The second strike changed everything.
Impacting on a ballistic arc, the projectile had cut through three cells in his vertical launcher, igniting a rocket propellant fire and stripping him of three Eagle Strike anti-ship missiles. Leaving nothing to chance, he decided to employ his weapons before giving the Philippine forces a chance to reduce his inventory further.
Seeking a saturation strike, he ordered all five ships to launch missiles in an orchestrated aerial dance that would climax with simultaneous arrivals at the stronghold, overwhelming its defenses. To exacerbate his enemy’s predicament, he organized the Eagle Strikes to form four groups in flight, turn at preset waypoints, and slam into the obelisk on the Second Thomas Shoal with ninety degrees of separation.
He wanted the timed arrival of multiple weapons spread across four threat axes to overpower the stronghold’s defenses and seal its fate.
Making the three major ships preserve two missiles for use against Philippine ships, and the corvettes to hold back one each, he ordered the group to unload the rest of its Eagle Strike arsenal. With eight of the forty weapons held back, he looked at a display showing the future paths of the four groups of eight missiles that would silence the railguns.
Content with the flight plans and with the automated launch sequence that his destroyer would control for all the missiles, he straightened and reached for a handset.
“All ships,” he said, “report readiness for anti-ship missile launch.”
As verbal confirmations arrived in parallel with updates in his tactical system, he tapped a key that gave him control of a five-ship arsenal. He toggled a switch and sent his voice through a circuit to speak to his crew.
“Standby for ripple launch of fourteen anti-ship missiles, cells ten through twenty-four.”
Without further fanfare, he tapped a key and waited for rocket exhaust plumes to decorate the sky.
The fireworks began as a frigate created multicolored orbs over the horizon. The missiles that would angle behind the module and attack from its rear flank sprang from their canisters first so that they could complete their longer journey while achieving simultaneous impacts with the others in the salvo.
Then, as the ship cut to the right to evade the next railgun shell, he watched plumes illuminate a corvette ten miles off his starboard beam. Caught spectating, he cringed when his executive officer cried out.
“Eye hazard! Look away!”
He ducked his chin to his chest and bent forward, the rim of his helmet shielding his vision from the controlled inferno of the Chengdu’s ripple launch. When the bursts of brilliance subsided, he looked up and watched smoke billow into the night under the last rocket booster.
The deck lurched, and he grabbed a console for balance. He looked at his executive officer, who appeared abnormally thin underneath his battle stations helmet. Steel groaned, and the now-familiar sonic boom of an incoming shell thumped against the windows.
“I had to order a hard left rudder and reverse the port engine,” the executive officer said. “The latest projectile just missed off our starboard quarter.”
“Very well,” Wong said. “Continue the submarine evasion legs with adjustments to avoid incoming railgun projectiles.”
He knew the railguns would become harder to avoid as he approached them. If he stopped at the destroyer’s maximum cannon range of twenty miles to attack the concrete garrison, fourteen seconds of flight would separate him from each railgun projectile, giving him questionable time to dodge them. The frigates would fare worse, needing to get closer to make use of their three-inch guns.
Part of him wanted to test his courage with a brazen exchange of blows against the concretized Philippine stronghold, matching his destroyer’s maneuverability, his ship handling, and his crew’s gunnery accuracy against the upstarts on the Second Thomas Shoal.
To support shore bombardment responsibilities, his ship and the two frigates carried armor-piercing rounds. Those would crack and penetrate the concrete, exposing his enemy’s guts to the high-yield rounds with less penetrative power but more explosives.
But his rational mind wanted the anti-ship missiles to silence the railguns and let him return to his hunt for the submarine that had killed his brother. A glance at his display encouraged him as it revealed all thirty-two missiles grouping into the prescribed four salvos.
Five minutes to impact.
“Left twenty-degrees rudder,” the executive officer said.
The deck dipped as the destroyer dodged another projectile. Red icons straddled ballistic arcs on the tactical display, showing the barrage of incoming shells, the closest of which disappeared milliseconds before its sonic shock wave shook the Chengdu’s bridge windows.
“Rudder amidships,” the executive officer said.
Wong recognized the ship handling expertise of his second-in-command, and he trusted him to avoid the incoming shells. He excused him for the two projectiles that had driven puncture wounds through the hull since the radar system had lost momentary track of the high-speed objects.
The executive officer’s river of rudder and engine commands drifted back into Wong’s subconscious mind as the tactical display drew his attention. Four anti-ship missile groups raced southeast in a box formation towards his target.
Four minutes to impact.
Fifty nautical miles separated him from the Philippine stronghold — thirty miles from his maximum gun range. No matter the fate of the flying missiles, he vowed to dedicate armor-piercing rounds from his cannon’s magazine towards silencing the railguns.
Three minutes to impact.
His heart leapt into his throat as one of the helicopters sweeping ahead of his five-ship line reported a possible active return from an unidentified submerged contact. But as suddenly as the evidence of a hostile submarine appeared, it vanished.
Two minutes to impact.
He reached for his handset and connected with the pilot of the helicopter. Rotor blade chop and turbofan whine hissed through the circuit.
“This is Helicopter Three, sir.”
“Helicopter Three, this is the task force commander,” he said. “Continue searching for the submerged contact for ten minutes. If you find nothing, then return to your patrol pattern ahead of the convoy. If you confirm a submerged target, sink it.”
“What if it’s the Shang, sir? What if it had propulsion or navigation problems and drifted into my path?”
“Then I pity our countrymen. My order stands.”
One minute to impact.
A voice from the loudspeaker startled him.
“The railgun module has ceased fire,” his operations officer said. “It fired its last shell thirty seconds ago.”
He shifted the handset circuit.
“Very well,” he said. “They must be bracing for impact. This is a good sign.”
His eyes burned as he watched the two lead groups of Eagle Strikes veer wide of the Second Thomas Shoal, flanking his victim. As the box of thirty-two flying warheads encircled and pointed towards the railgun module, his operations officer’s voice rang over the loudspeaker.
“Jamming frequencies, sir,” he said. “Coming from the railgun module. They’re trying to disrupt our missiles.”
Wong considered that a stationary target had no chance of masking its position, but enough electromagnetic energy at the right frequencies could block the satellite data missiles used to judge their positions in flight. Left to its inertial guidance, the accuracy of a missile’s self-assessment of its position would degrade.
“Can you overpower their jamming and guide the missiles from here?” he asked.
“Negative, sir. We’re too far away.”