Phoenix Sub Zero

The arrangement was simple, the only new element the coil and the ability to store such a huge amount of energy in so small a package, and then to release it all at once to components strong enough to accept it. The pod was no more complicated than a radio transmitter, in fact sharing many of the same submodules, and so similar in function that it could be considered a radio transmitter of a sort. The difference was in its construction — there were no electronics. The workings of the pod were either fiber optics, as in the wiring of the Firestar, or were done with pre-vacuum-tube technology using magamps, large iron cores with copper wire wrapped around primary and secondary transformer ends.

There were no transistors, no semiconductors, no integrated circuits, no microprocessors, not even any magnetic-tape drives. The pod had no conventional electronics because it was designed as an electronics killer.

The transmissions emanating into the atmosphere from the overworked transmitters had been seen by people decades before, but until the Yokashiba Company in Japan had manufactured the pod, the effects could have been produced only by a nuclear warhead. The American military called the transmissions EMP for electromagnetic pulse, the sudden wave of E-M power emitted immediately after a violent nuclear explosion. EMP had long been the fear of electronics designers, and for good reason — after an EMP anything using electronics would fail to function. Defenses were considered, research done, equipment given shields said to “harden” the electronics, to protect them from EMP, but in the end nothing could defend the Pentagon’s machinery against an enemy employing several dozen nuclear warheads in high-altitude air bursts. The final defense against EMP had been the Strategic Defense Initiative — Star Wars. SDI’s multibillion price tag had been sold (and bought) as a civilian missile defense, but its true purpose was to guard trillions in Pentagon war machinery from EMP warheads detonated over the skies of the United States, destroying computers, radars, missiles, aircraft, communications, the vital but vulnerable network that linked and moved and protected the country, all the network’s nodes and connections built with silicon electronics.

The pod’s transmissions continued until the superconducting coil drained its electrical energy, the voltage dropping precipitously until exhausted. The unit shut down and fell into the sea.

The electromagnetic transmissions left the unit in a spherical wave pattern, traveling at the speed of light, taking the merest fractions of a millisecond to reach the three jets flying above.

Lt. Joe Galvin’s stick trembled for a moment. He looked down at his panel and watched every light and indicator wink out, every needle fall to its powered-down position, some failing at the high peg, some at the low peg, some failing in the position at time of failure. Both jet engines flamed out at the same time. The intercom ceased working, which was why he never heard Giraffe’s exclamation of anger when the radar screen winked out as well as the missile status panel.

The latest model of the F-14 was built with hightech electronics and there had been attempts to harden the circuitry against EMP pulses, but the designers had, in effect shrugged, knowing hardening circuits meant adding weight.

The shielding had been penetrated in the first microsecond of the Firestar’s pod’s transmission. As had every electronic module in the jet. Every radar, weapon-control circuit, avionic instrument, radio, and computer. All fried to a crisp after five seconds of the electromagnetic onslaught. The engines, controlled by an onboard computer, their fuel injection regulated by powerful microprocessors, no longer had fuel injection, the chips destroyed. Both spun down, leaving the jet without electrical power — the voltage controllers on the generators gone anyway — and without thrust. The designers had never approved of fly-by-wire technology — the Tomcat’s control surfaces were moved by hydraulics, and the hydraulics were controlled by aircraft-grade cables linked to the hydraulic control valves. So for the first five seconds after the pod transmission, the F-14 Tomcat inhabited by Lt. Joe “Tailback” Galvin and Lt. (jg) Bugene “Giraffe”

Fredericks continued to fly, flying deaf and dumb and blind, but flying just the same.

In the sixth second after the pulse transmission, the jet— now a thirty-five-ton glider — began to oscillate in roll, pitch and yaw. The control surfaces, although actuated by the powerful man-controlled hydraulics, were computer stabilized.

Without computer intervention in the control surfaces, the F-14 would crash into the sea seconds after catapult launch. True, the computer’s input was minor, but crucial.

Without it, Galvin’s flying machine began to vibrate, even as he aimed the jet for the sea in a desperate attempt to keep air flowing over the wings now that there was no longer any power.