Choosers of the Slain

19

Some meteorologists theorize that the Antarctic continent doesn't have weather in the conventional sense. They believe that the prevailing South Polar climatic patterns are actually one titanic superstorm that has been raging continuously for the last ten thousand years-sometimes with greater intensity, sometimes with lesser, but perennially since the last ice age.

Occasionally, though, rents and eddies form within its structure, and for the moment the USS Cunningham cruised within one such patch of calm.

Corkscrewing easily through a steel-blue sea, the big destroyer ran beneath an open sky lightly streaked with frost-colored mare's tails. Twice that day, ice had been sighted to the south, great flattopped burgs riding low on the horizon, sea smoke of their own creation swirling mystically around them.

The winds carried the mark of the Pole as well. They were the katabatics, gusting in from the southwest, fresh off the Antarctic Plateau. Chill, pure, oxygen rich, and seemingly denser than common air, breathing them was comparable to breathing the outflow of some icy mountain spring.

Amanda Garrett relished the experience. Parka-clad, she had spent most of the morning out on the wings of the bridge, enjoying the sight of the snowy foam peeling away from the cutting edge of her ship's prow. However, the clear weather also brought with it a faint feeling of unease.

"Hey, Skipper," Ken Hiro's voice sounded in her headset. "Have you decided about diverting south under that next storm front yet?"

Amanda glanced up at the glowing sun and hesitated. They had been running under heavy weather for almost two continuous days, and certain maintenance tasks were best done on a stable deck. Besides, a rest would be good for all hands.

"Negative, Ken. Hold your course. We'll be socked in again soon enough."

Two hundred and forty miles to the northeast, over Isla Grande, the fair weather had already broken. Heavy cloud cover and turbulence were complicating an already difficult air-to-air refueling operation. Flying under total radio and radar silence, a flight of four Fuerza Aérea Rafales had located and made rendezvous with their C-130 Hercules tanker aircraft as it churned along just above the overcast.

The flight elements were armed alike. The leaders mounted a drop tank beneath each wing and a slender, cigar-shaped pod on their centerline. The wingmen carried a single larger tank beneath their belly and a pair of 1,000-pound laser-guided bombs on their inboard pylons.

The first element tucked in under the elderly Lockheed. Guided in by light signals from the pump boss's station amidships, the fighters skillfully coupled into the refueling drogues trailing aft from the tanker's wingtip pods.

As they did so, a second strike flight closed and joined up. Two dark blue and gray Aeronaval Tornadoes. Like pale remora clinging to a shark's belly, each carried a brace of Exocet antishipping missiles.

"Hey, Captain." This time, Hiro appeared in the bridge-wing hatchway. "I think you'd better come take a look at this."

"Sure, Ken, what have you got?"

She followed him back into the wheelhouse, flipping back the hood of her parka as she did. Inside, she found her exec and Vince Arkady intently studying the largest of the monitors mounted above the bridge windscreen.

"We've got Lieutenant Beltrain on the squawk box from CIC. He says he has a funny contact on the board."

"What's so amusing about it, Dix?" she inquired, raising her voice slightly to trip the sound-activated microphone of the com system.

"It's funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha, ma'am. Have a look at your bridge repeaters."

The flatscreen showed a computer stylization of the southernmost tip of South America and the Drake Passage environs, the Duke's position hack glowing blue in its center. Half a dozen other identified and innocuous surface contacts were scattered across the display, none of which were within a hundred miles of the destroyer. In the sky to the north, a Chilean passenger jet was descending toward Punta Arenas. To the northwest, "Pedro," the Argentine Atlantique shadower aircraft, circled repetitively. To the northeast, there was a third airborne target.

"It's that new slow mover, ma'am. The one coded Contact Charley. He came into our coverage area from the north, turned southwest at Isla Grande beacon, and aimed himself right at us. Since then, two separate flights of fast movers have overtaken and joined up with him. Radar cross-section variance indicates a lot of close-in maneuvering, probably an air-to-air refueling operation."

"Target identification?"

