Invasion: Alaska (22 page)

Cracking his knuckles, Captain Han Qiang activated the forward cameras of his Red Thunder missile. It was the latest in Chinese killer satellite technology and had rocketed up out of the thermosphere some time ago.

Han pressed his tongue against the gap between his front teeth, blowing air through them. He did it when he was excited. An image on the screen appeared. It showed the stars. The Red Thunder was in LEO, Low Earth Orbit. That was between the atmosphere and below the inner Van Allen radiation belt. In kilometers, that was one hundred and sixty to two thousand kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

Han shoved his fingers into twitch gloves. With practiced ease, he twitched his fingers. The signal left the tower built over the command center in Mukden. Han rotated his missile, making the star patterns change. The Earth appeared below on his screen, making Han blow harder between the gap of his two front teeth. He twitched more as he activated the grid pattern and external radar. Seconds later, the grid map appeared on his screen, with an American Osprey recon satellite blinking red at the left corner.

Han made rapid calculations, swiveled in his chair to glance at his second favorite Japanese girl and twitched a finger, applying thrust to the Red Thunder.

Eight hundred kilometers above the Earth, the Red Thunder missile hunted the Osprey satellite.

Captain Han was aware that Space Service and Army generals would be watching his progress in the Nexus Command Center. This was his moment to shine, and he grinned, relaxed because he was the best at what he did. This was nothing like running Ur-dominator in the computer games. This was pathetically simple. Still, he needed success here. It would help him gain his request of pit remote controlling with the latest virtual reality imaging.

The intercom light on his Red Thunder screen blinked pink. It meant a message came from Nexus Command.

“It’s moving,” a general told him.

“I’m tracking, sir,” said Captain Han, while clicking a button, making the microphone several centimeters from his lips live. He wore a Lord Yamato headset, using it instead of the Command Center electronics. Lord Yamato was Japanese and of superior workmanship. Han grinned. It was good the general had warned him of the recon satellite’s movement. Of course, he’d seen it moving. He’d simply waited for one of them to see it. Yes, that had frightened the old general and it must have made him wonder if the young captain could achieve success at this critical moment. This would improve his success because it would now stand higher in their eyes and possibly gain him a recommendation.

The precise reason why he needed to kill the American recon satellite, he did not know, although he had some ideas. Truthfully, he didn’t care why. It wasn’t any more
real
to him than Ur-dominator in Lord Yamato.

He saw that the recon satellite was over the Arctic Circle. The rumors must have merit concerning an invasion of Alaska.

Captain Han had been in the Space Service since his graduation from high school. He had gone to college on the Space Service’s coin. In the early days, he’d been in the Laser ABM branch of the service. ABM meant Anti-Ballistic Missile. Huge laser batteries stationed at strategic locations and connected to the power-grid protected China from Russian, Indian and American ICBMs. Once the enemy missiles lofted, the giant lasers would target them. Either they would target them during boost phase or in space during mid-flight, which could last as long as twenty-five minutes. Space-based mirrors high over China would help them shoot over-the-horizon. America also had a laser defense system. It wasn’t as good as China’s, but it was something and it would likely stop the majority of China’s ICBMs, if that day ever came.

Each country’s high-powered lasers also routinely burned down enemy satellites that attempted to fly over their country on spy missions. It was much harder for the Americans to snoop on China with recon satellites than, say, twenty years ago when it had been routine. China also found it difficult to spy on America via recon satellites. One answer had been to launch powerful boosters to send the spy satellites into higher and higher orbit.

Captain Han had heard rumors about a Moon base. The Moon would make an excellent warfare platform against the Earth. It held the high ground. It was much easier raining objects down on the Earth than sending objects up from the surface to attack, especially to attack the distant Moon.

Captain Han had thought about applying for a berth on the new Moon base, but construction was still a good five years from the happening stage. By then he hoped to be married.

“Captain!” the general said over the intercom.

