The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

Dalton Holt sipped his coffee and reminded himself again that retirement was only a few months away. He was a reluctant career man; joined the service late, when he was almost thirty. It had worked out well, but now, approaching his fiftieth birthday, he was ready to be a civilian again. The times were changing, and he had changed with them for about as long as he could. This Air Force was far different from the one he had joined—now it was all automated, computerized, impersonal. Different. Just transferred to this command, he was glad to ride out his time and leave with an uneventful but clean and respectable record. All he had to do was make it to November of this year, 2015, without incident—but he just couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was going to screw it up.
    He passed the styrofoam cup to his right hand and enjoyed the warmth. The small, windowless bunker beneath the sand of the Nevada desert was a bit chilly, even in the blistering summer heat. Extra air conditioning for the computers, he guessed. The walls were lined with video monitors, keyboards, tape drives, and other equipment, the functions of which he didn’t even care to guess.
    Two civilian technicians sat at computer terminals, busily entering commands and data which were relayed via satellite to the North American Defense Command, or NADCOM, mainframe hidden deep underground the former Grissom Air Force Base near Colorado Springs. The technicians carefully watched their monitors and the status boards on the wall as NADCOM received and implemented their instructions. Holt sighed and shifted the cup back to his left hand. Beside him, Major Richard Pettis was pointing to a detailed graphic on one of the monitors and continuing his leisurely explanation.
    “There they are, General, orbiting together and working as a single unit, carried by the COMSAT-9 military communications satellite. The large cylindrical mechanism on the left is called the cannon; it’s actually the projection unit for the Molecular Disruptor Array, or MDA. The smaller apparatus on the right is the power supply, called the Source. The two are more dependent on each other than you might think. The MDA must draw power continuously from the Source to remain stable, while the Source, because it’s generating so much raw energy, must have the constant drain of the MDA to maintain its own equilibrium. Despite this critical synergy, we have had no serious problems in recent testing.”
    Holt nodded. As he watched the animation, the cannon’s protective cowling receded; the barrel extended from the cylinder and the large crystal-looking end began to glow blue.
    “The Source, General, is one of the new miniature solar power stations. Fed by four large solar panels, it collects, stores, amplifies, and provides massive amounts of electricity to its companion device—in this case, as you can see, the Temple-Mollenhauer Molecular Disruptor. The Disruptor is linked with the recently-developed Kerwin projection engine to create a targetable device that can deliver a coherent beam of high-frequency energy with inconceivable force and concentration.”
    As if synchronized to Pettis’s narrative, the cannon on the monitor suddenly erupted with a blinding flash of blue-white light and shone its brilliant beam down toward the animated earth below.
    “The disruptor beam can disintegrate—in the proper sense of the word, that is, disconnect, unravel—the very molecular structure of virtually any material. It can literally disassemble a substance and reduce it to its component elements, rendering it utterly and completely destroyed. Or, as I like to say, dusted .”
    Holt considered this. Indeed, the Molecular Disruptor Array was a devastatingly destructive weapon. Whether it was presented to the world as an offensive device to end a conflict or as a defensive threat to prevent one, the country that owned it was certain to be feared and respected, if Pettis’s explanation was anywhere near accurate.
    It was.
    The weapon was now in low earth orbit at about 250 miles, and could be aimed with pinpoint accuracy at any location on the planet, given time to reach the proper position.
    Frankly, Holt was more impressed with Pettis than with the MDA. The major had championed the project since its inception nine years ago, and was well known in the upper ranks as a man to watch, and Holt had followed Pettis’s career with interest.
    Early on, Pettis had convinced the Pentagon