“Signal the Kurita group. Tell them that unless they hear from us in five minutes, we strongly advise they withdraw.”
Then the deck erupted with fire and the SM-2s leapt up, heading for their targets. “Vampires at 10 nautical miles,” said Otani. “Splash Vampire 1!”
They were firing the SM-2s in pairs again, assigning a lead missile and a wingmate to every Vampire. The theory was that a ship would always carry more SAMs than the number of SSMs the enemy might be packing.
In they came, and the sky suddenly lit up with more explosions, and every single one saw the crew breathing just a little easier. They got five more missiles, one after another, with Otani calling out each kill. It was now down to the final two Vampires and there were still six SN-2s in the air out after them. Harada had been looking over Otani’s shoulder, not realizing that his right hand had tightened to a fist and his nails were biting into the flesh of his palm. He took a deep breath, opening his hand. It was looking good. Then they heard the laser firing at just inside the seven mile range.
“Laser hit! Splash Vampire 7.”
The pair of SM-2s double teamed the last missile, and they took it down at the six mile range marker, the brilliant red-orange explosion vibrating the ship with the shock wave. The last four SM-2s ran blind and slit their throats about twelve miles out.
“Missile eight is gone,” said Samsonov. “Nothing got through, sir. They threw sixteen SM-2s at them.”
Karpov was not happy. “So now we see just how good the American tech is. Twelve fucking Moskit IIs, and not one gets through.” He stroked his chin, thinking.
“SSM inventory,” he said with a growl.
“Sir, we have 24 missiles on the Moskit II system, 10 MOS-III, and 6 on the P-900 system—40 missiles in all.”
Karpov looked at Fedorov now. “Nice of Mother Time to leave the MOS-IIIs alone, eh Fedorov? At least nothing has changed on that count. They are quite a bit faster to the target. Let’s see if they can catch lightning. Mister Samsonov, one MOS-III—just one please.”
“Ready sir.”
Karpov looked over. “Mister Grilikov, why don’t you do the honors and fire this missile.”
Grilikov had been watching, somewhat dumbfounded at Samsonov’s side. Now he blinked, looking at his teacher, who quietly moved his thumb to point to the correct switch, then he winked.
Grilikov fired.
The MOS III was a descendant of the P-800 Onyx missile and the work that was done on the Brahmos/Yakhont system for foreign export. The Russians were looking to compress the response time for the defender even more, and in the balance of stealth vs speed, they usually opted for speed. What they wanted was a hypersonic missile, and the first SSM to fill that bill was the Zircon 3M-22, and the 3M stood for MOS-III. That original design was first introduced in 2017, and was capable of speeds up to Mach 5, but the missile Kirov was carrying was an upgrade, the 3M-33, still called MOS-III by the rank and file.
It could run at Mach 7, faster than the hypersonic rounds of a rail gun, and now Karpov wanted to see if this enemy ship could defeat it. Counting time for acceleration, it was going to eat up about 2.4 kilometers per second. One missile went out, and closed the 62 nautical miles between the two ships in just 47 seconds. It was also stealthy, a sea skimmer, and it was not seen by Takami until it had penetrated the 20 nautical mile threshold.
“Fast missile inbound!” shouted Otani. “My God, it’s running over Mach 7!”
That was fast, but there was one thing faster. The lightning reflexes of the modern day AEGIS system acquired the contact at 17.6 nautical miles. The fire order pulsed to the missile deck. And two SM-2s went out to challenge the intruder. Before they had even acquired their target, the MOS-III was just 10 miles out…. Six miles… The SM-2s had just tipped over and began accelerating towards the Vampire, but it was too fast, too damn fast… But one thing was faster.
It was Takami’s laser system pulsing out at the speed of light. Five miles out, the missile was struck. Its inertial guidance system was fried, a split second later it was blind, with further damage to its steering that sent it careening wildly off course, destroyed inside the four mile mark when it struck the sea, and then exploded. The two SM-2s streaked right over that spot in the sea, late to the party. They continued on for another 10 seconds, trying to decide what happened before they found no threats and self-destructed.
It was as close a shave as one could get, but Takami survived.
Karpov watched the whole engagement on radar, pointing to the missile tracks Rodenko had on the defensive fire. “Those are the two missiles they fired? No others?”
“Just two sir, SM-2s.”
“Any malfunction reported on our missile?”
“No sir, the telemetry was clean until it went down.”
“Well now… This is very interesting. They must have hit that MOS-III with something else, but not a Phalanx gun. Look, our telemetry is cut off here, a little outside the range of their gun system.”
“Sir, I got an unusual emission during our Moskit II salvo, and I picked it up again just now. I think they have a laser defense system.”
“Yes… That would make sense. It’s the one thing faster than our missile, the only thing faster.” Karpov’s eyes narrowed. The junior officers watched him, wondering what he would do next. Would it be another barrage of Moskit IIs, or perhaps a heavier salvo of the hypersonic missile they had just fired. Lasers were a one shot, one kill system, and then they needed recharge time before they could fire again. Had there been four MOS-IIIs in that salvo….
Karpov turned, looked at Fedorov, then, to the surprise of everyone there, he walked slowly over to Nikolin, who sat up quickly, as if he had been caught doing something wrong. In fact, he had been quietly sending his friend Tasarov a stream of Morse Code that he channeled through his headset on an internal network, and the two of them had been wagering on which missile would score the first hit.
“Mister Nikolin, open a channel—in the clear please. Hail that ship by both hull number and name. Tell them Vladimir Karpov wishes to speak with their Captain.”
There were more things under Karpov’s deck than missiles. His mind was equally dangerous, and now he wanted to take the measure of his adversary before he took this any further.
Chapter 44
“Sir,” said Ensign Shiota. “I’m picking up a voice radio message—in the clear.”
“From who? Kurita? Well I suppose EMCON has gone to hell, but they have a secure radio set. Tell them to use it.”
“No sir. It’s that Russian ship sir. They’ve hailed us directly, and they want to talk with you.”
Harada looked over at his Executive Officer, a bemused look on his face. “In Japanese, or Russian?” he said with a grin.
“English sir.”
“Good enough, common ground most places in our time. Why not here? This ought to be interesting. Give it to me on the bridge overhead speaker.”
“Aye sir.”
Harada picked up the handset and spoke into the embedded speaker. “This is Captain Takechi Harada, Japanese Self-Defense Force. To whom am I speaking? Over.”
It was Nikolin’s voice, but the mind and words of Karpov. “Captain, this is Admiral Vladimir Karpov, Prime Minister and head of the Free Siberian State, speaking to you through an interpreter. Now, I don’t have the slightest idea how you and your ship got here, but then again, you are probably asking yourself the same thing about us. Am I correct? Over.”