An adult stories – End of Days – Prologue by Grendelpuppy,Grendelpuppy This is a prologue for my previous story END OF DAYS that was published in the Group Section. Rather than try to link the two stories as a series which would require first deleting then republishing the first story in the Loving Wives section, I will just urge interested readers to look it up.
A prologue will follow.
In the Pacific off the Coast of California…
Bill Portals sat in his command chair on the open air weather bridge of his favorite yacht, savoring the wonderful weather. Given the circumstances, it might have been advisable for him to be on the main bridge one deck lower. However; the temperature was warm but not uncomfortably hot. There were no clouds in the sky to obscure the setting sun. A quick glance at the radiation meter confirmed that there was negligible fallout today. Those brushfire nuclear wars had occurred thousands of miles away and many months ago. As everyone who was anyone and actually knew anything had expected, the radioactivity of the global fallout had been minimal and had declined quite precipitously.
The only obstructions to Bill’s view were the struts that supported the sensors and other systems above and just aft of the conn. Thinking about the advanced, phased array radar ring drew his attention to the monitor again. Except for a lone, military cargo plane or far less likely an airliner ascending from Los Angeles International airport, there were no aircraft or ships that were above the horizon within a hundred miles.
Bill was confident that there was no one lurking nearby. The two meter diameter, phased array radar ring above him was more advanced, more powerful, and far more capable than the radar systems of most warships. The advanced Gallium nitride semiconductor technology enabled much higher power densities and efficiency than the current radar systems that utilized gallium arsenide technology. He had only reluctantly begun marketing the systems to the United States Navy, just to keep up appearances.
Bill glanced up at the two meter diameter sphere that was nestled just above his radar ring. Ostensibly; the “disco ball” was the housing for Bill’s “telescope.” Bill had regaled many customs inspectors and other overly inquisitive bureaucrats with details about his advanced optical interferometer.
In truth, Bill’s Disco Ball did house an optical interferometer. He had on occasion actually utilized it for star gazing. However; his Disco Ball also housed an optical interferometer that was designed to transmit rather than receive light. Bill’s Disco Ball housed a phased array laser.
Only a few nations were experimenting with laser weapons. At best, the power output of these military lasers was only a few hundred kilowatts. The power of Bill’s laser was measured in Megawats! The larger optical diameter enabled a much tighter focus resulting in far greater power density and effective range. Bill hadn’t sold this technology to any nation state. He had gifted only a few systems to some of his more valued vassals.
While Bill was justifiably proud of his Disco Ball laser system, he was reassured by the sight of the gun turret just below and forward of the main bridge but aft of the helipad at the bow. The Rheinmentall Oerlikon Millennium Gun turret was indisputably one of the best short range air defense weapons in the world. He had covertly acquired the thirty-five millimeter, rapid fire cannon system before the war in Ukraine went nuclear. However; he hadn’t been willing to provoke unwanted attention by installing the turret until after the brushfire nuclear wars in the Middle East and far East began. Now that the golden age of Pax Americana was over, only the insane would sail far from their home waters unless their ships were well armed.
The radar alerted Bill to an approaching aircraft. Bill watched intently as a helicopter approached. Fortunately; it was one of his own helicopters. The helicopter was bringing in the last group of his guests.
The helicopter landed on the main helipad two decks below and aft of the bridge rather than on the smaller helipad on the bow. Deck hands rushed to secure the aircraft to the mobile landing platform. Although his trimaran yacht was exceptionally stable, he didn’t want to take chances. Only when the helicopter was secured to the mobile landing platform did the pilot shut down the engines.
As the passengers disembarked, Bill appraised them. His guests were all merely millionaires rather than billionaires like himself. However; they were at least double if not triple digit millionaires. While they might consider themselves to be wealthy, they were mere paupers by the standards of the high technology cognoscenti like Bill and his peers.
Bill’s guests imagined themselves to be his valued vassals rather than merely his pawns. The only people who should consider themselves to be Bill’s vassals were lessor, double digit billionaires. However; Bill’s pawns had useful skills just like some of his peons.
Of course even some of the billions of useless breeders who overpopulated the planet also had seemingly useful skills. However; their skills would not be so useful if the world wasn’t so overpopulated with useless breeders like themselves. Unlike the hoards of useless breeders, the lives of these pawns might be worth preserving.
Aside from having useful skills, the pawns were accompanied by their trophy wives. The trophy wives had packed extravagantly for the cruise. They asserted their imagined status by needlessly harassing the deckhands who were unloading their luggage. Unlike the trophy wives, the deckhands knew their business and understood their true status.
