TWENTY-four hours straight so far, locked down in Savo’s Citadel. Relieved, when Cheryl absolutely had to take a break, by Mills, or one of her tactical action officers.
Over the days on station the darkened cavern of the Combat Information Center had seemed to expand, to swell, growing larger than a hull could possibly contain. Cheryl’s own consciousness had expanded too, each time she settled the helmet over her head, plugging in to the artificial overmind that contemplated a hemisphere like an antecreational God brooding over the landless ocean.
Hanging in the air, her avatar looked down on a virtual world, created and reinterpreted by an intelligence far greater and infinitely faster than her own.
The large screen displays were still up. But she didn’t need them. The helmet/headset weighted her shoulders. Screens dominoed her eyes. A fan streamed cool air on the back of her neck. She could check own ship status as well, from the condition of every space and pump to the remaining weapons in the deep magazines. Developed from the helmet-mounted displays of fighter planes, with enhancements by Oculus and Sony, the VR screens before her eyes showed the entire battlespace, as sensed by satellite, ground-based radar, and her own ship sensors, deconflicted and reinterpreted as to threat level.
She floated in space, contemplating like Zeus an enormous blue tabletop scored with latitude and longitude lines and layered with shaded altitude readouts. With a flick of her eyes radio and radar transmissions appeared in coruscating curtains of delicate jade, violet, and indigo, wavering and fluttering like a Van Gogh sky. Neutral, friendly, and hostile contacts registered in standard symbology, though she could toggle to downlinked video from drones, or direct view when they were in line-of-sight range. If she glanced down she could see “through” the hull, to the irregular, rocky bottom over a thousand fathoms below.
She was barely conscious of her ass in the chair, of her hands resting lightly on the armrests.
Over the horizon, the strikes were going in.
The missiles had launched first, some from Savo and the other surface ships. But the majority had been barrage-fired from Ohio-class SSBNs off the coast, and attack boats USS Arkansas, Idaho, North Carolina, and John Warner. Slipping in low, accelerating to hypersonic speeds, they’d drilled in on antiaircraft missile batteries, intelligence fusion centers, power plants, radio and television stations. But most were concentrated on two points: the sole over-the-horizon radar the North Koreans possessed, outside Wonsan, and their command centers in Pyongyang.
She watched entranced as rapidly pulsing bright ruby trails marched inexorably down. Descending from exoatmospheric trajectories, three warheads preplaced in orbit by Delta IV Heavy boosters were burning their way downward. Both the Chinese and Russians had been notified minutes before. But along with that, the approach angles had been calculated so as to make it obvious that neither nation’s core strategic forces were being targeted.
They were over Savo now, converging inexorably on the Hermit Kingdom’s most vulnerable points.
Mills’s voice in her ear. “Standing by to go Shitstorm proof.”
“Do it,” she said into the throat mike. “EMPcon Charlie. Come to optimal course. Slow to ten. Make sure the rest of the formation rogers the warning. Jeonnam. Sioux City. Double check all UAVs are on deck, shut down, and hangared. All USVs submerged below sixty feet.”
“Already put that out, Skipper.” Was that a hint of irritation in his voice? Well, better to micromanage a bit, than leave her people exposed to what was about to happen.
The pulsating red lines stretched relentlessly onward.
The ship tilted beneath her. The world whirled as Savo swerved on her heel to course 095. The results of the tests off Kauai, during their workup, had been clear: this class would ride out an electromagnetic pulse best bow-on to it. This course pointed her directly at Wonsan. That city, hub of the eastern coast’s defenses, was almost three hundred miles distant. But even that far away, Savo would feel the effects.
The pulsing red line had almost reached its target, the mountain command post just east of Pyongyang. She scribed a distance and ran the numbers in her head. One minute remaining. Back to the throat mike. “All right, XO. Shut her down.”
The displays before her eyes flickered and died. She boosted the helmet off her shoulders. At the same moment the large screen displays at the front of CIC went dark. The consoles behind her powered down, the fans whirring off to silence. The air-conditioning hissed to a halt, leaving only the creaking of steel in a seaway. The distant thud of a hatch being dogged. A strange, lonely, haunting creaking, like the baffled protest of an abandoned mansion buffeted by the wind.
“CIC, DC Central: EMP condition Charlie set,” the old-style 21MC in front of her reported. It reminded her to reach down and shut off her own Hydra, her portable radio, and power off her cell. Probably protected already by the Faraday box of Savo’s hull, but why take the risk.
She looked at her watch. Just about now …
The overhead lights flickered, shading a deep blue for just the fraction of a second; then came back on to bright white. With a muted clicking, relays cycled like crickets in the fall. “Heavy EMP pulse,” called the petty officer at the electronic warfare console.
She whipped her head around. “You were supposed to be off-line—”
The petty officer looked startled. “Uh, that’s from the detector, Captain. It stays online during Charlie.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” She looked at her watch again. The first burst, right on time. The second should follow any moment now.
The weapons, predicted theoretically for years, had only recently been achieved. By an ad hoc team of nuclear program retirees and fusion experts, gathered at Lawrence Livermore after the labs at Los Alamos and Sandia had been laid waste by cyberjacked jetliners.
