Dark Star

“Yeah, the clever bastards got them, too,” Kurtzman growled, his face becoming hard. “And you know what that means, Barb.”

“Interpol has a mole,” Price muttered. “A traitor working for the, as the President calls them, Skywalkers inside the organization.”

“Or else the hacker for the people behind the X-ships is an absolute wizard at tracing encoded signals.”

“Is that possible?”

The man shrugged. “Anything is possible.”

“Okay, I just read the FBI reports on Blue Origins and Armadillo Aerospace,” Akira Tokaido announced. “Both companies are nowhere near a functional SSO ship. The only useful information the FBI got is that the X-ships have to be singles.”

“What does that mean?” Price demanded curiously. “Hand-built or something?”

“No, the ships only have one control system,” Tokaido replied. “Take a NASA space shuttle, for example. Those have a complete backup system for everything. In case anything goes wrong, it can continue to fly without loss of performance. On some of the critical systems, there are even three or four backup versions. Control board, air recycling, teleflex cables, fuel lines, everything but the engines, toilet and crew, comes in a minimum of three.”

“I see, and that adds a lot of weight,” she said, chewing over the new information. “So the Skywalkers took out everything not actually needed for flight, which massively cut the weight of the X-ships.” She frowned. “No, this doesn’t work, because they also have armored hulls. Wouldn’t that equal out the same weight as before?”

“Not really. The armor is mostly just heat-proofing, the few hardpoints are an ultralight composite,” Kurtzman stated. “But they would still need the microwave boosters to put them over the top.”

“Which is killing the crews. That beggars the question, do they know, or not care?”

“Unknown.”

The woman started to pace. “Okay, if the X-ships have no backup controls, then if we damage one at all, even minor damage, it’s down for the count.”

“Absolutely. But you’ve seen how fast they are,” Carmen Delahunt said. “Combine that raw speed with their stealth technology, and these things are damn near invincible.”

“But not invulnerable.”

“Oh no, a standard LAW should be able to blow them out of the sky. But you have to hit them first.”

“All right, if speed is an issue, then how about using a PEP?” Tokaido asked out of the blue. “That might do the job.”

“What is a PEP?” Delahunt asked from behind the VR helmet, her body language showing the woman’s puzzlement.

“A Plasma Energy Projectile,” Kurtzman translated. “And no, don’t ask me why the Army calls a laser weapon a projectile. I have no idea.”

“Yes, I have heard about that. The weapon is a highly advanced form of a deutronium-fluoride laser about the size of a refrigerator,” Hunt Wethers added from around his pipe. “But it weighs a lot more, about five hundred pounds. However, with special bracings, it can be mounted on the side of an APC, or even a Hummer.”

“So what does it do?” Price asked impatiently. “I know the Army had lasers that could blind people all the way back in Vietnam, but those were declared illegal by the UN, and banned worldwide.”

“No, this is a real weapon,” Kurtzman stated. “It kills. The beam cycles so fast that anything it hits becomes superheated into a plasma and explodes.”

“They do what?”

“Explode. Let me tell you, it’s a hell of a blast. Roughly the equivalent to a 40 mm grenade. Only the PEP can chew its way through even tank armor, just by staying focused on one area. The laser is fast enough to take out jets, but strong enough to kill tanks, maybe even sink ships, who knows?”

“The Pentagon planned to deploy them in a few years,” Tokaido said smugly. “But I managed to locate a couple of working prototypes at the Pickatinny Experimental Weapons Lab in Pennsylvania, and had them assigned to us for field testing.”

“Excellent!” Price said, exhaling. “Send one here, and one to the…no, send both of them to the White House.”

“Both?” the man asked in surprise.

“If a SOTA military laser suddenly shows up in the middle of a national park, what would you think?”

“I wouldn’t think anything,” Kurtzman snorted. “I’d know for a damn fact that was the location of a secret base. Okay, fair, enough, they both go the White House.”

“However, we still have to find the X-ships to destroy them,” Tokaido added. “They move way too fast for us to respond. We need to be waiting at the target, before they arrive.”

“We have to beat the men,” Delahunt added, “not the machines,”

“Exactly.”

“Unfortunately, we have no idea where they are going to hit next,” Price said.

“Barbara,” Kurtzman stated, “the impossible can be done.”

