Page 40 of Stars
“Did you not also have your Star Wars system back then?”
From drinking beer and eating burgers to being in the hot seat. Mark swallowed hard. In his mind, Sergey floated on the lake, laughing as he kicked water at Sasha, who was stretched out on his own float with his eyes closed.
“Where is the radiation signature coming from, Sergey? Is it nuclear powered, like your Topaz satellites?”
Sergey sighed. “I don’t know. We’re trying to find out. I will call you as soon as I know, Elizabeth. As soon as I know, I promise.”
“How do we fix this?” President Wall leaned forward, her elbows balanced on the edge of the conference table. Some of the hostility had seeped away, and her aggression shifted, subtly, to a determination to solve the problem. “Everyone, what are our options?”
“We are trying to establish communications with the satellite,” Sergey said. “If we can communicate with it, we can disable whatever programming has been activated. So far, neither Roscosmos norVozdushno-kosmicheskiye sily,the Russian Aerospace Forces, can connect to it.”
“Our NRO is working on an uplink as well. If we manage to make contact, we’ll need someone immediately who knows the technology and can guide us through the shutdown procedures. Can you make someone available?”
Sergey spoke to someone off to the side, snapping in furious Russian. He returned his gaze to the screen a moment later, his eyes tumbling with storms, like the churning Pacific Ocean seen from the Lunar Gateway. He seemed lost at sea, suddenly, a president in charge of a nation with no answers.
He doesn’t want this job. This isn’t him.Sergey wanted sunshine and Sasha, not this.
“Yes, Madam President. We will find someone, even if they are an old man on their deathbed.”
“Madam President,” General Duncan said. “We can launch an antisatellite mission and destroy this rogue Soviet bird.”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Chris and Erica shouted together, waving their hands over their heads, like they couldn’t be seen and needed to jump for attention.
All eyes flicked to them—from General Duncan to Presidents Puchkov and Wall, as well as all of her staff.
“With all due respect, Madam President, wecannotshoot this satellite down. We do not have the capabilities, for one—”
“General?” President Wall’s gaze flicked to General Duncan.
“Our calculations say differently, ma’am.”
“Is it theoretically possible? Sure.” Erica heaved a huge sigh and pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead. Mark knew that look: mental math was running marathons in her brain, orbital calculations and velocities converting to weapons trajectories. “Ma’am, antisatellite kill missions are for low to medium Earth orbits only. This thing was out where our GPS satellites live. That’s fifteenthousandmiles away from Earth. The ISS orbits at only 220 miles. Successful antisatellite missions target objects like weather satellites or recon birds that have malfunctioned. Antisatellite kill missions are the military’s area, yes,butthey’ve never shot one down this far out. Were you going to mention that, General?”
Silence. President Wall stared into the camera.
“When these kill missions go wrong—and they do, often—what was one satellite becomes thousands of microsatellites, far more dangerous to our astronauts,” Chris said.
“While I appreciate the danger and risks our astronauts face,” President Wall said carefully, “I also have to consider the effects of further attacks on our nation’s military and reconnaissance satellites.Anyfurther attacks would devastate America’s military forces. Not to mention, if this satellite is on some miswired military plan and is moving into orbit over the United States, I have to seriously consider the possibility that it will launch an attack on the homeland. Possibly a nuclear attack.”
Everyone swallowed, and the air in the conference room turned icy. Mark’s skin chilled, and he looked up reflexively, as if he could see the Soviet satellite moving into position over Houston, taking aim…
On the video screen, Sergey flinched.
“Now, the plan I have in front of me says we can redirect an existing satellite and send it on an intercept course. Both will be obliterated, and if we act quickly, the debris field will have a limited and acceptable impact.”
“Madam President, youdon’twant to execute a kill mission,” Chris said. “We don’t know what the nuclear status of that bird is. Do we need to protect the United States from a potential nuclear attack? Yes, of course. But we also need to protect American outer space.”
“Explain,” President Wall said.
“A large nuclear warhead detonating in low or medium Earth orbit could wipe out ourentiresatellite network. And not just ours, but everyone’s. Russia, China, India, Australia, Israel. Europe. Everyone who has a bird in the sky. All of them would be fried. Every outer space asset across the globe could go dark.”
“Our astronauts on the ISS would be stranded in a powerless metal tube,” Mark said. “They’d freeze to death before they ran out of air, but they would die. Or it might happen fast, one of the satellites in orbit slamming into them. They could be sucked out into the vacuum, where their blood will boil and their lungs will explode. Without power, without guidance controls, it would be nothing but a demolition derby up there, Madam President. They would absolutely die.”
“And without guidance thrusters, the ISS would reenter the atmosphere and burn apart over three-quarters of the planet before slamming into the ground with greater kinetic energy as the Hiroshima bomb,” Roxanne said.
President Wall’s jaw tightened.
Chris spoke next, his voice weary with the weight of outer space on his shoulders. “There are 50,000 satellites in orbit, Madam President. And every single one of them could go dark. And when they went dark, we’d lose all communications and all access. Without any course corrections or orbital maneuvers, those 50,000willbe coming home when atmospheric drag and gravity pulls them down. Sure, some will burn up in the atmosphere. But many won’t. We’ve got birds up there bigger than trains, ma’am. You could be looking at a Keyhole satellite plowing into Manhattan or a GPS bird leveling Paris. And we wouldn’t have any idea it was coming, because every single eye we’ve ever had in the sky would be gone.”
