Chapter Twenty-Two

The military executives, including General Haskell Gibbon, from a newly combined grouping involving NATO, ANZUS, China and Japan rushed through a military solution to deal with the spheres. Gibbon knew that NATO or just the USA component could have acted unilaterally, but the President decided to draw on the unique situation where the whole planet was under threat from outside. Although many military top brass were also political, they tended not to be the more cautious personalities of the purely civilian leaders.

As the USA Chief of Staff, General Gibbon rubbed his hands at the thought of so much power, sans politicians. Of course he was answerable to the President, but in this emergency he only had to inform President Edsel Cabot, who was overwhelmed with new presidential duties, and Gibbon had ensured he’d placed his own people in the President’s advisory committees.

That masterstroke twinkled his eyes. He’d easily persuaded the joint action committees to approve a massive pre-emptive strike. Not at the spheres. That was too obvious, and that bitch, Major Harvard, would’ve tried to spike it. But the incoming object was a threat, especially after he’d arranged for its parameters, in his published scenario, to change so that it seemed to be larger and coming in faster.

The Chinese general was no fool, and while shaking Gibbon’s uncertain hand when they first met, kept his smile to utilitarian minimalism and nodded in a way Gibbon associated with the Japanese. The Chinese general spoke yesterday as if Gibbon had prepared his speech.

“Though the data you provide falls outside of the range our experts predict, we recognize the incoming object as a threat and approve interception as soon as possible.”

Gibbon had expected to argue his case for action against the spheres along the lines of their taking these time displacements away was causing Earth’s problems. An earthquake larger than the 1976 Tangshan disaster sent a blame-the-spheres ripple around the globe along with the seismic waves.

He recalled the morning’s TV story. An Italian journalist had jabbered too fast for anyone to follow, but her narration wasn’t necessary. A helicopter view over the reawakened Mount Vesuvius showed the famous crater filling with bubbling, angry red lava. The pilot’s face bathed in sweat, he’d swung the chopper to the right, away from the caldera just in time as lava bombs projected up at him. The white, then red-hot ejecta arced through the air before one landed on a packed tourist minibus. The molten rock punched through the roof. The vehicle lurched to the edge of the mountain road and toppled over, then down the steep ash slope. Luckily, the noise of the helicopter drowned the screams, but the TV allowed Gibbon to hear those of the journalist.

* * *

With the collective firepower to obliterate life on Earth, the international consortium watched the monitors as over a dozen US and Russian Federation rockets blasted off with a combined nuclear warhead yield of sixty megatons to meet the single incoming sphere. It was too late to use the latest space-based kinetic energy weapons or organise the redirection of a meteoroid to intercept the sphere. They’d know in ten hours if the mission was successful. The projected interception was just over 160,000 kilometres from the other combined spheres remaining in orbit.

But this wasn’t Mission Control in Houston, nor The Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, but the Vandenberg USAF Base in California. The martial gathering, in pressed uniforms of olive-green, greys and navy-blue, mingled in a white room where one wall comprised of screens showing duplicate displays from the real control centre a few corridors distant. Vertical beige blinds rejected the glaring Californian sun. Most of the group left for refreshments.

* * *

Two hours to detonation, Gibbon looked over the top of his clipboard at the incongruous gathering. In spite of the nostril-widening aroma from a cup of hot coffee, the air felt thick, but it could be the tension. He leant towards his aide and whispered:

“Ray, is it my ears being clogged, or is there a deathly silence in here.”

“Some have second thoughts. Haven’t you, Sir?”

With as much surreptitious skill as he remembered, Gibbon attempted to predict which of the military gathering were the traitors. “Good Lord, no. It’s just as well we programmed in a proximity detonation as the failsafe. I don’t want to risk a mission failure just because some of these piss-artists are dithering.”

Of course he’d put to the back of his mind the niggling doubts planted by that Kallandra woman. After the failure of the low-yield tactical nuclear missile on the Pacific sphere, she’d said that anything they threw at the things would be skipped out of the way with a time slippery manoeuvre. Well maybe not with such a big detonation as he’d planned and he had an ace up his sleeve, both sleeves.

Radar and radio jamming would confuse the sphere’s sensors moments before detonation. The lead rocket would detonate with a low yield a full minute before the others, which would blast it to another universe. Hah! Time-quaking wouldn’t help that fucker this time. And, hopefully, the spheres would think the bunch of grapes above the Indian Ocean was the target anyway. Then they’d realise Earth meant business. How dare they ignore us? Stealing our time like that had a price.

