Invasion: New York (Invasion America) (43 page)

Gunther turned around in time to see the admiral stare in wonder at the general. The small man clapped his hands, and he strode to a communications officer.

“Put me through to Space Defense Command,” the admiral said crisply. This is an emergency priority message…”

LOW EARTH ORBIT

Fifteen minutes ago, THOR Launch Vehicle #3 used cold gas propulsion to deorbit into attack position. A regular rocket exhaust would have created a bright plume—a beacon—for the enemy to see. Instead, the stealth satellite maneuvered with a minimum signature.

Maximum penetration of hardened targets such as missile silos or underground bunkers would have demanded a nearly vertical attack from space. Ships were another matter, something much more easily penetrated than the other two types of targets. The THOR missiles could therefore attack at a much shallower angle. It meant the different stealth satellites could converge more easily from a variety of places around the globe. Major Foxx had calculated—or the targeting computers and his team had—the various THOR satellite locations and their estimated launch positions relative to each other.

THOR Launch Vehicle #3 had now reached its location. At the same time around the globe, other launch vehicles reached their places.

Data flowed into the launch vehicle from high-flying drones and over the horizon radar. The satellite’s computer relayed the targeting intelligence to the individual missiles, giving them their priority objectives.

Miniaturized onboard computers went about their tasks with high speed. The #3 Launch Vehicle burst apart. Sleek tungsten rods—fifty of them—separated from each other like sluggish wasps. Gravity tugged at the missiles and they sped Earthward, on their way.

The remains of THOR Launch Vehicle #3 didn’t know that nine other vehicles did likewise. Nor did the computer-run machine have any idea that a GD sensor finally found it. Seconds later, a laser generated in Iceland speared the empty launch vehicle, destroying it.

Meanwhile, the fifty tungsten rods of the destroyed satellite began their race into Earth’s atmosphere. They sped at the fleet heading for New Jersey.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Lieutenant Penner flew in the second wave of the great air assault upon the approaching GD armada. The first wave of fighters and V-10 drones engaged GD carrier UAVs, swarms of them.

“This is going to be tough,” Penner’s wingman said.

Penner silently agreed. Look at the number of enemy UAVs, a flock of them or a swarm of bees on the hunt. Missiles fired, four of them.

He released chaff.

US Command didn’t have many options now. To win, they had to destroy the armada. If they burned up the Air Force to kill the ships, it would be worth it. Penner didn’t want to sacrifice his life, but they had to kill the GD armada.

He had thoughts about aborting the mission. He didn’t want to ide. But he was a Canadian officer. He would go down fighting if that’s what it took.

Lieutenant Penner, in his helmet with its dark visor, looked around at the clouds. This was a beautiful day. Maybe, likely, it would be his last day. Under his dark visor, he smiled. It was beautiful today, and it hurt to think that in less than an hour he would be dead, fish food in the great Atlantic Ocean.

Trying to fortify his resolve, Lieutenant Penner and the airmen of the squadron continued to bore in toward the approaching armada and its swarms of UAVs.

GDN
BISMARCK

“It’s truly working,” the admiral said, with awe in his voice. “We’re killing their air force just as General Mansfeld predicted we would do.” He turned to Kaltenbrunner. “Mansfeld predicted the Americans would become panicked at the sight of my fleet. He said the Americans would hurl the last of their air against us, thereby aiding our conquest. I tell you, sir, for a landlubber, the man is a genius.”

General Kaltenbrunner grunted a noncommittal response.

At his station near the big screen, Gunther Weise’s hands had finally stopped shaking. He had settled down from the nuclear attack. It had taken long enough.

The Americans no longer launched ICBMs from North Dakota. Whatever their reason had been for launching, it was gone. Maybe it was as the admiral said. The enemy had panicked. The armada’s CAP chewed apart the American air heading out here to fight. Even now, the main amphibious landing craft and helo-carriers gathered to make their initial approach to the New Jersey shore. The Americans would have been wiser to hold their air back for later.

Gunther looked up at the big screen. He frowned.
What is that? Does anyone else see this?
For a moment, a red enemy appeared in space as if out of nowhere. Then a laser from Iceland destroyed the object.

“Strange,” the admiral said.

With a twist of his head, Gunther saw that the admiral watched the same thing he had.

“What is that?” the admiral asked.

“Sir,” a major asked.

“That,” the admiral said, pointing. “What is that? Where did it come from?”

Gunther’s head swayed back. He noticed something new: a streak on the big screen. It was purple, not red. Purple meant the computer hadn’t registered the thing as dangerous, but as an unknown object, as possibly threating.

“Look,” the admiral said. “There’s another one.”

General Kaltenbrunner swore in a harsh voice.

Gunther sat back in his seat, startled and suddenly uneasy. A blizzard of purple objects appeared on the big screen. His mouth dried out, and he glanced around. Didn’t anyone have any idea what those streaks represented?

LOW EARTH ORBIT

A twenty-pound tungsten THOR missile—one of fifty just like it—began its descent into the atmosphere. At the start of its rapid fall, the missile had an ablative nose tip.

As the rod plunged down through the atmosphere at meteor speeds, heating up by friction, the ablative nose tip wore away until finally it was gone. It had done its job as a mini-heat shield. Instead of a blunt nose or even a rounded one showing, the THOR missile had a sharp point and an arrow-like design. It sliced through the increasingly dense atmosphere, losing only a fraction of its terrific velocity.

Despite the intense heat, the internal guts of the tungsten rod began to work. At two miles above the Atlantic Ocean, the nose cap popped off. That exposed the sensors. They were high-grade and rugged, and this particular missile spotted the GDN
Otto von Bismarck
supercarrier, its priority-one target. Small flanges at the rear of the rod steered the projectile, adjusting as the supercarrier churned through the sea.

