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distance between itself and the target the weapon would detonate, and produce a shockwave that would destroy the bunker.
    However, despite having a small shaft to aim the thing down and a narrow, defended valley with interceptors based nearby this would not be a re-run of Luke downing the Death Star.
    The 5000lb weight of the weapon seemed excessive for its size, but the body had originally been part of the barrel of an 8” artillery piece and the penetrator was constructed of depleted uranium. Attached to the tail was a JDAM tail unit containing GPS, FMU-143 delay fuse, a satellite downlink for guidance, along with a solid fuel rocket to assist ground penetration. 
    The F-117X would have to pop-up to five thousand feet to toss-bomb the weapon but from the moment of its release, getting out of Dodge would be the young women’s principle concern.
     
    Kourou
     
    Six thousand two hundred and eighty five miles away the Ariane rocket carrying the first RORSAT dedicated to Guillotine cleared the tower in French Guiana.
    Nine thousand miles north-west of the launch site and one hundred and thirty miles above the sand sea of the Taklamakan Desert, Èmó 16 , a Chinese ‘Demon’ killer satellite, initiated a fourteen second burn to alter its orbit and speed to intercept. The speeds and trajectory range of the Ariane for reaching the required orbits for their payloads was a matter of record and all technical details of the Vulcaine 2 engine had been freely shared, pre-war. It was therefore a cause for concern at Chinese Space Command when data on the launch arrived from a surveillance satellite tracking the Ariane on radar. Its trajectory was as predicted but its speed was not, in fact if anything the flight profile was that of an older engine, a Vulcaine 1.
    250,000 pounds of force was being exerted against the pull of the Earth’s gravity, 51,000 pounds less than the Vulcaine 2 was capable of.
    Èmó 16 had accelerated from 17,000 MPH to 23,000 MPH in order to make the interception and in non-technical terms it was now seriously over-cooking it.
    The Èmó 16 carried out a radical maneouvre, pivoting about its axis whereupon its small main engine began a sustained burn. The problem the Chinese now faced was in deciding why the older engine was being employed by the French. Had ESA simply run out of their most modern engines? If that was the case then the second stage should be the twelve year old Aestus booster.
    Those who were trying to solve this puzzle were rocket scientists and it did not occur to them that the substitution of a Mk 2 for a Mk 1 was simple game-playing, a deception designed to wrong foot the Chinese and buy a little more time before the inevitable happened.  The calculations were made and at the appointed moment Èmó 16 pivoted about its axis once more, held steady for 4000th of a second and self-destructed, sending 10,000 small cubes at the point in space where the Ariane ’s second stage would be in three minutes and nine seconds.
    The second stage cleared the planned point of interception a full one point four seconds ahead of the gradually expanding cloud of cubes and its powerful modern HM-7B engine cut out prior to payload separation.
     
     
     
    Russia
     
    “Bingo!” Pat said with feeling, punching the air within the confines of the small cockpit behind Caroline. The ‘At-a-glance’ system truly came to life as real-time data populated the screens.
    “We …are…in… business !”
    "Ordnance uplink underway..." Once completed, they could guide all air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons via data-link to their satellite support. The targets would be unaware that they had been locked-up.
    "Time until Vandenberg launches number two?" Caroline asked.
    "Nineteen minutes, forty two seconds, and ESA should have the second Ariane on the way to the launch tower at Kourou. So if our luck holds out we will have continuous support for the mission’s duration...perhaps for the egress too."
    So much time