Los Angeles Class

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Descending….

Two hundred miles above the horsetail wisps of cirrus cloud decorating the rich cobalt of the approaching Siberian dawn, an American KH-12 reconnaissance satellite sailed southeast into the sudden, golden glare of the rising sun as it exploded above the purple-hazed curve of the Earth's horizon. Crossing the coast between the tiny fishing villages of Ul'ya and Mys Enken, the robot spy raced to greet the distant sunrise above dark waters still lost in night.

The satellite had originally been scheduled for a routine photo recon pass over the great port of Vladivostok, a thousand miles to the southwest, but hours earlier, a specially coded transmission with the electronic authorization of the National Reconnaissance Office itself had directed the satellite to use some of its dwindling stores of onboard fuel to shift its orbit farther north, in order to let it peer down on the drama unfolding in the predawn darkness below.

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