Thanks must be given to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and input.
=O=
Chapter 41: Countervalue
The atmosphere in the Situation Room was grim. The Secretary, reverting to old habits, chewed his nails as the minutes ticked by, and the Advisor downed her sixth cup of coffee in a gulp. The President was taking notes.
"Ten minutes since the strike and ultimatum. Pindown lifts in eight minutes." The Secretary reported.
Intelligence, unhelpful as always, estimated that the SS-4s, a generation behind Pacifican IRBMs, would need between five minutes and three hours to prepare for launch, depending on their readiness level.
The SAC attaché continued to update the board with the latest progress of the bombers mopping up after the massed IRBM strike. "Another target found and destroyed. 200 kilotons."
"They can't have that many missiles. We're probably knocking over grain silos at this point." The Secretary fretted. "Dear god, what casualty counts are we looking at here?"
"All estimates for deaths exceed four million." The Advisor sighed. "But then again, we lost what – ten million, twenty million people in World War II? Fifty, one hundred million people in the Taiping Rebellion and Reclamation War? We came out fine - well, more or less."
She headed for the coffee pot. "India lost two million people in Partition just twelve years ago. And two million have already died in Bengal. India will come out of this a-okay."
She dipped her head low, unconvinced by the blood-soaked logic of history. "Dagnabit."
The President grimaced. "It beats killing two hundred million Soviets, or a half-billion Indians."
He had not run for office to become a mass murderer – but avoiding mass murder, apparently, was rather difficult in this brave new world of hydrogen bombs and ballistic missiles.
"Our best guess is that the Indians will retaliate against at least Kunming and Chengdu if they decide to launch a countervalue strike." The SAC attaché added. "To serve the needs of retaliation, we advise targeting Hyderabad and Bombay, both key transport hubs with similar populations to our cities."
The ADC attaché picked up the phone. "They're launching."
The President nodded. "We'll save the retaliation until after damage assessment."
"Two missiles in the air. One down. Pindown kill. One away."
The ADC attaché continued to rattle off missile launches and failures. The minutes ticked by.
"Three more in the sky now. One's down. Pindown got it. Two are past pindown. Headed to Kunming, sir."
"Where's the other one headed?" The President was frantic.
"It… looks like it'll fall short of Chengdu by a hundred kilometers, sir. Pindown must've gotten it."
The strike was countervalue.
"Begin planning for a strike on Hyderabad after damage assessment. Flatten the place. I want deaths with minimal injured – if such a thing is at all achievable." The President made up his mind. Hyderabad was smaller than Kunming, so it would require more flattening to achieve a proportionate death toll.
Everyone groaned. This exchange would probably add another two or three million deaths to the total.
The Secretary chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. "Well, at least we can make sure the war stays limited. I don't see the Soviets going for national suicide at this point, and I don't think we have much to gain from launching against them right now."
The President nodded. Despite the ludicrous megatonnage – unthinkable just the day before – had it just been a day? – the war was still technically a limited war.
Technically, the Joint Government sought nothing more than the removal of the Soviet nuclear arsenal from Indian soil, a fair apportionment of disputed territories, and maintenance of deterrence credibility through overwhelming retaliation with superior thermonuclear firepower – all strictly limited objectives. The dismantlement of the Indian nuclear program was still merely a stretch goal, although the President personally suspected that some sort of guarantee for the Indian nuclear program would still be needed to mend relations with India – if such a thing were still possible.
Unlike in past wars with Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany, unlimited goals like the dismemberment of the enemy state and unconditional surrender were nowhere near the negotiating table. The mood in Congress was somewhat different, but considering that the war would probably be over by the end of the week, one way or the other, the President was not too concerned. He'd end the blasted thing himself before the vultures could finish figuring out how to coordinate a vote by phone to impeach him, scattered to the four corners of the nation as Congress currently was.
Oh well. We killed millions of Japanese too, and we're major trading partners now. How did that work, exactly?
