by Stuart Slade
The original plan had been to rebuild the Navy around missile cruisers then screen them with missile- and helicopter-carrying destroyers. The design books had been full of new cruisers and destroyers that would revitalize the Navy and give it back the striking power it had once had. It would even have had the ability to strike at the Americans and their aircraft carriers that now ruled the Pacific. But the Showa Restoration Coup had ended those plans. The missile cruiser program had been cut short at eight, two of those had already been lost. The destroyers had never been built. With the ships planned for the future aborted on the drawing boards, the Navy had started its long slide downwards.
Another part of the plan had been that the policing and patrol functions of the fleet were to be carried out by the Hayabusa class of fast attack boats. Gun-armed versions for coastal patrol and maritime security, torpedo boats for attack and missile-armed craft in case they needed to fight against major surface ships. Only the Hayabusas had never been built in the numbers planned. Despite the urgent need for them in Japanese waters, too many had been sold to the Caliphate, Djinns they called them, and the Caliphate had lost all too many in its futile attempts to face the Americans. Lost them stupidly, committing them to battle without cover and without the support of major fleet units.
Kurita remained impassive, but inwardly he was sighing with despair. So many plans, so much had needed to be done and it had all been left on the shelf. Still, he had to put on a brave face before his junior officers and extol the virtues of the Navy and its missile cruisers. "And if they do fight, we have our missiles. We outrange and outshoot them and, in the final analysis, that's all that matters."
CHAPTER TWO: CALL TO ARMS
Senatorial Administration Building, Washington D.C.
"Tough day darling?" Henry McCarty's voice was concerned. Naamah was looking tired and that was rare enough to be worthy of comment.
"Very. This one's going to be difficult. He spent most of the afternoon complaining about his television coverage. He says the cameramen deliberately chose angles that make him look like a toad."
"Well, he doesn't come over well on television. That's probably why he lost to Johnson in ‘68. Cameramen can make people appear quite different. Look at some of my early pictures. They can't even print some of those the right way around."
"Yeah, but this is different. It isn't camerawork, its genetics. He really does look like a toad. That's not why he comes over badly though. It's because he isn't smart enough to carry a presence. He's OK when he sticks to his script but he will keep wandering off and trying to fly by himself and he just doesn't have the knowledge to do it. If his IQ was any lower, we'd have to water him."
Henry McCarty had very good reason to know that part of the art of surviving as a gunfighter was to know when trouble was about to break. A good street gunfighter could look at a peaceful town scene and know that an ambush was out there. He could even sense where the gunmen would be hiding and where the danger ground lay. Suddenly, quite without any forewarning, McCarty knew an ambush was coming and he and Naamah were standing right in the middle of the danger zone.
"GET DOWN!" His voice was still booming around the steps as he hurled himself at Naamah, bringing her to the ground and spreading himself over her. One of the Secret Service guards saw what was happening and started to run over, probably thinking that the President's Executive Assistant was being attacked.
He'd barely started to move when a car shot out from the other side of the street, swerving across the road while a tongue of flame erupted from the back window. The burst hosed the steps of the building, bullets screamed off the stone steps, others whined as they ricocheted off the statues or made dull thuds as they hit parked cars. There were other, duller, thuds as well, ones that Henry McCarty recognized all too well.
The Secret Service man drew his pistol when the car started to move but it was too late to be of any use. He'd gone down, the pistol thrown from his hand. It landed only a couple of feet from McCarty and he rolled over to grab it. He fumbled the grab; the pistol was a semi-automatic and he was only familiar with revolvers. By the time he'd got his hand around it, the car was racing away. It was tens of yards and moving fast but he got off his six shots.
Behind him, two more Secret Service men were running down the steps. McCarty swung around; as he did so, the pistol in his hand discharged again, the bullet glanced off the steps and whined away into who knew where. He'd forgotten that semi-automatics held more than six rounds. The sound attracted the Secret Service men. One of them started to head for McCarty; the older man, obviously his senior stopped him and whispered something. The younger man stopped briefly and stared at McCarty wide-eyed, then changed direction, towards where people were down. McCarty followed him, then stopped also. Naamah was still where he had left her, eyes closed, motionless on the ground. His stomach churning, he took the few steps back to her. Then, relief surged through him for one of her eyes had opened.