The trophy wives were all appropriately dressed for an informal pool party at sea. They were obviously hoping if not confident that this was just another false alarm. Thanks to their somewhat scandalous attire, the trophy wives were all obviously much younger than their husbands and very nubile.
Bill had hired hackers as well as private investigators to illegally invade the medical privacy of the trophy wives. He had invited only those pawns whose trophy wives were not just presumably fertile. Although none had yet borne children, the fact that they were all on the pill or other forms of contraception attested to their fertility. They all remained capable of conceiving. Even better, none had felt the need to get cosmetic surgery that would compromise their ability to nurse a baby. They’d no longer be on contraception soon enough.
Even if the pawns were uncooperative, their trophy wives lives at least would be worth preserving. However; the trophy wives lives would be worth preserving only if they were cooperative. Feeding a few of their husbands to the sharks would probably motivate the trophy wives and surviving pawns to be cooperative.
Bill already had four dozen guests on his yacht and twice as many crew. Most of the crew were not only female but like the trophy wives, they were young and nubile. His estranged, former wife Melinda was not among his guests. Not only was she no longer young or nubile, Melinda was a bitch. However; their daughter as well as a few of the progeny that had resulted from his many indiscretions were on board. Their lives were definitely worth preserving.
The deck hands finished unloading the luggage. Others would be distributing the luggage to the various staterooms. The rotor blades of the helicopter were folded. The landing platform then slid forward on rails to transfer the helicopter from the helipad to the hanger where Bill’s other helicopter already resided. Furniture was brought out and set up on the spacious helipad. Then the helipad was split down the middle as the two halves slid aside to reveal the swimming pool beneath. Bill’s many guests gravitated to the pool deck and the two halves of the helipad, expecting a leisurely, evening cocktail party.
Bill’s guests needed the reprieve from the chaos and violence. The last half dozen years of incessant, intentional, government enabled anarchy had been bad enough. Now the deplorables were finally revolting. Cancelling the twenty-twenty-four elections had provoked a an insurrection. Assassinating the deplorables’ favored candidate along with his Secret Service detail had truly triggered the deplorables.
Unlike the January sixth protestors, the deplorables had finally taken up arms. Many of the deplorables were veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike most common criminals, they actually favored assault rifles and they knew how to shoot.
Vigilantes now reigned in most of America. Criminals were being lynched. Politicians and the journalists who had been gas lighting the people were being assassinated. Judges who had enabled vicious thugs to run at large were being subjected to public stonings. The hoards of illegal aliens who had invaded in recent years were now making another run for the border to escape the targeted violence and chaos.
The police who had been demonized and defunded had all either changed sides or caught the Blue Flue. Not even Bill’s corporate compounds with private security were completely safe. Partying on Bill’s yacht was always a welcome reprieve from the now incessant, low intensity, civil war that was wracking America.
Bill didn’t join his guests. He remained on the weather bridge. He had promises to keep.
At a seemingly casual gesture from Bill, one of the nubile young women who were standing by with solid Platinum serving trays stepped up to offer him a canapé as well as a glass of champagne. The serving women were all nude except for a narrow loin cloth. The slender strips of cloth might have offered at least a token concession to modesty if not for the fact that the fabric was so sheer. The fabric strips were billowing in the ocean breeze so that they concealed nothing anyway. At his command, none of the serving wenches had shaved their dark pubic hair. He didn’t like to be reminded of some of his past transgressions on Epstein Island.
The serving wenches no longer complained about their chronic nudity. They were in no position to object. They were all sabras, refugees from the still somewhat radioactive remnants of Israel. They were among the few that had somehow survived the Second Holocaust. While all of them might resemble Gul Gadot, none of them were Wonder Woman. His guards had beaten them often enough and just severely enough to subjugate them.
Bill’s yacht had been seemingly innocently cruising off the coast of Israel on that Purim when the nukes detonated over Haifa, Tel Aviv-Yafo, and Ashkelon as well as the Israeli nuclear complex near Dimona. The Israelis had been smart enough to deploy missile defenses. Unfortunately; their radar had been focused, really fixated towards the East, vigilant for an attack from Iran. They’d foolishly paid no mind to Bill’s yacht. Turkey had not yet become so belligerent as to provoke vigilance much less alarm. Only three nukes detonated over Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashkelon had been needed to ravage Israel’s population. The destruction of the Dimona reactor complex had greatly enhanced the radioactive fallout.