The Advisor stepped forward. "You know, I don't see why we shouldn't retaliate against the Soviet Union for this. Why should they be spared from any destruction at all? Millions of their proxies have died. Millions of Pacificans are going to die. Why shouldn't we hit the Soviet Union for this? Punitive strikes on the Trans-Siberian Railway or a strike on Vladivostok itself would…"
The Secretary sighed. "Janet, we don't know how they'll respond to that. They have a lot more firepower than the Indians do. We'll have to hit them with a full-scale counterforce strike just to be sure they can't retaliate. And at that point… we might as well throw the Drago Sundae at them and hit economic and industrial targets so they don't come back for round two."
The Advisor narrowed her eyes. "Drago was right, then. We should flatten the Soviet Union while we still have the chance."
The unthinkable was on the table. The President shook his head slightly. Had it only been four weeks ago that they'd been discussing restraint, red lines, and rules of engagement?
The SAC attaché interrupted. "Launch sites flattened."
The ADC attaché raised an eyebrow. "Sir, Longhouse is trying to attempt an intercept of the missile. It's unlikely to succeed, but at this point, we're just going to throw an extra plane at it."
A staffer ran into the meeting room. "Sir! The Kremlin and New Delhi just released a joint statement on TASS and All India Radio. They're saying all launches were unauthorized, gave orders to cease further launches, and just announced compliance with our nuclear ceasefire. And they're pulling their strategic weapons from India."
The room fell silent.
"Now they say it." The Advisor took a sip of coffee.
The Secretary raised a weary hand. "Do we still flatten Hyderabad?"
Another aide knocked on the door. "Sir, the Indian representative and the Soviet Ambassador are at the door. They wish to discuss terms."
The President sighed. "We'll let them in after Kunming gets flattened. Then we see what they have for us. Unless their terms are accceptable, we flatten Hyderabad."
=O=
Hiccup sighed as Toothless continued his patrol pattern over the Myanmar-Indian border – the frontlines for ADC's defense of the Mainland against Indian bombers headed for the densely populated provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangxi.
Longhouse hadn't said much about the ongoing nuclear war, but from the things civilian air traffic control – still at their stations – was broadcasting over the airwaves, it had escalated substantially. Radar still caught mushroom clouds popping over Assam just a few hundred kilometers away – unmistakable indicatons of a nuclear war still in progress.
"Fury 21, this is Longhouse. We have two SS-4 RVs coming in hot, and we need you to shoot them down."
Hiccup did a double take. "Say again, Longhouse?"
"Fury 21, we need you to shoot down two MRBM reentry vehicles headed straight for Kunming. Turn to bearing one-two-zero. We will guide you to target."
"Astrid! They want us to intercept reentering nuclear warheads! Turn due east and prepare to dump fuel!"
It was Astrid's turn to do a double take. "What? That'll never work! We can barely hit a missile coming up!" She put Toothless into a sharp turn as she oriented Toothless to the target.
"Fury 21, bandits are Bullseye 225/1500, closing at Mach 11, 900,000 feet and climbing."
Hiccup's jaw dropped. Sure, three-plus kilometers per second is peanuts for a rocket – ICBMs threw nukes over twice as fast, and space launchers and satellites whizzed around the earth at eight kilometers per second – Mach 24. But these velocities were ludicrous for airbreathing jets like Toothless. Their chances of interception were slim to none!
Weren't they?
He closed his eyes, and pondered the geometry of the intercept. "Astrid, once we orient, throttle down and climb! Keep us on heading 260! I need time to think!" He pulled out his grease pencil, graph paper, and slide rule, clenched his jaw, and got to work.
Astrid nodded, and pitched Toothless up as far as he could go, keeping a firm hand on the controls. Toothless seemed to hang in the air as he slowly, anemically, climbed into the inky black sky.
We have neither been trained for this mission, nor is our equipment rated for this mission. This cannot work.
Scratching sounds came in over the intercom as Hiccup furiously scribbled away on his graph paper, filling it with equations, graphs, and diagrams. "Longhouse, this is Fury 21. I have a firing solution. Please check my math."
He rattled on as Astrid ran a full systems check. Toothless was positively purring.
If there's anyone who can pull this off, it's you and Hiccup. You're the best, and you trust him to be the best, too. You trust him with your life.
And you trust him with your heart.
Hiccup took a deep breath. "Astrid. Here's what's going to happen. In simple terms, we're going to wait for the warheads to pass right in front of us, and shoot them down. The trick is timing, orientation, and command missile guidance. Begin fuel dump."
