NIGHT came early this far north. Cheryl stood shivering on the starboard wing. Gray-black rollers glinted like phosphated steel in the waning light. The wind was fierce, chilling her even under the foul-weather jacket. The temperature had dropped precipitously as the task force beat north. Past Hokkaido, out to the Pacific. Past the Kuriles, then north again, into the Sea of Okhotsk.
She dogged the door behind her. The officer of the deck glanced her way, but said nothing. She scratched her neck, burying her face in the radar hood. Feeling boxed in. Claustrophobic.
As well as guilty.
She groped under her coveralls, nails mining furiously at an itch that never seemed to retreat, that seemed resolved to take over her entire body no matter what Doc Grissett prescribed. “Fuck,” she muttered.
The surprise wake-homer attack off Korea. When she’d ordered Sioux City into Savo’s wake. The frigate had intercepted two of the incomers with her own CATs, but the last enemy weapon had evaded the antitorpedos and caught her on the port quarter, wrecking her so badly she had to be towed to Sasebo. With thirty-two dead, and dozens more injured or burned.
Cheryl shuddered. How was she going to face the families? Now she knew how Eddie’s squadron commander had felt, when she’d upbraided him for the loss of her husband. And felt doubly culpable.
But maybe this war could be ended. Maybe it was even ending now. Drawing to a close, not with triumph, but in the hesitant, tacit acknowledgment of mutually exhausted combatants.
She hoped so. With a parting word to the OOD, she stepped into the elevator.
“GOT more company, Skipper,” Matt Mills said as she slid into her seat at the command desk. Deep in the Citadel, in what was still called CIC by the old hands. The air was nearly as cold down here as up on the wing. The overhead was black as an Arctic night. The lighting was muted. No one else spoke. She nodded.
The combat systems team was doing an interoperability drill with the Japanese ships. Exchanging launch point estimates, surveillance tracks, IPPs, time of predicted impacts. The output would be a covariance error, or tracking error estimate, checking to what extent their systems returned consistent outputs if they had to carry out a coordinated engagement. She left them to it, studying the central display. The geo plot, first.
They were surrounded by Russia. Sakhalin and the mainland to the west and north. The Kamchatka Peninsula to the east. She leaned in, looking where Mills placed the laser trace.
“There,” her exec muttered.
Twenty miles to the west. Three contacts. AALIS had labeled them friendly, but Cheryl didn’t think that was entirely accurate.
Years before, the UN had declared this entire sea part of the Russian continental shelf, and thus part of the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Russian Federation. Oil and gas developments sprawled off Magadan, to the north. To her south, between her and the rest of the Allied forces, lay the main Russian naval base at Vladivostok. The Eastern Military District was led by Colonel-General Yevgeney Sharkov. PACOM had set her up with an HF radio link with his headquarters. A petty officer checked in once a day. A hotline, just in case.
The new contacts to the west, joining others to the east and an unknown number of submarines, were Russian.
The order of battle was sobering. The Russian Pacific Fleet had been beefed up throughout the war until the bulk of their navy was out here, including the latest ship types and a new carrier, Admiral Istomin, with fifth-generation T-50 fighters. Heavy-missile batteries, dense antiaircraft coverage, and a major airbase in Sakhalin lined the coasts. The EWs reported constant probing by radar.
An even more pointed threat, a stealthy Okhotnik drone, had shown up two days after they arrived on station. Relieved every twelve hours, a strike-and-recon UAV had stuck with them ever since, orbiting the task force at high altitude. She could see the hypersonic antiship missiles the drones carried through the telescopes on Savo’s lasers.
“China might be less of a threat, out here, than the Russians,” Mills said.
She nodded grimly. “My thoughts exactly, XO. Finished the drill? How’s it look?”
“Chokai’s still lagging us. The older software flight, probably. I’m not sure what we can do about it.”
Terranova stopped on her way past. “Coffee, Captain? I’m getting some.”
Cheryl shook her head and said no, thanks. Then almost immediately wished she hadn’t, but the Terror was already gone.
