9th November 1984

JGSS Tieshan Gongzhu

Low Earth Orbit

Betty wished that the Tieshan Gongzhu had windows. It was an irrational wish, since her telescopes and radar screens gave her a far better picture of the celestial battlefield than her eyeballs would have, and windows would have let in the blinding flashes of nuclear detonations and enemy lasers.

But the curved horizon below was spectacular, and the fuzzy CRT monitors were not doing justice to the magnificent view.

"Attention Task Force 11, this is Chongqing. Drop pods will be entering atmosphere in five minutes. Stand by."

Betty smiled. For the second time in as many months, she and her crew were part of history in the making. In five minutes, the Joint Government Marines would attempt the first ever spaceborne assault. Dozens of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles would descend from Medium Earth Orbit to land behind enemy lines on Falklands Prefecture, Antarctic Administrative Area.

There, they would provide armor support for a concurrent Marine air assault operation – and provide the solution to the age-old-problem of providing airborne forces with heavy equipment.

It was expensive overkill, but the Air Force and Navy had lost a lot of face by being unable to respond to an invasion of JOINTGOV soil (what with a war on in Europe and all). A big, flashy operation was just the ticket to regain it.

Paloma began yelling as hot flashes popped up over the South Atlantic.

"Multiple launches, Argentine Kilos! SAM! SAM! SAM! Forty-six inbound!"

Similar reports echoed through the flotilla.

Despite the best efforts of the Navy, Argentine CARBOX hydrocarbon-fuel-cell submarines were still active, and had just fired off antisatellite (ASAT) surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

The drop pods now hitting the atmosphere consisted of enormous, thirty-meter heat shields affixed to pressurized tents containing air-droppable tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and parachutes. Smaller derivatives of the resupply pods that had been used to seed Mars and the Jovians with supplies and industrial seed kits, the pods were large, unarmored, and minimally maneuverable.

They were big, juicy targets.

JGSS Tieshan Gongzhu was not. Neither were the other escorts of Task Force 11, or Taffy 11.

Chongqing came in. "Tieshan Gongzhu, Galahad, Tristan. Turn lasers earthward. Kill those SAMs."

A pair of SAMs poked their nosecones above the troposphere – the bottom ten klicks of Earth's atmosphere, which contains nearly all of the atmosphere's laser-scattering air.

Betty turned on the laser, and the SAMs detonated twelve kilometers up. A few dozen others tried their luck, but all were destroyed by intense green laser beams.

Paloma yelled out another warning. "Bulldog, bulldog! Friendly Adzes, moving to engage!"

Betty smirked. Once the anti-submarine cruise missiles splashed their homing torpedoes into the water, the enemy subs were as good as dead.

"Taffy 11, please be advised. Debris inbound from thirty by five degrees. Platforms just killed Argentine kill-sat."

Betty cursed. The Air Force was supposed to have swept all Argentine military satellites from the sky weeks ago. Apparently they had missed a spot. Chongqing came in again.

"Hong Haier, Tristan. Phased arrays to thirty by five degrees. Kill debris."

The two bearings were necessary for describing directions in three-dimensional space.

"Taffy 11, Argentine MiG-25s just took off from a civilian site in Patagonia. Probable ASAT throw."

Betty groaned. The Air Force had been running an air campaign from Antarctica to destroy any and all Argentine military installations and equipment. Aircraft had been on top of their list. How had they missed those?

"Tieshan Gongzhu, EW on those MiGs."

That was their cue.

"Noah! Jam 'em!"

Noah turned the phased array away from the Falklands (currently the object of much jamming) and turned it towards the MiG-25s, clearly visible on radar two thousand klicks off. Bereft of ground control, the Foxbats now had to use their own radars. Making the most of his nuclear reactor, Noah jammed those too.

Betty got on the command channel. "Tieshan Gongzhu confirms, Chongqing. They're jammed."

The Foxbats spread out, and Noah was forced to spread his jamming between the enemy aircraft.

The minutes ticked by. The Foxbats, staying well under five kilometers to gain the protection of the atmosphere, began to climb - fast. By now, the drop pods would be glowing as bright as the sun, and the Foxbats could probably make it by visual contact alone.

"All vessels, burn the Foxbats."

Lasers burned away at the Foxbats through hundreds of klicks of thin air. Four survived to launch missiles. All missiles were shot down.

