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Eric typed at his coht up an artist’s rendition of a satellite, unlike anything ever orbited before Theit were five enclosed canisters that were th No one needed to see the hammer-and-sickle e itself had that distinctive Soviet style that was both pompous and amateurish at the same time

Eric coh its real code name was November Sky, it was known almost exclusively by the nickname Stalin’s Fist It was launched in 1989 at one of the war the Cold War in direct violation of about a dozen treaties”

“That’s all fine and dandy,” Linc grumbled, “but what in the heck is it?”

“Stalin’s Fist is an OBP, or Orbital Ballistic Projectile, weapon Ourit Rods from God The theory is incredibly sihteen hundred pounds apiece When fired, they fall through the at in at an orbital velocity of eighteen thousand miles per hour, y of an atomic bomb, only there is no fallout, and defensive reaction time to such a weapon is cut in half because there is no ascent stage like with a conventional ballisticobject in the sky for aand no chance to escape”

“The Soviets intended it as a first-strike weapon,” Juan added “The idea was to target several itudinal axis and blame a freak meteor shower With no radioactive fallout, and the rods themselves vaporized on impact, there would be no way to say it wasn’t They even had astronoraphs of the meteors moments before they entered our at five cities, the Sovs thought they could roll across the border and Europe would be theirs”

“How do you know it didn’t work?” Eric asked Juan

“Because one of ency was to infiltrate the Baikonur Cosia rocket, and disable it I rigged it so the satellite couldn’t receive a signal fronetic field It will only react if the order comes from above the atmosphere”

“Why not just blow it up on the pad?”

“It was a manned mission Two cosmonauts went up with it to manually deploy its solar panels It was three days into the ed”

Hali asked, “They couldn’t just boost a ground signal?”

“It would have fried the electronics”

“Couldn’t they have sent a signal from Mir, their space station?”

“They knew the jig was up, so they left it floating around up there in a polar orbit”

“Do you thin

k it still works?” Eric asked