A nuclear-pumped electromagnetic pulse bomb.
She’d been briefed about this before leaving the States. Not in detail, but enough so that the commanding officers could protect themselves, and understand what would be happening ashore.
Along with blast, heat, and radiation, nuclear detonations produced stupendous waves of electromagnetic energy. The enormous gamma output “ruptured” the earth’s magnetic field. Traditional nukes only converted about one percent of their energy into the pulse. But Sandia had reverse-engineered the most massive bomb the United States had ever produced, the 1950s Mark 15, and modified it to convert half its fifteen-megaton yield into electromagnetic disruption.
At three locations, over Wonsan, Pyongyang, and the northern mountain complex that Intel estimated sheltered Kim’s deployable ICBMs, the action she’d heard called unofficially “Operation Shitstorm” was going into effect. Over the space of two minutes, every unshielded circuit in North Korea—every transmission line, radio, generator, radar, anything else that used metallic wiring—were being subjected to a power surge of tens of thousands of volts, at an amperage so massive it would jump air gaps, fry electronics, even melt transformer windings inside their casings.
“Second pulse,” the EW operator announced over the command net. “Less pronounced than the first. Call it as more distant.”
“That’ll be Pyongyang,” she told Mills. “One more, and we’re home.” A wave front hammered by that much energy would penetrate hundreds of feet of rock, short-circuiting missile guidance systems, launch equipment, even the starter wiring of the logging trucks the NKs depended on to haul their transporter-erector-launchers out of the tunnels for firing. But they had to be carefully timed, to avoid frying their own microsatellites as they swung overhead. Sizzle one, and their battlespace picture would be degraded. Electrocute two or three, and Chromite itself could be at risk.
The seconds ticked by.
“Nothing?” she yelled across the space.
The operator shook his head, pale-faced, sweating.
“Fuck,” she muttered, scratching furiously at her armpit through the coveralls.
“Let’s give it another minute, Skipper,” Mills said in a low voice.
She snapped, “I don’t need fucking talking down, XO. The terminal body has to have hit by now. Something’s obviously gone wrong.”
“Sorry, Captain.”
She regretted lashing out at him, she was sleepless and irritated, but he’d just have to let it pass.
He said, not meeting her gaze, “Roger, CO. Um … high-side chat just confirmed blast three isn’t coming off. Warhead malfunction. Seismics registered low-order detonation only.”
All right then. She raised her voice, setting aside the helmet, which she’d cradled on her lap during the blackout. “Shift to EMPcon Bravo. Forward array back online. Power back to the magazines. Reset the ABM watch. Let’s get AALIS back up, get back on our mission.”
But she didn’t have a good feeling. Two devices had worked as specified. But the last, and the most vital to mission success, hadn’t.
The decapitation raid on Korea had just become enormously more difficult.
Now its success might depend on Savo Island.
OVER the next hour, she watched the raid unfold on the displays, accompanied by a psychopolitical offensive by the ROK government in exile. As soon as state television went off the air, prerecorded messages blanketed the country from Allied transmitters. From the Yalu to Pusan, they warned the population to stay indoors, not to report to work or duty, that liberation had come and Korea was being reunited under a democratic government. A wave of Harops had gone in next. The Israeli-produced drones lingered over suspect sites, searching for any remaining radars and destroying them as soon as they radiated.
Gremlins and Trugons had followed. Drones, dispensed from C-130s and C-17s from outside the range of any still unsuppressed antiaircraft sites. The swarming UAVs had been tested in the raids on the Chinese coast and in combat with the Marines on Taiwan. Whenever a military vehicle moved, whenever an aircraft taxied out from its hidey-hole, they darted down to attack. Marauder drones with Hellfires orbited over areas identified as hide sites, alert for the IR glare of missile boosters.
The assault unfolded with incredible swiftness. After an hour, Cheryl’s displays showed large segments of the coast crosshatched green … safe-fly zones, where nothing larger than small arms would threaten Allied aircraft.
Then the planes went in. US Air Force F-22s and F-35s, and JASDF Mitsubishi F-15Js, F-2s, and X-2 Shinshin stealth fighters, were joined by the seven squadrons of ROKAF F-15s and FA-50s that had sought refuge in Japan after the fall of Seoul. Navy and Marine fighters from the jeep and strike carriers concentrated on the landing zone, blasting everything with low level runs.
The bombers followed. The first wave, lancing deep into the northern mountains, dropped Deep Digger bombs, penetrators that literally burned through rock and soil into tunnels intel had identified as likely locations for the hidden Korean retaliatory capability.
The second wave had obliterated the palaces and bunker complexes where Kim Jong Un was expected to hide. Others had spread terror and death along the old DMZ, blasting apart the artillery batteries that had intimidated the Allies for so many years with two-thousand-pound smart bombs. South of that demarcation, SEALs, Deltas, and Republic of Korea special ops teams were blowing bridges and mining highways, trapping the occupation forces of the North Korean army deep in South Korea.
