Operation Hail Storm

Sea of Japan ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus

The entire ship hummed.

To Kara, it sounded like a hundred electric shavers being run at the same time.

“What’s that sound?” she asked Hail.

“It’s the railgun being charged.”

Hail hesitated and then added, “To be more accurate, it’s the capacitors for the railgun that are being charged.”

That meant nothing to Kara. But she did understand that the ship’s big gun was being loaded and brought online. How it worked, she didn’t care.

Hail had brought up a map on his personal screen. A real-time plot of the jets showed they had just passed over Wonsan and were heading out to sea. He moved the image up to the big screen so the crew could see it as well. The good news was the F-35 had made it to sea without being cut off by the North Korean J-20s. The bad news was they were right on his tail.

Dallas Stone was still conferenced into the mission center speakers.

“Are the J-20s in range?” Hail asked.

Dallas responded “Yes they are and the railgun is at full capacity and ready to fire.”

“Do we have a smart projectile programmed to the J-20 profile?”

“It’s been programed and is ready to go.”

Hail thought that the smart projectiles should work. But other than testing the new depleted uranium projectiles on his own drones, they had never fired them at anything as fast as a Chengdu J-20. Unlike their dumb projectile brothers, the smart projectile had a computer that took over the guidance once the shell was within striking range. Fins on the nose and the tail of the heavy piece of metal would be deployed and manipulated by the computer to its final target. At these speeds, Hail was concerned that the projectile guidance software might get confused and take out the F-35 by mistake.

Hail held his arms up in the air and crossed his index fingers on both of his hands.

“Fire the railgun,” He told Dallas.

There was a deep concussive bang, followed by an abrupt change in the ship’s attitude as it leaned hard to port.

Kara felt like she was falling and grabbed for the first stationary thing near her, which was Hail’s neck. She half fell and swung around to the back side of Hail’s captain’s chair.

“You’re choking me,” Hail gurgled, as the ship rocked back over to its starboard side.

Kara got her feet back under her and stood, releasing Marshall Hail’s neck.

Hail placed a hand on his Adam’s Apple and gave it a soothing rub.

“Sorry,” Kara said. “Why didn’t you tell me that was going to happen?”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Hail croaked.

On the big screen, the plot of the projectile showed it moving toward the trio of jets that were headed in the direction of the Nucleus. But Hail knew that this animation would not provide them any significant information. It would simply show them if their bullet had made it within a mile of the group. The rest would be up to the guidance programming code that had been written by his smart guys in the IT lab.

There was nothing for any of them to do but watch and wait.

Dallas Stone’s voice came back over the speakers.

“Prince’s radar has detected a rocket fired from one of the J-20s.”

Hoping for the best and planning for the worst, Hail gave Stone the order.

“Recharge the railgun and get another guided projectile on the rack.”