A two state solution had been imposed on the Israelis. No one cared that the terrorist attack on the anniversary of the Yom Kapoor War had demonstrated just how vulnerable Israel had been even within its previous borders. Salvos of precision guided, short ranged rockets provided by Iran but launched from the newly established Palestinian states on the West Bank and Gaza Strip had emasculated Israel’s much vaunted air force.
With their major population centers and power plants destroyed and intensely radioactive fallout blanketing the entire country, the Israelis had been unable to rally their reserves. Only those who had been smart enough to have bunkers to shelter in had survived. These survivors had been smart enough to remain in their bunkers for the next several days or weeks while the radioactivity waned to survivable levels.
Unfortunately; at least for the Israelis, generations of propagandizing had conditioned the Israelis to eschew private ownership of firearms. Although almost all Jews celebrated Purim, few seemed to have actually read the book of Esther. The Jews had rendered themselves defenseless to their enemies. Biden’s embargo against exporting small arms had prevented the Israelis from rearming themselves during the months after the October seventh massacre enlightened them. The excuse had been to prevent “settler violence.”
The Israelis had only belatedly realized that the United States had once before been complicit in Jewish genocide. They had forgotten about the MS St. Louis. That had been only the most famous example. The Jews who had fled Germany to escape the coming Holocaust had been denied entry to America. The same political party that had been in power in nineteen-thirty-nine had once again rejected the Jews. The United States had done nothing as hoards of Jihadists were pouring over their borders from Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt to murder, ravage and rape them.
The jihadists had been to stupid and ignorant to understand that the radiation from the fallout was killing them. They had been to intent on capturing Israeli women to think. With few exceptions, the only survivors from the destruction of Israel had been the nubile young women who’d been captured and carried off rather than murdered. Those prisoners that hadn’t been promptly beaten or gang raped to death had become sex slaves to their Islamic masters during the remainder of their radiation abbreviated lives.
Only a few survivors of the conquest of Israel had been able to escape by putting out to sea. Bill had been eager to rescue refugees. However; only the most nubile young women who were sufficiently compliant had been permitted to survive.
Some of Israel’s submarines had been out at sea. Only one had survived the belated, insane intervention, truly yet another betrayal, by the United States Navy. The President had decreed that no retaliation for the second Holocaust would be permitted.
The Israeli’s lone surviving submarine had retaliated against Israel’s presumptive attacker of course. As everyone had reasonably presumed, Israel’s Jericho and cruise missiles had been armed with nuclear warheads. However; Iran’s defenses had intercepted some of the missiles. However; Israel’s nuclear retaliation had been devastating, but it hadn’t been Armageddon. It hadn’t been Armageddon even for Iran. Israel’s retaliation hadn’t been even a pyric vengeance. It had not exceeded the price that the insane mullahs who truly ruled Iran had been willing to pay to see the Jewish entity destroyed.
Examining the radar display then the satellite feed, Bill noted the many icons amongst the somewhat normal traffic of cargo ships, fishing vessels and lessor pleasure craft. Americans had belatedly realized that life could go on in the aftermath of the first brushfire nuclear war. America had survived the Second, Third and Fourth brushfire Nuclear Wars as well. The aggregate yields of all of the nukes that had been detonated had been barely a thousand Megatons. Although half a billion people had been promptly killed, the fallout from the brushfire nuclear wars wasn’t much worse than the fallout from the above ground nuclear tests of the nineteen-forties, fifties and sixties. Some four-hundred-and-fifty Megatons had been detonated during those decades. However; those nuclear tests had occurred over a period of a few decades, not just a few weeks.
Americans, especially the deplorables, had eventually realized that America had plenty of food and adequate fuel of her own. Unlike the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, Americans could survive. All that was necessary was for the various governments, especially the Federal government, to sit down, shut the fuck up, and get the Hell out of the way.
Of far more concern to Americans was the ongoing civil war. After enduring the ravages and abuses by the criminal class that was aided and abetted by their own government, the deplorables were revolting. Even worse, the deplorables were winning, and not just in flyover country. Many of the urbane and sophisticated urbanites who had been obsessed with demonstrating how enlightened they were by voting so insanely had experienced an epiphany. They’d joined forces with the deplorables.
While America was surviving, things were far from normal. Gasoline was still scarce and therefore expensive. The energy independence that had been achieved during the Trump administration had been squandered by his successor. Most states in flyover country had finally told the Federal government to go fuck itself. They now enabled rather than hobbled the fracking industry. They’d even brought coal fired power plants back on line!