"The big guy has to be an Argy KC-130. No doubt about it. No make on the small stuff yet. Could be two to four aircraft per flight and they're too far out to get a skin-track silhouette. These guys are being real quiet. Sigint indicates they're maintaining total EMCON. No radio, no radar, no transponders. Miss Christine's gang over in Raven's Roost says this is pretty damn unusual for this outfit."

"Maybe it's just some kind of training exercise," Hiro commented. "None of the other Argy harassment flights have used aerial refueling. Their aircraft have range enough to reach us without it."

"Not if it was an armed strike package," Arkady said soberly. "You'd be carrying ordnance on some of your hardpoints instead of drop tanks. You'd also want to top off on fuel before you went in over your target, so you'd have a big maneuvering reserve in case you had trouble… Hey, check this out."

On the flatscreen, Contact Charley had fissioned just as it crossed the 180-mile ranging line.

"Bridge," the squawk box sounded. "The fast movers have separated from the tanker. Estimate three two-plane elements, now coded as Contacts Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. New targets have accelerated to six hundred knots and are closing the range. Target Charley is now turning away to the north."

"He's not the only one. It looks like Pedro is bugging out."

"I see it, Arkady," Amanda said. "Dix, what's going on with that Argentine Atlantique?"

"He transmitted a nonscheduled position fix on us just before conducting his breakaway. He's descending and he's increasing speed."

"He's hauling ass before he gets it blown off," Arkady murmured under his breath.

On the repeater, the three fighter-bomber flights had fanned out into a broad triangle, an arrow fired from the Argentine mainland dead-on at the Cunningham. It would arrive on target in approximately sixteen minutes. Amanda shot a glance at each of the two officers that flanked her.

"Gentlemen, I need your evaluations, right now."

"We haven't seen anything like this before, Captain," her exec said quietly. "Something's up."

"Arkady?"

"If this isn't an armed Sierra strike, it's a helluva good imitation."

"Right. Mr. Hiro, I'm shifting the con to CIC. You have the bridge. Sound general quarters."

From bow to stem, all decks of the Duke were filled with the flat metallic honking of the GQ klaxons, the hammering of running feet, and the slam of watertight doors. Over all came the emotionless voice of the duty quartermaster. "General quarters. General quarters. All hands proceed to your battle stations. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill."

Down in the Combat Information Center, the systems operators began reciting the techno-litany that brought the destroyer's weapons arrays fully to life.

"Main turret indexing check, fore and aft."

"I have green lights, fore and aft, elevation and traverse."

"Phalanx safety interlocks off. Cycling to full autofire mode."

"Confirm helm and lee helm control shifted to CIC. Bridge and Main Engineering control to ready-use standby."

"All power rooms fully lit off and on-line."

"Alpha, Bravo, and Charley ESSM flights selected and armed. VLS cell doors opened and visually verified. Confirm hot birds on the rails!"

Amanda strode into the CIC to find her command chair empty and waiting for her. "Tactical Officer, status?" she demanded.

"The ship is at general quarters, Captain," Beltrain replied. "All weapons and defense systems up and on-line.

Condition Zebra set in all spaces. Awaiting your orders, ma'am."

"What's the situation with the bogeys?"

"Bogeys have descended to wave-top altitude and are currently below our radar horizon. As of last contact they were continuing to close the range. Given no change in speed or heading, Contact Delta will be reacquired in approximately twelve minutes. Targets Echo and Foxtrot will be reacquired and will cross our bow and stern respectively at about a five-mile range at about one-minute intervals thereafter."

"Right. Where's our nearest heavy cloud cover?"

The tac officer dialed a weather overlay in on the Alpha Screen. "The nearest squall line is about twenty miles to the southeast."

Damn, damn, damn! A stealth warship must always seek out protective weather cover. She had helped to write that doctrine. Then, first crack out of the box, she had allowed herself to be seduced by a patch of blue sky.

"We going to try and go stealth and evade, ma'am?"

"It's too late, Dix. They have us fixed. We'll have to take it as it comes."

"Aye, aye."

