14 OCT 2010
Sand Island
Mercifully, having just returned from being shot down, recovered and shipped off, Ash wasn't immediately being thrown back into the fire and flames, which gave her a chance to get a decent night's sleep.
At around 0600, Ash's watch alarm started ringing. Groaning, Ash reached out and slapped the watchface to shut it up. Getting out of bed was made more complicated than usual by the insanely attractive Sotoan woman holding Ash by the waist. Ash gently wiggled herself out of Kitagawa's embrace, although it didn't much matter since they were both due to be up for duty early in the morning.
"It's too early…" Kitagawa muttered as she shook herself awake. Ash drowsily swung her legs onto the floor to move to sort out her personal morning administration: namely, going to the toilet, washing her hair and putting her uniform on. By the time Ash had squared herself away, Kitagawa had put on her aircrew greens and was waiting for Ash to vacate the bathroom.
"See you at brief." Ash said to her WSO as she passed by. As the two passed shoulder to shoulder, Kitagawa cheekily tapped Ash's butt with the back of her hand. Ash spun on her heels, perplexed. Kitagawa winked at Ash before closing the door to the bathroom. Ash had been awake for all of five minutes and she was already red in the cheeks. Regardless, she left the dorm block and headed towards the squad room. When she got there a couple of minutes later, she found Wolf occupying the coffee machine.
"Wolf, do you take anything slow, ever?" Ash asked the ex-sailor.
"Good morning to you too, Blaze." Wolf retorted. He poured himself a cup and backed away from the machine. "I see Emmeria didn't change you too much."
"I was there for a day, if that." Ash poured out a mug of coffee and added an unhealthy amount of sugar to it. "Still better than fucking Alaska, I'll give it that much."
"Low bar." Wolf slowly sipped from his mug. "Anywhere's better than Alaska."
"True." Ash agreed, taking a seat at her desk. "Very true."
"Has anyone filled you in on the gossip around the base since you've been gone?" Wolf asked as he went to take a seat on one of the lounges.
"Grimm has a girlfriend now, right?" Ash recalled something about the subject.
"Sort of an unofficial thing, but yeah, pretty much." Wolf said. Ash scoffed.
"As long as the UCMJ exists, anything's unofficial." Ash swallowed a mouthful of overly sweet coffee and glanced up from her laptop at Wolf. "Any of the base command staff know?"
"Not that I know of." Wolf replied. "As long as they keep it on the down low, it should stay that way. I doubt Hamilton or Sergeant Major Hallaway care enough to come looking into the matter."
"If Hamilton cared enough to look into it, I would be out of a job ten times over." Ash privately admitted.
"Maybe not out of a job, but Perrault would definitely bump you back to being a lieutenant." Wolf said. He stretched and yawned. Right on cue with the end of Wolf's sentence, Motormouth Chopper walked in, his captain's bar clearly displayed on his chest.
"This squadron is not big enough for the two of us." Ash mocked Chopper with his new rank.
"Hey kid, look, I'm happy to let you be the boss, so long as I get to keep the paygrade." Chopper put his hands up in mock surrender as he travelled over to the fridge in search of a chilled bottle of water.
"I'd say that's a fair trade." Wolf added his thoughts. Ash squinted at Chopper to make herself look more threatening, but all she managed to do was make both Chopper and Wolf laugh.
"Goddamn it." Ash muttered to herself while smiling. She checked the noticeboard on the OADF website's portal. No outstanding tasks and no rostered flights for today. In other words, a boring day. Ash sighed, leant back in her chair and let her mug of coffee warm her hands.
With the withdrawal of the OFS Kestrel and her carrier group, Carrier Strike Group Taipan, the OMDF had pulled five ships from the line. Those ships were being replaced with a measly two ships, but those two ships were on the line with purpose and lethal intent.
"Bridge, TAO, NAVSAT reports three capital ships three hundred klicks to our southwest. We should make radar contact in ten minutes."
"Very well." Commander Aaron Corsair leant forward in his seat and grabbed a radio handset. "Hood Actual, Hammer Actual, make your course 225, all ahead flank."
