John Schettler - Second Front

Better late than never, thought Kurita. Those rockets must be trying to catch and kill the enemy rockets, but from what I can see, they move much too slow, and they are too low on the sea.

He watched them move in a stately trail one following another, eight in all, their tails bright with fire as they passed his ships and continued north. Then like a train coming in the opposite direction, he saw more missiles from the north, one, two, four in all. The two groups passed very near one another, yet had no argument.

They continued on about their deadly business, passing one another, with bigger fish to fry. It was then that Kurita realized these must be after exactly that—bigger fish. His own ship had already been targeted. Now Takami had fired eight rockets at the enemy, and four enemy arrows were moving swiftly away to the south, undoubtedly aimed at this secret new cruiser Yamamoto had told him about. These ships are fighting one another! Mizuchi hurls its fire at Takami this time, and it is terribly fast, much faster than our rockets. Yet how can they even see one another? My horizon is completely empty in all directions, except for those rockets. There is nothing on the sea at all. Is Takami simply firing blind? Surely it can have no idea where the enemy is now.

“Vampire! Vampire!” yelled Otani. “Multiple contacts inbound—I read four missiles. Range, 20 nautical miles and closing fast.”

“Hello,” said Harada. “Well, the interval of surprise is over, gentlemen. They obviously know enough now to get serious. Stand up the SM-2 system and engage those contacts. Set all laser and Phalanx systems to full automatic, weapons free.”

Only four, he thought. I’d have doubled down on that salvo. But they have more in the cupboard than we do, and will likely fire again soon. For now we had better just hope we can stop those four vampires.

“Lieutenant Otani, what are we firing at?”

“SA-N-22B sir—Sunburns. We should be seeing them any minute now.”

Twenty nautical miles, thought Harada. That is too damn close. Now he waited, the tension mounting second by second as his forward deck was awash with defensive missile fire. The SM-2s would go out one by one, with two assigned to each target, and AEGIS carefully watching the results to retarget any missile to a new Vampire if needed. He saw something bright flash like lightning to the north, and realized the Laser system had already taken a shot. This was just too damn close for comfort.

“Call the tune, Lieutenant.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Otani’s voice carried the emotion of the moment, the adrenaline carefully controlled, the effect of all those many hours training at her station in drill after drill. This time the weapons were free, hot, and this was no drill.

“Laser Reports a Miss—recharging. SM-2 has locked on lead target and detonated. Splash Vampire 1! Wingmate is redirecting to new target… attempting to lock on… No good, sir. Wingmate has missed, but missile three has the target and is tracking true. Hit! Splash Vampire 2.”

They had fired eight SM-2s in defense, but they were not all needed. They had two misses, and four kills in the first six off the deck. The last two ran blind, saw nothing more to argue with, and self-destructed as programmed.

“They just took down all four of our SSMs,” said Samsonov with a sheepish look on his face. “I have no telemetry on any missile.”

That removed all uncertainty from Karpov’s mind. Whatever doubt that remained was crushed. All the puzzle pieces fit to paint a nice clear picture.

We got strange signals intelligence from Nikolin on HF transmission bands that could not be read. Something was capable of jamming our Oko Panels on the helos, and Rodenko’s contact profile tells me exactly what it is—a ship also capable of shooting down a Moskit-II moving at well over Mach 2 on terminal approach. There was a modern day AEGIS class destroyer out there, and I have no doubt that we are now under attack.

There’s no time to wonder how it could have happened, he thought. Perhaps it was just as Fedorov suggested when he gave me that quiet little warning. So if they are out there, and this is still 1942, then we had better get serious. If that ship went to active sensors, it was because he wanted to fix our position to fire. In fact, he probably fired some time ago, well before I let those Moskit-IIs go.

“Mister Samsonov,” he said, his voice leaden, and deadly serious. “What is that ship carrying in the way of offensive missiles?”

“Sir, if it is standard loadout, it would have either eight Type-90 SSMs, or perhaps the newer Type-12.”

“Weapon characteristics…”

“Sir, the Type 90 is a high subsonic cruise missile with low angle approach—a sea skimmer, sir. Range 150 kilometers, with a 225kg high explosive warhead. The Type 12 is similar, but with extended range. Both use inertial guidance systems and deploy active radar on terminal approach.”

“Very well, please tell our S-300 system we’ll be expecting bad company any minute now.”

No sooner had Karpov said that when Rodenko’s board sounded the alert. “Missile warning! I’m now reading eight contacts inbound at 20 nautical miles. Top Plate, Top Pair and Round House TACAN confirm. Range now 17 nautical miles and closing.”

“Sir, S-300s firing now!” Samsonov would not have been quick enough to toggle and tap out orders for sixteen S-300s to get out after those missiles. The system on full automatic was far faster, and it was already doing its job. Hatches opened on the forward deck, and the long deadly missiles were up and on their way, one after another. On Rodenko’s radar they fed out from the ship like a long string of pearls, but this time the targets would not be so easy to hit. Kirov’s SAMs had been the terror of aircraft in this era, finding them without fail, their radar cross signatures simply too huge to miss, their speed so feeble that tracking and killing them was almost a certainty. This time, however, the targets were coming in very low, and relatively fast, with much smaller radar profiles, and all in an environment that was now suddenly alive with the harassment of ECM systems on both sides.

The first two S-300s were going to miss, but the third scored a hit, taking down the lead SSM. The odds of a hit were about 80% against a modern day SSM like this, and now they were further reduced by the sleek target profile, its inherent stealth, and the environment in which the engagement was taking place. The once infallible killer was now a hit and miss defensive system, but then it knew that, and its computers had been programmed to dish out ordnance required to saturate the barrage with defensive missiles. S-300s continued to answer its call.

The fourth missile scored the second hit, and its three underdeck cell mates took out one more. The first eight missiles had scored three hits the first time through the lineup, a good day for a baseball team, but not for a ship when 225kg warheads were being thrown at your head. You had to get each and every one of those missiles, without fail, and so the system opened yet more cell hatches on that long forward deck, and let the S-300s fly. Twenty missiles would go out in this defensive volley, two each assigned to the two contacts Rodenko now could ID as helicopters, their radar signatures giving them away in the clutter of other incoming Japanese planes. The other sixteen missiles would all go after those incoming SSMs.

It was going to be very close. They took down three more, and the last two were now penetrating inside close defense circles. It was coming down to the last two missiles against two defensive SAMs, and those odds were not good.