"When the bogeys close to an estimated one hundred miles range, go to tactical on the primary display."

"Will do."

"Communications, anything from those aircraft yet?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then get on their standard frequencies. Warn those planes off!"

"Aye, aye."

"Then get a link with CINCLANT. Tell them that we have Argentine aircraft in our vicinity, maneuvering with possible hostile intent. Inform them that we have gone to general quarters and that we will keep them advised."

The Argentine strike fighters had dropped down to within fifty feet of the ocean's surface, down where the jet wash of their engines flattened the wave crests and the spray pinged off their windscreens like pebbles kicked up off a gravel road. The aircrews knew that this zero-altitude approach granted them a temporary reprieve at best. They didn't need to hear the Duke's transmitted warning to know that they had already been detected. Their threat boards had reacted to a radar sweep of a kind they had never before seen. Sooner or later, they must pull back up into the sight of their enemies. There was nothing for it but to hunker a few feet closer to the sea and delay the inevitable for as long as they could.

"I do not believe that they are doing this," Beltrain murmured.

"They might not be," Amanda replied. "These guys could still be playing mind games with us."

"At what point do we decide that it isn't a game?"

"Well, Dix. That's the question now, isn't it?"

Amanda's instincts were all telling her that this was the real thing. However, when you are about to commit your nation to war, you dare not trust to instincts alone.

"We will be reacquiring Contact Delta within the next ten seconds, Captain," the Aegis operator reported quietly. The MMS system activated, the image from the masthead camera windowing into the corner of the Alpha Screen. Just above the juncture line of sea and sky, there was a faint smudge of kerosene smoke with two gleaming metallic dots centered in it.

"Contact Delta is over the horizon. Line of sight and fire established."

Okay, Captain under God, fish or cut bait.

"Tactical Officer, designate the Tornadoes."

"Aye, aye. Designating Tornadoes now."

On the main display, a diamond-shaped targeting box blinked into existence around the closest flight of Argentine aircraft. On the outer skin of the superstructure, phased-array cells energized and a pair of tightly focused radar beams lanced out to paint the oncoming jets.

Aboard the Tornadoes, threat boards screamed as the Cunningham's fire-control systems locked on. The Argentine element leader was startled. His mission profile had called for him to push in closer before commencing his own attack. However, he hadn't expected that his intended target would react so swiftly. After a split-second hesitation, he snapped a command to his systems operator in the rear cockpit and pulled up into his launching maneuver.

As the Tornado climbed through 120 feet, the systems operator powered up his own surface-search radar. Establishing a targeting lock, he gave his Exocets a look at their prey. As the "Missile Ready" lights went green on his ordnance panel, he called a launch warning to his pilot and pressed the release keys.

The first four-and-a-half-meter-long missile unshackled and fell away from beneath the wing. Ten feet beneath the aircraft, a braided wire lanyard snapped out the last safety pin and the Exocet's rocket engine ignited with a flair of orange flame. At one-second intervals, the other three missiles carried by the flight dropped and fired. Trailing streamers of milky smoke, they blazed away into the distance.

Within the CIC, the tracking teams called it out.

"Contact Delta is executing a pop-up maneuver… Tornado fire-control radars lighting off…. Active seeker heads! We have active seeker heads!… Missile launch!… Confirm multiple Exocet launch!… Missiles closing the range!… Impact in twenty-eight seconds… twenty-seven… twenty-six…"

Amanda Garrett's voice rang sharply clear over it all.

"Initiate full-spectrum stealth and ECM! All weapons systems commence firing!"

Throughout the CIC hands slammed down on actuators, unleashing the Duke's arsenal of physical and electronic firepower.

Dixon Beltrain had been standing by, poised over the armed firing triggers of his Main Tac Ops console. At his captain's word, he hit the launch sequence of the first ESSM flight.

Up on the Cunningham's foredeck, the slender, eleven-foot length of the first missile lanced into the air, hurled out of its storage cell by the gas charge of the Vertical Launch Array's coldfire system. Clear of the weather deck, its motor ignited, hurling it on its way in a boosted high-g arc to the north. With machine-gun rapidity, the three other rounds in the quad-pack canister followed.

