*****
Donovan Gaeta had been an AATACC Second-Lieutenant for more than two years, and the small, comfortable, air-conditioned Detection and Response Room was slowly becoming a second home to him. One year short of the thirty five year promotion barrier, Don had finally been evaluated as officer material, his electronic warfare background having weighed heavily in favor of the decision.
The promotion’s details didn’t matter, however. What mattered to him was the net effect it would have on his life. His current employment was in a home appliance repair shop, and the extra pay from his part-time commitment to the forces, along with his recent promotion, were allowing him to entertain possibilities that only a few years ago he wouldn’t have dreamed possible. Lisa had recently begun to hint that they should once again request endorsement for procreation. It was time for offspring number three, perhaps, she had whispered to him more than once. Don had decided that morning to discuss the possibility with the lieutenant who warmed the seat beside his.
First-lieutenant Mara Springer had more than twenty years of service and four childbirths under her considerable belt. She possessed a healthy dose of lucidity, a larger dose of humor, and happened to enjoy dispensing advice when encouraged to do so. After the usual morning formalities, their conversation had focused mainly on the weather and other such futilities, until he had finally broached the subject of family planning. Mara had found interest in the subject-matter, and they had spoken all morning about licenses, parental financing and his wife’s current state of health. By morning’s end, as they enjoyed the best grub an Army with a tight budget could afford, he had quietly decided to become a father again. Everything of relevance having been said, the afternoon began to drag along more slowly, the operators trading point position with one another so Don could get some drill-time on the principal console.
The AATACC’s DRR was Capicua’s primary instrument for the detection and elimination of air and spaceborne threats against its capital. Mostly that implied the detection and tracking of Apollo-type asteroids or similar bodies by way of the Active Electronically Scanned Array, an old-world Radar system scavenged from the Adamastor, the system being complimented by an ultra high gain antenna array of similar origin for threat pinpointing and ID. The AESA was an old workhorse and had been upgraded several times, but as yet no replacement program had been developed out of the sheer expense such an endeavor would entail. In fact, the only recent addition to the collection of detection instruments was the Plasma InfraRed Emission Detector, a relatively recent investment that, duly coupled with the Disposable Laser Cartridge Artillery System, was expected to intercept any inbound hyper-velocity target over the city’s upper atmosphere.
The PIRED and DLCAS were the brainchildren of those who had been particularly shaken up by the long-past phantom battle, and both systems were currently an integral part of Leiben’s continuing bid to be the sole power on Capicua.
A warning blip suddenly made itself heard, the response room’s mellow lighting correspondingly morphing into red. Surprised at the unexpected exercise, Don sat a little straighter, flicking his eyes towards Mara; she appeared bored and a little irritated by the interruption to her private thoughts.
“Threat identified!” Don said, a little louder than was really necessary. Mara annoyance intensified. She was once again sitting in the primary’s seat and he had just spoken her line.
“Threat identified!” Mara barked, staring at her second with an expectant quirk in her brow. Feeling foolish, Don quickly slid up his display screen and assessed the incoming data.
“Threat inbound from LCO, heading towards the equator at 62 degrees latitudinal inclination. Velocity barely sub-orbital, vertical component almost nil, with an altitude a smidge over one hundred clicks. No threat of impact with Leiben or any other manmade infrastructure,” he summed up.
“Sub-orbital ...” Mara whispered. More loudly, she addressed her second.
“No intervention necessary. Inform the artillery batteries to standby but to not, I repeat, to not fire against threat.”
As Don hurried to comply, Mara took a closer look at her own screen’s display, the only one between them that provided a visual representation of what was taking place; the three-dimensional image before her eyes displayed the curve of a planetary surface and, high up and moving in a lazy arc just north of Leiben’s outskirts, a small yellow blip surrounded by a triangle.
“What’s its cross-section?” she asked.
“It’s tiny. Must be a meteor, probably no more than a few kilos.”
“No meteor would be moving at sub-orbital speeds. This is man-made, Don. We’re looking at a man-made something coming out of orbit. Or maybe this is just an exercise.”
A debate broke out between them as to whether they were at the moment party to a simulation, and indeed Mara was beginning to suspect that that was the case. All orbiting objects more than five centimeters across had already been detected and their orbits characterized. All fifty five of them. And there was no indication that any would be returning to Capicua in the near future. Just as Mara was thinking that, however, the yellow blip vanished.
