Cold War
by Warringer
Chapter Four
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Slowly Destroyer Task Force 10 came to a stop, about ten thousand kilometers distant to the four unknown ships. It was a First Contact situation and even if everyone aboard the ships hoped that everything would go right, they were prepared for the worst, be it that the unknown aliens fired upon them or that the Soviets came from out of nowhere.
Soviets coming out of nowhere was normal. Every Soviet ship seemed to be outfitted with active and passive Stealth systems and one or two times a Soviet ship had appeared right on top of a NATO Task Force. It tended to fuel some of NATO Fleet Commands paranoia a bit more than the general fear of Shadows and Vorlons.
Every ship of the Task Force had active fire solutions in case of hostile moves from the aliens, ready to unleash their weapons on the slightest increase of EM emissions in the areas the recon drones had perceived as weapon systems.
EM emissions were a good thing and modern ship commanders had a hard time to believe the stories of older personal about times when they only had active radar and LIDAR systems and no way to know if a Soviet ship was activating its weapons or not.
Iowa was in the center of the formation, its two dual Ion Beam Cannons pointed at the lead ship of the alien force, surrounded by its cruiser and destroyer screen backing it up to the front and also ready to unleash their weapons.
Admiral Danniels stood near the back of the bridge of Iowa, his eyes pointed into the general direction of the holographic projections showing the four unknown vessels. Kewok was also looking at the projection, but he seemed to have zoned out a bit and Danniels knew that he was directly drawing informations from the ships computer through his cybrain.
Suddenly an alarm went through the bridge and the rest of the ship. The holographic projection changed and showed a dark red contact between DTF 10 and the unknowns. It had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"Soviets," Kewok spat out.
Wlatschides were a people that loved its freedom and hated the restrictive Soviet Culture with every fiber of their beings.
Data streamed over the projection and started to show everything the sensors had aquired so far and continued to show new data every second.
"Why did I know this would happen," Danniels asked with a sigh.
Than he concentrated on the wire less com link of his cybrain, directly getting the data and filing through it.
As he saw the data, he raised an eyebrow. The new Soviet ship had to be a new development, because he only could remember one ship that had a rotating section as part of its design. It seemed to be a refinement of the Akula design, NATO codename Nova. It lacked the many heavy weapons of the Nova, but whatever the rotating section was, it looked like it could hold a whole lot of missiles.
Danniels had to remember the Leonov, a Soviet experimental ship. It had been the only ship up to date with a rotating section. It had been frigate sized, but recon data from that ship had shown that those rotating section had be loaded to the brim with ship to ship missiles. It had only rotated to mislead everyone who looked at the ship. But it had also shown that the Soviets had found a way around the gyroscopic effect of those rotating sections, as the Leonov had had the same maneuverability of normal frigates.
Kewok cursed in his mother language, a long stream of growls and barks and a young Wlatschid ensign, who entered the bridge to begin his shift, drew his tail between his legs and stumbled back. Kewok ignored him, but Danniels noticed it, again wondering how similar the Wlatschides were to wolfs and dogs.
"We have a targeting solution for the Soviet ship," one of the weapons officers said and a small look to the weapons display, showed Danniels that the two dual Ion Beam Cannons had turned to target the new Soviet ship.
He had to smile as he imagined the face of the Soviet captain. He had to know that one of NATOs most powerful ships was just targeting him.
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"Captain, the Iowa is targeting us."
Ramius drew his mug of tea to his mouth and took a sip. Most other Soviet Captains would have started to panic at the threat of being targeted by an Iowa class heavy dreadnought. But not so Marco Ramius and all captains that had been his XOs.
He merely looked towards fire control.
"Give me a targeting solution for the Iowa and all of its escorts."
The rotating section of Red October was its greatest weapon. It was meant to lure any enemy, besides NATO maybe, into thinking that the Borey class had only rather primitive technology that they needed centrifugal forces to simulate gravity. In reality the rotating sections were just really large missile pods. More than eight hundred tubes for R-39 ship to ship missiles, called SS-N-22 by NATO, armed with a 2 MT nuclear device and two reloads for each tube.
Red October and all other vessels of the Borey class was called missile dreadnoughts by Fleet Command. But that didn't mean that they were only using missiles, even if they were the ships primary weapon.
Nothing said 'You are screwed' as eight hundred missiles launched at the same time by a single ship.
Still Ramius knew that the Octobers missiles would be swatted out of space by the NATO AEGIS systems before they could enter ten kilometers from every ship. They needed more than one Borey to missile spam an AEGIS.
"You know that they are getting good EM data of us?" his XO said and Ramius shrugged.
"So they do," he answered and drank from his tea," Admiral Kobalew's orders say to give them a good look if they are doing it anyways. The Borey will be introduced into normal fleet at any rate, not that NATO knows about its existence. I guess we won't be getting back into OMEGA FLEET now."
He looked at a small screen and at the hawk-like space ships that hung in space in front of Red October.
"Hail them."
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Commander Soral Molari grew more and more nervous. He couldn't help it. He knew that he was supposed to be a rock in the storm, but it was hard to be under these circumstances.
He had awaited a rather primitive civilization that just started to get into space. He got a race that had build giant structures that were colonies. He had awaited to see some small ships as large as a shuttle. He got ships that were larger than his Vorchan.
And now a single ship as large as a Primus, with a giant rotating section had appeared out of nowhere. No Jump Point opening, no side effects like the strong blur effect of the Minbari stealth devices. It had just blinked into existence between his little fleet and the larger fleet that had come on an intercept course from the giant structures.
He forced himself to breathe in and out deep to clear his mind and wished some alcohol to help him with getting clearer.
This was not going according to his expectations.
"Commander, we are hailed by the ship with the rotating section."
He looked at the communication technician.
"Put it on the screen."
The screen in front of him changed from showing the dark gray ship with the rotating section to showing a face.
It was a bearded face of a being that looked like a Centauri, just that the beings hair was trimmed short and didn't form the characteristic hair crest of the Centauri.