While America was regaining her energy independence, the global supply chains that had enabled the self anointed elites to export America’s jobs had been ravaged. America was struggling to reconstitute her industrial base and manufacturing industries. Building the machines to build the machines that could manufacture consumer goods had to take priority over manufacturing consumer goods.
Life was far from normal. Most people were compelled to risk taking public transit or walk to work. Local weather forecasts were routinely predicting likely fallout as well as temperature and precipitation. Bill had multiplied his vast fortune by selling Iodine tablets and radiation meters. He had resisted the temptation to make even more money by marketing prefabricated bunkers. That would give people ideas. Unfortunately; many of the hardcore deplorables already had bunkers. Some of the deplorables were even building their fortunes by marketing prefabricated bunkers to the general public!
Bill once again turned his attention to the radar display. Most of the other billionaires like Bill had their own megayachts. Their megayachts had the range and the endurance to cross oceans rather than just tour the Mediterranean sea or the Caribbean. The most recent, escalating political crisis had motivated them to once again seek safety at sea. They too were well prepared to ride out the coming storm. Many lesser craft that lacked the range and the endurance to flee had joined them. While these lesser craft might be safe from the immediate effects of a nuclear attack, they had only a forlorn hope of long term survival.
A few of the icons were glowing red. Not all of the billionaires were truly, fully cognoscenti. Only a select few were actual conspirators. Some of the ships that were loitering off the coasts of America weren’t just waiting to ride out the coming storm. They were waiting to bring on the storm.
With his helicopter was secured in the hanger, Bill gave orders to the Captain. The yacht turned to the West and accelerated to barely twenty knots. That was merely two-thirds of full speed much less flank speed. Only one pair of the quartet of MTU Friedrichshafe, twenty cylinder, diesel engines were on line. These engines were thirsty beasts. However; they weren’t as thirsty as the gas turbines of the CODAG system that Bill had been so tempted to have installed on his yacht. Gas turbines would have gulped fuel far more prodigiously than his quartet of diesels. His yacht could outpace most warships anyway.
Although one of Bill’s shell corporations owned a tanker that was ostensibly in route to Hawaii, he needed to be mindful of fuel until the rendezvous. He along with his vassals would soon be embarking on a long journey. More importantly, he was reluctant to attract attention to his yacht by displaying her true speed.
Not for the first time, Bill was amused by the irony. The legions of useless idiots who had embraced Anthropogenic Global Warming Theology were blind to the utter hypocrisy of the high technology gurus whom they idolized. Bills yacht along with his private jets could burn more fuel in an hour than a typical family of deplorable breeders with their politically incorrect three or more children, sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks as well as frequent flights on commercial airlines might burn in a year. Yet the legions of useless idiots who’d rioted, looted and burned at his command to support various idiotic causes worshipped him and his fellow cognoscenti as saviors of the planet.
When his yacht was up to speed, Bill issued commands. The three pairs of canisters that were nestled between the center hull and twin outriggers of his trimaran yacht were sequentially released. The canisters were just barely buoyant. The canisters were two meters in diameter and about a dozen meters long. The canisters fell behind as the yacht continued along its course.
Bill glanced at the control consoles that were integrated into the armrests of his command chair. He didn’t want to be overconfident as the Israelis had been on that Yom Kapoor or distracted as they had been on that Purim. He was at a critical moment when a few seconds of reaction time could make the difference between life and death as well as success or failure. Bill touched icons on his touchscreen.
At his command, a portion of the “disco ball” above his head rotated to reveal the twelve modules of Bill’s phased array laser as well as the quartet of electro optical sensors. These sensors were the interferometer that functioned as a spotting scope for his laser. Bill touched more icons on his display. The pair of diesels in the forward engine room came to life. Bill allowed these diesels to merely idle. Power from their massive generators wasn’t needed, at least not yet.
Once the yacht was well clear of the canisters, Bill transmitted commands. The canisters blew their ballast tanks. The now more buoyant canisters rotated to a vertical orientation. Only a few meters of the twelve meter long canisters protruded above the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The noses of the canisters bobbed in the waves that might have been ridden by the surfers who had once congregated at Malibu. Fallout phobia continued to compel most people to stay in doors as much as possible.
The telemetry from the canisters was displayed on Bill’s monitor. The telemetry was all green. That was to be expected from such primitive yet well proven technology. Elon Musk would have vastly improved upon the technology.
