[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (70 page)

There was a specific point in each pod’s descent when the pathogen was most vulnerable, and it was in that window that Martin and Jack now intended to try to stop some of them.

Working in the team’s favor was the fact that the pods were only being actively distributed in that three-thousand-mile-wide band, though ‘only’ was used loosely here. Once the pathogen was on the ground, it was designed to spread the old-fashioned way, through the sputtering coughs and sneezes of the sick and dying. So outside that pod’s band, it would be subject to the same limitations as the antigen, which had the advantage of being deployed months ago. But any countries that were inside that three thousand mile wide band and were not already sufficiently protected by the antigen would be devastated by the disease. Their populations would be literally wiped out in a matter of weeks.

With less than 40% of the populations of several countries in the Middle East immunized with the antigen that would mean a 60% kill rate. Tens of millions of people dead.

So into this weakest spot in the world’s defenses flew a single B-2 Spirit Bomber armed with more explosives than a flotilla of World War Two flying fortresses. They knew it wouldn’t be enough to completely stop the killing, but it might limit it, and that was the best they could hope for.

“Jack!” shouted Martin, somewhat impatiently.

“What, Martin? I said I’m on my way.” said Jack, swigging some Gatorade as he climbed back up to the cockpit. Settling into his seat the empty pilot’s seat, he checked the instruments with experience bordering on reflex.

“Three hours, Martin!” he exclaimed when he saw the mission clock, “Shit, what the hell were you thinking? I said not to let me sleep more than an hour. God damn it, we’re nearly over Tibet.” he did not look at Martin as he said this, he was using the plane’s nine-screen control system to page through the extensive information available to him. Any moment now they were going to hit their target deployment area and this whole mission was going to come to a head.

Setting his mind at ease that they had indeed not had any radar hits from ground-based units yet, Jack turned to the upper atmospheric radar with which they were hoping to track the pods as they entered the kill zone.

All across the planet reports were coming in about the debris from the massive conflagration that had transpired above humanity’s heads. From the initial face-off in the skies above Azerbaijan between the HATF-VI Missiles and Russia’s Gorgon Interceptors, to the three massive missile storms that had been launched from Florida, Hawaii, and the disabled HMS
Dauntless
, no part of the sky had been left unblemished by the fires of Earth’s arsenal. Rumors abounded about the cause of the great conflict being raged in the skies, but within the world’s great militaries, the return fire of the alien satellites had not gone unnoticed.

Over the next few days, the international team that had been born of the curiosity of a hitherto unknown scientist named Neal Danielson would reach out to those governments and let them see the critical information that they had gathered. They would all hear of the double agent John Hunt and what he had done for them. But for now the world was at the highest level of alert since the end of World War Two, missiles were prepped, fighters were fueled and on the tarmac, armies were gathering, and the weapons of doomsday were poised and ready. No one was under any illusions as to how difficult it was going to be to get the world to finally lower its guns and to turn their focus to the real threat that was on its way.

But Jack and Martin had no time to wait for political stability. True to their word as only machines and monks were, a widely spread volley of viral pods were even now making their long, slow falls towards Earth, showing as evenly spaced blips ahead of the B-2. The pods they were seeing had actually been dropped way over the horizon, but the speed of the satellite’s retrograde orbits had slung them around the globe as they fell toward the surface. All across the globe these pods were slowly falling, except over Europe and Africa, which would have been the drop zone of the satellite Shahim had long since dispatched.

Jack stopped talking as he surveyed the tactical radar readouts in front of him, then looked at Martin, “We have about five minutes left before we launch the first rocket. You ready for this?” He looked very seriously at his friend, “You know what happens when we launch, don’t you?” Martin nodded, but Jack elaborated so he could be sure his friend knew the consequences, “All our stealth goes out the window. We will be launching munitions over foreign soil without their permission, heck, without even their knowledge, or that of our own government. We will be shot at by everything that they can mobilize against us, and eventually they
will
hit us.”

Martin did not make light of it. He got it, and he held his friend’s stare. They both got it. The looked at each other for a moment longer, then Jack nodded, his respect for his colleague’s bravery showing in his eyes. Jack reached across and held out his hand. Martin looked at it a moment, then extended his own. The two doomed men shook hands across the central console of the plane and then put their concerns behind them.

“OK, Martin, switching to deployment mode. Strap in and put on your face mask.”

They both secured their straps and pulled on their helmets. Jack had his in place in seconds, but Martin fiddled with his face mask for a moment before he got it settled. The oxygen now flowing, they were prepped for maneuvering, and Jack reached down to switch the plane’s screens to deployment mode.

The view on the screens in front of Martin changed instantly. As a missile specialist, he was more familiar than most with the missile deployment systems on US warplanes, but he had never had as good a view as this before, and he whistled. Paging through the screens in front of him, he selected the target acquisition screen and started to plot in the first pod’s trajectory, setting the computer to track its course and plot a path to intercept. Next, he switched to the armament screen and began activating the first of his one-thousand-pound AGM-158A cruise missiles. The system automatically initiated fuel stirring and warming devices and a thirty-second deployment pre-system check started. Sensors and systems went to work making sure the engine would ignite when it was dropped from the cargo hold of the plane.

“OK,” said Martin, “I’ve plotted the target path on screen.”

“I see it, time to launch window … six minutes.” said Jack, “How are we doing on missile prep?”

“Green light in thirty seconds. Transferring coordinates to the missile now.” Martin moved slowly but methodically through the process, double-checking himself as he went. Speaking to no one in particular, he said, “Select target coordinate package … target coordinate package selected; assign package to missile bay … package assigned to missile bay; select missile … missile selected; lock-in target coordinates … target coordinates locked; awaiting pilot approval …” he looked up at Jack, who was smiling.