She got up and stalked the aisles, checking screens over the shoulders of petty officers and junior officers. Parting the curtains into Sonar. The Keurig was lit. She dumped in a bottle of water, selected a Sumatran Dark, Ten Ounce, and hit the button.
The Sonar chief, Zotcher, cleared his throat. “Skipper, remember that guy Admiral Lenson brought aboard with his staff? Back on the old Savo? The submariner—Rit?”
Cheryl rolled her eyes as she stirred in two sugars. She could afford it; she’d lost weight every time she checked the scale. Besides, who was she supposed to look good for? The only man who’d shown any interest, after Eddie that is, was back with his family.
The resort had nestled in a green-forested canyon, facing a golden beach and a lapis sea. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked down a the nature trail on one side, and down onto a heated pool on the other. Two days of freedom, snatched from a hellish precom schedule. Forty-eight hours of sex, larded with guilt. His mother Thai, father Nigerian. Cocoa skin she could close her eyes and still feel. Black stubble in the morning …
Zotcher cleared his throat and she flinched. “You mean Carpenter,” she said. “The idiot who put that porn game on the ship’s network?”
“It wasn’t a—” Zotcher stopped himself in mid-sentence. “Uh, right, Skipper. Anyway, he was telling me about how they used to run subs up here. Against the Soviets. Tapped a comm cable that ran along the bottom. Listened in on all the traffic from the base at Kamchatka.”
“Okay,” she said, and waited. There was an awkward moment.
Zotcher broke it. “Anyway, another thing he said, you know, we have to watch for ice up here.”
“Too early in the season for that, Chief. And it’s a lot warmer now than it was back then.”
“Sure, Skipper, but there’s a lot of fresh water inflow. That means low salinity in the upper levels of the water column. Ice from the Amur River. And we’re getting into autumn now.”
“This’ll be the fourth year of the war,” she said, feeling her shoulders tense again. Not really sure she was following his meaning.
Zotcher blinked. “All I know is what the Armed Forces News puts out. But it sounds like we’re winning. Or at least, that the slants are losing.”
“I hope so. Okay, we’ll stay alert for ice.” She sighed, and carried her mug back out into the main compartment. Looked at the elevator, wondering if she should be back on the bridge. Sometimes it seemed strange, unseamanlike, sealed in by airlocks, running everything from screens, like a video game tournament.
At the moment the center display showed her formation. Her formation. She was in tactical command of an augmented task group. She stood before the display, absentmindedly scratching her flank. Considering.
The centerpieces were Savo Island, two Japanese ABM-capable Aegis destroyers, Chokai and Ashigara, and one Korean unit, ROKS Jeonnam. Jeonnam was the northernmost, with Savo next, then the Japanese, all spaced at thirty-mile intervals. With their coverage areas interlocked, they barriered the flight paths of any ballistic missiles launched from central China toward the US. Unless, of course, they were programmed for a nondirect suborbital trajectory. Unlikely, but in that case the orbiting ASM satellites would take the play.
Her force was submarine-heavy. That made sense, considering how little tasking was left for the undersea forces this late in the war. USS Arkansas, Idaho, Guam, and John Warner. Her surface escorts were two US missile frigates, Goodrich and Montesano. Spaced even farther out, in a defensive and early warning perimeter closer to the coast and extending down toward the Kuriles, were the unmanned hunters USV-34, 20, 7, and 16.
She had no carrier support up here. But four Aegis units should be able to fight off an air attack, considering the enemy’s weakened state. In an emergency, JASDF F-3s were on call from Wakkanai, Hokkaido. That island was also her logistics support, via commercial tankers retrofitted for astern refueling. The US logistics fleet was occupied supporting operations in the South China Sea.
Hers was one of three Allied forces closing in on the enemy. One, based on Taipei, menaced the Chinese naval base at Ningbo and protected liberated Taiwan. The other, supported by three carriers, was supporting the invasion of Hainan.
