"Charge 4, loaded."
"Chamber hot, weapons free, batteries released."
Standing on the starboard side bridge wing of the OFS Hammer, Corsair was glad he was above and behind the main battery, because if he hadn't been, the blast wave from the twelve inch guns would have cooked him alive. He could see the mountains of the Bastok Peninsula surrounding his ship on three sides. Just barely able to see over the stern, Corsair could also see their escort, the cruiser OFS Hood, trailing them, protecting the Hammer from anything that wanted to attack them from outside the bay.
"CIC reports four large aerial contacts, bearing 188, range 420." An enlisted sailor called out to Corsair. Corsair nodded in reply and returned to the interior of the bridge as the ship's main battery fired in sequence at their target. He glanced at the display console in front of his station. Four aerial contacts were approaching the battlecruiser from the southern side of the bay. They were high, real high, thirty five thousand feet, and they were running their search radars looking for targets.
"Keep an eye on them." Corsair ordered.
"Aye, sir." The sailor returned to his station. Corsair took a seat in the captain's chair and quietly observed the events unfolding around his ship. The twelve inch gun blasts were thunderous, their effects on impact some fifty kilometres away even more so. The OFS Hammer had been tasked with providing shore bombardment for the troops on the ground, as well as to destroy any targets of opportunity. Corsair was following his orders to the letter. Anything that the grunts needed gone, the ship removed, a ton of explosive filler at a time. Simultaneously, two of the ship's ScanEagle UAVs were airborne over the peninsula, scanning the area for targets.
"Gunnery, rounds complete." The gunnery control centre reported. Corsair cracked his neck and yawned. He had been up for almost thirty hours and the lack of sleep could be seen in the eyebags. Nevertheless, his mind was as sharp as always. He looked at the air contacts to the ship's south. They were approaching slowly but steadily. With Yuktobania's air corridors closed until further notice owing to the war, they definitely weren't civilian aircraft.
"Radar spike! 188!" Somebody down in the CIC sounded off. Corsair grit his teeth.
"Vampire vampire vampire, three tracks incoming bearing 188. Ballistic contacts! Designated 1171 to 1173!" The TAO reported. They had missiles bearing down on them. Ballistic missiles.
"Captain has the bridge." Corsair declared.
"Captain has the bridge, aye sir." The OOD, officer of the deck, confirmed the transfer of command.
"Helm, hard right over to 090, all ahead flank." Corsair issued a navigation order to the helmsman.
"Hard right to 090, all ahead flank, aye sir." The helmsman repeated the command, throwing the rudder all the way to the gimbal limit to get the ship turning as fast as possible. Corsair gripped the armrests of the chair as the battlecruiser lurched over to one side in a hard turn. Out the front of the ship he could see waves crashing up and over the bow, coating the forecastle in water.
"Hood is engaging with SM-3s." There was frantic chatter down in the CIC. Hammer had her own load of SM-2s aboard, but against ballistic tracks they were at best a last resort.
"Wardog 4, Thunderhead, new tasking. Proceed 197 at burner for 320. Three cruise missile carriers at Angels 30. Intercept and destroy." Thunderhead gave a direct tasking to Grimm.
"Thunderhead, Archer, wilco." Grimm replied, pulling out of formation at full afterburner and climbing up to thirty thousand feet along the designated bearing. Blaze, Chopper and Nagase quickly disappeared from his line of sight as he flew up into and beyond the clouds.
"Give them hell, Archer." Pops encouraged the young Viper pilot.
Grimm chuckled. "Will do."
Halfway to the bombers, Grimm noticed on the datalink that there were friendly fighters that were closer to the bombers than he was. He found it odd that Thunderhead had tasked him with the mission instead of them, but considering he was already this far out, Grimm decided to shove that thought to the back of his head for now. His radar spotted the bombers at one hundred and seventy klicks. He closed the distance to half that before locking up and firing.
"Archer, Fox 3, Fox 3." Grimm declared as three of his four remaining AMRAAMs flew off the rails. Not even ten seconds after the missiles left their pylons, Grimm's RWR alerted him to a new contact. 57. An Su-57. A Felon. Right next to that Felon on the RWR display, a second symbol appeared with an audio cue. 57.
"Uh oh." Grimm deadpanned.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
"That's not good." Grimm muttered to himself as he threw the Viper into a sharp dive, turning perpendicular to the incoming missile's direction of travel. "Wardog 4, engaged by two Su-57s! Felons!"
"Roger, Wardog 4. Withdraw north to friendly air cover." Thunderhead instructed.
"Negative, Thunderhead." Grimm replied, turning into the presumably approaching Felons. "Wardog 4, attacking."
"Grimm, no!" Blaze blurted out over the radio. "Pull back!"
Grimm pulled two radar contacts at sixty klicks, Angels 25. They were just slightly higher than him. A missile still bearing down on his ass, Grimm locked the lead bandit and fired. He then started turning away and popping chaff, leaving his fourth and final AMRAAM blind as it acquired the lead Felon with its onboard radar. After popping a mere three or four chaff canisters, the R-77 tracking him lost its lock. Upon hearing the RWR stop blaring at him, Grimm turned back in towards the Felons and started climbing. The lead Felon was defending against the AMRAAM while the second was flanking around to Grimm's south. Grimm decided to push the second bandit.
