“Fuck,” someone murmured.
A momentary bloom, with fragments hurtling off like sparkling fireflies. But the main body still pulsed slowly. Rotating, but still in one piece.
Soongapurn: “Meteor Charlie, still on trajectory. Call that as a hit on the airframe, maybe, not the warhead.”
A line came up on chat.
MONITOR: Meteor Delta, two-round salvo, no apparent effect.
“Shit… they missed too. Are these things fucking armored? Give me camera, bearing zero-one-five true,” she muttered to Mills. The TAO grabbed the joystick, and the rightmost display slewed, rolled up, down, steadied.
A spear of flame appeared, descending from the azimuth. On the far horizon, grayed now with the first taste of dawn, a black silhouette. She’d lost her bearings. Wasn’t sure, in that half second, which ship it was.
A tremendous flash blanked the camera. Then, seconds later another, even brighter, even closer. When they faded, leaving drifting afterimages, the bridge talker called, “Lookouts report two explosions on the horizon. Bearing two-eight-zero relative.”
Beside her Lenson said tightly into the red phone, “This is Barbarian. All units Horde, report damage. Report ionization effects. Check background radiation and report readings. Over.”
A rumbling boom reached them. A low-frequency vibration waned, then waxed again. The vibrations tuning-forked away along the resonating length of the hull girder, dwelled, grew faint, and died away.
She exchanged glances with a stricken-looking Lenson. He murmured, “Do you call those as nukes?”
Mills leaned over. “Maybe some kind of partial detonation?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Not two partial detonations.” She hit the 21MC. “OOD, CO. Anything from the PDR-65?” The radioactivity detection, indication, and computation system, installed on every warship’s bridge.
“CO, bridge. Nothing yet. Continuing to monitor.”
She checked the wind gauge. Five knots, from the west. If there was a radioactive plume, they’d get it. “Turn on the water washdown?” she mused to Mills.
“We’d degrade our sensors,” he said. “We start spraying salt water, we’ll blind ourselves.”
“All right, good point. Hold off until we have a beep from the 65. Secure from ABM mode. Go to antiair, full automatic.”
“Could just be a very heavy conventional payload,” Enzweiler put in, behind them.
One by one, the task force reported in. The CIC officer made a tick mark on the call sign board as each rogered up. When the last ship was checked off, Lenson heaved a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath. He told the chief of staff to get on Navy Red and report what they knew. “Don’t call it as a nuke. Just say, heavy explosion. McClung reports light blast effects topside. Otherwise, TF 76, no damage.”
Cheryl switched her attention back to the incoming air strike. Which was now only forty miles distant, with thirty-eight contacts. The enhanced-range Standards had marched outward toward the leaders during the minutes the Nodongs had consumed in their descents, their respective destructions or survivals, and their detonations. Other blue symbols, many more, marked weapons from the Korean units, McClung, and Kristensen, following Savo’s initial salvo. She hoped Aegis was deconflicting properly. Seconds ticked by as the markers marched toward the incoming strike.
“Vampire, vampire, vampire,” the EW operator called. “Multiple vampires, bearing one-six-zero to one-seven-five degrees true. X-band seekers. Correlate with C-802s. Many vampires.”
“They’re dropping early,” Mills muttered.
The lead aircraft began turning away. A few of those following did too. As they wheeled away, the display populated with smaller contacts, as if each had spawned copies of itself.
But Savo’s Standards were loose among them. The callouts blinked, spinning downward and upward, documenting radical course and altitude changes. Last-minute maneuvers, by pilots desperately trying to evade their oncoming fates.
Maybe Eddie’s last seconds had been like that.…
“Three bogeys, headed for the deck.”
“Intercept… intercept.”
“CIC, bridge: still nothing on the PDR-65.”
Contacts turned, banked, milled about the screen. Some winked out for good.
But the red carets of the incoming antiship missiles jumped ahead second by second, closing on Kristensen, Hampton Roads, Sejong, and Savo. Dozens of them, scores. Too many, really, to count.
“Deploy chaff and rubber duckies,” Cheryl put out over Weps Control. “Phalanx, 20mm, Stingers, action starboard. — EW, spoof these guys, jam ’em, get ’em off our ass! We’re depending on you.”
“On it,” Chief Wenck called.
Above them dull thuds thumped like bass drums as the chaff mortars began to go off, flinging hot-burning infrared flares and millions of strips of aluminum foil into the dawning air.
Dan pushed back from the command desk. His coveralls were wringing wet and icy cold. Cold doom chilled his bones, too. Not from what they’d just evaded, screaming down from the heavens. Nor from what was incoming.
But from the fatal numbers that flickered on the inventory screen.
Savo’s magazines were emptying. Each incoming antiship missile required at least two rounds to have a decent chance of knocking it down. Those that penetrated, and that Wenck failed to fox electronically, would be met by five-inch VT rounds, last-minute Stingers, then drumfire from the CIWS.
But there were too many incomers. He’d given up after counting thirty. Aegis had been designed to counter mass attacks, but any defense could be overwhelmed.
“Bird eleven away… bird twelve away…”
“McClung reports all Standards expended—”
Fragments of speech. Bursts of transmissions. But only a sidebar, now, to the automatic responses of their digital nervous system. Directed and coordinated by millions of lines of code, Task Force 76 fought now as an immense robot. A hundred-thousand-ton Terminator, flung across sixty miles of sea.
“Vampire bearing one-six-four, take with guns.”
Slam.
Slam.
Dust drifted from the overhead, sparkling in the heating, unventilated air. The five-inch guns, aft and forward, were quickly joined by the bass roar of the Phalanxes, then the rapid cracks of the 25mms.
In the flight deck camera, bright points, low to the sea. One grew, but without changing its bearing. A shaft of fire darted out at it, followed by two more as it bored in. Stingers, fired from atop the hangar. Then streams of tracers reached out. The heavy loud BRRRR of the Phalanxes tremored the ship.
An explosion. Out of it, tumbling end over end, blunt wings. A flash of flames, blossoming into smears of flying fire. But still something black was coming directly at the camera, rotating rapidly, like old newsreels of shot-down Zeros crashing into carriers. He tensed, gripping his helmet.
The camera went blank. The Phalanxes cut off abruptly. The superstructure shook to a heavy impact, resounding like a struck bell. Lights flickered. The displays faltered, went blank; then lit again, repopulating. A rising whine came from somewhere. A motor, spinning out of control? Then he realized it was a scream.