by David Poyer
She leaned past him. “Admiral, should we pull everyone in tighter? Interlock fires?”
He seemed torn. Probably still fearing a nuke. But the two dozen–plus aircraft bearing down were a more immediate danger. “Probably not a bad idea,” he said at last, picked up the red phone, and started assigning new stations.
Which they had only minutes to slip into … Savo heeled as she came to the new course. Cheryl took a deep breath. What was the worst that could happen? That she’d be with Eddie tonight?
No. There were worse things than that. Such as getting her whole crew killed. “Let’s get some Standards out there,” she told Mills. “Take down the leaders. Maybe that’ll give the others second thoughts.”
The deckplates tremored. White smoke billowed on the cameras. Over the next minutes eight enhanced-range Standards bolted from their cells, reoriented, and streaked off to the north, leaving contrails that glowed phosphorescent in the dark. Savo’s combat system transferred control to Kristensen. She noted the time. Still an hour before dawn. The networked picture showed the other task force units launching as well. The system deconflicted them automatically, ensuring no more than two weapons were assigned to each target.
“Stand by for intercept, Meteor Bravo,” Soongapurn called. Reminding her that they still had North Korean ballistic warheads burning down toward them. Two for Savo, two for Hampton Roads.
Cheryl put her hand on Lenson’s sleeve. “Dan. Sir. Can I secure Gangbusters? We’re standing by for intercept.”
He hesitated, squinting at the displays. Then nodded. “Both gaggles are guiding on us now. Back to ABM mode.”
The rightmost screen blinked, changed, zoomed.
On a hot, brilliantly white dot, glowing violently in the far infrared. As the warhead plunged through the upper atmosphere, it grew both its infrared signature and an ionization trail. The electrically charged plume actually generated a more pronounced radar return than the metal at its heart. The pulsating brackets of the system lock-on displayed more jerkiness than she liked. The display abruptly lurched from it to another burning white dot, making her stiffen. But then it snapped back. ALIS was switching its attention between the two incoming terminal bodies assigned to Savo. The other pair, Cheryl would just have to take on faith that the other cruiser was handling.
She gripped her desk, ignoring the sticky bloodstains she must be leaving. A chill harrowed her back. Watching the bullet aimed at you, as it came in … waiting for it to hit …
“Intercept, Meteor Bravo … now,” called the Terror.
The brackets jerked, slewing off, tumbling through space. They swerved up, down, left, right, before locking once more.
Cheryl squinted up at the vibrating slushy image. Instead of a single pip, tumescent with ionization, the screen showed three separate returns. Each dimmed, then rebrightened, but at different rates, like uncoordinated strobes.
The brightening and dimming was a deformed body tumbling through space. Varying its radar cross section. Disintegrating, under the massive g-forces of hypersonic reentry.
“Meteor Bravo, breakup,” Terranova called. “Shifting to Meteor Charlie.”
The screen jerked and zoomed back, hunted, then drilled back in as the brackets snagged the second warhead. The trail of this comet, the nimbus of superheated, radar-reflecting ionosphere, was larger than that of the first. A heavier payload? Or just a stouter airframe, holding together better?
The air controller called, “Hampton Roads reports hard kill, Meteor Alfa.”
Terranova yelled over his words, “Stand by for intercept, Meteor Charlie … now.”
This time the lock-on stuck tight. A bloom of return coruscated silently onscreen. Flame? Gas? The new kinetic-kill heads carried no explosives. Sheer velocity drove their destructive power. But something odd was happening.… “What’s that look like to you, Doctor?” she called to Soongapurn.
The MDA physicist was frowning. “I’m not certain … looks like some damage, but…”
“Stand by for second round intercept—”
The falling comet stayed rock steady. “Miss,” someone breathed.
Okay, a miss, but she’d targeted three homers against each incomer. One had yet to hit. The ionizing blur kept growing. The picture pulled back to encompass its swelling bloom. Deep in its center, like a shrunken star after a supernova, the warhead itself glowed. One thousand, two thousand … as she reached eleven, the picture rocked again.
“Fuck,” someone murmured.