“I’m working on it,” Captain Han said, lacing his voice with concern. He smirked. This couldn’t be easier.

The Osprey blinked red on the grid of his screen. It was no longer in the corner, but nearing the center. Over the center four squares was a target symbol. Once the enemy satellite was in that, he would depress a button.

He glanced at his timer. That should occur under five minutes.

After the minutes had passed, the general said over the intercom, “Kill it.”

Captain Han wanted to activate his microphone again and whisper one word:
Patience
. He was certain the general would not enjoy a captain telling him that, however. The general wanted the Osprey dead, didn’t he? Then he should let Ur-dominator do his work without interruption.

“Captain,” the general said. “The recon satellite is in position.”

Stung that anyone should tell Ur-dominator his business, Captain Han activated the microphone. “Respectfully, sir, this is an Osprey e7b3 model. It’s the Americans’ most heavily armored recon satellite. I do not simply wish to wound it, but destroy its capacity to scan.”

“It’s moving!” someone shouted in Nexus Command.

Nodding and feeling vindicated, Captain Han took a moment to glance at his favorite girl. Oh, he’d love to run his hands over those legs. One of these days—

“If it escapes, Captain,” the general said, “there will be severe repercussions.”

“Escapes?” Han asked. “Not from me, sir.”

Han didn’t know if the Osprey had a flee program or if an American operator now steered it away from him. In twenty-eight seconds, it wouldn’t matter. Given its flight path, the amount of fuel an Osprey carried and its known engine size, there were only a few vectors that would make sense in its flight.

Therefore—Captain Han twitched his gloved fingers. The signal stabbed into space at the speed of light. The Red Thunder missile obeyed orders like the good robot it was. Han watched his screen. The ret dot wobbled, seemed to veer slightly left, and then it fairly leaped into the center of his four target-symbol squares.

“You are mine,” said Han, as he blew through the gap between his two front teeth.

He depressed a button. The kill signal beamed from the tower in Mukden and into space. In seconds, the radio signal reached the box-like missile. Deep inside it, a fuse burned out. The delay lasted four more milliseconds. Then eight hundred and thirty-one kilometers above the surface of the Earth, the Chinese missile exploded. The four point three kilogram explosive expelled over ten thousand pellet-sized pieces of shrapnel in all directions. Fifty-seven of those pellets tore into the Osprey. Seventeen pierced the armor and destroyed the delicate recon equipment. The American satellite continued to exist, but as a torn piece of junk, unable to fulfill its mission.

In Mukden, fifty-meters below the ground in an old coalmine, Captain Han sagged back against his chair. A perfect kill—he’d done it again. He was Ur-dominator and no one could defeat him.

PLATFORM P-53, ARCTIC OCEAN

Paul Kavanagh didn’t know anything about the burning carriers in San Francisco Bay. Nor was he aware that high above him in Low Earth Orbit a Chinese satellite-killer had just destroyed an American Osprey.

The effectively destroyed Osprey continued its orbit and would soon fly over the North Pole. Its cameras and radar would have swept over the oilrig frozen in the Arctic ice. It would have scanned, but not anymore. Therefore, the activity several kilometers from the oilrig was presently hidden from any American or any oil company personnel.

On the pack ice, Paul Kavanagh trudged in his snow boots. It was cold, dark and lonely. In the distance winked the derrick lights, the only manmade structure for a thousand miles. Wind blew across the bleak landscape, occasionally blowing dry snow like sand across a desert.

Paul wore a fur-lined hood, a parka and thick gloves. He carried a flashlight in one hand and used a radar-gun in the other, checking the depth of the perimeter ice. Today, he took a wide circuit around the rig. He searched for unlikely cracks or pressure ridges, which would indicate ‘plates’ of ice grinding against each other. Grinding ice-plates built up pressure ridges just as the pushing continents had once caused mountains to rise into existence.

