CRITICAL ASSET
A speculative fiction novel
Ian Tonnessen
Copyright © 2021 Ian Tonnessen
Hardshot Publishing
This book is a work of fiction. Names, with the exceptions of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, (Vladimir) Putin, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, (Harry) Truman, and George Washington are fictitious. All characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Nothing is intended or should be interpreted as expressing or representing the views of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence or any other department or agency of any governing body.
First Hardshot Publishing Edition: June 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Front cover design: Artwork by Robert Williams. Public domain photograph. Typography by Ian Tonnessen.
Back cover design: Public domain photograph. Typography by Ian Tonnessen
ISBN: 978-0-578-90913-4
For my wife, who encouraged me to keep writing,
and for my children, without whose presence this book might have been completed years earlier.
Critical Asset:
A specific entity that is of such extraordinary importance that its incapacitation or destruction would have a very serious, debilitating effect on the ability of a nation to continue to function effectively.
U.S. Department of Defense Joint Publication 1-02: Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
Basic Orbitology
LEO = Low Earth Orbit (100-1500 km)
MEO = Medium Earth Orbit (5000-10,000 km)
HEO = Highly Elliptical Orbit
GEO = Geostationary Orbit (35,786 km). Fixed equatorial positions.
Lagrange Gravitational Balance Points
Disposition of the Inner Solar System, 24 December 2065
International Military Coalitions, 2065
Glossary
1MC:Ship’s intercom system
Abe: Nickname for USS Lincoln’s artificial intelligence interface program.
AI: Artificial Intelligence. Officially, any computer which nominally operates above the 1019 FLOPS level (i.e. nearly all of them)
c:Speed of light (293,353 kilometers/second)
C2C:Command and Control Center. The location from which a warship’s CO and/or TAO direct all maneuvering and combat operations.
Cheng:Chief Engineer.
CO:Commanding Officer. On a ship, the senior line officer, aka the captain.
COPLAN:Combined Operations Plan. Pre-arranged military plans designed to assist DA leaders in crisis situations. Attack options are categorized as Limited, Selected or Massive.
CS:Command Station. The largest of four military facilities controlled by the Democratic Alliance, all located in the geostationary orbit ring.
DA:Democratic Alliance. Military coalition formed in 2029 as a successor to NATO. Also functions as an economic trading bloc.
DEFCON:Defense Condition. A five-point scale indicating the state of DA operational readiness. DEFCON Five means normal peacetime posture. DEFCON One means wartime operations.
DEW:Directed Energy Weapon. Umbrella term for militarized lasers, particle beams and other high-speed/speed-of-light weapons. Aka softshots.
Eisen Plan:2032 treaty which limits the computing power of all SAIs to 10³¹ FLOPS.
EVA:Extra-Vehicular Activity. Work which requires the use of a spacesuit.
FLOPS:Floating-Point Operations per Second. A standardized way of measuring computer hardware performance capabilities.
g:Gravitational force. 1g = standard Earth gravity
GEO:Geostationary Orbit. A circular geosynchronous orbit 35,786 kilometres above Earth's equator and following the direction of Earth's rotation.
Helias:Helical Axis Advanced Stellarator. A fusion power plant.
HM:Hras al-M’umnyn (Arabic: “Guardians of the Faithful”). Military coalition and trading bloc. Out of twenty-six members, its three key military partners are Turkey, Pakistan, and the United Caliphate.
KEP:Kinetic Energy Projectile. Solid ballistic rounds, aka hardshots.
L3:Lagrange point of stable gravity between two celestial objects, located equidistant on the far side of the larger object from the smaller one.
L4:Lagrange point of stable gravity between two celestial objects, located roughly 60° ahead of the smaller object on its orbital plane
MAK:Milli Emniyet Komutanlığı (National Security Command), MEK but commonly known as MAK. Its armed personnel are nicknamed the gray berets.
MGT: Milli Gözetim Teskilatı (National Surveillance Organization). The primary foreign intelligence agency of the Islamic Republic of Turkey.
MILCOM:Military Committee. The DA’s supreme military command authority, subordinate only to civilian political control.
NSC:National Security Council. Group of senior officials and commanders used by the U.S. President for advising on military and national security.
OKK:Özel Kuvvetler Komutanlığı (Special Forces Command). Special forces branch of the Turkish military. MAKs are subordinate to the OKK.
REDCON:Readiness Condition. A specific unit or service branch’s ability to respond to and engage in combat operations.
SAI:Singular Artificial Intelligence. Self-improving quantum computers. All are required by law physically constrained within Penning traps which limit their computing power to 10³¹ FLOPS (see: Eisen Plan)
TAO:Tactical Action Officer. The officer in charge of a ship’s C2C watch crew. A 24/7 position manned by the ship’s more senior officers.
VASIMR:Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket. Fusion-powered plasma engine used for spacecraft propulsion.
XO:Executive Officer. The 2nd most senior officer on a ship, subordinate only to the Commanding Officer.
