by David Poyer
The response was immediate. “This is Mishka. Roger, over.”
“This is Albert. Understand you are calling. How copy. Over.”
“I hear you loud, Albert. Stand by.”
Stand by for what? This wasn’t the protocol. She waited, and a new voice came on, male, rougher, older. “This is Colonel-General Sharkov. Request to speak to your commanding officer.”
“This is Captain Staurulakis, General.”
“Request to speak to commander, US Task Force in Okhotsk Sea.”
Couldn’t he hear her? “This is she, General,” she said, louder.
“This is Admiral Lenson?” the voice sounded doubtful.
Well, thank God they didn’t know everything. “Admiral Lenson is no longer aboard, General. I am in tactical command. Captain Cheryl Staurulakis.”
The hiss of static. Faint wailing music, bleeding in from some nearby frequency. She waited, glancing past the consoles toward the displays. Finally she added, “I am standing by for your transmission, sir. Over.”
“Sharkov here. I am passing urgent warning from Intelligence. Site Eleven is going to launch warning. I repeat, Site Eleven going to launch warning.”
Cheryl glanced at the petty officer. “What is Site Eleven, General?”
“Site Eleven is Chinese intercontinental missile installation. I can give latitude and longitude.”
She pulled a pad of paper over and unclipped her pen. “Tell Commander Mills, general quarters,” she snapped to the petty officer. “SPY to max radiated power. Set Condition One ABM.” They were already in Condition Three, but One would bring the rest of the crew on station. She leaned into the microphone. “We are acting on your heads-up, General. Over.”
“Please record you are officially warned by commanding general, Eastern District.”
“We are doing that, sir. All communications over this net are being taped. Over.” She nodded to the enlisted woman, who reached for the circuit log. Almost signed off, then remembered something else and hit the transmit button again. “This is Captain Staurulakis. Over.”
“Go ahead. Over.”
“General, the flight path of these weapons may take them over Siberia. Over Russian territory. We may have to intrude on your airspace, to get a kill during boost phase.”
The voice on the far end of the circuit turned steely. “That is negative, Captain. Under no condition are you to intrude on Federation territory. That has been agreed at the highest levels. Moscow. Washington. Over.”
“Understand that, sir. We are not intruding. Only intercepting.”
“You will not intercept nuclear weapons over Federation territory. You will not create a new Chernobyl on Russian land! You will not do this, Captain! Do you understand? Over.”
Oh, God. No … she hesitated, torn between the inability to promise what he wanted—no way was she ruling out an intercept for political reasons—and the sure knowledge that the voice on the other end had the power to wipe out her whole task force. Finally she fell back on the good old military passive voice. “Your warning is acknowledged, General. This is Captain Staurulakis. Out.”
* * *
WHEN she got back to the command desk Mills was taking manned-and-ready reports from the forward magazines, after magazines, laser and gun mounts. Around CIC, a muted bustle as the general quarters watch relieved the Condition Three watchstanders. Terranova was back. Cheryl handed her the lat and long Sharkov had given them.
Mills reported, “Captain: Circle William set. ABM Condition One set. Reducing speed to steerageway. Engines one through four on the line. Generators 1a, 2a, 2b on the line.” The air-conditioning dropped to a low purr. Cheryl noticed the knot meter dropping as well. He added, “Freeing generator capacity for railgun and lasers.”
“Very well. Pass that warning to Ashigara and Chokai. Inform Fleet.”
“Sent it on nanochat, Skipper. Fleet should know from monitoring, but I’ll shoot them a separate Flash. Who was that giving us the heads-up?”
“Did they—”
“Yes, ma’am. They all answered up, Captain.” His handsome face impassive. “Was that PACOM?”
“No. A warning from the Russians, if you can believe it. HUMINT or COMINT, I guess.” She wondered if she’d jumped the gun, setting Condition One. But the general hadn’t sounded like a Chicken Little.
Mills looked doubtful, but kept taking reports. Cheryl settled her helmet over her head. The familiar near-agoraphobia as the sealed interior of the citadel gave way to the hovering-angel picture from high above. “Alice, this is the CO.”
