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GWOT VII - Coastal Defense
GWOT VII - Coastal Defense
The waves are pounding us up and down.
I am hung over, starting to get sea sick, and am sick of waves smashing me in the face.
I am strapped in the jump seat (spare seat) of a surf boat.
This is not fun. I am wearing a life jacket carefully secured to me. However this will only allow my corpse to be recovered.
Apparently I needed a day off of training for Armageddon.
"He needs some sun and some fresh air," I imagine someone telling someone.
I was just woken up and walked to the docks instead of to the simulator. As I'd thought it was a sim day, I had nothing on me except my military ID.
Suddenly we make a powered rooster-turn across the waves.
This would be fun if I were into roller coasters. No question of popcorn, of course, it would have gone overboard four turns ago.
Then we stop. Next to a dark shape in the water.
Suddenly two men - big, burly men to be specific - in the subdued camo sometimes worn by California's Marines are manhandling me right over the side of the boat! They are made bulkier by the subdued camo life jackets they are also wearing. But I notice their pistols. A Sig-Sauer clone made by a California company, they have the unusual attribute of being able to fire one round even if totally immersed underwater.
We are briefly standing on what feels like a gym floor. A deck, rubberized perhaps, with little nubs that I can feel through my boots.
Then I am dragged through a hatch and handled down two companionways.
I am on board a California submarine.
###
"Secure hatch. Prepare to submerge. Diving officer, make your depth twenty meters. Attention all hands, this is the Duty Captain speaking. We have an authorized guest aboard. He will be getting a tour of the vessel. This has been authorized by the Captain of the Fleet. However, he is NOT a naval officer and he is NOT read in on any moist secrets. He may figure out what he can figure out with his eyes and ears. That is all. Helm, course 230, make your depth consonant with the CDP."
"CDP?" I can't help but ask.
"Coastal Defense Plan, Colonel," someone says from a console.
###
This is not a LIDES. This monster is too huge to be a LIDES.
LIDES are basically large cast ceramic pipes with hammer heads on the bow and stern. The pipes are stuffed with batteries, generators, electronics equipment, torpedoes, mines, other things we light-heartedly hope are still secret, and idiots. The kind of idiots who have to carry a pistol that can fire once underwater as the final escape from a severe fuckup.
This submarine has a mess hall. As I am half-carried forward to it, we pass through what is decorated as a redwood forest. Tubes that stretch from floor to ceiling. Painted lovingly as if they were trees, with individual names. In between, of course, is packed with all the equipment necessary for a submarine - air scrubbers, firefighting gear, power systems - and some which is not necessary, such as the emergency medical and personal weapons lockers from which I am never more than a few steps away.
They are strategic missile tubes. Each one contains a Sword of Damocles, a city-killer.
I don't get a chance to count before I am sitting in the mess hall. A breakfast is served. Ham and eggs and toast and orange juice.
Rather to my amazement, I am starving -- and start digging in.
The crew has questions for me.
I answer them. By definition, they all have higher security clearances than I do, or they would not be here.
I'm a Colonel. I'm a diplomatic officer. I'm a member of the Strategic Defense Force.
They eye each other cautiously with every question I ask. Then one answers, with a minimalist answer.
I don't ask if this is a ballistic missile boat. Obviously it is. I don't ask if California built it. Obviously we did.
I do ask, how many tubes? I do ask, orbital range? I do ask, "MIRV?"
"More than twenty." "Yes." Grudgingly, a nod.
That means a capability at least equivalent to the US Navy Ohio class submarines equipped with the Trident series of thermonuclear multiple warhead ballistic missiles.
In a sense this is all old technology. The US had all this in the 1980s. It would be weird if California couldn't replicate it over three decades later.
But the resources of a superpower went into the Ohio class. Even allowing for a lot of copying, and that some percentage of the California Naval Militia had been US Navy before she took up nuking San Francisco for a hobby, this is a most impressive achievement.
No answer is given to the question of how many we might have.
The conversation changes topics.
What are we going to do about America, the crazy old uncle waving his nuclear dick at everyone?
China's answer is simple and straightfoward. Nuke America until it glows and then shoot it in the dark.
This is understandable. Our best estimate is that they lost one hundred million people in twenty four hours to American nuclear barrages. Another two hundred million people lost their lives within the month to war and death, suffering and disease and starvation in a shattered nation invaded by the Americans.