Z/Zulu:Zulu time, aka Greenwich Mean Time. Military 24-hr universal clock.
CRITICAL ASSET
CHAPTER 1
Highway E38 west of Saratov, Russia
6:30 p.m. (1430 Zulu), 22 December 2065
Twenty minutes until we arrive, then thirteen hours of waiting until launch. Then thirty-three hours of flight time to the station, and thirty minutes to complete my part of the mission. Total hours left to live: forty-seven.
Aydin Demirci made the same shrinking calculation hundreds of times over the past few months. Now, the final number was under two days. He focused on keeping his face impassive.
He sat inside the tank of the container truck, shoulder-to-shoulder with a dozen other men. There was nothing for him to do but glance at the time, or rather try not to glance at it. Just act as they do, he told himself. You’ve done well so far. Mind your bearing, and you’ll succeed. The others were all MAK troops, men hand-picked from Turkey’s special forces to be part of the elite. All were experienced operators, all thoroughly vetted for their loyalty to the state, and all had trained nonstop for two months for this mission. They spent their time readying their weapons and equipment, or reviewing the steps and contingencies of their plan. During prayer times they all prayed together – for success, or for a safe return home, or in gratitude for this glorious opportunity that God had given them.
Poor brainwashed fools, Demirci thought, even when he imitated their prayers to preserve his façade. It wasn’t a higher power who gave you this opportunity. He knew that every one of the soldiers riding with him would not hesitate to die for his country. They don’t know it, bu
t it two days they’ll do just that.
The truck coasted over highways through southern Russia, a ten-hour route from where they came ashore at a marina in the Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik. The small yacht which delivered them was a signals intelligence ship disguised as a Russian pleasure craft. It was driven by a Turkish intelligence agent, and as far as the MAK commandos knew, his agency was part of the mission. From there, another of Demirci’s contacts met the team with a liquid helium transport truck, the tank of which had been emptied and modified to conceal a dozen men. This was the vehicle that would take them fourteen hundred kilometers into Russia, to Engels Spaceport.
Though the vehicle drove on autopilot, there were still two men up front manning the cab, dressed as drivers employed by Roscosmos. They were fluent in Russian and held transit paperwork for the truck’s cargo, along with encrypted credentials for themselves. The authentic credentials had cost Demirci’s organization a small fortune in bribes, not to mention the time and risk it took to find the right spaceport employee who could be bought.
Don’t think about what happened to the truck’s original driver, he told himself. There will be plenty more innocent lives lost before this is all over. If only the mission didn’t involve so much waiting time, with nothing to do but think. God, the misery of waiting may be worse than the moments of violence.
Demirci was tall and wiry, with piercing blue eyes that stood out against his olive complexion. His hair had much more gray than its original brown, but he was otherwise as fit as men half his age. A lifetime of science and academia, and here I am with a bunch of trigger-happy thugs. A quick flight from Ankara to Saratov would’ve been preferable, but that couldn’t be done. Not for what we’re planning.
The men in the truck’s cab used a makeshift intercom to announce to the others riding in the tank. “Ten minutes to the spaceport.”
The others in the back nodded to each other, preparing themselves. Demirci stroked his beard and glanced at the time again.
“Are you nervous, Doctor?” asked Terzi.
“Trying not to be, Colonel,” Demirci said with half a grin. “I’m sure it’s more impatience than nerves.”
“Well, it’s been a long ride in this thing.”
“It’s not the ride. This isn’t a normal day for me, of course. I’ve spent the last thirty years in physics labs.”
“You’ll do fine. This part of the mission is in our hands. Just stay with Sergeant Kervan. Run right behind him. Your part in all this doesn’t begin for another two days.”
Demirci nodded. “I know you’ll all do your jobs well. And I’ll do mine when it’s time. The mission will succeed.”
“I have no doubt!” said Terzi, energetic and smiling wide. “We’ve all reviewed the plan through and through. I have great confidence in it. My men and I have run difficult operations in many places, and God made sure that all those missions succeeded, praise be unto Him. He will make sure of this as well. In all the missions I’ve run, this is surely the most significant. It is too important for any outcome other than success.”
Demirci smirked at Terzi’s last sentence. The colonel has no idea how ironic that was. “I’m sure it will succeed. It must.” He paused, running through his mental list of concerns. “There are some parts of it that are out of our hands, though. I keep worrying that we’ve been double-crossed about those credentials, the ones that’ll get us through the two gates.”
“Don’t worry yourself with such things, Doctor. Their identity cards were checked and rechecked by your intelligence friends in the MGT. And they say their source at Engels is reliable, yes? I’m sure he will be. Russians are greedy bastards. He’ll enjoy his precious money tomorrow, and by the time we arrive at the station the next day, the MGT’s man in Saratov will make sure that he’s safely in Hell. For a mission like this, there can be no loose ends.”