A classified briefing via VTC had laid out her own mission. As the snare closed around China, the risk of all-out nuclear strikes rose. High-side chat said diplomatic feelers were under way, to try to end hostilities without the ultimate escalation. But no one could guarantee they’d succeed. Cheryl and her task force were the backstop. She was assigned to intercept any ICBMs targeted at US cities. The Armageddon Protocol, Admiral Yangerhans had called it, half jokingly. But also half in earnest, she figured.
She grimaced, turning toward the bulkhead to surreptitiously scratch her pits. If they could get through this … could the nightmare really end? It seemed surreal even to contemplate peace. The years before the war had been tense enough, with trade wars, friction over the islands, disgruntled allies, a bumbling administration fumbling everything it laid hands on. But looking back, they’d been good years. One long golden summer before the war …
A petty officer cleared his throat beside her. “Yeah,” she grunted. “What you got?”
“Voice call for you, ma’am. Uncovered HF.”
She frowned. Hardly anyone used conventional voice radio anymore. The first year of the war had shown how simple the older systems were to penetrate, even when they were scrambled. “Uncovered?”
“Affirmative, Captain. Simplex single sideband deconfliction frequency.”
Cheryl glanced at her watch. “It’s not time for the daily check.”
“No, ma’am. It’s Vladivostok calling. Want the task force commander. Personally.”
“That’s you,” Mills said, but he looked puzzled too.
The petty officer set Cheryl up at his desk. She fitted on the earphones, feeling decidedly retro. “Remember, it’s an uncovered net,” the petty officer said.
She nodded. The working frequency was a mini-hotline, mainly to prevent collisions and other fatal misunderstandings. She looked at the printed test sentences and drew a breath. “Mishka, this is Albert. Mishka, this is Albert. Over.”
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 submarine-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.”
“Keep me advised.” She double-clicked her mike and returned her attention to her rapidly climbing missiles.
But something about it nagged at her. From the south? There was nothing to the south. Only seven hundred miles of open sea, until the Kuriles. If it was a torpedo, or something like one, it would have to be incredibly long-ranged. She clicked to TF chat and warned her southernmost units, then back to the ASW circuit to activate Rimshot and stand by on bubble decoys and CATs.
Something changed on her screen. She blinked, unable to pinpoint exactly what it had been.
AALIS came up. “USV-16 dropped data link. Fails to respond to query.”
Right, Cheryl thought. That contact, a blue half square a hundred and twenty miles to the south, had begun to blink. Its callout read NULL DATA.
The USVs were autonomous Hunters, originally built as antisubmarine platforms, now mainly deployed as radar pickets. They were controlled from the ASW supervisor’s station. She clicked to that circuit. “ASW, CO. Why aren’t we hearing from Sixteen?”
“Don’t know, Skipper. No response to query.”
“Sonar reported propulsor noise from the bearing.”
A hesitation. Then, “It’s possible. Could just be a data glitch, though. Everything we get from the Hunters comes via nano.”
Meaning it went up to the circling microsatellites, then down again. “Any way we can confirm Sixteen’s still on station?”
Mills, on the same circuit. “We could ask Chokai to request Global Hawk out of Misawa.”
Terranova broke in. Unhurried. Calm. “Stand by for intercept, Meteor One.”
Cheryl let it go for the moment and switched back to overhead. In the 3-D projection the trails described beautiful orange arches, like burning tracers. The Alliances had almost reached the lead projectile. It was in coast phase now, far above the troposphere. Trolleying along through space on a ballistic arc that would take it nearly halfway round the world.
“Stand by … intercept.”
The radar picture showed vibrating brackets nailed around a speeding comet. Not its real shape, she knew. Its radar shape still tailed remnants of gas, atmosphere, and ablation from its fiery ascent. The Alliance wasn’t on the screen.
Then, suddenly, a silent explosion ripped apart the comet, sending parts spreading and tumbling. Still traveling at that incredible velocity, they would coast on through near-vacuum until gravity pulled them down again into the blanket of air that would sear them into gas, charred metal, micrometeorites too small even to identify, drifting down at last as a metallic, poisonous, violently radioactive dust, somewhere over Siberia.
