With escalation would come retribution, though that would have to wait until the full assessment of what damage had been caused was complete. Regardless, Stevidian response to attack was prompt. Incredibly though, Stevidian and Imbrinium (Crown) ambassadors had been summoned by Morrdh and during the discussions there, the Crown had launched an attack.
There was little doubt it was in response to the Stevid destroying Crown submarines, despite the fact those submarines had violated Imperial waters. That was irrelevant now, the reckless escalation of hostilities by Imbrinium would be remembered regardless of the finial outcome of war. Seeing as discussions on neutrality and the Morridane position on allowing foreign military units in its territory was still under discussion, the Military Intelligence company in Morrdh continued working until it was order to prepare for redeployment. The company, together with SIGINT monitoring stations in Stevid, space and those on
Defiler command cruisers, saw a noticeable spike in encrypted transmissions in Imbrinium. Data streams and other encoded transmissions were again detected within the battle space and the ocean between the Holy Empire and the Crown. It was clear a major shift in tactics and strategy had come about. Despite this assumption, nothing was concrete as Imbrinium high-level transmission encryptions had not been broken and were unlikely to be broken – direct orders to troops/aircraft/ships would remain unknown to the Empire, but it was glaringly obvious that the rise in transmissions was probably the prelude to a large attack, be it en mass in one place or region wide.
The INT reports were acted on immediately and wartime readiness across the Stevidian military, both at home and abroad, shifted from Extended to Immediate. The three fortress cities Stevid Capita, Keele and Milton went into high alert state, the ring wall and subsequent weapon systems were activated, satellite airfields and defensive structures were also activated and placed on permanent standby. The city anti-ballistic missile systems point defence flak, laser and missile batteries were activated. Short of actually closing the corridors into the cities themselves, the cities were now in lock down. The major port facilities and military bases in the north were placed on maximum alert and local populations were told to expect an attack. The south experienced less of a jump in alert readiness but the industrial heartlands in the south and in the central wastelands were told to expect minor attacks. But the relative distance from Imbrinium made an attack there nearly impossible. The biggest scenes of mobilisation were in Liberated America and north Stevid – closest places to Imbrinium that belonged to the Empire. In particular airfields were placed on immediate action and readiness to move at moments notice. Pilots sat in their planes ready launch straight up the airfield the moment a non-friendly blip on the radar appeared or an Observation Corps member spotted or heard something he didn’t like.
HMS Leviathan
Inquisition Class Dreadnought
Flagship, 2nd Fleet, 3rd Battlefleet, 2nd Splinter Fleet
Seconded to Task Force 551 as Flagship – Swift Licentia As per Stevidian naval fleet construction, the main battle fleet was broken down into two splinter fleets comprised of between 2 and 5 taskforces. The 3rd Battlefleet had been dispatched north the previous year in defence of New Licentia as part of the Tehver Affair and had been stationed south west of Morrdh following a cooling of tensions. The fleet moved further southwest following rhetoric from both Imbrinium and the Empire and now the 2nd Splinter Fleet was positioned 300km further north of the 1st Splinter Fleet which was now steaming west to eliminate any and all Crown shipping detected. However the Crown had known the approximate positions of the fleet through satellite intelligence, despite the difficulties involved in finding ships at sea even with satellites, enough intel had come the Crown’s way to attack the fleet. Within the fleet were Dweller Class satellite destroyers; it was no secret that the Crown was spying from above, few satellites hung quite so obviously above the fleet in such a low orbit. There were dozens up there, all Crown, all staring down upon a small chunk of the region – the order was given to fire upon the satellites in orbit to prevent other naval assets at sea becoming quite so easily compromised. The Splinter Fleet had three ASAT cruisers and all chose their independent targets, over the course of 30 minutes, hundreds of missiles had been launched, the missiles included those that were kinetic strike, proximity and also ball bearing dispensers. Actual kills were not the objective, even if slightly damaged, a satellite was next to useless and would require replacement. Fragmentation in zero gravity would be hurling at thousands of metres per second, enough to put a satellite out of action indefinitely.