Demirci nodded along, the icy ball in his stomach refusing to melt. “Does the body count ever bother you, Colonel? The lives lost before a mission is over?”
“Not to me, and not to my men. It is all for the greater good. I know you understand this as well, or you wouldn’t be part of this mission.” Terzi looked into the doctor’s eyes. “Although, I doubt the violence will be easy for you while it is happening. But I promise it will be easier in retrospect. We are doing a great and noble thing.”
Demirci kept nodding, contemplating the details of the plan, the real plan, of which Terzi and his men knew nothing. Demirci’s organization considered the mission inside and out for months, and it would not be bloodless. It couldn’t be. But his group’s leadership didn’t deem any of the peaceful alternatives to be viable. This was the appalling plan his organization had chosen, his idea no less, and it meant many people would die. Tens of thousands, most likely, he reminded himself. All for a greater good, of course, though the thought still didn’t sit well with a middle-aged academic.
“The flight out is another concern,” Demirci thought aloud. “We’re not certain that the Kostroma’s computer will accept our control of the craft instead of the registered crew. The programming data that our source in Engels gave us seems acceptable, but–”
“You worry so much, Doctor!” Terzi laughed. “We’ve evaluated all these things, run the mission through the simulations, and the quality of our information has been judged to be worth the risk. In our business,” –he motioned around to his men– “there’s no such thing as totally certain. We go when things look good enough. And that decision is never even ours, it comes from our chain of command. In this case, it comes all the way from the top.”
“Yes, I know. Forgive me, Colonel. My profession is science. ‘Certainty’ is an important word for me. Anything less than one hundred percent means I’ll question it.” He paused. “Answer questions and then question the answers. That’s a rule I live by.”
It was a favorite quote of Demirci’s father, himself a chemist employed by the national research center. “Answer your questions and question the answers” was what Yalçin Demirci liked to tell his son before school. He said it every morning until the day when Aydin was sixteen, only four months into the Reawakening, when the elder Demirci and three of his colleagues disappeared.
“I understand, Doctor. Before any mission, we get caught up in all the details ourselves. It drives our intelligence officers crazy, all the answers we demand. But once we go, we know that the outcome will be as God desires. I doubt He will necessitate the use of these.” The colonel tapped on the case containing two chemical bombs.
Demirci nodded. “I certainly hope not. Your confidence is reassuring. You’re sure our helmets will filter out the gas?”
“Completely. We spent a lot of time planning for contingencies like that. Just keep your mask in working condition and you’ll be safe.”
“You don’t have any concerns left?”
“Oh, I’ll always have them, right until the moment we’re back home. Concerns keep me sharp. My biggest is that we’re a small team, and there are a few single points of failure possible. Toprak’s breaching equipment, for example, or your own safety, since you’re the only technical specialist with us. I doubt we’d succeed without you. But in the end I know when we’re faced with challenges, answers will be provided.”
The men in the cab called back to the tank, “Approaching spaceport outer gates.”
The MAKs finished strapping their equipment to themselves. Demirci donned his helmet and switched on its headset. Even with its wide view faceplate, he found the helmet stifling. The doctor allowed himself a deep breath through the mask. For a moment, an image of his family appeared in his mind. He forced himself to ignore it.
Now it begins.
* **
The tanker truck approached the west access gate. It was a bit odd for deliveries to arrive so late in the evening, the guard thought, but he knew there was another supply launch scheduled for the next morning. And there had been a launch only a day before. Engels Spaceport kept getting busier and busi
er. Officer Ivchenko stepped outside the guard shack into the cold December air.
The two men in the truck’s cab readied their weapons, holding them below window level. As the truck stopped, the driver handed the guard his and his passenger’s identity cards and their manifest: thirty-two thousand litres of liquid helium.
“How are the roads out there?” the guard asked. “It’s freezing tonight.”
“Not so bad. At least there’s no snow yet,” the driver replied, smiling. His voice tinged with a slight accent that was hard for the Russian guard to place. “We used to do some delivery runs up in the Urals. Those were scary roads in the winter.”
Ivchenko held the ID cards and manifest under his scanner. Its screen showed all clear.
“Good thing you’re here now,” the guard said as he handed the cards and documents back. “We’re not supposed to let in deliveries after seven pm.”
Ivchenko returned to the warm guard shack as the truck drove on. Officer Dubinin was still watching the game. St. Petersburg had just scored on a power play and was now tied at three with Rostov.
* **
Sitting atop a massive booster engine at one of the spaceport’s six launch pads, its nose pointed towards the sky, was the supply craft Kostroma. The ship was over two hundred meters long and fully loaded, the cargo being a third of its fifty thousand tons. Four aneutronic fusion engines lined in a quad parallel around the hull of the ship, the thrusters which would propel the Kostroma over three hundred million kilometers in thirty-three hours. Its destination was Dirac Station, one of the largest facilities ever constructed in space. Liftoff was scheduled for 7:43 the next morning.
Critical Asset Page 1
