GWOT VI - Sortie

[drewkitty]

GWOT VI - Sortie

Under Long Beach Harbor

"Helm, make your depth fourteen meters."

"Fourteen meters aye. Set diving planes negative four degrees. Thrusters."

"Dive stations, dive stations, all hands. Pressure test in twenty minutes."

"Defensive systems, are we clear to enter the inner defensive zone?"

"Affirmative. We are authorized to enter the inner defensive zone."

"Comm, incoming message. Captain of the Fleet. Two words. 'Good Hunting.' No acknowledgement indicated."

"Copy. Helm, 245, make your speed one knot."

"One knot, 245, aye aye."

"Time, mark."

"Helm, turn to bearing 345. Maneuver as needed to stay within the lane."

"Defensive systems, are we clear to enter the outer defensive zone?

"Negative."

"All stop!"

"All stop."

The PONG of a powerful sonar echoed through the hull.

"Comm, deconflict."

"We are deconflicted."

"Someone didn't get the memo."

"Sensors, permission to raise mast?"

"Denied. Comm, message. Sender is surface patrol boat. Message reads 'our bad.'"

"No reply. Sonar, contacts?"

"Pipe hulls at 175, 145, 120, 95, all within knife range. Surface patrol boats in numbers. Freighter at 183 range 2600."

"Identity on freighter?"

"MV Ever Again, container vessel, Japanese registry under Greek operation. Mixed cargo of miscellaneous goods, medical supplies, dried fruits and nuts, agricultural machinery."

And weapons. Bear Force did its best to keep America busy all over the world.

In California territorial waters, the freighter would be boarded not only by a pilot but by a Naval Militia control team. And would still have surface to surface missiles designated for her specific destruction at will.

"I'm not happy about that ping. I feel like we've been hull mapped. Please log the event and advise the Planning Office."

Even aboard a submarine, among people of proven loyalty to California, the mention of the Planning Office brought a shudder.

The crew of that patrol boat would have a lot of explaining to do.

"We have cleared outer markers," Nav said a while later.

"Make our depth fifty meters."

"Cruising stations. Comm, hot mic."

"Attention. This is the duty captain speaking. We have done an amazing amount of work in a very short period of time. This will hopefully be the first of many underwater naval achievements by this Hull and this Crew. Right now we will run on batteries and go find a very isolated patch of ocean to play with our new toy. So study your manuals, those of you who are not still writing them, and Get Some Rest. You'll need it."

###

Southern Pacific Ocean

"And here we are, a veritable dagger pointed at the heart of the Pacific Missile Range."

An empty patch of ocean. No one was testing missiles any more, especially not from Vandenburg. Or so the Americans would think.

"Periscope depth."

"Elint, sweep."

"No findings."

"Sonar, report contacts."

"Negative contacts."

"Flash battle stations."

"Weapons, spun up, air and space warfare. Permission to flood tubes?"

"Flood tubes."

"Flooded tubes one through eighty, fore aft and amidships."

"Diving Officer, make your depth awash."

"Depth is awash."

"Aviation officer, launch protection drones."

Two self-bailing bays at the front and rear of the submarine opened their upper clamshell doors, and what looked like a small helicopter lifted from each. Each had a pair of what looked like long tubes slung underneath.

There was no new technology to the drones. They would just work.

"Elint, advise."

"Detection on drone control channels, low power. No other radiative sources within two sigma of detection values."

"Aviation officer, launch AWACS."

Another hatch opened and what looked like a liferaft capsule popped out of it and inflated at once. It rose and rose and rose until it formed the shape of a blimp and started its way upward into the sky, trailing a tether that was also its control and power supply.

The crew waited, with the calm born of long practice, for it to fully extend.

"Elint officer?"

"Detection is active. No new contacts."

"Radar officer?"

"Request permission to pulse."

"You are authorized to pulse. One sweep only."

At low power, coming from such an isolated area, it would likely not be detected at all. If by some chance it was, it might be dismissed as a transient, spike or other anomaly.

"One sweep. No returns except our aircraft."

"Aviation officer, loiter time on deployed frames?"

"ASW drones, two hours six minutes. AWACS indefinite."

"Comm, send on ELF. Message character. Lincoln. Lincoln. Lincoln."

"Copy, sending ell-ell-ell."

###

Vandenburg Naval Militia Base
Gantry Four

Hoots sounded in the calm afternoon as the handful of personnel working nearby immediately sought the safety of their bunkers.

"Target, target. Pacific Missile Range. Minuteman spin up. Inert warheads, repeat inert. Firing point procedures."

