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Battle Stations
"Battle stations. I repeat, all hands to Battle Stations." Captain Roger Westleigh barked, clearly and firmly. As if to underscore his words, the general quarters sounded up and down the decks of HMS Eagle as the sailors scrambled to their posts. On the deck three squadrons of Sea Harriers warmed their engines as bomb tractors drove frantically, arming up the aircraft. He put down his handset, satisfied. The signals officer, Lieutenant Axworth was co-ordinating with the other ships of the Allied fleet. "Thirteen degrees to starboard, Gryphonne." Up ahead, the bulk of the French Air defence cruiser edged through the icy pacific waters to its new position. Just aft of it was USS Eldridge, carrying the first ever Naval Gap generator. This ship was crucial - stealth lay at the very heart of the plan, if the Soviets discovered this fleet before time both the plan and the ships were sunk. The twenty ships formed up professionally, a testament to the firmness of the alliance that ships from eight different countries could work so well together. They'd have to, Westleigh thought, or this raid will fail miserably, and then it's shoreside duty for me, surely. His chest swelled with pride as he recounted his rise to become one of the Royal Navy's youngest Captains, and in command of an Aircraft carrier, no less! He knew now, that all eyes of the admiralty would be on him, watching his every move. More importantly, if the fleet failed to knock out the Soviet Iron Curtain installation West of Vladivostock and intercept the anticipated Soviet naval relief convoy, the Korean-led invasion fleet would catastrophically run aground, so to speak. "Signal the flagship, Mr Forbes, we are in position." "Aye aye sir." The seaman responded. Of course, there was no other possible response to an order from the Captain. Failure to comply would mean the brig and a court-martial. Westleigh turned to his trusted Lieutenant. "Now we play the waiting game, Mr Axworth." "Very good sir." There were a few tense moments. "Sir, we have a green light!" Shouted Mr Forbes. "Calm down, Mr Forbes. Mr Axworth, send the signal." "Aye aye sir!" Scant seconds later, the already bombed and fuelled up squadrons of the fleet's three aircraft carriers rose to the wild blue. Westleigh wished he could have been on one of those planes! Maybe even the first western military units into the Soviet Union since the end of the last war. Westleigh had missed that conflict, and had missed his chance to be a pilot, too, but he'd be damned if he'd miss his chance for glory here! Nervous electronic warfare officers sat glued to their VDU's. Anxious sailors paused in their duties, waiting to hear of the fate of their airborne colleagues. Captain Westleigh sipped from his Coffee mug. The coffee was terrible, as always - the Soviet invasion of the US had scuttled the main supply route of coffee from South America. Westleigh dreaded to think of what they were using as 'coffee' instead… "Sir! Lyon squadron reports contacts, sir! Seventeen Migs, on an intercept course for the fleet!" "Acknowledged. Tell them to carry on to the target Mr Forbes, we can handle them." Let them come - we'll make them pay, even if they though get through our gap! He grinned. A few Mig kills wouldn't look bad on his report. I could even turn the gap off momentarily, to draw them in…He shook his head, his discipline held. The mission comes first. Soon after, Gryphonne picked up another group of Migs on an identical course. The original group of Migs orbited in a racetrack to the east of the fleet, out of their own radar range, but not of Gryphonne's. Soon enough, the second group of Migs began their own racetrack, this time out to the west of the fleet. Westleigh frowned. They didn't have the fuel to orbit there forever. He was sure they were no threat to the fleet, with its several anti-air vessels. Even so, they bugged him… "Mr Axworth, report on the progress of our air units, if you please." "Aye aye sir. One moment please. First wave successful, sir! Targets destroyed. Second wave, ETA 3 minutes." Then "Sir, 801 squadron are being tailed! Another squadron of Migs!" They could follow them right back to the ship, and lead their fellows in, maybe through the gap… "Order 801 squadron, weapons free!" "Aye aye sir." 801 squadron flew Sea Harriers, slower but more agile than the Migs. On the other hand, the Harriers hadn't been carrying many Anti-air missiles on their ground-attack mission. After a moment, Westleigh sent in the reserve anti-air squadron. "Sir! Blucher reports uh, abnormal sonar readings, sir." Abnormal? "Where is Blucher, Mr Forbes?" "Abeam of Eldridge, sir." "Well, there you go sailor. Filthy gap interference." Westleigh remembered the early side-effects of Einstein's technologies - like the first ships sent by chronosphere that ended up with sailors fused into the decking…and the chronostorms caused by overuse of the early, unrefined mk1 chronospheres by the desperate alliance in the first war. He shuddered involuntarily. "Sir, I