“Sir, suppose the Russians built in a failsafe too?”

“What?” Gibbon said, too loudly, drawing faces to him. He turned his back to them, while tugging Ray Wolfe’s arm. “How the hell could they?”

His aide shrugged. “You taught me to anticipate anything, Sir. Suppose they rigged their missiles so they can independently trigger them? I know we agreed on an electronic-systems protocol with them for this mission, but we paid off their inspector, so—”

“I need to lean on them to make sure they don’t use their own abort button.” He felt his face heat, probably reddening, as he sought the Russian general heading their group.

This is ridiculous, Gibbon thought. I can feel my pulse accelerating and yet all I’m gonna do is to talk horse-sense to that yellow-livered Ruski.

Gibbon had led a gunship assault at that commie island, Grenada, in ’83. Not much to worry about there, but anything could happen in warfare, even so he’d hardly a spot of sweat then. Cool, calm and collected. He looked at his palms swimming in perspiration. He fished out a large handkerchief from his right trouser pocket and towelled his hands.

The Russian general wasn’t difficult to spot: tall, a mass of thick grey hair creating a shadow across the light grey uniforms of his two podgy aides. He was too damned good-looking. Gibbons faltered in his walk towards the General not only because he’d forgotten his name; he’d seen for the first time, the Russian’s epaulet: three stars, not four. So, he was not their main man, just a Colonel General. Gibbon slowly about-turned and strolled back to Ray Wolfe.

He ensured his voice travelled only to his aide. “What’s that damned Ruski’s name again?”

“Ivan Federov. He’s a Colonel General, equivalent to our—”

“General, I know. So he’s inferior to me as Chief of Staff.”

“With respect, Sir, it makes little difference. He’s their superior officer.”

“Yes, yes, I know that too. He speaks better English than I can get by in Russian, I suppose? I remember him saying hello and how are you, but could he manage a debate?”

Wolfe tapped at his iPaq. “He did a training course at Grantown-on-Spey in Scotland, so he may have a bit of a Russian-cum-Scottish accent.”

Grumbling, Gibbon walked cautiously over to the trio, who watched the lines of missile tracks on the wall-screen.

“Say, Colonel Federov, may I have a word?” Damn, he realised he should have added in ‘General’.

“Certainly, General Gibbon, this is a momentous occasion,” he said in impeccable English with no trace of an accent.

“It will be if it goes to plan.” Gibbon needed to test the Russian, although the chances of him giving away intelligence of any unilateral failsafe device was as unlikely as finding a budget-happy Republican.

“As you know, General,” Federov said, “we went along with it because the worst that could happen is nothing, unless the spheres decide we need to be eliminated.”

“That was a factor in the games theory matrix.”

“Indeed it was. But I’m not as convinced as you that in destroying this sphere, the other spheres will take notice of us.”

Gibbon imagined tugging at his collar and wished he could undo his tie. “How could they fail to notice, or not realise they’ve created havoc down here?”

“It’s no good trying to get inside their heads. For one thing, they are probably robotic. Granted they might be sentient robots—”

“Now you’re worrying me, General Federov, have you been working on sixth generation AI machines?”

The Russian grinned. “As your Seattle people have. Don’t you think it comical that in these times of détente we still keep so many secrets?”

Gibbon agreed, though he didn’t vocalise the ‘more than you know’ thought, since maybe it was less than the Russian knew. There were far more ex-pat Russians and former Eastern Bloc nationals working in Microsoft and Silicon Valley than Americans in the whole of Eurasia. And yet the Japanese were probably ahead of everyone. However, they weren’t in that room with itchy fingers on a comms device in their pocket.

“Listen Federov, we need this mission to be successful. Sure we have more missiles, hundreds ready to go, thousands could be later. I know you have too, and other countries if pushed. But this is our first real big shot at stopping them bastards from messing us up.”

The Russian’s smile evaporated. “Your people tried to destroy the Fiji sphere unsuccessfully. But perhaps it was too small to affect the sphere.”

“Exactly. We don’t want anything fouling up this time.”

“I could interpret your tone, General Gibbon, as one suggesting we might abort, even though our technicians have arranged it so we cannot.”

