by F X Holden
Al-Malki looked momentarily uncomfortable before the young woman spoke. “The Prince has a sore throat, I am afraid. He finds extended conversation tiring. If you don’t mind, I will join you.”
Al-Malki fluttered a hand theatrically at his throat. “Yes, very bothersome. I hope it is alright with you if Roberta sits in on our discussion?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but gathered his robes and paused as a waiter pulled out his chair, before sitting down heavily and pointing at Lapikov’s juice and coffee to indicate he would have the same.
A waiter brought another chair for the young woman, and she sat too.
So this was Roberta D’Antonia. Lapikov wasn’t surprised; he’d been briefed that it was likely the Italian would join their meeting. Al-Malki never went anywhere without his honey-blonde shadow.
Al-Malki waved the waiters away, but Lapikov sat and turned to the Italian. “Would you like some coffee?”
She looked slightly surprised at being asked. “Oh, no thank you. I already ate breakfast.”
Before or after your three-mile jog along Lake Zurich and two hours’ preparation for this meeting? Lapikov wondered to himself.
The Saudi aide had not been introduced and did not sit. He bent and spoke quickly in Al-Malki’s ear, got a brief reply, and then retired to stand next to the Prince’s bodyguards. He had the look of an ex-military type; a fixer, not a thinker.
Al-Malki fixed Lapikov with what was probably intended to be a winning smile. “I think I will have khoubos, chicken and a khodra salad. Would you care to join me in a Saudi breakfast?” His voice sounded just fine to Lapikov.
“No, thank you. Like Roberta, I already ate,” Lapikov lied. “I expect this will be a brief conversation in any case.” Both of his guests looked uncomfortable now, which was what Lapikov had intended. They waited for him to continue. “Prince Al-Malki, you have received our demand for an additional 500,000 barrels to be added to the Saudi quota for production cuts next year. What is your response?”
The Prince leaned back in his chair as D’Antonia leaned forward. “The Kingdom cannot accept a further five percent on its already generous offer to reduce production by five percent.”
“A ten percent reduction is still a three percent increase on average Saudi production for the last five years,” Lapikov pointed out. “It does not even take the Kingdom back to last year’s production levels.”
Lapikov noted that the Italian woman did not confer with Al-Malki, did not even look to him for confirmation as she quickly replied, “As we have already communicated, if Russia finds itself temporarily to be inconvenienced, the Kingdom is willing to place a $6 billion deposit with the World Bank to secure a loan for Russia on Saudi IMF terms.”
Lapikov stifled a laugh, then recovered. “China offered us sixteen billion. We rejected that offer too.”
The Italian contrived to look disappointed. “Then it seems the Kingdom is at the limit of what it can do to help your country.”
“Oh, I don’t think it is, yet,” Lapikov said. He had placed a napkin in his lap out of habit when he sat, and he took it now and folded it carefully, placing it on the table. He deliberately took a slow sip of his coffee and enjoyed the look of discomfort on the face of the fat Prince. Clearly, the man was not used to awkward silences. He spoke directly to the Saudi, ignoring his assistant now. “Prince Al-Malki, the Saudi delegation has until the end of today’s proceedings to announce it will accept this quota redistribution, and further, that it believes a target price above $60 a barrel, after discounts, should be OPEC’s policy for the next two years.” D’Antonia opened her mouth to speak, but Lapikov rudely held a hand up to her face. “Thank you, I know what the official Saudi position is on this.” He stood. “I am empowered by my cabinet and the office of my President to tell you that if you do not comply with our request to curb your production yourselves, Russia will take steps to curb it for you.”
D’Antonia was as quick on the uptake as Lapikov had been briefed she would be, and she flushed angrily. “I’m sorry, but unless I misheard you, you just threatened to attack Saudi oil production facilities?” The Prince looked from his aide to Lapikov with sheep-like confusion.
“Not misheard,” Lapikov said. “But misinterpreted, I’m afraid. We will not ‘attack’ the Kingdom’s production facilities. I am advised we will obliterate them, and send the Kingdom back to the stone age from which it only recently emerged.”