“Good afternoon, Skipper.” AALIS’s calm genderless tones.
“Scan and report.”
“ABM Condition One set. Magazine report: twenty RIM-180 Block Ones forward, fifteen aft. Spinning up round four, six, and seven.”
“Spin up all Alliance rounds,” Cheryl ordered. It wouldn’t pay to not be ready for anything. The AI acknowledged.
Her helmet video populated, downloading from the JTIDS via AALIS. The 3-D display reached out from formation center, out, out, up, up, until she gazed down on the entire sea, five hundred miles across. Circles, surface contacts—her own ships, her own Hunters, and the Russians. A green-for-neutral callout to the south identified a loitering Okhotnik. Blue semicircles indicated her subs. Yellow flashing trails tracked the nanosatellites she depended on for recon and comms. The Japanese had drones out to the south, extending their sensor range in case a missile was aimed at the home islands. There wasn’t any X-band intel. This remote and bitter sea was far out of range of the Missile Defense Agency radars.
Mills hooked symbols and tapped. They began flashing. He touched his boom mike. “Alice, TAO: Fire control key inserted. Prepare for auto control.”
“AALIS aye. Ready for auto control.”
“Alice, CO: Initiate auto control mode, but remain batteries tight.”
As the ship’s computer acknowledged Cheryl concentrated on her formation. She couldn’t see any realignments winning them anything. The intercept geometry looked good.
The Terror, Petty Officer First Class Terranova, on the command circuit. “Ma’am, we don’t show any PLP identified as Site Eleven.”
“Well, the Russkis probably got their own terminology. He gave you lat and long.—Alice, do you hold a possible launch point, terminology Site Eleven, in China?”
Terranova muttered, “Intel … wait a min … yeah. Okay, we got it.”
The smooth genderless voice murmured, “Identified from intel message traffic. Passed to Control.”
Cheryl ruminated, scratching at a sudden terrific itch just at her neckline. Okay, what else?
A raucous buzzer shocked the muffled voices, the click of keyboards. “Launch cueing,” AALIS said, one tenth of a second ahead of Terranova, so their voices overlapped in a disquieting duet. “Launch cueing … cueing from JSDF. Consistent with DF-41 in boost phase.”
Her TF chat lit at the corner of her view.
Mount Ashigara: to Matador
FLASH FLASH FLASH
Launch cueing from national sources. Multiple ICBM launches, central China. Assign tracks please?
“XO: Tell him, Savo will take first three missiles,” Cheryl said. “Three-round salvos each. Designate the next three to him. Assign Chokai two—she’s only got uprated Standards. By then our screens will be clear and we can either refire on the first salvo or take additional rounds in the boost phase.” She toggled to the comm net and snapped, “Inform Vladivostok we’re firing on ICBMs from Site Eleven. Suggest all units stand clear.”
She took a breath. Several seconds free now, not just to think, but to appreciate the full horror of what was happening. She put her hands to her head, but her fingertips met only the smooth rounded shell of the helmet.
This was it. The moment the experts had theorized about, the world had dreaded, for generations.
The decades of arming, years of conventional war, and the titanic struggle between two world-striding empires had reached
its climax.
Armageddon had begun.
And she was expected to stop it.
Four tracks winked on simultaneously at the far southwest corner of her vision. Bright scarlet trails, the altitude callouts spinning upward.
No more clumsy reference point messages, laboriously transmitted from computer to computer via DAMA channels on Link 16. Now every node was networked. Every contact, instantly cross-referenced, identified, and displayed across the task force and simultaneously from Japan to Pearl. Not only that; each was evaluated as to degree of threat, and assigned to a ship, a weapons system, and a specific missile.
AALIS locked on automatically, brackets hooking the new contacts. Numbers flicked past at blurred speed at the upper left of her screens. As Cheryl toggled to the TF command net more contacts winked into existence to the southwest, over China itself. A second salvo, along slightly different paths. But all headed northeast.
Aimed, in the shortest-course Great Circle route, at North America.
