“Any movement of the president, vice president, cabinet officials and their deputies, and senior-level military officers and defense officials triggers a warning to us, sir,” Kazyanov said. “The president and any official that travels with a large contingent, or any information we receive on movement plans, triggers an alert. If they do not, we may not know about their movement. Obviously, this trip was kept under very tight secrecy, with minimal security protocols to avoid attracting attention.”
“It is imperative that you come up with the means for discovering when one of those spaceplanes is going to make a flight and who and what is aboard it, Kazyanov,” Gryzlov said. “If they fly so routinely, maybe their security procedures are starting to break down. You must also think of ways to be alerted to movement of major American officials other than by the size of their retinue. Be prepared to brief the council on your suggestions at next week’s regular meeting.” It was obvious by his expression that Kazyanov didn’t like being barked at, even by the president, but he nodded assent. Gryzlov turned back to General Khristenko. “Continue, General.”
“Yes, sir,” the chief of the general staff said. He called up a silent replay of President Phoenix’s press conference. “My staff studied the video of Phoenix’s press conference and some video that was shot after the press conference of Phoenix having a meal with some cosmonauts, and based on these preliminary images my staff feels that it is indeed President Phoenix and he is aboard a spacecraft in Earth orbit, experiencing real weightlessness, and looks very healthy and not suffering from any ill effects of space flight or weightlessness. The other persons in the video were identified as retired brigadier general Kai Raydon, engineer and astronaut Trevor Shale, and retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and astronaut Jessica Faulkner, a spaceplane pilot.
“Most likely he did travel to Earth orbit on the spacecraft reported to our embassy by U.S. Strategic Command, an S-19 spaceplane, nicknamed ‘Midnight,’?” Khristenko went on, switching slides to a photograph of the spaceplane. “It carries a crew of two and up to five thousand kilos of cargo. It apparently has a pressurized module in its cargo bay that has seats for as many as four passengers.”
“I do not care about its seating capacity, General,” Gryzlov said acidly. “What kind of threat is this spacecraft to Russia?”
“It represents a technology that we are still several years away from developing: the ability to take off from almost any commercial runway in the world, fly into low Earth orbit, dock with the space stations or perform various activities in space, reenter Earth’s atmosphere, and land again on any runway—and do it all again just a few hours later,” Khristenko said. “It has a sophisticated propulsion system that uses readily available jet fuel and hydrogen-peroxide oxidizer. It can dock with the space station and deliver supplies or personnel almost on demand. If it stayed in the atmosphere, it could fly from its base in the western United States to Moscow in less than three hours.”
“Three hours!” Gryzlov exclaimed. “And then deliver a nuclear weapon right on top of our heads!”
“To our knowledge, sir, the spaceplanes have only deployed nonnuclear weapons in space,” Kazyanov said, “but one such weapon, the so-called Thor’s Hammer, did successfully reenter Earth’s atmosphere and destroyed a target on the ground.”
“That is when we argued to put the Space Preservation Treaty in place, sir,” Foreign Minister Titeneva said. “The treaty bans any weapons based in space that can attack targets on Earth. Russia, China, and all of the other space-capable countries have ratified the treaty except the United States, although they appear to be abiding by it.”
“Damn it, Daria, I want weapons such as that banned . . . only as long as it takes us to build them ourselves!” Gryzlov said. He ran a hand through his thick hair. “And we have no technology similar to this spaceplane?”
“We had built a reusable spacecraft years before the Americans built their space shuttle,” Minister of Defense Sokolov said. “The Elektron spaceplane was boosted into orbit atop an SL-16 booster and could land on a runway—it was even armed with guided missiles. We built several of the spacecraft, but their operational status is unknown. The Buran spaceplane was very similar to the American space shuttle. We built five of them and performed one successful flight before the empire dissolved. Three more Burans are in various states of completion; the other completed spacecraft was destroyed in a ground accident.”
“And look what has happened: we let the Americans gain the advantage over us in space,” Gryzlov said. “So put them back into operation and get them flying right away, and if we have built them once before, we can build them again. I want as many as possible put into immediate production.”