don't think…" "Don't answer back to the Captain, seaman!" Axworth barked. Forbes shut up. "Right, we'll tell-" The words never escaped Westleigh's mouth. The whole bridge crew had fallen silent, every man and woman stood, dumbfounded. On the flight deck someone screamed. Just off to port, huge tentacles whipped around the hull of USS Eldridge. The converted destroyer's hull began visibly buckling. Sailors screamed and ran around the deck in panic. One man grappled with a 30mm cannon, firing down into the water at something unseen. Another huge tentacle, as long as the ship whipped up, caught the man and his gun and threw the mangled remains overboard. The giant squid drew its main body onto the ship, snapping off the mast of the gap generator like a twig. Westleigh's eyes were drawn instantly to the thick red collar the creature had around its midsection, emblazoned with the Hammer and Sickle emblem. Some kind of control device. Soviet. Sailors on deck were drawn inexorably into the creature's gaping maw. The ship capsized under the weight moments later, lost with all hands. "DESTROYERS, NOW!!!" Westleigh screamed. "LAUNCH ALL AIRCRAFT! DEPTH CHARGES! DECK GUNS!" Orders relayed with startling speed, soon Merlins, Sea Kings and Ospreys hovered around dropping canisters and pouring fire into the churning waters that marked the grave of Eldridge. At least we may have given some of the sailors a quick death. Westleigh thought, ashen-faced. "Alert! HMAS Sydney under attack!" The bridge crew whirled again; another of the creatures (or maybe the same one?) was grappling with the Australian air-defence ship. Westleigh still couldn't bring himself to believe that this was really happening. "FIRE! ALL AVAILABLE SHIPS!" "Sir! We'll hit our own crewmen!" A seaman protested. "YOU'D RATHER THAT…THING…EAT THEM?" "N-no, sir!" Destroyers began firing deck guns, blowing ragged red holes in the side of the giant squid. Crewmen sprayed it with fire from 30mm AA cannons, stitching red wholes up and down the length of the monster. The bloody remains slid back into the depths, but it was no good; Sydney was going. A second squid was busy dismantling the starboard side of the ship. By now, the first wave of attacking aircraft were on their way back, having retreated as soon as they learned that the flotilla was under attack. Two more squids appeared and grabbed onto two more anti-air ships, Gryphonne and HMS Arrow. "Sir! Sonar contact, closing fast! Ospreys moving to intercept!" The fleet's combined anti-submarine warfare aircraft now wheeled everywhere, darting low in-between ship radar masts, dropping ordnance at every opportunity. A tentacle rose and swept a large part of Eagle's flight deck clear - of men, tractors, ordnance, a TV News crew. Then three depth charges were dropped into the water just adjacent t the deck. The squid was blown to pieces, showering blood all over the flight deck and splattering onto the bridge windows. Westleigh was about to lose his lunch. The sole Belgian ship, the anti-air cruiser Ypres was now capsizing, almost torn in half by two squids. "Sir!" Now what? "Incoming aircraft!" "Ours or theirs?" Axworth shouted. He had to shout to be heard over the braying, squealing of the nearby squids and the shrieking klaxons that filled the air. "Uh, both sir, but a lot more of theirs!" The Harriers, Rafales and Hornets were returning, but with the Gap generator gone and the anti-air ships 'squidded', along with them now came the three combined Russian Mig squadrons. One had chased the Allied planes while the other two waited patiently for the gap to go down and the AA ships to be destroyed. A mass air battle now occurred just above the churning red waters between the spaced-out remaining ships. "More sonar contacts sir! And our ASW aircraft are running low on munitions!" "Sir!" A Chief Petty Officer barked, using a caller to call the bridge. "Squid off the port bow!" "Master-at-arms to the port bow! Break out the armaments for what good they'll do!" Westleigh ordered. He could hear the fear in his own voice. He tried to reassure his crew, but failed miserably. He was too young for them to trust properly. Westleigh was just surveying his fleet; the waters were now alarmingly clear. Clear of his ships. All the AA ships were gone, now squids were grappling with destroyers. The French Aircraft carrier, Arromanches was festooned with squids. A Rafale, desperately low on fuel, was struck by a squid arm trying to land and cartwheeled flaming into the sea, ripping off the squid arm and taking it with him. A pyhrric victory. The burning remains of other aircraft splashed down into the ocean. The sky was a confused maze of contrails, but the Russians outnumbered the Allies in the air, and were gaining the upper hand steadily. A flight of Migs broke off from the dogfight to take out the destroyer USS Brandon - almost leisurely - as it attempted to blast a squid from the stricken HMS Cumberland. He had to accept the inevitable. "This is Captain Westleigh, HMS Eagle," He broadcast on the shipwide frequency. The Admiral's ship had bought it ages ago, now it was his responsibility. "All ships, retreat!" The order tasted like ashes in his mouth. Shoreside duty, for sure… Just as they were preparing to weigh anchor, the ship lurched suddenly to port. He would have thought that was impossible, due to its sheer size. His ears were full of men screaming, and bulkheads groaning in protest as they tried to hold the ship together. Now two squids were on the back of the ship… "Master-at-arms, report!" No answer. "Oh, bugger it." Westleigh picked up the caller again. "This is the CAPTAIN! ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP! I REPEAT, ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP!" The bridge crew were silent. Outside, a squid roared. Half the ship's crew were on deck, rattling away at the monsters with SA-80 rifles. "THAT WAS AN ORDER! GET OUT!" The men and women scrambled off the bridge. On the flight deck, a squid swept another dozen sailors into its mouth like obscene sweets. It lurched closer to the bridge, tilting the ship crazily. "Wait! Mr Forbes, Mr Axworth, come with me!" "Aye aye sir!" They chorused. The bridge was deserted. The three men made their way to the armaments locker, hurrying past crewmen scrambling to the liferafts on the opposite end of the ship to the squids. The Captain passed a rifle to the Steadfast Mr Axworth, then to Forbes, who looked ready to faint, then grabbed one himself, slinging a webbing belt full of spare clips over his shoulder. They ran onto the flight deck, were only a few armed sailors remained firing at the squids. The foremost one was bleeding from over three hundred rifle rounds. Even so, it lurched forward again, swung a tentacle and decapitated the bridge. Wreckage exploded into the sea. A Mig swooped low over the deck, as if gloating. Westleigh rattled off a clip at the nearest monster and reloaded. "THIS IS HOPELESS!" Forbes screamed. He ran to the rafts. "FORBES! STAY HERE! THAT IS A DIRECT ORDER! AKNOWLEDGE AT ONCE!" If Forbes could hear over the Roaring, exploding, gunfire and jet engines, he was ignoring his Captain. Westleigh spun and riddled the coward with bullets. Then looked around; no one had seen. If they did, they had other things to worry about. The second squid picked up a sailor, and before he even had a chance to scream, it crushed him like a bloody sponge, all over the deck. "I've got a plan, sir! Get to the liferafts!" Axworth shouted in his ear. Westleigh should have reprimanded him for speaking to the Captain so. But he agreed. He stepped back, with the remaining seamen on deck. Axworth dropped his gun and ran towards the Squid. A tentacle swung down - the sailors shot it until it exploded into meaty chunks. Axworth had ducked and now got up again - now Westleigh could see where he was heading; one of the last surviving bomb tractors. It was loaded, ready for the Sea Harriers that would now never arrive. The Lieutenant hopped in and floored the machine - all five miles an hour, straight at the squid. "GODSPEED MR AXWORTH!" Westleigh shouted. Axworth turned and saluted, just before drawing a pistol and shooting at the nose of a 500lb bomb, blowing himself and the squid to bloody atoms. Westleigh could only watch. It was beautiful. Eventually he gathered his last men. They got to the liferafts just as more squids piled onto the deck, finally crushing the last Allied ship under the waves. The squids were silent after that, and the Migs, having annihilated the Allied air power at considerable cost to their own, finally left the survivors huddling their liferafts together for protection. For days they floated, slowly freezing. They lashed their rafts together, but even so some of the rafts simply vanished. Westleigh didn't want to think about what had happened to the men and women aboard…he told himself the cold would probably have killed them first. "We're going to die, aren't we Captain?" A Seaman asked, blind and delirious from the sea and the cold. He was Seventeen years old. "Don't worry Billy, you won't feel a thing." The Captain pulled out his service pistol. It was all he could think of reassuring the boy. There was, after all, no hope of rescue if the Russians had destroyed the Korean fleet too. "Captain! Behind you!" The Captain whirled, aimed his pistol down into the water. "Come and get us you Russian f-… uh?" There weren't any more monsters I this sea. It was a Dolphin! An American Dolphin with a GPS collar! It clicked and whistled its acknowledgement as if to say, "Yes, that's right, I'm a Dolphin." The men caught on quick. Soon they were cheering and clapping. A Frenchman hugged him gratefully. Someone had managed to save a case of champagne from God knows where…they opened it now. Westleigh looked at the Dolphin. "Very well! Home Flipper!" He laughed. The invasion would have to wait a bit…
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Angles High (PART 1)
"Homeplate, this is Striker One. We are being jammed by probable enemy force from the North West. Enemy raid strength and raid direction is unknown. Please advice."