Even the Prince had caught on by now, and he gaped at Lapikov. Lapikov ignored him and gave D’Antonia a sardonic bow. “I will leave you and your employers to your deliberations, young lady. I recommend they treat our request seriously. Rest assured, we have considered all of the attendant implications. This is not a bluff.”
He walked to the terrace door and a waiter opened it for him, his bodyguards falling in behind him as he walked down the carpet-lined corridor to the lift waiting at the end. He had only gone a few steps when he heard the terrace door open again and D’Antonia came running into the corridor behind him.
“Minister, please,” she said and was brought up short by Lapikov’s men.
“Let her speak,” Lapikov told them.
“Minister,” she said, short of breath. “Culturally … I’m sorry, but the Kingdom will not back down in the face of a threat. It can be persuaded, it can be nudged, its cooperation might even be bought, but it cannot be threatened into acceding with your demands.”
“Give us some credit, Signora,” he said. “We have been dealing with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for nearly a century; we know how our words will be received.”
“Then you know you may just have declared war,” she said, aghast. “And not just with Saudi Arabia and its OPEC allies, but with its international allies, like the USA.”
Lapikov laughed. “The USA no longer needs Saudi oil, Miss D’Antonia. Thus it no longer needs Saudi Arabia. It is barely interested in keeping the NATO alliance together, let alone its tenuous partnerships in the Middle East.”
“You are turning your back on the Saudi loan?” she asked. “The Kingdom has given you a lifeline. You say China has done the same…”
“Only drowning men need a lifeline,” he observed. “Our economy is still reliant on oil now, but in ten years it will not be so. We don’t need to sell ourselves into debt slavery.”
“I see Iran’s hand in this. You are too weak to act alone,” she said, eyes narrowing. “You dare not.”
“Dare not?” Lapikov bridled at this. “I was told you were an intelligent woman, Miss D’Antonia. Clearly, my briefing was wrong.”
His men had called the lift and were standing holding the doors. With that comment, he turned on his heel and stepped into the elevator with them.
“Precooler decoupled, air intake closed … switching to internal oxygen. Skylon D4 approaching suborbital peak,” Flight Lieutenant Anaximenes ‘Meany’ Papastopoulos said quietly to himself. There was no need for him to speak loudly. No one was listening but the cockpit voice recorder. He finished flipping switches on his console. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, completes another flawless ascent. If you’d like to show your appreciation, please throw money at the pilot, not flowers. Ladies’ undergarments are also acceptable.”
With a last glance across multiple screens to confirm all systems were nominal, Meany leaned back and ran a hand over the stubble on his head. It was as close to bald as he was allowed under Queen’s Regulations, Chapter 6, Order 209, and it was a relatively new look for him. He’d always had the standard short back and sides with a tousled mop on top that generally went with the RAF uniform, but on joining 11 Group’s Skylon unit, and with his ‘tousled mop’ looking a little more like a dishwashing brush now he was in his 30s, he’d decided it was time for a change. He also happened to think it made him look well hard when coupled with the exoskeleton that he wore outside his olive drab no. 14 uniform. Powered by a fuel cell that was nestled in the small of his back together with the neural link to his lower spinal cord, it cradled his hi
ps and, using piston-powered rods that framed his thighs and calves, allowed him to sit, stand and walk unaided.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of gear he could remove when going through the metal detectors at the gates of RAF Lossiemouth, but after a year of hand-scanning Meany on his way in and out, the security staff were only just starting to get bored with finding new nicknames for him. ‘Cyborg’ had been a favorite for a while, before they’d settled on ‘Papastompalot.’ None was cheeky enough to say it to his face, though, probably because they were afraid of what would happen if he decided to kick their asses.
I’m sorry, Flight Lieutenant Papastopoulos, can you please repeat your command? said a voice from the console in front of him.
“No, Angus,” he sighed. “You can stand down until specifically paged, thank you.”
Yes, Flight Lieutenant.
