The Phalanx mount was incapable of feeling relief or exaltation over its victory. It merely began hunting for the next foe, its multiple barrels indexing jerkily as it sought for a favorable firing solution.
In the Cunningham's Combat Information Center, there was nothing left to be done. The Duke was operating in full Armageddon mode now, more and more systems cycling over to full automatic as the light-speed war of computer, sensor, and jammer was waged. This was a battle she must fight out alone; the men and women who crewed her could only come along for the ride.
"… seven… six… five… Jesus! It's gonna hit!"
Topside, the Phalanx fired with a droning roar like a titanic chain saw, its quad gun muzzles blurring with recoil, a hundred rounds being expended before the first empty shell casing could fall to the deck.
A single slug caught the Exocet head-on. The tungsten penetrator core of the hypervelocity round had been intended to pierce the armor of a main battle tank. It simply ignored the far flimsier structure of the antiship missile, punching cleanly through the guidance package and the warhead to fracture the casing of the solid-fuel rocket motor.
The last Exocet exploded a meager hundred yards off the Cunningham's portside flank, sending a long horizontal plume of scarlet and silver flame licking out toward the destroyer.
Amanda felt a series of faint thuds ripple through her ship's structure.
"We've got dropouts on the planar arrays, portside forward," the Aegis operator called out. "I think we have shrapnel damage."
"The bridge has been hit," a second voice chimed in from the battle-damage stations. "Bridge requesting corps-men and damage-control parties. Repair Four responding." No time to worry about it now. The mast cameras were panning aft to pick up the next attack wave.
The first flight of Rafale E's were coming in on the stern, anti-IR flares glowing in their wake like golden snowflakes. Already in too close for area defense systems, point defenses were shifting fire to engage the new threat. The aft turret was dappling the sky around the Argentine jets with shell bursts, and the smoke trails of RAM rounds reached out toward them.
Suddenly, a dazzling point of blue-green light appeared beneath the belly of the element leader. A warning horn blared from the CIC overhead.
"Laser lock!"
Amanda didn't need to look at the exterior monitors to know what the intent of their attackers was. Somewhere on the weather decks of the Duke, a small dot of brilliant illumination was dancing. The ordnance-carrying aircraft of the attacking flight would now execute a sharp half-loop at a range of two or three miles, pitching a stick of heavy laser-guided bombs at the warship in a high parabolic trajectory. As the bombs came over the peak of their arc, their sensors would pick up the laser energy being reflected off the target by the illuminator aircraft. They would home in on it unerringly.
The drop aircraft was already pulling up into its release maneuver.
"Helm! Crash turn! Hard right rudder!" Amanda snapped. "RBOCs, fire full concealment pattern!"
The sailor at the helm station spun her controller fully around against the safety stop, then forced it the extra click more to engage the crash-turn sequencer.
The Duke moaned throughout her framing as her rudder swung hard over and the propeller blades of the starboard propulsor pod feathered automatically. Despite the best efforts of her stabilizers, her deck started to tilt outboard as she drove into the tightest of minimum-radius turns. Her own wake overtook her, bursting over the well deck and rolling up her right flank in a knot of green water and foam.
As she pivoted around, her chaff launchers began to ripple fire again. The grenades, bursting at close range all across the destroyer's forward arc, produced not only metal foil but thick, white streamers of multispectral chemical smoke. The Cunningham plunged headlong into an artificial fog bank of her own creation.
The bawling of the warning horn wavered and fell silent. A few moments later, a double thunderclap sounded from beyond the bulkheads and the Duke shuddered heavily. Their guidance lock lost, the bombs had fallen off target into her wake, kicking up mast-high domes of seething water.
Someone produced a relieved whoop of victory.
"Steady down!" Amanda snapped. "We aren't out of this yet! Dix, where's that last flight?"
"Target Foxtrot coming in on the port side, bearing two-sixty degrees relative. Range, ten thousand yards and closing. Point defenses are engaging!"
"Helm, turn into him. Hard left rudder!"
The Cunningham burst out of her smoke screen, trailing rags of vapor from her superstructure. The MMS cameras picked up the last pair of French-built deltas almost at once as they slashed in from the east, going for the destroyer's flank.
As the ship clawed around to face her new attackers, Amanda realized that something was wrong. The bow Oto Melara, a key facet of their forward arc defenses, was still silent. A fast glance down at her weapons-status telepanel showed that the gun had been toggled out of the Aegis defense system's computer loop to manual control.
"Number-one mount! What the hell are you playing at?" Beltrain roared from the Tac Ops console.
Across the compartment, the young gunner's mate manning the bow turret control station was leaning forward over his console, intently reconfiguring the system settings.
The laser lock warning horn blared again as the Argentine element leader illuminated his target. His wingman started to pull up into his toss-bombing run…
The bow turret crashed out a single round and the lead Rafale dissolved into a smear of flame.
Dumbfounded, the CIC crew watched the fragments of burning wreckage tumble into the sea. The sole remaining strike pilot was also stunned and demoralized. Releasing his ordnance in a wild patch that put the bombs into the sea a comfortable half-mile from the Cunningham, he broke hard around and fled.
"All surviving Argentine aircraft are disengaging and withdrawing," Beltrain reported. "Reentering area defense engagement zone. Designating ESSM flights-"
"Negative. Check fire, all systems," Amanda cut in. "Save our rounds for the ones coming at us."
Swiftly, Amanda called up the damage-control report on her personal repeaters: Light splinter damage to superstructure. Efficiency of the forward SPY-2A arrays down to 94 percent. Diagnostics indicating damage to bridge systems.
"Damage control, any word on casualties yet?"
"None reported except for the bridge area, ma'am," the DC officer called in from his station. "Corpsmen have been called on-site. That's the last word we've had."
She scanned the threat boards. For the moment they were clear except for the retreating blips of the Argentine air strike. There was no sign of an immediate follow-up.
"Helm, bring her around to a heading of one seven oh degrees. All engines ahead standard."
"Aye, aye, ma'am. Steering one seven oh degrees. All engines ahead standard."
"Communications, get this off to CINCLANT, flash priority: 'USS Cunningham has been attacked by aircraft positively identified as belonging to the Argentine armed forces. Two attacking aircraft downed. Ship has taken light damage but remains fully operational. Until otherwise advised we are acting under the assumption that a state of armed conflict exists between the United States and Argentina.'
"Then prep a data dump from the Aegis memory system covering the attack. They'll be wanting that."
She turned back to her tactical officer. "Dix, I'm turning the con over to you while I go topside and check out how badly we're hit. Keep us on this heading until we get back under the slop and keep your eyes open for another strike package. Oh, and find out what was going on with that forward gun. Any questions?"