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  There was real danger here from the transmitter’s power output and the open vacuum of space. Freedom's antenna amplifiers were located in her external plumbing layer. Nicknamed the oven, the plumbing layer was an enormous maze of waveguide sandwiched between her central core and outer skin. Waveguides focused microwave energy from her radar transmitter onto each of her four triangular faces, each face an antenna measuring 660 feet on a side covered with thousands of spikelike nails. While replacing antenna amps inside the oven, Jay would be working inside the most powerful microwave oven ever created.

  Weightless, using only his hands, Jay raced up the ladder to the top peak of the triangular prism shaped control room. Throwing open the maintenance equipment cabinet, he pulled out an oversized backpack and secured it to the floor. Following a desperate search, he filled it with antenna amps and tools. Grabbing the case, he strapped it on his back and hurried off to change into his pressure suit.

  13

  DEWS AT Passover, 12/0912014, 161I Zulu, 11:1I A.M. Local

  Arecibo Earth Station,

  Arhcibo, Puerto Rico

  An invisible infrared laser beam painted a rectangular section of earth along Arecibo’s rim, leaving a trail of fire, smoke, steam, and scorched grass sizzling in its wake. Measuring thirty-three feet across, the enormous heat ray moved quickly, methodically scorching the earth in a row pattern like a farmer might plow his field. In just under ten seconds, a patch of earth about half the size of a football field lay smoldering.

  An army private standing by the picture window in the rec building noticed smoke rising from the rim. Alarmed, he ran to the phone but couldn’t speak, terrified by what he saw outside. He stood mesmerized, watching the grass fire racing toward him, surrounding the rec building, fuel tanks, and four SAM missile launchers within seconds. Flames spread across the rim as if the ground were saturated with gasoline, and there was no place to run.

  Twin fuel tanks next to the rec room were detonated by exploding SAM missiles. A series of secondary explosions followed, engulfing Arecibo’s rim in flames. Saturated with fuel, the burning air instantly reduced the young soldier to ash.

  Behind the rec building stood the large thirty-five-meter satellite dish pointing toward Freedom. Surrounded by scorched earth and smoke, the dish stood blistering hot, but remained operational.

  Passing over Arecibo, the DEWSAT scorched the earth, searching for this thirty-five-meter dish. Triangulating on Arecibo’s radio beam, the DEWSAT had resolved the antenna’s position to within one hundred feet. Thermal scanning gave the DEWSAT a second independent, albeit somewhat less accurate, position estimate of the antenna’s position. Looking down from 115 miles overhead, the DEWSAT saw two blistering hot metal objects—the uplink antenna and fuel tank.

  It targeted them both, the largest first.

  Switching from target discrimination mode to maximum power, the DEWSAT’s optical computer brain set target dwell time to one second.

  From the security building overlooking the big bowl, the sergeant simultaneously watched four programs on separate TV sets. He didn’t notice the smoke outside or the red alarm lights, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. When I Love Lucy disappeared, he spun around to see the status board on fire with red lights and alarm messages spewing across every monitor screen. Their firehouse alarm bell had been broken for years but not replaced because it never rang anyway.

  “Gawd!” he exclaimed out loud. I’d better get some help.

  Grabbing the phone, he punched up the rec building. It was dead.

  The overhead lights and status board flickered, then went dark.

  Smoke outside caught his eye as he stood up for the last time.

  Backup generator oughta cut in, he thought, when suddenly every window in the building went. Spillover from the heat ray had detonated a cluster of four SAM missiles parked by the fuel tank. A series of explosions took out the fuel lines running above ground to the power plant downhill. Rapids of burning gasoline and diesel fuel rushed downhill over earth and rocks, engulfing the power plant, two more missile launchers, and one section of Arecibo’s mammoth bowl.

  He didn’t hear the explosions, but with his last breath smelled the fountains of gasoline and diesel spewing upward from the detonating fuel tanks. Flying through the burning air at hurricane speed, a two-foot dagger of window glass mercifully severed off his head at the neck before the security building was engulfed in flame and incinerated a few seconds later.

