Dark Dragons (41 page)

“Bird Nest to Tango Leader!”

Towsley grabbed his radio.  “You have Flash Priority on
the bogey already, Bird Nest?”

“Negative.  We just had a computer-triggered alarm from
Divine Wind.  We’ve lost telemetry data on four units . . . now five . . .
eight!  Sir, I think our weapons are being compromised!”

“What?”

“We’re checking Geo-Diss to verify.  Stand by.”

Towsley ran out of the laboratory toward the elevator,
Darren and the two armed guards close behind.  He punched the third floor
button.  “Take Darren back to his cell,” he told the guards.

“What’s happening, colonel?” Darren asked.

“It appears we’re losing our satellite weapons,” he replied
with a whisper.  “We’re checking Geo-Diss to see if they’re still up
there.”

“Geo-what?”

“Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance . . .
telescope cameras that U.S. Strategic Command uses to track satellites and
orbital debris.”

The doors closed and the loud klaxons in the hangar were
muffled.  The elevator began to ascend.

“Geo-Diss confirms we have lost fourteen satellites,” the
voice from the Combat Operations Center said over Towsley’s radio.  “There
goes one more!”

“What’s happening?” Towsley shouted. “Where’s the
bandits?  Why haven’t we engaged?”

“Medusa Stare and SSN detect no inbounds, no bogeys, sir.”

“Do these Vorvons use stealth, Darren?”

“Their fighter interceptors use an active-stealth bubble
field like we do, but they’re under powered and not that effective.  Your
telescopes should be able to visually track them though with no problem.”

“Big Papa to Tango Leader.”  The voice over the radio
was low, almost a growl.  Darren recognized it immediately.

“Go ahead, Big Papa.”

“Is Mr. Seymour still with you?” General Taggart asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring his ass up to the COC now.”

Darren shook his head.  The general sounded just like
Barstowe summing him to the principal’s office.  Towsley gave him a
puzzled sideways glance.  “Yes, sir, we’re on our way.”

“I think I know what’s happening,” Darren said, a cold hunch
beginning to form in his brain.  “I just hope I’m wrong.”

“What haven’t you told me, kiddo?”

The elevator stopped at the third floor, the Combat
Operations Center, and the doors opened.  The four men stepped out, and
the first thing Darren saw was Taggart facing them ten feet from the elevator,
hands behind his back, a General Patton-like scowl on his face.  Over his
head on the opposite side of the COC, the top main screen displayed a
black-and-white still frame of the fuzzy but unmistakable outline of a
Dragonstar in flight seen from the ground.

Darren’s fears were confirmed.  Scorch.

“Our Geo-Diss observatory in Maui just snapped a picture of
our bandit, colonel,” Taggart said. “Look familiar?”

“That’s not one of ours!” Darren said.  “I swear to
God.  The Vorvons captured that fighter when they invaded Xrelmara. 
It’s a prototype Dragonstar.  It’s not——”

“Shut up!” Taggart screamed.  “They’re gone! 
Every last fucking one!  All fifty orbital weapons! 
Gone!”

Darren turned to face Towsley, but the colonel did not
return his gaze.  In fact, he looked just as pissed as Taggart.

“Sergeant,” Towsley murmured. “Take Darren back to the
Containment Area.”

“Yes, sir.”

Darren felt a steel grip seize his right arm from behind and
pull him toward the elevator.  “Colonel, please believe me!  That’s
not one of ours!”

*

“That’s not one of. . . !”

The elevator door cut off Darren’s voice.  Towsley felt
his stomach do a roll as he stared into the beady eyes of General Taggart, the
grimace still chiseled into his face.  He looked up at the bottom screen
and the blue computer outline of Earth and the fifty orbital tracks that were
now missing telemetry data from the x-ray laser cannons and electromagnetic
railguns.  The NESSTC’s twelve AEGIS/SHAAD satellites that guided and
communicated with the ScramHawk SAMs were still fully operational,
however.  So were the five MILSTAR and fourteen DSCS satellites that the
U.S. military relied on for its secure communications.  For now.

Towsley could hear Rear Admiral Raymond Breuer, the NESSTC’s
second-in-command, to his left in the communications pit talking to who he was
sure was the president and the Secretary of Defense, the only two people who
could authorize the use of nuclear weapons.

