“Sound general quarters!”
“Aye sir! Bosun!”
“Bosun aye, sir!”
“Sound general quarters!”
“Aye, sir!”
There was a piercing whistle over the 1MC chipboard circuit. Then a hand flipped a switch.
Gong, gong, gong…!
The rhythmic sound of the alarm sent the entire ship into action. Every crewmate stopped what they were doing, didn't think, didn't even hesitate. They all scrambled. Staff rushed from their seats. Sailors got out of their bunks and into their fatigues before they were even awake. Others rushed from the showers, soaking wet and desperate to find their uniforms. The mess hall was abandoned, trays left or knocked askew. The ship's stores were closed, non essential functions were turned off. Up and down the corridors heads bobbed as they climbed through the low access doors.
“General quarters, general quarters, all hands to battle stations! Route for travel is up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on your port side. Set material condition zebra throughout the ship. Space action inbound.”
Firefighters got into their equipment. Helmets were withdrawn from storage. Hatches and doors were pulled shut. Munitions on the flight deck and the hangar deck were secured, while others were moved to their aircraft.
Two elevators rose up to the deck bearing weapons and an F-72 Wildcat each. They were put onto the flight deck with two massive missiles under their wings. A third aircraft was raised, slightly larger than the other two, with a pair of engines and a large disk on its dorsal side. The E-14 Vulture was on the forward-most elevator, and was pushed into the forward launch position. Its wings were folded so the other two could launch ahead of it. The deckhands cleared the way once the jets were on the launch positions.
Admiral Harper watched with satisfaction from the bridge. He didn’t see the planes on deck as often as he’d like. They couldn’t keep the planes out for sustained periods without winds or ship maneuvers damaging them. His ship looked remarkably clear on deck compared to 20th century carriers. Then he had to remind himself it wasn’t his ship anymore. He looked back at the crew.
The current skipper, Captain Haig, ordered, “Inform me when all stations are ready. Turn us into the wind, and go half ahead.”
The Kitkun Bay accelerated, and Harper leaned against the force. The great ship was something of a rectangle, with cut off corners. Its flanks did not curve outward like an early aircraft carrier, they were slanted upwards. The carrier picked up speed from ten knots, to thirty. Then it approached its cruising speed of fifty.
The ship hummed with power. It was very different from older carriers, but was a design only a little younger than the concept itself. A pair of catamaran hulls, connected by two pliant seals fore and aft, contained a cushion of air under the ship. The surface effect ship was an immensely stable and fast design, using the stability of a catamaran but pushing it out of the water with a hovercraft air cushion to dramatically reduce the drag produced by a normal displacement hull. In essence, it was the best of both worlds, and one of the fastest aircraft carriers in existence.
“Launch aircraft!” Haig called out.
“Aye, aye, captain.”
Harper could hear a radio transmission. “Cats, you got green lights. Launch when ready.”
A figure on the bow by the number one runway bowed, and swept their arm forward. The Wildcat raced down the deck and went off the edge. It pulled the nose up smoothly, conspicuously not even dipping. Seconds later, the next fighter zipped down its line from the number two, narrowly clearing the vulture’s wings, as per design.
Finally, the vulture got its chance. Slower, more lumbering, the aircraft got the signal. It picked up speed and flew into the air. Its tail bent down gracefully; like a whale it curved upward instead of dipping.
With the high wind over the deck from their speed the catapults were much smaller than typical carriers, if they were activated at all. The takeoff run didn't need to be very long.
“Strike force away. Let's get moving,” the captain said, “Plot an evasive course.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
Harper nodded in approval. “Ensign?” He looked at a young officer. “CIC. Inform all fleet assets they have weapons free on targets of opportunity. Let's let the hamsters know we aren't going to go without a fight.”
The ensign nodded back, “Aye, aye, sir.” She hit a control. “CIC, bridge. Weapons free on targets of opportunity.”
Admiral Harper called over to Haig, “Captain, I’ll be in the CIC.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Haig nodded, “I'll be with you in a moment.” She turned back to monitoring her ship.
