Strike Force

“I’m glad you’re impressed, General!” retorted Ayatollah Hassan Mohtaj, acting president and Supreme Leader of Iran. “That was a half-billion-dollar ballistic missile that was just destroyed…and on your request! I hope you realize your government is going to compensate us fully for the cost!”

“You will be fairly compensated, Mohtaj…you just won’t be paid anything,” Furzyenko said.

“Oh? How, then?”

“By helping keep your asses alive,” the general said.

“First we turn over the body of their commando, the robot machine, and the equipment from their spaceplane over to you for free, and then we waste our most sophisticated missile on a test flight for you, and we will not be paid? That is simply not fair, General.”

“We can simply take our troops back to Russia and leave you to your fate,” Furzyenko said. “Is that fair enough for you?” Mohtaj opened his mouth but said nothing. “Who will destroy you first if we left, priest? Buzhazi? The Qagev princess and her followers? The Americans? The Israelis? Your fellow Iranians? So many enemies, so little protection. Think about it before you speak to me again with that tone of voice, priest.” Mohtaj gulped indignantly but said nothing. The Russian glared at him, then picked up his secure telephone and waited for the encrypted connection. “General Furzyenko here, sir.”

“How did it go, General?” Russian president Leonid Zevitin asked.

“The Americans took the bait as you predicted, sir,” Furzyenko said. “We simply waited until we knew Armstrong Space Station would be in a good position to attack, then had Mohtaj command the Pasdaran to launch the Shahab-5 missile over the Indian Ocean.”

“You didn’t actually target it for Diego Garcia, did you, General?”

“It would have impacted in the Indian Ocean but far short of the island, shortly after second-stage ignition — it would have looked like an unsuccessful launch.”

“Any chance the missile was shot down by one of their airborne lasers?”

“Their one known AL-52 aircraft has terminated its patrol north of Tehran and is being refueled somewhere over the Persian Gulf,” Furzyenko said. “We know they have one or two flyable 747 AL-1 airborne laser aircraft, but we believe if they are operational they were kept back guarding the homeland and were not part of McLanahan’s Iran operation. Our picket ships have detected no other aircraft in the area, although their stealth bombers could have sneaked past us. We will get telescopic infrared photographs of the space station that should confirm that the Skybolt laser fired, but I am confident that it was Skybolt that destroyed the Shahab-5.”

“So Martindale has resurrected the space laser again,” Zevitin said. “This is a major violation of the Outer Space Treaty and a clear and serious escalation of hostilities all around the world. The United States has militarized space, again.”

“Agreed, sir. This calls for a quick response.”

“And there will be one, General,” Zevitin said. “I guarantee it. What of our fanar unit?”

“Fanar was moved away from the Strongbox right after we destroyed the spaceplane,” Furzyenko said. “We left its surveillance radar in place and put a decoy trailer at the site, both of which the Americans destroyed. But the laser is on its way here to Mashhad under heavy guard. We’ll fly it back to Russia right away.”

“Very good, General, very good,” Zevitin said. “Gather your analyses and post-strike reports and report to me as soon as possible, and we’ll plan Russia’s next move against the newly aggressive President Martindale and his pet bulldog, General Patrick Shane McLanahan.”

“Nakanyets!” Furzyenko said happily. “At last!”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Janet and Bryan Raydon and Linda and Richard Offerdahl for their generosity.

Thanks to astronaut Mike Mullane, author of Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut (New York: Scribner, 2006), and Thomas D. Jones, astronaut and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to NASA (New York: Alpha, 2002) and Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), for their help on understanding the wonders and dangers of space flight and for their thoughts and opinions on the military use of space.

Thanks to the organizers, sponsors, exhibitors, and presenters that I met at the 2006 International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, part of the X-Prize Cup weekend demonstrating and rewarding the newest advancements in private spaceflight technology. I especially wish to thank Patricia C. Hynes, Lowell Catlett, and Thomas Burton for their hospitality and help.