"Wilco, Hammer."
"Helm, make your course 225, all ahead flank." Corsair ordered.
"My course is 225, all ahead flank, aye sir." The OFS Hammer's on-watch helmsman confirmed the order and carried out the aforementioned change in heading and speed. Corsair felt the forty thousand ton battlecruiser underneath him pick up speed. The hunt was on.
A couple of days ago, the Kestrel and her escorts had been engaged by an overwhelming wave of anti-ship missiles. While none of the missiles had broken through and none of the ships had taken any damage, the attack was confirmation enough that the Yukes were indeed out to sink or at least disable Osea's operational carriers. The Hammer and her surface group had been tasked with finding and sinking Yuktobanian warships. Today was their first catch.
"New surface contacts, bearing 225, designated tracks 0955, 0956 and 0957." Somebody reported down in the CIC. The radio circuit between the bridge and CIC was open. "IDed."
Corsair looked up at the radar picture. Two Kirov-class battlecruisers and a replenishment ship. Two of the biggest and baddest ships the Yuktobanians had.
"About time we found something in our weight class." Corsair openly remarked. "OOD, set condition one."
The klaxon started ringing across the ship.
"General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations. Up and forward on the port side, down and aft on the starboard side. Set material condition Zebra across the ship. The reason for general quarters is hostile surface."
As Corsair and the other members of the bridge crew donned their flash hoods and other personal protective equipment, the Hammer ripped into action, slowly but surely pulling ahead of the smaller OFS Hood. Forty thousand tons of steel bashed through the waves at speeds well in excess of thirty knots.
"Gunnery, captain, make ready firing solutions to engage the two lead ships with Scalpels." Corsair issued an attack order to the gun crews in the gun plotting room aft of the CIC.
"Captain, on this course, we'll enter effective main battery firing range in fifteen minutes." A navigator informed the captain.
"Very well, maintain current speed and heading."
Theoretically, if the two parties had encountered each other at ready states, the Kirovs could disengage at will owing to the range offered by their nuclear propulsion. The Hammer was powered by gas turbines and had an upper limit as to the distance it could perform a chase. Unfortunately for the two missile ships, they were tied up to an underway replenishment ship at limited speed heading right into the approaching battlecruiser.
"Two hundred and fifty Scalpels versus three hundred interceptors." Hammer executive officer, Commander Thomas Danfield, remarked regarding the number of SAMs that the two Kirovs held between them.
"And eight hundred rounds on top of the Scalpels." Corsair retorted. "Just throw shit at the wall until something sticks."
"Aye." Danfield agreed as they beared in on their target. Keeping an eye on the radar display, Corsair noticed that the enemy battlecruisers had increased their speed and were moving west towards them.
"Kirovs have gone live on radar." A voice from the CIC came up the radio to the bridge.
"Love it when they put up a fight." Corsair said, grinning like a fool. "Range to target?"
"Two hundred klicks, sir." The navigator called from the rear of the bridge.
"Good enough for me." Corsair picked up his radio handset. "Gunnery, captain, commence fire on the lead ship with Scalpel. Staggered continuous fire."
The men and women in the gunnery control centre had already calculated a course to target the two ships as previously instructed by the captain, so by the time that the fire order came down the pipe, the ship was ready to engage.
"Engage track 0955."
"Target package uploaded, coordinates locked."
"Charge 6, Scalpel, loaded."
"Weapons free, batteries released."
The Hammer's two main gun turrets slewed to fire upon the lead Kirov. The gun barrels themselves elevated up forty degrees to achieve a ballistic arc high enough for the shells to reach their target.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
With an earthshaking BOOM, the Hammer opened fire. Instead of throwing a volley of six shells every five seconds, the guns were throwing one shell every half-second for a constant shower of twelve inch high explosive. The concussive force from the guns was powerful enough to shake the water vapour out of the air around the frontal arc of the turrets. The Hammer didn't skip a beat as it unloaded its magazines upon the Yuktobanian capital ships, bashing through the water at well over thirty knots.
