| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <Shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Fighting Colours |
| Date: | Thu, 28 Jan 1999 23:13:49 +0000 |
>>>>>[Seventh. Lucky seven? In any case, this is where it became
apparent just how bad the situation was.
+++++begin video
The warship is dying.
Like a mortally wounded horse, still loyally straining to carry its
rider onwards, HMS _Rorke's Drift_ thrashes through the rising seas.
Though she's still fighting through the waves at over twenty knots, you
feel and see how every revolution of her twin screws, every sluggish
roll, brings her nearer to death.
Her fin-stabilisers wrecked, each roll seems to take her further over to
the right, each lurching recovery slower: her list is worsening despite
her trimaran hull, and as she takes water astern, she slams into each
wave rather than knifing through it: great sheets of green water wash
over the bow and around A Turret every few seconds. Behind her, she
still trails thick black smoke, and fuel oil leaves a scar on the ocean
surface from her leaking tanks.
Quinn, pacing the battle-scarred bridge, gnaws a fingernail: deep in
thought, she only notices CPO Mason's presence when he clears his
throat.
"Chief?"
"Mr McTaggart says the flooding's getting worse, and the patches are
leaking like sieves. The pumps can't keep up, not in this weather and at
this speed, sir."
"How long until she founders?"
"Six, maybe eight hours, if the weather doesn't get any worse and you
keep her below ten knots. At this speed... half that at most, he says,
and if we speed up at all we'll rip the patches clean off and she'll go
under in less than an hour." the gruff CPO reports without apparent
emotion.
"Thank you, Chief. Pass my compliments to Mr MacTaggart on his good
work. Weapons state?"
"We've got the aft Sea Hawk tracker on line and fifteen missiles we
think will launch, and the PDL's working. A Turret is functional, plenty
of ammo. Port blatgun's still usable, starboard's wrecked. The Sea
Streak stopped a couple of shells, it's U/S. MTLS is fine, all tubes
loaded with Mantas. No serviceable Sea Sharks left." the petty officer
relates. The ship has less than half its armament functional, then.
"Sensors?"
"We're in EMCON Alpha. The 1204 and 1012 are in standby, the 1220 has
had it. The bow sonar's useless, we're slamming so hard we may lose the
dome, but the tail's streamed and monitored. Lots of surface noise,
couple of tracks we're classifying. ESM's fine, and we've got the
jammers back up. Countermeasures all loaded and standing by."
"Outstanding." Quinn adjusts her antiflash hood, obviously less used to
it than the Navy personnel, as a young AB hurries up the ladder with a
message pad.
"FLASH traffic from Northwood, sir." the rating says nervously.
Quinn accepts the pad, reads it. "My, my. Chief, we are honoured and you
owe me a beer. It seems an Aztlan Navy missile destroyer has gone rogue,
and is heading this way at flank speed. Last availalable satellite intel
puts her within thirty miles of us right now." She throws the pad out
through one of the bridge's broken windows with a muttered curse.
"We're taking on _Aztlan_?" Mason is incredulous.
"Actually, Chief, I doubt it. I have a feeling that message is the
literal truth and Aztlan have fuck-all to do with this. Too blatant by
far. They're nasty, but they're not fucking idiots." Quinn returns the
pad. "You know their ships. If you control the captain and the
intelligence officer, the rest of the crew will obey orders without
asking questions. _That_ is our 'possible warship' escort for the cargo.
...I wonder if this posting really was coincidence? I'm going to kick
the shit out of Pendleton when I see him next."
"So we're fighting an undamaged Aztlan destroyer with a sinking,
crippled frigate. Sir."
"Precisely. What do we have to lose?"
"Our lives? And which ship is she??" Chief Mason appears perturbed.
"The K42. Got to be." Quinn nods. "Could be worse, she's an older ship.
If it was one of the M-boats..."
"We might as well fire the scuttling charges now. The K-class is still
bad news, lots of bruisers aboard. How about our backup?"
"HMS Campbeltown is making best speed from Diego Garcia and should be
here within two days. HMS Ocelot is sprinting from the Persian Gulf, but
she's four days away at best. The crabs might get a couple of Theseus
MRAs out of Singapore, but they won't be armed and fuelled and on-
station in less than a day or three to help us." Quinn sighs. "We're the
only ship between that destroyer and the _Arabica Joy_. And you know
what's aboard her, and you saw our orders, Chief."
"Aye, sir. So, we fight?"
"With what we have. Yes, Chief, we fight."
"We'll lose the ship, sir. Might win the battle, but we won't be afloat
for long after." The dour CPO says flatly.
"That will suffice, Chief. Their Lordships can build a new ship in a few
years, but it's taken a few _centuries_ to build our Navy. We have a
mission to perform, and so perform it we shall." Quinn almost comes to
attention, as she takes a deep breath. "Come about to course three three
zero. Sound Action Stations and prepare for gun action, surface. Stand
by all damage control stations. And, Mr Mason? Hoist the battle ensign,
please."
