Orbital by F X Holden

Author:F X Holden [Holden, F X]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-21T22:00:00+00:00

Orbital

Titov Space Test Facility, Timonovo, Russia

Anastasia Grahkovsky took the earpiece out of her ear that had been carrying a recorded audio feed from the Baikonur control center and put it down beside the smashed porcelain that had until a few minutes ago been her favorite teacup.

It hadn’t been an accident. She had been holding the cup in one hand as she spoke with Major-General Bondarev on her cell phone with the other. She had listened to him politely. She had hung up on him calmly. And then she had thrown her cup down onto the coffee table in front of her with such fury that she heard pieces of it strike the window six feet away.

The Americans had attacked one of her Grozas! A clumsy, inelegant approach, but it could have worked. At her request, the designers had given the fuel compartments of the Groza heat shielding, but if the laser had managed to heat the outer casing sufficiently, enough energy could have been released to nudge the satellite out of orbit if the Americans had not been detected and counter-attacked. They had taken many precautions to ensure her babies were not sent into the cold dark of space without the ability to look after themselves, but would they be enough? Right there and then, she decided to assume not.

It was 11.30 a.m. on a rainy, gray Sunday morning in Moscow, but she rarely bothered to check the weather report because it made no difference to her whether it was cloudy or sunny, and she was not given to long outdoor walks so cared even less if there was rain, sleet or snow in the air. But she had the window of her apartment open and had sat in a chair near the window so she could feel the chill breeze which suited perfectly her already dark mood.

She took herself back to the audio she had been listening to and put her earpiece back in. What it was, was astrophysical pornography. She hadn’t been listening to the babbling replay of the commentary of the uniformed monkey men in the control center with their countdowns and their shouted confirmation of orders and mindless whoops of delight. She had downloaded an audio rendition of the trajectory data from the Groza guidance system as the huge tungsten warheads dropped off their hub, were boosted away by the Sarmat re-entry vehicle, and dropped through the atmosphere.

She had a braille printout of the trajectory the Titov AIs had calculated her warheads should follow, and measured the deviations, small and large, running her finger down the page as radar tracked the warheads up until the moment they split into hundreds of smaller wedge-shaped missiles.

You did it again, Corporal Khan, she thought to herself. She ran the tape through her fingers again. You shrunk the footprint this time. Perhaps you think your little tin medal will protect you?

The man intrigued her. If he was a conscientious objector, why did he not refuse to serve? He’d taken a

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