Pushing almost two times the speed of sound, Grimm closed to within visual distance of one of the Su-57s with all the fury of the third monkey on Noah's ark. The Felon saw Grimm, nosed around and let off a missile. Grimm gripped the stick and rolled, popping an unhealthy number of flares in his trail. The missile the Felon had fired, an R-73, tracked onto the flares and detonated at a safe distance behind him.
The Felon and the Viper entered the merge. The Felon rolled onto its canopy and dived in what Grimm assumed was an attempt at a split-S. As the Felon's nose pointed towards the sea below them, Grimm pulled enough gees to pin him into the seat, lined the Felon inside the funnel on his gunsight and fired. One of the Su-57's wings came off in one large chunk.
"Archer, splash one!" Grimm declared. With one of the Felons now dead, he turned around for the second bandit. The bandit that was aggressively pushing his position and launching missiles. Grimm leant back into the seat as he hit himself with a high gee load, rolling over and heading away from the approaching fighter. Chaff and flares filled the skies as an R-77 flew over his head. Grimm actually saw the Adder missile fail to track and fly off into the distance. Looking over his shoulder, now Grimm saw the smoke trail of an R-73 looking for his tailpipe. Grimm drew back on the throttle, cutting the afterburner off, and pitched down while dropping flares. The missile detonated just clear of his tail.
Now with a Felon rapidly closing the distance on his ass, Grimm drew back the throttle to idle and deployed his airbrakes. He looked over his shoulder and started throwing the aircraft around attempting to avoid the Felon's nose. The latter came in closer, throwing cannon fire down range. Grimm watched the tracers fly overhead, coming so close that he was surprised the Felon's thirty mike cannon didn't take off his rudder. Fortunately that was the closest the Yuktobanian pilot got to downing him. As the Felon pilot realised that he had overshot, he peeled away. Grimm threw the throttle all the way forward, withdrew the airbrake and pulled the nose across the Felon's direction of travel. A violence buzz-like sound ripped through the air as the Vulcan cannon of the Viper tore through the spine of the Felon.
"Wardog 4, splash two!" Grimm yelled. "I say again, Wardog 4, splash two Felons!"
"Tracks 1171, 1172 and 1173, splashed by Hood."
Corsair let loose a breath of relief. The Hood had successfully intercepted all three anti-ship ballistic missiles. With the air threat briefly removed from the playing field, the Hammer had taken on additional ground support taskings for targets further inland. The battlecruiser's main gun battery fired with deep booms, sending four hundred kilogram shells packed with high explosive about forty kilometres down range. From the information he was gleaning off the radio, the gunnery centre was actively spotting what they were shooting at with one of the two airborne ScanEagles. A concentration of armoured vehicles and infantry, apparently.
"Gunnery, rounds complete, awaiting BDA."
"Captain, TAO, Eagle 2 has eyes on a Yuke SAM battery packing up about sixty kilometres west-north-west." The TAO called up to the bridge. "Recommend tasking Scalpels on target."
Corsair thought about it for a second. He picked up the handpiece microphone above his station.
"CIC, Captain, spin four Tomahawks onto those SAMs. Gunnery, continue to service fire support requests as they come in." Corsair issued separate orders to the CIC and to the gunnery control centre.
"S-400 battery designated as Track 1176."
"Placing four Tomahawks from pack 1 in weapons pool."
"Kill track 1176 with birds."
Corsair could hear a woosh sound somewhere off to his rear.
"Birds away, killing track 1176, heading 283."
An often forgotten about fact regarding the Hammer and her similarly modified sister ships was that in addition to their two sets of triple gun twelve inch turrets, she also had two hundred VLS cells of the same type used by the Arleigh Burke and Ticonderoga classes. From the port side bank of a hundred cells shot out four BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles. The missiles tilted out to the north-west and shot off into the distance.
"TOT, five minutes."
"New tasking. Grid 009-001, twelve rounds HE." Gunnery had received a new tasking. "Range thirty seven klicks, elevation 405 feet."
"Charge 5, high explosive, loaded."
"Batteries released. Commence fire."
With six barrels available, in the span of ten seconds the Hammer got twelve rounds in the air heading towards a target on the ass end of the peninsula, totalling almost four tons of sheer explosive mass.
"Fire mission complete, waiting for BDA."
"Bridge, sonar, launch transient, 250. Additional transients, 251, 253, 256!"
"Oh shit." Corsair muttered. "Helm, hard left over all ahead flank, circle us over our wake!"
"Hard left rudder, all ahead flank, aye sir."
"CIC, Captain, snapshot to starboard, 250 through 260!" Corsair issued an emergency fire order to the CIC to get torpedoes in the water against whoever was shooting at them. He grabbed onto the armrests of his chair as the battlecruiser lurched over to one side.