Cheryl was getting up to pee when the surface console operator called, “Surface contacts, emerging from the harbor.”
She sighed, and settled the helmet back on.
She hovered in midair, three hundred miles off the coast, but able to zoom in on any point in the country. Her gaze took in the whole peninsula now, all quarter-million square kilometers of Korea.
Up to the 42nd Parallel, where the display showed General Sharkov’s heavily armed divisions, deployed along the Russian border.
AALIS’s disembodied voice murmured in her ear, “Small craft emerging from Wonsan harbor.”
She zoomed in. Six, seven small contacts were slowly departing the breakwaters. “Probably diesel-engined,” Chief Terranova said on the command circuit. “So no ignition systems to disrupt.”
“Jesus. Seriously? Fishing boats?”
“Guess they have their orders,” Mills said. “Doubt they’d have anything aboard heavier than an RPG, though.”
So, a group suicide mission. But one she couldn’t just ignore. She switched to the formation circuit. “Hungry Ghost, Hungry Ghost, this is Tangler, Tangler, over.”
“Hungry Ghost” was Jeonnam’s call sign. Appropriate, since it was manned by the surviving crew of a ROKN frigate sunk in the Battle of the Taiwan Strait.
“This is Hungry Ghost, over.”
“See the hostiles sortieing from Wonsan?”
“Roger, Captain. We hold those contacts.”
“Move to a position to intercept. If their radios still work? Try to persuade them to turn back. If they won’t, sink with gunfire. Stay alert for midget submarines, more suicide attacks, drones. Don’t move too fast, I want to send USVs with you. Over.”
The accented voice acknowledged and signed off. Seconds later, Jeonnam peeled off from station, heading toward the beach.
She passed the information to Sonar and ASW, and got two AI-enabled undersea vehicles dropped through Savo’s central well. Once they were speeding after the destroyer, she returned her attention to the northern reaches of the peninsula.
Savo’s powerful phased array scanned it thirty times a second. She was getting feed, too, from the Marauders that cruised the valleys and the MICE microsatellites that flashed past in low orbits, each handing off the surveillance mission to the next as it rose above the horizon. From the Air Force AWACs that was even now angling in closer to Chongjin, in the north.
All collected, fused, and displayed in her helmet. Her eyes flicked from one callout to the next. No human brain could assimilate all this. No human intelligence could sort through so much input, and react quickly and correctly to the one piece of data that meant an emergent threat.
But the ship was backing her up. Sifting through the terabytes of data streaming over the networks.
An insistent pressure from her bladder recalled her to where she’d been headed before all this started … turning the watch over to Mills, she unsocketed from the helmet and uncrimped a stiff back from the chair. Then staggered, catching herself on the seat back as CIC reeled around her. The dim space seemed insubstantial, indistinct, an unreal shadow-cave after the omniscient reality of the Network.
For a moment her mind staggered as well, as she gripped the hard edge of the seat and tried to master the disorientation. Which was more real, flesh and blood and atoms, or the digital simulacra that more and more reflected how battles were managed? Were not both of them only surface manifestations, mere surfaces to a deeper reality?
No, she reminded herself. There was a stratum beneath appearances.
A reality in which people’s loved ones, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, died, shot down.
Just like someone else’s loved ones were dying ashore now, under American missiles and bombs. That was the reality.
“Y’okay, Skipper?” Terranova, concerned. Taking her elbow.
She cleared her throat. Deep breaths, Cheryl. “Um, yeah, thanks. Just thinking.”
“You looked … like you needed to sit down. Shu-eh you’re all right?”
Cheryl nodded. “I’m fine, Terror. Be right back. Just need a head call.”
SHE escaped for a few minutes to the narrow cramped airliner-style head beside CIC. Peed, remembering only then to turn her Hydra back on, in case the TAO needed her for some fresh crisis. Washed her face. Considered, and peeled her coveralls down to douse her armpits as well. A sniff test. Better, but … Send somebody to her cabin for a fresh set? Maybe. If this went on too much longer.
She blinked at a too-pale, strained-looking visage in the mirror. She couldn’t obsess over casualties ashore. If Chromite went as planned, it would bring peace a long step closer.
Peace. It seemed like heaven. A long-ago Golden Age when you didn’t have to know where the nearest blast shelter was, and carry a gas mask at all times. When you didn’t have to leave your cell on to be ready for a Homeland Security warning text. Didn’t have to watch everything you said, and who you said it to. When you could say what you liked about politics, and not be accused of being an ass-symp and taken in for “counseling.”
It occurred to her then that she hadn’t eaten lunch. Or breakfast, either. Someone had come by with a tray, but she’d waved him off. Well, there were breakfast bars and hot coffee in the sonar shack. That should keep her going a little longer.
Maybe even, until this was over.
BUT the landing itself was delayed. No reason given, but the spearheads still orbited twenty miles off the beach, overheaded by heavy combat air. Finally the order came over the command net. The special ops teams headed in aboard Ospreys. Lagging them, deployed in an arrow formation, were the fast catamarans and LCACs, loaded with Marine light armor. Overheaded by Marauders, Gremlins, and carrier air, they hit the beach to hold the exit door open while a combined ground and airborne force made a furious dash eighty miles inland.