Although the ScramHawk was a non-nuclear weapon, its plasma
bomb warhead produced frightening nuclear-like effects——a 6000
̊
F thermobaric fireball
and a “dial-a-yield” shockwave that could register from 1 to 30 kilotons,
producing the largest conventional explosion ever produced by man.  In
comparison, the yield of Hiroshima’s “Little Boy” was 15 kilotons.  For
that reason, the Joint Chiefs placed authorization for their use within the
nuclear
integrated plan
of the National Command Authority, which were the president
and the Secretary of Defense.

The ScramHawk’s warhead detonated when a core of cesium and
pressurized xenon tetroxide was sharply heated to a plasma state in a millionth
of a second by a high-intensity laser shroud.  The warhead was also
surrounded by canisters of tungsten-carbide “grape shot,” creating a MACH seven
cluster of molten shrapnel in every direction.  If the fireball or
shockwave failed to destroy the enemy vehicle, the white-hot bullets of
tungsten-carbide certainly would.

Breuer turned to face Taggart, a headset pressed against his
left ear.  “General, we have received National Command Authority
authorization.  We’re awaiting final go-ahead from the Pentagon to execute
OPLAN.”

“Very well, admiral.  Colonel, would you please
accompany me.”

“Yes, sir.”  Towsley stepped forward and stood next to
Taggart.

“I’ve already notified Dr. Ngatia,” Taggart whispered. 
“Our four guests are going into cold storage for a while.  They’re being taken
to the medical lab as we speak.”

“Excuse me?”

“Chemically-induced comas.  I don’t want them conscious
during our defensive operations.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I believe there exists the possibility of telepathic
communication with the enemy.  Combined with their ability of remote
viewing areas not within their presence would represent a serious breach of our
security.  We, of course, don’t have proof that they can communicate
telepathically with one another . . . I know you’ve developed a warm and fuzzy
spot for them, but I’m taking no chances.”

“I understand,” Towsley said curtly.

General Taggart tipped his head slightly, giving Towsley a
long gaze, then, “Good.  Welcome back.”

“National Military Command Center has issued OPLAN
eight-zero-five-five,” Admiral Breuer said.  “We’re clear to broadcast
Emergency Action Messages to our ScramHawk delivery systems.”

“Transmit EAMs,” Taggart ordered.

Humanity’s most destructive and intelligent weapon ever
created, the Navy’s RIM-202 ScramHawk SAM represented the last line of a global
defense, while the North American continent was under the protection of the 32
^nd
Army Air and Missile Defense Command and its scattered mobile batteries of
MIM-202 ScramHawks.  Towsley hoped the $9 million-per missile performed
better than the $86 billion constellation of orbital pop guns which had been so
leisurely destroyed by a single Dragonstar.

The Proximity Alarms exploded in the COC.  “Flash
Priority!  Flash Priority!  We have multiple inbounds across all
sectors,” came the voice of Major Hilly, the COC’s chief watch officer on duty.

“What are they, major?” Taggart asked.

“Medusa Stare is compiling laser-range finder data and
surveillance images now, general.  Ten seconds.”

The blue computer outline of Earth and its continents now included
dozens of red circles with empty Flight Characteristics Data fields next to
each.  One by one, the FCD fields began to populate as Medusa Stare and
the supercomputers underneath the COC calculated radial velocities, distances,
bearings and courses.   Towsley felt his heart miss a beat when
Surface Impact early-warning data began flashing under the FCD fields, too . .
. the objects were asteroids, thirty-seven of them coming from every damn
direction!

Medusa Stare transmitted several black and white images of
all inbounds to the top screen of the COC’s front wall.  Most of the rocks
were the size of a house, some as big as an oil supertanker.  And each one
had a peculiar characteristic not associated with asteroids——engine flares.

“The enemy has imbedded delta-v rockets into them,” Towsley
said.  The first shard of fear to pierce him in the heart was that
thirty-seven cities across the earth were about to be vaporized.  However,
the four-person Tracking and Impact team in their console pit began plotting
TIP data showing otherwise.  The asteroids were in fact on intercept
courses for all GEODSS telescopes in New Mexico, Hawaii, Diego Garcia and Spain
and all six radar PAVE PAWS bases, including the three VHF radar transmitters
of “the Fence” running across the U.S. along the 33
^rd
parallel.  All ten of the Russians’s ballistic missile early-warning radar
sites were also targeted including their Okno military telescope in Tajikistan
along with the Chinese Xian satellite center and the Aerospace Command and
Control base outside Beijing.  The enemy was about to blind the American,
Russian and Chinese militaries from conducting outer space surveillance and
neutralize their ability to track objects approaching their territory.

