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CHAPTER 8

Attia and Iyad stood silently in the command center as the highly-modified Scimitar rocket lifted from the launch pad and into the deep blue sky above the Iraqi desert. Their ground support team had successfully kept the rocket isolated from the infected ground computer networks and updated the launch programs directly to the rocket as it sat on the pad in the scorching heat of the noonday sun. Getting the missile prepared, including the hurriedly-developed network-isolated command and control system, had not been easy. One of Attia’s team came up with the idea of using a new, consumer-grade portable computer imported from Turkey for ground control, and, to everyone’s surprise, it worked beautifully. The computing capability of modern consumer electronics outpaced the performance of the world’s supercomputers merely a decade ago. Moore’s Law, thanks to quantum computing, was alive and well.

After porting a virus-free set of flight control software from the consumer laptop, the engineering team created, almost from scratch, the control sequences that would enable the rocket to interface with the launch platform. For example, they couldn’t have the tower’s hold-downs that kept the rocket from falling over pre-launch holding it too long and keeping it from getting off the ground. It wasn’t terribly complex software to program, it just had to be done—from scratch. It took them five days.

The rocket ascended, and right on schedule the twin solid rocket motors that gave it the additional kick it needed to get off the launch pad separated and fell toward the desert floor. The first-stage engines continued to burn and carry the rocket skyward until they used up their fuel and the second stage engines came to life, boosting the ship’s two-stage, solid-fueled rocket upper stage to just shy of Earth escape velocity. Once in space, the upper stage engines would ignite and send the payload, a cluster of fission bombs, on their way to their rendezvous with the alien Artifact—a rendezvous that was designed to go very badly for whatever was contained within it.


Beginning in the late 2020s, the United States began deploying a series of monster satellites in low Earth orbit. Had Ronald Reagan been alive, he would have instantly recognized them as the descendants of his proposed Star Wars ballistic missile defense satellites that were envisioned to protect the United States and its allies from nuclear strikes launched by the old Soviet Union. Only now, the Soviet Union didn’t exist and its heir, Russia, was part of the European Union and an ally of the United States in the global competition with China, India and the Caliphate. After the near-cataclysmic war with China, the satellites’ new mission was neutralizing the ever-present threat of the religious fanatics within the Caliphate who proclaimed that when the time was right, they would wage war against the infidels and bring on the apocalypse.

In the age of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, everyone knew all too well how easy it would be to initiate an apocalypse. It was against this threat that the orbiting ring of satellites, each equipped with a five-hundred-kilowatt laser, was designed to operate. The systems were on their highest state of readiness for the rocket launch in the Iraqi desert based on what the CIA and other intelligence sources were learning about the Caliphate’s planned response to the alien Artifact. Another set of satellites, each equipped with sophisticated optical and infrared sensors, was actively watching the activities of the Caliphate and, in particular, activities at their missile launch complex in Iraq. They had no trouble seeing the heat signature and tell-tale launch plume as the massive Scimitar rocket blasted toward space.

Within seconds, the launch notification went to the US Air Force Space Command headquarters in Los Angeles, California and to the computer systems which semi-autonomously controlled the lasers that were designed to deal with just this sort of threat. Multiple engagement options were assessed based on the rocket’s anticipated flight path, and the two satellites with the best line-of-sight were brought online and taken to battle readiness. The automated systems were doing their job, keeping the target locked in the sights of the two laser stations while they awaited approval to engage from their human controllers back on Earth.

Humans don’t think as quickly as machines. People are also very nervous about allowing automated systems to have rapid life-or-death decision-making authority when potentially millions, or billions, of human lives could be at stake—which was one of the reasons the laser battle stations were only semi-autonomous. Taking the time to reflect on a threat and to consider the sometimes not-so-clear ramifications of making the “right” decision of “the moment” was what people were good at. And this system was constructed to require a human decision before engaging a target to prevent a “wrong” decision. This time, the human element, the “decision,” took too long and one of the satellites lost its ability to engage the Scimitar rocket as it moved beyond its effective range. When the engagement approval was received, the remaining satellite performed its final targeting adjustment and began to discharge the bank of ultracapacitors that had been storing power from satellite’s onboard nuclear fission reactor for just this purpose. Within milliseconds, the laser beam director locked-on to the target and the invisible beam of laser light shot toward the accelerating Caliphate rocket.

Another set of satellite instruments were tracking and imaging the Caliphate’s rocket as it moved toward Earth escape. Had the laser successfully hit the rocket, they would have seen the immediate damage the beam caused and sent images of the ensuing destruction back to Space Command in Los Angeles and to the Pentagon. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the cameras tracked the rocket as the upper stage deployed and ignited its engines to take its payload into interplanetary space. The laser missed. And, as the autonomous engagement computers quickly calculated, there was no time for a repeat engagement. The satellite which fired its laser would take several minutes to recharge its capacitors and no other satellite could be in place to fire at the Caliphate’s rocket in time.

In its first real test as an antimissile system, against a real target and not during a simulation, the trillion-dollar system failed.

stars

Less than ten minutes after the failure, the secretary of defense was informed of the miss and had the unenviable task of having to tell President Kremic that the most expensive defense system in American history had failed in its first real-life test. But telling the president wasn’t what worried him the most. He was concerned about how the Artifact, or others yet undetected, might react to a nuclear attack in space. The safety of the United States was now being undermined by religious zealots with nuclear weapons—in space no less. He was terrified.



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Framed