As Harper walked, he could see the other ships of Astoria Carrier Strike Group One pick up speed through the windows. He could see the frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and the other four carriers of the strike group. Rooster tails of water rose up behind their fantails. They went to fifty knots.
A frigate came by. It had a bow and stern railgun, with a single tower in the center topped by a large dome; the primary laser. It had another smaller laser and a CIWS gun, and of course clusters of VLS cells.
Harper turned just as the bridge lit up with a flash. Seconds later there was a sonic boom. He looked back. Burlington and Bangor, their two cruisers, had plumes of smoke across their decks. Both had their sets of railguns and laser towers pointed upward. They had four railguns each, two laser towers, four CIWS weapons of both varieties, and the largest collection of missiles among the surface combatants. As Harper watched, the bow, stern, and amidships launchers bloomed with smoke and a curling wake of missiles.
In the distance, there were more flashes. One of their trimaran destroyers was just barely visible. It had two railguns on the bow, and its own laser tower. It had twice the close in armament of the frigates. Its bow and stern launchers fired. More missiles launched from the rest of the frigates and destroyers, joining the volleys from the cruisers. They were all sleek and smooth vessels, raked back for stealth surfaces and a low radar returns.
Harper put one hand behind his back while the other grasped a safety bar. “Already? What's the status of the orbitals?”
“CIC says they're still at medium orbit,” reported the ensign from before.
“They're moving quickly, but cautious. Odd combination,” Harper murmured. He kept moving through the ship. He passed members of the aviation component, larger than the ship's true complement. The ship's company was smaller than previous eras, especially compared to the air wing, but Harper knew he couldn't have everything. Nostalgia for his youth didn't help against the kinetic slugs coming in.
He reached the CIC, a forward-oriented chamber, with a few more chairs than previous generations. “Admiral on deck!” a subordinate said.
“At ease,” Harper found his way to a chair in front of a grid table. “Status on the Ormoc Bay?”
A lieutenant commander looked up. “She's limping out as fast as she can. France Silva and Shoup are still with her. They lost Benjamin Wilson.”
Harper cursed. “Status of the stations?”
“L1 surrendered. Orbital-1 is in the process of evacuating.”
“The spaceports?”
“They've elected to protect their laser arrays. They'll neither help nor hinder any parties involved.”
“To be expected,” Harper mused. “Shore defenses?”
“Missiles are flushed. We’ve almost got the first wave away.”
“Interceptors are online!” An ensign reported.
“How's the submarine squadron?” Harper asked.
“They're launching their missiles now,” the lieutenant commander said, then checked the boards. “They’ve dived already.”
“Good. We’ll need them.” Harper looked at the holo tank. An image appeared of Astoria Colony. The globe lit up with indicators, as a fleet of ships hovered around medium orbit. Little silver dots indicated missile launches around the globe, seeking a few enemy targets. “And the Blackhorse fighters?”
“On the way.”
The fighters were sized like an aircraft, but were in truth aerospace. They could pop out of the atmosphere to deliver heavier ordnance than air launched munitions. As he watched, a handful of them moved upward to engage the enemy.
Captain Haig entered the room. “Status?”
“All mobile space assets are in retreat. Enemy is remaining in medium orbit and launching probes,” the lieutenant commander said, “Looks like they’re preparing for a landing.”
“Find targets of opportunity, but be as discreet as we can,” Harper ordered.
“Projectiles detected!” another ensign called.
“They're launching kinetics now?” Haig questioned.
“They're testing our defenses,” Harper murmured distractedly, “Trying to find our main batteries.” He turned in his chair. All the seats in the CIC were oriented semi forward, but capable of rotating. No one was standing, or at least not without a handhold. He hit a control. “Get me the 12th Division HQ.”
“Aye, sir.”
A few moments later, he picked up a wired phone. “This is Taan Actual,” He said, using the ship's tactical callsign, “Carabao, come in.”