A momentary bloom, with fragments hurtling off like sparkling fireflies. But the main body still pulsed slowly. Rotating, but still in one piece.
Soongapurn: “Meteor Charlie, still on trajectory. Call that as a hit on the airframe, maybe, not the warhead.”
A line came up on chat.
MONITOR: Meteor Delta, two-round salvo, no apparent effect.
“Shit … they missed too. Are these things fucking armored? Give me camera, bearing zero-one-five true,” she muttered to Mills. The TAO grabbed the joystick, and the rightmost display slewed, rolled up, down, steadied.
A spear of flame appeared, descending from the azimuth. On the far horizon, grayed now with the first taste of dawn, a black silhouette. She’d lost her bearings. Wasn’t sure, in that half second, which ship it was.
A tremendous flash blanked the camera. Then, seconds later another, even brighter, even closer. When they faded, leaving drifting afterimages, the bridge talker called, “Lookouts report two explosions on the horizon. Bearing two-eight-zero relative.”
Beside her Lenson said tightly into the red phone, “This is Barbarian. All units Horde, report damage. Report ionization effects. Check background radiation and report readings. Over.”
A rumbling boom reached them. A low-frequency vibration waned, then waxed again. The vibrations tuning-forked away along the resonating length of the hull girder, dwelled, grew faint, and died away.
She exchanged glances with a stricken-looking Lenson. He murmured, “Do you call those as nukes?”
Mills leaned over. “Maybe some kind of partial detonation?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Not two partial detonations.” She hit the 21MC. “OOD, CO. Anything from the PDR-65?” The radioactivity detection, indication, and computation system, installed on every warship’s bridge.
“CO, bridge. Nothing yet. Continuing to monitor.”
She checked the wind gauge. Five knots, from the west. If there was a radioactive plume, they’d get it. “Turn on the water washdown?” she mused to Mills.
“We’d degrade our sensors,” he said. “We start spraying salt water, we’ll blind ourselves.”
“All right, good point. Hold off until we have a beep from the 65. Secure from ABM mode. Go to antiair, full automatic.”
“Could just be a very heavy conventional payload,” Enzweiler put in, behind them.
One by one, the task force reported in. The CIC officer made a tick mark on the call sign board as each rogered up. When the last ship was checked off, Lenson heaved a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath. He told the chief of staff to get on Navy Red and report what they knew. “Don’t call it as a nuke. Just say, heavy explosion. McClung reports light blast effects topside. Otherwise, TF 76, no damage.”
Cheryl switched her attention back to the incoming air strike. Which was now only forty miles distant, with thirty-eight contacts. The enhanced-range Standards had marched outward toward the leaders during the minutes the Nodongs had consumed in their descents, their respective destructions or survivals, and their detonations. Other blue symbols, many more, marked weapons from the Korean units, McClung, and Kristensen, following Savo’s initial salvo. She hoped Aegis was deconflicting properly. Seconds ticked by as the markers marched toward the incoming strike.
“Vampire, vampire, vampire,” the EW operator called. “Multiple vampires, bearing one-six-zero to one-seven-five degrees true. X-band seekers. Correlate with C-802s. Many vampires.”
�
��They’re dropping early,” Mills muttered.
The lead aircraft began turning away. A few of those following did too. As they wheeled away, the display populated with smaller contacts, as if each had spawned copies of itself.
But Savo’s Standards were loose among them. The callouts blinked, spinning downward and upward, documenting radical course and altitude changes. Last-minute maneuvers, by pilots desperately trying to evade their oncoming fates.
Maybe Eddie’s last seconds had been like that.…
“Three bogeys, headed for the deck.”
“Intercept … intercept.”
“CIC, bridge: still nothing on the PDR-65.”
Contacts turned, banked, milled about the screen. Some winked out for good.
But the red carets of the incoming antiship missiles jumped ahead second by second, closing on Kristensen, Hampton Roads, Sejong, and Savo. Dozens of them, scores. Too many, really, to count.
“Deploy chaff and rubber duckies,” Cheryl put out over Weps Control. “Phalanx, 20mm, Stingers, action starboard. —EW, spoof these guys, jam ’em, get ’em off our ass! We’re depending on you.”
