I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
I was asked in a PM about adding more Rifts. Sorry guys. This is the start of the Golden Century. Will you get more Rift's tech? Yes, but it will be spotty.
Chapter 39: Incoming!
Earth, Mid October 2019
Mell and Ruth were in the BBC headquarters using the only two shower stalls the building had in operation when the Big Voice started up at its truly massive volume level. Mell was lucky that she had been still in her flip flops, because beside that and a large towel, she had nothing on but what her god gave her after puberty. And that was how she and Ruth sprinted out of the Hut, across the yard, and into the dirt floor bunker.
As Mell ran, she made a vivid mental note. She was going to be very upset at Charles if this turned out to be a drill of some kind. She was not alone in that thought as she crossed the road to get to the woodline. Maybe counting on having a few hours and using them had not been such a great idea after all.
Her thoughts quickly went other places as the air shook with the loud crashing of double booms of Vipers and Raptors launching from all across the island. She could only catch a glimpse here and there of the launching craft making the incredible level of noise, but she could tell that this was a maximum effort by the Colonials to get their defenses in place. The Colonials were not hiding any more. It would seem that Charles was pulling out all of the stops, and that must mean that this was not just a drill. Mell slowed down to take a glimpse in a few different directions and a very underdressed Ruth caught up with her. The pair was almost shoulder to shoulder as they went down the stairs and into the door at the base of the bunker.
Everyone in the BBC news crew had seen the Colonials hiding Raptors around the island for some time now. One of the young reporters had wanted to break the story about the Colonials bringing down more craft from outside of this solar system. It took both Mell and Ruth more than a little effort before they were able to talk her out of getting them all killed. The two of them were not scared of losing their lives at the hands of the Colonials. They could have done that a long time ago, like say before they took the time and effort away from other projects to build them this nice bunker.
It had taken some doing to explain that if there was an attack on the locals, they would not like military secrets getting out. They had to both say and provide examples from the World Wide Web that it was no different from any other war zone. At least not after one got to the point where planes were being hid in bunkers. Ruth had finally sealed the deal when she started to cite chapter and verse on when reporters and news crews had been targeted by an attacking force in the past. The young reporter had turned green and dropped the idea from any other meetings. Ruth had only gotten to the fourteenth example. That did not mean that Ruth did not have a few trusted teams out there getting tape on what was going on. She thought that this B-roll would be useful in the near future.
As soon as the two almost naked women cleared the concrete steps leading down into the main level of the bunker, one of the cameramen shut the metal door behind them. It worked very well, much to his surprise. After all, they had not practiced anything like this before today. With a few quick flicks of a wrist, the door was locked down tight. It was airtight, and a small indicator would let them know when the CO2 reached a dangerous level and the door would have to be reopened.
Mell went right over to one corner and with the help of a makeup person, changed into clothing better suited for the news reporting business. She was not about to go on the air covered in only a towel and flip flops. Maybe when she was younger and dumber, that might have been understandable but not now. She even had been able to get into proper clothes without flashing the rest of the bunker any extra skin. Ruth was not as lucky and the truth was she did not care what the room saw while she changed into work clothes and body armor.
The support crew had notified the parent channel that breaking news was happening. Mell and Ruth had still been crossing the yard when that notice had been sent to the rest of the outside world. As soon as Mell was fully dressed and her body armor was on and straight, they would start broadcasting. This was one time that she was not complaining about the helmet messing up her hair for a broadcast.
She headed to the stairwell heading back up to ground level from the bunker floor. The film crew already had the door open for her and had set up just at the bottom of the stairs. She went up a few steps, then stopped and turned back around to face down the steps. A cameraman was standing at the bottom shooting up, but he was so short. The field of view was still perfect. Well, perfect for a war zone any way.
Peter Alex was an ideologue in a major way. He had moved to this station only because the news station that he used to work for, one that his ideology matched up with so well, had bad ratings. Low ratings came with low pay, and then more pay cuts. Those rates were so bad that he had to leave to protect his career, no matter how much he agreed with that network's views on the world. He still had to pay for a mortgage, alimony, and private school for his two kids. BBC had picked him up, but their HR department made him sign a host of complicated legal documents. Ones that said his political views were to be left at home, not brought to work with him. He had a hard time believing those documents, but he had signed them anyway
Peter had already received two warnings about violating those documents while he had been the anchor. He had been very surprised at these formal warnings. He had thought that it was just a formality, a kind of a check the box for their legal department. Now, if he did something like that one more time, he would be fined by the network. He was insulted by the written warnings that he had to sign in front of some snotty nosed kind from the Legal Department but then again, he had bills to pay. So he stayed with the company.
He was not a fan of the Colonials, unlike more than a few of the other people he worked with at this station. He hated them, if truth be known to those outside of his bedroom and dinner parties. And when he had a few glasses of wine, he would tell anyone around him the same thing. He even hated the name that they called themselves. After all, only truly evil people would use a word like Colonial in their self-identification. He hated the fact that these people who knew how to travel the stars still had a military branch. Then he found out that their military held a place of political position in their government. That was just so wrong in his book of ideas and personal beliefs. He also hated that they would let just about anyone carry a weapon. It was like it was the old west or something all over again. It was like a living nightmare.
It also grated on Peter's nerves every time they did a story about them. They were always carrying weapons. Even the kids! Everything that they did and where, all of it was an affront to his views on how the world was supposed to work. He hated talking about Colonials, and he hated covering any story that came up about them or even referenced them in the slightest way. It seemed that more and more of the world was falling in love with how the aliens went about things. He had no idea what the world was coming to, but he did not like it.
When he saw the 'Breaking News' banner, his heart started beating a little faster. The really big ones tended to be history in the making and news anchors were right in the middle of it. That is, until he was told that it was something to do with the Colonials. Then he cringed both inside and out. He thought he covered his reactions well, but the crew in the control room saw them very clearly. Even though they were in a commercial break, the recorders were running on the production room floor. The cringe was noted by the crew, but nothing was said aloud. When the red light came back on to the central camera in the room, Peter had his news anchor smile ready to go. One part of his mind was hoping that he was going to report that the Colonials had been pushed off the planet. One can dream, after all.
"Welcome back. We have breaking news. We have Miss Kelly live from the alien Colonial controlled pair of islands." The tone was dripping with contempt, and his smile dropped just a little at the corners. Many of the studio crews' heads started looking left and right, as they picked up on the tone coming off of the news anchor.