At twenty pounds, the tungsten rod was less than an inch in diameter and four feet long. A luminous trail appeared behind it, as straight as a line.

Traveling at the incredible velocity, the THOR missile neared its target.

GDN
BISMARCK

Warrant Officer Gunther Weise’s hands had begun shaking again. Fear boiled in his stomach, and the approaching disaster angered him as terribly unfair.

Gunther had no idea how this wretched turn of events had occurred. By the startled and grim looks on their faces, the admiral and general didn’t know how or why this terrible thing was happening, either.

In some diabolical fashion, the Americans attacked them from space. It was a science fiction assault. The enemy shouldn’t have been able to deploy or use such a weapons system. The German Dominion was superior in every way to the has-been Americans. Once, the US had stridden across the globe, the strongest power on Earth. But that day had long passed. This was a new era. German might had been reborn through the Dominion.

“How…?” General Kaltenbrunner asked in a hoarse voice. “How was this even possible?”

The admiral shook his head.

Gunther Wiese sat at his station. His stomach knotted horribly with pain. He couldn’t take his eyes off the big screen.

Then the THOR missile struck the supercarrier, a molten, glowing-orange meteor that punched through metal as if it was paper. Incredibly, it smashed through the air control tower first, burning antennae. It sliced down through deck after deck of the great ocean-going vessel. Lastly, the missile tore a hole out of the bottom of the carrier. Meanwhile, fuel storage tanks blew. Friction caused munitions to explode with tremendous force, causing the entire vessel to shudder horribly.

Gunther was already dead, with a piece of hot shrapnel sticking out of his skull. The admiral no longer possessed a head as blood jetted out of his neck. His uniform was no longer white. General Kaltenbrunner bellowed in agony before blood loss rendered him unconscious, and his big frame slumped onto the burning floor.

As the great pride and joy of the German Dominion Armada began to sink below the surface, the rest of the THOR missiles likewise smashed through other carriers, into battleships, cruisers, infantry transports, hovers, against every major ship in the fleet.

Ships blew up. Ships sank. A few limped along with brutal damage. It happened so fast, too, as if Heaven had rained vengeance upon them. Then the attack from space ended, with nothing but hundreds of luminous trails in the sky.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

“Are you seeing this?” Lieutenant Penner shouted.

On his screen, beamed from an American AWACS, Penner watched the greatest air reversal in history. He didn’t know yet that it was part of the greatest sea reversal in history, a bigger upset than the Battle of Midway.

One moment, US fighters died to swarming GD drones. The F-35s and V-10s battled gamely, but there were outmatched by numbers and by better technology.

Now, the GD drones simply stopped firing. The drones ceased launching missiles, shooting shells; they stopped doing anything as they flew straight. Some went down into the rough swells. Others traveled east. More flew to the west. If Penner didn’t know better, he would say that the drone operators had all at once ceased to exist. Yet how could that happen? It did not make any sense.

“What’s going on?” Penner asked his wingman.

“I don’t have any idea, sir,”

Then an air controller began to explain it to them. The THOR missiles had just taken out the majority of the GD invasion fleet.

“Say again,” Penner said.

He listened as the air control officer explained it. THOR missiles, what in the world were those.

As Penner wondered, he noticed that the US fighters amongst all those GD air began to shoot down the enemy planes.

This is turning into a turkey shoot
, he realized.

Penner laughed. It felt wonderful to be alive. Then he sobered up. He still had a task to do, and maybe now he would be able to accomplish it.

It was time for the air force to destroy whatever was left of the enemy ships out there.

The air traffic controller told them to concentrate on GD infantry and ground-vehicle transports.

Penner nodded. That’s exactly what he planned to do.

TORONTO, ONTARIO

General Mansfeld stood in a hushed operational chamber. Screens lined the walls, with technicians seated below them. His staff officers stood as a group, silent and staring. They had been doing both for the past few minutes.

Mansfeld stared at a screen in disbelief. He found it hard to comprehend what he saw. His eyes were fine. His brain worked to full capacity, but the switch from conquering brilliance to catastrophic defeat left a bitter taste in his mouth and a cold black hole in his thinking.

The luminous trails from space had already dissipated. The Americans had found a way to harness meteors. It was amazingly brilliant and cleverly done, and it had just annihilated his chances of ending the campaign in a crushing German victory.

On the screen Mansfeld watched yet another enemy cruise missile. The sleek thing skimmed over the waves.

It’s going to hit a troop transport. I can’t afford that
.

True to the prediction, the missile stuck and blasted a surviving troop transport at the waterline. The transport began to list. Mansfeld watched as panicked sailors and infantrymen jumped overboard into the sea.

That’s the wrong thing to do. You must keep your head. That was the only way to survive a disaster
.

Another cruise missile skimmed the sea. It destroyed a hover-carrier holding a large number of Sigrid drones.

A disaster, this is a disaster. The Americans have broken the closing jaw. I cannot believe this
.

A hard knot of anger washed through General Mansfeld. This technologically advanced blow could ruin his hard-won reputation. Historians would pen down that he had miscalculated. Instead of a great victor—the greatest of modern times with far-seeing vision and—

“No,” Mansfeld said. He turned to stride away into his study, but he realized he needed to rally his command staff.

Clearing his throat, Mansfeld said, “The Americans have done well. It would be petty to say they haven’t. But this will not save them. Nothing came save them from their coming dismemberment.”

“General?” one of the staff members asked. “How…what will we do now?”

Mansfeld forced heartiness into a mocking laugh. “Why, we will close the trap, Colonel.”