Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24)

by John Schettler

  “But it is only a few missiles.”

  “At the moment.” He gave Karpov those dark, warning eyes. “Drop a stone in a pool of water, and the ripples migrate out. In the beginning the frequency is very tight, but as they progress, the wavelengths increase, and the intensity grows less over time, like a tsunami that sees its energy dissipate over great distances. I suppose I always expected that these changes would have to migrate forward, but I thought that the real consequences could be held here—until these events have run their course.”

  “You’re saying that these events are already changing the future—and you did not expect this to happen now?”

  “Not yet. Sir… As we approached Paradox Hour—July 28th, last year, things began to happen on the ship—some very strange things, as I have told you. I’ve given that a good deal of thought, and I think those events may be linked to changes that migrated forward in time. Men started to go missing, and now I think it was because something in the long chain of causality was broken—their life line annulled, and time could no longer justify their continued existence. Understand sir? When we change this present, we will also change the future—all the days between this moment and this ship’s point of departure in 2021. Those men may have vanished because they never even existed—just like the names on that list Volkov squeezed out of Zolkin, the men we lost in combat on the first ship. When we returned to Vladivostok, it was as if they never existed.”

  “And you are thinking that if something like our missile inventory has changed….”

  Fedorov nodded. “Let me put it to you this way… Suppose we change something here that has a catastrophic effect on the line of causality, so much so that time cannot account for our presence here any longer. Don’t you understand sir? The very fact that this ship was even built rests on a big stack of plates—WWII, its outcome, the post war alignments, the cold war. Suppose they never build this ship. Yes, we could do something here that would lead to that, and apparently the consequences of our actions here are already starting to reach 2021, small ripples at first, small changes, but there could be a tsunami out there, moving inexorably forward in time, and every missile we fire increases that energy. Look what we’re doing here at this very moment—dueling with an Aegis class destroyer in 1942!”

  Karpov blinked, thinking. Then Rodenko reported again, and the Admiral inclined his head, listening, though his eyes were still locked on Fedorov.

  “Sir, missile launch detected by MR-800 Flag radar system at 188 degrees, 60 nautical miles. They’re firing at our KA-40. It’s an SM-2.”

  Now Karpov turned. “Not very sporting of them. Signal that helo to drop elevation at once, get them right down on the deck. Do we still have a fix with our other helo?”

  “It’s being jammed, but I still have good confidence on the contact location.”

  “Then it’s time we settled this. Mister Samsonov, Moskit II system. Set attack profile to extreme low altitude with evasion on final approach. Eight missiles please. Target the contact and fire when ready. Rodenko. How’s our KA-40?”

  “Descending… Descending… They’re using ECM now sir… I think they’ve spoofed that missile.”

  “Good. If they survive, have them climb again and reacquire the contact to help our missiles along. Now let’s see how they like our Sunburns.”

  DDG-180, JS-Takami, Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~14:40

  “I’ve reacquired the KA-40,” said Otani. “They dropped elevation and hit our last missile with ECM.”

  “Put one more on the damn thing,” said Harada. “Let’s keep them dancing.”

  “Incoming!” said Otani. “J/OPS-28C has a missile at 20 nautical miles. SPY confirms, multiple contacts inbound.”

  “Mister Honjo, weapons free. Knock them down.”

  “Salvo of eight missiles this time—Sunburns.” Otani tagged the threat, and everyone on the bridge tensed up. They weren’t seeing these missiles until they broke the horizon at about 20 miles, which meant the Russians were also doing a number on their Sea King’s radar. Admiral Kurita had them in his binoculars at about the same time as they streaked past his position, one after another, a long train of potential destruction.

  “That will make twelve in all,” said Fukada. “With what they threw at other targets earlier, this looks like they’re pushing all their chips out on one last number.”

  He was wrong in that, for he was still assuming Kirov would have only 20 SSMs aboard, when in fact it left Severomorsk with three times that number. In they came, and only Otani could see it playing out in real time. It was coming down to seconds now, not minutes. Soon the watch called out they had tail fire on the Mark 1 Eyeball. Then Harada gave an order that no one expected.