As the ship heels and turns, Quinn walks out onto the bridge wing. From
the mainmast, a great billow of multicoloured silk suddenly blossoms: a
huge White Ensign, proclaiming to the world that the _Rorke's Drift_ is
His Majesty's Ship and that it's on its way to fight a war.
"Three hundred years of progress for this. Might as well repaint the
hull black-and-buff." Quinn mutters to herself. For all the innovations,
for all the computer systems, guided weapons and sensor suites developed
since Nelson's day, the _Rorke's Drift_ is closing to do battle with the
enemy, proclaiming her identity not with electronic transponders but
with coloured silk fluttering in the wind, fighting with guns instead of
high-tech missiles, because that's all she has left.
If she even lives to get that close.
+++++
Quinn, alone on the bridge, paces restlessly as the typhoon rages around
her battered ship. A shout from the Ops Room breaks the silence. "Zippo!
Bruiser! Red zero one two! Eight inbounds!"
"Weapons free, PWO fire at will!" Quinn shouts down the ladder. "Full
starboard rudder, unmask batteries, then manoeuvre at your discretion!"
"Firing!" The forward missile magazine empties itself in seconds, Sea
Hawk SAMs blasting out vertically, turning over and diving towards the
horizon. A Turret elevates and traverses, the long barrel weaving oddly
as it compensates for the ship's jolting, the hard turn and the targets'
motion. Chaff and flare rockets leave their launchers with thunderous
roars, bursting around the ship, and four canisters are flung clear like
depth charges of old: but when they hit water, they expand into silvery
geodesic constructs, floating radar reflectors topped with smoky flares.
"Bruiser splashed!" One of the incoming missiles has lost an argument
with a SAM.
"Splash! Splash!" Two more, the second close enough to be seen as a
pinprick of light on the horizon. "Bruisers five, inbound, seekers
active!" The 155mm gun begins firing, one AHEAD-fused canister round
every three seconds: six-inch time-fused shotgun shells, scattering huge
clouds of depleted-uranium shrapnel in the path of the missiles, a
sudden flame-shot black smear showing where one of the homicidal
machines died.
"Jamming active!" A different voice, the rating manning the
countermeasures gear. "One ditched, three bruisers locked on!"
"Bruisers beginning terminal weave!" Tibbs warns.
"PDL firing!" Whipcracks from somewhere behind the bridge as the point-
defence laser, the last hard-kill shield the ship has, engages the
incoming missiles.
A cartwheeling cloud of spray and flame cloud erupts less than a mile
from the Rorke's Drift, shrapnel whipping the water up into froth, a
damaged missile that went out of control -
"BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!" Chief Mason's booming voice on the Tannoy, and
Quinn tightens her grip on the rail: one missile falls short, swerving
towards one of the decoys and slamming into the sea off the bow in a
sheet of spray.
The other - diving to hit the frigate amidships - is visible for the
merest eyeblink before the ship is kicked hard, the deck jolting
violently underfoot.
The deafening explosion of its warhead seems almost irrelevant, as the
shockwave of the impact knocks Quinn flying. The bridge lights fail for
several seconds, before returning, as a pipe bursts and sprays chilled
water across the bridge.
"We're hit! We're hit!" someone screams from the Ops Room.
"Shut up! Damage report!" Quinn replies, picking herself up and running
to the bridge wing. The stern of the ship is swathed in flame and smoke,
the starboard helicopter hangar fiercely ablaze.
"Engines okay!" Chief Mason shouts back. "Hit the hangar. Bad fire, but
not too-"
"Zippo! Bruisers! Red zero eight five! Four bruisers inbound! In close!"
Another salvo, that had got dangerously near before being detected-
"More chaff, Mode C!" Quinn yells, followed seconds later by the roar of
the launchers and the booming reports of the quick-bloom chaff rockets
bursting. There is an agonised pause, before the 155mm gun opens fire
again, getting five rounds off and destroying one inbound -
"Bruisers beginning evasive weave!"
"PDL firing!" Again, the flat cracks of the laser, and one mechanical
kamikaze leaves a smear of fire in the rainy air.
"BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!" Once again, Quinn clings to the rail, as
something white and incredibly fast flies past the bridge, missing by
feet -
"Pu wolb?" she suggests, and the _Scirocco_ - beginning to turn for a
second attack - is suddenly an expanding cloud of burning debris.
"Chief, bruiser count?"
"No hits, none still searching. Mr MacTaggart reports the hangar fire
non-critical, he wants to screen it and let it burn out. Nothing useful
left in there except the torpedo magazine, and they're U/S now, so he
doesn't want to risk men fighting it-"
"He's the engineer. Come right to three zero five and increase speed to
emergency full. That destroyer's close, Chief, we kill it now or we're
dead." Rain lashes through the shattered bridge windows and the
frigate's stern digs into the water, all four turbines responding in
seconds to the telegraph.