This far north, the ice froze hard and it froze thick. At first, it had been a terrible feeling, knowing that he walked across the Arctic Ocean. There was no land anywhere nearby, just ice. If suddenly the sun should appear and melt the ice….

It was a foolish but atavistic fear, nearly impossible to root out completely. It was foolish because for one thing, the sun couldn’t appear, wouldn’t appear for months. It wasn’t even winter yet. For another thing, even if it would appear, it lacked the heat to melt polar ice. Well, a sudden solar flare might give the sun enough heat to melt the ice. But a flare that large would also burn out almost all life on the planet just as had occurred in the old movie
Knowing
.

Paul scowled as he clicked the trigger, aiming the radar-gun at the ice.

Red Cloud is giving me makeshift work, hoping I get lost out here. The Algonquin wants me dead
.

Paul halted and blew out his cheeks in frustration. Hooking the radar-gun onto his belt, he slid his rifle’s strap from his shoulder. He carried an old M14 rifle, a relic.

“In case you chance upon a polar bear,” Red Cloud had told him.

Yeah, right. Paul would have rather carried a big revolver with heavy caliber bullets. He certainly wasn’t going to spot a white bear at a distance. What was he supposed to do, lie down on the ice and sniper the polar bear to death? A heavy revolver or a machine pistol to pump bullets into the beast, that’s what he needed. This old relic was only good for one thing: punishment detail, which it what Red Cloud meant perimeter duty to be.

Paul wouldn’t have minded if he’d gotten full pay, and if he could have stayed here for another four months. He’d been fined, worked at half pay and he waited for the mechanic to repair the plane’s engine. At half pay, he hadn’t even made enough yet to cover his various expenses.

I didn’t shoot your friends during the war, Geronimo. Why take their deaths out on me?

Paul blinked in frustration at the ice. Of all things, it appeared as if Murphy was going to stay, but not him. Paul could hardly believe it.

Staring up at the stars, Paul stood there, surprised. The stars were beautiful. He craned his neck and stared, his gaze scanning back and forth, taking in the immensity of the universe. Slowly, a feeling of awe began to overtake him.
I’m just a speck in the universe, a tiny mote crawling over the surface of a spinning rock
.

His problems suddenly didn’t seem so big. Compared to the size of the universe, his anger almost seemed foolish. He felt small and insignificant. It was a bad feeling. Then it hit him, a terrible feeling of loss. It had felt this way the first couple of days after Cheri had told him she wanted a divorce.

Mikey…Cheri…why am I not at home with you? Why did we ever get divorced?

Paul Kavanagh shook his head. He wanted to start over. He wanted to get it right for once.
What do I have to do differently?
Where had his life gone wrong? Had it been before Quebec or after it? Maybe it had been in continuation school. Maybe it had been before that.

If I can’t get it right, I can at least make sure I help the two people I love
.

Nodding, he pulled off his right glove and dug into his parka. He’d walked into Red Cloud’s hut several days ago when he knew the others were either asleep or outside. Paul had the odd schedule, often working alone as night guard. Rummaging in the Algonquin’s desk, he’d found his cell phone in the bottom drawer and taken it. If he was only getting half-pay, then he was only half of the company’s employee. As he stood alone out here on the pack ice, Paul took the cell phone out of his parka and managed a sour grin.

It hurt the cold corner of his mouth. He didn’t wear a ski mask anymore, letting his growth of whiskers do the job for him.

Look at this. He had a single bar on the cell. They had a cell-phone relay cube at the base. Someone must have forgotten to take it offline, which they usually did so people like him couldn’t phone home. It was a new policy since the destruction of the Californian oilrig. Many in the business were certain the blown oil well had been an inside job.

Paul clicked off his flashlight, hooking it to his belt. He then punched in Cheri’s numbers and listened to it ring.

“Paul?” she asked, answering the call.

“Hey baby, I’m still near the North Pole.”

“What do you mean ‘still’?” she asked. “Have they fired you?”