  “Signal the Kurita group. Tell them that unless they hear from us in five minutes, we strongly advise they withdraw.”

  Then the deck erupted with fire and the SM-2s leapt up, heading for their targets. “Vampires at 10 nautical miles,” said Otani. “Splash Vampire 1!”

  They were firing the SM-2s in pairs again, assigning a lead missile and a wingmate to every Vampire. The theory was that a ship would always carry more SAMs than the number of SSMs the enemy might be packing.

  In they came, and the sky suddenly lit up with more explosions, and every single one saw the crew breathing just a little easier. They got five more missiles, one after another, with Otani calling out each kill. It was now down to the final two Vampires and there were still six SN-2s in the air out after them. Harada had been looking over Otani’s shoulder, not realizing that his right hand had tightened to a fist and his nails were biting into the flesh of his palm. He took a deep breath, opening his hand. It was looking good. Then they heard the laser firing at just inside the seven mile range.

  “Laser hit! Splash Vampire 7.”

  The pair of SN-2s double teamed the last missile, and they took it down at the six mile range marker, the brilliant red-orange explosion vibrating the ship with the shock wave. The last four SM-2s ran blind and slit their throats about twelve miles out.

  Battlecruiser Kirov, Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~14:45

  “Missile eight is gone,” said Samsonov. “Nothing got through, sir. They threw sixteen SM-2s at them.”

  Karpov was not happy. “So now we see just how good the American tech is. Twelve fucking Moskit IIs, and not one gets through.” He stroked his chin, thinking.

  “SSM inventory,” he said with a growl.

  “Sir, we have 24 missiles on the Moskit II system, 10 MOS-III, and 6 on the P-900 system—40 missiles in all.”

  Karpov looked at Fedorov now. “Nice of Mother Time to leave the MOS-IIIs alone, eh Fedorov? At least nothing has changed on that count. They are quite a bit faster to the target. Let’s see if they can catch lightning. Mister Samsonov, one MOS-III—just one please.”

  “Ready sir.”

  Karpov looked over. “Mister Grilikov, why don’t you do the honors and fire this missile.”

  Grilikov had been watching, somewhat dumbfounded at Samsonov’s side. Now he blinked, looking at his teacher, who quietly moved his thumb to point to the correct switch, then he winked.

  Grilikov fired.

  The MOS III was a descendant of the P-800 Onyx missile and the work that was done on the Brahmos/Yakhont system for foreign export. The Russians were looking to compress the response time for the defender even more, and in the balance of stealth vs speed, they usually opted for speed. What they wanted was a hypersonic missile, and the first SSM to fill that bill was the Zircon 3M-22, and the 3M stood for MOS-III. That original design was first introduced in 2017, and was capable of speeds up to Mach 5, but the missile Kirov was carrying was an upgrade, the 3M-33, still called MOS-III by the rank and file.

  It could run at Mach 7, faster than the hypersonic rounds of a rail gun, and now Karpov wanted to see if this enemy ship could defeat it. Counting time for acceleration, it was going to eat up about 2.4 kilometers per second. One missile went out, and closed the 62 nautical miles betwe
en the two ships in just 47 seconds. It was also stealthy, a sea skimmer, and it was not seen by Takami until it had penetrated the 20 nautical mile threshold.

  “Fast missile inbound!” shouted Otani. “My God, it’s running over Mach 7!”

  That was fast, but there was one thing faster. The lightning reflexes of the modern day AEGIS system acquired the contact at 17.6 nautical miles. The fire order pulsed to the missile deck. And two SM-2s went out to challenge the intruder. Before they had even acquired their target, the MOS-III was just 10 miles out…. Six miles… The SM-2s had just tipped over and began accelerating towards the Vampire, but it was too fast, too damn fast… But one thing was faster.

