*****
The moment after Lieutenant Mara engaged the MAGE, the Master Gigabit Ethernet system was flooded with several terabytes of data that had accumulated in the response room’s databanks since the first bogey’s appearance. It took all of ten seconds for the silicone-germanium processors to upload and process the information, and to reach a decision. Accessing the General Military Network, it ploughed through all firewalls and hooked itself up to the six Artillery Batteries that belted the capital, as well as to the three primary instruments with which it intended to perceive its foe. Accessing the Active Electronically Scanned Array, Plasma InfraRed Emission Display and High Gain Antenna array directly, it dispensed with the response room’s torrent of data, preferring the much more direct influx those systems could provide. The master system duly noted that the inbound targets did not appear on the scanned array and presumed that it was due to stealth technology on the Threat’s part. In fact, the signals only showed up on the PIRED because their inbound trajectories through the lower thermosphere were leaving an infrared-emitting path in their wakes. The system calculated the probability of interception at the nearest target’s altitude, which at that very moment was just inside the mesosphere. Dissatisfied with the results, it decided to wait, and instead prepared the Disposable Laser Cartridge Artillery System for firing operations.
Surrounding Leiben like somber sentinels, the Anti-Air Threat Artillery Batteries stood potently, each with three cannon pointed out towards a non-existent enemy on the horizon. Upon receiving orders, only four of the batteries activated; the remaining two were under maintenance, vital hardware components having been removed for repair.
The artillery system, better known as DLCAS, had been the subject of a fifteen year research program before finally being fielded, and centered on an entirely new way to fire cannon. Designed around its munitions, each unit possessed a ludicrous combined reinforced/perforated chamber, which once activated opened to allow a two-meter long, 200 millimeter shell to be inserted. The cannon then resealed their breeches and traversed their snubbed barrels up towards the sky. Once there, the cannons’ instrumentation extracted specific data from the shells to assist in calibration, and then paused for further instructions.
Momentarily foiled in its intention to strike down the incoming targets, the master system relied instead on the High Gain Antennas for targeting. By themselves, the HGAs were nearly useless, possessing such a narrow field of vision as to render them incapable of detecting the incoming objects. Combined with the PIRED, however, the HGAs would be able to pinpoint each target’s real-time location precisely enough for it to be engaged. There was a rub to contend with, however.
What allowed the PIRED to detect the objects at all was the infrared signature they produced as they tore through the thermosphere, compressing the already hot gases there to a point where IR emissions could be detected. But with such a steep descending angle, with such a powerful IR signature compared to its size, and at an altitude of over a hundred kilometers, the targets frustrated PIRED’s attempts to supply the artillery system with the precise data necessary for interception.
Added to that was another complication. The high gain antennae were unable to penetrate the ever-intensifying plasma surrounding the objects, meaning these would have to descend until they were low and slow enough for the shroud to dissipate. The system calculated that, at the current rate of the targets’ deceleration, the altitude of engagement would be thirty-five kilometers. And so it waited another twenty seconds, tasking several HGA components in pairs to each battery in advance.
As the nearest targets punched through the thirty-five kilometer mark at over three kilometers per second, the ionization dissipated enough for the high gain antennae to precisely map their trajectories and the laser cannon system began to be fed real-time data. Finally receiving the necessary vectors, each individual cannon acquired its respective target and began tracking operations. At 14H50, local time, Unit 2 of the 1st Anti-air Threat Battery reached a firing solution and electrically initiated its shell.
The shell cartridge’s rear section consisted of a cylindrical block of high explosives, encased within a copper cylinder and surrounded by a carefully spaced solenoid, the casing and solenoid forming an open circuit at their extremities via an instrument package.
At rest, that circuit was devoid of current, but upon the shell’s electrical initiation, a capacitor bank, hidden safely within the Battery infrastructure, instantly pumped a powerful electrical charge into the solenoid, generating an intense magnetic field between itself and the casing for the briefest of moments.
At the point of highest magnetic intensity, the electric detonator at the shell’s base fired, sending a detonation wave coursing through the Elastomer-bonded Octogen main charge. Before five microseconds had passed, the expanding shock front reached the metal casing and began to deform it outwards into a funnel shape, distorting the magnetic field between itself and the solenoid until they contacted each other, and in doing so progressively short-circuiting the circuit along the shell’s length as the wave-front advanced. The detonation wave raced along the entirety of the explosive charge, the expanding plasma plasticizing its metal container, torturing it into a magnetic field-distorting, electrically inducting tube, and so causing a significant fraction of the explosive charge’s stored chemical energy to be transformed into electrical current.
By the time the explosive shock front had reached the end of its short journey, the inducting effect caused by the distorting magnetic field had intensified the current by two orders of magnitude. In that moment, a load switch placed in the fore instrument package did the first, last, and only thing it had been designed to do: it closed at maximum flux compression, transferring the generated current into the killing component of the shell, an optically pumped diode laser, specially designed for the sole purpose of producing an exceptionally intense, coherent infrared flash before frying itself.