None survived their futile zoom climbs.

Chongqing returned. "Okay, people. Drop pods are on final approach. Thirty seconds to heat shield jettison. All ECM on Falklands."

Betty inhaled sharply. Once they entered the lower troposphere, the Marines would be in Navy and Marine hands. The drop pods would count on navy strike fighters to destroy any SAMs or anti-aircraft artillery that made an entrance, and rely on Marine attack helicopters and air assault troops to ensure that their landing zones were secure.

"Heat shield jettison. Good separation on all pods. Parachute deployment. Good on all vehicles."

There was very little Tieshan Gongzhu, or any of the ships in Taffy 11, could do to provide aid to the Marines so deep in Earth's soupy atmosphere.

"No MANPADs yet."

Betty hoped that all the enemy forces had expended their air defense weapons on the attacking Marine air assault troops, and that all was going according to plan.

"Touchdown in three, two, one… Treads down. Wheels down. Contact made with local battlenet. Not our department, Taffy 11. Stay sharp. We're not out of the woods until we cross Finland."

Paloma anxiously scanned the skies for inbound threats. Low Earth Orbit was a very unhealthy place for expensive warships. Engagement ranges were too short for good countermeasures, engagement velocities were suicidally high – a mine could have a relative velocity of seven or eight klicks per second, and the horizon meant you were blind beyond two thousand klicks, and had to rely on jammable satellites.

"All wheels down. Taffy 11, watch for subs."

Another brace of missiles came up from a Kilo north of the Falklands, but Galahad easily swatted them out of the sky.

"Taffy 11, perigee burn. Let's get out of here."

Sparky gunned it, and the radiation alarm went off as four nuclear rocket motors burned simultaneously on four ships. The burn would take them all the way back to L1.

Now two klicks per second faster, and soaring over the North Atlantic, the crew breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Betty tried to keep her crew on edge. "Watch out, people. We'll be approaching Western Europe in a few minutes. The Soviets might just decide to turn on the war again."

A lot of (mostly unmanned) laserstars and KEW platforms had been lost over Western Europe in the fighting a month ago, and the battle had generated its fair share of horror stories.

Sparky chuckled. "Nah. We're home free. There's no way the Soviets are going to restart a war they just lost!"

Sparky was right, but nobody else felt truly relaxed until the four ships passed over Finland, and their trajectories flattened out as they ascended back into the safe, empty expanses of High Earth Orbit.

31st June 1985

Applied Scientific™ Research Installation

Cleveland, Ohio Province

Dr. Lipsky walked out of the boardroom with a faint smile on his face, Shego on his tail.

"You really impressed the brass back there, Dr. D. They'll give your team a contract for bomb-pumped x-ray laser research for sure. But do you think the boys can handle that and the dual-secondary nuke at the same time?"

Drew turned towards Shego. "You'd be surprised how quickly my team works… when you provide the right motivators."

Shego looked at a directory on the wall. "Hey, Dr. D. Do you want to go get lunch?"

The steak was excellent as always, and the outlet hadn't skimped on the fries.

Drew made conversation between sips of iced yin-yang – a sweet blend of coffee, milk, and red tea.

"You know, Shego, the war last year really kicked Space Warfare Development Command in the pants. They're coming up with a parade of new weapons and equipment they want developed and deployed. With budgets as loose as they are now, everyone has contracts coming their way. And with CYCLOPEAN under our belts, my lab is perfectly positioned to take maximum advantage of the coming bonanza. With the funding we'll get, I will be able to create wonders of technology never before seen in the history of mankind!"

Dr. Lipsky broke into maniacal cackling. Shego rolled her eyes, and waited for him to stop.

"The Air Force is really taking this 'fighting the next space war' thing seriously, huh?"

"Not the Air Force, Shego. The Space Operations Group. There's a lot of talk among the brass of spinning it out into a separate service. They're still torn between Star Navy, Space Navy, and Space Force."

Shego sarcastically ticked off the options.

"Hmmm… pompus, childish, and boring. Not much of a choice, isn't it?"

"Star Navy - Xingjun - sounds best in Chinese. I think they'll keep it regardless of what English name they pick."

They both chuckled. Drew fell silent. "Huh. Star Navy. Do you think they'll ever change it to just 'Navy'?"

"Maybe when we have colonies across the galaxy. Or maybe when their budget gets bigger than the Navy's."