Mell was in full blue body armor and the camera should be picking up this fact from the company logo on her chest and on the Kevlar helmet. "Thank you, Peter. A few minutes ago the local Commander triggered a mass alert indicating that the island was under immediate threat of attack. It could possibly be from the nearby Chinese Naval forces some sixty miles off the coast." Mell shifted her stance so that more of the sky could be seen behind her and past the rough cut wood stairwell.
Peter gave a smirk that he did not know was transmitted live to the world in the broadcast split screen. "Are you sure they're not just running a drill to get some attention and make the Chinese government look bad? It has been a whole half a dozen hours where the Colonials have not been headline news on a major network."
Mell opened her mouth to give a retort, but instead she ducked as four hundred pounds of explosives went off about two miles from where she was standing. That amount of high explosives moves a lot of air, when it reaches in an unstable state. What surprises most people, is that the shock wave going through the ground is the one that hits first. Then the pressure wave of the explosion follows shortly travelling through the thinner and less dense air.
On the images being beamed to the world, she could be seen moving and dust starting to come off the wall and steps behind her, as the shock waves or ground trimmers caused by the armor piercing warhead hit one after the other. Mell fell forward and to the side at the same time that her cameraman fell backwards, both of them jostled by the trembling ground. But the camera kept recording and more importantly it continued transmitting the open sky above them. It showed multiple explosions going off behind Mell. There were bright flashes in the sky, followed by the two delayed shockwaves hitting them again. That bit of file footage would be replayed for years afterwards. It would be a staple of all future film school classes on proper field camera work in extreme environments.
While the camera was out of focus Mell had grabbed the top of her helmet and gotten to her knees. She had run up and looked over the top of the concrete lip of the stairwell. When the camera refocused on her, she looked pissed. More to the point, she did not seem to care anymore that she was being filmed. Her well known poker face was sooooo not in place now. She turned back to look down at the camera man holding the emergency camera pointed at her. She let her personality out of the box, and she had forgotten a leash.
"Peter I don't think this is a drill, do you?" As the words left her mouth another pair of very heavy blasts rocked the area. This set also was followed by the sound of loud screaming jet engines of some kind. Their soul ripping screams were followed by sonic booms that most people thought were just more warheads going off.
Peter was watching the side screen, seeing what the rest of the world was seeing from her point of view. His mouth had dropped open when the transmission went to static in mid shot after another pair of explosions. In his ear bud, Peter could hear the control room freaking out as the transmission was cut off at the source with another large flash bleeding out the other colors on the frozen screen. The studio started transmitting dead air for a few seconds. Then a high pitched and whinny voice was heard across the world.
"Oh god they're gone! Why didn't the Colonials just negotiate with the Chinese like real people!? What is wrong with them?"
Peter had no idea that he had spoken aloud, and no one told him that it had gone out to the rest of the world live. He would get some job offers for what he had just said, but none would pay that much just because of his point of view. The BBC network would not be one of them. They would mail the contents of his office to him, COD.
The control room head and program director all hit the button at the same time. It was the one that would automatically play a public service announcement for the next thirty seconds. When they came back to the news broadcast ninety seconds later, Peter was still on the Anchor Desk but with a slight tight lipped look frozen of his face. He did a brief recap of the breaking news story, making sure to stick to the teleprompter word after painful word. He was almost done and ready for the next commercial break when his hand flew to his one ear and he stopped talking for a few long seconds.
"It seems the technical difficulty has been resolved. Mell can you hear me? We lost your image mid-broadcast." Peter was trying to channel balance, but all he did was convey what a person who might have eaten a crap sandwich or stepped in cow droppings in new shoes might look like. His acting skills just were not that great.
Mell's very grainy and jerky image went worldwide. She had blood pouring out of her nose and running down one side of her face. She had small cuts on her face from forehead to chin. Head wounds liked to bleed a lot, and that amount of blood made many a hand fly to their faces as the images played out on their chosen types of screens. The image was low quality and dark. In the background, the viewers could see movement but they would not be able to tell what was going on. It looked like she was in a cave or something, and the sound had an odd echoing quality about it. The shaking images gave it a slight "Blair Witch" vibe.
"Thank you, Peter. We are under some kind of massive bombardment. The Colonies of Kobol built us a shelter a few days ago, and they asked us to keep it quiet. It was just to cover all contingencies, but they asked that we not show it in any reports we transmitted from the local area. 'Just in case' were the words they used, because they were worried that someone might target us." Mell stopped talking when a hand come into the shot holding something white, and she dabbing at some of the leaking blood from her nose. When the hand white cloth retreated Mell was talking again.
"It seems like 'just in case' just happened. We have lost count of the number of explosions outside, but there seems to be hundreds of them, and some of them are damn big!"
As soon as the last words left her mouth, something hit near the bunker, and it shook violently. Dust came into camera view, and Mell looked up with visible concern on her face. This time she was not talking to the main office of the BBC or the rest of the world. She was talking to the people hiding in the room with her. She had lost all control of her face today. Fear and anger ruled her like in very few other times in her broadcasting life.
"That was a close one." Mell had to blink her eyes a few times, after she returned her gaze to the shoulder mounted camera.
"We are almost two kilometers away from any military target, but that does not seem to matter to whoever is shooting at us. As soon as we safely can, we will try to find out what is going on outside of our little bunker. We have no idea why, but what we think is happening is a massive missile strike hitting us and the rest of the island. As I just said, we are kilometers away from any Colonial military point. This is Mell Kelly sitting in a Colonial built bunker, while bombs launched from somewhere else on this planet are falling around."
The control room at the main BBC facility cut the feed to the broadcast going out to the rest of the world, but kept Mell and Ruth on the line. They wanted to find out how things were without blasting it out to the rest of the world. They did not want someone's family to find out that their kid who happened to be working for BBC had not made it into the bunker and thus might have died. Those were the things of nightmares and lawsuits.
The command staff in the studio needed a detailed headcount, a list of any known injuries, and their current supply situation. They also wanted as close to a pin point location as they could get from their team on the ground. There was a very well defined checklist that most global news services used, and had been refined by too many chances to test them in the real world. The gathered information would be encrypted and sent to the British Government. They were, after all, the British Broadcasting Company.
A copy of the data would be sent to the US Department of State liaison in London. More than a few of the people working for them on the island were American citizens. The French and Australians would also be given most of the data, albeit through slower official and very restricted channels. It normally fell to one of those four countries to pull out reporters who had found themselves or their team in the middle of a shooting war of some kind. It was just an accepted fact of life that they would do so. More to the point, those major news services would not be charged a dime to get their people out of a suddenly hostile area.