"Kirovs are defending." Somebody in the CIC reported. "Interceptors in the air."
With the Hammer's shells being as big as they were, they were hard to miss on radar. While they weren't built with air denial in mind, the Kirovs were far from defenceless, armed with a mixture of S-300 and Osa SAMs and a plentitude of close-in weapon systems. The S-300s closed the distance and made impact with the shells.
One by one, the shells dropped off the Hammer's datalink system, presumably having been blown out of the sky. However, the Hammer had more than two hundred rounds to fire and the Kirovs only had a hundred and eighty S-300s between the two of them at best. The shells continued to rain down while the flow of missiles eventually ceased.
"Kirovs are out of S-300s." The TAO reported.
"Captain, Gunnery, halfway through Scalpel stowage." The senior most officer in the gunnery control centre rang up to the bridge.
"Continue fires." Corsair ordered.
"Aye sir." The GCC chief replied. Hammer's guns continued to rain hell on the enemy.
As the first shells in the barrage went active and started searching for their target, they entered the Kirov's second layer of defence, short-ranged Osa SAMs. While the Osa was capable for its time, the age of the system became apparent when missiles went flying two at a time towards the shells now on their terminal attack phase. The shells that made it past the umbrella that the Osa provided entered the Kirov's third and final layer of defence, CIWS. Coming in from a near sixty degree angle, the surviving shells found themselves entering a virtual wall of lead.
"Captain, Gunnery, Scalpel stowage is empty. We're out of Scalpels." The GCC reported.
"Gunnery, cease fire."
"Cease fire, aye sir."
In five minutes, the Hammer had expended her entire arsenal of precision guided shells. While she still had almost a thousand unguided shells in her magazines, those had a maximum range of eighty kilometres. The Scalpels still in the air were all they had. The lead Kirov was defending herself with every weapon able to engage air threats, including the twin main gun at the rear of the ship. The display of firepower would have made for an amazing fireworks show, but unfortunately the Hammer had fired enough shells to overmatch all three of the Kirov's layers of defence.
"Scalpels have made impact!" The TAO called out. "Track 0955 has gone cold!"
Of all the shells that had been fired, roughly twenty had made impact with devastating effect. Coming down at a near vertical angle, the shells smashed through the radar towers and superstructure of the battlecruiser, cutting through antennas and electrical wiring before penetrating the main deck and exploding within the ship with devastating effect. Twenty consecutive twelve inch high explosive shells crippled the ship's ability to fight, knocking out electrical grids, destroying centres of command, starting a multitude of fires and violently shaking just about everything aboard out of alignment.
"Gunnery, captain, load shells and prepare to engage Track 0957." Corsair made a second combat order to the gunnery control centre.
"We crippling or sinking them?" Danfield asked as the Hammer closed the distance between them and the two Kirovs.
"Orders are to render both ships combat ineffective." Corsair stated. "They're not backing off. I'd say that's clause to sink them."
"Sounds good to me." Danfield agreed with Corsair's reasoning. Despite having witnessed her sister ship get bitchslapped by an entire salvo of twelve inch shells, the second Kirov wasn't making all haste back to its home port. Instead, it was charging the Hammer head on at full speed while the first ship and the resupply ship beat a hasty retreat. Corsair grinned maliciously. Broadsiding an enemy warship was considered the ultimate achievement of a surface warfare officer. Broadsiding a capital ship with his own capital ship was just icing on the cake.
The two battlecruisers circled in on each other, closing the distance from two hundred kilometres to a mere one hundred kilometres, a distance considered within spitting range in modern naval warfare.
"Vampire, vampire, vampire!" A voice came up over the radio from the CIC. "Four vampires incoming bearing 230!"
"Kill tracks 0958 to 0962 with birds." The TAO ordered, taking the initiative in defending the ship before Corsair gave the order.
"Port batteries released. Birds away!"