Unfortunately; Elon wasn’t amongst the cognoscenti. That didn’t suggest that Elon wasn’t a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming Theology. Fortunately; Elon hadn’t been sufficiently credulous. He hadn’t been motivated to carefully check the source codes for the global circulation models. He hadn’t checked the math. Perhaps it was his Asperger’s, but he had naively accepted the catastrophic conclusions of the alleged climate scientists. As a result, Elon wasn’t a heathen like the deplorables who rejected Anthropogenic Global Warming Theology.
Bill Portals wasn’t as naïve as Elon. He’d paid many millions of dollars in research grants to so called “climate scientists” who were at best mediocre scholars. Many were flagrantly dishonest. He’d bribed or bought out scientific journals to ensure that the far more knowledgeable skeptics couldn’t be published. The Overton Window had been relentlessly pushed further from the truth. The elder generation of atmospheric physicists who actually understood the fundamentals of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics had gradually died off. The various text books and references had been carefully edited to purge accurate data.
Unfortunately; while Elon wasn’t a heathen, he was a heretic. While Elon believed in Anthropogenic Global Warming, Elon was willing and able to solve the alleged problem rather than merely exploit it. Elon was unwilling to do what must be done to save the planet, or at least enable the cognoscenti to reign supreme in their new, even more opulent paradise.
Unlike Bill, Elon wasn’t a fan of Thanos. Elon could do the math. Elon understood that if Anthropogenic Global Warming really was such a serious threat, there simply wasn’t enough time to reduce Carbon dioxide emissions by gradually reducing emissions along with the population. Elon understood that propagandizing people, enabling access to contraception and encouraging or even coercing abortion couldn’t save the planet from the alleged threat.
Unfortunately; Elon was unwilling to winnow the surplus population of useless breeders. He didn’t have the courage to ensure that only a more sustainable population of less than a billion people would remain. Elon was confident that advanced, renewable energy technologies could save the planet without the needed culling of the herd.
At Bill’s command, the hatches that sealed the exposed ends of the canisters opened. He had been tempted to design the canisters with only thin membranes to seal them. The membranes would be ruptured at the appointed time, just like the hymens of the many virgins that Bill had been introduced to at Epstein Island. However; his aerospace engineers had warned him that membranes rather than hatches might be to risky. His artificial intelligence hadn’t argued against the seemingly excessive caution of his peons.
A count down was displayed on one of the many screens that graced the bridge of Bill’s yacht. He waited patiently. It had been agreed that a simultaneous launch rather than a time on target salvo would be the best strategy. While the President was an imbecile and the upper ranks of the military had been either suborned or viciously purged, some of the holdouts amongst the lower ranks still believed in duty, honor and country. It wouldn’t do to give such people time to react.
When the readout reached zero, the rocket motors of the missiles were ignited. The missiles were derivatives of the venerable Scud missile. Scud missiles were like ass holes. Almost everyone had ’em. There were plenty of pariah nation states that were eager to sell Scud missiles, and not just to other nations.
The missiles rose from their floating canisters on columns of flame. Bill wished that he could take credit for the concept. However; the concept had been proposed almost half a century earlier as a basing mode for America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Of course the ideas for alternative basing modes had been merely a distraction to discourage America from building Peacekeeper missiles. The acolytes of Mutual Assured Destruction had argued that there was too much risk. Deploying significant numbers of the heavy, ten warhead missiles to regain strategic parity with the old Soviet Union would have been a major escalation. Even worse, the sanest basing strategy would be to deploy the missiles in super hardened silos protected by active defenses. Deploying active defensive systems for missiles might have given the American people the outlandish idea that nuclear might be survivable. They might have demanded that missile defenses be deployed to protect people rather than just missiles!
Bill’s guests ceased partying. Although they were miles away, they were enthralled by the sight of his missiles rising on their columns of fire. Obviously; only a few were smart enough to comprehend the significance. Mister Gates’ missiles attested to his power. He truly was his own master now. He was now omnipotent! Only a select few of his guests understood the new reality. They were no longer even his pawns. With no government to protect them, they had become his thralls!
Bill returned his attention to his monitor. His missiles would cease boosting as they expended their fuel. Their stealthy reentry vehicles would separate to follow their quasi ballistic trajectories. Not even Mister Portals’ radar and electro optical systems would be able to track them from a distance until the heat of reentry revealed them.
There was no doubt that the missiles had been spotted by radar by now. Most likely, electro optical systems were also focused on the incandescent rocket plumes. America had a limited number of interceptor missiles stationed at Fort Greeley in Alaska, poised to engage missiles from North Korea. However; those interceptors were not in position to engage missiles that were being launched from just off the West Coast.