While they were talking, one of the sound guys in the main control room was working on recording everything that was coming off the island. It might be eventually be useful or perhaps only for historic reasons. Meanwhile, the bunker had finally gotten quiet. While Ruth was still transmitting all of the requested information back to the control room, Mell and a small crew went out the blast door that would allow them access to the stairwell that led to the surface.
Much to their surprise, the heavy metal door opened with ease and the accessway was clear of any major debris, so up the stairs they went at the slow walk. They came face first into a version of hell that stopped them dead in their tracks as their eyes adjusted to the light. As others made it high enough to see without being too exposed to most dangers, they too would stop and take in the scene laid out before them.
The converted villa that housed the BBC station was gone. The area where the fuel trailer had been located, that is until the Colonials moved it farther way about eight hours ago, had also been hit and now was a deep crater in the soft wet earth. The very expensive uplink truck had been blown completely in half and each end was separated from each other by a dozen meters.
The cab of the truck and an over two meter long section of the work space was sitting in the middle of the road. The back half of the truck with the large dish was in the tree line behind what was left of the main building. Lots of things were burning around the whole area and pillars of smoke were still rising in the sky wherever their eyes went. They could see farther now that it was more open. What used to be a treeline had been blown down or had just been cut off at the tops by something hard or sharp moving through them at very high speed.
Mell and the first group stood still on the steps looking around at the devastation. Ruth sent up a larger team after they went a whole five minutes without the sound of any explosions ringing in the air. The head office would be rerunning Mell's last broadcast to the whole world for at least the next half hour, so Ruth had time to setup a better shot. The only way they would get a live shot out now was via the sat phone in the emergency bag, so it was going to be at a lower quality than normal. With the loss of the van to some kind of bomb, it was their only way to get the broadcast out to the rest of the world in a timely manner. The bigger and better high definition back up camera was also recording side by side with the emergency one. Their data would have to be sent out the old way, the same way they did before the uplink truck came to the island. It looked to be that way again for the near future of broadcasting from this location.
Ruth had most of the blood cleaned off of Mell's face, but her nose was starting to swell noticeably. It was not broken though. Both Mell and Ruth would be surprised when their medic and backup soundman told them that bit of news. Even with most of the wet blood off of her face, it had poured down the front of her blue body armor. It was slowly turning a strip of light blue, into a dark black. One that while not visible during the live broadcasts, was indeed very visible on reruns and historical footage recorded using the better camera. It was very dramatic, and one that more than a few news services were not that comfortable showing after it was brought to their attention by their legal departments.
Mell took a breath and looked into the small handheld phone camera's lens. She took a full second to get her mind in the right place, and with a shake of a finger from Ruth, she started her updated report. She was having to focus only on the small lens and not 'see' what was on display around her in a full 360 degrees of hell.
"This is Mell Kelly live from the island of Raiatea. This is the main Colonial controlled island on our planet. This is also the Trading Outpost, used for the transshipment of supplies and support that have been purchased on this planet to the rest of the refugee fleet in orbit around two different nearby stars. The last word we got was that the Chinese government had demanded that everything on the island be turned over to them or else. The local commander in charge of this outpost declined the demand given to them. Not long after we broadcast that response, the island went on alert. We all knew about the Chinese fleet undergoing 'training maneuvers' in the nearby ocean, and very few of us thought they were benign for some time now."
Mell took a few steps to one side as she had been carefully coached to. Now the lens could see the bunker visible against the wood line, though due to even more careful camera work, it did not have any other points of reference visible on the transmission to the world at large. When she was on her new 'mark', she started back up with her monologue.
"A few days ago, the Colonial commander deemed the threat to the islands high enough to start taking action. Still, he diverted some of the very few heavy construction vehicles and operators on the island, moving them away from projects to protect his own people, to building our news station a bomb shelter for our use only. That, as it turned out, we needed very badly. About an hour ago at 1 AM London time, we started hearing explosions from all over the island. Some of them were local defenders launching and speeding through the sound barrier to defend the islands but most were bombs or cruise missiles. Our news team counted over four hundred detonations while we were inside the bunker alone."
She started a slow turning walk and her cameraman followed in lock step, her puffy face centered in his view finders. With only a few degrees of movement, the image of the uplink truck and what was left of the BBC station that was still burning were in the shoot behind her. The images being transmitted were poor, but they were clear enough to show what remained of the news services studio and the very expensive support equipment.
"We had our building marked with our network's logo within the first month we were here. And it has been seen worldwide on many of the stories we did after it went into operation. It even was on a search engine's mapping program used worldwide. And we know that the logo can be clearly seen by an Earth imaging satellite. One of our camera guys has one of those types of images as a screen saver on his personal laptop."
Mell's voice went very grim. "But that was not enough to keep us out of the line of fire. You can see at least three impact craters, and what looks like part of a missile body."
Mell walked over and kicked a thirty-six centimeter diameter metal tube, which unknown to her at the time was a YJ-18 turbofan engine's housing. As the object of her kick reverberated in her ear, a frown come to her face and she lashed out again with a lot more energy in the next foot strike. This would draw cheers from many combat vets around the world.
"We hope to find our golf cart in this mess and then try to find out what is going on. Is this the worst? Or is it just the beginning? We are hoping that this is not the start of the first human interstellar war in our recorded history. We will do our best to find out what is going on without getting ourselves blown up by someone's cruise missile or whatever else was thrown our way. This is Mell Kelly reporting from the newest war zone on the planet."
This was not a dime she was dropping. She had dropped a manhole cover and the world knew it as the image faded out and the main studio of the BBC came back into the image. Now the whole world had a better clue as to what had happened and it did not match what some of the 'other' news services were selling or as one other news service called them out for, shoveling. This was what the 'general' public was given. Members that did not fall into this group had a few different sources of information in both the raw and processed formats.
The United States had kept a Boeing E-3 Sentry and a Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint along or near the islands for every hour of every day for almost a year now. This was the minimum in terms of surveillance units assigned to the area. Most of the time there could be as many as half a dozen craft in the area under US control. They ranged from the modified 747 named Sofia, to specially modified MQ-9s, Navy Tritons, P-8 Poseidons, and Global Hawks. That also did not count the non-air breathing and subsurface surveillance assets. They were not just there to keep an eye on the Colonials, but on everybody and everything else. In short, if a whale farted or a sea gull took a crap in the local area, it was noticed, recorded, and quickly passed along to people with a lot higher rank than the crafts' crews possessed.
