By the time Lin Cuo reached the Joint Command Center in Kashgar, only forty-seven minutes remained on the system countdown.
The mobile administration's special train had not yet come to a complete stop when theater headquarters delivered the latest survey results to the command car.
The figure of more than twenty-four hundred heavy guns existed only on paper. Fewer than seven hundred could immediately cover the center of the predicted ellipse; the remaining batteries were either positioned to the south or had to relocate to their second prepared positions.
The eighteen 280-millimeter heavy guns were particularly troublesome. Their mounts, tractors, survey teams, and ammunition trains were all in place, but if the landing point shifted just forty kilometers north, all they could do was point at the map and prove they had shown up.
The Indian front command advocated moving the batteries farther forward.
The Hexi officers objected, arguing that a celestial impact on this scale might first destroy every position closest to the center.
The Western Regions representatives demanded a more precise predicted ellipse, as though Lin Cuo could simply take a ruler and redraw the Mars Hive's delivery coordinates if he felt like it.
Lin Cuo could only order every frontline division to complete its dispersal against the impact immediately. Armored vehicles were to leave their fixed camps, repair engineers were to be stationed at both ends of railway bridges, and no dense troop concentrations were permitted within the innermost twenty kilometers. The artillery would remain in its prepared positions, but had to reserve second and third firing positions. No gun was allowed to pile all its ammunition beside its emplacement.
Vikram Singh, commander-in-chief of India's First Northwestern Front, listened to the orders and gave his head its habitual side-to-side wobble.
"Your Excellency the Regent, our artillery positions