month—Space Station Armstrong safely in its orbit, set up to watch Minister of
Defense Czilikov’s folly in Iran a total of sixteen hours a day, telling the
world about the big mistake the new leadership of the Soviet Union was about to
make.

           
Govorov
turned to the chief duty officer in the Gorgon launch control and monitoring
center. “Status of the target, Lieutenant Colonel Gulaev?”

 
         
“Unchanged, sir. Station Armstrong is
thirty-one minutes ten seconds from apogee. Speed and track, unchanged. We can
set our chronometers by it.” He turned to face his superior officer. “They are
not merely goading us, are they, Comrade General? They know about Feather?”

           
Govorov was
slightly taken aback by the question involving the
Iran
operation. Not by the fact that Gulaev, Govorov’s youngest but by far most
intelligent duty commander, had discovered Feather—he was exposed to as much
message traffic and strategic operational briefings as Govorov himself, and he
was a bright kid. But Gulaev, the grandson of one of the
Soviet
Union
’s most highly decorated World War II flying aces, had done
what few in the Kollegiya had done: he’d pieced together the inner workings of
Feather and
then
tied the movements
and capabilities of the Americans’ most sophisticated and secret military
device into the classified Soviet military operation. Gulaev was thinking
several steps ahead of most of the military high command.

           
“You seem
to know a good deal about Armstrong,” Govorov said, “and you are talking too
much about Feather. I would strongly advise you to keep your thoughts to
yourself—or better yet, do not have such thoughts.”

           
Gulaev
looked grave, but Govorov managed an encouraging smile. “No, the Americans
can’t know about Feather. The operation is too ambitious even for the Americans
to imagine.”

           
Gulaev
nodded, but his inquisitive face was stony as he turned back to his duties. His
question bothered Govorov. The Americans, he was certain, were using the
powerful space-based radar on Armstrong Space Station to maintain the longest
possible surveillance on the region? Why?
Certainly not to
watch a few ships in the
Persian Gulf
.

           
Always believe the worst and hope for the
best—at least that was what he had preached to Gulaev and the other young
officers in his command.
Time to get off your mindless high
horse, Hero of the
Soviet Union
Govorov.
Think like your young officers: The Americans knew or have guessed the
invasion plans. Armstrong Station has detected vast numbers of weapons, numbers
inconsistent with a simple exercise or with any resupply efforts into
Afghanistan
. In response they have moved the station
into an orbit with the apogee, the highest point of the orbit, directed over
the Soviet-Iran border. Moreover they have placed the station in a higher
eliptical orbit, which allows them to scan the
Iran-Persian
Gulf
area longer and places them a bit further away from any Soviet antisatellite
weapons. They are expending tremendous amounts of fuel and energy to insure
that the station passes over the same exact points on the globe on every orbit
..
..

           
“Lieutenant
Colonel Gulaev.”

           
Gulaev got
up from his chair and was quickly beside Govorov. “Sir?”

           
Govorov put
a hand on his shoulder, “Never be afraid to question everything and everyone,
Lieutenant Colonel. I know it’s not wise to question those in authority, but in
my command I demand it. It’s old fools like me that will drag our country
down.”