“Come off it, Federov. If you wanted to abort I’m sure you could.” Gibbon abruptly realised he’d walked into his own trap.

“You mean your side could abort. You have overridden our agreed protocol?

Yes?”

Gibbon chose to be silent, as now was the rest of the room. He felt foolish and yet chimerical because he knew the Russians must have an abort or blow-to-hell-on-command ability secretly built in, as he had. Surely? He felt a sour taste in his mouth as if his acid reflux problem was being triggered by stress.

A shout by one of the Russian aides rescued Gibbon.

“The sphere is changing course.”

Gibbon knew that in the control centre down the corridor, computer operators’ fingers would be a blur as they accessed scenarios triggered by the new trajectory data.

Federov leant towards Gibbon. “It’s not a problem; the missiles will home in on it.”

“I know that,” he blurted. Gibbon hated not being in control, but immediately regretted his hasty response while the Russian was so calm. “They can even cope with the loss of forward sensory contact for several seconds at a time.”

“Yes, that was clever programming.”

Gibbon couldn’t recall whose side did the programming. Sure enough, the lead missile changed course too. On target. He grinned, at last.

A solid black rectangle on the large wall of screens flickered to life. Gibbon’s eyes eagerly switched from the tracking screen to the newly energised one. It was a live feed from a nose cam on the lead missile showing…nothing, mostly. Eyes narrowed, he leaned forward as if that helped. Then, a techie must have twirled a focus knob; he saw the non-twinkling pinpricks of stars. Even though the missile zipped through space at over 40,000 kilometres per hour, the stars didn’t seem to move.

A green arrow appeared on screen as if Sagittarius, the archer, was targeting the star in the centre. The image zoomed in to reveal the approaching metallic sphere.

Scrolling data indicated that their combined collision speed was a hundred and ninety kilometres per minute. Detonation in twelve seconds.

Twelve seconds, he thought, making sure the failsafe procedure was only a finger press away in his right jacket pocket. He internalised his own commentary to the countdown.

Eleven.... Federov had his hand in his pocket too. Left—trousers.

Ten.... Strange that the sphere, very tiny on screen even at maximum zoom, didn’t seem to get any larger.

Nine.... That last one seemed longer than a second.

Eight.... Throat drier than Arizona but no time for a glass of water.

Seven.... The room seemed to sway.

Six.... The sphere vanished.

“Is it my eyes, Ray, or has it gone?” Gibbon needn’t have asked. The room pulsated with gasps. Silly because it was anticipated. The spheres were becoming predictable when faced with attacks, but Gibbon hoped that the heavy-duty walloping would damage it this time.

The screen blanked. Silence again as all eyes turned to the tracking screen. A red spot grew to a disk where the lead missile detonated. Simultaneously, the tracking lines showed the other missiles spreading so that when they detonated the chances of hitting the sphere increased, if and when it appeared in the next second or minute.

Seconds later a predetermined pattern of detonations erupted from the outer missiles to the centre.

Gibbon allowed a grin, however nervous, as he thought of the sphere being caught like a salmon in a net. It should have been smashed this time.

He started shaking. Ridiculous after his wartime experiences and yet, somehow, the threat was worse for being undefined. He was unlikely to die in this conflict although he hadn’t enjoyed the implications of that physicist when she pointed out that if part of the Earth stood still the rest would move on at thirty kilometres per second. So there was a chance all this could go fatally wrong if the spheres had such a defence mechanism. Suddenly, his knees gave way and his chair creaked as he promptly landed on it. Frowning, he couldn’t remember standing. He put his hand on his stomach as if that would calm the cauldron effervescing in there.

His eyes flicked to the other screens one at a time, seeking evidence of destruction or survival. Weather satellites, and others, had their sensors re-aligned especially. Infrared was washed out for a while yet, as was visible light. Radar was a mass of speckles. Not from missile fragments: they would have vaporized. Plasma pockets and maybe sphere shrapnel?

“Is...is that all of them, Ray?” Gibbon’s eyes couldn’t focus properly on the status screen.

“Yes Sir. The second wave are being prepared at Vandenberg and Plesetsk.

Aimed at the cluster in orbit. Are you OK, Sir?”

“Not really, but let’s get through this nightmare.”

“Not a nightmare, Sir. I think we managed to destroy that sphere, even though….”