The Mark 41 VLS pack on the left side of the Hammer's superstructure popped open and let off four SM-2s with a flash of fire and a pillar of smoke. Corsair took a closer look at the radar display on the bridge. Judging by the speed of the missiles, they were being engaged by S-300s in surface attack mode. Not the most effective mode of attack against an armoured target since S-300s had a fragmentation warhead, but Corsair gauged that the SAMs in surface attack were the only ranged anti-ship weapons the Kirov had. Nevertheless, the Hammer's counter battery intercepted and destroyed all four S-300s.
"Splash tracks 0958 to 0962." The CIC reported. Corsair clenched his fist. They were just about within main battery range. "Kirov is turning and withdrawing."
"Oh buddy, you fucked up." Corsair mused. The Kirov was fast for its size, but it just lost a lot of that speed turning over its wake. "Gunnery, commence fire."
Once more, the two triple gun turrets slewed to target, elevated and opened fire, creating giant ripples on the ocean surface from the sheer force of the explosion contained behind each shell. While these shells were unguided and didn't have a rocket booster to extend their range, they were still lethally accurate. The second engagement process was even more one sided than the first exchange of fire. Without cell depth to counter the constant barrage of shells, the second Kirov was forced to rely solely on its Osa SAMs, CIWS and small gun battery for protection. These systems were nowhere near enough to protect the ship from what was coming.
The Kirov managed to defend itself against the first thirty shells, but once the thirty-first shell hit its mark, the battle was effectively over. The first five impacting shells impacted within a twenty metre radius of the battlecruiser's flight deck and hangar bay, detonating torpedo stocks and aviation fuel, starting fires at the aft end of the ship. The next two hundred shells raked the Kirov from aft to bow, demolishing the ship's superstructure, destroying any and all forms of self-defense that the Kirov had, ripping through the ship's hull and demolishing everything inside. By the time that the Hammer entered within forty kilometres of the Kirov, the ship had been almost totally gutted.
"Track 0957 is dead in the water." The TAO announced.
"Bridge, starboard side bridge wing, smoke trail visible on the horizon bearing 229." One of the bridge watches called out. Corsair left his seat, walked out onto the open air bridge wing to the right side of the Hammer's bridge and took a look through a rangefinder set bolted to the deck. The boatswain's mate that made the call was right. Corsair couldn't see the origin of the smoke trail because of the Earth's curvature, but there was no mistaking the massive pillar of black smoke wafting into the sky far out in the distance.
"Bridge, captain, can I get a range to target?" Corsair requested via a radio.
"Forty klicks." Danfield replied from the other side of the radio.
"Yeah, that sounds about right." Corsair said to himself, entering the bridge and lifting himself onto his chair. "Hood Actual, Hammer Actual, we are disengaging at this time. Make your course 075, speed twenty."
"Hood Actual copies."
"Helm, make your course 075, all ahead two-thirds." Corsair gave a manoeuvre order to the helmsman.
"My course is 075, all ahead two-thirds, aye sir." The helmsman confirmed the order.
"What'd you see?" Danfield asked as Corsair sat up in the captain's chair.
"A massive fucking smoke trail." Corsair replied. "That ship's done for if she's burning that bad to see the trail from this far out."
"Reactor fire?" Danfield suggested.
"Everything on fire, more like." Corsair retorted.
"That is true." Danfield agreed. "That is very true."
Steering over its wake and with their mission complete, the OFS Hammer and the OFS Hood turned east and made steam for Naval Station Saint Hewlett. One crippled Kirov and one sunk Kirov. Thus far in the war, the two single largest naval losses for the Yuktobanian Navy and a significant blow to their surface power projection.
"Alright. Chief, drop us to condition two." Corsair ordered. "We're out of combat, but I think we've just kicked the hornet's nest."
"Aye sir." A Chief Petty Officer on the bridge carried out the order, announcing the relief of everybody but the ship's crew essential to carrying out the fight.
Corsair peeled off the thick woollen flash hood that he had been wearing throughout the duration of the engagement, sweating like a motherfucker but pleased with the outcome of his mission. The other surface force commanders in the fleet would love to hear about his achievements in the battle.