The radio officer on the damaged Iowa was momentarily startled by the voice, before he realised who was speaking to him on the net.
Flight Lieutenant Catherine 'Vixen' Scarlett was the first female combat pilot in the United States Navy. She was a damn fine pilot, with the reflexes of a cat and the killer instinct of a tiger. But it had been a hard road to the Mark III Martin-Baker ejection seat of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat for her.
She reckoned that half of her time was spent fighting off the attentions of both male chauvinistic pigs (who sought to get her sacked) and overenthusiastic Romeos (who sought to get her into the sack) rather than actually engaging the Reds.
It wasn't her fault that the Romeo's on the Iowa swarmed to her like bees to a flower. In fact, Scarlett had often cursed her good looks. She acknowledged that looks had helped her a lot when she was trying to get her way, or avoid getting into trouble for her many brushes with the military police. However, more than one superior officer had looked upon her with contempt as an empty-headed blonde bimbo (she cut her hair to shoulder length in a fruitless attempt to avoid the stereotype) who was going to get good REAL men killed trying to take care of her.
And dealing with female superior officers was hell. Scarlett had gone around with her hair tied back in a severe bun, worn baggy clothing, and stooped her posture in vain attempts to avoid the hostile attentions of other females in the service with heavier shoulderboards who were jealous of her youth and looks.
The Vixen reckoned that the Reds were easier to fight. At least it was pure skill against skill. no backroom politics to worry about.
Vixen did not have the stocky build that most pilots, male or female, had. Rather, she was rather tall and lanky, with a set of magnetic green eyes that had perfect twenty-twenty vision. She was best described as a 'waif, only on the tall side' as quoted by her backseater, Flight Lieutenant (jg) Howard 'Bear' Jones. He had gotten the job of being her RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) for two of his qualities. A fine sense for the F-14 Tomcat's electronics, and a neutral attitude towards females in the Navy. Meaning, he didn't try to put her down or get her into the sack. And Scarlett was infinitely grateful for that.
The Vixen chewed on her lower lip, a habit that she unconsciously displayed when nervous or excited. The radio crackled.
"Wait one." There was a pause as the radio officer conferred with Rear Admiral Burke, the overall commander of the Iowa's battlegroup. The four F-14's continued cruising in a wide, slow figure eight pattern to economise on their fuel.
The Iowa's flight deck was still fouled, it wouldn't do to start losing planes before the battle due to 'flames-outs' -Navy jargon for "running out of fuel in mid-flight". Carriers needed clean decks for flight ops, even the smallest piece of debris could end up being sucked into an engine and bring down an expensive plane and experienced pilot. For this reason, the fuel-carrying A-6 Corsairs were unable to take off to give the fighters a top-up of fuel via mid-air refuelling before the upcoming battle.
Vixen was worried. She knew that the Russians had an air force. Thankfully, it wasn't any match for the air-power of the Allies. In her youth, she had listened to stories of the massed MiG attacks of the Stalin War. During those dark days, Allied airmen had an average lifespan of a few days, the Russians enjoying a numerical advantage of ten to one. Entire columns of good men had died before ever seeing the front-line.
Now, the tables had turned and it was the Allies that enjoyed numerical advantage, if only in numbers of fighter jets. However, Vixen was no fool.
With the battlegroup crippled by the submarine attack, the Russians would be idiots to give up the prize of the Iowa and her support vessels.
Now two questions remained. Would the Russians hold off their air attack force and wait for the fighters to start flaming out? Or would they come in with a full swing and roundhouse punch, relying on brute force to shoulder past the Allied CAP (Combat Air Patrol) and attack the crippled fleet?
Either was not good. Vixen had no desire to end up in the freezing waters of the Artic. She was certainly not overly enthusiastic to become a frozen Popsicle snack for some commie-loving polar bear.
Her RIO suddenly called out from the backseat.
