“Aye, aye, Captain. Initiating recovery,” Selkirk reported, excitement growing in his voice as the automated sequences checked off on his display. “Recall and docking transponder now active…. Drone is responding…. We have good data links!”
Lane’s eyes shifted from his console instrumentation to the night beyond the windscreen and back again in an instinctively repetitive cycle. “Verify the docking speed you want, Ger.”
“Twenty-five knots, sir.”
“Right. Captain, what’s our wind out there?”
Amanda glanced at the meteorology display. “Four knots. Quartering out of the northwest. Holding steady. We are inside the gates for auto recovery.”
She returned her focus to the threat board and the tactical display. Up until this moment on the mission time line, they had been able to rely on unobtrusiveness for survival. All of the Queen’s weapons systems had been retracted inside the stealth envelope of her RAM-jacketed hull, reducing her radar cross section to that of a floating log. She had also been running EMCON with only passive sensors in use and with communications limited to the briefest of transmissions on low-probability-of-intercept jitter frequency channels.
Now, however, the Queen must radiate a beacon signal to toll her recon drone home, a signal that could be detected by Syrian ELINT monitors as well as by the Navy robot aeroform. It was a systems limitation that must be worked around, as with the limited range of the Cipher drone that mandated the tight inshore launch and recovery.
“There she is!” Selkirk called. “Coming right up the slot!”
The laser lock warning on Amanda’s threat board started to flicker intermittently, reacting to the pulse of the drone’s navigation Ladar. She activated a secondary screen on her console, accessing the imaging from the mast-mounted sighting system.
Selkirk had the low-light television cameras atop the sea fighter’s snub mast trained aft, looking out over the stern antenna bar and the airscrew ducts. The Cipher drone materialized out of the horizon shadow, creeping in, its onboard artificial intelligence matching the speed and bearing of its mother ship.
The Queen’s quadruple air rudders flexed as Steamer Lane held her steady against the intermittent brush of a wave crest. A trio of docking probes deployed downward from the rim of the drone, ready to mate with the three sockets set into the hovercraft’s upper deck.
“Easy…” Selkirk murmured. “A little more… you’re lining up… lining up…”
Amanda held her breath as the little robot edged into position over the Sea Fighter’s weatherdeck. It wasn’t alive, but damn it, it was still part of her command.
The Cipher dropped abruptly. There was a thud from back aft and a series of sharp clicking bangs.
“Hard dock!” Selkirk exclaimed jubilantly. “Three probes, three locks, and three green lights! Recovery completed. Drone systems are powering down.”
“All right!” Lane lifted his hands off the air rudder yoke for an instant, fists clenched in victory.
A red light flickered near Amanda’s right knee and an audial warning from the threat board demanded her attention. “I’m very pleased to hear that, Mr. Selkirk, because we’ve just been painted by a Plank Shave search radar. The bearing is from the south, and it has to be our friend the Syrian Tarantul… and he has just gone to tracking sweep interval. He’s getting a return off of us!”
Selkirk wiped his telescreens clear of the drone recovery displays, calling up the Queen’s ECM systems. “He’s got more than that, ma’am. Bass Tilt fire-control radars coming up now. He’s trying for a firing lock!”
The decks of the Raqqah shuddered as her CODAG propulsion system rammed its maximum output through her three racing propellers.
“All engines answering ahead flank, Captain,” the helmsman yelled over the combined diesel roar and turbine howl. The glowing numerals of the iron log on the helm console registered thirty-five knots. The little Russian-built warship was giving her all to close the range with the intruder.
“Where in damnation did he come from, Taluk?” Shalakar gripped the bridge grab rail, holding himself in place beside the radar operator.
“From inshore, sir. From inside our patrol line. A single, very small, fast surface contact. I thought for a moment that there were two… an airborne as well… but now there is only the one.”
“How did he get inside of us? Identify!”
The SO shook his head. “Impossible to say. It is a very faint return. Possibly a Zodiac-type small craft…. Speed holding steady at twenty five knots. Range closing…. He’s cutting across our bow at five kilometers.”
“Acknowledged. Lookout! Do you have a visual sighting?”
“No visual at this range, Captain!”
Shalakar’s fist slammed against the side of the radar cabinet. “Zodiac or not, I want target locks! Lieutenant Sadrati! Arm the SSN 22s and the bow 76 turret both! Prepare to engage on my command!”
“We’ve got missile-seeker heads activating.” The tension level in Selkirk’s voice rose a notch. “SSN 22 Sunburns, arming for launch. He’s getting serious about this, ma’am.”
“Understood, Mr. Selkirk. Stand by on your chaff launchers and decoys. Mr. Lane, I think it’s time we get out of here.”
“I’m good with that, ma’am. Jumping to light speed!”
Steamer’s lips peeled back in a fierce, tight grin. His palm shoved the propulsion power levers forward to their check stops. The roar of the airscrews grew into a frame-shaking thunder, and acceleration shoved all hands back into their seat padding.
“This is the Lady to all elements,” Amanda called over her command circuit. “Initiate broad-spectrum countermeasures. Commence! Commence! Commence!”
“Captain”—the radar operator’s shout was half strangled with surprise—“the target is greatly increasing its speed. Forty-five knots… fifty… fifty-five and still accelerating! It is now opening the range, sir!”
Shalakar glared down into the screen. The bogey wasn’t just opening the range, it was pulling away effortlessly, turning almost twice the Raqqah’s best rate of knots.
“That’s no Zodiac!” he growled. “Missile Officer! Clear master safeties on all cells! Stand by to fire!”
“Captain,” the SO cried out again, “look at the screen.”
From a broad arc all along the western edge of the radarscope, flickering cartwheels of light strobed and intermeshed, blanketing the screen image. A myriad of smaller sparks and blobs of illumination crawled and danced between the pulsing spokes. The faint, spectral image they had been pursuing began to melt into the electronic chaos.
“Captain,” another urgent voice cut in from the overhead squawk box, “this is communications. All voice channels and datalinks have just gone down. High-intensity cascade jamming all across the range. Multiple sources!”
Shalakar’s dry throat resisted his swallow. What is out there? Blessed Allah, what is out there?
“Captain!” His missile officer wouldn’t give him time to pray or to think. “Targeting systems no longer have acquisition! Missile-tracking locks broken! Switching missiles to independent proximity homing…! Captain, we can still fire on the bearing…! Captain, what are your orders?”
In the Queen of the West’s cockpit, Amanda accessed a data link from one of the Carlson’s Eagle Eye Remotely Piloted Vehicles. A distant cousin of the Cipher reconnaissance drone the Queen had just recovered, a trio of these little robotic tilt-rotors had popped up over the horizon a few moments before. The jamming modules they carried, combined with the integral electronic countermeasures (ECM) of the Sea Fighters, wreaked havoc with the local ether.