HMS Leviathan was the 3rd Battlefleet’s flagship of the 2nd Splinter Fleet. She was part of a decentralised command structure within the Splinter Fleet’s five task forces. Each task force maintained a level of independence but overall command resided with the Splinter Fleet Flagship. Admiral Tinkner was the flag officer aboard the dreadnought. A veteran of the last regional war and experienced in operations against Kanami in both Hanover Wars, he knew how to fight large naval engagements. But his skills would be soon put to the test.
The carrier groups within the Splinter Fleet had continuous CAP missions but also had carrier based AWACS operating at the limit of their range, further boosting radar and detection coverage. Support from RAF JSTAR and AWACS also contributed to early detection ranges. It was this increased detection range that alerted Admiral Tinker to the oncoming attacks. Staggered waves of missiles were approaching the fleet at high speed and extreme range – the naval bombers would not be far behind and neither would their escort. Being reasonably close to Crown territory allowed for a large escort presence too.
“Sound the general alarm.” He said calmly as his radar operator confirmed the attack and the bearing to the fleet. The operations room was bathed in red lighting and was only pierced by the steel blue LCD screens of the computer consoles. Tinker grabbed the intercom speaker that had immediate links to all ships in the fleet.
“It is now confirmed the fleet is under missile attack. We believe the missiles to be live and from inbound Imbrinium aircraft. All hands to action stations, the fleet is now at condition red. All hands to action stations.”Less than a minute passed and signals from all ships in the splinter fleet acknowledged they were at condition red.
“Officer of the watch!” Tinker started, his training and experience starting to kick in. An aging commodore and a youngish looking captain greeted him.
“The initial AAW picket force ring is about 20 km out from the main task forces. The missiles, and potentially the aircraft, are coming from north by north west. I want two Lemartes Class destroyers and a Reef Class frigate to break and move north-by-north west and engage the missiles and aircraft as soon as possible; eliminating what they can before the missiles reach the main force. If the enemy have any sense they will try and destroy the carriers – their survivability is paramount.
A Winchester light cruiser will reinforce the picket ring – the fleet will need additional CELLDAR transmitters closer to where the action will first happen. We need to keep the picture detailed and up-to-date.If we keep the information of the battle space concurrent and make sure we adapt to it, we’ll win this.”There were nods of approval from both officers; to one side a scribe was transmitting the orders over coded bandwidth to ships and units that the orders applied to. This also included messages to the cloud computing data network, otherwise known as FORCEnet, keeping the entire navy (and by extension the military) up to date with the current happenings.
“Those three ships will have air support from HMS Zaneta (Sanctus Mare super carrier). All carrier air wings are to prepare for launch. Seventy aircraft must remain close to the fleet for continued close support. A further sixty are to engage the missiles and break up the attack. Those aircraft, depending on the over all destruction of missiles, are to probe forward and attack the bombers and escorting fighters. Twenty fighters are to stagger their attack and formation over several kilometres and flank west. The small numbers and flights of about five aircraft or less may not be noticed as soon as the main bulk force of our fighters approaching head on. It keeps them on their toes.”Both nations had enough intelligence on one another to know that military capabilities of each other. It was no secret that Imbrinium would probably use Hellion anti-ship cruise missiles. Probably one of the most potent and deadly cruise missiles on the market, it was expensive but had high-survivability rates and high kill ratios once actually in the terminal phase. It’s sophisticated AI complicated matters but could ultimately be used as a way of distracting the missiles further. As a cruise missile is limited in size and has to accommodate much in just over 5m of space. The goal of the initial Stevidian counter attack was to get the missiles to expend much of their counter measures before meeting the main Stevidian naval force. Anti-air pressure from
Lemartes Class destroyers (reputed to be the one of the best anti-air destroyers in the world) coupled with the AAW capabilities of the
Reef Class (both classes sported PAAMS multi-function tracking and engaging air defence systems), together with a massed attack from
XF-25c/d carrier based Hawker air superiority fighters.
The missiles had been detected 300km by SAMPSON and CELLDAR radars, but confirmation had only been ascertained about five minutes later. The fleet had about 20 minutes to react and would do so since most of the planes were up in the air already. The point of contact would be about 15km out from the picket line – some 40 kilometres away from the main force. With initial action forcing the ‘clever’ missiles to evade attack and increase their survivability, the speed of the missiles would reduce, their counter measures would be expended (only on some however) and overall flight time would increase. Battle space control allowed quick detection of the missiles although pin pointing the aircraft was proving more difficult but approximate locations were given to the 20 Hawkers flanking west.
