“Those American bastards struck my spaceport with a missile from space!” Zhou Qiang, president of the People’s Republic of China, thundered through the secure voice teleconference link. “I am going to order an immediate launch of a nuclear ballistic missile against Hawaii! If they kill a hundred Chinese, I am going to kill a million Americans!”
“Calm yourself, Zhou,” Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov said. “You know as well as I that if you launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, or anything that looks like one, anywhere near the United States or its possessions, they will retaliate with everything they have, against both our nations. They are on a hair trigger now, thanks to your attack on Guam.”
“I do not care!” Zhou snapped. “They will regret the loss of one Chinese a thousand times, I swear it!”
“My commanders on the ground say that your S-500S battery locked on to the space station with missile-guidance radar,” Gryzlov said. “Is that true?”
“Then I suppose you know that the Americans locked on to the S-500 launcher with their microwave weapon?”
“I know they scanned you with a simple synthetic-aperture radar, Zhou, the space-based radar mounted on the station itself,” Gryzlov said. “I have technicians and intelligence men on the ground there, remember? They know exactly what you were scanned with. It was not the directed-energy weapon. They obviously meant to goad you into responding, exactly like your stupid ill-trained men did.”
“So are they now trying to goad us into widening the conflict, to turn it into a nuclear exchange?” Zhou asked. “If so, they are succeeding!”
“Calm yourself, I said, Zhou,” Gryzlov repeated. “We will respond, but we must be patient and plan this out together.”
“This is all because of your foolhardy attack on their spaceplane, is it not?” Zhou asked. “You tell me to be calm, but then you do an insane act like destroy one of their spaceplanes! We tracked those fighters and your antisatellite weapons. Who is the crazy one now? You want to prohibit unauthorized spacecraft from overflying Russia? That is even more crazy! What has gotten inside your head, Gryzlov? You are even more unstable than that idiot Truznyev before you.”
“Do not talk to me about insane acts of war, Zhou!” Gryzlov retorted. “We are lucky we are not at war with the United States after that crazy General Zu attacked Guam!”
“I could say the same about your father’s cruise-missile attack on the United States itself!” Zhou shot back. “Ten thousand, fifteen thousand Americans vaporized? One hundred thousand wounded? Your father was—”
“Tread carefully, I warn you, Zhou,” Gryzlov spat menacingly. “Be careful of your next words if they even remotely concern my father.” There was complete silence on the other end. “Listen to me, Zhou. You know as well as I that the only American nonnuclear weapons that can reach our spaceports and other antisatellite launch sites are either cruise missiles launched from penetrating bombers or weapons launched from their military space station or weapon garages,” Gryzlov went on. “The military space station is the key because it controls all the weapon garages, uses its space-based radar for surveillance and targeting, and has the Skybolt laser, which is impossible to defend against. It must be disabled or destroyed before the Americans employ their weapons.”
“Disabled? Destroyed? How?” Zhou asked.
“We must pick the perfect time when the maximum number of Russia and China’s antisatellite weapons can launch simultaneously,” Gryzlov said. “The station has self-defense weapons, but if we can overwhelm them, we could succeed. My defense minister and chief of the general staff will inform me of when the American space station is in perfect position, and then we must attack at once. The station’s orbit is well known. They changed it recently for the Starfire microwave-laser test, and they may change it again, but we will watch and wait. When the orbit stabilizes, we attack with everything that is in range.
“But I need your commitment, Zhou: when I say attack, we attack with every weapon in range, simultaneously,” Gryzlov went on. “That is the only way we can hope to disable or destroy the military space station so it cannot retaliate against us, because if it does, it can destroy any target on the planet at the speed of light.”
There was a very long silence on the other end of the secure connection; then: “What is it you want, Gryzlov?”