It was a snap kick. An immediate strategic launch.

###

American Aerospace Defense Command

"Page the duty officer. Thermal bloom, Vandenburg."

Everyone sat up straighter. It wasn't likely that California would start a nuclear war with a single launch from a known location.

But no one could ever forget that America had.

"What do we have?"

"Gantry Four. They prepped a Minuteman on the pad. They just launched. Looks like ... Pacific Missile Range. Definite southwest commit. This is not an orbital launch. Hold on. We have an anomaly. FAST bird. Substantial upgrade. This is a hypersonic weapons system using a Minuteman lower stage."

A California ... missile test?

He picked up the phone.

"Get me NRO. We need emergency satellite re-tasking. On my authority."

###

"Helm, surface. Battle stations missile."

The lights dimmed red and everyone got very busy.

The helicopter drones flew northwest and southeast at full throttle, getting as far away from their parent as they could.

Hatches popped open on the deck, square boxes.

"Space weapons officer, bandit bandit bandit. Incoming hypersonic missile. Track intercept and destroy."

"Radar, give me an AWACS pulse for hypersonic ranging."

"Ranging. Ranged. We have target ballistics."

The four platforms - the submarine's sail herself, the AWACS blimp loitering on its tether above, and the two helicopter drones - were simulating the components of a much larger radar system than anything a submarine could carry.

"Weapons, kill ballistic track 101 with bird 72."

A missile popped out of one of the open tubes, leaping into the sky as if on a spring, then lit and roared northeast towards its target.

"Kinetic kill vehicle tracking, tracking.... second pulse?"

"Denied," reminded the duty captain.

"Loss of signal from KKV."

"Visual. We have debris falling from this sky. That is a kill, I say again, that is a kill."

"Aviation, recover all aircraft immediately. Ship, diving stations. I say again, diving stations."

The drones started racing back. The tether was reeled in as the invaluable helium that had inflated it was valved out to the air. The hatches slammed. Except one.

"Hatch failure on hatch 44."

"Emergency procedure. Stat. Radars you are COLD."

"Radar, copy cold."

One radar pulse would cook the brains of the two sailors who were racing out of the sail hatch onto the deck with hammers and crowbars to secure or free the stuck hatch.

Securing it would be far safer. But leaving it open would be very noisy. And noise underwater was death.

"Hatch secured."

The two helicopter drones landed, and sailors folded their rotors as the elevators descended and the clamshell hatches closed over them.

The electronic guts of the AWACS were manhandled into a cargo hatch by other sailors. The fabric had ripped away in the rough jostling, which would make an accountant wince given that it was specially treated anti-radar ballistic fabric. But no one on the sub cared about that.

"Hatch status secure."

"Dive dive dive. Make your depth fifty meters."

Now for the acid test.

###

American Air Defense Command

"Looks like their missile test failed."

They watched with satisfaction as the hypersonic broke up and scattered in small, irrecoverable fragments over a wide stretch of the Pacific Ocean.

But no one launches a weapons test without having an asset in place to observe. The South Pacific was America's ocean, and anything found in it was fair game to take, burn, sink or destroy.

They would find whatever ship, trawler or submarine had been used to observe, and do exactly that.

###

"Reactor, you may crash start."

They had been running on batteries entirely until this point. They were below ten percent. They could charge on Diesels and eventually limp home, but that required being at snorkel depth and venting a thermal plume that satellites could detect. Even if the balky exhaust cooler worked.

American nuclear submarine reactors were constantly running. Even in port. They had to bring in water and eject water continually. They did this very quietly, but not completely so. It was a signature that California had learned over months and years to detect.

An American submarine with her reactor crashed or scrammed could do an excellent imitation of a paperweight.

California had designed a reactor - helium pebble-bed - that could be started and stopped much more easily and without complex procedures. It had been tested on shore and in an artificial lake. It had not yet been tested in open water.

The power indicators surged and they had power. Enough to move and enough over that to charge.

Best of yet, no need to bring water in and out of the hull and no subtle ocean temperature changes to track.

"Best stealth speed. Sneak us northwest. Get us out of here."

This was about to be a very unhealthy place to occupy water in.

And not just for a California submarine. Any submarine.

Several LIDES were lurking on the edges of the operational area. Silent, stealthy, fully charged over the previous weeks running Diesels when American satellites were not overhead.

There would be no need to identify friend or foe when anyone in a certain area was automatically enemy.

The Southern Pacific Ocean was about to be a free fire zone. An ambush. Wheels within wheels within wheels.