The death tolls kept going up and up, too. Best analysis we could do, probably plus minus ten percent, is that China lost half a billion people to the Firecracker War. Five hundred million. 500,000,000. Every single one of them, a person like you or me.
Even Stalin would blush at those numbers.
We are caught in the middle. A full nuclear exchange between China and America would coat California in fallout twice. The residue from hitting the rest of the continent so very hard, and trans-Pacific fallout as America kills another half billion Chinese and to quote the former Homeland propaganda, "Finish The Job!"
I've seen the classified estimates of that. Several hundred pages to say "Everybody dies."
Oh, we would try to survive and to save our people. Nothing about our oaths says anything about "Not valid in case of nuclear conflict."
But these earnest people surrounding me, our sailors, would be the last Californians standing in a dead world.
Those 'trees' ... would plant the seeds of one last dark harvest. Whatever cities the Chinese missed, California would "take care of." Did I mention the fallout?
The world was really too small for us to play with these weapons. It's like a duel between three men with flamethrowers in a telephone booth.
That's why I was here. I might learn something from them. But they needed to learn some things from me.
###
I am shown the control room. This is different from the helm. Kennedy Space Center packed into a space the size of a two star hotel room, shock hardened laptops daisy chained together to control ballistic missile launches.
I recognize some of the readouts and indicators on the wall screen.
"Aegis?" I murmur, and am hushed immediately.
Ever tried to shoot down a bullet with a bullet?
###
There isn't much of a sick bay. There's bunks and hooks for IV bags. And a lot of drugs.
"We can't stabilize casualties to transport them to definitive care. This infirmary is about reverse triage. Get you back on duty. Keep you alive. Or..."
I realize that the naval corpsman has the Thanatos logo sewn on his sleeve.
And that's a LOT of morphine storage.
###
We are going to have to be clever.
"So far from God, so close to America."
###
I am dragged back to the surface, then aboard the surf boat, which returns to harbor.
Officially we were playing in the surf all morning, which is why I look like crap.
I am given the afternoon off, to rest. Shower and stare at the ceiling.
Mutual Assured Destruction. M-A-D. We've achieved it.
Can we reject the MAD-ness?
Mutual Assured Survival?
The waves are pounding us up and down.
I am hung over, starting to get sea sick, and am sick of waves smashing me in the face.
I am strapped in the jump seat (spare seat) of a surf boat.
This is not fun. I am wearing a life jacket carefully secured to me. However this will only allow my corpse to be recovered.
Apparently I needed a day off of training for Armageddon.
"He needs some sun and some fresh air," I imagine someone telling someone.
I was just woken up and walked to the docks instead of to the simulator. As I'd thought it was a sim day, I had nothing on me except my military ID.
Suddenly we make a powered rooster-turn across the waves.
This would be fun if I were into roller coasters. No question of popcorn, of course, it would have gone overboard four turns ago.
Then we stop. Next to a dark shape in the water.
Suddenly two men - big, burly men to be specific - in the subdued camo sometimes worn by California's Marines are manhandling me right over the side of the boat! They are made bulkier by the subdued camo life jackets they are also wearing. But I notice their pistols. A Sig-Sauer clone made by a California company, they have the unusual attribute of being able to fire one round even if totally immersed underwater.
We are briefly standing on what feels like a gym floor. A deck, rubberized perhaps, with little nubs that I can feel through my boots.
Then I am dragged through a hatch and handled down two companionways.
I am on board a California submarine.
###
"Secure hatch. Prepare to submerge. Diving officer, make your depth twenty meters. Attention all hands, this is the Duty Captain speaking. We have an authorized guest aboard. He will be getting a tour of the vessel. This has been authorized by the Captain of the Fleet. However, he is NOT a naval officer and he is NOT read in on any moist secrets. He may figure out what he can figure out with his eyes and ears. That is all. Helm, course 230, make your depth consonant with the CDP."
"CDP?" I can't help but ask.
"Coastal Defense Plan, Colonel," someone says from a console.
###
This is not a LIDES. This monster is too huge to be a LIDES.
LIDES are basically large cast ceramic pipes with hammer heads on the bow and stern. The pipes are stuffed with batteries, generators, electronics equipment, torpedoes, mines, other things we light-heartedly hope are still secret, and idiots. The kind of idiots who have to carry a pistol that can fire once underwater as the final escape from a severe fuckup.