Thirty tonnes of JP-7 sprayed from Toothless's rear, spreading across the sky in a brilliant trail. Thirty tonnes lighter, Toothless roared skywards. At Hiccup's direction, Astrid brought the supersonic aircraft around in a country-sized S-shaped turn, aligning Toothless with the ground track of the inbound warheads.
"Bandits are at Bullseye 225/500, closing at Mach 11, 700,000 feet and descending."
"Astrid, throttle up!"
Toothless roared with two hundred megawatts of power as he climbed into the stratosphere. Astrid kept a firm hand on the controls of the lightened aircraft as her eyes flickered across her panel.
"Radar on! Infrared on!" Hiccup turned on his radar, and the infrared stayed pitch black as it surveyed with an unblinking liquid-nitrogen-cooled eye the cold void of the cosmos.
"Uhh… Fury 21, Bandit One appears to be a near-miss. Current track is… it'll miss the bulk of Kunming. Do you still want to hit Bandit One?"
"How big is the miss?" Hiccup asked.
"Anticipated miss distance is eight kilometers, plus-or-minus two-fifty meters.
Depending on burst height and target, that would maybe put a quarter of Kunming in the blast zone. People caught outside would be badly burned. Lightly built residential buildings would be goners, and people would die under collapsed buildings or in firestorms. This probably being an airburst, fallout would probably be minor.
Fallout from a groundburst would kill millions.
"Be advised, Bandit two will impact one kilometer from downtown Kunming."
Kunming would be completely fried.
The lives of millions of people had just been placed in their hands, and Hiccup knew it.
Hiccup would have to live with the outcome for the rest of his life.
Astrid turned pale as she felt the wheels in Hiccup's head turn.
Four missiles for Bandit Two, or two missiles on each warhead? Save downtown Kunming for sure, or risk downtown to save all of Kunming?
It's my decision. I'm the man on the spot.
This was different from dropping a nuke on a SAM site next to a town. They weren't following orders and flight plans anymore. Heck, he didn't even have rules of engagement to fall on.
Fifteen seconds to engagement.
Sweat beaded down Hiccup's face as his mouth went dry. Millions of lives might be lost – or saved – depending on how things played out. The end-to-end reliability of a nuclear-tipped Falcon missile was between fifty and seventy percent, depending on who'd done the checks. If his team had been the one on the ground, it would be closer to seventy. Had his team been the one to arm the missiles? He couldn't remember…
In the front seat, Astrid raged. No, no, no, that fool! It didn't matter! It didn't matter!
Whatever happened, Hiccup would blame himself for the outcome. He'd force himself to wake up every day knowing that a his decision had cost millions of lives even though the outcome was practically random! And knowing Hiccup, he'd feel the tragedy of every statistic, and blame himself for it!
"Hiccup!" Astrid railed. "Hiccup! Snap out of it!"
Hiccup tried an ethical approach. Was this a trolley problem variant he'd seen before? No, this was a simple risk benefit…
"Hiccup, it doesn't matter! It's random! Don't think about it! It's go time!"
She had to snap him out of it. She loved him too much to let him go through with this. She loved him.
She knew what to say.
Okay, risk benefit. Assess the downside. Casualty models were horrendously inaccurate, and highly dependent on whether the miss would airburst or groundburst, specifics of the how the population reacted to fallout warnings…
"Hiccup, I love you!" Astrid yelled. "I'm with you either way! Just pick one!"
Hiccup, shocked awake, finally spoke.
"Astrid, pitch zero zero two, yaw three degrees…" Hiccup turned his radar sensitivity up to the maximum, and watched carefully.
Toothless rocketed past 100,000 feet, and Astrid fought the controls as the turbojets began to feel the pinch of the thin air. For the first time ever… Toothless wasn't climbing anymore.
Toothless stared into an indigo void.
A hundred kilometers above, two reentry vehicles smashed into the wisps of air of Earth's upper atmosphere at three kilometers per second, compressing and heating the air to thousands of degrees before it could get out of the way. Red-hot epoxy coatings vaporized into the slipstream, protecting the relatively delicate warheads within from the intense heat.
The infrared sensor beeped, and two dots streaked into his radar screen, crystal clear against the empty backdrop of space. The dots closed impossibly fast.