“This is Carabao Actual. That you, Harper?” Colonel Warren asked.
“They're coming, Warren. I trust you've been watching the skies?”
“Of course. We flushed all our first strike weapons and we're scrambling the alpha strike now. I trust you squids are launching?”
Harper smiled. “We're getting up to speed. Fighters are away.” He could imagine the land based planes launching from the runways in his mind's eye. “The enemy wants valuable infrastructure so they're going to try to land at either the main spaceport, or the secondary one on Clatsop Island.”
“My money is on Clatsop. They might think we're planning something nasty at the open port. Plus all our major defenses are on this side of the sea.”
Harper looked at the screens. The island wasn't an island per se, any more than Madagascar or Japan was just an island for its size. He could see floating icons of trawlers, miners, ocean thermal energy conversion platforms, and hydrocarbon drillers. He was glad they didn't use internal combustion anymore, they weren't just wasting the chemicals by burning them, but the sight of those last two platforms still reminded him of his childhood. Harper shook his head, then nodded, “Yeah, I'd agree. They want access to the mines, and a good place to put a base camp for later.”
“Looks like we'll need you after all. Turns out intelligence was right.”
“Yup. The buggers don't like water.” Harper scratched his chin and looked at the displays. The radars detected tiny kinetic slugs rocketing down from orbit. As he watched, laser fire struck several of them. Only a few positions on the mainland were used. “Nice work there, by the way.”
“Roll for initiative!” Warren joked, “Looks like we got the highest number.”
“Well, now it’s our turn. We rolled a fifteen.” The first strike missiles shot up past the kinetic slugs. Angry bees to defend the hive. But as with bees, they only had one stinger. Dozens of missiles were shot down by the enemy. Harper grimaced. But, Japanese bees and Japanese hornets… A swarm of missiles hit the shields of a small enemy ship. The warship backed off, not too badly damaged, but their bell thoroughly rang. “Well, step one is done. Let’s roll,” Harper said, and put the phone down.
Hours went by as the enemy pulled in. Harper put his hands together. “Tell the fleet we have weapons free. Be discreet, but start harassing them.”
“Yes sir.” The comms officer sent out the messages.
Harper could imagine the railguns firing. He thought he could hear the echo through the ship. “Begin evasive action.”
“Helm, Begin evasive action!” Haig ordered.
The ship went up to its best cruising speed, eighty knots.
Maneuver warfare was crucial to the modern battlefield. Having diverse methods of handling the enemy was also critical in any time period. The Navy wasn't merely meant to be a target, or to destroy the enemy ships on their own. They worked as a deterrence to spoil the enemy's aim at both them and surface targets. They had reduced radar silhouettes, making them harder to detect from orbit, and intense speed to dodge orbital bombardment, but in building these ships they always knew they wouldn't be immune to combat. Yet since 1950, virtually all military forces were built with the knowledge that they might prove useless in an extreme state of war. Every weapon since was built knowing they would vanish in a mushroom cloud. But they weren't meant for that kind of war; they were meant for lesser conflicts.
Harper could see the F-72s already many kilometers away and dozens high on his displays. As he watched, green icons symbolized Old F-40 Off Road Tactical Fighters(OTF) shrieking along to join with them. The OTFs were noticeably slower than the wildcats but their weapons were still potent. Harper turned on a display with drone footage. He could see one squadron; the OTFs had twin booms and broad wings, with one engine instead of two. They swarmed around below the wildcats like a cloud of bees under a swarm of wasps.
The wasps climbed above them. The wildcats went into supersonic zoom climbs and sent a dozen missiles into the sky. They weren't to hit the enemy ships, only their probes. Within minutes half the missiles were knocked out. But six missiles hit home.
At the same time, several OTFs opened fire. Their lasers blinded the enemy ships. They pulled off, or tried to return fire, but hitting through the atmosphere proved much more difficult than targeting another enemy space force. Harper raised an eyebrow as radar picked up more contacts. Landing ships. “Is Walters ready to intercept?”