  Blowing their tops like giant Roman candles, each exploding tank belched an enormous fireball upward, then spewed burning fuel, dropping fiery spray for hundreds of yards. As the fire advanced around the bowl’s perimeter, detonating fuel tanks and missiles fed the torrid frenzy. Rivers of burning gasoline and diesel raced down the mountain, saturating the ground underneath Arecibo’s mammoth dish. From the air, Arecibo looked like a large fiery crater charring the sky black.

  Within minutes, Arecibo was transformed into a collection of twisted metal and flaming wreckage. The earth trembled as the cable towers supporting Arecibo’s mammoth dish collapsed.

  It all happened so quickly. Ashes and black smoke were spotted by a Brit missile cruiser in the North Atlantic over one hundred miles away.

  Once Arecibo had been quietened, the DEWSAT sheathed its invisible ray.

  Something’s Wrong Here, 12/09/2014, 1611 Zttlu, 9:11 A.M.

  Local

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  “Something’s wrong here! We’re disconnected!” Colonel Napper exclaimed, pounding the screen linked to Freedom. Jay’s picture had suddenly gone black and a loud, low-pitched bell began to gong. All signals from Freedom had been lost, communication with Jay, Depack, and Centurion severed.

  It was like watching a spectacular video game suddenly stop. The slowly rotating hologram of earth froze motionless. Thousands of symbols designating everything in orbit—DEWSATs, Hell Fire, Freedom, Hope, Anti-SATellite missiles, space mines, discarded rocket boosters, junk—froze suspended. Across the walls of the War Room, the alarm board lit up while both the air and space threat boards went black. The sea threat board continued to operate, but all air and space information had been severed.

  Colonel Napper pounded the alarm cutoff switch and silenced the bell.

  A message appeared on screen in large red print.

  CRITICAL ALARM: Freedom Whiteout—LOS

  Condition Exists SYMPTOMS: All Communication and Data Channels Lost PROBABLE CAUSE: Unknown POSSIBLE CAUSES:

  1. High Background Noise Due to Sun Outage 2. High Background Noise Due to Sunspots RECOMMENDATION: Roaring Creek Earth Station

  as Alternative Uplink Site

  Computers inside Cheyenne Mountain quickly but incorrectly diagnosed the cause of Freedom's Loss Of Signal as sunspots or a sun outage. This diagnosis was only as good as the program which produced it. A complete analysis program would have exhaustively tested every failure possibility, but there were too many failure possibilities to test them all. When theory came to practice (when it came time to pay for it), you tested only those situations most likely to fail. Their computer programmer hadn’t considered the possibility of communication failure due to friendly fire from their own DEWSAT laser because he believed it would never happen. From its original inception, the SDI system had not been designed for war with itself.

  Freedom's Loss Of Signal condition had all the symptoms of a sun outage, except one—sun outages were predictable, normally occurring twice a year at Arecibo. A sun outage occurred when Freedom was positioned directly between the sun and Arecibo. When the sun lined up directly behind Freedom, Arecibo’s antenna was blinded in the same way you’re blinded looking directly into the sun.

  Freedom's LOS condition had all the symptoms of an outage due to sunspots, except one—only Arecibo reported trouble. All other Department of Defense earth stations remained on-line and fully operational. As a rule, electromagnetic interference from sunspots prevented clear reception of broadcast signals
around the world.

  Loss of Freedom's data link was a critical matter to Headquarters because Allied battlefield control had been consolidated inside Cheyenne Mountain. A critical condition yes, but not unexpected. Loss Of Signal work around drills were routine, and several communication alternatives were on hot standby in case they were needed. An alternate earth station located in Roaring Creek, Pennsylvania, could be brought on-line in a matter of seconds.

  Napper and Mason studied the critical alarm message— Napper on the War Room floor, Mason from the Crow’s Nest.

  “Sun outage doesn’t make sense,” Mason said quietly. “Outages are predictable.”

  “Right, Slim, and sunspots don’t hold up either. No one else has any problem. Roaring Creek’s on-line.”

  “Whataya think Sam? Any recommendations?”

  “Assume a sun outage. Switch over to Roaring Creek. Couldn’t do any harm.” Napper paused for a few moments, chatted with an officer sitting to his side, then continued. “Yeah, assume an outage but don’t plan on this switch solving our problem.”