The ESSM (Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missile) was a descendant of the original NATO Sea Sparrow surface-to-air interceptor system, crossbred with technology taken from the U.S. Air Force's AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile). Like its predecessor, it was compact, reliable, and lethal.

The Argentine Tornadoes had reversed course instantly after releasing their ordnance, sweeping their wings back and lighting off their afterburners in a desperate supersonic dash back to the horizon and safety. They activated their internal ECM jammers and spewed chaff and anti-IR flares into their wakes to throw off the swarm of Mach-4 killers overtaking them. The element leader succeeded; the wing-man failed.

Steered into position by the gathering beams of the Duke's fire-control system, the ESSMs pitched over and dove. Seconds later, the trailing Panavia caught the sledgehammer blow of a missile hit. Its upper fuselage shattered, the big fighter-bomber plowed into the sea, its high speed and minimal altitude not granting even the fragment of time necessary for a clawing hand to reach an ejector seat handle.

Even as the Tornado was destroyed, a second battle was being joined — what Winston Churchill had once referred to as "the wizard war": the death struggle of the black boxes.

The Cunningham's Wetball system came fully active. Derived from the Ironball stealth paint developed by the United States Air Force, the Duke's exotic polymer hull coating held billions of microscopic iron spheres in suspension. By shifting the polarization of these metal particles at ultrahigh frequencies and in irregular patterns, incoming radar waves could be distorted and dispersed.

Aboard the departing Aeronaval Atlantique patrol plane, systems operators watched in amazement as the Cunningham's return faded off their scopes like a snuffed candle flame.

Other defensive systems engaged as well. Decoy launchers, like old-style K guns, hurled foxer pods off the destroyer's stern quarters. Some of these burst open upon striking the ocean's surface, ejecting a fast-inflating mylar balloon that carried a false radar target into the sky. Others bobbed upright in the wave troughs and extended waterproof antenna, broadcasting impulses that might be mistaken for the electromagnetic signature of a Cunningham-class destroyer by a simpleminded guided missile.

The Duke's own defensive radars jittered wildly up and down their frequency spectrum, shifting operating channels a score of times a second to throw off homing antiradar guidance. Scanners hunted down the Argentines' operational radio and radar channels, and linked cascade jammers flooded them with electronic white noise. Seduction jammers spawned a flotilla of false radar targets around the Cunningham's true position, blending them with the chaff clouds and flare clusters being scattered by the RBOC launchers.

The advanced-model Exocets responded in kind with counter-counter measures. Burning in at transonic velocity, a bare ten feet above the wave tops, their guidance packages cycled rapidly between active radar, passive radar homing, and infrared modes, cross-referencing the data inputs to try to penetrate the clutter and seek out the real target.

Despite their sophistication, two of the four missiles were overwhelmed in seconds, staggering away in cybernetic confusion. One of the remaining pair, by sheer chance, chose to fixate on the faint, true, ghost image of the Cunningham amid all of the ECM chaos. The last locked on the thermal flare of sunlight reflecting off the Duke's bridge windscreen. Stubbornly, they continued to close the range.

Dix Beltrain watched the sparks of light crawling across his tactical display. They looked just like the symbols he had battle managed in a thousand combat simulations. There was a difference, though. These were no computer-generated simulacra. These were the actual weapons boring in to kill his ship and his shipmates… to kill him. He tried to control the tremor of his fingers as he dialed up the second ESSM flight.

He drew the date wand and prepared to designate the next set of targets. He found his eyes being drawn back to the track of the Exocets, now only inches away from the Cunningham's position hack. Abruptly, he stabbed downward with the glowing tip of the wand, encapsulating the incoming missiles in targeting boxes. He slapped the firing keys again, not recognizing until a heartbeat later the catastrophic error he had committed.

A second flight of Enhanced Sea Sparrows blazed out of their launch cell. However, before these rounds had even reached the peak of their booster climb, the Exocets were cutting underneath the interceptor missiles. The ESSMs pitched over at an ever-increasing angle, vainly attempting to acquire their targets. They failed, and the salvo plunged, wasted, into the sea.