“Pilot approval awaited?” said Jack in a lighthearted mockery of Martin’s grave tone.

Martin eased up a little, chuckled, then raised his eyebrows, “Well?”

“I’m on it, Martin, cool your jets.” said Jack, still laughing.

Jack looked at the screen and checked the numbers. Martin did not mistake Jack’s levity for brevity, and saw the experienced pilot deliberately review all his entries, as he was trained to do. “Looks good, package approved, launch approval set. Ready to lock in?”

“Ready.” said Martin, looking at him and taking a breath. They both readied their hands on the switches to either side of them, deliberately designed to be as far from each other as the cockpit’s width would allow. Jack glanced at Martin and said, “Locking in … now.” He turned the key on the left of his console as Martin turned the key on his right and the control screen beeped, a countdown timer appearing a moment later.

It was out of their hands now. They could stop the launch any time up to the moment the missile left the bay, but unless they changed their minds, the plane was now going to do everything else itself, the possibility of human error removed from the equation.

It was a long few minutes. Martin occupied himself by scanning for the next pod, higher in the atmosphere but coming at them fast as it headed west. Once the first missile was launched at the first pod 250 miles away, they would bank hard and send another missile after that second pod, then a third, and onwards until they had used up their payload or been shot out of the sky.

Jack went through his prelaunch routine. Running through his maneuver and responses in his mind, preparing his reflexes. The B-2 had a significant armory to defend itself, including everything from decoy flares, to explosive jacket air-to-air missiles; they could fool incoming missiles and even disable enemy planes. They were mostly delaying tactics, rather than actual game changers, but they might be the difference between life and death, between being blown up and having enough time to eject.

At one minute out the cabin started beeping loudly, the plane was preparing to open the missile bay. It would significantly reduce their stealth capability, but then, so would the huge rocket flare of the missile they were about to launch, not to mention the explosion that would light up the sky fifteen minutes later.

The screen counted down and Jack positioned his hand over the autopilot switch. He already knew the course he wanted after the launch: a one-hundred-sixty-five-degree hard turn to starboard. Heavy banking turns always made the plane more visible to radar, but they were already going to be announcing their position to the world and he intended to get his turn completed at the same time, rather than giving those that would soon be trying to kill them a second radar blip to aim at.

The whole feeling of the plane changed as the huge doors in its undercarriage opened. The smooth lines of the delta wing were suddenly interrupted and the two men could instantly feel a ripple in their world.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

A camera in the bomb bay showed Martin the missile as its clamps released and it dropped away. Two seconds later its ramjet engine ignited and it rocketed ahead. Jack was watching the same image from his console and the moment the missile’s engine ignited, he flipped off the autopilot and wrenched the plane off its heading. The G-force pressed Martin into his seat and he grunted, “Jesus, Jack, is this thing supposed to turn this hard?”

He strained at his belts as his view changed dramatically. He had a brief glimpse of the missile powering off into the distance out of the cockpit window before the horizon angled to more than forty-five degrees and their hard bank obscured his view of their first launch. Oh well, Martin thought, remembering the long nights he and Madeline had spent building the warhead, I hope the damn thing actually works.

With the big hold doors straining shut behind them, Jack leveled the huge plane out again and Martin took a breath.

“We should call that first one Sylvester.” Martin said to Jack after a moment’s silence.

Jack looked at him, confused, and Martin smiled, feeling a strange peace now that they had sealed their fate and it was out of their hands. He chuckled as he looked back at his screen, saying in an aside, “Because the cat’s out of the fucking bag now.”

Alone now, unleashed, the missile surged forward with singular purpose. Fully one-third of its mass was given over to the ramjet engine that drove it forward. Its body was white and completely encased in fiberglass. Halfway along its length, two stubby wings swept back from its midriff, matched by an equally short tail fin. An air intake emerged from the top of the missile just behind the wings like a mouth gasping for air. That mouth fed the missile’s ramjet with supersonic oxygen, which was then superheated and fired out of the rear of the missile at blistering speed. A long, blue-white jet trail streamed from the nozzle at the rear of the missile like God’s Bunsen burner, propelling it forward at over a thousand miles per hour.

Two hundred miles ahead the first viral pod continued its descent through the atmosphere, itself burning with the heat of atmospheric deceleration. At the missile’s breakneck speed it covered the distance between them in only ten minutes, descending on the pod with fury. As the missile got ever closer, the pod hit an exact point in its descent and, just as Agent John Hunt had said it would, the pod began to break apart. With most of its initial velocity now spent, the heat screens were no longer needed, and now it could release its cargo to disperse on the winds onto the unsuspecting populace below.

The pod and the missile flew toward each other.

The final mile between the AGM-158A and its target would be covered in only three and a half seconds. As this threshold was passed the missile reacted, triggering the explosion that would rip it apart. In perfect coordination, the engine cut out and two small bar explosives halfway along the missile’s length detonated, slicing the missile neatly in two. The heavier rear started to fall away immediately, taking the spent engine with it. A moment later a much larger explosive in the core of the front half of the missile fired. The remaining fiberglass casing of the fuselage disintegrated as fifty smaller cylinders were blown outward by the shaped central charge. The small cylinders flew outward and forward, forming a wide circle, the explosion propelling them away from each other, even as the missile’s massive momentum continued to carry them forward and down over the descending viral pod in a wide circle, like a massive rope lassoing the alien capsule in midair.

As the small cylinders fell level with the larger alien pod they all ignited. With machine precision they detonated at once, their thermobaric payloads exploding in a ring of fire around the pod. The fire swelled inward, sucking in oxygen in a massive gulp. At the center of the blast a vortex of flame was created, rushing upward. The disintegrating alien pod was swept up by the 100m wide inferno, the beautiful and terrible fire roasting its target’s deadly cargo to a harmless crisp.