“As quick as you can, Henry,” Kai said. “Valerie, status of the Kingfishers and Hydra?”
“Kingfisher-9 is minus two Mjollnir projectiles, and three Trinity modules on station have expended a total of six antisatellite projectiles,” Valerie reported. “All other modules on station are ready. Six of the ten Trinity modules in orbit are ready. Hydra is ready, approximately thirty bursts remaining.”
A few minutes later: “Command, the first two rockets appear to have released an orbital payload, believed to be spaceplanes,” Christine reported. “Their orbits are not coincident with ours.”
“They might have payload-assist modules that will boost them into a transfer orbit,” Trevor Shale said. A payload-assist module was an extra booster stage fastened to the topmost payload section that could boost that payload into a different orbit at the right time without having to expend its own fuel. “We should expect those spaceplanes to move to intercept orbits within one to ten hours.”
Kai Raydon looked around the command module and noticed that Brad wasn’t in his usual position, attached to a bulkhead in the command module. “McLanahan, what’s your location?” he asked on intercom.
“Mission commander’s seat on Shadow,” Boomer replied.
“Say again?”
“He was warming the MC’s seat while Ernesto had to take a ‘wicks’ break, and now that we’re at combat stations, he’s pinned to it,” Boomer said. “So far he seems to have a pretty good handle on things.”
“Override the airlock lockouts,” Kai said. “Get your MC back in there.”
“There’s no time, General,” Boomer said. “By the time Ernesto gets his ACES back on, we’ll be bye-bye. No worries. Brad’s doing good. Looks to me like he has already started mission-commander training.”
Kai shook his head—too many things that were out of his control were happening, he thought ruefully. “How long before you detach, Boomer?”
“Cargo-bay doors coming closed now, General,” Boomer said. “Maybe two minutes. Will advise.”
“Command, rockets three and four going orbital as well,” Christine reported about a minute later. “Russian payloads one and two established in orbit. No further activity from any ground sites.” That changed just moments later: “Command, detecting numerous high-performance aircraft departing Chkalovsky Air Base near Moscow. Two, maybe three aircraft airborne.”
“Antisatellite launch aircraft,” Trevor said. “They’re putting on the full-court press.”
“Radio all to Space Command, Trev,” Kai said. “I don’t know for sure who the target is, but I’ll damned well bet it’s us. Christine, I’m assuming their objective is to reach our altitude and a matching orbit to intercept us. I want orbital predictions on all those Russian spaceplanes—I need to know exactly when they will launch themselves into transfer orbits.”
“Yes, sir,” Christine replied. “Computing now.” A few minutes later: “Command, Surveillance, assuming they want to jump to our orbital angle and altitude, I expect spacecraft Sierra-Three will reach a Hohmann-transfer-orbit jump-off point in twenty-three minutes, reaching our altitude and orbital plane seven minutes later. Sierra-One will do the same in forty-eight minutes. Still working on the other three spacecraft, but they could all be in our orbit in less than four hours. I’ll compute where they’ll be relative to us when they enter our orbit.”
“Four hours: that’s about the time we pass over Delta-Bravo One,” Valerie pointed out, referring to the orbital display on the main monitor. “They timed this to perfection: they’ll have five spacecraft, presumably armed, in our orbit when we pass over the antisatellite missile sites in Moscow and St. Petersburg.”
“Trevor, I want to move station as high as we can, as fast as we can,” Kai said. “Change our trajectory as much as possible, but I want to increase altitude as much as possible—maybe we can get out of the S-500S’s envelope. Use every drop of fuel we have left, but get us up and out of the danger zone.”
“Got it,” Trevor responded, then bent to work on his workstation.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
A SHORT TIME LATER