  Napper went to work connecting Cheyenne Mountain to the thirty-five-meter satellite dish at the Roaring Creek Earth Station. After pressing the sun outage key on his terminal, his job was done. In less than ten seconds, his computer automatically linked Cheyenne Mountain over a special high-speed landline to Roaring Creek. Immediately, Napper’s data link light turned green, indicating Freedom's signal had been detected. “We’re on the air!”

  A picture of Fayhee's empty chair and control console appeared on Freedom's video display screen, alarm lights inside Cheyenne Mountain cleared, the holographic image of the earth began to slowly rotate, over two hundred ASATs in low earth orbit quietly disappeared, and Freedom's communication link was restored.

  Napper pressed a switch, ringing a bell inside Freedom. Should get their attention, he thought.

  “Freedom! Do you read me? Over.”

  Silence.

  “Freedom, do you read me?”

  A harsh voice sounding like sand and glue responded.

  “We have a problem. Your signal’s fading ... in the noise.”

  A snowy picture of Centurion appeared.

  “Jay’s overhead. I’ll connect you.”

  Then Napper and Mason watched Freedom's signal fade away. As suddenly as the link was restored, it failed. Freedom's video broke up into tiles—both primary links severed.

  “Recommendations?” asked Mason. “I need ideas, Sam.”

  “We’re boxed in. Let’s back outta this corner. Switch to Hope. She’s standing by.”

  Without looking to the supreme commander for approval, Mason ordered: “Do it!”

  Then, without warning, Hope's communication link failed. The picture of Commander Pasha Yakovlev broke up into square tiles, then went black. With their backup links gone, Cheyenne Mountain lost their ace in the hole. Both their primary and backup control systems had failed.

  Identical to Freedom in every respect, Hope provided the SDI network with redundancy, two of everything. If Freedom failed, Hope would automatically take over without missing a beat, an operating spare in case of problems or maintenance.

  The second critical failure in less than one minute,

  The Problem Without Solution thought Mason. The network’s designed for single point failures, but we haven’t seen a single point failure yet. Space stations don’t just drop off the air or fall from the sky. Doesn’t add up—this is no accident. There’s malice here. Someone’s got us scrambling and all we’ve done is react. Compound failures’re stacking up faster than we can clear ’em. The unthinkable is happening and we ’re powerless to stop it. We 're losing control of the armada! Concentrate, Slim! Focus on the big problem first! Network control—get that armada in check. Freedom is the controlling piece of orbiting real estate here, but she’s out of commission—so work around her. Work Hope in parallel. First, we need visibility—get our eyes and ears back. Probe space. See what’s going on.

  “Hopei" Mason looked at Napper on his TV display.

  Napper turned, spoke to an officer sitting to his side, then replied, “We don’t know what happened, but my best people are all over this problem. We need her now!”

  Mason nodded agreement. “As a stopgap measure, we need land-based radars tracking the armada.”

  “Agreed!” Napper exclaimed. “We’ll patch in BMEWS until Freedom's back on-line.”

  BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) was a group of large powerful land-based radars designed to probe space searching for ICBMs. BMEWS radars could track objects in orbit as small as a two-inch bolt.

  “Like the old days,” Craven acknowledged, then his forehead wrinkled. “I don’t like it, Slim. Seems like a giant step backwards.”

  Mason didn’t agree. His face took a hard set as he looked at his boss, the Supreme Allied Commander. “We need a fallback position.”

  Mason looked at Napper on screen. “Sam, do you have any better fallback plan?”

  “No, sir. I like your idea! It’s one we can depend on. BMEWS is operational and linked by landline. We’ve lost our real time, but using BMEWS we can track the armada without Centurion.”

  “Slim, I think you’re making a mountain out of a mole-

  The Problem Without Solution hill, but do what you must.” Craven didn’t see any reason to push Mason on this point. Patching BMEWS in wouldn’t cost them any extra time.

  “Patch in BMEWS,” ordered Mason.

  “Napper, get up here now!’’ bellowed Craven.

