Phase 3: Rescue
CE 74 January
Norwegian Sea
"Depth 50," the driver of the Ulysses announced.
"Flight, mark!" Corales ordered.
"But sir, we can't launch underwater," the flight controller protested. "The linear catapult doesn't work-"
"Open the launch hatch and have Brown launch under his own power," Corales interrupted him.
"Yes sir," the flight controller acknowledged nervously, still skeptical of the viability of his CO's plan. "Launch hatch-2 opened. Catapult-2 extension aborted. Initiating mobile suit launch-"
"God damn bitching lingo!" Corales cursed. "Brown, get the fuck out there now!" he yelled into the radio handset that he had swiped from the somewhat incompetent flight controller's hand.
"Driver, fast fill bow tanks. Down trim 60 degrees," Corales ordered.
"Fast fill bow tanks. Down trim 60 degrees," the driver repeated while pushing the steering bar forward. Seawater rapidly filling the ship's bow tanks made a rumbling noise that could be clearly heard by both the apprehensive bridge crew and the delighted enemy sonar operators. Due to the lost of the sail's starboard hydroplane, the ship's nose diving rate was greatly hampered and has to be compensated by higher filling rates of the bow ballast tanks at the expense of increased noise levels.
Lt. Kato Brown glanced at a small photo of a smiling girl with black hair stuck onto the gap between two large MFDs in front of him. The left MFD displayed the bootup sequence of his mobile suit's operating system, an essential ingredient that allowed a Natural like him to pilot his machine, a ZAFT-manufactured AMF-101 DINN.
"Brown, get the fuck out there now!" the radio squawked, the CO's unmistakable coarse usage of language lashing his ears. Wait, the sensible portion of his brain that had just finish processing the latest order told him. Did Captain Corales ordered him to launch now? His altimeter still indicated that he was below sea level, or more precisely 30 meters below it. He knew it could theoretically be done as his spaceflight-certified DINN was capable of operation in shallow waters but he has never practiced such a maneuver before.
Suddenly, the ship's upward angle dropped. The silent environment of the Ulysses was broken by the sound of ballast tanks being brutishly flooded. At that instant, the harness fastening the feet and shoulders of Brown's machine came off and now, Brown could feel his machine being launched forward by both inertia and the thrust of his main engines that were already engaged at maximum output.
"Kato Brown, DINN, launch!"
Blue seawater greeted his digital viewports which quickly turned into white splashes as he exited the watery boundary that separated his launching point and the sky above. His machine, painted in purple and black and emblazoned with the distinct red 'Z' of ZAFT, ascended to an altitude of about 500 meters from momentum alone before engaging its flight mode by performing a limited mechanical reconfiguration: an aerodynamic head shroud swinging down onto his machine's head, and the three pairs of wings extending from the backpack. The machine continued ascending in a zoom climb while the reconfiguration took place and then angled into a horizontal cruise after it was completed, allowing the head-mounted sensors to scan the sea below him.
Kato checked his tactical display. Multiple aerial and surface contacts were detected in the microwave and IR spectrum; three helicopters directly below him and two surface warships 4000 meters to his left. Much to his surprise, the helicopters, most probably ASW units, were still hovering at their initial positions. SOP would be dispersing as widely as possible while dispensing countermeasures and activating electronic defense. Not that he was complaining, but the Alliance really needed a radical RMA. Captain Corales's incessant rants about the low quality of OMNI's recruitment and training programs, coupled with the appointment of an officer corps dominated by Blue Cosmos radicals were on the mark.
Kato aimed his MMI-M100 shotgun at the tightly packed helicopter formation below him and fired. A burst of twenty 30mm tungsten balls erupted from the muzzle of his left hand weapon and accelerated towards their prey in a diverging pattern, hitting the latter in the main rotors and top fuselage, which broke several rotor blades and printed fist-sized holes on aluminum body panels. If one has auditory devices picking up sounds, what could be heard would be the wheezing sounds of helicopters auto-rotating wildly followed by the splashing sound of them plunging stomach first into the sea.
The sea suddenly expelled large canisters into air, one after another, until there were eight of them flying, during which the lead canister split into two halves to reveal the flat-nosed cylindrical body of a Corinthos antiship missile, which then ignited its solid rocket engine to start propelling itself towards its target. Its colleagues followed suit, firstly ejecting their underwater protective shell, then activating their engines and then flying interception courses towards their targets.