Kim’s father had built a remote mountain stronghold at Mount Paektu, a gigantic volcano near the border with China. Over decades, the regime had turned it into a sprawling redoubt of tunnels and underground fortifications.
Unfortunately, they were off-limits to nuclear or even heavy conventional bunker busters. Swiss geological experts warned that the volcano was still spasmodically active. Too great a shock might trigger a full-scale eruption, bringing on something like nuclear winter and massive crop failures over most of the Northern Hemisphere.
So the Kims had chosen well. But with most of the NK army now sucked into the occupation of the South, the Joint Chiefs had calculated that a surgical strike stood a reasonable chance of taking down the command structure, possibly including the dictator himself.
At least, that was the plan. As the trooplifters headed inland, escorted by fighters and attack helicopters, Cheryl tried to keep her attention on her own role. Stand guard, defend Japan and the other Allies, and the homeland, against retaliation. That was her mission.
Jeonnam reported back that they’d warned the fishing craft heading for Savo and Sioux City, received no response, and sunk the lead two with gunfire. At which point the other fishermen had turned south and headed away down the coast.
Fleeing. And the right choice, she thought. Their hammering diesels had been impossible to overlook, their scanty armament a risible nonthreat. Even if they were burdened hull-deep with explosives and manned by suicidal fanatics, they’d never have gotten close. Not that North Korea had any shortage of either—explosives, or fanatics.
But she couldn’t help donning the helmet again now and then to monitor the beachhead elements as they crept inland, securing roads and heights. Sealing a perimeter against counterattack. Creating a safe zone damaged aircraft could retreat to, along with developing a lodgment in case the Koreans buckled after their leadership was decapitated. Helicopters and LCACs shuttled in artillery and ammunition. Close air support UAVs circled ahead of the ground element, eliminating opposition, while deep strikes cut bridges on the Chinese side, in case Beijing was tempted to intervene. The Ospreys hopscotched ahead, dropping parties to seize bridges and passes.
So far, they seemed to be making good progress.
She scratched violently at her neck, where the helmet rested. It seemed to be irritating her skin, which was already prone to rash. Sighed, and told the TAO to call instantly if he needed her. “And by instantly, I mean if anything at all happens out of the ordinary. Bad news doesn’t improve with age. I’m going to see if I can get my head down, at least for a little while.”
“Best of luck on that, Captain. Wish I could join you,” Mills said, with a tired smile.
At her console a few feet away, Terranova snorted. Mills reddened. “I mean—I didn’t mean—!”
“I know what you meant, XO. Forget it.” She felt like giggling. Laughing insanely. God, she was tired. She couldn’t think of anything to add that didn’t sound ludicrous. So she just sighed, and undogged the door.
THEY were on the beach again, at the bonfire. Alone together there, this time. The steady wind from the sea whipped the coals into white heat in the moonless, starlit dark. Sparks snapped and whirled up into the night. The surf crashed with a long, dull, withdrawing roar.
She and Yeiyah. His skin like smooth brown leather, so soft-looking she had to caress it. A tattooed dragon in blue and green writhed down his arm in the firelight. Muscle bulged, and tanned fingers gripped her shoulders like iron clamps. She pulled the blanket over them as he drove into her. Dug her head back into the sand, gasping, as the stars far above almost went supernova in her belly.
Almost, almost, almost …
But never quite. She could get only so close, and then, it didn’t seem to happen …
He lifted his head in the firelight. No. It wasn’t Teju. It was Eddie. Only there was something wrong with his face. His breath stank of decay. When he pulled out of her and rolled away, it felt as if something remained. She looked down. To see it had come detached, rotted out of him, was still sticking out of her … and it was beeping … oh my God …
She bolted upright, eyes blasted open, to near-dark. Red numerals blinked 0300. She was in her at-sea cabin, and the phone beside her bunk was going nuts. She tried to shake off the dream. It was too horrifying. Too real … she grabbed the handset desperately. “CO,” she rasped.
“Skipper, TAO. Call for fire from Underwood.”
“Underwood” was the fire coordination center for Chromite, back in Japan. “Go ahead.”
“They want Tomahawks on an armored concentration north of Paekam.”
She struggled up on an elbow and clicked the bunk light on. Stuck her toes down, searching for her boots. She was still in her smelly coveralls. Shit, fuck, she’d meant to change … “Paekam … what … where the fuck’s that?”
“It’s a blocking force. Holding the Strykers up at a pass through a ridge. They need a laydown ASAP.”
She zipped her boots. “Get a package rolling. Be right there.”
The dream shredded, evaporating into confused wisps as her mind lurched ahead. Into what her task group had left in the magazines, flight time, preparations for launch. She started to grope after it, then shook her head. Why bother? They didn’t mean anything, dreams. They were less than nothing …
UNDERWOOD requested an immediate laydown of sixteen TLAM-Ds, which expended the last of Savo’s land attack inventory. That left her with only the Alliance rounds and enough Standards for self-defense, plus the railguns and lasers, of course. The Tomahawks were on their way within eight minutes, along with five more from Jeonnam. AI-enabled models, once in the target zone they would seek out armor on their own, distinguish enemy vehicles from the Marines’ Strykers and Abramses, and dispense submunitions to destroy them.