"Vixen. The Reds are going for the unsubtle approach. Jamming has increased and distance to source is getting lower fast. These guys are definitely on afterburner, anxious buggers eh? The commander of the jammers is smart, he is using on-off tactics so that the Phoenixes cannot use their home-on-jamming lockon feature."
He was referring to the AIM-54 Phoenixes carried by the Tomcat. With their extremely long range of over a hundred miles, the Phoenixes were a crucial advantage for the Allies, giving them the 'first-strike' advantage that was so important in air combat. The multi-million dollar missiles also had 'home-on-jam', which allowed the Phoenix to lock onto jamming planes without needing a radar lock from the Tomcat.
Problem was that the jamming effected the radars of the Tomcats and Phoenixes, reducing the Allied advantage. The Phoenix had a good chance of hitting with optimal conditions. However, given the weather conditions and the on-off jamming, the pilots might as well throw stones at the MiGs. The on-off jamming was working very well for the Reds. The HARM air-to-ground missiles had a memory feature to memorise the location of a ground-based radar site even if it had shut itself down for self-preservation. Such a memory feature was useless in a Phoenix, the targets being able to move in the time that the missile had lost the jamming signal.
Vixen cursed softly under her breath. This was going to be close. However, she told herself that this was what she got for daring to be a fighter pilot instead of a desk jockey or base-camp commando.
She smiled grimly. It was time to kick ass and take numbers. No prizes for second place in air-to-air combat. Only a place on the menu of a commie polar bear with an autographed picture of Romanov over his dining table.
(Bear didn't take offence at her frequent use of 'polar bear' jokes. But then, Bear was Bear. Even Vixen had trouble sometimes trying to get more reactions out of his placid exterior.)
The radio crackled again. This time, there was no hesitation in the radio officer's voice.
"All flights, this is Homeplate. Proceed forward and engage at maximum range. Do not, repeat, do not engage afterburner unless under missile attack. Flight deck will be clear in the estimated time of fifteen minutes. Hold off Russian attack and break away on command to clear the way for the Aegis SAM's. We will get fuel to you asap."
"Good luck."
The Vixen's lips curled in a half-smile as she pointed the nose of her Tomcat towards the incoming Reds.
"You ain't getting me for lunch, my furry buddy."
Vixen kept her eyes straight ahead, searching for the tell-tale pinprick of light that could grow into the head of an enemy missile in the space of an eyeblink. Her systems were still lost in the fog of jamming. There were at least a dozen Russian jammers out there with the bulky jamming pods tucked underwing and spewing out EM noise.
Bear counted down the range. They passed eighty, seventy, sixty.
Suddenly, Bear became animated.
"Burnthrough. We have burnthrough." Bear was referring to the Tomcat's AWG-9 radar having closed to a range where its signals were able to overwhelm the jamming.
"Vixen. Raid count is fifty-plus inbounds west. Figure a dozen jammers hanging back. They are coming in at two thousand feet. Can't be sure of plane types yet. Could be MiG-29's though, so watch out."
Vixen toggled the radio. "Homeplate, This is Striker One. We have burnthrough. Raid count fifty at two thousand west. Plus dozen jammers. Request weapons free." She reached down without taking her eyes off her front and flipped open the master arm switch, pulling the lever down into 'Fire' mode from its previous 'Safe' position.
"Striker One. This is Homeplate. Weapons free. Go to afterburners but watch the fuel. Good hunting."
Vixen kicked in the afterburners, the Tomcat surging forward to Mach 2.34 as the AWG-9 started to lock onto individual Russian planes. Around her, the other Tomcats were gunning their engines as well, Twenty-four F-14's against sixty-plus aircraft.
The odds were against them this time. However, the incoming planes were at a severe disadvantage. When the Phoenixes started to come for them, it would be a toss-up between dumping the anti-ship weapons that slowed them down, or holding on to them in hopes of breaking through the F-14's to launch them at USS Iowa and her battlegroup.
The radar locked onto the first target. Vixen automatically switching to Phoenixes and pulling the trigger. A white-painted missile dropped from the Tomcat, firing its motors. Another followed the first a second later.
Around her, smoke trails from the brilliant wakes of the AIM-54 Phoenixes lighted up the grey sky, each one a bundle of sensitive electronics and high explosive fitted with a remorseless robot brain, boosted by a rocket motor giving them a velocity of around Mach 5. They screamed in for the Russians, who were now just thirty miles out from the Tomcats and two hundred from the fleet.