The secondary lines of defense engaged. The RBOC launchers shifted from decoy to concealment mode, trying to bury the ship in the heart of a concealing chaff cloud. Fore and aft, the two Oto Melara "Super Rapid" mounts opened fire, spewing out their streams of 76mm shells at a rate of a round per second, seeking to blanket the incoming Exocets with proximity-fused airbursts.

Amidships, atop the superstructure, the portside Phalanx Close-in Weapons System came on-line. An advanced Mark II model of the original General Dynamics "Sea Whizz," the single Vulcan 20mm Galling gun of the first-generation weapon had been replaced by a battery of four 25mm rotary-breech cannon and augmented with quad clusters of RAM light surface-to-air missiles mounted on either flank of the squat, stealth-sheathed turret. A fully autonomous robotic system, it required no human input beyond its activation.

Now, as it perceived the incoming threats with its millimeter-wave radar and infrared trackers, its artificial-intelligence circuits coldly assessed the possibilities. Opting for missile engagement, it salvoed four RAMs at the closest Exocet.

Two miles out, the heat-seeker rounds bracketed and killed their target, whipsawing the lead AM-44 with a shotgun blast of fragmentation and tumbling it into the sea in a flurry of spray.

The Phalanx mount was incapable of feeling relief or exaltation over its victory. It merely began hunting for the next foe, its multiple barrels indexing jerkily as it sought for a favorable firing solution.

In the Cunningham's Combat Information Center, there was nothing left to be done. The Duke was operating in full Armageddon mode now, more and more systems cycling over to full automatic as the light-speed war of computer, sensor, and jammer was waged. This was a battle she must fight out alone; the men and women who crewed her could only come along for the ride.

"… seven… six… five… Jesus! It's gonna hit!"

Topside, the Phalanx fired with a droning roar like a titanic chain saw, its quad gun muzzles blurring with recoil, a hundred rounds being expended before the first empty shell casing could fall to the deck.

A single slug caught the Exocet head-on. The tungsten penetrator core of the hypervelocity round had been intended to pierce the armor of a main battle tank. It simply ignored the far flimsier structure of the antiship missile, punching cleanly through the guidance package and the warhead to fracture the casing of the solid-fuel rocket motor.

The last Exocet exploded a meager hundred yards off the Cunningham's portside flank, sending a long horizontal plume of scarlet and silver flame licking out toward the destroyer.

Amanda felt a series of faint thuds ripple through her ship's structure.

"We've got dropouts on the planar arrays, portside forward," the Aegis operator called out. "I think we have shrapnel damage."

"The bridge has been hit," a second voice chimed in from the battle-damage stations. "Bridge requesting corps-men and damage-control parties. Repair Four responding." No time to worry about it now. The mast cameras were panning aft to pick up the next attack wave.

The first flight of Rafale E's were coming in on the stern, anti-IR flares glowing in their wake like golden snowflakes. Already in too close for area defense systems, point defenses were shifting fire to engage the new threat. The aft turret was dappling the sky around the Argentine jets with shell bursts, and the smoke trails of RAM rounds reached out toward them.

Suddenly, a dazzling point of blue-green light appeared beneath the belly of the element leader. A warning horn blared from the CIC overhead.

"Laser lock!"

Amanda didn't need to look at the exterior monitors to know what the intent of their attackers was. Somewhere on the weather decks of the Duke, a small dot of brilliant illumination was dancing. The ordnance-carrying aircraft of the attacking flight would now execute a sharp half-loop at a range of two or three miles, pitching a stick of heavy laser-guided bombs at the warship in a high parabolic trajectory. As the bombs came over the peak of their arc, their sensors would pick up the laser energy being reflected off the target by the illuminator aircraft. They would home in on it unerringly.

The drop aircraft was already pulling up into its release maneuver.

"Helm! Crash turn! Hard right rudder!" Amanda snapped. "RBOCs, fire full concealment pattern!"