"My husband always said that when somebody responsible for my safety tells me to lie down, get down and stay down until I get permission to stand up." Naamah grinned impishly. "Works in the bedroom as well."
"Good advice. You're not hit." To McCarty's intense relief, it was a statement, not a question. "It's over, you can get up now." His voice had a tinge of reserve in it; when Naamah mentioned her husband, there was only one person she meant and it wasn't him. Naamah gave his hand a quick squeeze then headed for the casualties. A young man, on his back, surrounded by a splattered pool. Naamah wasted barely a glance on him. He'd only been hit once but the bullet had torn the inside of his thigh and severed the great artery that ran though there. He'd been dead within seconds.
A young couple, the man was bleeding from the shoulder, but he cradled a young woman. For a second Naamah thought her blouse was red but it wasn't. Or, rather, it hadn't been. It had been white before she'd been hit. There were others as well but they were the nearest. She knelt quickly beside them.
"She'd breathing but it's bad. Press here, try to stop the bleeding. That's what'll save her." The man put his hands where he was told. The woman had a chance, not a great one but a chance. If she got proper help fast. The man's shoulder was a crease. He'd probably tried to do what McCarty had done for her but hadn't been fast enough or skilled enough. Then Naamah was aware of another man kneeling with them. The young Secret Service man. "Naamah Sammale. Executive Assistant to the President. Help on the way?"
The agent nodded. "Everybody you can imagine."
"Good." Naamah thought for a second. "Get a toxins unit sent over as well. If this was Caliphate, these bullets could be poisoned. Ricin for example." If that was the case, then there was no point in sending medical units at all. Ricin was a killer. "How's your man over there?"
"Dead." The Secret Service man's voice was neutral. It wouldn't matter anyway. Protocol in these things was strict, the Secret Service agents were the last to be treated. Principles first, civilians second, agents last. In the background, sirens started to shaft through the eerie quiet of the scene on the steps. The woman on the steps was going into shock. It would be a near run thing indeed for her, even with normal bullets.
Naamah got up and rejoined McCarty. He was standing, watching the road, his eyes hard and professional. "Henry, I wonder who they were shooting at?"
Cockpit, B-70C Sigrun Altitude 85,000 feet, approaching Moscow Air Defense Zone
"This just doesn't feel right. It never does."
"What's the matter Sigrun?" Major C.J O'Seven was slightly amused. They'd established a good rapport with Sigrun as soon as they'd collected her from the Palmdale assembly plant four years ago. Some crews never managed it. For some reason, perhaps their own lack of empathy or something beyond human understanding, they'd never made the connection with their aircraft. It had taken weeks with his previous aircraft, Honey Pot, he and his crew had fixed her up and repainted her crew compartments but it had still taken time. Sigrun had been different. When he and his crew had boar
ded her for the first time and introduced themselves, she'd replied by the time they'd reached the runway. Her ‘voice' had been neutral at first but had quickly picked up a slight Swedish accent.
"Having MiGs attack me. They're my friends, they escort me. As long as they can keep up of course." Sigrun's voice had a touch of smug conceit in it; well-deserved because the Valkyrie was the fastest aircraft flying. Just how fast was strictly classified but there were indicators. It had taken them barely two and a half hours to get from the emergency deployment exercise in Maine to the approaches of Moscow, a vast change from the old days when a lumbering B-36 would take the better part of a day to make the same trip. Another indicator had been over the Nevada test range. One of SAC's vaunted SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft had tried to show off to the new bomber. Sigrun had used a little less than full throttle and left the Blackbird floundering along in her wake. That wasn't the only difference, even at full speed, Sigrun could twist and turn in ways the Blackbird pilots could only dream of.