The wave of blips indicating the Phoenixes closed in on the Russians. And twenty of the incoming wave were blotted out, terminated by the forty-eight Phoenixes. Vixen saw the blip targeted by her first Phoenix disappear off the scope with grim satisfaction. However, her second missile went wild, losing its target and falling harmlessly into the sea. Twenty kills out of forty-eight launches was bad.
"Damn it. The Phoenixes are suffering in this sort of weather. We are shooting down on the bastards and the winds are mucking up the sea's surface, giving the seeker heads false targets at water-level. Some of our birds must have gone into the drink instead." Bear commented dryly.
Vixen flicked the weapons over to Sparrow radar-seeker missiles. The other Tomcats of Twilight, Roland, Ukelele, Vandal and Wombat flights, each comprising of four F-14's, doing the same thing.
"They have a lock!" Bear hollered a moment before the alarm cut in. "Launch! Radar-seeker! Eleven o'clock low!"
Vixen glanced at the radar-warning display. Some Russian had gotten a lock on her Tomcat and launched a radar-guided missile.
She twisted the stick violently, letting the Tomcat fall over in a snap roll before executing a series of corkscrews and turns that confused the Russian radar-seeker head. At the same time, her left thumb triggered off a series of chaff bundles, the aluminium-coated plastic shreds cluttering the radar and offering the Russian missile a large number of ghost targets.
The rolls were punishing, Vixen straining for breath as the she fought to keep her eyes towards the direction the missile was incoming. |
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Andles High (Part 2)
A streak of light, and the Russian missile was gone, carrying on into empty space. Vixen pulled the Tomcat's nose back up to face the Russian planes. Both sides were now about fifteen miles from each other, knife-fighting range for fighter planes. The first black dots appeared on the bubble canopy and grew rapidly.
A explosion, a flare of light to the right. Roland Two was gone, a tumbling wing falling away from the rags of what had been a Tomcat, a dirty black cloud hanging in the sky as mute testimony to the F-14's last moments.
Vixen kept the aiming circle over an incoming single-tailed plane. A MiG-23.
The MiG-23 was hellishly fast, but a notoriously poor dogfighter with too wide a turning radius. A pin-point of light flashed under the Red's wing an eyeblink after Vixen fired off her Sparrow. She rolled away to the left, flares tumbling out the back of the Tomcat as the Russian's missile screamed past.
The Red wasn't so lucky. Vixen got an upside-down eyeful of the MiG-23 exploding in an orange fireball, the two unarmed 550 pound AS-14 anti-ship missiles falling away from the incandescent pieces of the one-man fighter.
She turned hard right as another Russian tried his luck, 30mm cannon fire streaked by the rolling F-14. She fell under the twin-tailed MiG-29, went vertical and fired a snap-shot Sidewinder. The AIM-9L missed, but the Russian was spooked enough to pull up too hard.
He hung there for a moment, twin engines struggling to pour out the power for a split second as the plane slid sideways with the pilot trying to pull its nose up too abruptly.
That was all the time Striker Two needed to unleash a Sidewinder from six miles out. The blue-painted missile blew the Russian asunder in a deafening explosion that Vixen heard over the roar of her own engines.
Twin-engined planes, larger than fighters, charged past at low level towards the east. Vixen saw the missiles hung under the wings and rolled her fighter in pursuit of the Badgers. She counted at least thirty of them, each one armed with a couple of massive 2600-pound Kerry antiship missiles.
"MiG on our six!" Bear snapped as Vixen was going full-bore for the bombers.
A MiG-29 riding shepherd on the three bombers appeared to materialise out of nowhere behind them, it launched two missiles, both of them heat-seekers tracking on the hot afterburner exhaust of Striker One and Two.
Vixen never had the time to warn Striker Two, evading the heat-seeker meant for her as another lethal smoke trail crossed from the smaller Russian plane to the American in less than two seconds. Striker Two disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flame. The shattered remains dropped like a stone, disintegrating as it tumbled, chopped to pieces by the shrapnel.
The MiG-29 rolled under Vixen and went for Wombat Four as the latter was manuevering into position for a shot at the Badgers, loosing a snaking stream of 30mm tracer rounds. The metal skin of the American jet peeled away in flashes of smoke and light as the heavy rounds chopped into the fuselage and twin tails. The F-14 heeled over sharply and fell away, one engine sputtering out and the other venting smoke like a chimney. The plane shuddered as the pilot fought for control, his RIO slumped in his seat with the back of his head sprayed over the shattered cockpit glass.
