Chapter 72 - Orbital Trajectory
"Get me Space Command on the secure uplink, now!" I roared across the command bridge.
The subterranean vault beneath Tartarus shook as the aftershocks of the Texas launch propagated through regional seismic sensors. Klaxons screamed overhead in alternating tones of amber and blood-red.
"Airborne Laser Platform *Prometheus* is in position over the Rockies!" the communications officer shouted, her hands a blur over the frequency array. "General Vance is on the horn! He’s asking for executive authorization to fire!"
"Patch him through!"
A heavy click resonated in my earpiece. The voice of General Vance came through thick with tension. "Colonel Carter, we’re tracking the outbound threat from your family’s coordinate sector. What in God’s name happened down there? We thought the facility was sanitized!"
"It was a sleeper silo, General! Jake Carter bypassed Tartarus entirely. He’s running a depressed-trajectory kinetic strike straight into Cheyenne! Conventional THAAD batteries won't have time to acquire a lock—the missile is hugging the radar floor at Mach 14!"
"Then Prometheus is our only shot," Vance said grimly. "Firing sequence takes forty seconds to prime the chemical oxygen-iodine laser. If we miss the booster burn before the payload shroud separates, the warhead will split into three maneuverable reentry vehicles. We won't be able to kill all three."
"Authorizing emergency release code: Alpha-Echo-Zero-Niner," I commanded without hesitation. "Burn that booster out of the sky before it crosses the Mississippi."
On the primary tactical holotable, a high-altitude surveillance satellite zoomed in on the roaring projectile. It looked like a needle made of polished obsidian, trailing a forty-foot tail of incandescent blue fire. The aerospike engine was holding together under pressures that should have torn modern metallurgical alloys to ribbons.
Jake hadn't just used Carter family money to buy concrete. He had procured advanced aerospace graphite composites directly from black-market Russian naval yards. The entire family shipping business had been a conduit for illegal heavy-metal logistics.
*05:45... 05:44...*
"Prometheus is locked," the tech called out. "Directed energy discharge in three... two... one..."
From an altitude of seventy-five thousand feet, an invisible, megawatt-class beam sliced through the upper atmosphere. On the infrared feed, the heat blooming across the missile's flank appeared as a violent wash of purple. The casing began to blister.
"Direct hit on the fuel bladder!" Miller yelled, slamming his hand onto the console. "Skin temperature exceeding three thousand degrees! Structural failure imminent!"
"Wait," I breathed, leaning closer to the glass. "Look at the telemetry. The velocity isn't dropping."
The purple heat bloom suddenly shifted. The obsidian needle didn't disintegrate. Instead, explosive bolts around the midsection detonated in four sequential rings.
"Separation!" Miller screamed. "The booster was a decoy! It was just an aerodynamic shroud!"
From the burning wreckage of the booster emerged a sleek, wedge-shaped hypersonic glide vehicle. It banked sharply at an impossible forty-degree angle, slipping sideways through the atmosphere and breaking the Prometheus laser lock in an instant.
"Glide vehicle identified: *Valkyrie-Nine*," the computer's synthesized voice announced flatly. "Remaining time to impact: four minutes, twelve seconds."
The screen flashed red. The glide vehicle was no longer heading toward Cheyenne Mountain. Its fins adjusted, diving back down toward the eastern corridor.
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"He lied about the target," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "He wanted us to burn our directed-energy reserves on the decoy. Cheyenne was never the target."
"Commander..." Miller turned to me, his eyes wide with horror. "Look at the new vector. It’s descending directly into northern Virginia. The National Military Command Center. The Pentagon."