When the Chinese started flushing their decks of twin engine fighters, the information was sent right up the chain of command and it quickly went all the way to Command Authority. They were still waiting for a reply from that authority in Pearl Harbor when the third Chinese task force started launching a huge number of missiles into the air. Then the carriers' escorting cruisers started launching their own waves of missiles. That was like putting water on a grease fire.
The crews on both airplanes turned pale as the number of vampires rose into the air in steadily increasing numbers. The US Navy had held the record for the most missiles or guided rocket launches at one target since the middle of World War 2. That record was set when they launched over two hundred Tomahawk missiles in one hour. The Chinese had just blown the lid off of that record, and the numbers were still climbing every second as the radars repeatedly swept the sky in their battlespace and the data was put onto screens.
Now the alert went up the military chain of command at the speed of light. It did not take long before more and more systems were reporting the waves of destruction closing on the Colonial controlled islands. All while the numbers of cruise missiles were still climbing on top of what had already been launched. Both mission commanders sent their craft to war footing and vacuumed up every bit of data they could from all of the missiles, ships, and aircraft within reach of their sensors. Sweat was pouring off the flight crews, and the systems operators in the back of the craft were hyperventilating. The stink of fear filled the flying metal cans faster than the air conditioning system could filter it out. They could only guess what those weapons were fitted with, and their imaginations were running wild.
The missiles' booster motors burned out, their solid fuel expended getting them away from the ships that had carried them. The cruise missiles then dropped in altitude and the numbers stopped climbing so fast on the main monitors of the different aircraft in the local area. On the low altitude monitors, the numbers were still climbing at a steady pace as they picked out the growing number of missiles from the back ground clutter of the ocean waves. The periodic interruptions the Chinese missile launch operations experienced were noted for further investigation. Finally when the missiles stopped launching, the updated information was sent up in a complete updated batch of information and the pair of aircraft crew settled back down to wait some more.
In the back of one of the American craft, one of the system operators handed a five dollar bill over to a colleague. In another case, a twenty was passed between three sets of sweaty hands. The exchange of greenbacks was accompanied with grim looks, and hands covering the mics on their uncomfortable headsets.
One of the NCO's put the money in his pocket and spoke just loud enough to overcome the engine noise. "I told you they would hot launch, and it would fry the VLS. My uncle told me the same thing happened to him at the Red Sea in '91."
The intelligence officer a few rows back heard the exchange as she put her larger prize away and acknowledged the voice with her chin. She did not need to say anything, her bet had not been on that subject. She had made her money by betting that the attack would start on her shift today. She knew that sometimes it was better to be lucky than good. Then one part of her brain reminded them that she still needed to live through this mission to buy that beer she was planning on. Spy planes tended to turn up missing more often than anyone wanted to admit. Even when there was not a shooting war going on close by, they just would drop off the scopes and never be heard from again. The US was up to over 30 overdue spy planes since 1950.
The pair of craft were still watching everything that was going on within detection range of their craft. They still had not picked up on their powerful radars and other instruments any sign that the Colonies had detected the launching aircraft or the onrushing wave of death. However there was a new addition to the RC-135 Rivet Joint that told them something different. It was a powerful IR system that had been also been tested on the upgraded MQ/A-9D drones a few months before. This was the first fast mover to be outfitted with the device. If it worked out as advertised, then the whole fleet of spy planes would be retrofitted with it.
The system was automatically tracking heat sources streaking through the sky. At first, it was just one source. Soon it was over a dozen objects. All of them were leaving the alien controlled islands at an impressive rate of speed. They were like blowtorches going through the air, and the system had no idea what or how fast they were moving. The new sensor could only do two things very well. One was record the event with as much background data as it could. The other was to alert the biologic at the keyboards that something was up. Identification was way out of its design parameters.
What the two crafts' normal systems were picking up turned out to be the first of the Chinese fighters blowing up in a fireball. That made for a great radar return, at least before the parts spread too far apart and the radar cross section (RCS) was reduced. Then the component parts would stop generating a return as they fell in a growing arc of space. That one fireball was soon joined by a whole bunch of others.
They knew that they were sending a live feed of updates up to and through gear that had a line of sight to satellites generally above their heads. And they still did not have orders to do anything but sit in their high backed chairs and watch. Eyes were roving over different screens. The number of high and low speed targets started to fall. A slight cheer went up in the main cabin of many craft in the local area that could see what was going one. Most were not cheers of joy. It was more relief that the missiles falling out of the sky were not releasing any detectable nuclear fallout.
It started when the missiles started falling on the islands. None of the craft on duty today had any idea that most were falling in the lagoon. The resolution was not that good at the current range. As far as they could tell, hundreds of missiles were blasting the islands into dust bunnies. They could tell that the Colonials were sweeping the skies of a lot of the attackers, but the numbers of targets was so massive and the defenders so few. According to the math, this could only end one way. And still the crews in those planes and ships were waiting for orders.
Even as Mell was giving a live transmission in full view of what was left of their modified house, the American forces were still waiting for orders. The last orders from the White House had been to stay out of anything that might happen to be connected to the impending spat between the Chinese and the Colonials. That is unless the President personally said different. It was LBJ all over again with the actions in Vietnam, or Obama with Iraq. Only this time the delay was because the President of the United States was taking a nap.
The President of the United States had left very strict instructions not to be awoken and not one person on her staff wanted to poke the bear and wake her. She was not known to handle being awoken early very well. All three of her phones in the room had also been turned off, again at her personal instructions. She did not want to look tired for an afternoon press conference, so she had decided this was a good time to rest her seventy year old bones for a few hours. After all, what could happen in a few short hours? Maybe she should have read a little more about Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel before taking a nap.
While the first missiles were still in boost phase, some of the local commanders took it upon themselves to protect their commands. They preferred being laughed at like the USS Ward instead of being remembered like the USS Arizona. It started in the bases and assets that were the closest to the danger zone first. Then it picked up speed as the information spread like a wildfire pushed by a hurricane. It was the information age, after all.
The alert aircraft were launched with live weapons. Ready crews worked on getting more aircraft ready to launch. Ships, and not necessarily only warships, in port started to make a break for the open sea. More than a few were making turns for speed that was more than was listed in any Jane's book ever published. Little concern was given to no wake markers in harbors, ports, and channels across the board. They might have been given tickets, but the enforcement boats were in front of the larger ships making the same run.
