Chaliapin had done everything a human could do to defend the airspace over Lavrentiya. He had his sector scanning radar pointed directly at the source of the coming attack. He had his missiles online. He had his people on the edge of their seats expecting an attack.
As soon as he heard the systems officer call a warning, he knew all of this wasn’t going to be enough.
“Vampires inbound!!” the man yelled. “UI aircraft maneuvering. AI engaging!!”
Outside the trailer, from three sites around him, missiles leaped off their rails. But prioritized by the combat AI, they weren’t aimed at Bunny’s Fantoms, which were heading as fast as they could out of range of the Russian missiles. The Russian AI had sensed the existential threat and stopped tracking the two stealth fighters to focus on intercepting the smaller, self-guided JAGMs, speeding downrange at 600 knots. The firing inclination of the S-500 launchers meant that as they were mounted on the elevated hills behind Lavrentiya; their missiles had to begin diving radically almost as soon as they were fired if they were to have any hope of intercepting the JAGMs speeding in at wave-top height.
“Mayday from the Ilyushin, it’s going down!” his operator called. He turned in terror, looking to Chaliapin for hope, but seeing none.
One S-500 missile made a proximity detonation and took out a single JAGM. Two others detonated behind their targets, to no effect.
Five JAGMs made it through.
The first and second hit in the center of the truck park and container yard outside Lavrentiya township. The yard contained mostly food and clothing, and the explosions were less than impressive.
The third and fourth hit targets that had been identified as probable fuel storage sites, and these caused an altogether more impressive conflagration, with a single huge fireball rising a hundred feet into the air. The explosion also rained burning debris over the town, causing spot fires in multiple buildings including a row of containers holding anti-aircraft artillery ammunition. One of them was in the process of being unloaded and the exposed AA shells exploded in a fan-like spread of armor-piercing anger, detonating one by one the other containers alongside them in a ripple that caused the air to quiver and sent out a blast wave that took out the windows of the five-story administration center two miles away. The final shed to detonate was at the end of the Lavrentiya airfield runway, and it sent shrapnel slicing laterally through three of the five temporary hangars housing Okhotniks of Bondarev’s 6983rd Fighter Aviation Regiment which were in the middle of being fueled and armed for the upcoming operation.
The fifth missile wasn’t intended to cause massive destruction. It had been programmed by Bunny O’Hare to identify and home on the communications signature of a Nebo-M command hub, and the subsonic scream of its solid-propellant engine was the last sound that Lieutenant Colonel Alexandr Chaliapin, commander of Russia’s premier anti-aircraft defense battalion, ever heard.
The last thought to go through his mind was, ‘I was right.’
Bunny O’Hare had no time to celebrate.
She had nullified the threat from the Nebo-M, but it had not gone quietly into the night. Even as it fought to intercept the JAGMs closing on Lavrentiya, it was sending targeting data on the two Fantoms to a combat air patrol of two Su-57s circling overhead. Between the data from the Nebo and her own radical maneuvering, the Sukhoi pilots had no trouble locking up Bunny’s Fantoms.
“Missile launch!” Bunny grunted. “Jamming, firing countermeasures.” Rodriguez watched as she handed off countermeasure control of the Fantoms to their autonomous defensive AI, and tightened the grip on her mouse. The virtual-reality helmet around her gave her a near 360-degree view, simulating the view out of a cockpit. The two Sukhois were high on Bunny’s starboard quarter and she ordered her Fantoms around to face them, staying low to the water, trying to force the Russian missiles to overshoot.
They did, missing her lead aircraft.
Checking the other Fantom she saw that the AI had spoofed the other pair of missiles too, either through jamming or by drawing them away with chaff and flares. The fact her machines were still alive told her the pursuing fighters weren’t carrying K-77s, they were probably fielding older R-77s — she still had a chance!
She had two units in the fight. They weren’t armed with anything but cannon, but that would have to be enough.
“I’m sorry baby,” Bunny said, taking her support drone off of defensive subroutines and commanding it to attack the nearest Sukhoi. “We all have to die one day.”
It was the only chance she had. If one of the drones could engage and distract the fighters now dropping down on her rear quarter, the other might just have a chance of escape. In her downtime under the Rock, Bunny had ‘tweaked’ her drones’ offensive AI settings, creating what she called ‘berserker mode’. When initiated, the AI would only execute maneuvers intended to give it a firing solution on an enemy. It would take no evasive action whatsoever, no matter how imminent the threat. And even after all ordnance was expended, unless she canceled the ‘berserker’ command, the drone would try to destroy its target by ramming it. With each drone costing upward of 80 million dollars, it wasn’t surprising the designers of the Fantom’s combat AI had not considered implementing anything like Bunny’s berserker code. But Bunny hadn’t felt bound by budget constraints.
“It would totally suck to lose both drones again,” Rodriguez said, before she could stop herself.
“Understood ma’am,” Bunny said, dragging a waypoint across her touch screen and ordering her lead drone to bug out by scooting under the noses of the approaching enemy fighters. “Will try to avoid total suck scenario.” The two Sukhois were dropping on her like sea eagles hunting salmon. She locked them up with her missile targeting radar, knowing it would set alarms screaming in their cockpits, even though she had no missile to fire. Her ploy was psychological. Their own AI would have told them by now that they were facing two drones. Human pilots hated drones. A drone like the Fantom had only a silicon life to lose, it could pull Gs that no human pilot could, and it knew no fear. US air combat orthodoxy said that if you couldn’t kill a drone with your first missile salvo, you should do everything possible to avoid getting in range of guns and short-range missiles. Bunny was banking that at least one of the Sukhoi pilots would lose his shit at the sight of her Fantom closing on him with a missile warning screaming in his ears.
There was no sign of that yet though. As she tried to extend at least one of her Fantoms away from the oncoming Sukhois and let the other take the fight, a warning alarm filled the trailer and the Russians let fly with their second salvo of short-range off-boresight missiles!
Carl Williams of course knew about the planned nuclear strike before the Ambassador did. HOLMES didn’t spend all of his time gathering intel for the Ambassador; he also had a considerable portion of his bandwidth devoted to keeping Williams up to date with military developments, with orders to break in on whatever Williams was doing (including sleeping) with a flash alert for any event involving actual or potential losses to either side.
Well before Devlin took the call from the Secretary of State a small buzzing alarm from Williams laptop was the signal of just such an alert. Carl had dragged a mattress down to his office, and had taken to showering in the gym, and eating in the Annex’s commissary. He hadn’t see his own apartment for nearly two weeks. Nowhere else had the connectivity he needed to keep his uplink to the NSA HOLMES platform operating at full capacity.