This submarine has a mess hall. As I am half-carried forward to it, we pass through what is decorated as a redwood forest. Tubes that stretch from floor to ceiling. Painted lovingly as if they were trees, with individual names. In between, of course, is packed with all the equipment necessary for a submarine - air scrubbers, firefighting gear, power systems - and some which is not necessary, such as the emergency medical and personal weapons lockers from which I am never more than a few steps away.
They are strategic missile tubes. Each one contains a Sword of Damocles, a city-killer.
I don't get a chance to count before I am sitting in the mess hall. A breakfast is served. Ham and eggs and toast and orange juice.
Rather to my amazement, I am starving -- and start digging in.
The crew has questions for me.
I answer them. By definition, they all have higher security clearances than I do, or they would not be here.
I'm a Colonel. I'm a diplomatic officer. I'm a member of the Strategic Defense Force.
They eye each other cautiously with every question I ask. Then one answers, with a minimalist answer.
I don't ask if this is a ballistic missile boat. Obviously it is. I don't ask if California built it. Obviously we did.
I do ask, how many tubes? I do ask, orbital range? I do ask, "MIRV?"
"More than twenty." "Yes." Grudgingly, a nod.
That means a capability at least equivalent to the US Navy Ohio class submarines equipped with the Trident series of thermonuclear multiple warhead ballistic missiles.
In a sense this is all old technology. The US had all this in the 1980s. It would be weird if California couldn't replicate it over three decades later.
But the resources of a superpower went into the Ohio class. Even allowing for a lot of copying, and that some percentage of the California Naval Militia had been US Navy before she took up nuking San Francisco for a hobby, this is a most impressive achievement.
No answer is given to the question of how many we might have.
The conversation changes topics.
What are we going to do about America, the crazy old uncle waving his nuclear dick at everyone?
China's answer is simple and straightfoward. Nuke America until it glows and then shoot it in the dark.
This is understandable. Our best estimate is that they lost one hundred million people in twenty four hours to American nuclear barrages. Another two hundred million people lost their lives within the month to war and death, suffering and disease and starvation in a shattered nation invaded by the Americans.
The death tolls kept going up and up, too. Best analysis we could do, probably plus minus ten percent, is that China lost half a billion people to the Firecracker War. Five hundred million. 500,000,000. Every single one of them, a person like you or me.
Even Stalin would blush at those numbers.
We are caught in the middle. A full nuclear exchange between China and America would coat California in fallout twice. The residue from hitting the rest of the continent so very hard, and trans-Pacific fallout as America kills another half billion Chinese and to quote the former Homeland propaganda, "Finish The Job!"
I've seen the classified estimates of that. Several hundred pages to say "Everybody dies."
Oh, we would try to survive and to save our people. Nothing about our oaths says anything about "Not valid in case of nuclear conflict."
But these earnest people surrounding me, our sailors, would be the last Californians standing in a dead world.
Those 'trees' ... would plant the seeds of one last dark harvest. Whatever cities the Chinese missed, California would "take care of." Did I mention the fallout?
The world was really too small for us to play with these weapons. It's like a duel between three men with flamethrowers in a telephone booth.
That's why I was here. I might learn something from them. But they needed to learn some things from me.
###
I am shown the control room. This is different from the helm. Kennedy Space Center packed into a space the size of a two star hotel room, shock hardened laptops daisy chained together to control ballistic missile launches.
I recognize some of the readouts and indicators on the wall screen.
"Aegis?" I murmur, and am hushed immediately.
Ever tried to shoot down a bullet with a bullet?
###
There isn't much of a sick bay. There's bunks and hooks for IV bags. And a lot of drugs.
"We can't stabilize casualties to transport them to definitive care. This infirmary is about reverse triage. Get you back on duty. Keep you alive. Or..."
I realize that the naval corpsman has the Thanatos logo sewn on his sleeve.
And that's a LOT of morphine storage.
###
We are going to have to be clever.
"So far from God, so close to America."
###
I am dragged back to the surface, then aboard the surf boat, which returns to harbor.
Officially we were playing in the surf all morning, which is why I look like crap.
I am given the afternoon off, to rest. Shower and stare at the ceiling.
Mutual Assured Destruction. M-A-D. We've achieved it.
Can we reject the MAD-ness?
Mutual Assured Survival?