The first asteroid strike would be at the PAVE PAWS site at
Beale Air Force Base, California, in eleven minutes, thirty-four seconds. 
The 3
^rd
Missile-Space Defense Army’s Pechora radar site in Siberia
would be hit eight seconds later.  The loss of any Russian or Chinese
bases, however, were of no concern to the men and women in the COC.  An
“America First” doctrine had been clearly outlined years ago to employ the
ScramHawks only for primary defense of U.S. territories, those of its NATO
allies and America’s vital oil interests in the Middle East.

“All delivery platforms are ready to pull the trigger,”
Admiral Breuer said.  “Aegis and SHAAD guidance systems functional.”

The supercomputers beneath the floor of the COC sent the
first
FIRE
signal to the
Ticonderoga
-class
cruisers and
Arleigh Burke
-class destroyers of the
U.S.S. Abraham
Lincoln
carrier strike group 420 nautical miles southwest of San
Diego.  Two ScramHawks were to launch three minutes, nine seconds from now
and simultaneously intercept the asteroid targeting Beale AFB eighty miles
above California with 30-kiloton yields each.  The supercomputers had
estimated those yields were appropriate enough to vaporize an asteroid that
Medusa Stare’s pulse laser-radar measured to be around one hundred and seventy
feet in diameter.  The big rock would be traveling at twenty-three miles
per second when it reached the beginning of its terminal trajectory at the
bottom of the thermosphere.

More and more
FIRE
signals were transmitted along with precise launch times to all eleven U.S.
aircraft carrier strike groups and sixteen ScramHawk air defense batteries
scattered across North America.  Just twenty seconds after first contact,
thirty-seven surface-to-air missile trajectories had appeared on the main
battle screen as curved yellow lines.  They would turn red when the
missiles launched.

“Looks just like that old arcade game ‘Missile Command,’”
Taggart said, staring up at the computer projection map on the main battle
screen.

Towsley nodded his head.  “I was never good at that
one.”

Taggart smiled from ear-to-ear.  “I was.”

Thursday, May 20

Caliban quickly sat up in his recliner, startled for some
reason.  His eyes scanned the room, and for a second, he thought he heard——voices?——a
familiar buzzing in his head, a feeling he had not felt for a long, long time.

He vaulted out of the recliner and paced around his cell,
eyes still wandering across the ceiling.  They
were
voices. 
He could plainly hear them, as clear as interstellar space.

Caliban swooned where he stood. 
I am here, glorious
Invicid . . . hear me.

*

The yellow line arcing up from Carrier Strike Group Nine
turned red.  Two ScramHawks, one from the
Cape St. George
and the
other from the submarine
Michigan
, were away.  Towsley took another
sip from his Diet Coke and paced nervously back to a spot behind Major Hilly’s
console station, stood there for a few seconds, and returned to General
Taggart’s side.  The general had become a statue for the last ten minutes
with his hands behind his back, headset on, and an impassive gaze which had not
left the front high-definition screens.  With just a bit of jocosity,
Towsley imagined the same pose captured in bronze outside Doolittle Hall at the
Air Force Academy.

More and more SAM flight trajectories were turning from
yellow to red as all naval CSG’s launched their ScramHawks.

“Beale PAVE PAWS indicates first intercept in five minutes,
thirty-nine seconds,” Major Hilly said into his headset for the officers in the
COC to hear.

*

Over Continent Group Three, twenty-two high speed objects
were racing up into the atmosphere to intercept the eleven kinetic asteroid
weapons targeting the human surveillance sites. 
So easy . . . such a
disappointment.

Sryik-of-the-Three-Suns felt a warm glow in the chest as it
selected twenty-two singularity missiles for air-to-air intercept and gave the
thought-command to fire.  After the last weapon shot away,
Sryik-of-the-Three-Suns turned its Dragonstar east to intercept the human missiles
over Continent Group One.