Tangler: to all Tangler
Desig tracks 0032 through 0035 Meteor 1, 2, 3
Matador taking tracks Meteor 1, 2, 3 with Alliance. Mount Ashigara tracks 0036, 0037, 0038. Mount Shiomi tracks 0039, 0040
“Request batteries released,” AALIS said in her earbuds.
Cheryl ignored it for the moment. “Terror, IPP for lead missiles yet?”
“No impact point yet, Cap’n. Trajectory so far consistent with west coast of US.”
The command circuit: “Lock on, tracks Meteor 1 through 3.”
“Warning bell forward deck. Warning bell aft. Visual confirm, forward deck clear. Aft deck clear. Bridge stations secured. Conn to after-Citadel. Topside clear for engagement.”
“ECM reports: Okhotnik tracking outbound, headed south.”
“Positive pressure throughout the ship.”
“Capacitor banks armed and ready. Electrical control, manned and ready.”
“CIWS manned and ready.”
“Lasers, manned and ready.”
“Nulka, chaff, decoys, railguns, CAT manned and ready.”
She toggled back to the overhead view. The Russian surface units had turned, headed away from her task force. At flank speed, to judge from the readouts. Probably wise. No one knew the characteristics, safety interlocks, of the DF-41. If there were any. Each carried ten independently maneuverable warheads, of up to a megaton each.
Which meant an intercept, even if it took place sixty miles up, might wipe out every piece of unshielded electronics within hundreds of miles.
Which could leave a good portion of her task force helpless against any follow-on weapons.
She steered her mind away from might-bes to concentrate on now. Only seconds remained. The spew of new contacts from the southwest continued, like fireballs thrown out by a Fourth of July fountain. The last gasp of an expiring superpower. The dying spasm of an empire being overthrown, but still battling.
Or perhaps, of two empires dying.
She toggled to the exterior cameras, scanning the horizon. Savo steamed alone. The formation had accordioned out, expanding its footprint to reduce vulnerability. The gray sea rolled empty save for low clouds shadowing the dark horizon to the south. She toggled to the weather overlay. Rain, but headed away. So it would not interfere with either sensors or launch.
She toggled down one more level, to the cameras on her helmet. Curved by the short-focus lenses, the aisle between the consoles stretched to infinity. The large screen displays loomed up like drive-in movie screens.
AALIS said, “Request batteries released, CO.” An added sharpness in his/her/its tone?
“SPY?” Cheryl prompted.
Terranova: “We have firm lock-on. AOU still resolving. West coast ’a US.”
“XO: what about that covariance?”
“Within limits. Good to go.”
Terranova said, “Meteor One, pitchover.”
Once again, the familiar dilemma. The sooner one could fire, the better; ascending missiles were most vulnerable early in their flight regime. To catch one during its boost burn, or shortly after, while it was still ballistically ascending, the interceptor had to accelerate at about 8 g. Her own weapons had to first rise nearly vertically, to clear the thick lower atmosphere, then pitch over to meet the oncoming missile.
She scratched viciously at her neck under the helmet. Just now AALIS was feeding her an outer intercept range of about nine hundred miles and an inner range of four hundred miles. But intercept estimates got fudgy at the edges. Fire too soon, and the hit-to-kill homing body would run out of fuel for terminal maneuvering. Too late, and it would be impossible to reach the intercept point before the target passed overhead. ICBMs traveled so fast nothing could catch up in a stern chase. There were terminal phase interceptors farther downrange, fixed Ground Missile Defense sites in Alaska and THAAD batteries north of San Francisco and Los Angeles. But by then the bus would be dispensing its warheads, multiplying the targets and adding decoys and debris to the equation.
And added to that now, the warning just received from Sharkov. She manipulated the view, sliding southwest. Yeah. Here, Russia curved inward, along the coast, cupping Manchuria and cutting China off from the sea. Zhang had threatened that this too was historically Chinese, but hadn’t yet moved to reclaim it. Doubtless due to the loans, technical assistance, natural gas, and arms Moscow had lavished him with. To keep Russia’s two great enemies at each other’s throats, and weaken them for whatever the postwar world held.