  It was Takami’s laser system pulsing out at the speed of light. Five miles out, the missile was struck. Its inertial guidance system was fried, a split second later it was blind, with further damage to its steering that sent it careening wildly off course destroyed inside the four mile mark when it struck the sea, and then exploded. The two SM-2s streaked right over that spot in the sea, late to the party. They continued on for another 10 seconds, trying to decide what happened before they found no threats and self destructed.

  It was as close a shave as one could get, but Takami survived.

  Karpov watched the whole engagement on radar, pointing to the missile tracks Rodenko had on the defensive fire. “Those are the two missiles they fired? No others?”

  “Just two sir, SM-2s.”

  “Any malfunction reported on our missile?”

  “No sir, the telemetry was clean until it went down.”

  “Well now… This is very interesting. They must have hit that MOS-III with something else, but not a Phalanx gun. Look, our telemetry is cut off here, a little outside the range of their gun system.”

  “Sir, I got an unusual emission during our Moskit II salvo, and I picked it up again just now. I think they have a laser defense system.”

  “Yes… That would make sense. It’s the one thing faster than our missile, the only thing faster.” Karpov’s eyes narrowed. The junior officers watched him, wondering what he would do next. Would it be another barrage of Moskit IIs, or perhaps a heavier salvo of the hypersonic missile they had just fired. Lasers were a one shot, one kill system, and then they needed recharge time before they could fire again. Had there been four MOS-IIIs in that salvo….

  Karpov turned, looked at Fedorov, then, to the surprise of everyone there, he walked slowly over to Nikolin, who sat up quickly, as if he had been caught doing something wrong. In fact, he had been quietly sending his friend Tasarov a stream of Morse Code that he channeled through his headset on an internal network, and the two of them had been wagering on which missile would score the first hit.

  “Mister Nikolin, open a channel—in the clear please. Hail that ship by both hull number and name. Tell them Vladimir Karpov wishes to speak with their Captain.”

  There were more things under Karpov’s deck than missiles. His mind was equally dangerous, and now he wanted to take the measure of his adversary before he took this any further.

  Chapter 5

  DDG-180, JS-Takami, Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~ 14:52

  “Sir,” said Ensign Shiota. “I’m picking up a voice radio message—in the clear.”

  “From who? Kurita? Well I suppose EMCON has gone to hell, but they have a secure radio set. Tell them to use it.”

  “No sir. It’s that Russian ship sir. They’ve hailed us directly, and they want to talk with you.”

  Harada looked over at his Executive Officer, a bemused look on his face. “In Japanese, or Russian?” he said with a grin.

  “English sir.”

  “Good enough, common ground most places in our time. Why not here? This ought to be interesting. Give it to me on the bridge overhead speaker.”

  “Aye sir.”

  Harada picked up the handset and spoke into the embedded speaker. “This is Captain Takechi Harada, Japanese Self-Defense Force. To whom am I speaking? Over.”

  It was Nikolin’s voice, but the mind and words of Karpov. “Captain, this is Admiral Vladimir Karpov, Prime Minister and head of the Free Siberian State, speaking to you through an interpreter. Now, I don’t have the slightest idea how you and your ship got here, but then again, you are probably asking yourself the same thing about us. Am I correct? Over.”

  “That pretty much sums up the situation, Admiral. I see that promotions come easy in the Russian Navy these days. Over.”

  Karpov ignored the remark, and got right down to business. “Consider your situation, Captain. I counted eight missiles off your deck, and lo and behold they were aimed at my ship, but none of them hit. So you’re sitting across the table from me with an empty pistol. As you have just seen, that is not the case on this side of the argument. Now what in God’s name are you doing here fighting with the IJN?”

  “Defending Japan.” Harada kept it real simple.

  “ I see… Well you may be broadly unaware of the situation here, but if you were better versed, you would see that every action I have taken against Japan has been fully justified. Your country presently has troops on Siberian soil, and one of two things will happen—Japan will either withdraw those troops and return all occupied territories to Siberian sovereignty, or I will take them by force. We started with Kamchatka earlier this year, and now the order of the day is Sakhalin Island. You people have been calling it Karafuto, but that is about to change.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Harada in return. “Then again perhaps not.”