In total 38 fighters were in the air to engage the missiles head on before moving to attack the aircraft. 15 remained in the air over the fleet while a further 15 remained on the carriers ready to launch within 5 minutes of hellions breaking through the counter attack force and the picket line. 20 fighters were flanking west while 20 remained on standby in the air inbound from the other Splinter fleet to react in case additional support was needed.
Just as planned, the numerous dots on the
Leviathan’s radar met 40km away from the main force. Hellion missile terminal velocity was around 546mph – just over two and a half minutes’ flight time. This would be extended however with the ensuing action. With CELLDAR and SAMPSON working in tandem and the FORCEnet removing irrelevant and redundant data, the enemy hellions were detected at some 100km away. Aster-30 missiles from the three ships dispatched to engage the missiles ahead of the picket line were launched in staggered stages to forces the hellions to continually evade. The fuse was fragmentation did not require a kinetic strike to kill or damage. Damaging would be sufficient to kill missiles later on in the engagement; the Asters travelled in excess of Mach 4 and were more than fast enough to meet the enemy missiles and reengage as necessary covering the distance in less than 30 seconds. Both the Lemartes Classes and the Reef Class were both armed with the latest in anti-air laser technology but also with the ILMS cannons. ILMS was conventional in the sense it was similar to Goalkeeper and Phalanx systems but its AI and computer interface was also one of the best in the world. It allowed human interaction to make sense of sensor confusion and used computer processors to calculate where to shoot based on the weather, atmospherics, speed, distance and potential manoeuvrability of the target – in this case the Hellion’s stats were known throughout the world.
The lasers fired first; charged blue energy firing with extreme accuracy would incapacitate some missiles before engagement with the Asters. The radar screens on all the ships showed the beauty of the Hellion’s AI as the missiles danced around avoiding both missile and laser, some continued on as if nothing was happening, but they would meet another staggered launch of Asters, the closer they came they were met with the short ranged Aster-15s before flying over the ships in a hail of artillery fire from the ILMS cannons and main guns. The air was peppered with explosions and flares and the hellions were defeated, or as the evaded and made their way forward towards the picket line and main fleet. The gravitas of the situation became apparent to the AI and the computer network Imbrinium used. The engagement was spread over a small 10km area and the missiles easily registered the three naval culprits and several missiles AI adjudged to engage the ships. Stevidian FORCEnet relayed this threat to the ILMS and missiles that now begun to defend the ships rather than to directly attack missiles. Within minutes, a Lemartes Class was crippled and listing, the Reef Class frigate was sinking and the other Lemartes was burning almost out of control but was still able to fire her point defence cannons.
In the air, the 38 Hawkers continued to harass the Hellion and managed to deplete their numbers further before heading north in intercept the enemy aircraft flights.
The picket line in the north only had four vessels that encountered Hellions that had now dispersed over a very wide angle of attack. The numbers were further cut down using the same tactics of before; some of these vessels had launched Aster-30 missiles in the initial engagement, now the whole fleet was involved. The hellions were now beginning to choose their targets but not entirely through choice. The AI would realise survivability was be getting lower against a coordinated air defence like this and was now punishing Stevidian ships for fighting too hard. Minus the ships already attacked, several escorts and four cruisers were destroyed. The 15 aircraft on carriers launched to support the other 15 in the air and began to harass the missiles that were now in the terminal stage and beginning to ignore most threats. To that end Hellion kills went up but so did shipping losses. An
Emperor Class battleship was struck and damaged, as two other cruisers. Four more escorts were destroyed along with a Dweller ASAT cruiser. Among the more high profile losses, an Audacious light fleet carrier was damaged and was listing to port, though not sinking; a
Hanover Class EW cruiser was destroyed but require nearly ten strikes before she exploded in a huge spectacle of destruction. The flagship was hit as well but the jamming meant the missile struck the superstructure and the armour meant the damage was only superficial. The smash damage meant several machine guns and five ILMS cannons refused to fire- the shock waves meant that the fire control system was scrambled for several minutes so targets for the ILMS were input manually for the stand alone computers to track until full fire control was restored. The biggest loss was the
HMS Arturus, a
Crusader Class battle cruiser. She suffered a similar fate to the EW cruiser and took twenty protracted hellion strikes before she succumbed to damage and blew her magazines killing 900 of her 1,140 crew.
