Orbital: This is the Future of War (Future War Book 3)

by FX Holden

  She really believed that by creating a devastating weapon of mass destruction, and despite having just seen the horrifying loss of life it had caused, that she was some kind of Angel of Peace! She was no different from any of the scientists and engineers that had gone before her, whether they had been the first to create gunpowder, the machine gun, the missile, or the nuclear weapon. Each one told themselves that their invention would mean the end of war, then later watched it being used to take war to horrific new heights. Her logic was as twisted as theirs.

  Wasn’t it? He reached forward and poured himself a glass of water. There was no need to rush back to his duty. He had only been running simulations with his team. They could wait.

  Was he reading too much into her words? She hadn’t actually claimed that Groza was a weapon so terrible that it would mean an end to war. Only that it would eliminate the need for nuclear weapons. There was a certain logic to that. Groza was only the first of its generation, but if you could eventually achieve the same magnitude of destruction as nuclear weapons, without radioactive fallout poisoning the earth and air, was that not preferable? No more ‘mutually assured destruction,’ no more species-ending Armageddon?

  But how much more tempting would it be, he pondered, for politicians and generals to resort to using a weapon such as Groza if the long-term consequences were less terrible? If mass destruction could be achieved without mass extinction?

  It was, he realized, a question that could occupy an entire philosophy class for hours.

  He took a sip of his water. She had definitely been wrong about one thing. He hadn’t seen something hideous when he looked at her. In fact, he had found Anastasia Grahkovsky strangely beautiful. The way she looked at him, even though she could not see him, was mesmerizing. She was broken, smashed, scarred, yes – but fierce and passionate. And she had read him like a damn book.

  He touched his shoulder where she had gripped it. Then he shuddered.

  Forget that, Maqsud, he told himself. That suka is crazy.

  “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, your attention please,” Alicia Rodriguez said. The eight crew members of B for Bertha, four pilots and four systems operators, were seated in front of her, Karen ‘Bunny’ O’Hare among them, but sitting on her own in the back row. Rodriguez knew her well enough to know she wasn’t making any kind of statement – she just preferred her space.

  “This will be our first combat mission,” Rodriguez said. “I am Mission Commander, Major Severin is your mission intelligence coordinator, Sergeant Halloran your intelligence supervisor, and we are pulling weather specialist support from 45th Wing. You have the mission data on your tablets; this is your chance to ask questions because when we leave here, you will be expected to execute your orders immediately. This is not an exercise. Is that clear?”

  There was a chorus of various ‘yes, ma’ams’ and ‘aye, ma’ams’ depending on what service the officer was from. She stepped aside and let her second-in-command, Kansas Severin, take the floor. With him was Zeezee Halloran, who Rodriguez had moved from her role in logistics – now that was more or less under control – to intelligence. Zeezee already had her Intelligence Specialist ‘A’ qualification and Rodriguez had gotten her fast-tracked through the ‘C’ qualification at Dam Neck in Virginia and attached to the 45th Wing’s intelligence unit.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Situation, people,” Severin began, calling up an image on a screen. It was a page from the file the US agent had smuggled out of Russia, at the cost of their life. “You may be aware of the big picture, but just in case, here is a quick recap. The world’s largest crude oil processing facility, Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, was destroyed a week ago. Saudi Arabia has tapped its strategic reserve to keep the oil flowing, but that is not going to last, and the world knows it. Whether in reaction to or in coordination with the destruction of the Abqaiq plant, Iran has stepped up harassment of Saudi-flagged or chartered crude oil shipping in the Persian Gulf. One Saudi oil carrier has been detained, and two have been sabotaged in port in the Emirates, reportedly by Iranian Revolutionary Guard special forces.”

  O’Hare held up a hand. “Iran is just making hay while the sun shines, Major, or is there more to this?”

  “We don’t believe Iran is acting alone. This week the Saudi Air Force reported that Russia has begun basing 5th-gen Su-57 aircraft at Esfahan in central Iran. Earlier this year, Russia also moved a squadron of Mig-41 interceptors into Egypt’s Hurghada Air Base. If the Saudi report is true, Russia is making up for its lack of a functioning aircraft carrier to support its allies in the Middle East by basing front-line aircraft inside their borders.”