“Yes, sir. They’re preparing to engage.”
Harper watched. Space had a lot of variables, but there were only so many ways to land on a certain target on this side of the technological tree. They would have to go through predictable tracks. He zoomed the display in on the swarm of enemy landers. They looked like upside-down turnips, blunted to resist the atmosphere but angled enough for
Yellow flashes appeared on the screen. Railguns mounted on the backs of trucks opened fire. Indicators of landers winked out one after the other. The railguns kept up their fire. They targeted the enemy ships in space. Harper knew they couldn't destroy them, but they'd make their bells ring.
~~
The F-40s returned to secondary land zones. They landed on the Depraved Lagoon to the west.
After first contact, humanity had to use their wits to utilize their existing technologies, cruder than the Galactic community. Their greatest experience was with ground and sea combat, which some perceived as a weakness. But Cold War black projects, crazy pipe-dreams and failed concepts could be salvaged to make such experience a strength.
The F-40s inflated large bags under their fuselage. They landed on the water with a splash. They threw up a wake and the air blew through holes in their rubber trunks. The landing gear let them glide along as hovercraft, reaching the shore. They pulled right up onto the beaches, where crew pulled them to parking spots. Air cushion landing systems let them land on virtually any terrain, from water, to sand, even to snow and swamp. “Damn things can't even float,” one militia soldier grunted, “Why can't we just load them in the water?”
“Shut up and help me!” her friend snapped, hauling a cart full of missiles.
XXXXX
“We can see their ships! Why can't we see their land batteries?!”
“They appear to be using either high powered cannons or railguns of some kind, fleetmaster. They are more difficult to track than missiles or energy weapons.”
“They are just giant slugs! How can they even hit us?! A cannon from the ground can't reach orbit.”
“With all due respect,” the aide said, holding his tablet as if it would shield him from his commander's wrath, “They can reach orbit. They don't need to make orbit.”
The fleetmaster glared at him, then up at the globe at the center of the bridge. He started pacing, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. “This is absurd! Where are they getting these weapons?! Why would they build them? Don't they know we can annihilate them?” The fleet master demanded.
“Command wants us to take the colony intact,” his aide said, peeking his eyes from behind the tablet. “Further, without precise optics, we can't precisely target them. We will need saturation fire, or larger rounds.”
“What’s the point of surface batteries?” The fleetmaster snapped, gesturing up at the globe, “Don’t they know spacecraft are the only viable defense? We can crush them!”
“Yes, but it’s stopping us so far.”
The fleetmaster stopped. Other bridge crew members huddled down in their seats. The fleetmaster said, “Sarcasm is unbecoming of an officer.”
“Of course, fleetmaster.” The aide hoped his tail did not come off in fear.
The fleetmaster sighed. He went back to pacing. “We could pulverize the entire colony. We could wipe them out. But we can't take the land and hold it without boots on the ground.” He scowled. “This is madness!”
“Indeed it is, sir,” His aide agreed. “We cannot destroy the planet without significant political blowback.”
“Of course not! Are you mad?” The fleetmaster did not recognize his own hypocrisy. He scowled.
“We also can’t accurately target them,” The aide pointed out. “They are keeping our ships at a distance. Our weapons are only strategic in accuracy, yet this drastically reduces our accuracy.”
“Why do they not have orbital defense platforms? Why not more starships?”
“it appears to be for situations such as this, where we have driven away all their space defenses. They are not as helpless as we thought. Their defenses are highly mobile and we cannot target them accurately. And they can defend their ground forces.”
“Even if we could target them, we can't bombard them into submission. That never works.” The fleetmaster groaned. He held his head. “It's never been enough to provoke a surrender!”
“Not without significant pressure beforehand,” the aide agreed.
The fleetmaster made another groan. “This is ridiculous. Ridiculous!”
“Even we don't think planetary invasion is obsolete…”
“We didn't think we'd need this many troops!” The fleetmaster swore.
