"I can't believe this," Halabi said. "What a bloody dog's breakfast."
She was strapped into her command chair. Indeed, everyone in the stealth cruiser's CIC was secured at their stations against the violent, high-speed course changes with which the Trident's Combat Intelligence guided them through the battle for the English Channel.
The main display teemed with thousands of contacts, friendly and hostile. The quantum processors and software of the Trident's Nemesis Battlespace Management System was busy collecting, analyzing, and disseminating terabytes of data every second. Posh broke down the attack into manageable chunks of information not just for the thirty-five dedicated sysops on board the Trident, but also for hundreds of newly trained shore-based officers who were laser-linked to the ship via the drones, which floated safely at the edge of the stratosphere.
As they watched, a wall of blue triangles moved across the computer-generated map of Suffolk toward the main German lodgment. Four larger, slower icons trailed behind them.
"Are those the Specter variants, Mr. Howard?"
"Aye, ma'am. But they call them Cyclones here."
Halabi nodded. Two of her engineers from the ship's Air Division had worked as advisers on the project, the fitting out of four Douglas Dakotas as gunships with electric miniguns firing out of two rear windows and the side cargo door. Each gun had been hand-tooled at a small factory in Scotland, and all used components stripped from various ships of the Multinational Force. Like their "forebear," the AC 47 gunship of the Vietnam War era, the Cyclones carried more than twenty-four thousand rounds of ammunition, and could plow up an area the size of a football field in a few seconds.
Halabi keyed in a request for a live feed from the Big Eye, with a footprint over the area.
Before she had a chance to take advantage of the feed, however, her weapons sysop called out. "Coming into range for launch on the Tirpitz group, ma'am."
She didn't need to request vision of the German battleship and its escorts, forging into the Channel. One panel of the main display had been devoted to their primary target all along. She heard the jackhammer of the Trident's Metal Storm pods as they lashed out at an air threat that had broken through the protective screen of 303 Squadron. A quick check revealed that they were down to 4.5 percent of their war stocks.
It was getting very tight.
"Targets designated, Captain."
Halabi scanned the main display, looking for the main body of the British Home Fleet that was moving down from the north to engage Admiral Raeder.
"Launch," she ordered.
She heard the ignition of the missiles in their silos, but could feel nothing because of the ship's extreme speed and the violence of the maneuvers the CI was using to protect them.
Deck-cams showed the last of her combat maces lifting away on white exhaust plumes. As soon as they cleared the tubes, the CI threw the ship into a tight turn, the Metal Storm pods drumming away again. Halabi checked the threat boards: 163 German aircraft were attempting to sink her, although it looked like some of them had broken off in a hopeless attempt to intercept the sunburn missiles that were now accelerating away to the east.
Her second defensive sysop, Lieutenant Anne Davis, reported that the laser packs were now "nonfunctional."
"Thank you, Ms. Davis. Comms, how are Three-oh-three doing?"
"Down to sixty percent strength, ma'am. RCAF Four-oh-one and Two Squadrons are set to arrive in three minutes."
Metal Storm roared out again, reducing its stocks to 4.3 percent.
Halabi was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable. Her last offensive weapons were speeding away at Mach 6. Her ability to defend the ship and its crew was degrading with every minute that passed.
A sudden lurch to starboard nearly wrenched her shoulder out.
"Sorry, ma'am," said her countermeasures chief, Lieutenant David Loomes. "Posh detected a torpedo launch. Dolphins away."
Down beneath the waterline on the port-side hull, bay doors slid open and two black lozenges spat out into the foam skirt that surrounded the ship when the Super-Cavitating System was engaged. Seeker heads powered up, aqua-jets engaged, the Tenix-ADI Dolphin's own SCS came online, and the weapons shot away from the Trident at a speed of 280 knots.
Twenty-three seconds later, there came a dull thud from the speaker system at the subsurface threats station as the first Dolphin intercepted the U-boat that had fired on them. With a final burst of acceleration, the superhard, nonexplosive warhead simply punched through the thin skin of the submarine, exiting the hull on the other side, leaving two gaping holes.
The sound of the torpedo intercept didn't register against the incredible amount of background noise, but the Nemesis arrays recorded a kill and then reported that both Dolphins were seeking new targets.
"Thank you, Mr. Loomes," said Halabi.
Her six ship-killers, the last of her missiles, were tracking past Calais, ripping along forty meters off the deck, through the obstacle course of ships and even the occasional slow, low flying plane. Halabi's eye was drawn back to the main display for a moment, where the Cyclone gunships had begun their run.