Warships already at sea were given orders to evade and protect themselves. Aircraft and ships of all types went dark, their transponders and locator beacons suddenly going offline. This might have been dangerous, but it was done all over the Pacific. All over the rest of the world, bases went on alert and it was not for any type of urinalysis drug tests.
While the first female President of the United States slept, the next phase of the largest naval battle since the Battle of the Philippine Sea had started to unfold on the other side of the world. Not all of the Raptors had been sent after the fighters and missiles attacking the island. Three Assault Raptors were hunting bigger game in the local waters. A lot bigger game than the single seat fighters or meter wide missiles the others were looking for. Soon they were joined by the six Vipers that also called the island home. The other armed Colonial spacecraft were going after targets further away from the pair of islands.
The now larger formation of Colonial ships broke into a trio of three ship formations. Each went after targets that the built in DRADIS said were close to them. Some went looking for the carriers and cruiser-sized destroyers. The lead Viper of Alpha Flight was the first to find his target. He had found the Liaoning and her escort of six anti-air frigates, six Type 052C destroyers and two now depleted Type 055 cruisers. The speedy little Colonial craft had beaten the retreating Chinese fighters to their floating home base and its escorts.
Each of the Vipers was carrying four Colonial built anti-ship missiles, a pair mounted under each wing of each craft. These eight weapons were not anti-ship missiles with nuclear warheads, designed to kill Cylon Basestars with one or maybe two hits. Instead they were fitted with just good old fashioned Colonial VHE (Very High Explosive) warheads that made ONC (Octanitrocubane) look like pre-corned black powder. They were designed to be more useful against a wider range of targets. The undercarriage hardpoints of the MK VIII's were not fitted with weapons. The drag these additional weapons could impart was too much of a risk if they found themselves in an air to air battle. This was a lesson learned from the wargames against the American and a few other locally built airframes. That information had come as a surprise to the Colonials, and it was a closely held secret.
While the flight leader was picking his targets and passing on his instructions to the other two Colonial craft, the rest of the flight let loose with their missiles, one missile at a time. Each Viper pilot put a single missile on each single targeted ship highlighted on their scopes unless specified by orders from the Colonial Command Center. The targeting priority list was pretty complete, and the Colonials were not flush with weapons.
Both of the missiles launched from Alpha Flight's lead Viper hit the old russian carrier. They went in around the midships, and hit close to the center of the hull. Both hit between the flight deck and the water line of the 304 meter long ship. The two missiles were only slightly more than two meters apart when they left the Colonial Mk VIII Viper. When they hit the larger warship, they still were only three meters apart. The heavy warheads carried by this class of missile would each have been strong enough to make good sized dent on a Cylon Basestar and even shake one of the smaller classes of Colonial Battlestar to its core frame. What two weapons did to the 65,000 ton carrier was hard to describe. The word 'epic' fit nicely.
The Colonial made warheads did their jobs as designed all within a heartbeat of each other after the onboard modified Cylon seeker told them it was time to come out and play. The pair of weapons were so close, in fact, that the effect looked like just one massive explosion to even Colonial and Rifter made scanning systems. The long metal flat top deck deformed and formed a bubble of bending metal, flames, and things that should not melt. The bubble seemed to be moving in slow motion as it went all the way up to the command bridge before releasing the pressure it was holding back in a flash of light, sound, and almost white hot flames.
The now ex-Riga had been launched on 4 December 1988. Then she was the ex-Varyag, and now she was the ex-Liaoning. She had been the pride of the Chinese navy since acquiring her uncompleted hull. Now, not so much. At first, after the pair of weapons hit, the great old ship was in two distinct and large parts floating close together. It looked like the two parts might have survived the close encounter with the Colonial made weapons. They might have been able to be put back together with enough yard time and money. One had to be looking at it from the waterline to think like that. Then the main weapons magazine and fuel storage bunkers spilled their violence into what was left of the aft half of the great old warship. At that point there was little doubt about what was going to happen to this product of the Cold War.
The aft part of the ship came apart in its own wave of flame and sound that was a close second in intensity to what it endured during the first assault. Then it was a wave of sound, flames and flying things that could not be identified. There was nothing big enough left of the aft of the ship to be identifiable outside of a very good and dedicated laboratory. No one would know where the metal, plastic, and meat came from as they made their way to the floor of the ocean over nine hundred meters below the wave covered surface in the weeks to come. And they would not be alone down there, but rather be only the first to arrive at those cold depths.
The sharp bow with its characteristic ski jump was pointing proudly straight up into the air after the shock wave of part of its body passed it by. It floated and bobbed around for about an hour before it too finally slipped below the blue water. The hull area around the flight deck was still so hot that it gave out a blast of super-heated steam as some kind of final salute to the rest of the world. It was on its way to Davy Jones' locker and getting a speeding ticket along the way. Close to two thousand people died with the once pinnacle of Soviet naval engineering. It did not go to the sea bottom alone either, but the great ship did not care. He (Russian ships were always male) had been built for war, and he had done his assigned task. It was just that the enemy that he had tried to fight was not the enemy he had been built to fight.
The leader of Alpha Flight had taken it upon himself to be the one to attack the two next largest ships all on his own. While there had never been any doubt about using at least two missiles on the carrier class ships, there were two schools of thought about how best to handle the Renhai-class ship in the Colonial command center. One was that the ships had a lot of defensive capabilities, which the weapons would have to make it through. Therefore it should take between four and six of weapons of this class to have a sure chance of destroying the surface warship.
The other school of thought was that it did not matter. The ships were way smaller than the larger ships, and it should only need two Colonial made anti-shipping missiles to destroy one of them. This was the idea that had the most support in the mess halls. Now Charles did not care about destroying any ship, he just wanted them out of the current fight. The pilot of Alpha Flight was sure that two missiles was overkill, and he was willing to take a risk. He was thinking that at worst, they would have to swing around and either use the wing mounted pulse lasers or he would let the single Assault Raptor make a run and finish off any undamaged ships. Then again, Charles would just be happy for non-mission capable, and they could move on to the next target on the long list that needed attention by the fighting forces of the Colonial military.
Then again, maybe the pilot did not think that deeply about what he was about to do. With most Viper pilots, you just never could be sure what was going through their heads at any given time period. Within four or five heartbeats after the first missile had left the wing on the way to the carrier, the last one on the left wing was leaving its mount on its way to a target. The last missile on the right wing of the flight leader's craft was not even that far behind the number three missile from the left wing. Each one of the independent weapons were on their way to one of the two 13,000 ton Type 055 ships.