"It's only an exercise. The Russians want to see how well some of their new equipment works against high-performance targets and we want to give DAMS a work-out. Nothing to worry about, all the weapons have safety offsets."
‘"No nukes? Nukes make my skin itch." There was a ripple of laughter around the flight deck.
"No, Sigrun, no nukes. Not even high explosive. This ride's mostly air-to-air anyway and the Russians don't use nuclear-tipped air-to-airs." That was a big difference between the MiGs and Sukhois flown by the Russian PVO Air Defense Force and the F-108s of SAC and the F-112s of NORAD. The Americans used nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles, the Russians didn't. Both sides made their arguments, both sides had their points. Each was happy with what they had and each knew the other's equipment well enough to make a judgment.
"Coming up on the Moscow Air Defense Zone now Seejay." The defense systems station, below and behind the main flight deck, was dominated by a large color display. The B-70C was the first aircraft to have full color displays and they were controversial. Some said it made putting too much information on the screen too easy and would overload the operators. Perhaps, but it made the situation displays much clearer. Anyway, with color television rapidly supplanting black-and-white in the civilian world, the extra cost of color had almost vanished.
There was a bright green dot in the center of the tactical display, around it was a huge light green egg. It covered an area 120 miles ahead of Sigrun and 40 miles behind her. The ellipse extended 90 miles on either side of her projected flight path. If there was a missile launch detected, Sigrun could be anywhere within that ellipse by the time the missile finally climbed to their altitude. That huge area was Sigrun's first line of defense, the uncertainty of where she would be at any specific time gravely complicated the task of those trying to intercept her.
Suddenly, the map changed from simple to complex. A series of red circles appeared as the ground target acquisition radars lit up. Captain John Henty, the Defensive Systems Operator, hadn't bothered to plot the long-range surveillance radars. Everybody knew you could see a Valkyrie coming a long way off, the important point was you that there wasn't much you could do about it. That was, of course, a lesson all in itself. We're coming, you can't stop us so you‘d better fold while you still have the chance.
If the targets didn't get the message and tried to put up a defense, speed and altitude were Sigrun's primary defenses; those and her superb electronic warfare suite mated to the Defensive Anti-Missile System. The target acquisition radars were important. It wasn't they were so essential in themselves but they marked the position of the surface-to-air missile batteries. And Russian surface-to-airs, like American, were nuclear-tipped. The red circles marked the space the missiles could reach by the time they'd reached Sigrun's altitude. Within each red circle was a bright red line that pointed from the circle's center to Sigrun's position. That was the projected course of any missile launched from that site. Measure a line from Sigrun's position to the tip of that line and that gave the distance separating the racing aircraft from the explosion as the missile warhead initiated. That was a detail; the truth was that as long as Sigrun and Skalma stayed out of those circles they were safe.
It wouldn't be hard. The area covered by the red circles was a tiny part of that covered by the green ellipse. If there were no other defenses, the two Valkyries could thread through the missile screen without any great effort. A few wriggles, no more. In a B-52, at a quarter of the B-70s speed and 30,000 feet lower, it was a different story. The green ellipse would have been much smaller and the red circles much larger, the red swallowing the green. There would have been no safe path through, the B-52 would have had to fight her way through the missiles. That meant they needed support; RB-58s to find the defenses and take them down with air-to-surface missiles, F-108s to screen the bombers from enemy fighters. The B-70 didn't need all that, not at the speed and altitudes she could use. That was why Palmdale was turning out every B-70 it could, triple shifts working the factory 24 hours a day,
It wasn't quite as easy as that, of course. Many of the Russian systems were mobile and could shift positions as needed. The problem they faced there was that any missile capable of reaching Sigrun‘s altitude had to be big and heavy; moving those wasn't easy. They required time to take down and set up and that limited the benefits from their mobility. Another complication was that the Russians had developed a datalink system so that the target acquisition radar could be removed from the firing battery. That meant the missiles could fire from an unexpected position.