Theoretically, the surviving Aegis destroyers that were based in San Diego could foil Bill’s plan. Fortunately; the President had in her infinite stupidity decreed that any of those ships that weren’t deployed elsewhere should remain in their berths at San Diego rather than patrolling the West coast. The President had also forbidden those ships to have their radars active when they were in port. That as well as patrolling would be a dangerous provocation! Of course that hadn’t dissuaded the cognoscenti from targeting San Diego quite lavishly anyway. Some of Bill’s vassals were at that moment just off the coast from San Diego. Another group of his vassals were off the coast of Washington State, targeting the naval base at Bremerton. All were at that moment launching their missiles.
Bill was confident. The guidance systems of the venerable Scuds were pathetically inaccurate. Bill might have updated the guidance systems of the missiles. However; of things went wrong, that might result in incriminating evidence being recovered. Bill had opted to mitigate that problem by equipping his missiles with advanced, maneuvering, reentry vehicles.
Mister Gates had adopted the concept from the old Pershing Two missiles that had been banned by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The reentry vehicles on his missiles were designed to maneuver. Aside from having a compact, lightweight inertial navigation system, the warheads also had radar terrain mapping for guidance. His warheads could also be command guided via a data relay link. The warheads would impact within only a few meters from their predetermined aim points. More importantly, maneuvering reentry vehicles were more difficult to intercept than purely ballistic missiles. Obviously; once they detonated, there would be no surviving fragments of the warheads that might incriminate him.
Bill frowned when his attention was drawn to a new blip on the radar screen. The contact was on an intercept vector at a velocity of over a hundred knots. The contact was obviously a helicopter. Most likely, the contact was a Coast Guard helicopter. No doubt the Coast Guard helicopter had noticed the rocket plumes from his missiles and was investigating.
Bill’s fingers caressed icons on a touch screen. The twin diesels in the forward engine room throttled up, spinning up their compulsator generators. The disco ball quickly slewed to exactly the correct vector while the central segment rotated slightly to adjust the elevation. Simultaneously; the somewhat less agile Millennium gun turret at the bow began to slew towards the contact. Although the helicopter had appeared over the horizon just moments ago, the laser energized.
Various countries, including the Israelis, had developed lasers that were somewhat effective weapons. However; their beam power had been measured in only hundreds of kilowatts at most. The average power of Bill’s pulsed laser was measured in Megawats! The peak pulse power was measured in Gigawatts. The laser must have blinded the pilots almost instantly. The helicopter wavered. However; a fuel tank was heated until it ruptured. Kerosene exploded just as the helicopter impacted the ocean. A burst of thirty-five millimeter AHEAD rounds from the Millennium cannon arrived just a few seconds later to lash the wreckage that was still floating in the water with shrapnel.
Bill smiled as he savored the sight of the smoldering wreckage floating in the water. Soon, the cognoscenti such as himself would no longer feel obliged to feign allegiance to the various nation states. They would become the overt rather than covert rulers of the planet. He was to preoccupied with gloating to pay much heed to his monitor much less look to the South.
A half dozen minutes later, the first mushroom cloud rose over the horizon. Bill had not taken the risk of validating his design by testing one of his nukes. Given the massive computational resources at his command, Mister Portals had been confident. The artificial intelligence that ran on his largest mainframes had assured him that his design would function as expected. Nuclear weapons, even Hydrogen bombs, really weren’t that complicated. Bill’s smartphone had many orders of magnitude more computing power and memory than the big, mainframe computers that had been available to the Manhattan project. The technology was just as archaic as his Scud missiles.
As he observed the various instruments that were focused on the rising fireballs, Bill Portals was pleased with himself. The Plutonium that Bill had purchased from Zelenski had been salvaged from the ruins of the Chernobyl reactor as well as from spent fuel pilfered from storage casks. Unfortunately; reactor waste grade Plutonium wasn’t the same stuff as bomb grade Plutonium. As one might simplify to explain to a child or an unintelligent adult, reactor waste grade Plutonium had been overcooked.
It had been demonstrated that it was possible to build a nuke out of reactor waste grade Plutonium. However; the device had been about the size and weight of a railroad locomotive. Even more problematic, the yield had been pathetic, only a few kilotons.
Bill had resolved the Plutonium problem by covertly building a gas centrifuge cascade similar to what everyone utilized to refine Uranium to refine his Plutonium. Unfortunately; reactor waste grade Plutonium is millions of times more radioactive than natural Uranium much less depleted Uranium. Fortunately; Bill’s peons had been just barely smart enough to be trained how to operate the gas centrifuges. The few that had understood that they were literally killing themselves had been family men with wives and children who could be threatened.