Aboard the old Savo, each launch had vibrated the ship and shaken dust out of the overhead. But now, deep within the Citadel she couldn’t hear the faintest echo or tremor as they roared out of the magazines, oriented themselves, dropped their boosters, and headed off. Only the video from the deck cameras showing gouts of flame venting from the redirectors, then stars climbing into the night, proved they were indeed on their way.
“Sonar reports engine noise bearing zero eight eight.”
She cleared her throat, knuckled her eyes, and got up from the command desk. Crossed to the blue curtain that traditionally walled off the sonar stacks from the rest of CIC. Pushed them aside, to reveal a small balding man leaning over the chairs of two younger petty officers, like an aging high priest over his acolytes. Before them screens streamed marigold lines. They marched steadily top to bottom, a mysterious hieroglyphic only the trained eye could make any sense of. “Chief, what’ve we got?”
Chief Zotcher glanced up. “Skipper. Something out at roughly zero nine zero.”
“Those are fishing smacks,” she told him. “Jeonnam sank two and the others are skedaddling.”
One of the petty officers placed a finger on the screen. “See it? There’s a tone.”
Zotcher said, “Use the K filter.” To Cheryl he added, “We have those, yeah. Broadband, small-boat harmonic signatures. Off the engine and prop, mainly. Typical four-stroke, six-cylinder marine diesels. But there’s something else there too.”
She glanced back at the displays in CIC. The gaggle of small contacts that were the fishing boats had slowed. They were trailing out into a long line, but still heading south along the coast. “Something else. What?”
“We’re not sure … a bathtub pattern under what we think is the fishing boats. But on the same bearing, so it’s hard to separate out, even with analysis.—Move the window, show the Skipper the Fourier.”
She stood watching marigold waterfalls march up the screens as Zotcher prattled on about grating lobes and covariance matrices. Not for the first time, she reflected that the chiefs could probably run the ship without officers aboard at all. At least until they confronted the administrative requirements … She interrupted his search. “I don’t see it.”
The petty officer hissed. Zotcher hopped from one foot to the other, pointing. “Right there. There! See it?”
“I don’t, but I believe you. So what is it? Biologics?”
“I can’t tell you that, Captain, just that it’s multiple low-energy contacts, with low bearing drifts. Biologics come in at a higher frequency.”
She scratched between her fingers, considering. Low bearing drift meant the source was headed either for or directly away from the receiver. “Does Sioux City have it? Did you get a cross-bearing?”
“She’s only got the towed 20. They’re not picking this up, but they don’t have our whiskers.” Meaning, the supersensitive passive detector rods lined along the keel. “Uh, I’d recommend getting our bloodhounds out there, check this out. Captain. Just to be on the safe side.”
“Both our USVs are inshore with Jeonnam. Just get me a range,” she told him, and turned and pushed her way back into the main space. Worrying, now, that her resources were being drawn down to the danger point. She could send a drone out along a line of bearing, but it would be slow and largely limited to video coverage. Could launch a helo, but that might constrain maneuvering for at least a few minutes … She glanced at a wind direction indicator. Actually they were pretty close to a launch envelope.
“Let’s get Bedsores out there. Come right till we have wind. Vector him out along zero nine zero, on sonobuoy and ELINT run,” she told the TAO. The lead helo pilot was compact, taciturn, and apparently born without the need for sleep. He spent most nights playing board games in the hangar with several of his similarly addicted maintainers. Hence, naturally, the nickname.
The TAO nodded and started the ball rolling.
FORTY minutes later their TLAMs reached the target area and began crisscrossing it, dispensing munitions over the enemy armor and bunkers blocking the pass. She kept checking the nanochat and was happy to see the land commander’s praise of their effectiveness.
When the announcement came they’d broken through a muted cheer bounced around CIC. Not long after, the symbology showed the lead elements on the move once more. They pushed through the pass, hooked left along the ridge, then turned right for the climb up the mountain. Their final destination lay six miles ahead: the tunnels and bunker systems of the dictator’s last redoubt. A second surge of refueled UAVs and fighters orbited overhead, taking out bunkers, concealed batteries, and firing points along the road with Hellfires and JDAM bombs.
Cheryl couldn’t help marveling. Chromite had seemed like a bridge too far, a victory of wishful thinking over the reality of the North Korean will to resist. But to judge by their progress so far, the operation just might succeed.
Surely killing one of the enemy dictators, and knocking one of the Opposed Powers out of the war, would go a long way toward ending it.
She was actually feeling optimistic when one of the UAV symbols popped red. A line unrolled on the nanochat board.
Locus: to Matador
Disturbance reported on surface Lake Chon
She frowned. Chon was the jewel-like pool cradled in the caldera of the volcano. Similar to Crater Lake: an immense spread of water walled by precipitous mountains. A disturbance? Maybe … it was erupting?