“On it,” Chief Wenck called.
Above them dull thuds thumped like bass drums as the chaff mortars began to go off, flinging hot-burning infrared flares and millions of strips of aluminum foil into the dawning air.
* * *
DAN pushed back from the command desk. His coveralls were wringing wet and icy cold. Cold doom chilled his bones, too. Not from what they’d just evaded, screaming down from the heavens. Nor from what was incoming.
But from the fatal numbers that flickered on the inventory screen.
Savo’s magazines were emptying. Each incoming antiship missile required at least two rounds to have a decent chance of knocking it down. Those that penetrated, and that Wenck failed to fox electronically, would be met by five-inch VT rounds, last-minute Stingers, then drumfire from the CIWS.
But there were too many incomers. He’d given up after counting thirty. Aegis had been designed to counter mass attacks, but any defense could be overwhelmed.
“Bird eleven away … bird twelve away…”
“McClung reports all Standards expended—”
Fragments of speech. Bursts of transmissions. But only a sidebar, now, to the automatic responses of their digital nervous system. Directed and coordinated by millions of lines of code, Task Force 76 fought now as an immense robot. A hundred-thousand-ton Terminator, flung across sixty miles of sea.
“Vampire bearing one-six-four, take with guns.”
Slam.
Slam.
Dust drifted from the overhead, sparkling in the heating, unventilated air. The five-inch guns, aft and forward, were quickly joined by the bass roar of the Phalanxes, then the rapid cracks of the 25mms.
In the flight deck camera, bright points, low to the sea. One grew, but without changing its bearing. A shaft of fire darted out at it, followed by two more as it bored in. Stingers, fired from atop the hangar. Then streams of tracers reached out. The heavy loud BRRRR of the Phalanxes tremored the ship.
An explosion. Out of it, tumbling end over end, blunt wings. A flash of flames, blossoming into smears of flying fire. But still something black was coming directly at the camera, rotating rapidly, like old newsreels of shot-down Zeros crashing into carriers. He tensed, gripping his helmet.
The camera went blank. The Phalanxes cut off abruptly. The superstructure shook to a heavy impact, resounding like a struck bell. Lights flickered. The displays faltered, went blank; then lit again, repopulating. A rising whine came from somewhere. A motor, spinning out of control? Then he realized it was a scream.
“Damage report,” Cheryl was saying urgently into the 21MC. “Bridge, I need damage reports.”
“Missile hit aft, starboard side, vicinity frame 200,” the 1MC announced. “Repair three provide. Damage reports to the bridge.”
“CIC, bridge. Aft lookout reports hit to upper part of the hangar area. Right about where the Stinger guys were.”
“Stinger team, come in,” Cheryl was saying urgently. “Stinger team, Army, are you on the line?”
“CO, Damage Control: Fire, heavy damage, starboard boat deck area.”
“CO, Air Control: four F-18s launching for SuCAP, heading our way.”
“At last,” Fred Enzweiler murmured. “About fucking time.”
The displays flickered again. Dan pulled his attention away, trying to concentrate on the rest of his force. Zembiec, Sejong the Great, and Hampton Roads had formed one mutually supporting group, a few miles from the second, of Savo, Kristensen, and McClung. Reports began to come in. McClung had been hit hard, with fourteen wounded and no count yet on KIA. Kristensen had absorbed two missiles, both striking well aft, wiping off her after five-inch mount and her Harpoon launchers. Both reported they were fighting fires and nearly out of ordnance. Zembiec, Sejong, and Hampton Roads were still untouched.
But the activation of Gangbusters had done what it was supposed to: attracted the incoming aircraft to Savo instead of Reagan.
He caught sandalwood and sweat as Amy Singhe bent over him. “They hit us hard,” she murmured. Strong fingers dug into the knotted muscle of his shoulders.
He leaned back, closing his eyes, but feeling unreal. Getting a chair massage from a beautiful woman in the middle of a battle? Not exactly PC, but hell, bring it on. “We screened the carrier.”
“You pulled the strike onto us instead? That’s what we just did?”