The sailor at the helm station spun her controller fully around against the safety stop, then forced it the extra click more to engage the crash-turn sequencer.

The Duke moaned throughout her framing as her rudder swung hard over and the propeller blades of the starboard propulsor pod feathered automatically. Despite the best efforts of her stabilizers, her deck started to tilt outboard as she drove into the tightest of minimum-radius turns. Her own wake overtook her, bursting over the well deck and rolling up her right flank in a knot of green water and foam.

As she pivoted around, her chaff launchers began to ripple fire again. The grenades, bursting at close range all across the destroyer's forward arc, produced not only metal foil but thick, white streamers of multispectral chemical smoke. The Cunningham plunged headlong into an artificial fog bank of her own creation.

The bawling of the warning horn wavered and fell silent. A few moments later, a double thunderclap sounded from beyond the bulkheads and the Duke shuddered heavily. Their guidance lock lost, the bombs had fallen off target into her wake, kicking up mast-high domes of seething water.

Someone produced a relieved whoop of victory.

"Steady down!" Amanda snapped. "We aren't out of this yet! Dix, where's that last flight?"

"Target Foxtrot coming in on the port side, bearing two-sixty degrees relative. Range, ten thousand yards and closing. Point defenses are engaging!"

"Helm, turn into him. Hard left rudder!"

The Cunningham burst out of her smoke screen, trailing rags of vapor from her superstructure. The MMS cameras picked up the last pair of French-built deltas almost at once as they slashed in from the east, going for the destroyer's flank.

As the ship clawed around to face her new attackers, Amanda realized that something was wrong. The bow Oto Melara, a key facet of their forward arc defenses, was still silent. A fast glance down at her weapons-status telepanel showed that the gun had been toggled out of the Aegis defense system's computer loop to manual control.

"Number-one mount! What the hell are you playing at?" Beltrain roared from the Tac Ops console.

Across the compartment, the young gunner's mate manning the bow turret control station was leaning forward over his console, intently reconfiguring the system settings.

The laser lock warning horn blared again as the Argentine element leader illuminated his target. His wingman started to pull up into his toss-bombing run…

The bow turret crashed out a single round and the lead Rafale dissolved into a smear of flame.

Dumbfounded, the CIC crew watched the fragments of burning wreckage tumble into the sea. The sole remaining strike pilot was also stunned and demoralized. Releasing his ordnance in a wild patch that put the bombs into the sea a comfortable half-mile from the Cunningham, he broke hard around and fled.

"All surviving Argentine aircraft are disengaging and withdrawing," Beltrain reported. "Reentering area defense engagement zone. Designating ESSM flights-"

"Negative. Check fire, all systems," Amanda cut in. "Save our rounds for the ones coming at us."

Swiftly, Amanda called up the damage-control report on her personal repeaters: Light splinter damage to superstructure. Efficiency of the forward SPY-2A arrays down to 94 percent. Diagnostics indicating damage to bridge systems.

"Damage control, any word on casualties yet?"

"None reported except for the bridge area, ma'am," the DC officer called in from his station. "Corpsmen have been called on-site. That's the last word we've had."

She scanned the threat boards. For the moment they were clear except for the retreating blips of the Argentine air strike. There was no sign of an immediate follow-up.

"Helm, bring her around to a heading of one seven oh degrees. All engines ahead standard."

"Aye, aye, ma'am. Steering one seven oh degrees. All engines ahead standard."

"Communications, get this off to CINCLANT, flash priority: 'USS Cunningham has been attacked by aircraft positively identified as belonging to the Argentine armed forces. Two attacking aircraft downed. Ship has taken light damage but remains fully operational. Until otherwise advised we are acting under the assumption that a state of armed conflict exists between the United States and Argentina.'

"Then prep a data dump from the Aegis memory system covering the attack. They'll be wanting that."

She turned back to her tactical officer. "Dix, I'm turning the con over to you while I go topside and check out how badly we're hit. Keep us on this heading until we get back under the slop and keep your eyes open for another strike package. Oh, and find out what was going on with that forward gun. Any questions?"