“Looks like a perfect intercept,” Cheryl observed, feeling a slight weight lift from her chest. One down. Seven to go. On the other hand, that meant she’d expended three precious and irreplaceable weapons when only one would have sufficed. “Make it two-round salvos going forward,” she ordered.
Mills and AALIS rogered up. At the radar systems coordination station, Terranova had already shifted the picture to the next warhead.
Then the surface warfare supervisor said, “Montesano reports explosion effects from bearing one five seven. Breaking-up noises.”
“USS Guam, lost data,” AALIS announced.
Terranova: “Meteor two, stand by for intercept.”
Cheryl froze. What was happening? The explosion and breaking-up effects, on that bearing from the escort, pointed straight to Guam.
Which meant … some as yet unclear but obviously dangerous threat was indeed approaching from the south. It had taken down the USV, one of her outermost sensors. And now, one of her escort submarines. The next unit in would be JNS Chokai, her southernmost ABM-capable unit.
But the older destroyer was already locked on the third wave of DF-41s. With an earlier version of Aegis, and less capable radars, Chokai would be keyholed on the missile threat, the way the old Savo had been. Leaving her nearly blind to an approaching attack from under the sea.
She was typing as fast as she could, putting the warning out on the command nanochat. “Matt, get Dagger in the air. Full ASW loadout. Vector them south. Find out what’s going on. Tell Fleet we’re under attack. Notify … Idaho. They’re closest. Give them a course to intercept. Zotcher’s best guess on the track. Tell them to close and take these things out. Whatever the fuck they are. But warn them to be careful.”
But what was attacking them? Submarines, like the ones that had snuck in under cover of fishing boats, off Korea? No, they didn’t seem to be. Zotcher would have identified them.
But then what?
AALIS’s voice brought her back to her own mission. “Meteor two, stand by…” The brackets stayed steady. A flash, in the corner of the radar picture. But the cometlike cone did not disintegrate. It burned steadily, a cold candleflame of gas and ablating coatings fifty miles up, its trajectory gradually bending toward the horizontal.
“Intercept round one failed. Second round arrives in three seconds … two … one.”
Again, the silent burst, the spinning debris, the gradual emptying out of the field of view.
And once more, the switch to yet another target. Third of the first salvo of three DF-41s. The last of the weapons Cheryl had assigned to Savo Island. To the south, Ashikara would take the next three missiles under fire. And Chokai, the last two.
Unfortunately, each reentry body they failed to intercept would dispense up to ten other warheads. Even one would carry unimaginable destruction. And she couldn’t help wondering what was coming the other way. Would StratCom retaliate, even if, as seemed likely, this was some kind of last-ditch launch by a rogue commander? Hundreds of American missiles could be in the air right now. From submarines, silos, alert bombers … the full weight of a strategic counterstrike.
She shuddered. Truly, the world might end today.
But all she could do was stand and fight.
AALIS said, “Meteor three, stand by for intercept.”
“Sonar, CO: High-speed flow noises closing from the south. Two separate sources. Cross-bearings give speeds of sixty-plus knots. Advanced propulsion system. Not screws per se. Maybe propulsors.”
Sixty-knots-plus propulsors? All she could come up with was some kind of high-speed autonomous weapon, half midget submarine, half torpedo. But Intel had warned of nothing like that in the enemy order of battle.
She hit her throat mike, but her eyes stayed riveted to the radar picture. The steady glow of the still ascending dispenser bus. “Copy, Chief. Is that what took out Guam?”
“Sounded like it, CO. And … headed our way.”
She chat-alerted Chokai, but wasn’t sure what antitorpedo measures the older destroyer carried. And the Japanese unit couldn’t be diverted from its ABM mission. It would have to fire when the incomers were close to the ship, since the Standards didn’t have the range of the Alliances. The reason she’d assigned Chokai last … She toggled back to radar and searched the interior of Asia for additional cueing. Thank God, she didn’t see any. Maybe the eight they’d already picked up would be all.