Sigrun had been equipped to deal with that threat. She carried a thermal imager that could pick up the flare of a rocket engine being fired up and an electro-optical camera system that gave a crystal-clear, highly magnified picture of the ground ahead. Sigrun‘s co-pilot had his eyes riveted to that display, watching for any suspicious movement. At the moment, the EO camera was set to panorama but he could zoom in on anything that seemed curious. Radar, electronic surveillance, thermal imaging, electro-optical cameras and good, old-fashioned Mark One eyeball, all integrated to form Sigrun's second ring of defense: unequaled situational awareness.
"‘Thermal launch signature, ahead, 11 o'clock." The alert came up on the navigator's console and the big defense systems display aft.
"It's out of range, very low threat. Firing AGM-76 anti-radiation missile." The displays had highlighted the radar system most likely to be the control for the missile now ‘soaring up' to meet them. Under them, there was a bump and a slight vibration as an AGM-76 left the bomb bay, ‘fired" at the guilty radar. In fact both missiles were smokies, exercise missiles fitted with a live first stage but that was all. They'd launch, make a short arc in their intended direction, then go more or less harmlessly ballistic.
The targeted radar blinked off the screen; the Russians had determined it was a good shot and would have killed the radar long before the missile it was guiding reached its target. Sigrun‘s third ring of defenses: her wall of air-to-surface missiles, taking out whatever the RB-58s had missed. Nevertheless, Sigrun changed course by about five degrees to increase the miss distance.
"Bandits, bandits. Total count six aircraft, three loose pairs. Dead ahead, ten o'clock, two o'clock. Climbing very fast, tentative identification MiG-25 Pchelas. Trying for video contact now." Beneath its transparent screen, the electro-optical camera swung to the bearing of the leading inbound aircraft and swept to maximum magnification. A quick search and the image formed on the screen; grainy from the high magnification but there. There was no mistaking the brutal, boxy shape of the MiG-25. "‘Let's shake him up a bit?"
O'Seven nodded then flipped onto the shared radio channel. "Good to see you, Gray-531. Welcome to the party."
There was a stunned silence for a split second on the channel. "Borgemoi, your camera is THAT good Sigrun?" The range was still great, but two formations of aircraft closing at Mach 3 plus ate distance quickly.
O'Seven looked at the image again and frowne
d. "Gray-531, for real, you're trailing a little white smoke or vapor. We can't see well enough to be more precise."
Another slight pause. "Nothing showing here. Thank you for the heads-up, Sigrun."
"That missile launch, they were herding us into the fighters Seejay." O'Seven nodded. At Red Sun, the Russians had shown they were experts at that sort of thing. They used their missile batteries to shape the battle, setting up SAM traps and dead-end flak pockets, using missile launches to steer intruding aircraft away from lightly-defended zones, into ambushes from heavy concentrations of antiaircraft assets. They had raised deception and misdirection to new heights, what appeared to be the layout of their defenses rarely was.
Most people thought Red Sun was an air-to-air exercise but that was far from the truth. It was an integrated air defense exercise and the Russians had shown their SAMs could carry their weight in the battles. When the Russian SAMs were guests at Red Sun, their American equivalents could only watch and learn.
Sigrun was turning, trying to put the climbing MiGs into an impossible tactical position. It was the basic bomber defense maneuver, one that the B-36s in The Big One had used against German rocket fighters and one that still worked well. Sigrun had a huge turning circle at these speeds, more than 20 miles across, but that was enough. Her sheer speed meant that only head-on attacks were practical and closing at speeds approaching 5,000 miles per hour, the fighters had only a single shot.
As Sigrun swung around, one of the fighter pairs was already falling behind her. They might fire but their missiles, even the big R-40Ts couldn't catch a B-70 in a tail chase. The chance of a beam shot working was so slight it could be neglected. By the time the MiGs were in range, one pair was hopelessly out of position, one was marginal and only one was in a good launch configuration. Already, Sigrun's radar and ESM systems were tracking both aircraft and feeding their course into the DAMS computer. DAMS was calculating the course any missile would have to follow in order to stand a chance of hitting Sigrun.
