Page 37 of Stars

“How many fragments?”

“Five, ma’am. Six feet long, approximately four feet in diameter.”

The new objects appeared on the display up front, unknowns flashing in orange and red. Their trajectories were linear, their speed accelerating.

Lieutenant Van frowned. That wasn’t the behavior of a fragmented satellite, the wild pitch and yaw of broken machinery spinning end over end, eternally tumbling without atmospheric friction to stop it.

No, those objects were purposeful.

“Dear God,” Lieutenant Van breathed. “Those are projectiles.”

For a moment, the monitoring bay was silent, save for the pulsing alert klaxon and the shaking exhales of the monitoring crew. Alert beacons strobed above the display monitors, the same vibrant, violent red as the orbital track of the five projectiles now on a collision course with five US military satellites.

Time to Interceptflashed on the display, a countdown of less than five minutes.

If this were the Cold War, she’d be calling the White House and alerting the president to a Soviet attack. Satellite warfare, space combat. Antisatellite operations. Star Wars. She’d learned about it in history class at the Air Force Academy. They’d war-gamed this for a term project, “Interstellar Combat Operation Potentials of the Cold War.” They’d been studying almost half-century-old technology, like their professors had studied World War II when they were at the academy.

This wasn’t the Cold War, and there wasn’t a Soviet Union anymore. Russia had never been closer to the United States, not after President Puchkov and President Spiers’s friendship. Hell, there was a Russian astronaut in training in Houston. Their countries’ space programs were married, NASA helping rebuild Roscosmos from the ground up.

Why was a Soviet satellite firing on the United States’ Milstar communications birds?

What the hell was going on?

“Who owns that satellite?” Lieutenant Van barked, snapping out of her daze. “Who the hell do we contact about that Soviet bird?”

“It’s abandoned, ma’am!” Lawson cried. “It was one of the last payloads the Soviets sent up before the fall.”

“What’s it’s orbital history?”

“It never achieved stable orbit, ma’am,” Karthi called out. “Three months after launch, it performed an orbital maneuver that pushed it out of its Molniya orbit. Since then, it’s been useless as a communications satellite.”

“It’s been dark ever since,” Lawson said. “NORAD tagged it as a dead bird in 2001.”

“It’s not dead now,” Van snapped. “Get Vandenberg on the line. They need to move our birds, now.”

“Ma’am, ETA to targets is four minutes. Vandenberg can’t perform orbital maneuvers in four minutes,” Lawson said.

“They have to try!”

A shrill wail tore through the alert bay, louder, sharper than the warning klaxon. It was theoh-shitalarm, the one blast no one had ever heard in a real-world situation. It was the sound of nightmares, the most dreaded of the annual drills.

Radiation alarm.

Van paled, and she grabbed the desk as her knees turned to jelly.Not on my watch.

“Nuclear alarm!” Karthi cried. “Ma’am, that bird is hot!”

* * *

12

Over the North Atlantic

“Mr. President?”

Sergey blinked awake, bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed. He was beyond exhausted, the price of a long weekend under the burning sun and nights lying awake in Sasha’s arms. He wouldn’t change a thing, though.

They’d done it. He’d visited Sasha. They’d been open with their love, not hiding at all.