John Schettler - Steel Reign

“Sir, I’m reading a single target at 228 kilometers—in the Tatary Strait, off Lazarev.”

“Correct. That will be a bothersome Japanese destroyer. It is right at the outer edge for our Moskit IIs, but the P-900s have the range easily. Sound inventory.”

“Sir, we have seven missiles remaining in the P-900 bank, including missile number ten.”

“Ready a single P-900, and fire. Set missile guidance to accept remote assist from the Oko panel on Tunguska on terminal approach.”

“Aye sir…. Missile ready, sounding launch warning and firing now as ordered.”

And that would soon be the end of Kagero class destroyer Maikaze , and a good number of her crew. The ship’s name meant ‘Whirlwind.’ It had sewn the wind with shells from its deck guns that day, unaware that a dangerous enemy was watching and waiting to strike. Now it would reap the whirlwind. The P-900 was effectively a cruise missile, and the longest range SSM in Kirov’s larders. Now there would only be six remaining, but the Japanese would have to trade a destroyer for that missile, and Karpov would secure both ends of that vital ferry site on the 18th of December.

Ryoko Otani was quick to spot the missile fire as the P-900 climbed to altitude for the subsonic cruise segment of its flight path. Takami was well out in front of Kurita’s task force, which was now slowly escorting the troop laden transports towards Karafuto. The safest and easiest port to debark them would be Otomari on Chitose Bay in the grasp of the lower crab claw made by the island. To screen them, Takami sailed off to take up station as a forward radar picket, well up the southeastern coast off a long spit of land that framed the eastern edge of Taraika Bay, called Cape Kira-Shiritoko. From that position they had a good look north up the long eastern coast of the middle and upper portion of the island. If Kirov moved south to get into any position to threaten the troop convoy, Takami would see that move easily enough.

The ship had assumed a stealthy EMCON mode, attempting to radiate as little as possible. Now that they were ‘in theater,’ a possible combat zone. Harada had ordered EMCON Alpha, total emissions silence. Since the SPY radar system was a passive phased array it could run in a mode known as ‘SPY-1 Silent’, and still receive and process signals radiated by the enemy, even while restraining its own signal emissions, and Kirov was radiating with no restraint, all over the spectrum, absolutely heedless of the fact that anyone might be out there listening.

The SPY system could see airborne threats out to about 175 nautical or 200 standard miles in this mode, and it wasn’t until the P-900 was descending into its terminal phase that Otani saw it, for it had just then come inside that detection range. It was there, there, then suddenly gone. The missile had descended to just a few meters in height, down on the deck to skewer the Maikaze , and was below Takami ’s detection threshold when it finally struck home. But Otani knew what threats she might be looking for, and this one filled the bill.

“Con, radar. I just picked up what looked like a missile descending to sea skim mode. Sending coordinates to the CIC now.”

“Understood,”said Harada. “Process it and tell me more. In the meantime…” He reached for the 1MC intercom to broadcast a message to all ship’s stations. “Now hear this, now hear this. We just got a whiff of our Russian nemesis out there, and it looked like they were already throwing some lead at somebody. Court’s in session and all stations will now come to order. For all you 90-day Blunders out there, that means rack time is over and it’s battle stations. I want everyone to emulate that time honored sailor of endless note—A. J. Squared Away. Do it now. This is the Captain. That is all.”

Harada’s time in training with the US Navy had seen him pick up a lot of the typical slang bantered about by their sailors. Now he looked to his radar station. “What was that contact, Lieutenant?”

“Had to be a missile sir. I’m figuring it was a P-900.”

“Get a line on its angle of approach?”

“Aye sir, just a few seconds, but it traces out to our estimated position based on SIGINT data.”

“Good enough. So who are they shooting at, and why all the way on the other side of the damn island?”

“Sir, that’s right at the Lazarus ferry crossing site,” said Michi Ikida, the ship’s navigator.

“So there must be an operation underway there,” said Fukada. They’d want that ferry site to establish communications with the mainland. It’s also the choke point on the strait. They can set up artillery there and then control access to the mouth of the Amur River from the south. How do you want to play this, Captain?”

“I don’t see anything we can do for that situation at the moment. Our watch is out here on the Sea of Okhotsk. The Siberians know that we’ll reinforce from Hokkaido, but they don’t seem too awfuly concerned about it.”

“They’ve accepted that in lieu of getting their own troops ashore in the north.”

“It sure seems that way. Well, once they are ashore, and well established, then they’ll push south. That’s when this Mizuchi comes south right along with them, and the fur starts flying. So this is my plan.”

He walked over toward the navigation station, looking over the map on Ikida’s screen. “We’ll move here,” he said, pointing to the long spit of land that framed the eastern edge of Taraika Bay. “We’ll take up station just west of that isthmus. We’ll know they are coming, but they won’t expect us here. Hovering west of that long isthmus gives us a little screen from their Fregat system. We stay silent, EMCON Alpha. But my bet is we’ll hear them coming like a bull in a China closet. They’ll be radiating, just like they are now, and when they get close, we get our friends to attack with any land based air power they have on lower Sakhalin. During that attack, we pop up a Sea King, and fix their location. Kurita must have his carrier based aircraft ready and also vectoring in on them at this time. With any luck they’ll just think it’s another plane. Then we throw everything we have at them, all eight Type 1 SSMs, and we keep our fingers crossed. Comments?”

“An excellent plan,” said Fukada. “But I have the icing for the cake. If we have them inside 50 klicks at that time, then we should use the deck gun as well. If not, then we should definitely use the rail gun.”

“The rail gun? It was meant for missile and aircraft threats.”

“True enough, but it can also lob that projectile out 200 Kilometers at Mach 7—and they can’t stop it. If we get a hit, it might be the equivalent of a 90mm gun for the damage it could do. There’s no explosive power, but it will damn well ruin any system it might hit on that Russian ship.”

“Very well, I’ll consider that. Anyone else? Mister Honjo, you’ve got the CIC. Any thoughts?”

“Just give me a target, sir. But I agree with what the XO says. If we go offensive, then we throw anything we have that might put damage on that ship.”

“Alright. Where do we want Kurita in all of this?” The Captain waited, but as expected, Fukada was first to answer.

“He’ll want to be aggressive once cut loose from that convoy escort. Those troops should be ashore by tomorrow morning. He’ll come looking for trouble after that.”

“Think we can dissuade him?”

“Why should we?”

“You want to expose those ships to a Moskit II barrage?”

“The more targets Kirov has to worry about, the better. I’d say we should let him sortie up the east coast as a fast surface action threat. Let Kirov take their shots, and then we can go after his SSMs—assuming they survive what we just discussed when we bushwhack them.”