Over the following seconds, all operational cannon fired, sending twelve coherent near-infrared flashes across the distance between the weapons and their targets, some managing to deposit over twenty kilojoules of thermal energy against the objects’ blackened exteriors in a microsecond. The PIRED detected six brief, very intense infrared flashes as targets disintegrated, the remaining six continuing their descent unhampered. By the time the sixth flash had been detected, the first cannon to fire had already reloaded and prepared to fire again.
Ever more frequent flashes of light illuminated the countryside as the seconds passed by, each accompanied by the tremendous concussion of the DLC cannon as their perforated blast chambers noisily expelled super-heated explosive residue before ejecting the remains of their shells. The incoming targets continued to slow down as they penetrated the lower atmosphere, their numbers dwindling quickly with each passing second until, only a moment before complete interception, the MAGE was abruptly pulled from the task, execution authority automatically transferring to the four stunned Battery commanders who had only just reached their stations. The remaining two inbounds struck their targets and detonated within a second of each another.
The first warhead detonated beside the 3rd Anti-air Threat Artillery Battery’s center cannon, releasing a deadly burst of Gamma rays, x-rays and a constellation of charged particles outwards into the immediate area. Twenty meters away from the heart of the blast, the steel-reinforced concrete bunker proved thick enough to absorb most of the radiation. The lieutenant and his three-man crew, having barely begun to take stock of what was happening, nevertheless received more than fifty gray of lethal emissions. Suffering an influx of more than three thousand joules of heat energy each, the four men suddenly felt an intense searing sensation course throughout their bodies.
It was the last feeling they would ever experience.
Thermal radiation emanating from the proto-fireball simultaneously assaulted every surface it came into contact with, ablating steel and concrete away with enough intensity to toss cann
on out into the incandescing trees like juggling clubs. The enormous pressure from the bunker’s ablating roof drove it downwards towards the doomed soldiers until, a fraction of a second later, the expanding fireball collided against the concrete. In the briefest of instants, four young lives were snuffed out.
The second warhead came down over the city itself, detonating ten meters above a residential complex in the May 23rd neighborhood. In an instant of fire and light, the building was driven into the ground, its solid construction no impediment to the forces acting upon it. Floor after floor collapsed, extinguishing the lives of men, women and children in a layer-cake of tragedy until the collapsing mass broke through its arched foundations and pummeled into the underground transit system beneath. All commuters who had taken shelter there perished immediately, not even those who had been shouldered into the station’s radiating tunnel complex being spared of such a fate; the falling debris acted like a pneumatic hammer, ejecting air from the station’s cathedral-like interior with enough force to propel anything not bolted down towards unyielding concrete and unforgiving steel.
Two nearby buildings came crashing down with the blast, their ruins cutting off all access to the gaping hole in the earth where the center building had stood.
All electronic devices in the immediate area were instantly destroyed and power spikes in the electricity distribution grid damaged all appliances in the city lacking the proper protection. Leiben Varsity was one of the more fortunate establishments, its electricity grid possessing many contingencies meant to protect its sensitive research equipment. In the Varsity’s distinguished Department of Physics, in a dark room with blacked-out windows situated on the complex’s third floor, a computer connected to a collection of scientific instruments duly recorded the second warhead’s neutron spike. A nearby physicist, distracted by his calculations, raised his head in irritation at the computer’s warning bleep.
His hackles then rose as an odd crackling sound began to emanate from the blackened windows beside him. His stretched his hand out hesitantly and splayed it upon the nearest windowpane´s surface. It was warm to the touch and heating up quickly. Whatever thoughts were going through his mind then fled as the windows shattered with explosive force. Glass fragments and broken window frames flew into the compartment with an earsplitting concussion, carving up the young man’s exposed skin and tossing him mercilessly onto the floor.
He lay there for a long moment, his slowly recovering ears picking up the sound of glass shards tinkling off myriad chairs and worktables, listening in astonishment to the resounding rumble that was coming from a large, rectangular hole in the wall. Carefully but clumsily he rose, barely noticing the pain from the cut in the palm of his hand. A jagged piece of glass stuck out of the wound, having found its new refuge the moment he had pushed himself up off the floor.
He approached the opening with awkward steps, the enormous explosion having somehow knocked all grace out of him, and then paused to contemplate the solitary black mushroom cloud that stooped over his city. He felt sick all of a sudden and wondered numbly whether it was from radiation sickness. He found that his right eye could no longer focus correctly, and was about to rub it when he became aware of his shredded hands. He stared down at them, horrified by the vision of carnage. Was that a piece of milky white glass, or was it a protruding bone? He tried to poke at the outcropping but quickly gave up when the pain intensified. Blood dripped freely into his palms and onto the patterned floor, and his right eye was entirely out of focus now, able to see the world outside only through smudged shades of red.
His untidily scribbled notes lay forgotten on the floor. Only moments ago he had been working on an efficient new way to produce Polonium-208 from natural Bismuth. As much as he tried now, however, all he could focus on was what his only remaining eye could perceive – at the base of the rising mushroom cloud, an enormous billowing cumulous expanding up and outwards, blotting out the still-erect buildings with a deep rumble. In a few moments that cloud would reach him.
Hot tears joined the rivulets of blood streaming down his face.