Back in Donner’s room he and his dad found that many of the satellites Donner had located were off-line. A few internet radios were still operating and from these, they heard the news. Someone had attacked the space assets of the United States. Commercial assets belonging to US multinationals were also under attack. No one had found an obvious sign of rockets or missile explosions (other than the explosion of the satellites themselves) so most speculated the attacker used kinetic energy weapons. Such weapons, launched by electromagnetic railguns, would offer greater stealth at launch and be more difficult to track than conventional rockets, especially if launched in large numbers.
If this were true, then it was also expected that these weapons had been launched from the moon or its vicinity. No one knew who had launched the attack but there were just a few suspects since there were few bases on the moon. The US, China, Japan and India all had moon bases. Most commentators suspected Chinese involvement.
A few denounced the attack as deplorable, but many others argued that it was only just, as the US had for many years been the world’s greatest aggressor. Donner and his dad gave up on getting any factual information and shut down the setup.
“We'll check later Donner, as far as this bunch knows it could have been caused by little green men,” said Jack shaking his head.
The talk at dinner was about what might have happened. Donner's mother seemed particularly disturbed at the news of war. Jack carefully explained that they hadn't enough information to verify that what had happened was an act of war. And he suspected that even if it was an act of aggression, it wouldn't directly affect them except maybe as an increase in food prices. It would, therefore, make even more sense to try and farm enough to support the three of them.
After dinner, Donner and his dad went back up into his room to listen for any news. Some of the geostationary satellites they had found earlier seemed to be off-line now. After several minutes of searching low Earth orbit satellites, they found what seemed to be an official broadcast from the White House. The president’s spokesman read the following statement:
“At five-fifty PM Eastern Standard Time, the space resources of the United States were put under attack. This includes military and commercial assets. This attack was unprovoked. Five minutes later thousands of hypersonic aircraft and missiles were launched against our ground and sea assets. Our allies in the Polish block and India were also attacked. The attack heavily damaged the United States' capability to respond. However, using other assets untouched by the first attack, US systems detected the launch locations of this second wave of attacks. They came from Japanese and Turkish controlled territories. At six-ten PM the President ordered a retaliatory strike against these launch sites and other strategic sites with our remaining hypersonic resources. Just a few minutes ago at eight-twenty PM the Japanese and Turks confirmed our intelligence by broadcasting terms of surrender to Washington. The President has rejected these terms but agreed to negotiate. It is unknown at this time as to the extent of the damages to our forces or the loss of life, we will release these numbers when we have them. The President will be making a speech at nine-thirty PM, I urge all Americans to tune in. That is all for now.”
The press yelled questions at the spokesman, but he was gone and the broadcast went back to the local anchors.
“Is it all over now?” asked Donner.
“I suspect this first wave of the war is over. The hypersonic weapons they used travel at Mach 5 or greater, that's about four-thousand miles-per-hour. And with precision guidance it doesn't take long for targets anywhere in the world to be taken out.”
“Why dad, why did they do it?”
“Well son, I can tell you that the Japanese have been hard-pressed to maintain their standard of living since the turn of the century, mostly because of their decreasing population, especially the working-age population. They obviously want to gain access to resources, and they apparently believe the US is preventing them from doing so. I don’t know why the Turks are involved but they are a relatively young country and could have similar resource pressures. Or maybe the Turks are trying to become a regional power and they feel the US is blocking their efforts. It will be some time before we know for sure.”
“What about the military space assets we lost, what are those dad? I thought we hadn’t any except for some military satellites?”
“That too is something we will be learning about over the next several days or weeks Donner. It might be military satellites, but I suspect it has something to do with the radio source you found. And I am sure that radio source is what prompted the Japanese and Turks into taking action and choosing this time to do it. Let’s wait until we hear what the President has to say.”
The President’s address just reiterated what the spokesman had said earlier. The only new piece of information was that negotiations would begin in Geneva in a week. He urged all Americans to remain calm.
“I’m going down to your mother,” said Jack. “Don’t stay up late, we will probably learn more tomorrow anyway, goodnight.”
“Goodnight dad,” said Donner. Donner set his system up to scan and laid on his bed where he went to sleep listening to snippets of the news.
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