  O’Hare whistled. “What a shit sandwich. Russians to the right of them, Russians to the left of them, and a nuclear-armed neighbor hijacking their oil tankers.”

  “Why the sudden Russian interest in the Middle East again, Major?” Albers asked.

  “Iran’s actions are stifling the flow of Saudi oil out of the Persian Gulf, and when that happens, Iran benefits, sure, but so does Russia. Whether Iran is just being opportunistic or acting in league with Russia isn’t clear yet. But there are … other indications this is all part of a larger Russian strategy.” He stepped back. “Sergeant Halloran?”

  The Chinese American intel officer stepped forward. “Thank you, Major. The reason we are here. Russia has deployed a new weapon of mass destruction in space. They call it Groza, or ‘Thunderstorm.’ It is an orbital kinetic weapon that drops heavy projectiles on ground targets. It is ugly, it is inaccurate, but it breaks no current arms treaties and it is very, very destructive.” Halloran advanced the briefing slides to show video of the Abqaiq refinery burning. Running across the bottom were several amateur and CCTV videos that showed the prelude to the attack – hundreds of contrails appearing in the air above Abqaiq and then falling onto the plant at, literally, meteoric speeds. “This is video of the world’s first known Groza attack – the former Abqaiq oil processing plant in Saudi Arabia. An area the size of four city blocks, leveled in seconds, just a smoking ruin today.” She blanked the screen. “Saudi Arabia has accused Russia of the attack, but Russia denies responsibility and is sticking to their story that this was a freak meteor strike. The National Security Agency has put out a bulletin warning that a massive social media disinformation campaign originating from Russia has been initiated to support the meteor strike story and warn that similar events are possible in the future. Apparently, Russian scientists have conveniently uncovered evidence that the Earth is passing through a never-before-detected asteroid belt. The cynics among you will note that this ‘freak event’ may just have saved the Russian economy from collapse as it sent the global crude oil price through the roof.”

  There were chuckles around the room and Halloran held up a hand to stop them. “No laughing matter. They are setting the stage for another Groza attack. We don’t know where or when, and we don’t plan to wait around to find out.” She called up a graphic of the globe, showing sixteen satellites in orbit around it. “This is an illustrative graphic showing the current position of the sixteen possible Groza launch platforms…”

  O’Hare held up her hand. “Possible, Sergeant? We don’t know for sure?”

  “We have photographs of the Groza satellites taken during their production phase,” Halloran said. “Check your briefing notes. They show a satellite core module we estimate weighs about ten tons, with a payload of about eighty tons of tungsten projectiles. As far as we can tell by ground-based observation, they have sixteen of these in orbit. There could be more.”

  The room was silent as the crews reviewed the graphics on their tablets.

  “Yes,” Zeezee read their minds. “They’re big. Just about visible to the naked eye if you’re standing on a nice dark mountainside.” She held up a tablet. “Everything we know about Groza, which is not a lot, is in those notes.”

  “Defensive weapons?” O’Hare asked.

  “Unknown,” Zeezee admitted. “That schematic we showed you is two years old.
The design could have gone through more iterations since then.”

  “Can I respectfully advise in that case, Major,” O’Hare directed her comment to Severin, “that we assume Russia didn’t put the equivalent of a Battlestar into orbit without some means of protecting it.”

  “I’ll consider that advice, O’Hare,” Severin said. “Tactical environment,” he continued. He flicked a couple of screens ahead in his briefing and showed a map of the globe with a red orbital track and the current position of the satellite clearly marked on it. The orbit ran right over the East Coast of the USA. “This is your target. We have designated it Groza A1, for obvious reasons.” He zoomed the image and saw a couple of personnel lean forward and frown. “That’s right. Its orbit takes it right over the top of New York City. Sergeant Halloran tells me it also takes it within strike range of Kennedy Space Center, Patrick Air Force and Canaveral Space Stations.” He let that sink in. “That is not a coincidence, ladies and gentlemen. The whole world knows KSC and the Cape are our primary heavy-lift launch facilities. The 45th Space Wing, NASA and SpaceX are all based here. Russia knows that the Cape is also the launch site for our X-37 fleet.”