Post attack procedures had been rehearsed since leaving berthing in Morrdh and so recovery of personnel and equipment was efficient and professional. The picket line was established and focus and air but also submarine attack resumed to ‘pre-action stations’ levels. In total 13 ships had been destroyed with around 7 crippled and declared ‘out of action’. While most of the losses had been escort vessels like Reef and Starling Class frigates, a handful of treasured Lemartes Class destroyers had been crippled with one destroyed. The psychological effects of losing the
HMS Arturus could not be judged at this stage but the spectacles seen by crews with the destruction of EW cruiser
HMS Equivocate and battle cruiser
HMS Arturus would scar the memories of the sailors that day.
The Splinter Fleet was crippled and its AA defence compromised and lacking escorts and would require full rotation with ships from the other Splinter Fleet and support from stand alone task forces further south to boost numbers. The other fleet moved north in support of the stricken fleet while a single task force broke away to continue surface and submarine naval interdiction.
As planned, the planes involved in the initial attack did not expend all their missiles and staggered themselves into three small waves as they moved to intercept the enemy bombers. The 20 reserve planes from the other splinter fleet would provide cover for the fleet as the counter-attack commenced.
* * *
The main Stevidian response would come from elsewhere. The lack of Stevidian satellites in the correct position meant that though a few losses had been sustained, satellite coverage had not yet been compromised – besides Stevidian allied satellites through the Delian League would be used if all else failed. Satellites that had been in the correct position had not been focusing on enemy ship or air movements (these could be figured out conventionally in time), they had been focusing on enemy ground installations.
These images and grid references were transmitted over several hours using heavily encrypted burst transmissions to prevent detection or arousing suspicion. The recipients were the twenty or so submarines now close to shores of Imbrinium. Silently they had sat for days, all twenty dotted around the entire coastline many hundreds of miles apart from one another and at different depths. All oblivious to the locations of each other. All with the set targets and missions – but all 20 waiting for the small burst transmission of just a handful of bytes of data. So small it wouldn’t be noticed, and so complexly encrypted it was pointless deciphering; and even if it were it would read similar to:
- Code: Select all
*Cruz* *n-nuk* G/R 9733 x 2771 Ex G/R (9733) 1332 x (2771) 7726 – God Save the King, God Save the Empire.
Cruise missiles only, no nukes and a Stevidian Military eight-figure GPS grid reference with an addition fine grain grid reference for accurate targeting of up to 10 metres.
The twenty submarines were given their targets – some would share as only five had been pinpointed for immediate attack and destruction.
The high-priority targets were two rocket launch pads and the accompanying space centres that had been identified in the past through media, news intelligence and now satellite imagery of launching satellites potentially for military use and communicating with them.
Two military air force bases that were observed to have high concentration of ‘golf balls’ and a network of dishes believed to be centres for controlling and communicating with satellites, military units, and the transfer of data to Crown units throughout the world. Of course it was hard to prove but the two bases may have been engaged in SIGINT and ELINT operations that have the ability to intercept conventional cellular tele-communications and/or intercepting tele-communication satellites.
The final target was a satellite-tracking centre. Immaterial if it was civilian or not, the hardware was obvious as the amount of dishes pointing up at the sky was plain to see and it was logical to assume the military had a stake in the installation or better yet to assume it was indeed military. Lightweight military vehicles could be seen in the imagery but it could not be confirmed if the site was 100% military. Enough evidence was there to justify a strike believing it to be a genuine military target.
The attacks would occur at the dead of night and the submarines were charged with the destruction of these sites with AGM-129 stealth cruise missiles and the domestically produced AGM-715c Eliminator stealth cruise missiles. Surprise would be the advantage here and the cruise missiles would use the terrain to their advantage to avoid radar as well as surprise. Imbrinium had a formidable military but the Kingdom was not a militarised nation, an attack from missiles from all directions would confuse most layered anti-air defence assuming the Crown had one at all for combatting terrain hugging missiles. The submarines would then retreat slowly and quietly to predetermined depths and coordinates to avoid detection as best they could. A communication and camera tethers were retracted and nothing was left behind betraying the whereabouts of the subs - they would all be blissfully unaware if the missile strikes were successful or not...