Moments later, there was an explosion above in the distance, followed by another. And yet the radar signature stayed on his screen. Still climbing altitude to close for visual range, his wing mate firing off a PL-10 short-range heat-seeking missile as added insurance.
As the fighter jets reached their maximum altitude of sixty thousand feet, they saw what looked like the silhouette of an arrowhead falling from the sky, a triangular drone of some sort diving back down to their level. At sixty-two thousand feet, when the third missile reached the target, its proximity warhead exploded a spray of metal shrapnel a mere hundred feet away. The arrowhead was clearly hit, showing a burst of orange flame and then smoke trailing as it fell toward them.
Yet as the arrowhead passed by them, the damaged drone seemed to shed a layer; a smoking plane peeled off. The rest of the triangular drone continued to dive at maximum speed at the task force below. As the two pilots pushed their fighter jets down to follow, straining against the g-forces as they lost altitude, their threat warnings began sound. Somehow in the midst of its steep dive, the drone below had fired off six Sidewinder missiles, which turned and raced back up at them. They attempted to pull out, but it was too late.
The air-defense systems on the ships below tried to pick up a radar lock, but while the fighter pilots had had a silhouette view of the drones, the systems were faced with only thin, sixteen-inch wing edges coated with radar-absorbent material. At thirty thousand feet, a firing solution finally crystalized, but just as the system locked, the target seemed to dissolve. The Shrike drones spread out from one another, a closed network among them sharing a targeting algorithm that ensured they did not all select the same destination point. Lookouts on the ships began to visually pick out what looked like seven thin lines falling down toward them. At twenty-three thousand feet, one of the lines disappeared in an explosion, hit by a rising air-defense missile.
When the drones were at twenty thousand feet, the task force’s machine cannon opened up, and their tracer bullets tried to connect with six thin, sixteen-inch wedges from miles away. The drones maxed their power, creating sonic booms that fell behind them as they accelerated well past the speed of sound.
Another drone was hit at a range of six thousand feet, leaving the five remaining Shrikes to reapportion their targets in the final seconds of their terminal fall. Flying down at maximum speed from almost directly overhead, an arrowhead slammed into the flight deck of each of the two undamaged carriers. The speed of the dive combined with the drone’s mass drove each robotic kamikaze deep into the bowels of the ship. From five decks below, fiery explosions shot out through the gaping holes they had left. Then the explosions traveled across the length of the carriers, turning them into massive fireballs.
The listing Liaoning turned out to be the lucky one. The remaining Shrike hit its flight deck at an angle. It punched straight through the tilted flight deck and then went out through the hangar deck and into the sea below. The drone felt no disappointment at its failure to completely sink its target, just as its wing mates felt no pride at their success.
USS Zumwalt Ship Mission Center
“Sir, Port Royal is requesting to be released from escort duty so it can advance on the enemy force.”
“Permission denied. That battle cruiser’s main gun range is two miles longer than the Port Royal’s gun. They’ll just stand off and pound the Port Royal, especially at that reduced speed. You heard the old man on the radio. Let’s give him a little more time before we play the martyr,” said Simmons, sounding confident for the crew but inside hoping he was right to trust his father.
“Range is now twenty-eight miles,” said Richter, tracking the four ships of the enemy surface task force in, since the two fleets were now too close for radar jamming to be effective. When the ships were roughly thirteen miles away, they would come into visual range and her job would become redundant.
“Are they following the amphibs?” Simmons had ordered the transport ships in the task force to position themselves where they could support the troops ashore but were as distant as possible from the brewing battle between the surface ships.
“No, sir. Still steaming toward us,” said Cortez. “They want to finish this.”
“So do we,” said Captain Simmons.
USS Zumwalt, Forward Rail-Gun Turret
Vern dried her palm on her pant leg again and then picked up the plastic soldering gun by its greasy handle. This was the last section of wiring to lock back down, which she was thankful for because she could not take any more of the smoke, the smell, and the confinement inside the rail-gun turret. As for the fear, she had long since set that aside, balled it up somewhere next to the nausea in her stomach.
“Almost there,” she said, knowing that Mike was less than a foot from her and could see it just as well. The radio on his tool harness squawked and she heard the captain’s voice.
“All right, damage control. Time’s up. Clear out.”
Vern pulled the trigger on the soldering gun again and ran it smoothly over the surface of the insulated coupling for the rail gun’s high power line; the plastic of the fitting liquefied and melded together.
She heard Mike curse under his breath. He cleared his throat and keyed the microphone with an aggressive click: “Zumwalt Actual, we need one more minute. That’s all. Vern’s literally down to the last wires here.”
“If he doesn’t give us more time, we’re going to get a cold weld. It’s not going to fully fuse, and the bond might snap right at the seam line if it gets any added force on it,” Vern said.
“Damage control, repeat, clear decks, copy!” said the captain.
“When I say we’re almost there, you know damn well I mean it,” said Mike. “Hold for just one minute. Do you copy?”
Klaxon horns sounded an alert across the ship.
“All hands, this is the captain, clear decks; rail-gun battery preparing to fire. Powering down main systems.”
Vern looked up at Mike and then went back to soldering, a wisp rising from the soldering gun’s hot tip. Mike grabbed her around the waist and carried her out of the turret and through two hatches. At last, he set her on her feet.
“Your son is really a pain in the ass. Where did he get that from?” said Vern, wiping the sweat from her glasses with the inside of one of her pants pockets.
“No idea at all.” Mike shook his head as he caught his breath.
The red wash of the auxiliary lighting gave the hallway a surreal glow. They leaned against the bulkhead next to each other and waited.
Then the lighting in the hallway darkened as the power system began to transfer. In the pitch-black, Vern felt a rough hand reach to hold hers. She squeezed it.
There was a crack from the rail-gun turret above. But it was not the triumphant sound of one of the rounds being propelled toward a target. It was the terse clap of an electrical problem. The auxiliary lights went dark and then turned back on with a series of disconcerting strobelike pulses.
Mike felt Vern’s hand slip from his grasp as she started down the hallway, running back toward the turret.
USS Zumwalt Ship Mission Center
“Sir, we’ve got power failures across the ship. Engineering reports engines not powering up. The misfire caused some kind of surge,” said Cortez.