Half a second later the alert-script cuing buzzer went off at the AALIS control station. Chief Terranova called over the racket, “Launch cuing! Simultaneous cuings from MICE and Locus.”
“Confirm from UAV,” said the controller, behind her. “Video.”
Cheryl snatched for the helmet. Her hair snagged on the cable. She jerked it free, tearing strands out by the roots, and powered up. The screens lit. She toggled to overhead from Locus, the Marauder that had sent the alarm.
Rugged, snow-etched mountains fell to a blue, lovely, wind-rippled surface. For a moment she stared, puzzled. What the fuck, over?
The camera lurched, canted right, and refocused.
On a patch where that placid blue was being torn apart, erupting into foam and smoke as above it a fiery lance climbed skyward.
Beside her Mills, probably seeing the same feed on his screen, breathed, “That’s a JL.”
CALLOUTS flashed beside the video of the climbing missile on Cheryl’s own screens. Terranova called, “Profile plot, designate Meteor. Very rapid climb rate. Consistent with solid-fueled first stage. Size and acceleration profile … consistent with sub-launched IRBM. Passing angels five. Identify as SLBM. ID as hostile.”
Sub-launched? But there couldn’t be submarines in an inland lake.
There could be submerged tubes, though. Linked with command nodes through deep tunnels …
“Take as target,” Cheryl said into the throat mike.
“Roger, ma’am … have lock-on … computing trajectory and IPP.”
Beside her Mills said urgently, “Their sub-launched IRBM. Reverse engineered or copied from Chinese JL-1. Range … red book guesses at a thousand kilometers. Unitary missile. Single warhead. But … I don’t know, this looks … bigger.”
“Presumed thermonuclear,” Cheryl added through a suddenly dry mouth.
The video froze, canted, then recommenced. A mountain filled the field of view. Then the lake surface again, boiling once more. A second blunt-nosed torpedo-shape burst up through smoke-stained spray, ignited its booster with a silent clap that spread blast waves across the water, and began to climb.
But as the video canted again, violently, a flame-tipped cone of white fire entered the frame from the right. It dwindled rapidly as it chased the rising missile into the crystalline sky.
The two fires merged and vanished in a ball of yellow-white flame, followed by an immense cloud of dirty smoke. Pieces emerged at jagged angles, still afire, looping and tumbling before falling back into the seething, steaming lake.
She toggled from video to radar. The vibrating brackets of AALIS’s tracking. Readouts showed a rapid climb rate, altitude angels fifty. “Meteor Bravo splashed. Meteor Alfa, nearing pitchover,” Chief Terranova noted.
They had a problem. She toggled from screen to screen, thinking rapidly as a third missile burst out of the lake and climbed. Another Hellfire chased it, but fell behind and at last staggered down out of the sky to detonate against a mountainside.
“Meteor Alfa, gathering horizontal velocity,” AALIS’s neutral, ungendered voice informed her. “Stand by … pitchover. Meteor Charlie, locked on. Solid lock both contacts.”
Two targets now. They wouldn’t get an impact point or an intercept angle right away. Once she had a firm impact prediction, Terranova could set up to fire.
A unitary target—meaning the warhead didn’t detach from the main body of the missile—presented a huge radar return. But Cheryl also had to consider range, speed, and geometry. If the target was too far to the south, the intercept probabilities went down. If it was aimed north, they rose. Best of all was a head-on shot, the classic reentry phase intercept, but she doubted they’d get that. One seldom got an easy shot at a ballistic missile. And they had no idea how many more lay poised at the bottom of that lake. Or when Dictator Kim would decide to push his famous red button again.
Not that she wouldn’t whack that mole if she had to. Just that she might have to expend more Alliances to get an assured kill. Without all that many rounds to start with. “I need an IPP,” she snapped. “First target's coming out of pitchover. Let’s get it, I need it now, people!”
“Looking at the angle. Extending the arc … Target is … Tokyo.” Terranova’s soft voice was as unconcerned as it would have been if the thermonuclear had been dialed in on the South Pole.
Cheryl toggled to the IPP screen. The GCCS underlay on which it was imposed didn’t show populated areas as such. Just black circles with town names. But the way they clustered as they approached the largest circle of all made it plain how many millions lay beneath the lifted sword.
In the streets, sirens would be wailing. Cells would be streaming text alerts, directions to the nearest shelter, warnings to take cover immediately.
But even with the sirens, the texts, the shelters, hundreds of thousands of Japanese would die.
The AOU shrank, widened, then contracted again as AALIS recalculated, matching its projections with the Network’s. But it never budged from the middle of the Tokyo plain.
Okay, Cheryl. Stay cold. Execute the prefire checklist. Toggling to the intercept template as AALIS set it up, she contemplated the geometry.
The missile’s closest point of approach would be southeast of their assigned station. If she launched quickly enough, they could catch it in the postboost phase, while the sustainer engine was firing and it wasn’t yet at maximum velocity.
