“And we destroy their launchers.”
Tuxae scratched his mandibles, fretting. “Which means we are digging tunnels in sand. Unless it is a salvo launcher, the humans rarely launch more than four rockets from a single location, but never less than two.”
“Odd.”
“Perhaps not.”
H’toor trilled uncertainty. “I do not understand.”
Tuxae forced himself to be patient with his tactically unsophisticated friend, whose comic songs made him an even more popular crewmember than he was an expert communications operator. “When the humans launch one missile, our automated intercept systems have been reprogrammed to temporarily ignore the source. We would be constantly interdicting bare ground if we counterfired at every rocket’s point of origin. But two missiles arising from the same place? That could signify the location of a more sophisticated and capacious launcher, a target that our intercept system cannot afford to ignore.”
“So, by launching at least two rockets per location, the humans are forcing our systems to spend time acquiring coordinates for every site.”
“Exactly. They are making us waste time, effort, and ammunition.” Tuxae felt the multiple lenses of his eyes slide and tighten against each other in hyperfocused consternation. “This sudden, large attack is not merely unprecedented. It has been carefully planned. The humans have watched us, timed us, have measured what we can and cannot do in response, and how long it takes us. I fear…”
H’toor shifted slightly to look over at his suddenly still friend. “What do you fear, Tuxae? The accuracy of their calculations?”
“That, too. But mostly, I fear their prior silence.”
“Again, I do not understand.”
Tuxae clacked his claws. “The humans were capable of waiting many weeks to commence this attack—weeks of waiting, watching, measuring while many of them died, and all of them feared. But now they are striking back with weapons we did not detect, at terribly close ranges, and at a time of their choosing. And so I fear.”
“That they are in fact ready?”
“No. That we are not.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Downing studied the scattered reports trickling in from Java’s cities. General revolts were underway in all of them, initially targeted at the most hated and vulnerable adversaries: Optigene’s clone-soldier regiments. The attacks had been extremely successful, spearheaded by cadre-led insurgent groups that had been waiting for the rocket barrage as their jumpoff signal. The barrage had, in turn, been unleashed only upon the arrival of the fleet codenamed Rescue Task Force One: the material fulfillment of Case Leo Gap, Nolan Corcoran’s carefully orchestrated matrix of strategic deceptions and sacrifices. However, the day’s greatest challenge and uncertainty remained: effectively coordinating the myriad and disparate elements of this day’s fateful attack. But, so far, so good.
Downing, ever wary of operational optimism, shook off that thought. “Mr. Rinehart?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Give me an update on our tactical picture. Are we good to go to the next step?”
“Reports indicate that, as predicted, the invader’s combat air patrols on the maritime approaches to Jakarta and Surabaja have been pulled off that duty and redeployed to engage the new ground threats around those cities. All approaching cargo ships have been ordered to hold position. They report clear skies.
“Also, our covert observers on Java are Morse-signaling that the Arat Kur PDF sensors seem unable to operationally discriminate more than a fraction of the targets, probably because their tracking arrays are overwhelmed. We are getting scattered reports that their antimissile counterfire is becoming increasingly autonomous and decentralized. Their individual PDF systems are falling out of the integrated defense grid at the same pace that their cooling and reload intervals are becoming problems. We are good to go, sir.”
“Very good, Mr. Rinehart. Remember, when the Arat Kur see what we do next, their orbital interdiction assets will shift back to our larger ships—and to the aerial threats they’ll be seeing momentarily. When that targeting shift occurs, let me know. Immediately. Timing is everything—everything—if this plan is to work.”
“Very good, sir. Awaiting your order to take the next step.”
Downing drew a deep breath. “Mr. Rinehart, send the following signal to our assault-enabled cargo ships: ‘salvo all’ in one minute, on my mark—mark.”
Cesar Pinero, master of the twenty-thousand-ton freighter Maldive Reckoner, watched the last of the two-stage rockets lance away from the deck of the heavily barnacled schooner that was just two hundred meters off his starboard bow. The weapons’ launch exhausts washed in through the already shattered windows of the pilot house, setting its interior on fire. The boat’s captain and first mate were already speeding away in a much-patched Zodiac, slaloming around the canvas covers under which the rockets had been hidden until three minutes earlier. Pinero checked his watch: fifty-seven seconds to his own launch. And in the meantime, it would be instructive to learn how long it took for the Arat Kur to respond to the schooner’s actions. Pinero started a silent countdown: one-one-thousand; two-one-thousand; three-one-thousand—
Looking port and starboard, bow and stern, the rest of the ponderous grain freighters seemed to loom larger in their immobility, having been signaled by the Arat Kur to stop and hold position. So they had done—and watched as the invaders blew every offending smaller ship to kindling.
Four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand…
Pinero checked his watch, looked down from the conning tower at his new second mate, on loan from the Japanese Navy, and nodded. The mate waved to the deck hands, who rose up from among the long crates arrayed on the Reckoner’s deck in a neat single-layer, row-and-column grid. They hastily inserted crowbars into the broadly gapped seams of the crates.
Six-one-thousand, seven-one-thousand…
The crates’ sides and ends fell away as deckhands flung their lids overboard. In seconds, the four-by-six checkerboard of overlong wooden cargo boxes had been snatched away to reveal twenty-four missiles of diverse types and capabilities. Pinero blew the whistle he held in his teeth; all but the second mate and two of the deckhands raced toward the gunwales. The engineering section, already there, started the lemminglike rush over the side, hurtling feet-first toward the water over twenty feet below.
Eight-one-thousand, Nine-one-thousand…
Strange how calm it all seemed, how orderly. Half of the small boats had already been reduced to flotsam and jetsam by kinetic kill warheads fired from orbit. Hundreds of long plumes marked the path of the missiles they had launched, which—in their fiery, scalded-cat leaps into the air—had destroyed the decks and ruined the pilot houses of the ships that had carried them to this place. Some of those missiles were exploding in the air: orbital laser or long-range, ground-based PDF interdiction. More dwindled and down-Dopplered into the gray horizon haze that marked the periphery of Jakarta. From behind, dozens of other missiles converged on that target zone. The ships still clustered beyond the fifty-kilometer limit had started unloading, also. Pinero had worried that he would be paralyzed by fear when this moment came, but instead he felt strangely detached, as if he were simply a spectator, even to his own actions.