  Halloran took up the thread. “45th Space Wing intelligence base case assumption is that in the event of open warfare in space between Russia and America, the first place Russia would hit would be Kennedy-Canaveral, to prevent any further launches. In the past, our planning assumed a tactical nuclear strike would be needed, and that made an attack less likely as a tac nuke dropped on a US mainland target would without a doubt only take place if we were already in the middle of World War Three. Groza changes that assumption.” She brought up a map of the East Coast of the USA, with cities and military bases highlighted from New York down to Florida. “Russia is doing its best to hide Groza behind this BS meteor cover story. If it gets traction, they might feel brave enough to hit other targets. Looking at the damage assessment from the Abqaiq attack, we estimate that during a single orbit, Groza A1 could attack up to twenty separate targets on the US East Coast, hitting them within 15 minutes of launch, and unlike a ballistic or hypersonic missile, its projectiles would be completely unstoppable.”

  “And on that cheerful note,” Severin said, paging back a couple of screens, “you can see our mission is both vital and simple. We will intercept Groza A1 over the pole, as it tracks south-south-east over Canada. We will photograph it and confirm the target is, in fact, a Groza weapons platform. And then, before it reaches the Eastern seaboard of the USA, we will disable it.”

  There were no chuckles this time and he took in the faces around the room, which showed one universal expression – surprise.

  It was Bunny O’Hare who raised her hand first. She’d been looking through the briefing materials. “These satellites can be repositioned, Major? We knock out this one, what’s to stop them from moving another into the same orbit?”

  “They do that, we’ll kill that one too,” Severin said grimly. “We’ve learned a few things since the Cuban missile crisis, O’Hare, and one of them is, don’t let the enemy put doomsday weapons on your doorstep. Or over your damn head. Hopefully, we kill Groza A1, the politicians and diplomats can get Russia to park its damn killer satellites over Siberia instead.”

  The Minnesotan, Albers, had a hand in the air. “With respect, sir, we start knocking their shiny new satellites out of the sky, Ivan is going to get annoyed. Like, how would we react if we launched a new class of remotely piloted submarines and Russia started sinking them on the quiet? It’s going to be game on.”

  “The idea is that if we only engage those birds that are an active threat to our cities and bases, we can argue it’s a proportionate action. And we can keep that action out of the public eye as long as the engagement is limited to space. But let’s leave politics to the politicians, who I am sure will soon be pointing out certain realities to the Russians, and focus on the job we’ve been given to do. Alright, let’s move on. Who, where and when…”

  When Alicia Rodriguez’s crews saw the satellite track that looped over Cape Canaveral Space Station, home to the three functional X-37 spacecraft of the 615th Combat Operations Squadron, their thoughts immediately and involuntarily went to their own safety. The pilots and systems officers of the X-37 fleet could theoretically operate from any base in the country, or overseas, but they needed advanced communications infrastructure and for the new X-37 fleet, it had been bolted onto the existing launch communication and control complex at the Cape’s Morrell Operations Center (MOC) – the self-described nerve center for all Space Force launches from Cape Canaveral. Control of the remotely piloted X-37s was still several years from being made mobile.

  As Severin went through roles and responsibilities for the upcoming mission, he was standing in the briefing room of a rather nondescript suite on the second floor of the MOC. Entry to the suite was limited to personnel of the 615th Squadron, but the presence of the X-37 crews on the station was well known because they lived in Patrick Air Force Base accommodations and came and went every day through the big front doors of the MOC marked “Control of the Battlefield Begins Here.” Russian agents would have had no trouble at all working out where the crews of the X-37 fleet were based, and watching the orbital path of the Groza, more than one airman hunched their shoulders during Severin’s briefing at the thought it could be overhead at any time.