Angus wasn’t its official name. The AI that helped him manage the systems onboard the Skylon Suborbital Launch System had an alphanumeric designation he had never bothered to learn. But as his command module was a trailer inside a hangar on an airfield in northeast Scotland, he’d decided to give it the most Scottish name he could think of. And a Scottish accent to match.
He looked at his watch and stood up. The next critical point in the mission would not be reached until the spacecraft was somewhere over Canada, which was another hour away. His stomach was growling. He probably had enough time to…
A loud chime sounded inside the trailer, and the AI’s voice broke his train of thought.
Collision warning. Unidentified object detected. Range 23 miles, closing velocity 200 knots, collision probability 93 percent. Options: evade or engage, pls advise.
Meany dropped behind his console again, pulling up his targeting screen. “Arm the 27mm please and give me a visual on the object as soon as you have one,” he said.
Arm defensive weapons, obtain visual of the target, yes Flight Lieutenant.
As a former fighter pilot, Meany Papastopoulos had flown advanced stealth fighter jets armed with guided missiles and precision bombs and commanded drone swarms that turned a single pilot into the commander of a slaved squadron of attack aircraft. In its payload bay, the Skylon could carry a rotary launcher capable of firing the RAF’s new advanced short-range multispectral seeker missile, adapted for space combat. Unfortunately, his current mission had required an empty payload bay, so he was carrying no offensive weapons.
But for the defense of the Skylon, he had at his disposal a technology from the previous century; a single nose-mounted, belt-fed, Mauser 27mm laser-targeting-assisted cannon armed with low-velocity soft-nosed lead shells that were not so much intended to destroy their target as to shove it rudely out of the way. It was a defensive system designed to protect the expensive Skylon from the risk of a major space-junk collision, which had proven an all too real risk in early missions due to mankind’s inherent laziness. The spacefaring nations of the world had filled the skies with satellites in low earth orbits and when they had malfunctioned or simply reached the end of their useable life, they were left to fall out of orbit of their own accord, or just drift on, into infinity.
The single-barrel revolver-style 27mm cannon on the Skylon could be set to fire in bursts of between 1 and 100 rounds, but it was a defensive weapon, not intended to blow its target into thousands of dangerous pieces. The ideal result was a single solid hit on the target that would shove it into a new and less dangerous orbit.
Naturally, if the threatening object was a live and viable satellite belonging to a State or corporation, then sending it careening through space to burn up in the atmosphere would not be a very popular move. All known satellite and spacecraft orbits, both civilian and military, were accounted for in the Skylon mission plan, so as Meany started scanning through the database for the Skylon’s current sector and saw nothing, he knew there could be only two types of object approaching his machine.
A hunk of junk, or a military platform that some State had not logged and that hadn’t been spotted yet by ground-based observatories.
His money was on junk. Statistically, it was the most likely.
I have visual, the AI said with silicon calm. Processing image.
A window opened on Meany’s targeting display, and a small white dot appeared in the blackness, reflecting light off the earth beneath it, and the moon high on its starboard quarter. As he watched, the AI zoomed and magnified the image, digitally enhancing it. Beside it, images flicked past at lightning speed as the AI combed its databases for a visual match.
Probable match, Angus announced, as the flickering images stopped on a suspect. AAU CubeSat, Type 1U, launch date 2003, owner Aalborg University, mission: imaging, mission failure due to battery problems, satellite deactivated September 22, 2003.
“It’s been circling for thirty years?” Meany asked.
The satellite was launched with a compressed gas jet nozzle that was supposed to fire on deactivation and cause the orbit to degrade so that the satellite would enter the atmosphere and burn up, but it must have been incorrectly oriented and boosted the satellite into this higher orbit, Angus said.
“You’re certain it isn’t a live corporate or military object?” Meany asked. Bringing his targeting system online, he locked up the object on the screen. It was still just a white blob on a vast black expanse to him, but it was growing larger by the second.
Ninety-seven percent certainty, the AI replied.