“Captain?” Dave Branscombe, her ops officer. “We’re getting video from nano. Guam’s last reported position.”
She clicked on it. A disturbed area of the sea. A spreading carpet of yellow and cream, flames guttering here and there on the gray waves. Smoke obscured it, then blew past. Already the seas were gentling, the slick drifting apart. She zoomed in, hoping for survivors. But couldn’t see any. “Oh my God,” she muttered.
In a horrifying déjà vu, she flashed back to the exercise off Hawaii again. This was all too much like it. She was bending all her attention to fending off an overt attack, while a dagger was being plunged into her back.
Only this was real, not an exercise. Not a game.
“Meteor three, stand by,” AALIS said. Cheryl switched to the radar picture again. Waited, breathless once more, as the system counted down. “Two . . One … intercept.”
The speeding contact, still trailing ionized gas, didn’t waver. “Failure to intercept,” AALIS announced, as if they couldn’t see that for themselves. Followed, almost in the same sentence, by, “Round two, KKV failure to separate.”
“And then there was one,” Mills breathed, beside her. Cheryl watched the wavering comet. The glowing cone was shrinking as it left the remnants of atmosphere behind. Cooling as it ascended too, presenting a smaller target to the secondary IR homing function of the Alliance’s seeker head. The lock-on brackets quivered around it.
“TAO, Sonar: Incoming sonar contacts on constant bearing. Decreasing range. Estimate speed seventy knots … wait one … rocket effects. Rocket effects, in the water, bearing one seven six. Consistent with supercavitating projectile.” A tension-filled voice in the background. “Alerting Montesano on ASW net.”
A glance at the overhead view gave her the chills. Yeah. USS Montesano was on that bearing. One of her frigates. She clicked to TF ASW and went out voice. “Thunderbolts, this is Tangler. Flash. Rimshot on! Confirm.”
“Thunderbolts” was Montesano. If the incoming weapon was magnetically guided, the active magnetic-signature-management system could displace its apparent location, even trigger premature detonation. The answer came back at once, the voice sounding startled. “Tangler, Thunderbolts: Confirm Rimshot activated.”
“Shkvals?” Mills said, beside her. She couldn’t see him through the helmet. “But they were only at sixty knots before. And Shkvals don’t have ranges that long.”
“Agreed, it’s something new. Maybe a conventional propulsor first stage, for long range. Then a hydro-reactive jet final stage to sprint in in to the target.” That was why the Hunter hadn’t transmitted any warning. Once the final stage was on its way, even the countermeasure torpedoes were useless, too slow, their warheads too small.
She clicked to the ASW circuit and quizzed Zotcher and the ASW officer. But the sonar analysis didn’t match any Chinese weapon, and the Japanese arrays confirmed they hadn’t detected any unidentified submarines to the southward.
“Tangler, this is Thunderbolts … heavy detonation close aboard. Intense shock. Engines offline. Damage report to follow.”
She sighed, light-headed with relief. “Close aboard” … but not an actual hit. Okay, Shkvals … they traveled at almost two hundred knots, with a super-cavitating nose plate to tear a hole in the sea. And if the warheads were the same as the older models … shaped charges to burn through side armor. Then pyrophoric rods to tear through the hull, bursting into unquenchable flame on contact with air, water, or fuel. Even now, decades after the first models had been revealed, the Allies had nothing like it. Originally Russian technology, but proliferated now to all the Opposed Powers. Chinese? Iranian? Unlikely out here. But they could be North Korean, controlled by some bottom-hugging last-ditch survivor.
Or were they Russian? Approaching from the south, but Vladivostok lay in that general direction too. Timed to coincide with the onslaught of the Chinese ICBMs, to reduce her ability to respond?
Right now that didn’t really matter. “Get all units around to the reciprocal. Open the range as much as we can.” She searched her mind for something, anything, else to do. “Get the other units’ helicopters out there. Sonobuoys. And run Mark 54s down the bearings. Maybe they can pick these things up. We’ve got to kill them before they fire the second stages.”