The deaths of so many pawns had been worth it. Bill’s super pure Plutonium two-thirty-nine had enabled him to build fission triggers for his nukes that were more compact and powerful than the triggers that were currently employed by the alleged superpowers. The more advanced, fission triggers had enabled more compact and powerful fusion stages of the fission-fusion-fission devices. The neutron balance had been sufficiently positive that he’d even been able to salt the depleted Uranium bomb casings with Cobalt to augment the long term radioactivity of the fallout. America couldn’t be allowed to recover anytime soon.
The mushroom clouds rising over the horizon attested to yields of far more than a Megaton. Bill’s nukes weren’t the ten to twenty Megaton city busters that Russia and the United States had deployed back in the sixties. However; Bill’s nukes were far more powerful than the one-third to half Megaton nukes that had become the norm for strategic nukes as guidance systems became more accurate.
Most of Bill’s guests were once again partying on the pool deck and twin halves of the large helipad. None had been informed of the spectacular light show that he had planned for them. The pawns and their trophy wives were mindlessly sipping on champagne and nibbling on brie when the first mushroom cloud appeared over the horizon. Some of their exclamations were anguished. They understood what they were witnessing. Most were bemused because they were to stupid to understand. This should be merely the opening salvo of a global, thermonuclear war.
Some of those that were smart enough to understand what they were witnessing took comfort in the sudden realization that they were among the chosen few that would be enabled by their Lord and Master to survive the nuclear holocaust. They were far enough out at sea to be safe from the blast effects from the surface detonations. All of his guests were wearing the special, designer sunglasses that he had provided to them. Aside from being silly, the sunglasses would protect their eyes in the event of a premature detonation at higher altitudes. Bill’s yacht was not only upwind from the targets, it could outrun the fallout. Even if his yacht somehow failed to outrun the fallout, the sprinklers that were mounted above deck could wash away the radioactive particles.
When the last of the six mushroom clouds had risen over the horizon, Bill issued his orders. “Set Course for Point Nemo. Bring all the engines on line. Increase power to flank speed. Let’s get the flock out of here!”
The bow of Bill’s yacht turned a point to the South. The second pair of diesels in the forward engine room couldn’t be coupled to the twin propeller shafts. However; the design of Bill’s yacht faithfully replicated the propulsion system of the HSC Benchijigua Express. The ferry that provided passenger service between the Canary Islands utilized the power generated by the diesel engines in its forward engine room to power a pump jet propulsor. The propulsor augmented the thrust from the propellers. The speed of the yacht surged to over forty knots.
An hour went by, then two hours and finally three. Bill was disappointed. Bill had been expecting the protégé of the late senile Imbecile-in-Chief to immediately and mindlessly launch retaliatory strikes against Russia or China, or hopefully both. His artificial intelligence had assured him that although the two rival superpowers had been gravely wounded during the nuclear melee, they as well as the still somewhat radioactive remnants of North Korea, would in turn retaliate against America. Unfortunately; there were no more mushroom clouds rising over the horizon. There weren’t even detonations in space! An Electromagnetic pulse attack would cripple America even more than he and the cognoscenti Billionaires had.
Bill might have despaired. The global pandemic had fizzled. The Covidvirus that had been so carefully nurtured utilizing Fauci’s gang of function techniques had to rapidly evolved into a less virulent and more benign virus. His Chinese minions had betrayed him. They had enabled the virus to feast exclusively on Caucasian tissue cultures. As a result, the lethality rate in Asia and Africa had been orders of magnitude lower than in Europe or the Americas. Variants of the less lethal virus had inevitably become the predominant variants.
The brushfire nuclear wars had also been a bit of a disappointment for Bill. America had emerged relatively unscathed from those nuclear conflagrations. America had been content to remain uninvolved after Israel was nuked. When Zelenski nuked Moscow months later, the stress had been to much for the senile old goat. He’d died of a heart attack. His successor had been to hysterical to push the button. Her vastly experienced military and political advisers had been unable to persuade the stupid bitch to launch a preemptive attack that would inevitably provoke devastating retaliation. There had been an unintentional wisdom in her stupidity. Already ravaged by the ongoing, brushfire, nuclear wars, Russia, China and even North Korea had been reluctant to launch an attack that might finally provoke America’s wrath.
