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, relaxing 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 concerning an invasion of Alaska must have merit.
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 Anti-Ballistic Missile branch of the service. 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 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, since it held the high ground. It was much easier raining objects down on the Earth than sending objects up from the surface, 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 implementation 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 red 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.
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 oil rig frozen in the Arctic ice. It would have scanned, but not anymore. Therefore, the activity several kilometers from the oil rig 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.