Choosers of the Slain

35

Amanda stirred restlessly in the lounge chair. Looking out into the darkened and deserted wardroom, she wearily recalled a rather pompous lecture she had sat through back at the Academy. It had concerned an officer's need to draw up a "sleep schedule" that would guarantee them an adequate amount of rest under all circumstances.

It was a reasonable concept. However, the lecturer never quite got around to explaining how you were supposed to keep to this schedule during a developing tactical situation. Or how you were supposed to shut your mind off during those scraps of downtime that you might find.

Recurling herself more tightly in the lounger, she suppressed a shiver. She couldn't seem to shake the aftereffects of her brush with hypothermia, and no place seemed warm. Finally her eyes grew heavy, and she began to close out the world.

"Captain to the Combat Information Center, please."

She was through the hatchway and halfway down the ladder to the CIC before she was fully awake again.

Christine Rendino and the current OOD, Frank McKelsie, were waiting for her by the center consoles. They both looked about as burned out as she probably did, and they also looked worried. Amanda shot a glance past them to the tactical displays.

Some of the secondary monitors had been dialed to exterior view on low-light television and infrared. It was still dark out there, the clock readout indicating that they had some ninety minutes to go before first light. There was nothing to be seen but rolling, oily-backed swells and a low, broken overcast. They were still at full EMCON and the primary Aegis systems were down, the Alpha Screen currently showing a computer-generated signal intelligence display.

A flickering red air-target hack showed the position of a possible hostile some eighty miles to the northeast. Four additional air targets, each surrounded by a pinkish circle indicating an indefinite position fix on the contact, appeared to be running in line abreast ahead of it.

"What do we have, Mr. McKelsie?"

"We're not sure, Captain. We think the Argys might be cooking up something new."

"Specifics."

"Rendino's got the dope. Her gang's putting most of it together."

"We've got multiple aircraft contacts on the Sigint monitors and they are acting in a totally wacko manner." Christine took over, nodding toward the big screen. "Target Alpha came over our horizon about fifteen minutes ago. He's at twenty-five thousand feet, cruising at three hundred knots. However, he's weaving so his actual speed-overground is about one hundred and seventy. He's conducting a continuous air search with a fairly low-powered multi-mode radar. I'm pretty sure he's one of those converted 737s the Argentines use as a kind of half-assed AW ACS."

"Yeah," McKelsie added, "nothing we have to worry about at this range."

"The thing is," the intel continued, "that bird seems to be acting as a command-and-control node for some other kind of setup. According to my people over in Raven's Roost, he's got data downlinks going with at least four other systems in that immediate area. We're also getting a lot of voice traffic, mostly station-keeping stuff and intermittent UAF reflections off him from multiple sources below our horizon. I think probably they're Atlantique ANGs."

"It looks like they might be running a very tight antisubmarine sweep," Amanda commented. "Maybe they think we have underwater reinforcements."

"It looks like it, but I don't think it is. The leakage we've been able to read off their data-link sidelobe doesn't look like any sonar sweep I've ever seen. Matter of fact, it doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before, period."

"Yeah, Captain," McKelsie added. "Rendino and I are both tight on this. The Argys have something new going and they're going to hit us with it."

Interesting, Amanda thought, put a load on these two and they dropped their bristling antagonism for each other and became a pretty good team.

"Okay, Mr. McKelsie. What are you doing about it?"

"The Argys are sweeping from east to west, so I figured our best bet was to get out of their immediate line of advance. I've brought the ship around to a hundred eighty degrees true and increased speed to twenty-five knots to open the range. I haven't gone to full general quarters, but helm control has been shifted to CIC and both the bridge and CIC duty watches have been put on alert. Maintaining full EMCON and full stealth and all passive sensors are up full."

"Very good, Mr. McKelsie. I have the con," Amanda replied, dropping into her command chair. "How soon before we know anything more?"

"Pretty quick, I'd guess. Just as soon as those low-riders come over our horizon."

They waited in the blue-lit semidarkness. The Combat Information Center was warm and quiet, the low voices of the systems operators almost soothing. Amanda found her head sinking back against the padded seat rest. Paradoxically, now the urge to slip back into sleep was overwhelming.

No! She snapped her eyes open and gave her head an angry shake. These were the last hours before dawn. The hours when the body's resources were at their lowest ebb. Traditionally, the hours when a military unit was at its most vulnerable to surprise attack. She would not yield to her traitorous biological rhythm now.

Abruptly, the graphics on the Large Screen Display altered. The four possible target hacks of the hypothetical aircraft were replaced by the sharp, red, vee symbols of hostile air targets, each with a yellow conical scan pattern radiating ahead of it.

The patterns overlapped and the Cunningham's position point marker was engulfed by the southern edge of the sweep. Christine and McKelsie stiffened and each peeled off toward their respective subsystems bays.

"Confirm multiple radar-emission sources," Christine called out a moment later. "Confirm aircraft type as Atlantique ANG Two. Confirm radar type as Ignasie B, surface-search mode, maximum output. Frequencies and scan rates appear to be synchronized. The range is closing!"