The missiles climbed to about 1000 meters and then fell to approach the Danilov-class cruisers on Kato's left via ballistic trajectories. Kato dived to merely 5 meters above the somewhat choppy sea and proceeded to approach the same warships via a sea-skimming trajectory. The high-low attack path worked! The defenders' CIWS and main guns aimed high and spewed lead at the Corinthoses dropping from above, allowing Kato's DINN to cross enough distance to put their hulls within his weapons envelope. As the CIWS and main guns blew away the last offending missile and started to swivel down, Kato unleashed all available firepower at them. The MMI-M76 assault rifle held in his right hand raked the bow of the warship on the right, smashing 76mm API warheads into the lightly armored main gun turret, VLS array and bridge deck, which set them ablaze and catalyzed a catastrophic explosion of the HE munitions still remaining in the VLS tubes, consequently sending the warship down under. The rocket pods on the left portion of his torso and his shotgun opened up against the left warship, the former turning the forward portion of the superstructure into a burning mass of molten metal while the latter punching holes into the sensor mast and port deck walls. He missed the VLS array by a meter, preventing another catastrophic explosion from occurring due to the crude damage tolerance of the Danilov-class cruisers.
"Beta-1 sinking! Beta-2 on fire!" Brown called his kills grimly. He realized at once that servicemen's lives were lost and children somewhere were made orphans, but the worst part was that they were not at war at all; peace was a happening reality in space right now, but he was powerless to do anything else in this struggle for survival.
"Beta-1 sinking! Beta-2 on fire!"
The bridge crew of the Ulysses immediately applauded their hard-earned victory over part of the surface group that has been relentless in terrorizing them.
"I don't get it. They're not firing any SAMs at all," the flight controller remarked.
"A pure ASW group with no AAW capability? What kind of commander sent them out?" Lee shook his head.
"The same kind that lost the war to those Coordinators," Corales blamed. "We did not lose to their superiority, we lost to our inferiority."
"Raider-1 is engaging Alpha Group," the flight controller reported.
"Taking heavy AAA!" Kato's voice squawked on the radio. Due to the ship being submerged, all data from tactical to voice were transferred via a one way quantum communication line, in this case, from Kato's DINN to the ship's flight controller. This meant that Kato could not receive any instruction from the ship.
"Charge at Alpha Group. Fire everything we got. Cover him," Corales ordered.
"Corinthoses, fire. Last salvo, Skip," Lee said.
"Shit, I'm hit! Ulysses, mayday, mayday! Help me!" Brown called for help desperately over the radio.
"Hang on, we're coming! Loading tubes 1 to 8 with Mk 90s," Lee yelled futilely, knowing that the doomed pilot could not hear him.
"Miyuki, I love you!" came Lt Kato Brown's last words before his transmission signal went offline.
"Raider-1 contact lost," the flight controller reported shakily to a somberly silent bridge.
Suddenly, the ship was rocked an explosion above her which was so powerful that it deafened her crew for a few seconds. In the bridge, showers of sparks were sprouting everywhere, scalding some of the crew.
"Damage report!" Corales yelled. His forehead felt oddly wet so he put his hand on it, only to find it smeared with sickening red fluid when he took it down to have a look.
"Catapult-2 destroyed. Breach on Deck 25. Decks 25 to 30 on fire," engineering reported. Deck 25 was Kato's mobile suit storage bay, so this was as if the ship was bidding farewell to him in an eerie way.
"Damage control, move it!" Lee mobilized the firefighting effort.
"Captain, our NJC has stopped!" engineering did not know when to quit bringing bad news.
"Switch over to battery power," Corales said while still staring at his bloodied hand. It must be the blood loss because his voice was more subdued this time despite the gravity of the situation.
"Incoming torpedoes. Number 4, bearing 1-8-1, range 2000," sonar warned.
The incoming fishes brought Corales to his senses. "Countermeasures. Evasive maneuvers," he yelled.
"Too late!" the driver yelled as he turned hard to the left, banking the entire ship by 30 degrees. The EW controller energized the ship's rear facing sonar array to actively 'ping' the incoming torpedoes in order to provide the ship's antitorpedo computer with precise data so that a countermeasure solution could be devised. When the solution was presented to him, the fishes were merely 1000 meters from impacting. Now, he shared the same sentiments as the driver but he was not willing to give up just yet. He executed the countermeasure plan as per the computer solution. From the six rearward facing tubes installed at the stern around the MHD propulsor, two salvoes of 12 supercavitating antitorpedo torpedoes were launched at the incoming torpedoes. These small underwater arrows, merely one fifth the size of their archenemies and powered by a solid rocket motor instead of counter-rotating screws, lanced towards the Ulysses's aggressors at low subsonic speeds and detonated into an overpressure wall between the ship and the incoming torpedoes.
