“Mr. President, it is my pleasure to see you again, even though it is under these unfortunate circumstances,” said Kuan, Sheng, the Chinese Ambassador, bowing at the waist.
Johnny Withers set two chairs in front of the President’s desk.
“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Ambassador. Your presence is most reassuring in these troubled times. Please continue, Mr. Ambassador.”
“My government has been asked by the People’s Republic of North Korea to extend to you their most sincere apology for the damage inflicted upon your satellite system in their area of the world. It was not deliberate, but the target, as I am sure you are aware, was the satellite system of South Korea. Your satellites were, shall I say, unfortunate victims of the fortunes of war.”
“Those unfortunate victims of the fortunes of war were very, very expensive, Mr. Ambassador. If the People’s Republic of Korea survives this conflict, I can assure you, they will get the bill, and we will demand replacement cost, to include launching costs, for them.”
“Rest assured, Mr. President. The People’s Republic of Korea has requested my government to inform you that they will compensate you at full replacement costs once the current unfortunate conflict is resolved.”
“Please pass on to the People’s Republic of Korea my thanks for their offer, and we look forward to full reimbursement as soon as possible. I would like to add to that, once again, the thanks of our government to the People’s Republic for not interfering with the evacuation of American civilians from the Republic of Korea.
“What is the feeling of the People’s Republic of China towards all this unpleasantness in your area of the world? The United States and the rest of the western nations are very concerned about this and how it will affect many things, including security arrangements, future trade, the flow of goods and oil and capitol and people.”
“Mr. President, the People’s Republic of China is greatly disturbed over this nastiness. We had no knowledge of Kim, Jong-un’s intent. We are working diligently to persuade the People’s Republic of Korea to end hostilities immediately if not sooner. Unfortunately, Dear Leader is bent on reuniting the peninsula under himself. We wring our hands in frustration as well as you. This is most unfortunate for my government as it is for yours.”
“Express my thanks and appreciation to your government for their efforts to end the conflict as quickly as possible and for being as kind as to act as a benevolent intermediary.”
“It will be my pleasure to express your wishes to both my government and to pass them on to the People’s Republic of Korea, Mr. President.” The Chinese ambassador arose, along with Marge Talbott, and bowed at the waist to the President.
“Johnny, have my chauffer take the kind ambassador to wherever he wishes. Marge, remain for a while. I would like to discuss a few matters with you.”
“Thank you, Mr. President, but we arrived in our separate automobiles. It will not be necessary,” said the Chinese ambassador.
“Of course, Mr. Ambassador, how thoughtless of me.” What Jason Thornton was really thinking was that Of course, you did. You didn’t want any recordings of any conversation you had with Marge Talbott en route, did you.
“What do you think, Marge? What’s your reading of the Chinese ambassador on this?”
“Mr. President, I have a gut level feeling he knew it was going to happen all along.”
Twelve thousand miles away, another series of important messages was being relayed. These went from Chang, Mao Lin, Chinese Chief of Staff, Peoples Army Navy, to the Army Front Commanders.
“What is the word from the National Reconnaissance Office Ed? How soon are we going to get our satellites going?”
“Something seems wrong, Mr. President. We have a number of sleeper satellites and dual-purpose satellites which have remained quiet just for this contingency. These are in addition to the several we repositioned. The NRO tells me they are all malfunctioning.”
“What the hell do you mean, malfunctioning? Be specific, Ed.”
“They aren’t responding to the signals, Mr. President. We don’t know why.”
“Any idea as to when we will have it figured out, Ed? Damn it, we need those satellites now. AWACS are good, but not nearly as capable as those satellites. As soon as you have some idea of the problem, call a meeting for here with the NRO, the National Security Council, and the Joint Chiefs. Ride the asses of those people over in the NRO until then. Find out about using commercial satellites as surrogates if any are ready for launch until we are up and running. Get back to me on that ASAP.”
“Yes, Mr. President. The people at Livermore are working on both aspects as we speak. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. Ron Weber is over at NRO now trying to kick butt!”
“The commercials will probably want a pretty penny for their efforts, maybe even a guarantee on a contract. It wasn’t just our military satellites, but some of the commercials that were on the Pacific Rim went down, too. They will have to reposition some of them, maybe even change orbits. That means they will have to cut short services for some other customers already contracted for.”
“Damn it, Ed, that’s it. Get your people over here at 08:00 tomorrow. Bring as many answers and people and theories as you can or think necessary.”
“Aye aye, Mr. President. We’ll be there.” Both men hung up, and McCluskey started calling the NRO, Livermore Lab boys and a few others.
“Peggy!”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“I want an NSA meeting with the Joint Chiefs tomorrow at 08:00. Ed is bringing some extra people. We’ll meet in the war room. Set it up, breakfast for anybody who wants it, tea, coffee, donuts, and the usual fat pills. Let them know we will host breakfast as usual.”
Jason Thornton was utterly convinced that everyone worked better on a good breakfast. Some simple carbohydrates to provide blood glucose for brain food are always in order.
Most people were eating when Jason Thornton walked into the meeting. All began to stand. Thornton waved them down. “Sit and eat, people. I know some of you commuted over an hour to get here, and others had a late-night flight. What I know about our satellite capabilities over East Asia is that we don’t have any. Now, I would like to hear what you know and what our options are. The DCI brought some of his experts with him, so Ed, I’ll hand it off to you and yours to get us started. Ed.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. Our guests are Doctors Diane Foster, computer engineering, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories; Robert Hatcher, propulsion systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Larry Corning, Software design and engineering, NASA. Dr. Corning, can you give us some ideas or possibilities of what happened to our backup satellites?”
“Mr. President, people. There are several plausible explanations of what happened. Solutions, of course, depend upon which explanation actually occurred. First is that our satellites were attacked. Take that as fact. Mechanisms of attack include a massive burst of electromagnetic pulse that fried all the microcircuits. This could occur by delivery of a very small but tailored nuclear blast in the immediate vicinity of our satellites. It is noteworthy that other satellites positioned over the same region suffered the same fate. The burst could be so powerful and so short that it would occur in microseconds and wouldn’t be registered by other instruments here in the States. This is the most plausible explanation, but also unlikely. We easily observed the first attack with EMP, I doubt that they could do so again to the degree that it wouldn’t be registered by the observable flash from the burst, even in daylight or picked up peripherally by our ships at sea or other nations.
“Less likely but equally effective is that they were attacked by a laser beam of the appropriate wavelength and energy level. Properly regulated, it would have the same effect but not necessarily explode them. Third is that the codes were changed, scrambled, if you like. This wouldn’t damage the satellites but render them useless. They would be transmitting nonsense. This seems to be the case. This outcome requires that whoever changed the codes had to have the original ones in order to introduce changes. We are attempting to recover radio signals the 24 hours before the satellites went down to see if any have received a similar code. We don’t have ground-based listening stations in the right places on land anymore to detect such signals, so this is a long shot.”
“Dr. Corning, forgive my ignorance, but you are saying that someone could have changed our codes by radio signal to our satellites? Secondly, is there any reason for the twenty-four-hour criterion?”
“Actually, in the first case, yes, Mr. President. In response to the second question, if someone had the original codes, they could have sent the signal, that is, planted it by a worm, to change or scramble the codes at any time or to initiate other changes at any other time.”
“It sounds, Dr., like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack of space.”
“That is exactly right, Mr. President. That’s what it amounts to.”
