Executive Intent

“Therefore, China wants a blue-water navy to challenge American dominance and protect its interests around the world,” Carlyle went on. “They bought themselves an aircraft carrier from Russia and are undergoing a massive crash training course to make it fully blue-water operational. Additionally, we know they’re placing ground-launched ballistic hypersonic antiship missiles in their sea-launched ballistic-missile submarines’ operating areas and sea-lanes near their shores as a warning to our survey ships and hunter-killer sub patrols to stay away-”

“And now they’ve engineered this so-called accidental launch as another warning: Your carriers are at risk, so stay away,” Raydon said. “They say it was an accident, and we’re buying into it.”

“Thank you, General Raydon,” Barbeau said irritably. “If there’s nothing more you have for us, you can resume your duties up there…wherever you are.”

“Over the South Atlantic now, ma’am,” Raydon said. “I do have one more comment to make regarding China. Their new manned space station, the Golden Wing Ten, maneuvered itself into an almost mirror orbit recently. We’re still separated by altitude and distance, but it clearly is a hostile move on their part.”

“I don’t understand, General,” Miller Turner said. “What’s hostile about this? The so-called Chinese space station is a couple of space capsules docked together with a central engineering and mating module. There are only four Chinese astronauts aboard.”

“It demonstrates some important capabilities, sir: the ability to maneuver, to be refueled, and to track another spacecraft with accuracy,” Raydon said. “Moving a spacecraft into a different orbit requires a lot of fuel, and unless the fuel is replenished, the service life of a satellite is greatly shortened when it’s moved, especially to the degree this one has been. It’s a relatively simple task now to maneuver within striking distance of Armstrong Space Station.”

“‘Striking distance’?” Carlyle remarked. “You mean, deliberately collide or attack the space station?”

“Why else would you send a spacecraft on nearly the same orbit, sir?” Raydon asked. “We don’t know that much about the Golden Wing Ten. The Chinese tell us it’s to expand their knowledge and experience in orbital operations, but that’s about it. We speculate that it’s akin to our early Gemini-Agena spacecraft docking missions, where we learned docking, handling, and equipment-transfer procedures that we eventually used on Skylab, lunar, Shuttle, and International Space Station missions, but again, we’re making excuses for the Chinese that are not backed up by any evidence. We should-”

“We’re completely off the topic here, gentlemen,” Stacy Anne Barbeau interrupted, “so let’s save this discussion for another time, shall we? We’re agreed that the Chinese missile launch was most likely accidental; we want to participate in a full-scale investigation; and we’d like the Chinese to stay away from our carriers and point their missiles in some other direction. In return, we’ll pledge to use less aggressive maneuvers to warn foreign pilots to turn away, in order to avoid possible damage that might result in accidental launches. Can I go to the president and recommend this course of action to him?” Kai Raydon looked as if he was going to raise his hand, but no one else said anything, so Barbeau said quickly, “Thank you for your inputs, gentlemen. My staff will follow up with each of you for details for the report to the president, and I’ll call if I have any more questions. Thank you.” And her videoconference window disappeared.

“Thanks for the good work, General Raydon,” Secretary of Defense Turner said. “Please pass along your full report of the Bush incident to Air Force as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” Kai responded, and signed off.

“Opinionated SOB, isn’t he?” National Security Adviser Carlyle remarked. “Seems that flying…or according to Raydon, falling…through orbit in a space station gives you the right to say whatever happens to be on your mind.”

“They’re doing great work on a shoestring budget, Conrad,” Turner said. “Every time they go out and capture, repair, refuel, and reorbit a satellite, they save us about a hundred million dollars compared to the cost of launching a satellite from Earth.”

“If he shoots his mouth off at Barbeau again like that, he’ll be beached faster than any rocket ship,” Carlyle said. “After putting up with McLanahan for so long, Barbeau’s not going to let another cocky space cowboy stay put.”

“Speaking of the space station, I got the initial report from Air Force about a test of a new space weapon,” Turner said. “They call it Mjollnir, or Thor’s Hammer, a system that reenters titanium bars through the atmosphere at thousands of miles an hour. They hit a small ship-size target from a hundred miles in space with one big metal bar. They had a bunch of congressional staffers observe the hit-I guess it really watered their eyes.”

“The ‘Rods from God’ actually worked, eh?” Carlyle remarked idly.