Vixen fired off a Sidewinder, but the heat-seeker was confused by the burning wing of a crippled Badger, swerving from the MiG to cleave the big bomber in two. The halves exploded, hurling wreckage through the air as the Red fighter pilot evaded and dove for the deck, Vixen's Tomcat hot on his heels.
Vixen took one last look at the retreating bombers as they streaked away from her at full military power. The surviving bombers are now headed into SAM country, an area a hundred miles in radius around the Iowa and her escorts. Any plane, friendly or not, risked being hit by friendly Surface-to-Air Missiles. A quick glance at her fuel supply as she chased the MiG-29. This was going to be a tight one.
She had no doubt now that the MiG pilot was an ace, a top pilot of the Russians.
And that was why she wanted him dead.
"Fuel status, Bear." She called as the Tomcat dove after the MiG, grey rain clouds scudding past the canopy. The F-14, large and stable firing platform that it was, was taking the hammering from the rain and weather. However, the electronics were being downgraded. Vixen could not get a solid lock on the MiG with her remaining Sparrow missile.
"We passed bingo fuel two minutes ago." Bear reported calmly. Vixen bit her lip. Bingo fuel was the point of no return. Anymore than that meant that the fighter would flame-out before reaching the carrier. Now she was depending on the A-6's getting to her with fuel before she ran out and had to ditch.
It also meant another thing. Turning back now served no purpose. The aggressive spirit in her demanded to take out the Red MiG. Let caution take a ride in the wind. That Commie was going down.
The MiG was still ahead of her, but presently it started to pull up as the pilot detected Vixen coming for him. The turbulence must have been rocking his plane like a amusement park ride, but the pilot used the weather to help his plane with the jinks, letting the MiG ride the winds as it began to turn away to the right for an attempt to circle vertically around Vixen's diving Tomcat.
Vixen was reminded again of the pilot's skill as he pulled up, using the raw power of the twin Tumansky R-33D turbines with their eighteen thousand pounds of thrust to hurl the fighter into a Mach 2.8 vertical climb.
The next instant, the fighter had cut its engines and pulled its nose up in a 'Cobra' manuever. Vixen's Tomcat charged past as she snapped her fighter right in a hard roll, the G-forces slamming her into the seat with sufficient force to knock all the breath out of her.
The MiG-29, hanging in mid-air with its nose pointed up , now tipped over and locked its radar onto Vixen's plane.
An Alamo air-to-air missile screamed for her blood.
Vixen flipped her plane and pulled to the right, the combined manuever putting her into a side-slip and raising her nose to point more or less towards the Russian fighter as it thundered down after its missile.
A flash and a tremendous concussion. Vixen felt consciousness slip away for a moment as the Alamo detonated scant meters behind the Tomcat. A loud exclaimation from Bear. Vixen was too stunned to wonder what it was as the Tomcat began to spin.
Her mind cleared in a hurry as she forced the falling Tomcat into a nose-up position. Already, she knew that the F-14 had been struck a mortal blow. The sounds of the engines were all wrong.
30mm fire laced the sky. The MiG was now diving vertically, its tracers streaking past the Tomcat as the latter began to fall over on its back in a death-dive. It was coming on fast. aiming to finish off the falling F-14 together with its crew.
The twin-tails of the MiG filled her crosshairs. And Vixen let rip a volley of M61 Vulcan 30 mm cannon fury.
Smoke and flames as the MiG was hit, the plane appearing to spasm with the strikes, the flashes of the cockpit canopy catching the light as they fragmented from 30mm hits, then the sky was abruptly replaced by the roiling sea as the F-14 fell gracelessly onto its back.
Vixen snapped the dying bird over onto its belly. It responded, but immediately began to roll again as the winds pulled at it. The smell of jet fuel suddenly brought the cold realisation that she could be dead in a single hellish moment should the plane explode.
"Eject! Eject!" Vixen screamed into the intercom. She couldn't hear the reply over the screaming of the wind (the engines had fallen silent). However, a sudden roar and a blast of freezingly cold wind told her of Bear's ejection.
Vixen tore the radio and oxygen leads from her mask and reaching her hands over the back of the seat and grasping the ejection handlebars. She yanked them a moment later.
A powerful "Blaamm" as the ejection rockets fired, and she was kicked from the dying Tomcat.
"Ejecting!"
The Badgers closed in on the fleet. At eighty miles, the twenty-two surviving bombers released a flock of 42 Kerry missiles. One unlucky Badger suffered a malfunction in one of its antiship missiles, the latter damaged by 30mm cannonfire. The resultant explosion blew the bomber and its luckless crew into a mix of body parts and flaming metallic rags.