  Mason discreetly passed Craven a note.

  Recommend checking the room for bugs. There's

  malice here!

  “Nonsense!” Craven mumbled under his breath. “Atmospherics or sunspots. There’s .some reasonable explanation.”

  A mole’s inside Cheyenne Mountain, thought Mason. Has to be. This was important. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. No other explanation made sense. He wrote a note to the chief of security, marked it uR.6Fwr, then signaled his operations officer to come over and lend a hand.

  Without saying a word, Mason handed the note to the major. Silently, the major read over his delivery instructions, gave Mason a wink indicating he understood, then left the conference room heading down the spiral staircase.

  Listening to their meeting from the War Room floor below, Shripod Addams looked concerned over the space station siluatiQn like everyone else in Cheyenne Mountain, but he alone was not surprised.

  Lightning Without Thunder, 12/0912014, 161I Zulu

  Altitude: 115 Miles In Circular Polar Orbit,

  Passing Over New Orleans, Louisiana

  Onboard A DEWSAT

  Passing 115 miles directly above the cloud-covered streets of New Orleans, two small fuel pumps began turning inside the DEWSAT’s attitude positioning engines. In the silent vacuum of space, two jets of hydrazine fuel escaped, slowly rotating the sunflower shape about its center of gravity. Once the DEWSAT came about, its lethal stem pointed toward an Anti-SATellite (ASAT) missile, a large cylindrical canister shaped like a rocket booster trailing sixty miles behind and twenty miles below. Light reflecting from the cylinder bounced off the sunflower’s mirrored head, focused on a sensor, and fed the DEWS AT’s optical computer brain for processing.

  Almost instantly, the DEWSAT illuminated the ASAT with a single UWB radar pulse. After measuring exact range and position, the DEWSAT trued its sights. First, it rotated its mirrored head less than one degree about the stem, then refined its focus by changing the mirror’s parabolic shape by a few hundredths of an inch.

  Within a few seconds, the one-hundred-foot-long stem and reactor core began heating up. The DEWSAT’s Free Electron Laser accelerated high-energy electrons down its stem, then lased them into an invisible twenty-megawatt beam, dwelling on target less than one second before the small, tactical nuclear warhead exploded. A brilliant, blazing white fireball ignited the sky. For a fraction of a second, the intensity of the light and heat released f
rom the explosion was comparable to that from the sun, so powerful it would permanently damage any electronic equipment within a ten-mile radius. The size of the explosion was equivalent to 20,000 tons of dynamite, about the same size as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

  Immediately after the blinding flash, the DEWSAT rotated its mirror about the stem, focused on a second ASAT, and fired—dwelling on target one-half second before reducing it to a cloud of fiery gasses and exploding debris. Fed by burning rocket fuels, the fireball from the second explosion, a conventional hundred-pound warhead, lingered several seconds before fading to black.

  Without hesitation, emotion, or glory, the DEW illuminated a third target and seconds later sent it to a fiery grave—this one, a smaller space mine with a conventional warhead.

  Executing the kill sequence flawlessly, the lethal DEWSAT weapon system was without parallel—within limits, technically elegant, robust, and unapproachable.

  As this ballet of explosions, fire, and light raced across the cloudy New Orleans sky, hundreds of people on the ground below scurried for shelter, expecting a downpour. Diffused by the clouds, the flashes looked like distant lightning silently igniting the sky without the clash of thunder.

  For approximately one minute, chaos ruled the civilized world. Communications around New Orleans and around the world were disrupted. Radio, TV, satellite, telephone, aircraft traffic control—every communication system using the electromagnetic spectrum was jammed off the air due to the interference from the explosions overhead. The communication fabric that held the peoples of the world together broke down due to interference from over two hundred exploding ASAT warheads.

  In one simultaneous attack, seventy-two DEWSAT’s eliminated 238 orbiting ASATs and space mines.

  As part of their mission, the Cheyenne Mountain staff had tracked every object in orbit around the earth since Sputnik, the first Russian satellite. Of the roughly 60,000 objects orbiting the earth, 238 were known ASATs or space mines launched by the third world, each an immediate threat to the DEWSAT armada in case of war.