Hiccup furiously scribbled figures onto his graph paper. "Bingo."
He pulled his trigger.
"Fox three! Fox three! Missiles away!"
What the…
Two nuclear-tipped missiles, gleaming white in sunlight brighter than over any desert, streaked into the sky.
Had Hiccup decided to engage both targets? The scratching of slide rules and of grease pencil on paper grew intense as Hiccup recomputed his shot.
It didn't matter. She trusted him.
Astrid held the aircraft rock-steady.
"Fox three! Fox three! Missiles away!"
Two more nuclear-tipped missiles roared into the void, and Astrid closed her eyes tight even though her flash curtains were drawn.
A pair of flashes snaked under her curtains.
Astrid counted heartbeats as the seconds ticked by. One… Two… Three…
A third flash snaked under her curtains.
If a fourth came, it would be the flash of a multimegaton weapon initiating over a major city.
Eight… Nine… Ten… Eleven…
Come on, come on…
Her radio crackled to life.
"Fury 21, this is Longhouse. Both bandits are down. Spectacular work."
Astrid swallowed hard, and almost choked as she forced herself to breathe. Behind her, Hiccup sighed audibly over the intercom.
They sat in silence as Toothless gently eased back down to 70,000 feet, exhausted by the ordeal.
Astrid spoke first. "I never want to have to do that again."
"Astrid…" Hiccup croaked. "I'm sorry I… got a little indecisive back there. But if…"
"No ifs, Hiccup." Astrid whispered. "It happened the way we wanted to."
Hiccup gulped.
"And even if it didn't, and even if downtown Kunming were a smoking crater…" Astrid paused. "…it wouldn't have been your fault. Missile failures are random. And even if it hadn't been random, which it was… I said I'd be with you no matter what, and I meant it."
Hiccup spoke, quietly this time. "Uhh… Astrid? Did you really mean… the rest of what you said… back there?"
Astrid nodded fervently. "Every word, Hiccup. Every word."
=O=
"Sir… damage assessment just came in." The ADC attaché spoke, crestfallen. "The nuke aimed at Chengdu… it appears to have detonated on contact about 150 kilometers short of the city. We believe… its radar fuse was damaged in-flight by the pindown barrage."
The President's jaw dropped. "I thought that… how many casualties?"
"We're awaiting BDA… but fallout from the groundburst will be heavy. There are ten million people in the fallout zone. And the Yangtze River runs right through it"
"Is Chongqing…" The Secretary's voice wavered.
"Chengdu and Chongqing are on the edge of the fallout plume, yes. But we don't anticipate significant casualties in downtown Chongqing."
"Casualties?"
"Up to a million dead and injured in the short-term, sir. And there will be additional deaths in the long-term. CEMA – the Central Emergency Management Agency is issuing contamination, evacuation and shelter orders as we speak, but we don't know how well they'll work. Anyone in a fallout shelters should come out of the fallout in Sichuan fine, and basements will help a lot of people, but at this point, the final numbers really depend on how well the population reacts."
The President glanced at the SAC commander. "What are your recommendations for proportionate retaliation?"
"Strikes on Hyderabad and Kanpur, sir. Both are important inland cities, and Kanpur sits on the Ganges."
The President nodded. "Do it."
"Sir, hang on." The attaché spoke, elated. "Lhasa's intact. No hits. And Kunming… we have no hits on Kunming!"
The Secretary motioned to the SAC commander to stop. "What happened? Did they both fizzile?"
The ADC attaché was jubilant. "A Blackbird aircrew shot down both missiles. According to Longhouse, the weapons systems officer managed to come with a workable firing solution and flight plan practically on his own, and was good enough at his job that he hit the darned things. They want to put him in for a commendation, sir."
The Secretary tilted his head at the President. "Does this change our retaliatory plan?"
The President turned to the SAC commander. "Flatten Kampor. We're not hitting Hyderbad."
The Secretary frowned briefly, and the President shrugged. "Too many lives have already been lost today. I'm not blowing up a single city more than strictly necessary."
=O=
And so ends Chapter 41! I almost can't believe I made it this far - and I have all my readers and reviewers to thank for it. None of this would have been possible without your encouragement and support. Coming up: One more chapter to wrap things up, and an epilogue.