"Shit!" McKelsie snarled from his side of the compartment. "They're running a bistatic search on us!"

Amanda's jaw tightened. Stealth technology was built around the concept of reducing the target's radar image by either absorbing the incoming radar beam, or by widely and erratically dispersing it so that a clear return or "echo" was not reflected back to the receiver. Hence the Duke's coat of Wetball metallic-polymer paint and her sleekly angle-less design.

However, such a shield could potentially be broken by bistatic radar. Have several powerful radar systems sweep the same block of space while operating on the same frequency and at the same coordinated scan rate. Anything within that block of space would be hit simultaneously by several different beams, all converging at slightly different angles, producing a vastly larger number of fragmentary returns than would be produced by a single beam.

Have multiple radar receivers tuned to pick up these returns, again far more than could otherwise be detected by a single receiver. Data-link your output from all of the systems into a central point where a computer would analyze and reassemble these fragments like a cybernetic jigsaw puzzle until a true, composite image was produced. If your transmitters were powerful enough and your receivers were sensitive enough and your computer processors fast enough, you might just catch yourself a stealth.

"Mr. McKelsie, do they have a return off us yet?"

"Negative, we're still below the limits, but their signal strength is building rapidly."

"Can you phase us in to the wave clutter?"

"I can try, but this is the flattest sea state we've been in for days. I don't have a helluva lot to work with."

"Do what you can."

The Argentines must have had every hacker south of Venezuela working around the clock to cobble together the software for this. The question was what to do about it. Should they make a fight of it now, or should they try to huddle under the rags of their cloak of invisibility? Slowly and deliberately, Amanda tapped the nail of her right forefinger against the plastic arm of the command chair three times.

"Helm, all engines ahead slow. Make turns for five knots."

"Aye, aye, ma'am. Engines ahead slow. Making turns for five knots."

"Left standard rudder."

"Aye, aye. Steering left standard rudder."

Amanda lifted her voice slightly, letting it fill the CIC. "We're going to try and evade. Aegis operator, put a tactical overlay up on the helm's navigational monitor."

The Cunningham paid off in a wide turn to port, her wake fading as her speed bled away, her slowed propellers producing drag instead of thrust. Inboard, Amanda listened as the helmsman called off the bearing of the turn.

"Coming left to one hundred and ten degrees.. one hundred degrees… ninety degrees… eighty degrees—"

"Okay, helm," Amanda interrupted. "I want you to minimize our radar cross-section by holding us bow-on to those search planes. Aim us right at that nearest aircraft and turn with him as they sweep past. If you need more engine, just ring it up. You've got the ship."

"Aye, aye, Captain. Will do."

Reduce speed to reduce contrast and turn bow-on to the enemy to reduce aspect. There was nothing else to be done passively. Amanda caught the eye of the duty tactical officer. "If we have to go active, I want two LORAINs on the nearest ANG and two more on that command-and-control aircraft. Don't wait for a formal launch order. Salvo fire the second you get locks."

He nodded a silent reply. CIC discipline called for the maintenance of a low sound level, but it was going to extremes now. Voices were lowered to a whisper in the ancient, instinctive reaction to the presence of an enemy. Huddled in their blue-lit technocave, the men and women of the Cunningham waited out the passage of the wolf pack.

Amanda looked across to the stealth-systems bay. "How are we doing, McKelsie?" she inquired.

The countermeasures man didn't voice a reply, nor did he take his eyes from his telepanels. Instead he held out a hand, flat and palm down, and rocked it in an ominous so-so manner.

The point of closest approach would be fifteen miles.

Just for an instant, as the Duke's bow came around due north, one of the exterior cameras picked up the distant flicker of aircraft strobes wedged in between the sea and sky. Then they were gone, and on the tactical display the Cunningham passed out of the Argentines' scan zone.

"Enemy radars are no longer painting us, Captain," McKelsie reported.

"Confirm that. No variance in scan rate, course, or commo traffic. They are history and we are livin'!"

Christine's restrained scream broke the tension, and all hands in the CIC unclenched their muscles and grinned at the wonder of being alive.

"For Crissakes, Rendino. Grow up!" McKelsie growled, rubbing the back of his neck.

That was back to normal too.

"Okay, people," Amanda said. "We've foxed them for now, but they'll be back. Helm, very well done. Now bring her back around to three-forty degrees true and bring up all engines ahead standard. Make turns for twenty-five knots. I'm going to park us in the safest place I can think of at the moment-right in the middle of that patch of water they just swept.

"Mr. McKelsie, I'm keeping the con. You get to work with your people and start analyzing this new setup the Argentines have."

"Aye, aye."

"Chris, have intelligence section feed McKelsie's gang anything and everything you picked up on the systems they're using. O Group in one hour. I want a countertactic!"

Amanda rubbed her eyes and settled back into her command chair. Slipping a comb from her pocket, she began to order her tousled hair. "Oh, and by the way, everyone, good morning."