  “Captain, don’t play tough guy out here with me, believe me, you’ll regret it. Your presence here was quite a surprise, to say the least, but radar signatures don’t lie, and my reflexes are as good as they come. Now, I’m not stupid, and I know exactly what you just tried to pull here. It failed. You’ve expended your SSMs, and if you persist, you’ll be expending a good deal more of your SAMs as well.”

  Fukada looked over at the Captain, his eyes wide, mouthing something which prompted Harada to pause. “Mister Fukada?”

  “He’s bluffing! They just threw thirteen missiles at us and we knocked each and every one down. He’s empty too, or at most he may have but one or two missiles left.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Harada. “The first twelve were all Sunburns. But that last number was something new. Did you get a signature on it, Otani?”

  “I thought it was an upgraded Onyx, but it was just too damn fast. Had to be something new—maybe a Zirkon variant—hypersonic, sir.”

  “Well pinch me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think they load those missiles in sets of one. That has to be one egg from a full nest. I’m betting he’s not bragging here. He’s got more under his forward deck than we first thought.” But Harada had to play the game here, and see what this man really wanted.

  “It seems to me that you’ve expended a good many SAMs as well—not to mention the thirteen flies we swatted down over here. Don’t get pushy, Admiral. As you have seen, we can defend ourselves.”

  “Well that’s damn well what you’ll be doing then, because you’re done insofar as offense goes. You want to close the range and try that 127mm deck gun? We have one too, right on the bow—along with six more 152s on three twin turrets. Let me put it to you this way, Captain. You throw another missile at my helos and I’ll throw the kitchen sink at yours. As for that airborne contact just crossing over the eastern shore of Sakhalin about 60 nautical miles to our southwest, those planes are about to have a really bad day. Now you can either get on the radio and save some lives, or I’ll take them apart, plane by plane, the instant they break through my 40 mile range circle. After that, I’ll see if that surface action group 20 miles off your bow has any SM-2s. I don’t think so. And when I’m done with them, I’ll come south for you. It’s either that, or you turn tail and withdraw. Your call, Captain. Vladimir Karpov, over and out.”

  Harada said nothing more, switching off the handset and returning it to its cradle. “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” he muttered. �
��Lieutenant Commander, what do you make of this?”

  “He’s right on one count, sir. We’re sitting here with an empty pistol—except for one thing, the rail gun. We don’t have to close on him to use that. We’ve had the range for the last thirty minutes.”

  “Yes, but something tells me that would be like poking a stick in a beehive. Mister Honjo, what’s our SM-2 count looking like?”

  “Thinning out, sir. We’ve got 13 forward and 23 more aft. 36 total on that system, and then we have the 12 SM-3s.”

  “Anyway you look at it,” said Fukada, “we’ll be an empty shell if he does have another batch of those hypersonic SSMs. Neither of the two SM-2s we fired were able to get a hard target lock before that last missile was in its terminal run. That’s just not good enough. We would have to use the SM-3s, and hope to god we see them coming earlier. We can’t let another of those hypersonic jobs get inside 20 klicks before we pick it up.” Fukada had a hard face, but there was a crack in his bravado that Harada clearly perceived.

  “If we do use the rail gun, and get any kind of a hit, bet on him throwing anything he has left,” said Harada.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Fukada. “He’s already put thirteen missiles on us, and with nothing to show for it. I’m willing to bet that’s more ordnance than he’s used in all other operations here, though that’s a guess. We really have no idea how long he’s been here. The point I’m making, sir, is that those missiles matter. That’s his might and muscle here, and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good, just like our missiles.”

  “So you’re suggesting we thumb our nose at this bastard just to get him to burn through his missile inventory?”

  “We do that, and we’ve mission killed him, sir. He’ll probably have his SAMs in good numbers, but there is no way he could really hurt the IJN after that. So what I’m betting on is that he knows that as well.”