As the individual stations began acknowledging their orders, a male voice came over a different set of speakers. “Commanding Officer, your presence is requested in Combat Information Center.”
Ann could feel the tension level in the darkened room go up dramatically. Men and women at electronic consoles around the compartment began pushing buttons and speaking into headsets in low voices.
She heard the clang of an opening door, and a voice called out, “the captain’s in CIC.”
Captain Bowie strode into the room, making a bee-line for a woman seated in a chair at the focus of three large tactical display screens. The captain and the woman went into a hushed conference immediately.
Ann nodded toward the woman. “Who’s she?”
“That’s Lieutenant Augustine. She’s the Tactical Action Officer. She’s in charge of fighting the ship.”
“Is that her regular job?”
“She’s the Operations Department Head,” Chief McPherson said. “TAO is a watch station. It rotates with the watch turnover. OPS has got the bubble now, because she’s the best TAO we’ve got, and the captain figured things might get hairy.”
Ann regarded the female officer without speaking.
Chief McPherson cocked an eyebrow. “What? You didn’t think the gals just came along to clean the ashtrays, did you?”
A voice broke over the speaker. “TAO — EW, I’ve got multiple X-band seekers, centered on bearing zero-three-five. We’ve got Vipers, ma’am. I count three … make that four. I say again, EW has four inbound missiles, bearing zero-three-five!”
The woman’s voice came back instantly. “TAO, aye! Launch chaff, now! Break. All Stations — TAO, we have inbound Vipers! I say again, we have missiles inbound! RCO, go active on SPY. Break. Weapons Control — TAO, shift to Aegis ready-auto. Set CIWS to auto-engage.”
Ann’s stomach contracted into a knot. “They’re shooting at us?”
“Yeah,” Chief McPherson said. “We’ve got missiles coming towards us, and our radar’s not up yet.”
She gave Ann’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’ve got to get to my station. Put on your seatbelt and keep your head down. And hang on to that laptop if you don’t want to lose it. The ride is about to get bumpy.”
She wheeled around, and trotted away before Ann could respond.
Ann heard a quick succession of muffled thumps. “TAO — EW, launching chaff. Six away.”
The reports kept coming through the overhead speaker. “TAO — RCO. SPY is active. Transmitting data to fire control.”
“TAO — Weapons Control. Aegis is at ready-auto. CIWS is set to auto-engage.”
Ann fumbled at the sides of the chair until she located the seat belt. She belted herself in, and then grabbed her laptop computer, hugging the black plastic rectangle to her chest like a sheet of armor plate.
Mouse would be coming to the end of his run, now. The robot might already be out from under the ice pack, bobbing on the surface, waiting for retrieval. Ann knew without asking that no one would care.
“TAO — EW, inbound Vipers are showing staggered monopulse radar signatures. I think we’re looking at AS-23 Kronos missiles, ma’am. Recommend we avoid jamming. Some of the Kronos variants have home-on-jam capability.”
The Tactical Action Officer’s voice came back a second later. “EW — TAO, my memory might be failing me, but I don’t think the MiG-31 can carry the AS-23 missile.”
“TAO — EW. I don’t know what they can carry, ma’am. I’m just telling you what’s on my slick.”
Ann listened to the chatter and wondered what in the hell they were talking about.
Without warning, the ship gave a violent series of tremors, accompanied by a sequence of tumultuous rumbles that seemed to shake the teeth in Ann’s head. She cried out, but her voice was nearly swallowed up in the cacophony of sound.
In the ear-ringing silence that followed, another report came over the speaker. “TAO — Weapons Control. Twelve birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two each on the inbound Vipers, and one each on the Bogies.”
The giant display screens at the far end of the room flickered with cryptic symbols. Their meaning was as foreign to Ann as the unintelligible reports tumbling out of the speakers, but she knew enough to realize that her future was being spelled out in that intricate dance of shapes and lines.
Somewhere out there in the darkness of the pre-dawn Siberian morning, engines of death were screaming towards each other at fantastic speeds. And it came to Ann that guided missiles were complex and intricate machines. They were robots, like her Mouse, but a thousand times faster and more single-minded of purpose. Mouse could do many things. But these robots could only destroy.
The realization that she might be minutes — or even seconds—away from death, crashed over Ann like a freezing wave. She was suddenly glad that she didn’t have a job to do, because her muscles were locked in place. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t breathe.
She wanted to leap out of the chair and run away from this craziness. But where would she go? Even if her paralyzed body would agree to take instructions from her brain, which she very much doubted, there was nowhere to go. Nowhere but a freezing and alien ocean, and this ship — which had suddenly become a target.
On the big screens, a cluster of blue symbols rushed toward a cluster of red symbols. With a quick series of flashes, about half of the red and blue symbols vanished from the screen.
“TAO — Air, splash two Vipers.”
Another voice followed without pause. “Weapons Control concurs. The remaining two Vipers are now inside our minimum missile range. We cannot reengage with missiles.”
As Ann watched, one of the red symbols veered to the side and disappeared.
“TAO — EW, splash Viper number three. One taker on chaff!”
Ann wasn’t quite sure what the exchange of words meant, but it seemed that three of the incoming missiles had been destroyed. One of the red symbols tracked toward the center of the screen without pausing.
Two more red symbols flashed and vanished. “TAO — Air, splash two Bogies.”
The remaining red image kept coming.
Ann began to tremble. She didn’t know how to read the catalog of symbols sprayed across the screens. She didn’t know the color codes, or the significance of the shapes, or the meanings of the blocks of letters and numbers that followed close on each symbol like the tail on a kite. She knew none of these things. But something in her instinctively knew that when the inverted red V shape reached the middle of the screen, she would die.
Another red symbol flashed and disappeared. “TAO — Air, splash Bogie number three. Bogie four is bugging out.”
“TAO, aye.”
The red inverted V continued without pausing. It had nearly reached the center of the screen, and no one seemed to be doing anything about it.
Ann clamped her mouth shut, willing herself not to scream when the moment came.
A throaty metallic rumble split the air, like the roar of an unmuffled lawnmower engine. The sound was followed by the muted boom of an explosion. Not far away, but not on the ship either.
There was perhaps three seconds of near silence, broken only by the hum of electronic cooling fans, and then a cheer went up around Combat Information Center. Some unseen person shouted, “Go CIWS!” followed by a wolf whistle.
The overhead speaker crackled again. “TAO — Weapons Control. Splash Viper number four.”
Ann took a breath for the first time in nearly a minute. The cool air felt strangely unfamiliar as it rushed into her lungs. She felt her muscles begin to relax.