He shrugged her hands off. It felt great, but Staurulakis was eyeing them. And he had to agree. A massage before imminent death was one thing … but now that it looked as if they might pull through, it was definitely inappropriate. At the same moment, Mills leaned over. “We’re getting some kind of near-sea return from bearing 215 degrees.”
Dan pulled a sleeve across his forehead. “What kind of return? Range?”
“Sixty miles. Intermittent. Nothing from EW on that bearing.”
“Strike Bravo’s still a hundred and thirty miles out,” Staurulakis put in.
Dan eyed the display. “Nothing on Aegis.”
“It’s not sure it’s a contact yet.”
“Got a speed? A course?”
“Too intermittent.” As if guessing what he’d ask next, Mills said, “Commander Jamail said range on the KH-31s was seventy miles.”
“So they couldn’t have launched yet? The SU-35s, Gaggle Bravo?” But as soon as he asked it, he knew he couldn’t depend on the intel alone. “We have to assume there’s something there. —Fred, get us reoriented. The three damaged units haul out to the north. Zembiec, Sejong, Hampton Roads, move up to the south.”
But the callouts were coming up now. In red.
With each update from the SPY-1, they jumped ahead in giant strides.
“Twenty miles and closing fast,” Mills breathed. “Christ, they’re coming in hypersonic!”
Blue carets winked on from Zembiec and Hampton Roads. The last defensive missiles clicked outward, but more slowly than the incoming weapons were traveling. Within seconds, Dan could see they weren’t going to reach them in time.
“Go EMCON silent?” Mills asked urgently. “Shut down Dan?”
They looked to him, but he nodded to Staurulakis. “Ask your CO.”
Cheryl bit her lip. “We shut down, we lose targeting. The gun radar. Phalanx. And jamming. No. We stay up.”
From the EW console: “Vampire, vampire! X-band seekers. Correlates with KH-31 seeker head.”
“Fire chaff—”
Mills said quietly, “Tubes are empty, ma’am. Never reloaded. Too much fire and smoke topside. If those things are infrared guided, they’ll home on us just by those fires.”
She reached for the 21MC. Pushed the DC Central button. “Water washdown,” she snapped. “Shipwide. Right now.”
The 1MC announced, “All hands retire within the skin of the ship. Set Circle William throughout the ship. Initiate water washdown.” In the
one remaining topside camera, a nimbus of fog burst out along the side as dozens of sprinklers activated.
The topside washdown was designed to sluice away fallout, but maybe she could reduce their infrared signature. Blend the ship with the sea around her.
What the hell. It was all she had left.
* * *
A terrific shock whipped the deck from beneath her, knocking down everyone on his feet, jerking and whiplashing those buckled into chairs. Something snapped in her arm where she’d been leaning on it, and her head glanced off the desktop as it came up to meet her skull. A white flash. A bewilderment.
Then another jolt, even harder, whipping the deck up and then down in an undulation like shaking out a carpet. Only this one was steel, beamed with heavy stringers. She grabbed at the arm of her chair, which bucked like a mechanical bull. A console operator staggered back, pawing at a mask of blood under his flash hood.
The whole ship groaned, crying out, as the twin Phalanxes aft fired BRRR BRRR BRRRRRRRRR.
Slam.
SLAM. More echoing detonations whipcracked them. The air seethed with dust. Papers fluttered. Screens went dark. Lights burst, and shards of glass pinged off consoles and tabletops. A scorching stink like worn-out brake pads filled the air. The 1MC said something, or started to, in the boatswain’s excited voice, before it cut off.
The consoles went dark. The large-screen displays blanked. The fans in the consoles descended the scale. With a chatter of relays, the yellow battery-powered battle lanterns mounted in the corners came on, firing dim cones of tallow light through choking, smoky air, outlining staggering figures tugging on EEBDs and gas masks.
Gritting her teeth, Cheryl set her left arm—which felt like it was broken—in her lap, and with the other hand clicked to the sound-powered circuit. A babble of voices. Finally Chief McMottie’s growl quieted them. “For Christ’s sake, pipe the fuck down! Damage reports!”