“With a little bit of luck,” Price amended. “And so far, our luck is registering at just below zero. We call the terrorists the Skywalkers because that Brazilian shuttle was their first target, but in truth, we don’t know anything about these people. Are these attacks religiously motivated or political? What are their ultimate goals?” She turned, and started for the door. “Hell, we don’t even know their real name yet.”

CHAPTER SIX

Outer Siberia, Russia

The two Dark Star agents shuffled their feet on the frosty ground and shivered in the morning breeze.

The crisp, clear air was bitterly cold, and carried a faint acidic taste of rock dust. Reaching from the dark mountains to a jagged cliff, the desolate landscape was barren and rocky, like the far side of the moon. There were no plants in sight, no grass or trees, not even the slightest touch of green to brighten the otherwise sterile vista.

The man and woman knew there were parts of Siberia that were lush and green, covered with dense forests and fertile fields of wheat, the cities bright and lively with commerce, music and laughter. But not here. Then again, less than a decade ago this section of Russia had been forbidden for anybody to even discuss, much less visit, unless you were a KGB agent, a privileged member of the Presidium or a slave.

Steadily losing the arms race against the prosperous West, the old Soviet Union had been overjoyed to find a motherload of pitchblende in such an isolated area. Hundreds, then thousands, of innocent people were arrested on false charges and sent to the area to slave in the hastily erected mines, many of them freezing to death before starving.

Which was just as well, Colonel Zane Southerland thought humorlessly, stomping his sneakers to maintain circulation. Because the acid fumes used in the process that extracted tiny flecks of uranium from the tons of pitchblende was slowly destroying their bodies. He considered it a much better fate to die from the cold, rather than coughing out bloody chunks of what was once your lungs.

When the mine became exhausted, the Soviets had started to convert the labyrinth of tunnels into an underground fortress, then the government ran out of money, and then out of power. These days, the barbed-wire fences were long gone, the one road smoothed until it once more merged with the shifting dust of the desolate landscape as a modern Russia tried to erase the crimes of the old USSR. Abandoned and forgotten, the uranium mine had been thoroughly wiped from the pages of the history books.

Which should have made it the perfect location for a refueling cache, the colonel raged furiously, buttoning closed his collar. Except that the expected tanks of liquid nitrogen and hydrogen were not there!

Less than an hour earlier he had been warm in South Africa bombing the capital building. Now he was freezing to death, but he knew the attack had been well worth the price. Formerly the head of Internal Security, Southerland had been thrown out of power when Mandela led the revolution. Now a wanted criminal around the world, the colonel stayed constantly on the move, always one jump ahead of Interpol and their ridiculous charges of war crimes. Bah, he had been merely protecting his homeland. He was a hero, not a monster!

Glancing over a shoulder, the colonel stepped closer to the hulking transport, savoring what little heat there was coming off the rapidly cooling engines. In spite of the hostile weather, Southerland was dressed in only a lightweight, camou-colored ghillie suit and sneakers, with a Webley .44 revolver strapped about his waist, but no spare ammunition. Although they operated at maximum efficiency, the X-ships consumed fuel at a prodigious rate, and weight was a matter of prime concern. His teams carried only what was necessary for their next mission, and nothing more.

Although a relatively short man, Southerland was solidly built, appearing to be made of only muscle and bone, similar to a closed fist. His hair was cut in a severe military style, and there was a long scar on the left side of his face that marled the left eye to a dull white orb. Long ago, while questioning a traitor, Southerland had felt pity and offered the chained man a glass of water. It had been gratefully accepted, then smashed against the stone wall, the jagged edge slashed across his throat and face.

Knocking aside the makeshift weapon, Southerland had grabbed the prisoner around the throat and squeezed until the bones cracked, killing the man on the spot. Which was probably exactly what the rebel had hoped for in the first place—escape from the brutal torture to reveal the location of a hidden weapons cache. The doctors at Johannesburg had offered to repair the scar, but Zane refused, preferring to keep it as a grim reminder to himself to never again offer another person mercy.

“If only we had some fuel,” Southerland muttered, scowling into the distance. “Where are those fools?”

“Just arriving now, sir,” Sergeant Davidson said over the comm system. The pilot had stayed in the control room of the X-ship to monitor the pressure in the fuel tanks during refueling.