The two large destroyers or small cruisers as the rest of the world called them in the press still did not know they were under attack by the Colonial craft. The first missiles had yet to hit the largest ship in the task group, so they did not know yet that death had come for them. The two ships had been in constant hard turns in different directions after their land attack missiles had been launched. The plan was for them to come up behind the carrier, hopefully increasing the anti-air defenses of the high value vessels, and acting as a lifeguard for any damaged returning attack aircraft.
The number four missile's target was almost a dozen kilometers from the one for the number three missile but at the speed the two were flying, it did not make that much of a difference in the larger scheme of things. The second larger escort for the modified Russian built carrier was also in a tight turn to return to the nest so to speak. The ship was broad side on to the approaching missile. The missile came on to the ship from the high side of the turn. The Cylon seeker had already decided what side of the ship it wanted to see just a little closer.
The weapon hit between the aft engine room and the aft most VLS. The last two engines of the great almost cruiser were blown apart when the missile came a calling. The blast took out every compartment from there to the area where the ship's small boat was launched. The force of the hit almost caused the ship to roll over onto her low side. At the last second, when it looked like the ship was going to turn turtle, she came back to a level keel. It was just too bad that the missile hole was by now below into normal waterline of the vessel. And all warships were, if anything, very much loaded even when all of the weapons have been launched. The tight turn had raised that one side of the vessel relative to its usual running level. It if had been even keeled, the hit would have been above the waterline.
As the 13,000 ton ship came back to level, the gaping hole allowed water to pour into the hole the Colonial missile had made. This was not all that bad a thing. The onrushing blue-green water put out the now raging fire that the explosion had caused. Except it also flushed out half a dozen sailors into the warm waters of the South Pacific. The ship was adding an Olympic sized swimming pool's worth of water into the hull of the ship every few seconds. The ship was being swamped, and within seconds of coming level on her keel, she started to list heavily the other way.
The ship's crew fought hard to keep her afloat but the People's Navy had grown so quickly that training had not been able to keep up with the demands of the expanding force. Faster and faster the ship rolled over onto the damaged side. When it hit the magic point, the great ship rolled completely over. Leaving only her red painted lower hull exposed to the air and sky. She was surrounded by burning fuel as what was left of her crew tried to exit the stricken vessel. Many tried to crawl onto the now exposed lower hull of the ship. The few that made it would hope and pray that someone would come and save them as white tipped sharks started to show up outside the burning ring of fire. Now it no longer seemed like a great idea to have seen all of those shark attack movies before leaving port and making their way to do battle on the big blue sea.
The second Type 055 ship died more quickly. The high speed missile banked at the last second and the missile body cut like a knife through a fifty meter length of the hull before the warhead hit something hard. The odd turn had tilted the blast of the warhead up and the flames shot into the VLS that was holding the HHQ-10 missiles. Between the Colonial made warheads, the solid fueled rocket motors, and their own warheads, the warship just shattered like a watermelon fitted with a cherry bomb. There would not be any survivor from that ship.
The second Viper pilot was a lot more on the conservative side and had only selected two of the next largest warships to attack. Her targeting information was picked up by the Assault Raptor's ECO, who quickly changed the targeting data to be more effective in her eyes. This was considered to be one of the normal tasks of an ECO, and one of the core skills that was still trained under the Admiral's command. With that update passed on, the ECO could finish getting her own targeting list done for her weapons.
As soon as the second Viper jock saw the missiles start to leave the flight lead's wings, she pulled her trigger and all four of her weapons left the wing mounts at almost the same second. Then the younger pilot started to quietly freak out after pulling the trigger to dump her guided payload. Each one of the weapons she had just launched went on their own flight path. The only thing the smoking paths had in common was that they were all going toward the general circle that the nearest Chinese Fleet was in.
It would seem that the Raptor's ECO had changed the assigned targets of the modified Colonial missiles. It had not been done with much of a fine touch. She had given the human hand built but Cylon designed seeker very little information. Each weapon was just told the general area of the target and what the target should look like. The last command was to simply hit said target. The missiles each plotted what they felt was the fastest route to the targets that they had been given. And that was why the pilot saw her weapons take off in so many slightly different directions after leaving her craft.
Type 052C Luyang II-class destroyers displaced about 7,000 tons each and were about half the size of the larger Type 055. They were spread out in a circle around the center ships of the fleet. The first missile found its target and it came slamming down at almost hypersonic speed. It struck the ship on its forward 30mm close in weapons system. The whole bow from around a meter and a half from under the ships main super structure going all the way forward was blown apart. The missile had gotten help from all of those 30mm rounds stored in the magazine under the rapid firing weapon. They did not react that well to the heat of the Colonial made explosive. Without a bow, the sea came crashing in and flooded the ship until only the twin gold colored propellers were exposed in the open air.
The second Luyang II had a missile come crashing through the top of the bridge at well over Mach 4. The blast removed all of the command and control for the ship in a single flash of light. The fire that started lasted longer, and no amount of firefighting skill could get it back under control. The ship was abandoned by her surviving crew an hour after the missile decapitated the ship. The fire burned hot and long. By the time the last surviving crewmember had left the ship, twin silver rivers of flowing liquid aluminum were draining off both sides of the onetime warship. Only the flooding of the magazines and VLS saved the ship from being blown apart.
The third Luyang II had a missile fly down the port smoke stack. Surprisingly, it did not hit the sides of the stack. That is, until it hit the bottom where the exhaust from two engines was collected into the single smokestack. Then the missile went directly into unfriendly mode as the sensor felt the contact with something. The blast was so deep inside the ship that most of the force was directed down. A hole seventeen meters wide was blown out the bottom of the warship before even the captain knew something was wrong. The Xi'an was the last ship from this task force to slip below the ocean. This was only because of her well trained crew. More people were lost fighting the fires and damage than to the first explosion. Still, her fate was sealed the second the fleet opened fire on the alien controlled island.
The fourth ship of her class took its death stroke when it was hit between the aft radar mast and the eight cigar shaped anti-ship missile launchers. The warhead on the Colonial missile was so powerful that the eight YJ-83's carried in the cigar shaped tubes added their own abuse to the ship that was carrying them. The 190 Kg warheads were like trip hammers as they exploded one at time. Between them and the solid fuel that powered the booster and rocket motors. It was too much for the quickly built warship to handle.