“I’ll take that,” Meany said. “Give me weapons control.”
You have targeting control.
“Call Paddington.”
Paging Squadron Leader Bear, the AI confirmed.
Meany wasn’t supposed to use the Skylon’s defensive weapons system without a confirmed order from his commanding officer. His name was Squadron Leader Gregory Bear, of RAF 23 Squadron Space Operations, so naturally his subordinates called him ‘Paddington,’ after the famous British cartoon bear.
Meany needed an off-center hit, preferably on the spaceward side of the object, so that the hit would shove it not just out of their way, but into a degrading orbit that would eventually send it into the atmosphere where it would burn into gaseous oblivion. The cannon, of course, would have a recoil that would impact their own trajectory and velocity, but the AI compensated for this in real time using thrust vectoring as the weapon fired.
With vision zoomed and enhanced, Meany could see now the object was tumbling, which made his job harder. But it also confirmed that the object was just junk. Controlled spacecraft did not tumble crazily through space.
With his targeting system zoomed, he centered the laser-guided sights on a corner of the satellite. He knew from experience the largest face of one of the old CubeSats was only 11 inches square. So small it made a very hard target, but big enough that there was a small chance it could chip the spacecraft’s ceramic composite heat shield and completely ruin Meany’s day.
He heard the trailer door open and a panting Paddington jump in behind him. He didn’t turn around. “Space debris, sir, 97 percent certain it’s a hobby CubeSat. Collision in six minutes. Permission to engage?”
“Is that all?” Bear asked, sounding disappointed. “I was at least hoping for a decent-sized Sputnik or something this time. Hardly seems worth all the fuss.”
“Then delegate weapons authority to me and I won’t need to keep interrupting your afternoon nap, sir,” Meany said.
“Can’t do that,” Bear said, ignoring the jibe. “Rules of Engagement and all that, Flight Lieutenant. Angus, live-fire authorized,” he said, confirming the order to the AI.
Yes, sir. Weapons released.
“Firing, single round,” Meany said, his hand on the side-stick that guided the targeting crosshairs. He twitched a finger and the screen flashed briefly white, the only visual indication that the weapon had fired. A white icon appeared on his targeting screen to show the round was tracking, and then it flashed red.
“Missed,” the officer behind his shoulder said, unnecessar
ily. “Cutting it fine, Meany.”
“It is spinning rather a lot, sir,” Meany muttered.
Four minutes to impact, the AI pointed out, also unnecessarily. Preparing emergency evasion sequence.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence, Angus,” Meany said. He adjusted the crosshairs minutely. “Firing, two rounds.”
His screen flashed white again, and two icons appeared below his crosshairs. A second later, one turned red, the other…
“Green. That’s a hit,” Meany exclaimed. The CubeSat slid sideways like it had been kicked with an enormous boot and its rotation slowed. But was it…
Collision averted, the AI said. Resuming programmed mission trajectory.
“Just another day at the office, eh Meany?” Bear said. No one called Papastopoulos by his full name, either first or last. He was the son of an immigrant Greek restaurant owner who had named him after the ancient Greek philosopher Anaximenes, whose contribution to science had been a theory that all matter was composed of either gaseous, liquid or solid air. Since Meany had been conceived in the business class toilet of a flight from Athens to London, his father had thought the association to be an apt one. Papastopoulos had quickly learned in his childhood to tell people trying to pronounce Anaximenes, “just call me Nick,” and had happily adopted the call sign ‘Meany’ that his flight leader had given him in training.
Greg Bear looked nothing like the cartoon bear his officers had named him for, which was why they’d given him the moniker. He was a former fast-jet pilot like Meany, who had spent most of his career flying multirole Tempest fighters and had seen action on several occasions, including the first successful RAF strike on an enemy satellite using a modified Meteor long-range air to air missile. He was tall, lean, befreckled and ginger-haired, and his green eyes regarded Meany with amusement over a cliché bushy mustache. He was holding a half mug of tea which he must have artfully managed not to spill while running to the command trailer.
