"A few minutes ago we received a copy of a message that is being circulated within the Chipanese Armed Forces. It describes the events of the last 36 hours as the 'Showa Restoration', an obvious reference to the Meiji Restoration of almost a century ago. It describes the reformers as having usurped the Emperor's authority and abused his trust. The Traditionalists claim to have returned rightful authority to the Emperor and to be acting on his behalf. The document is signed by the person claiming to be the leader of the traditionalist factions, Masanobu Tsuji.
"It goes without saying that this document would not have been issued if there was any doubt over the success of the Traditionalist operation. It would therefore appear that the events of the last 36 hours can only be described as a coup, albeit a bloody and poorly organized one. Our expert opinion on this suggests that the planning of the operation contained a certain level of personal vindictiveness against naval personnel who were part of the Operation A-Go fiasco five years ago. That, in its turn, points to Masanobu Tsuji being an active participant in this operation rather than just a figurehead."
There was a long silence in the room. Eventually, Sir Eric asked the questions that were in everybody's mind. "What happens now ma'am? What does this mean for us? Where do we go from here?"
The Ambassador stood silent, her eyes defocussed. In her mind she was visualizing the likely flow of future events, a cascading stream of colored lights that mingled, split and merged as possibilities, probabilities and outcomes jostled for significance.
"In the short term, the prospects for us are very dangerous. Chipan will revert to its former policies of expansionism and aggression. We can expect provocation and attempts to extort financial, political and territorial advantages from us. We can expect Chipan to greatly increase its expenditure on armaments and on its forces. That expenditure will be substantially uncontrolled. Because of its precarious economy, we can expect it to use those forces.
"In the longer term, the situation is much more hopeful for us. Chipan cannot stand a long period of such military expenditure, within a decade, two at the most, its economy will start to implode. The critical point will come when that process becomes irreversible. At that point, they will be faced with the temptation to use all their military arsenal before they lose it. In anticipation of that time, we must start the planning necessary to bring them in for a soft landing.
"There is one question that could be of critical importance here. Many of the reformers have escaped to sea on Japanese warships. What will they do? Where will they go?"
Cockpit F-108A Rapier "Wicked Stick, " 103,000 feet over Nevada
Even the big fighter was running out of power up here. Wicked Stick was wallowing on the edge of her zoom climb performance envelope, the air around her so thin it hardly existed. The sky had long ceased to be blue and had taken on the blackness of space. The fighter was so high that Brigadier-General Charles Larry could see the curvature of the earth below him. Almost 20 miles up, well on the way to space itself but the F-108 wasn't going to make it any further. The difference between maximum speed and stalling speed was now so thin it could barely be measured and the J-93s were gulping the few molecules of air still around in an attempt to keep the great white fighter airborne.
In the back seat, Larry's Bear, his electronic systems operator, was trying desperately to get a radar lock on the satellite before the plane stalled out. They'd been under ground control the whole way, the satellite had been tracked by a ground-based radar and Wicked Stick had made her zoom climb under strict orders. Now she was where the ground control intercept had put her but the satellite hadn't appeared.
"Got it" The voice from the back was triumphant. "We have lock on the target. Wait One - Fox-November."
There was no bump, no lurch. If this had been a real launch, there would have been a whirring noise as the rotary launcher moved a GAR-9 into firing position then a thump as the 1,000 pound missile was launched. Here, in this simulation, there was nothing. Nothing that could be felt anyway, but something had changed. Stalling speed now exceeded maximum speed, the thrust from the J-93s wasn't enough anymore and Wicked Stick departed controlled flight.
The stall was vicious. Neither the F-108 nor its huge cousin, the YB-70A were known as pilot's aircraft. The nose slammed down, a wing dropped, and the aircraft simply tumbled out of the sky. One advantage of being up here was that they had more space to recover than any aircraft had ever had before them, and they would need it. Stick centered and forward, dive the aircraft out of its spin. Slowly the big tighter stabilized, the horizon stopped rotating and the F-108 was back under control.
"Control, this is Wicked Stick. Things got exciting for a moment there. Did we hit?"
There was a long pause from ground control as the range instrumentation measured speeds, trajectories, guidance arcs and lethal radii. The reply when it came was flat.
"Negative, Wicked Stick, your shot missed. Went behind the target satellite and was outside lethal radius. Nice recovery from the stall though."
"Thank you Ground Control. Better luck next time. Wicked Stick is returning to base. Fuel situation normal."
Larry set his F-108 on its course back to Nellis AFB. The combination of a fighter capable of flying at unprecedented high altitudes and a long-range nuclear-tipped missile had raised the question of whether the system was capable of taking down satellites. It was a good idea but so far it hadn't worked. The F-108A/GAR-9 combination was right on the edge of its performance envelope for anti-satellite shots and so far, nobody could make it work. This had been their third attempt. Larry knew it wasn't going to work. Good as the F-108 was, it wasn't quite good enough. That didn't matter though. Between the stand-down of the F-85 groups and the formation of the first F-108 unit, he'd been involved in the Air Force X-plane program and that had shown him where the future lay. Satellites were only the start, the Air Force was already planning a Manned Orbiting Laboratory that would put men in space for whole tours of duty.
The real jewel was another program, the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a manned, winged vehicle. The first prototype, Dyna-Soar 1 was already flying, dropped from a B-52 mother ship. The next stage would be rocket-launched near-orbital booster flights by the end of the year. Dyna-Soar II would be a manned hypersonic reconnaissance vehicle, flying at over 200,000 feet to a range of more than 6,500 miles. The prototype Dyna-Soar II was already under construction, if all went well it would fly by the end of 1967. Another version of Dyna-Soar II was going to be a nuclear-armed anti-satellite fighter. Even further down the line was Dyna-Soar III, a full-fledged manned, hypersonic, global, strategic bombardment and reconnaissance system. SAC was going into space and taking its bombers with it.
Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy
It was a dress uniform, no-flourishes-spared occasion. An official reception to mark the first visit by SAC aircraft to an Italian air base since The Big One had ended World War Two. A
much more significant event than just a courtesy visit by four aircraft that normally showed no reluctance to flying over Italian air space any time their flight plan demanded.
The visit was taking place at a time when the political situation in Southern Europe was in a greater state of flux that usual. Both Franco and Mussolini had survived the destruction of Germany. Certainly, they'd been German allies but they hadn't quite been good enough allies to merit destruction. Then, the situation in Europe after The Big One had been so confused that nobody had wanted to add to the mess by removing two functioning, if tainted, regimes.