Now the orange pulsing trails were bending to the northward. They were leaving China. Crossing the Sikhote-Alin Mountains. Crossing Russia, on their way to America.
She looked on coldly, watching the flight path predictions and probabilities of kill that streamed up the sides of her screens, and knew she could not fulfill the Russian colonel-general’s angry request. Or rather, threat. Delaying intercept until the targets were over Okhotsk would mean she’d launch too late. Her Alliances would have to climb vertically, pitch backward into a tail-chase geometry, and even then, couldn’t match a final-stage ICBM warhead at suborbital velocity. They’d lag behind. Burn out, and fall uselessly into the sea.
No. Savo’s interceptors would have to violate Russian airspace.
She decided to leave it to the computers. Hoping that the latest patch had taken, the millions of lines of code properly written and flawlessly debugged. That all the engineers and designers and fabricators had done their jobs.
“Alice: batteries released,” she said.
And instantly toggled back to the God view. To see the orange trails headed nearly straight overhead. They diverged only slightly, but with a considerable altitude differential. Different angles of climb. Meaning different targets. The West Coast? Spaced from north to south, perhaps. The highest-angled ones lofted to fly the farthest. San Diego? Los Angeles? Fresno, Long Beach?
She reminded herself to breathe, but it wasn’t easy. The seconds ticked past.
The seconds ticked past …
“Is she gonna…?” Mills muttered, low, as if the AI could overhear him. “Jesus … is it gonna fire?”
Cheryl pressed her thoat mike to transmit. “Alice, CO. What’s the hold-up?”
“Parameters don’t match. Ashigara disagrees.”
The XO said angrily, “We checked covariance an hour ago. Tracking error was within tolerance. We—”
Cheryl clicked in, interrupting him. “This is the CO. Ignore the differences! Own-ship data only. JTIDS, network data only. Get those missiles out there. Now.”
“Manual launch?” Mills asked. She could hear him tapping away, setting it up on his keyboard.
“Too risky. Give her one more chance.” She toggled to exterior cameras again.
The forward magazine hatches were cranking open. The new missiles didn’t boost out of their launch cells vertically, the way the old Standards had. Their high-energy, exotically fueled engines burned too hot to confine inside the skin of a ship. Instead, like a sub
marine-launched missile, a gas generator impelled them out of the cells, blowing them out like a pea from a peashooter.
The first popped up as if spring-loaded. It seemed to hang there, sixty feet above the deck, for a shutter-flick, maybe a twentieth of a second, just long enough for her heart to catch and the fear to trigger: Wasn’t it—
The booster ignited in a blinding glare. When the dazzle cleared the weapon was gone, ascending vertically, already out of the field of view. Succeeded by a second, and a third. Smoke swept aft and blanked the cameras, surrounding her in a woolly nothingness, a chemical whiteout. Cheryl could almost smell it, though she knew that was her imagination.
“Missile away,” AALIS said. “Alliances four, six, seven, away. One, three, eight preparing for launch.”
She toggled and the departing weapons reappeared, already miles distant, spearheads of violent flame trailing rapidly expanding cones of white smoke. “God, they go fast,” she muttered.
No roar of engines reached them. Not this deep, this sound-isolated and shock-damped, armored by steel and Kevlar. Only the camera, and the flicker of numbers on the ordnance register above the displays, told her they were on their way. She breathed again and went back to overhead view. The blue inverted carets of outgoing interceptors leapt from the center of the screen and sped outward. Toward the advancing orange trails.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
Except that suddenly Chief Zotcher spoke into the combat control circuit. “CO, XO, this is Sonar. Suspected propulsor noises bearing one eight five. No range reading yet. Classification unknown.”
“Sonar, CO: need a classification, Chief.”
“Classification unknown. Doesn’t match any of our profiles.”
Not again, she thought, closing her eyes. “Torpedo? Submarine?”
“Larger than a torpedo. Faster than a submarine. Not sure yet what it is, Captain. Freshwater layers … salinity clines … and a super-low radiated-noise signature. We’re not getting consistent passive returns and it’s too far to ping in mixed layers. Trying for cross-bearings with Chokai on ASW chat.”