The rear ATT explosions disrupted the incoming torpedoes' seekers, forcing them to abandon their pursuit by detonating prematurely. However, despite successfully warding off fatal impact, the resultant detonations were too close for comfort as they rocked the ship again.
"Fire tubes 1 through 8 at Alpha-1," Corales ordered an eye for an eye.
"ASH mode. Fire tubes 1 through 8 at Alpha-1," Lee complied. Loud clanks could be heard from the torpedo room's damaged machinery and the ship seemingly shuddered as the weapons were discharged from the bow tubes.
"Secondary fire spilling into capacitor compartment. Losing power," engineering who seemed to be saving the worst news for the last, finally broke it. As if a cue, the ship stopped moving.
"Captain! I have no propulsion! Shit, we're sitting duck!" the driver shouted.
"No fucking kidding," were the only words escaping Corales's lips.
"Mobile suit launch! Captain, it's Lt. Winters!" the flight operator yelled.
"What? What the hell is she doing out there in her condition? Get her on the line," Corales demanded angrily.
"Negative. Line down," the flight operator rejected.
"She is our only hope now," Lee said. Several officers nodded in agreement.
"Maya Winters, DINN, launch!"
The sudden surge of pressure during takeoff was something routine to well-trained mobile suit pilots, and with more than a thousand terrestrial takeoffs under her belt, Maya should be at home with this one that was done 40 meters below the surface of the sea, yet it felt like her body was stung in all places by deadly insects. The injury she was carrying was more severe than she thought. While she was resting on a soft and comfortable mattress, it was hardly felt, but right now on the worn-out seat of her DINN and subjected to inertia, it felt horrible.
"Damn it, Brown! The war is over! It should not be here. Not like this," Maya grumbled to herself as her machine cleared sea level.
The sky exploded with flak fire as the three remaining Danilov-class cruisers began fighting the latest airborne threat in the form of Maya's DINN. Maya shifted into flight mode under the cover of smoke and flares that she has launched as soon as she broke the surface of the sea.
Maya rolled and looped in the air, circling the trio of surface warships cautiously outside the engagement envelope of their deadly CIWS. Only their larger caliber main guns were firing at her with fragmentation shells which were causing dents and cracks on her machine despite her best effort to avoid dwelling within the fragmentation coverage zones. She found it hard to approach closer to bring her weapons to bear due to her lame left hand affecting her ability to drive.
Suddenly, there was a window of opportunity. The surface of the sea between Maya's machine and the lead ship erupted into geysers of vapor as the latter's ATT met the Ulysses's heavy torpedoes in a series of massive explosions. Apparently, one or two torpedoes got through as the targeted warship began a sharp turn to the right, presenting her aft and drawing her CIWS coverage zone away from Maya.
Maya dived to sea level with the legs of her machine touching wave crests and the engines spraying seawater upwards on both sides, then charged towards the aft of the blundering warship, barely dodging fire from the other warships that kept exploding behind her. As she came within her weapons range, Maya increased her altitude and strafed the topside of the target along the length of its hull with 76mm API shells. As with what her predecessor did, a shell struck the leftover HE munitions in the VLS tubes and caused a chain reaction that quickly tore the warship into two.
"Ulysses, do you copy? Alpha-1 is sinking. Engaging Alpha-2 and 3 now," Maya called her first kill of the day.
She charged at the next Danilov at low level as well from its port side, hiding herself from the third warship. She fired all 24 missiles from her torso launchers in one salvo, spoofing her target's port CIWS to fire at the incoming weapons instead of her. She dived into the sea in such a way that her machine was partially submerged with only the torso popping out of the sea. This lower stance gave her a clear line of sight to her target's port lower hull, which she wasted no time to puncture with the remaining 76mm ammo of her assault rifle. The attack lit up the damaged portion of the hull and sent the warship listing to port.
Thick black smoke curled upwards from the burning hole she just put on the second warship, hiding her from the optical sensors of the third warship's independent CIWS system, which did not register her as she lifted her machine clear of the sea and the sinking hulk of the warship she had just devastated. She aimed her shotgun in the general direction of the last warship and fired it without waiting for any fire solutions. The spread effect of the weapon guaranteed that some shots found their mark. By the time she was empty, that unfortunate warship was riddled with perhaps a hundred fist sized holes in the bridge deck area and the sensor mast.
"Alpha-2 is sinking. Alpha-3 is disabled. All enemy ships neutralized. RTB," Maya called.
"She did it! In that condition," Lee exclaimed euphorically.
"No fucking shit. Now, let's get my boat running again. I'm not going to wait for the cavalry to appear," Corales yelled to his dazed crew.