The ship was blown into two parts. The aft part held the rudders, the helicopter hangar going all the way down to the reduction gears that helped turn the twin shafts and the auxiliary power plant. This part of the ship sank in less than ten minutes after being hit. The second part of the ship, everything forward of the main engine room, took longer to sink but that did not mean that the shock damaged survivors were any better off. The ship quickly filled up with water and soon her knife like bow was horizontal to the water.
Then it was the Assault Raptor's turn to reap its own harvest of death. She carried more weapons and had a greater variety of them. The ECO selected weapons were only a few heartbeats behind the second Viper's weapons. The Vipers' weapons were just under halfway to the Chinese battle group when her weapons started flying. The rest of the warships in the battle group was targeted by the sole Raptor.
The single Colonial Viper scaled anti-shipping missiles were breaking the backs of the destroyers in this fleet. What the 4,000 ton Jiangkai II class frigates did when hit with just one of those missiles was to just come apart under the single hammer blow made by the Colonial weapon. The smaller ships acted like a balloon that had been overfilled with air and came apart under the pressure. And the ECO put two weapons on each target that was on her screen. She could have put only one per ship, but she had rushed and double-clicked instead of single-clicked on each target. It was such a small mistake, and one that she would not live down for many years. One officer even would threaten to dock her pay for the wasted missiles. She would have to pay for his dental work after he had opened his mouth, on top of time in the brig. Charles would not press any charges about that event.
The missile launch point was just a little less than forty miles between the ships and Vipers. The targeted ships did not know they were under attack until the massive explosions ripped apart the aircraft carriers. After that, they were very quick to start to understand that they were under attack by something. For most of the ships though, things happened so fast that their brains could not react fast enough to know they were under attack.
Only one ship among the escorting frigates and one damaged Type 052C destroyer would be able to leave the battle area from that one carrier battle group. Each of the surface warships were even able to fire off at least one HQ-16 and/or one HQ-9 counter missile. Then again, they might have just have come out of the tubes by accident. Even then the weapons self-destructed when the onboard computers told the warheads that they did not have a target within their limited field of view. So, they ate themselves midflight without even coming close to the attackers.
Those two ships made it out of the battle area for a mix of reasons. The weapons on the Raptor were older than the ones that had been carried by the Vipers. They also had been through more landings on battlestars or land bases before today. The end result was that the weapons were a little less reliable than they should have been. Two weapons failed in flight and this left only one missile for each of those two lucky ships. The destroyer had the second weapon targeting it miss, or maybe near miss is a better term.
The weapon exploded off to one side of the speeding vessel. The ship still lost all power due to the shock damage, and it had a massive dent bashed into one side of the ship. Without power and damage done to every system that was on the outside of the hull, it had lowered the risk level of the vessel, and the threat had fallen off the screen of the Raptor. The frigate only lived because the last missile exploded over the top of the ship. It rained destruction down on the small warship from the main gun mount forward, going all the way back to the smoke stacks. She was completely dead in the water, but she was able to launch her two small boats and start collecting the sailors from the other vessels of their battle group that were in the water.
The second flight of Vipers and single Assault Raptor found their own carrier battle group to attack at about the same time that Alpha flight found theirs. Their target had a repeat of what happened to the Liaoning and her fleet done to it. This was very fitting, because the Type 001A was a Chinese built copy of the older Russian ship. It was not an exact copy, but she was a very near sister to the Russian made ship. It was almost fitting that that the two very near sisters would share the same fate on the same day.
The first missile from Bravo Flight came streaking in at over four times the speed of sound, diving out of the deep blue skies. The weapon came up on the ship moving at 29 knots from behind like it was standing still. It hit the Type 001A class ship dead in its center mass, just behind the bridge and where the CIC of the warship was located. The massive warhead made it three decks deep into the ship before it went into unfriendly mode. The missile still had a lot of forward momentum when the warhead activated, and this worked to direct the blast somewhat.
The blast blew out part of the combat information center going down into one set of the officer's cabins and into the senior non-commissioned officers' cabins. The blast wave went down at a steeper angle and the fire and gases shot through the sailors' bunking areas, which thankfully were almost totally empty at the time. The length of the blast wave caused by the weapon was over forty meters long and just as wide. This was very bad news for a ship that was only twenty meters wide at its widest point.
The great warship was designed to take damage, and she might have even survived that devastating hit. However, like most warships in this day and age she had a weakness. She was top heavy. To keep this somewhat in check, the Chinese had used aluminum instead of steel to save on the weight above the waterline. This had been a pretty common practice on this planet for almost fifty years. It was also a much loved idea in the civilian shipbuilding industry.
There were just two problems with this idea. One was that while aluminum was used on both commercial ships and warships, they were not the same thing. Something extra had to be done to the metal if it was to be used for military applications. And if it was done the wrong way, there could be two different results on the resulting aluminum sheets. One was that the metal would melt too easily. It would literally run off the ships and into the water in as many little silver rivers of hot metal. Do something the other way too much and the metal would shatter like plate glass if it was hit hard enough. These were very closely guarded secrets, and the Chinese had not had a blue water navy long enough or enough ships damaged in combat to see the issues with the way they made the hull metal.
The way the builders of this warship went was too much to the former side of the equations while making the metal. The blast and fireball made by the attacking missile peeled the side of the ship apart all the way down to the double keel and the superstructure shattered like an plate glass window getting hit with a baseball. It would rain down sharp metal shards for almost a kilometer around a central point of the ocean. She would slip below the waves after about ten minutes of her crew being slammed by the incoming weapons. The rising waterline might have helped one or maybe two life rafts to be launched, and then again maybe not.
The other difference was that the Assault Raptor was leading rather than playing a supporting role to the two smaller Vipers. The Raptor's pilot was the senior pilot in this group, and this group had worked together for months before today's mission. Instead of one missile going after each of the guided missile cruisers, the Raptor punched out two weapons per ship, no matter what the type of target. The Raptor's crew had laid claim to the carrier and any destroyer sized or larger ship. The smaller frigates were to be taken out by the Vipers. The Type 52Cs were turned into metal confetti in fireballs of explosives and fuel. The Raptor got a clean sweep of all of her targets, and she finished her attacks before the two Vipers finished landing their fewer weapons.
The only difference in the results of this attack was that one of the Jiangkai II's, the one called the Weifang, survived. She had been rated as one of the best trained ships in the whole Chinese fleet for so many years in a row that she was not allowed to compete any more. No one would be able to know what had alerted the small warship that they were under attack by Colonial flying assets, but she started firing every weapon that might work to counter an air threat near her within seconds of the missiles leaving the Vipers' short wings.