Move farther south, out of her box? They didn’t have enough time to gain a better angle for the shot, but if more surprise packages emerged from Mount Doom, even a few miles southing might improve their P sub K. She snapped to Mills, “Come around to two zero zero, XO. Flank speed, thirty-five knots.”
He was bent forward, frowning at the display. “Pass to the bridge, or execute from here?”
“Suit yourself. Just get us around and kick her in the ass.”
The compartment heeled slightly. Something clattered back by the ASW plot. Without shafts or the conventional huge spinning screws aft, propelled instead by electric motors in rotatable pods along the hull, the cruiser pivoted and accelerated without a shimmy.
“Hitting thirty,” the TAO told her a couple of minutes later.
“CO, Air control: Helo reports sonar contact bearing 085 true, 21,000 yards Mother.”
“Mother” of course was Savo Island. Cheryl rogered, intent on the still climbing radar contact that was Meteor Alfa.
Headed for the biggest city on the planet.
Thirty-eight million people. She remembered that. From somewhere.
The Japanese had layered missile defense. Patriot Advanced Capability, Aegis Ashore with Standards, and an independently developed multi-object kill system based on the SRB-A3 solid rocket booster. She assumed they were seeing the same picture she was. But she owed them more than an assumption. She typed rapidly:
Matador: to Grandstand
Confirm MDA, Tokyo informed ICBM en route generated IPP Tokyo
Grandstand: to Matador
Affirmative. But if you can intercept do so soonest. Reduce risk to population as much as possible
She nodded, understanding. Taking it down early would drop it in the Sea of Japan. A hell of a lot better than raining radioactive debris on one of the most densely populated areas on earth.
Matador: to Grandstand
Will do our best
She glanced down, searching for the red Launch Enable switch. Then remembered: that had been aboard the old Savo. Now AALIS ran the entire launch protocol, once a target was designated to the system. Cheryl could veto a launch, up till the boosters ignited, but that was all.
More and more autonomous with each software flight, “Alice” was now all but independent of human decision making. The ontologists had discussed, the designers had designed, the Navy had approved. The ship would think more quickly and more correctly than humans under pressure. It tracked the target, tested itself, ran last-second operability checks on individual rounds, and calculated the chances of a successful intercept twenty times a second, until the parameters optimized.
Then it would send the signal.
“This is Savo Island. Designate target Meteor Alfa. Three round salvo, one from forward magazine, two from aft,” the ship’s detached gender-free voice intoned in her earbuds. “Initializing missiles 2, 4, and 7. Testing … testing complete. Missiles ready. Standing by to fire.”
“Steady track,” Terranova called. “Still accelerating. But it’s gotta be close to sustainer burnout.”
Cheryl was taking a deep breath when a discordant chime sounded. Zotcher burst through the blue curtains. “High-speed screws,” he yelled. “TWS has torpedoes in the water, bearing one zero zero. At least two. No pings. Bearing zero eight zero.”
“Bridge, TAO,” said the officer next to her instantly. “Execute turnaway—”
“Belay that,” Cheryl snapped. “Belay that, maintain course and speed!” The inertials on the missiles required the launch platform on a steady course for at least sixty seconds before launch.
The external cameras on the helmet gave her faces turned toward her in CIC. A close-up of the TAO’s strained features as he acknowledged. “You can slow to ten,” she added, “and get the CATs in the water. As soon as missiles-away, we can—”
“Two more torpedoes in the water,” a sonar petty officer’s voice came over the comman circuit. “Total four. All running hot. Sound like CHT-02s. Wake-homing guidance.”
She scratched furiously at her neck, fighting a sudden, dizzying sense of dejá vû. Then realized: No. It's wasn’t dejá vû.
This was identical with the exercise scenario they’d played during workup, off Hawaii. Dual threats, missile and subsurface, simultaneous and unexpected.
And that exercise play had ended … with a torpedo slamming into Savo’s stern.
“Activate Rimshot,” She snapped. “Hold off on decoys. Stand by on CAT.”
Unfortunately, Rimshot, the magnetic foxer, wouldn’t spoof a wake-homer. The bubble decoys confused active homing torpedoes, but once again, wouldn’t deflect the weapons charging toward them at sixty knots. The Countermeasure, Antitorpedo, was her last resort. It would home in on and detonate beside the enemy fish.
But she still only had the single brace of four CATs. She hardly noticed as her nails dug into the itching sores between her fingers.
They might still catch a break. Wake-homers were usually fired from astern of their target. They zigzagged up the path of disturbed water a ship left behind. They had a secondary passive sound-homing capability, but with her podded Teslas Savo put much fewer decibels in the water than a ship with conventional screws.
But fired from ahead, as they’d been in this case, they’d most likely pass by Savo, detect her wake, behind her, then U-turn and home in from astern.
And whoever had fired them was still there, ahead. But why hadn’t sonar picked them up? She touched her throat mike. “Sonar, CO. Chief, why didn’t we hear the archer?”
“Low and slow … and masked by those fishing smacks. Blade noise square on the same freq spectrum.”
“And from the same bearing,” she said, understanding now. The fishermen hadn’t been the threat at all. They’d been masks, to cover the approach of something more dangerous. Probably, some of the midget submarines Intel had warned about.