Several things suddenly happened at once. Every single alarm system inside the room simultaneously elected to bleat, blare, and otherwise buffet the operators with an overwhelming cacophony of sound. In the same moment their display screens caved in, and Mara suddenly found herself staring at a transparent glassy pane and, through it, at myriad flashing lights fixed against the wall, warning her that something was terribly wrong.
“What did we do?” Don asked, holding his hands away from his console as if suspecting he had pressed a wrong button.
“Nothing. Restart your computer.”
Pressing the rapid boot button on the wall, she began to pray as she waited for a response. An impossibly long second later, their display screens came to life again, and Mara’s relief was quickly overruled by fear for what she might find once all systems were running. Working fast, she digited her pass-code when the prompt appeared, barking at her second to hurry and do the same. Before assessing the visrep on her screen, she pressed the Call-to-Quarters alarm button and, quickly pulling the C-to-Q pass-code tag out from the crevice of her substantial bosom, she broke it and read the eight digit alphanumeric code concealed inside. Quickly digiting the code into the appropriate prompt, she entered, and a brand new hooting alarm began to make itself heard somewhere beyond the response room. Hollering at her second to evaluate and deactivate the remaining alarms, she finally opened the visrep on the screen before her.
What she saw there nearly stopped her heart.
Several dozen blips populated the entire lower thermosphere above Leiben, and were belting down fast over the capital of her world.
“We’re under attack,” she stated breathlessly.
“What do you mean, under attack? You just said it was an exercise,” he countered.
Not saying a word, she turned her display screen towards him. The expression on his face made it clear that he was seeing her point. She hurried to make a decision.
“These are way too many targets to leave to human intervention. I’m removing execution authority from the ArtBats and handing it to the MAGE. Do you agree?” she asked, her chest heaving.
“Seventy-three – no, seventy-five ballistic targets inbound at over five clicks per sec. Yeah, I agree,” he replied, and then they simultaneously did the same thing.
Removing pen-keys from their pockets, they inserted the devices into their respective slots on the consoles before them. All visual displays promptly disappeared, only to be replaced by a series of command options. Working quickly, they progressed through each option. The last one was for Mara alone.
She opted to engage the MAGE.
A corded telephone suddenly chimed beside Mara, startling her. The phone rang once more before the lieutenant managed to unfreeze herself and answer it.
“Say, what the hell is going on over there, people?” an outraged v
oice shouted from some obscure office in the Strategic Command Center. It was Lieutenant-Colonel Timmons, the center’s most highly decorated asshole.
But Mara couldn’t let him be one today.
“Colonel, sir, we were moments ago tracking a single space-borne threat as it passed over Leiben. It then detonated and almost knocked out our defensive capability. Since getting our systems back online we’ve been tracking seventy-five targets closing in on Leiben at over five clicks per second. I initiated the Call-to-Quarters alarm and passed execution authority to the MAGE –”
“You did WHAT?” her superior screamed from on other side. She winced at his sudden rage and wondered for the first time whether she had done the right thing. The colonel began to laugh.
“Well then, Lieutenant, we seemed to have jumped the gun a little here. You may not have realized it all cooked up in there, but the solar flare alarm has sounded over the city, compliments of our Flare Early Warning System. What you’re seeing is a clear sign of interference from the higher atmosphere due to unusual solar activity. We are not, nor have we any reason to suspect we are about to be, under attack. Now just relax and keep your hands off the console so I can overrule that decision of yours.”
“NO!” she shouted before she could stop herself.
The complete silence on the line was disheartening.
“Apologies, sir, but that decision can’t be made without authorization of the SCC commander himself,” she reasoned, thinking hard as she mentally reassessed what she had witnessed over the last minute.
“Sweetie, I know you think you’re very smart, but if I inform the Colonel you engaged the MAGE under these circumstances, you will be court-martialed. Am I clear?”
“Yessir, I understand that, but if you’re wrong and I’m right, in a minute or two we’ll all be dead. Please listen, sir. If the signals we’re receiving were radar phantoms, and my second’s telling me we’re up to eighty-three now, their trajectories would be erratic. Not ballistic! And certainly not nearly parallel to one another. My conclusion is that this is either an exercise or a legitimate strike. I’ll stake my career on it, sir!”
There was a long pause as her superior pondered on her words.
“Well, sunshine, you’re in luck today, ‘cause I’m not in a mood to stake your career on this notion of yours. I am removing execution authority from MAGE and handing it to the ArtBats. Where it belongs. Have a nice day, dear.” The line went dead, leaving a very distraught Lieutenant to stare at her screen as a cascade of inbounds rained down over her beloved city.