John Schettler - Second Front

“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.

“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.”

“That pretty much sums up the situation, Admiral. I see that promotions come easy in the Russian Navy these days. Over.”

Karpov ignored the remark, and got right down to business. “Consider your situation, Captain. I counted eight missiles off your deck, and lo and behold they were aimed at my ship, but none of them hit. So you’re sitting across the table from me with an empty pistol. As you have just seen, that is not the case on this side of the argument. Now what in God’s name are you doing here fighting with the IJN?”

“Defending Japan.” Harada kept it real simple.

“I see… Well you may be broadly unaware of the situation here, but if you were better versed, you would see that every action I have taken against Japan has been fully justified. Your country presently has troops on Siberian soil, and one of two things will happen—Japan will either withdraw those troops and return all occupied territories to Siberian sovereignty, or I will take them by force. We started with Kamchatka earlier this year, and now the order of the day is Sakhalin Island. You people have been calling it Karafuto, but that is about to change.”

“Perhaps so,” said Harada in return. “Then again perhaps not.”

“Captain, don’t play tough guy out here with me, believe me, you’ll regret it. Your presence here was quite a surprise, to say the least, but radar signatures don’t lie, and my reflexes are as good as they come. Now, I’m not stupid, and I know exactly what you just tried to pull here. It failed. You’ve expended your SSMs, and if you persist, you’ll be expending a good deal more of your SAMs as well.”

Fukada looked over at the Captain, his eyes wide, mouthing something which prompted Harada to pause. “Mister Fukada?”

“He’s bluffing! They just threw thirteen missiles at us and we knocked each and every one down. He’s empty too, or at most he may have but one or two missiles left.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Harada. “The first twelve were all Sunburns. But that last number was something new. Did you get a signature on it, Otani?”

“I thought it was an upgraded Onyx, but it was just too damn fast. Had to be something new—maybe a Zirkon variant—hypersonic, sir.”

“Well pinch me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think they load those missiles in sets of one. That has to be one egg from a full nest. I’m betting he’s not bragging here. He’s got more under his forward deck than we first thought.” But Harada had to play the game here, and see what this man really wanted.

“It seems to me that you’ve expended a good many SAMs as well—not to mention the thirteen flies we swatted down over here. Don’t get pushy, Admiral. As you have seen, we can defend ourselves.”

“Well that’s damn well what you’ll be doing then, because you’re done insofar as offense goes. You want to close the range and try that 127mm deck gun? We have one too, right on the bow—along with six more 152s on three twin turrets. Let me put it to you this way, Captain. You throw another missile at my helos and I’ll throw the kitchen sink at yours. As for that airborne contact just crossing over the eastern shore of Sakhalin about 60 nautical miles to our southwest, those planes are about to have a really bad day. Now you can either get on the radio and save some lives, or I’ll take them apart, plane by plane, the instant they break through my 40 mile range circle. After that, I’ll see if that surface action group 20 miles off your bow has any SM-2s. I don’t think so. And when I’m done with them, I’ll come south for you. It’s either that, or you turn tail and withdraw. Your call, Captain. Vladimir Karpov, over and out.”

Harada said nothing more, switching off the handset and returning it to its cradle. “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” he muttered. “Lieutenant Commander, what do you make of this?”

“He’s right on one count, sir. We’re sitting here with an empty pistol—except for one thing, the rail gun. We don’t have to close on him to use that. We’ve had the range for the last thirty minutes.”

“Yes, but something tells me that would be like poking a stick in a beehive. Mister Honjo, what’s our SM-2 count looking like?”

“Thinning out, sir. We’ve got 13 forward and 23 more aft. 36 total on that system, and then we have the 12 SM-3s.”

“Anyway you look at it,” said Fukada, “we’ll be an empty shell if he does have another batch of those hypersonic SSMs. Neither of the two SM-2s we fired were able to get a hard target lock before that last missile was in its terminal run. That’s just not good enough. We would have to use the SM-3s, and hope to god we see them coming earlier. We can’t let another of those hypersonic jobs get inside 20 klicks before we pick it up.” Fukada had a hard face, but there was a crack in his bravado that Harada clearly perceived.

“If we do use the rail gun, and get any kind of a hit, bet on him throwing anything he has left,” said Harada.

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Fukada. “He’s already put thirteen missiles on us, and with nothing to show for it. I’m willing to bet that’s more ordnance than he’s used in all other operations here, though that’s a guess. We really have no idea how long he’s been here. The point I’m making, sir, is that those missiles matter. That’s his might and muscle here, and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good, just like our missiles.”