Maybe they’d all been too dismissive of this enemy. Both of his resolve, and his craftiness.
“Captain, we need to turn away,” the TAO said.
“Negative. Where’s Bedsores? I mean, Red Hawk? I mean, Dagger 02?” Their helo was still out there. It carried homing torpedoes, cocked to track and kill. “Vector him toward home plate. ASW, drop at Sonar’s best guess of range.”
She toggled off that circuit and back to ABM. Less than a minute had passed since her last look, but the climbing missile was higher above their radar horizon. She scratched viciously at her wrist. Sweat trickled down her neck under the helmet. Three minutes since initial cuing. AALIS was computing intercept points. But with a crossing engagement their firing window would be tiny. Even the uprated Alliances could miss. The terminal interceptor depended on kinetic collision, actually slamming into the target. It could fail too.
But if she held off too long, nothing would be able to catch up as gravity increased the velocity of the falling reentry body.
And then, Tokyo …
She couldn’t think of that.
“Two more high-speed screws,” Zotcher said over the circuit. “Total six in the water.”
And she had only four CATs.
She closed her eyes.
Savo was doomed.
The enemy had won. Snuck in under aural cover, then swung for the groin. And in a few seconds, the punch would connect. Heavy, explosives-packed weapons, sniffing the sea like hunting hounds. Closing from astern. And finally, crashing into the hull …
A flash of her old CO, Lenson, intent at the command desk, in situations as tight as this … how frosty he’d always looked … surely he’d never felt this intimidated, or unsure. The guy had self-confidence she could never match. And the unorthodox brilliance to come up with tactics that left the enemy flatfooted in left field.
And just then, in remembering him, one last thing she could do to save her ship occurred to her.
She recoiled. To do it would condemn her to obloquy. Subject her to court-martial.
But it had to be done. To save her ship, her crew, and their ability to keep fighting.
Reluctantly lifting her arm, which felt like it weighed tons, she toggled her throat mike to task group command. “Sandman, this is Tangler,” she murmured.
Sandman was Sioux City, the frigate pacing her a mile off Savo’s quarter.
Tangler was Cheryl herself, commanding the task group. Including the two non-ABM-capable escorts.
“This is Sandman, over.”
“Tangler Actual. Immediate execute. Break. Flank speed, cut left, cross my stern at two hundred yards. Stand by. Execute.”
“This is Sandman. Say again, over.”
She repeated the command and got a roger. Feeling cold, she shivered.
She’d just condemned others, in place of herself.
No. Not in her place. In place of her ship, and the weapons and sensors it carried.
It was the inexorable logic of every game, from chess to war.
Sacrifice the lesser, to protect the greater.
Just as her old Savo had been sacrificed once, to protect a carrier.
Now only the new Savo stood between Japan and destruction.
Sioux City would have to be the sacrifice.
She sighed, feeling like she’d held her breath for half an hour. Toggled to the ASW net, to see Dagger One winking on and off five miles to the southwest. “Mark on top Datum. Fish in the water,” its pilot reported. “Will orbit and drop number two.”
“CATs triggered,” the ASW officer said on the same circuit. “CATs away.”
“All engines stop,” Cheryl said. The cruiser would coast on, driven by the sheer momentum of nearly twenty thousand tons of steel. But with her wake dissipating, and with a more attractive target, the frigate, crossing behind her.
Luring them away …
To chase someone else down instead …
She pushed her horror aside and hit the mike again, this time the internal command circuit. “Alice: initialize three more Alliances. First salvo will be, three missiles on Meteor Alfa. Second salvo, three rounds on Meteor Charlie.” She’d get her interceptors out where they could do some good, at least. Even if her last parry failed, and Savo too was hit. Even if she and her escort both went down.
“AALIS aye. Initializing Alliances one, three, five. Two, four, and seven standing by to fire. Magazines in ‘operate’ mode. Three-round salvo on target desig Meteor Alfa. Second salvo, three rounds Meteor Charlie. Warning alarm forward and aft. Safeties and interlocks disengaged. Standing by for CO’s command.”
“You have permission to engage,” she said, enunciating it in the distinct, clear tone you had to use talking to voice recognition software.
“Acknowledge weapons free. Stand by … missile two away. Missile four away. Missile seven away. Alliances one, three, five, and six initializing. Stand by for second salvo, target Meteor Charlie.”
No roar, no rattle, not this deep in the hull, but she followed the fiery plumes toward the horizon on the video feed. “Very well.”
“Permission to engage Meteor Charlie.”
“You have permission to engage Meteor Charlie.”
“Acknowledged.”
She toggled to nanochat and sent:
Matador: to ALCON
Under wake-homing torpedo attack. Ordered Sandman to cross my stern to absorb. Accept full responsibility.
In her earbuds AALIS said, “All missiles away. Salvos complete. Tracking. Stand by for intercepts.”
Cheryl sat shaking, unable to respond. Her fingers left bloody prints on the command desk. She squeezed her eyes closed. She’d done all she could. All she fucking well could.
Now they’d all just have to live with the consequences.