"Fish in the water, 250, 255, 260."
There was a puff of smoke from the Hammer's starboard side torpedo tubes as three Mark 54 torpedoes were flung into the ocean. Their little propellers pushed them up to speed as their sonars started pinging, looking for a submerged target. Forty five thousand tons of steel violently kicked up water as the ship circled around a hundred and eighty degrees.
"Detecting sonar pings. Torpedoes are heading… bridge, sonar, enemy torpedoes are heading for the Hood!"
"Helm, hard left rudder to 255." Corsair ordered.
"255, hard left rudder, aye sir." The helmsman confirmed the order.
"CIC, load ATAD on port side tubes. Light up active sonar."
"Loading ATAD for port tubes. Banging on sonar."
"Hammer, Hood, evading west at flank." The captain of the OFS Hood informed Corsair.
"Hood, Hammer, roger." Corsair switched to another channel. "CIC, calculate an intercept course for outbound torpedoes."
"Bridge, TAO, cannot comply, torpedoes will be outside of maximum range by the time ATADs are loaded." The TAO replied from the CIC below deck. Corsair cursed. The Hood was on her own.
"Bridge, sonar, no new contacts."
Corsair frowned. The Hammer's primary sonar dome was mounted under the belly of the ship and had an omnidirectional search radius. If they weren't detecting anything, it wasn't because any prospective contacts were in their baffles. Either the contact was sunk in the mud like a catfish, or there was no contact in the first place. Gears turned in Corsair's head.
"Light up high frequency sonar." He ordered. The sonar officer down in CIC flicked a switch and the Hammer started banging away with a second set of active sonar, high frequency sonar, a system jointly used to map underwater topography and, more importantly, spot small objects at short range. Small objects like mines.
"Bridge, sonar, detecting a half dozen small objects underwater, designated tracks 1174 through 1181."
"Classification?" Corsair asked.
"Standby." The sonar operator down in CIC replied. A moment of silence. "Tracks 1174 through 1181 designated as Zoohey mines."
Corsair cursed to himself. He ran out to the port side bridge wing and looked out towards the Hood. The Zoohey was a captive mine, similar in function to the Osean Mark 60 CAPTOR. The main difference was the payload. While the CAPTOR shot out a twelve inch Mark 46 lightweight torpedo as its payload, the Zoohey used a twenty one inch UGST heavyweight torpedo. The Hood was doomed the moment the mine detected the cruiser.
"Captain!" A sailor called out. "Sonar reports launch transients, bearing 253, 254 and 258!"
Adjusting the fit of the flash hood around his neck, Corsair waltzed back into the interior of the bridge.
"Helm, hard right rudder to 010."
"Hard right rudder to 010, aye sir."
Corsair got on the horn to the CIC once more. "CIC, calculate solutions for incoming transients with ATAD, fire as you bear."
"Bridge, sonar, torpedoes in the water, torpedoes in the water! Bearing 255!"
"Firing solution achieved. Batteries released… fish in the water."
From the port side torpedo launcher shot out three ATAD anti-torpedo rockets. The moment they hit the water, their rocket boosters ignited and shot off towards the incoming torpedoes.
"Loading ATAD on port side launcher."
Out of the corner of his eye, Corsair saw a small flash and a jumping spout of water. He whipped his head around. Three or four kilometres off the Hammer's port beam, the Hood had been retreating away from the torpedoes locked in on her, to no avail. The young captain of the Hammer watched as the Hood took one, then two, then three torpedoes, all under the keel. The cruiser's midsection was thrown up into the air as her spine shattered into half a dozen pieces. A colossal explosion then threw up a colossal spray of debris, smoke and water. When the smoke cleared, the two halves that remained of the Hood were on their way to Davy Jones's locker.
Corsair's face hardened.
"Fair winds and following seas." Corsair whispered to himself. He shook his head. Most of the bridge crew were looking outwards at the wrecked Hood.
"If you don't want their fate, I'd suggest manning your stations." Corsair said sternly. "We're still in the fight."
Everyone collectively regained their focus and returned to their stations.
"Explosions in the water, indications confused." Sonar reported from down in CIC. Corsair assumed that station meant that the ATADs had met the incoming torpedoes. "Bridge, sonar, all incoming torpedoes destroyed."
Corsair breathed a sigh of relief. "Nav, get me a course that'll bring us alongside the Hood."
The navigation officer on the bridge did some quick plotting. "Captain, coming to heading 238 at all ahead one third will bring us alongside."
Corsair nodded. "Helm, ten degrees left rudder to 238, all ahead one third."
"Ten degrees left rudder to 238, all ahead one third, aye sir."
Corsair grabbed a set of binoculars and looked towards the twisted wreck of the Hood. Fuel and oil created a slick on the ocean surface as the last remnants of the cruiser slipped beneath the waves. Shattered remnants of what had once been a part of the ship littered a space a mile wide, but even from four kilometres away Corsair didn't spot any life rafts or sailors in the water. Given how quickly the ship had slipped under, he didn't have high hopes for finding any survivors.