The remaining six MiG-23's continued towards the fleet at full-afterburner. Their AS-14's had a range of only ten miles.
"Vampire! Vampire!" The call went out on the three Aegis cruisers, USS Archer, USS Samson and USS Bunker Hill. The SAM launchers trained out to the west, and the first SM-2 SAM's howled aloft.
Missile met missile in head-on explosions of molten white and orange. The incoming vampires dropped as SM-2's, guided by the three Aegis cruisers computers, took out Kerry's in intercepts with closing speeds of over Mach 6. Five of the six MiG-23's were blasted out of the skies, along with two Tomcats of Twilight flight, killed by friendly SAM's.
Eleven missiles broke throught the SAM cloud as the fleet fell back to its final defense systems. 20mm Phalanx Close-In-Weapon-Systems (CIWS), called R2D2's because of their shape, loosed off a literal rain of depleted-uranium head rounds from their six-barrelled cannon, punching five missiles out of the sky in thundering explosions that were visible to the crewmen diving to cover on Iowa's exposed flight deck.
Two of the remaining six lost themselves in chaff clouds. One slammed into the sea without exploding, the other losing its original target before regaining its lock and going into a terminal dive.
Two missiles found the USS Archer. A total of 2,600 pounds of missile and high explosive blasting the Aegis cruiser six feet out of the water in twin thundering outlashings of raw power. A savage series of secondary explosions ripped the length of the shattered ship, leaving behind a blazing husk of dead seamen and warped metal sinking into the roiling water.
The remaining three missiles were collected by Iowa. The first exploding twenty meters over the flight deck in a lethal ball of pure-white fire and slicing shrapnel. On the bridge, Rear Admiral Burke brought his hands up instinctively as the plate glass windscreen blew inwards, a fragment the size of a small coin tearing away his larynx. Half of the flight deck personnel died instantly, the concussion literally compressing their brains into mush and crushing their ribcages as flat as a soda can under a sumo wrestler. The other half were wiped out a moment later when a second Kerry penetrated the inferno that was once a flight deck and blew up on the third deck.
The front half of the flight deck folded up like a can of sardines, 4 inch thick steel melted and warped by the sheer power of the Russian warhead. The inside of the ship was gutted by the shrapnel, people actually falling apart in an eyeblink as the hail of white-hot fragments cut through metal, flesh and bone. The fireball rushed through the mangled entrails of the Iowa, consuming what the shrapnel had sliced to ribbons.
The final Kerry went off five feet from the carrier's island, the massive structure that sat off-center on US carriers. A few crewmen actually saw the building-like superstructure crumple, the sheer force of the blast wrenching the island from the deck and hurling it into the sea reduced to a third of its former size. A massive chunk of the carrier's side plating went with it, exposing the carrier's innards to the hungry sea.
The USS Iowa shook with secondary explosions as she began to list.
Two-thirds of her crew never got off before she went down to join the shattered hulk of the USS Archer. Over five thousand Americans died.
Voices...
Vixen came to with a violent heave. She was dead..
No, she was alive. But it was cold, mind numbingly cold. She shuddered, and nearly screamed as the movement triggered off a paralysing starburst of pain from her neck.
For a single moment of cold dread, she thought that she had broken her spine. Maybe it was better to release the clasps on her life-vest and allow herself to slip into the depths of the water rather than spend the rest of her life as a cripple.
But then, there was someone in the water with her. She felt her head being moved into position and gave another pain-filled cry. Something clicked around her neck. Her mind didn't seem to be working properly. The water, the water. It was warm. Yet why was she shivering?
She felt consciousness rush back. Now she was in something noisy. She tried to roll over, but couldn't. So that was how dead was like, held down in a noisy place that smelled like jet fuel and the sea.
It took her sometime before Vixen was coherent enough to realise that she wasn't dead afterall. And therefore an aircrewman. (No, an aircrew-woman!) looking at her and talking to her.
"How, what" She began, her mouth feeling like it was full of cotton.
Five minutes later, she knew it all.
Flight Lieutenant Catherine "Vixen" Scarlett wept silently. For the people of the USS Iowa and USS Archer, for the fallen pilots and RIO's of the Tomcats.
And for the man who lay beside her, silent and still in a zippered bag of navy-blue. A final hibernation from which one never awoke.
Vixen hand clenched. Another name, another face.
Lost in the insanity of war.
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