Drew was lost in thought.

"Uh… Dr. D? You okay?"

"Just thinking about the wars to come…"

"Relax. You're a scientist. Leave the strategizing about the next space war to the generals or admirals or whatever, and when the next one breaks out, don't insist on personally inspecting your pet project to satisfy your oversized ego."

Drew completely missed Shego's crack.

"No, no, no. I'm not thinking about the next space war. I'm thinking about the last space war."

"The last space war?"

Drew placed his hands together, and turned towards Shego.

"Are you familiar with the Fermi Paradox?"

"No."

Drew sighed.

"According to our best estimates, aliens should be everywhere. However, we do not see any. Thus we have a paradox."

"Why the heck should aliens be everywhere?"

Drew cleared his throat, and began a long monologue.

"Assumption One: The galaxy has a hundred billion stars, nearly all with planets, and is three times older than Earth. It seems vanishingly unlikely that mankind is the only tool-using civilization to have ever arisen in the galaxy."

"Assumption Two: If interstellar colonization is possible, the galaxy can be fully colonized in few million years - a geological blink of an eye. This is true even if you only have slower-than-light ships going no faster than a big nuclear pulse ship, and miniscule population growth rates. Behold the power of compound interest, Shego. At current population growth rates, in a thousand years – a mere three dynasties – our population will be in the hundreds of trillions."

"Assumption Three: We have not seen, heard, or found any aliens, their stuff, or their trash, even though according to the previous assumptions, Earth should have been colonized many times over. We know aliens can leave lots of trash. Terrestrial bacteria have already escaped our habitats from Mercury to Callisto. It's an assumption because who the heck knows what USS or ONI might be hiding."

Shego glared at Drew, who chuckled at the obvious falsehood. USS and ONI would have gone public with the discovery, and milked the discovery for every last drop of political capital they could get. Heck, the scientific-industrial complex would have been unstoppable in the quest to obtain that secret information.

"Conclusion: Either one of the assumptions is incorrect, or there is something else preventing the establishment of pan-galactic civilization. Some people say there's a Great Filter – maybe nearly all technological civilizations wipe themselves out by war or environmental degradation, or intelligent life really is that rare. Perhaps interstellar colonization really is impossible. We'll find out more when Project Starshot launches in a decade or two."

"Sounds good to me. We nearly blew ourselves back to the stone age just last year."

Drew frowned. "I don't like filters. As they say, it only takes one species to get past that filter, and the whole galaxy is conquered in a blink of a geological eye." He narrowed his eyes, and stared off into the distance. "

"My money's on equilibrium scenarios."

"Equilibrium what?"

"Equilibrium scenarios hold that the galaxy is nearly always empty. It's filled with expanding civilizations, but these can never conquer large chunks of the galaxy because of some self-correcting process."

Drew began ticking off his fingers.

"The Beserker hypothesis: the Galaxy is populated by self-replicating killing machines that destroy all emergent civilizations, and make perpetual war on each other. Remember, it just takes one early-developing civilization to manufacture such devices to fill the galaxy with self-perpetuating death in the blink of an eye."

"The dark forest hypothesis: the myriad civilizations of the Galaxy constantly hide from and destroy each other with relativistic weapons or giant lasers out of paranoid fear of each other. Lumps of rock moving at nearly the speed of light are near-impossible to spot… or stop.

"The Malthusian hypothesis: the great hand of Malthus inevitably leads to societal collapse, as exponentially increasing populations grow faster than civilizations can expand their holdings at the limited speed of light. Remember compound interest? In six Chinese dynasties, the population will number in the quintillions, and the nearest hundred star systems will all be out of room."

"What can our military do against those?"

"Oh, very little. In the last one, the military is part of the problem – life itself, struggling under the limited to growth imposed by the speed of light. In the other two, the military is overwhelmed by superior force, and everyone dies."

They fell silent, and Shego felt a shiver run down her spine.

"It's all highly speculative, of course. More science fiction than long-range planning."

The shiver came again. Shego exhaled sharply.

"Last space war, huh?"

Drew nodded.

END

Author's note:

Thank you for reading The First Space War. I hope you found this fan-fiction interesting, and took away some new ideas. Feel free to comment and review.

History marches on! The story continues in the Butterfly Effect series and other possible future works.

Science is Awesome!

DrCyrusBortel