+++++++++++++++
His Majesty's Ship _Rorke's Drift_ is up to a logged thirty-five knots,
a speed her designers never intended: the flooding aft lifting her bows
and helping her plane across the choppy seas, the frigate slamming like
a speedboat into every wave but making a terrific speed. Quinn stands
amidst the ruins of the bridge, inside a glowing nimbus of energy that
deflects the rain around her in crackling streaks. She watches the smoke
trails, rapidly dissipating, that still hang in the air pointing to the
distance: the frigate turning towards them.
"Captain? Mr MacTaggart says we've torn the hull patches off. We're
taking a ton a minute in the aft magazine and the pumps can't cope.
Engineering's ankle-deep and rising fast, we've lost the primary
firemain, and the fires in the hangar space are getting worse." Chief
Mason calls from the Ops Room. "She'll sink in less than half an hour at
this rate."
"Thank you, Chief. Tell Mr MacTaggart that we need the ship to hold
together for fifteen minutes, no more, and could he please whip the
rowers harder? We need more knots. Warp factor nine, Mr Mason."
"Aye aye, sir." The CPO merely nods: in combat, the ship's captain has
every right to demand the impossible. He has to hold his comm unit away
from his ear when MacTaggart replies to the orders, though, paint on the
bulkheads almost visibly scorching under a broadside of Glasgow
invective. "He's not happy, sir."
"I don't care if he's in misery or ecstasy, I just need him to give us
more speed, and I don't care if he has to get out and push to do it.
And, Chief? Pass the word to the crew. Stand by for surface action,
gunfire. Get everyone inside the citadel, and clear the superstructure
forward as much as possible. Everything topside's going to get wrecked."
Quinn's relaxed demeanor seems a little forced, but still she sounds as
if she is in total control of the situation. No matter how bad things
are, an officer must at least sound like she has all the answers. "Form
a working party to get the liferafts moved below and aft, they'll be
ruined if we leave them in place."
"Aye, sir." Mason turns, moves away: Quinn paces slowly, to and fro,
boots crunching on the broken glass nobody's had time to sweep up:
scanning the horizon, with eyes and then with binoculars, tensely
waiting for the first sight of the enemy. Time passes: seconds dragging
out into minutes that feel like hours.
"Flashman, Flashman, red zero zero four! Juliet band, high pulse rate,
fast scan, classify as Aztlan _Macahec-4_ surface search radar, locked
onto us!" the EW technician calls from the Ops Room, and the sudden
return of tension is palpable: "pucker factor" almost visible in the
air.
"Bridge, aye! Engineering, with all due respect, give me some more
fucking knots please, unless you actually _want_ us to be sunk before we
get a fucking shot off!" Quinn adjusts her wrist unit, not waiting for
MacTaggart's unprintably foul reply as she selects the ship's Tannoy
system.
"All hands, this is Captain Rodriguez. We have detected the enemy and
are closing to engage with gunfire. We will take severe splinter damage
topsides while doing so: all crew are to remain below the weather deck
and aft of Frame 32 unless vitally necessary." She pauses, takes a deep
breath. "This ship and her crew uphold the highest traditions of the
Royal Navy, and it is an honour to command you." Releasing the comm
unit, she mutters to herself "Henry the Fifth I'm not. What the hell. I
need an idea... why not?"
She taps her com unit again. "Shreddie waver to the bridge." A few
moments later, Leading Hand Edgson arrives.
"Sir?"
"A flag hoist, Hooky. Can we make 'Fuck You' in one signal?" Quinn asks.
The signalman doesn't bat an eyelid at the request. "No, sir. Have to
spell the first word, it's not in the books, it would need five hoists.
Can't swear properly with bunting, none of the good words are in the
manual."
"Fair enough. Is 'Engage the enemy more closely' still in there?" That,
and 'make all speed possible with safety to the masts and rigging', were
the only signals Nelson sent his fleet after action was joined at
Trafalgar.
"Not officially, sir, but I can raise it with no problems."
"Make it so. Damn, I always wanted to say that..." Quinn's laugh is less
forced. "Are we having fun yet, Hooky?"
"More than I ever wanted, sir."
"Good. Then watch this for even more." Quinn's whole body seems to
shudder as she clenches the rail, and a few seconds later the ship's
speed across the sea begins to rise at a terrifying rate. Sounds of
alarm can be heard from the Ops Room.
"What the..." Mason arrives up the ladder. "Sir, GPS says we're making
ninety knots and rising fast?"
"Coyote magic, Chief. Ask the sea nicely, and it's amazing what it'll do
for you." Quinn wipes away a trickle of blood from her nose. "We need to
close the range fast, don't we?"
"Yes, sir-" Mason is interrupted by the warning from the Ops Room.
A surface radar contact, range nineteen miles.
The K42, turning to engage this infuriatingly persistent foe.
The battle moves into its last phase.
+++++end video]<<<<<
-- Sir Charles Pendleton <23:14:36/01-28-60>
Centre for Defence Analysis