  But you couldn’t exactly hide a US heavy-lift rocket launch facility and the X-37 had to be lifted into space on the back of a massive Space Launch System rocket powered by four of the RS-25 engines that had carried the Space Shuttle into space; or on a Falcon Heavy with two strap-on boosters. There was nothing ‘stealthy’ about an X-37 launch. Neither could the X-37 stay hidden during orbit. Though small in cross-section, it was visible to Russian ground or space-based tracking from the moment it launched. Rodriguez was certain the Russian Aerospace Forces had compiled a massive dossier on her X-37s, their technical capabilities and vulnerabilities. They had probably wargamed a thousand times the various strategies they felt might succeed in neutralizing the US spacecraft, and she knew from her own wargaming that those strategies included everything from ground-based missiles to cyberwarfare attacks. Her people were, of course, trained in the countermeasures needed to defeat a Russian or Chinese attack.

  No matter how you looked at it, though, the main vulnerability of the X-37 fleet was the fixed infrastructure at the Cape required to launch it. Vandenberg Air Force Base in California might be used in a pinch, but it was best suited to launching medium-sized rockets into polar orbits, not the heavies on which the X-37 relied.

  Which the airmen and women of Rodriguez’s 615th Squadron knew made them and the entire Kennedy-Canaveral Space Complex a very, very juicy target.

  “If these satellites have some sort of defensive sensor suite, their ground operators may be able to detect incoming threats and engage them. What could we expect in the way of a ground-based response, ma’am?” one of the weapons officers was asking Zeezee.

  “Good question. As you know, Russia has both ground, sea and air-launched Nudol anti-satellite missiles,” Zeezee replied. “They’ve shown they can knock satellites out of orbit, and even intercept ballistic missiles on re-entry, so they are a definite threat to Bertha.”

  “We’re going to burn a lot of fuel on these ops,” Albers pointed out. “Do we have access to the Trans network?” The US Trans network was the space-based equivalent of the Air Force KC-46 aerial refueling aircraft. Each Trans module was a huge, orbiting, self-piloting tank that the XC-37 could dock with in order to refuel and recharge.

  “Yes, Lieutenant, that has been accounted for.”

  “Space to space weapons? Could they have mounted something on these Grozas, Sergeant?” O’Hare asked.

  “Nothing on the schematics we obtained, but they were for an early prototype. Russia has tested both ballistic, kinetic and energy-based weapons in space, and these satellites are big enough to field weapons, so assume yes, Captain.”

/>   “Well, Bertha has a few tricks up her sleeve, Sergeant,” O’Hare remarked. “And we’ve been rehearsing them. I say, bring it!” Another of her pilots reached over and high fived O’Hare. Rodriguez frowned. They were excited, cocky even.

  “I admire your confidence, O’Hare, but if…” Rodriguez broke into the briefing, “… against all the odds, the Russians bring Bertha down, plan ‘B’ has already been initiated. We have been given priority for the launch of X-37 Avenger aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy out of Kennedy. But the earliest launch window is three weeks from now, and that will involve cutting corners that are making everyone uncomfortable, which just increases, even more, the need for this particular mission to succeed,” she continued. She saw O’Hare raising her hand again and spoke quickly. “And before you ask, Captain, plan ‘C’ would only be activated if Russia’s actions directly threaten the USA or its interests. And that is simply to use ground-based anti-satellite missiles, fired from Aegis missile cruisers in the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific, to take down any Groza birds that threaten the USA. But we do that, and it really is game on.”

  “If Iran doesn’t start World War Three first, anyway,” someone said grimly.

  Saudi Arabia had taken the news in 2028 that Iran had successfully tested a nuclear weapon with equanimity. It had not been a question of whether, but when. When Iran announced it had developed a nuclear warhead that could be fitted to its new Sejjil-3 three-stage ballistic missile, Saudi Arabia shrugged. Saudi Arabia wasn’t worried about a ballistic missile that could strike targets 2,500 miles away (though Israel and nations in Europe rightfully were) when Iran already had an armory of missiles that could reach from inside Iran to strike any target in Saudi Arabia.

  It had reacted not by starting its own nuclear weapons program in competition, but by tying itself even closer to the USA and other allies with a massive conventional arms upgrade program. It was, therefore, well positioned to react to the latest provocations by an emboldened Iran. Iran had fired on Saudi military aircraft, hijacked shipping and, most recently, sabotaged Saudi-chartered oil tankers moored off the port of Fujairah in the Emirates.