A pair of missiles were tracking the 4,000 ton ship through the congested area that held her carrier task group but she had soon vomited every missile from her thirty-two cell VLS. That great wall of missiles went into the general area of the incoming Colonial missiles as if by magic. It was not the best SAM's that the Chinese could make. Then again, even the best would not be able to save the ship, much less the rest of the battle group.
What did save her life from the incoming Colonial fire was the 76mm autocannon turret on the bow and the shells it fired in spray and pray fashion in the general area it was directed to. A lucky hit on one of the incoming missiles' mid-body control surfaces was a miracle shot, if there ever could be called one. It did not destroy the fifteen centimeter long fin made of alloy not made on this planet but the 6 kilogram shell did a great job of jamming it at one setting so that the missile could not make any last second adjustments. The attacking missile was affected by this loss of control, causing it to self-destruct. In doing this, it also succeeded in taking the second Colonial missile with it into oblivion at the same second.
The Wiefang did not escape without any damage to show for the battle going on around it. Far from it. The pair of Colonial anti-ship missiles exploded over the top of the ship at the same relative location in the air near the vessel. That was about twenty feet above the top mounted Type 381 Radar. The mass of explosives detonated that close to the small ship wiped out anything that was even remotely close to even the edge of the fireball zone created by the Colonial weapons.
The superstructure of the ship was blasted apart and only a stub three levels high was left behind after the blast wave had both spread away from the ship and lost its energy. The damage from the gun turret level going all the way back towards the aft was horrendous. The command supper structure itself was shattered like glass. Looking even further back behind the stump of a command area, it seemed like someone had taken a bite out of the ship's center smoke stack. It was a massive amount of damage, and a great loss of life for most of the crew.
The ship should have sunk in minutes with that much damage having been done to it in such a short amount time. The force of the two missile warheads pushed the ship down into the water like a plastic toy boat in a bathtub. She was pushed so deep into the blue ocean water that the waves were almost at the level of the helipad before it started to pop back up out of the water to a more normal level. She bounced up a bit higher in the water before bobbing back down. When the ship stopped moving up and down, she was sitting at two and half meters of draft. This was well short of the five meter she normally would need to float in. If she had lost a few more tons of top weight, she might have lost her stability entirely and rolled over in the waves.
She was the only surface ship of the second carrier task group to survive contact with a group of upset Colonial warcraft. There was a number of reasons the Wiefang did not join the rest at the battle group at the bottom of the ocean beside the golden BB hit on one of the attacking Colonial missiles. One was that the warship was on a war footing, and every one of her water tight hatches was closed and checked to be truly watertight. This was something a lot of the other captains and crew had not done on their ships before launching the attack on the two islands. Most had thought it to be too time intensive, and could negatively impact the combat efficiency of their ships. In other words, it was bad training and bad leadership on those ships.
The other key fact was that a very young Cheng Xiangyu was on this ship. He was in the engine room at the time of the damage, and he took command of the ship. Through some good luck and a few right guesses, he was able to save the ship and what was left of her crew. He would, over the next week, slowly help her make her way home. Or at least get her into a safe port before she could finish sinking. It would go down in history as one the greatest feats of seamanship in history, no matter what country he were from.
She did not have to go the whole way home or the nearest safe port alone. She picked up a pair of intelligence ships that had been monitoring the Colonials from outside of the twenty mile zone for the last few weeks. They had decided it was time to leave the contested area, and even a damaged warship was better than no warship escort at all. The pair of lightly armed ships also had been busy picking up as many of their countrymen as they could from the water.
This odd source of additional manpower helped the damaged warship and it alleviated the overcrowding on those other two ships. These were not the only Chinese ships leaving this area as fast as they could. Most of the captains did not know what was planned but they were smart enough to see that things had not gone to any plan that the central government might have come up with.
Below the surface of the warm water, the surface ships were also being followed by submarines not filled with their countrymen. Those that had been assigned to the mission of making sure the Chinese ships left the area. If they decided to turn back towards the Colonials, it might would not have ended well for those ships armed or not. They were ships of a hostile power who had more or less declared unrestricted warfare on another one.
The returning fighters had no place to land. They initially became concerned about it when they saw the increasing number of pillars of smoke coming from the general direction they were going back to. They realized as a group that something was wrong when they could not contact their home bases. That was reinforced by the pillars of smoke becoming visible close to where their mother ships should have been after only five more minutes of flying.
The senior pilot in the group offered up a pair of suggestions to the remaining aircraft. Shang Wie Li Wei was equal to a captain in any air force around the world. He looked down at his fuel gauge and then looked at the few craft around him. He made a face that was hidden behind his oxygen mask then pushed his short range encrypted radio activation button on one of the panels near his right knee in the cockpit of his old SU-27.
"Okay, we 'might' have enough fuel to make it to the civilian airport on Tahiti." He did not say anything more for many long seconds so that the rest of the survivors could adjust to the facts of life. "The second option is that we would find the nearest friendly ship. Then eject and hope to be pulled out of the water alive. You all will have to make your own call but I'm going to be looking for a friendly flag down there somewhere and punch out. It has been an honor to fly with you today."
This generation of pilots were well schooled about the history of aviation. Every one of them remembered the stories of the Iraqi pilots fleeing in fighter jets into Iranian airspace decades ago. They also knew what had happened to them during and after the experience of fleeing their country to escape invaders. It did not take long, but every pilot activated their NIIP Tikhomirov N001VE Myech coherent pulse Doppler radar with AESA. They started looking for the nearest Chinese flagged ship still alive below them. They did not need to give Shang Wie a verbal acknowledgement of what each one of them had decided. That radar energy pulse down towards the water was good enough.
Li Wei smiled as his craft let him know about the number of active systems coming alive around him. He did a quick count to make sure he was right about the numbers. When he was sure of the numbers, he activated his long range radio for the first time in years. He flipped a switch to broadcast in the clear without any encryption to hide what he was about to say to the whole world.
"This is Shang Wie Li Wei to any craft of the People's Liberation Army Navy. My flight is planning on finding a friendly ship and punching out. To any aircraft that maybe be still out there, I suggest you do the same. I will see you all back at the barn. The first round of Tsingtao is on me."
He had said every word in Chinese. He did not care if anyone else understood him or not. He just needed deep down in his soul for any other craft to try to get away alive. Oh, and for any People's Liberation Army Navy ship to know to pick them up after they punched out of what remained of the People's Liberation Army Navy Air Arm.