He smiled and nodded. Though her comment may seem cursory, he knew that her concern was genuine. She did not banter or politic, not within the team. Outside the team he was sure very few people saw much of the real Ayala, but once she had told someone who she really was, she had a way of conveying that underneath it all she was a very clear-cut person: an open book. Once she let you see the real her, that was it. After that, what you saw was what you got.

She gave him a quick hug, then slung her bag over her shoulder and left.

Chapter 40: Guilt Plating

“The rivet gun, the large one.” shouted Martin Sobleski from under the mammoth shell.

Captain Toranssen hefted the bulky and lethal-looking device under one arm, using the other to pay out its thick wire, and made his way round to where Martin’s feet were sticking out from the bottom of the missile casing.

The GBMD system that the US had spent countless trillions constructing around its borders was made up of several overlapping and complementary layers. These included various radar and sonic sensing devices, satellite monitoring, and other less advanced but equally important methods of sensing and tracking incoming threats. But while sensing and following incoming missiles was maybe the most technologically complex part, it was relatively pointless without the more tactile side of the system.

The business end of the GBMD was made up of two different but equally deadly missile batteries. The first was kinetic. It relied upon building up a lot of momentum and focusing it into a small point, delivering a crushing impact to an incoming missile. While each one of its warheads had a relatively small area of impact, it used what was called a cluster effect, deploying hundreds of the needle thin projectiles in a destructive maelstrom. This gave it a large chance of interception. Despite this, it was relatively cheap per unit, meaning lots could be launched at a target; the aim was to blanket, to carpet bomb the skies.

The second type of weapon in the shield was a battery of much larger, much more expensive, and much more lethal anti-ballistic missiles. While they were still smaller than the long-range ballistic missiles, they were designed to intercept, and their payload significantly less potent, they were still much larger and more expensive than their kinetic GBMD counterparts.

With the size of the missile barrages in question, it had been clear to the team that they could not hope to manufacture, distribute, and install the one thousand or so missile shields they would need to protect all of the missile battery they would be sending against the satellites. So they had decided to focus on shielding the larger and much more destructive anti-ballistic missiles, with their small tactical warheads.