Gibbon saw that his aide was sneaking a glance over at Federov. So, the Russians tried to sabotage the mission after all. He stood, too abruptly and felt light-headed. Swaying for a second he put out a hand on Ray’s shoulder for support. While revving up his energy for a blast at Federov, he could feel his pulse throbbing in his thick neck.

“Sir,” said Ray, “you may have misinterpreted what I meant—”

“No I didn’t. You stop here.” Gibbon had wound himself up, and marched across the marble floor to the group of Russians, who remained watching the screens.

“Federov, you set off your missiles too early, didn’t you? Jeopardising the whole mission like that is totally irresponsible.” He couldn’t stop his forehead perspiring but didn’t want to fish out a handkerchief; it would look bad—a weakness. But he felt hot too; his face must be glowing red. The damn Russian hardly looked round at him.

“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, General.”

“So you don’t deny it? Don’t bother, I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”

To Gibbon’s astonishment, the Russian, looking calm and collected, smiled as if he was so superior nothing could touch him. Feeling his anger bursting up through him like an awakening volcano, Gibbon wrenched off his jacket, dropped it over a chair and threw himself at the Russian. His last-moment raised arm failed to prevent an ignominious scrum down to the floor. Chairs scattered chairs and shocked colleagues shouted.

Through the Russian’s shirt, Gibbon could feel iron stomach muscles as he scrambled, trying to protect his eyes from a two-fingered jab. He wondered why he was on his back while Federov enjoyed the space and superiority of being over him. Gibbon rolled to the left, but the Russian knelt on his chest. Not only could Gibbon not move, he could feel his ribs cracking and his sternum shot hot pains straight to his heart. Maybe this was it! A heart attack from the physical and emotional stress. He thrashed his arms trying to smite the Russian, whose face had lost its control and twisted like a gargoyle drooling vehemence and spittle over Gibbon.

Incongruously, Gibbon felt his elbow getting colder. He twisted his head sufficient to see broken glass on the floor. They’d knocked iced water off the tables.

His sleeve must be wet.

In the midst of the fracas where it seemed the Russian didn’t really want to hurt him, and Gibbon’s initial vehemence had sublimated to embarrassment, arms dragged them apart.

Gasping, Gibbon couldn’t look his aide in the face. “Damned Russians.”

Before the expected agreement came from his aide, a sharp female voice cut through the room.

“It’s back.”

Grumbling that it demonstrated his correct interpretation, even though the Russians denied detonating their missiles too early, Gibbon looked at the screens. He didn’t know which one indicated the sphere had popped back into their time.

“The group of spheres, Sir,” said Ray. “There’s nine there now. There were only eight this morning. They’re running an image-tagging algorithm to—”

“Since when?” Gibbon looked at a smudge of blood on his handkerchief after using it to dab the back of his sore head.

“Since the start of your…erm…fight, Sir.”

Gibbon groaned. His explosion at the Russian might have been justifiable, at least to him, but he knew it would be seen as unprofessional and bad form with regard to the recent relationship with the former Soviets. He’d risen to his position by always being right but also in making positive decisions, aggressively when appropriate.

“General, you were wrong this time,” Federov said. “And so were we. Sixty megatons made no difference to them. For all we know, the sphere was going to flip out of time and zip across to the others all along.”

Gibbon sat more upright. “Then we blast them with ten times as much in the second wave.”

The Russian sat opposite Gibbon, who bristled at the sight of the man looking suavely no different than before the scuffle.

“Our game theorists don’t agree, General. Now this negative event is factored in, there’s no advantage to us in taking a second aggressive action.”

“He’s right, Sir.” Ray wrung his hands in apology.

Gibbon sniffed at the strong but now cold coffee he’d originally brought into the room. A scum of milk glared accusingly at him. Maybe if he’d drunk it all earlier, his brain would’ve sorted this problem out without needing the Russians or blasted game theory.

Dolefully he looked up at Federov and was about to suggest another tactic when another woman’s voice sliced through the awkward air.

“The spheres are moving off. Slowly, so far. At normal to the ecliptic and now parabolic. Too early to estimate direction.”

Gibbon slumped in his chair. Exhausted and sore, in several places and meanings, he resigned himself to the inevitable; the Earth had its chance and blew it.

Time decoherences were going to get worse until the planet split apart. A flash of insight told him that it might have happened to other planets in the Solar System, creating the asteroid belt.