"Yes sir," he said, his face stunned. "That is how it looks at the moment."
"Holy Christ," he whispered, slumping into the chair. He had lost a ship? He had lost 20,000 marines that he was responsible for transporting safely to their destination?
"Sir?" Brannigan said, "I've ordered a..."
"Twenty thousand!" Jules broke in, shaking his head in denial. That was more than two hundred times the worst-case casualty estimate formulated before departure. It was a disaster of unprecedented proportions.
"Sir? Are you with me?" Brannigan said.
"We need to find the ship that did this immediately!" Jules said, his fists clenching in his lap. "This is an outright act of war! Those EastHem fucks need to be tracked down and eliminated at once. And once we've done that, we need to..."
"It wasn't EastHem sir," Brannigan cut in.
Jules looked at his image as if he thought the man mad. "Wasn't EastHem? What are you talking about? Of course it was EastHem. There's no one else with nuclear torpedo capability."
"Sir, by all evidence that we've seen so far, that was a WestHem weapon that went off."
"A WestHem weapon?"
"No mistaking, sir. Camel was able to paint the delivery device with her fire control radar for a few seconds before the jammer went active. The signature was of a Mark-38. And then there were the detonation flashes. As you know, we can identify the weapon type by the EMP it releases. Again, all data points to a WestHem device. We can collect some of the radioactive debris for analysis as well if you'd like, but that will only confirm what we already know. Somebody fired a Mark-38 torpedo at Camel and killed her."
"Is there any chance that it was an accident?" he asked next. "Could one of the escort ships have inadvertently jettisoned a torpedo and it drifted into Camel's path?"
"I would rate that possibility as extremely unlikely. That weapon was on an exact collision course and it detonated in optimum destruction range. I'm forced to conclude that there is a hostile ship out there, probably a stealth attack ship, and that it deliberately attacked the convoy."
Jules thought of the report he'd received that Marlin was tracking an Owl being operated by the greenies before her signal was abruptly lost. Could it be possible? Could the greenies have somehow gotten one of those ships operational and used it to attack his ship. And could they have possibly managed to get on or more of those nuclear torpedoes operational as well. As impossible and as mad as that idea sounded on the surface, there really was no other explanation that made sense.
"We need to sweep the area and see if there's an Owl out there," Jules said. "It's possible the greenies may have somehow managed to get one of the captured ships operational."
"I've already ordered the attack craft launched," Brannigan told him. "They'll be going along the path of the weapon, probing with their active sensors to try and locate the vessel, if there is one. I've also had all ships activate their active search systems. If there's an Owl out there, we'll find it."
"Very good, Brannigan," he said, nodding in satisfaction. "Let's find that ship and capture or destroy it. I want this done within the hour. Within the hour, do you hear me?"
"I understand, sir."
"And in the meantime, we need to start figuring out what we're going to tell the media about this. Let's start thinking of a cover story right away."
From the launch bays of the Californias, A-22 attack craft emerged, their powerful rocket engines lighting up and sending them streaking off into the surrounding space to search for the ship that had attacked Camel. The saucer shaped craft joined up into teams of two and began a grid search along the bearing that the torpedo had come from. They moved back and forth over their grids, their radars and other active systems probing in all directions, their passive sensors sniffing for the slightest sign of heat.
At the same time, the destroyers and the anti-stealth ships of the armada joined in the search as well, their unmanned probes shooting off in multiple directions along the torpedo bearing and off to the sides of it. Radar and search lasers filled the empty vacuum while technicians kept their eyes glued to their screens, reading the telemetry that was coming back in.
The WestHem forces however, held a distinct disadvantage in the search. Though they had the bearing that the weapon had launched from, they had no idea from what range its flight had begun. It could have been launched anywhere from 600,000 kilometers out to inside of 60,000 kilometers. And the further out that it had been launched from, the more time that the ship would have had to alter course and clear the area. They were in effect stuck with an area to search that the Earth itself would have fit inside of with room to spare for its moon to orbit. And in addition to the huge search area they had to work with, they only had a limited amount of time in which to do it in. The entire armada was still traveling at maximum speed away from the area while the ship they were searching for was undoubtedly standing relatively still. The attack craft were not capable of decelerating to this speed and lingering behind. And even if they could, they would never be able to catch back up to their mother ships when they were done.
Meanwhile, while all of the searching was going on and while Mermaid herself drifted silently and invisibly, her bridge crew nervously following the courses of the various ships on the lookout, the second torpedo that she had launched continued to close with Mule. None of the sensors on the search ships got a sniff of it since they were probing outward of the formation, not along its inner flank. It closed to within 12,000 kilometers before the search radar on Mule itself was able to get a hint of a return.
By that point, all of the commanding officers on all of the Panama ships had been alerted to what had happened to Camel. Every last one of the remaining transports were at general quarters now, their active systems all on line, their defensive weapons systems charged and on standby. Even still, it took a horridly long time for the bridge crew to react to the threat closing in on them. The commanding officer of Mule initially dismissed the intermittent returns as an anomaly, thinking that the fear and hysteria of the detection crew was causing an imaginary sighting. Precious seconds ticked by before he even thought to report this finding. It was only when the returns began to get steadier and when the infrared flickers began to accompany them that he started to wonder if maybe there really was a second weapon out there and maybe it really was heading for his ship.
He ordered the targeting radars lit up and directed down the bearing from which the sightings were coming. As with Camel, this gave a momentary solid return that was able to identify range, course, speed, and a weapon signature. He paled as he saw that he was dealing with a Mark 38 thermonuclear torpedo and that it was less than five thousand kilometers out. Before he could open fire on it with the anti-missile lasers, the jammer on the weapon went active, cluttering the display.
"This is Mule," he reported to the commander of the armada on the emergency frequency. "We have a torpedo closing in on us from five thousand kilometers! Jamming systems are active. Attempting to engage now!"
The entire command staff followed the brief drama on their screens as the telemetry from Mule was downlinked to them. They watched as her array of lasers began to fire into space one by one, trying to hit the now hidden object that was closing with them.
On Mermaid, Brett and his bridge crew watched the same thing. Since they were still linked via laser to the weapon, and since the weapon had clearly been detected, Brett ordered that the rocket engine be fired to help close the range a little faster. A command was given and a second later the powerful chemical rocket lit up, accelerating the torpedo towards Mule at nearly 12Gs.