The younger officer took an ineffective swipe at the sweat accumulating on his forehead. "Captain, I need to tell you about something that happened during the attack…."

"I know, Dix. You're okay. We'll talk about it later."

The damage was less than it might have been, and far less than she had visualized. The bridge had been spattered with a bucketful of high-velocity metal fragments from the exploding Exocet. The heavy composite materials of the superstructure had absorbed most of them. A couple of the smaller chunks were still embedded in the bridge windscreen, each surrounded by a gray, bubbly patch of heat-marred acrylic. The spray door leading out to the portside bridge wing had been blown inward, spraying the interior of the wheelhouse with flying shards of thermoplastic. Half a dozen flatscreens had been smashed and the deck was crunchy with bits of safety glass. The control consoles themselves appeared to be more or less intact, barring a couple of impressive shrapnel scores. Less could be said for some of the personnel who had been manning them.

The first thing Amanda saw when she entered the bridge was her exec holding a blood-soaked first-aid dressing to the side of his face as he leaned weakly against the chart table.

"Ken, are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm just cut up a little."

"Let me have a look."

"Honestly, Captain. I'm all right."

"Damn it, Ken, Misa will give me hell if I bring you back any less pretty than you were. Now, let me have a look!"

Amanda eased back the dressing and winced inwardly at what she found. "You're going to start a fine collection of stitches there. What about the rest of the bridge crew?"

"Minor stuff except for the helmsman. Robinson's working on him now." Hiro painfully nodded toward the farside of the bridge where a cluster of people were hunkered down around a motionless form.

Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Bonnie Robinson was a quiet and rather plain black woman from Detroit, Michigan. Now, though, as she worked over her wounded shipmate, her intensity and concentration gave her a kind of knife-edge beauty that onlookers would recognize only after the fact.

The subject of her attention had already been eased into a basket stretcher, his blue uniform coveralls laid open and a mass of blood-soaked gauze packing taped down across his chest. His eyes were closed and he was still except for his labored breathing. A cannula fed oxygen into his nostrils and an IV bag was tucked under his shoulder, its contents being pressured into his arm by his own weight.

Amanda recognized him as she knelt down by his side. Petty Officer 2nd Something-or-other Erikson, twenty years old, from some little place in South Dakota. He had come aboard at Pearl just prior to this cruise. As usual, she had talked with him a bit when he had signed on, and probably hadn't exchanged a dozen words with him since. He had seemed to be a good kid with a good record.

"What have you got?" she asked.

"I'm not sure yet," the Corpsman replied curtly. When she had her hands on a serious patient, Robinson tended to let all thoughts about military formality slip from her mind. Her captain understood and made no comment.

"He was unconscious when we got here and he's shocky as all hell. There's penetrating chest trauma, and I think there's some shrapnel in there. There's no sign of hemorrhaging from the lungs, but I'll bet we've got some going on in the chest cavity. As soon as he's stable enough for it, we'll hump him down to sick bay and I'll get some X-rays. We'll know more then."

Amanda held back all of the trite little phrases like "Do the best you can" and "Keep me informed." She simply gave an acknowledging nod and got to her feet.

She looked down into the young seaman's pale face for a moment more and a strange chill rippled through her. She stepped back abruptly and took a deep and deliberate breath. She had seen wounded before, as well as the dying and the dead. There was no sense in its getting to her now.

She went back to the bridge captain's chair and jacked her headset directly into the MC-1 circuit.

"All hands, this is the Captain. Here's the situation. We have been attacked without provocation by aircraft of the Argentine Air Force and Navy. We have sustained minor damage and a couple of our people have been wounded. Two of our attackers, one-third of the enemy strike force, have been destroyed. For our first action, we have acquitted ourselves well.

"At this time, we do not know what triggered this attack or what the current political situation is between the United States and Argentina. You will be informed as soon as we learn anything further. Until then, we must assume that we are at war and we must act accordingly on that assumption. From here on out, ladies and gentlemen, it's the real thing."