“Worth a try,” Mills muttered, typing rapidly.
“Meteor three, third intercept,” AALIS said. “Three. Two. One. Intercept.”
Her lips moved in a silent curse. She stared at the speeding comet, now shrunken almost to a pinpoint.
“Failure to intercept,” AALIS said, with a note almost of regret. “Round three, target too high for intercept maneuver. Initiate Alliance self-destruct.”
Mount Shiomi: to Tangler
Taking tracks 0039, 0040 with Standard
Tangler: to Mount Shiomi
Expend rounds ASAP and retire to north best speed. Deploy antitorpedo countermeasures immediately
She shoved herself back from the desk, panting as she snatched off the helmet. The black-ceilinged Citadel seemed impenetrably dark. Sweat ran down her neck. “We missed it. Fuck. Fuck!”
Mills laid comforting, or maybe restraining, fingers on her arm. “Fat lady hasn’t sung yet, skipper. MDA has track. It’s being passed to Fort Greely. They’ll knock it down.”
“God, I hope so,” she muttered, but didn’t like the odds. The ground-based interceptors didn’t have a good test record, and had never engaged against a real threat.
Mount Shiomi: to Tangler
Missiles away. Increasing speed to flank. Countermeasures deployed
She felt slightly better. Maybe they could get out of the woods. Her task force, at least. Then she remembered Guam. No survivors. All dead. USV-16, gone, but at least it had been unmanned. Montesano, out of action, no casualty report yet.
They’d taken a hammering. But from whom? “Where’s our helo? Is he there yet?”
“Vectoring to an intercept point. Full loadout, sonobuoys and fish.”
She toggled to the ASW screen. They had a solid plot on the remaining intruder. The task force’s northward turn, and increase in speed, were giving them more time to respond. Shkvals only had ranges of about six miles, so keeping the threat at arm’s length would protect the rest of the task force.
Four minutes later, Dagger reported dropping on a sonobuoy contact. Then, seconds later, a massive, rumbling detonation.
Cheryl tried to think, but stringing coherent ideas together was like slogging through mud. Her neck felt sticky. Probably bleeding, where she’d clawed it. Her arms itched. She put her head in her hands, and concentrated on neither passing out nor throwing up.
Somewhere in there—it all got fuzzy, liquid, for a couple of minutes—Chokai reported one successful intercept and one miss.
So yet another bus of ten warheads was on its way to the US.
Terranova patted her back, voice gentle. “Skipper? Skipper? Your neck is bleedin’. Y’okay, ma’am? That was rough.”
Cheryl uncovered her face. Tried to control the quiver in her larynx. “Yeah, Terror. Pretty … fucking … rough.”
“What were those things? Where’d they come from?”
“We’ll have to find out, Beth.” Not exactly regulation, to call enlisted by their first names. But just now such formulas seemed too petty to care about. Yeah, where had they come from? The North Koreans? They seemed too advanced. Might have been the Chinese. Sure.
But who would benefit most from literally torpedoing the Allied defenses? Who would gain, at the end of the day, from triggering an all-out nuclear exchange between China and the United States?
She could think of only one player.
But then, why had Sharkov called to warn them?
It made no sense, but she could cogitate on it later. Right now … She shook off the dizziness like a boxer recovering from a hard blow. “Confirm MDA has track on our leakers. Keep a sharp eye on that launch site for more. I want more sonobuoy barriers to the south. Remain on station, Condition One. I need a damage report from Thunderbolts. And start a search for survivors, beginning with that last datum for Guam. We aren’t out of the woods yet. Let’s stay alert, God damn it.”
She couldn’t keep the anger from her tone. The disappointment. The shock. She scratched furiously between her fingers, then sucked at them. It might not be over. It might only be starting. She tasted salt blood, but didn’t care. And at the same time she was frightened. So very frightened.
Eddie.
God.
God.
All the people.
I wish I’d done that better.