~~
“They'll try to land at the secondary spaceport. We'll move the Marines over there, then land back to support you guys,” Harper said to Warren.
“AWACS is picking them up,” Haig said.
“Thank you,” Harper said. He looked at his displays. Their AWACS airships weren’t able to get very high up compared to satellites, but they were vital for providing electronic warfare assets, radar, and communications.
“I guess we were right all along,” Haig said, walking over to look at the displays. “We've got the upper hand.”
“We'll always need something to fill the gap,” Harper nodded.
An ensign entered the room, with beverages for the officers. She grabbed a handhold when the ship hit a wave, then lurched her way to the officers. “Sir? Ma'am?”
The officers thanked her and took their drinks. The Ensign held the tray at her side, and looked at the displays. “Admiral? Sir?” She looked like she wanted to hide, but held her ground. “Why are they so surprised by us? I mean, our ships?”
Harper turned toward her. He glanced at Haig, then back at the ensign. “Well, they didn't anticipate needing a way to counter us. In their minds, kinetic bombardment is all you need.”
“But why isn't it all they need? Can't they paste us?” the ensign asked.
Harper put his fingers together, “Well, when the atomic bomb was first developed, we thought it would be a war winner,” He explained, then sipped his drink, “But the first war fought with it available was done conventionally.”
“Huh? But why wouldn't we use a weapon in our arsenal?” She asked.
“You don't use nukes because you have them,” Haig snapped, “Go back to your duties, ensign.”
Harper held up a hand, “What's the point of using conventional weapons when a button will do, ensign? That's a good question. If you need to capture an enemy in a city, would you nuke the city? No, you'd send in special forces. If you need to deal with a common criminal, do you use a bomb? No, you arrest them. There are times where it is inappropriate to use an atomic bomb as it would be to stab someone for stealing your drink. Proportional response is something that's been a part of human history for as long as we've been around.”
“Proportional response? Why do we need to worry?”
“Diplomacy, war, and politics aren't violence for violence's sake, sailor, it's controlled, for a purpose,” Harper said slowly, “It’s to make the enemy do what you want them to do, we're not out to massacre them. We don’t jump up the ladder of escalation immediately.”
“What ladder?”
“In our minds there exists a ladder of war and proportionate response. It's pretty easy to climb, and a lot harder to get back down. And nobody has the same ladder. What we consider proportionate might not be to another. So we need as many options as possible. A conventional force can do a lot more than a nuke. If we were forced to escalate immediately, that would end with a lot of dead people for a lot less gain than you'd get from special forces rescuing a hostage. You need the rungs on the ladder so you have room to maneuver. Otherwise your only options make the costs and risks of any resolution barely worth it, if that. Without conventional forces you render your big guns politically and economically senseless.”
The ensign still looked skeptical. “But you can still threaten them.”
“And if they call your bluff?” Haig swept her hand at the images of the fleet. “Look around you, ensign. If all we had were orbital rocks, how could we intervene in police actions? In mild conflicts? Hell, a bunch of dangerous wildlife? We could threaten them, but we couldn't do anything about it. They call our bluff, what then? We are made out to be a bunch of fools. That's what happened with the first atomic bomb! They didn't have enough conventional assets to put an end to the war before it got worse.”
Harper nodded, “You need options.” she pointed at the displays. “Otherwise you end up like them.
~~
The Marines landed to face the enemy. They linked up with the local army assets, and prepared to face the enemy assault on the laser launch system.
They set a trap for the enemy drop pods. Automated turrets opened up. They were based on an old system, Metal Storm. Projectiles were stacked in a barrel in a superposed load, with electronically triggered propellant between each round. It would be heavy for a grunt to carry, but it had the advantage of no moving parts, making it difficult to jam, and some of the fastest firing speeds in history. This made them a prime automated defense weapon.
Bullets shredded the targets. Bursts of grenades hailed down on the landing craft. The enemy mecha and troops were shredded by the time they landed. The hamsters paid with their blood.
After two days, the hamster fleet was forced to retreat.
They were out of marines.