Bill was grateful that he had learned from his mistakes. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Aside from targeting the largest coastal cities of America, the cabal of cognoscenti Billionaires had targeted every nuclear power plant that was within the range of their missiles. Each reactor core contained the long term radiological equivalent of the fallout from a fifty Megaton bomb. Adjacent to every reactor was a storage facility for spent fuel. Even the spent fuel from the long ago decommissioned and dismantled Trojan nuclear power plant in Oregon was still languishing in fuel casks on site. Thanks to the stupidity of the luddites who had obstructed the recycling of spent nuclear fuel while obstructing the construction of a nuclear waste repository, all of America’s spent fuel remained vulnerable to attack. Each spent fuel pool contained as much as a dozen reactor years worth of radioactive nuclear wastes. The coastal regions of America would be devastated by the chronic radioactivity. Not even flyover country would be spared. It would be far worse than the fallout from a thousand, Megaton yield, Cobalt bombs.
Meanwhile; off the coast of San Diego…
Commander Shultz sat in his command chair on the bridge of his ship, luxuriating in the beautiful weather. The sun was shining. The skies were blue. The temperature was warm, only bordering on hot. The radiation meter indicated that there was no resurgence in fallout today.
Of course the ship had recently been upgraded with a Nuclear, Biological, Chemical protection system. Fortunately; there was truly no need for it today. The fallout from the brushfire nuclear wars was actually not much worse than the fallout from all of the above ground nuclear testing of the forties, fifties and sixties had been. The aggregate megatonage had been comparable. The radioactivity had faded by many orders of magnitude during the intervening months. The apocalyptic scenario depicted in the novel On the Beach simply hadn’t happened. However; it was reasonable to be careful.
Commander Shultz still wished that his little ship had an open air weather bridge in addition to the main bridge. Unfortunately; it didn’t. It didn’t even have a combat information center. He indulged himself by arising from his command chair to stroll about the bridge then out onto the starboard bridge wing.
As he watched the bows of the main hull and starboard outrigger slice through the waves, Commander Shultz was finally feeling good about his command. The Gabriel Giffords featured a CODAG propulsion system. He had ordered the helmsman to engage his ship’s two gas turbines to multiply the power of her twin diesel engines. She was now making about forty-five knots as she bore down on her objective with the setting sun at her stern. She would have left an Arleigh Burke in her wake. Thanks to the repairs and reinforcement of the deck plate and shell plate of her bow, she could pay no heed to the heavy seas. Standing on the open air bridge wing, the rough ride was exhilarating.
Gabby’s transponders had been turned off. Her phased array radar was operating only in passive mode to augment her Infrared Search and Track sensors. Commander Shultz had been ordered to demonstrate just how stealthy his ship could be. So far, there was no indication that they had been detected by their quarry. He’d only reluctantly resisted the temptation to play THE FLIGHT OF THE VALKARIES over the intercom.
Most of Commander Shultz’s peers would refer to his ship as a shitty little ship. He couldn’t deny that there had been numerous problems with the littoral combat ships. The Freedom class had certainly been an almost unmitigated disaster. However; the Independence class hadn’t been quite so problematic. Both classes still had promise. After the debacles in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, America needed all of the warships that she could get.
The concept of littoral combat ships had begun to evolve during those heady days after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the Soviet Union followed by the First Gulf War had coronated America as the hyper power and the global hegemon. It had been presumed that the Navy no longer needed so many major surface combatants. Smaller, less capable, less effective ships had supposedly been sufficient to confront third world shit holes or just show the flag.
The two competing designs for littoral combat ships had been enthusiastically executed during the infamous war on terrorism. A total of thirty of the two classes of shitty little ships had been built. Several had already been decommissioned. Unfortunately; the fixation with Islamic insurgencies had been a dangerous distraction. Even worse had been the dangerous delusion that America still reined supreme.
Bush had been distracted by the “war on terrorism.” Obama either hadn’t cared or had been eager to enable America’s downfall. More often than not, Biden hadn’t even known what day it was much less that he was President rather than just Vice President or a Senator. Biden’s successor had always been and remained clueless. America had actually been surprised by the emergence of China and the reemergence of Russia as rival super powers.
To make matters even worse for the shitty little ships, anti-ship missiles had proliferated. Even the Huthis who now ruled the smoldering but no longer so radioactive ruins of what was left of the former Saudi Arabia as well as Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, had anti-ship ballistic missiles! The littoral combat ships had suddenly been deemed no longer survivable, especially in the littoral waters that they had been intended for.
Unfortunately; as the Battle of the Red Sea and the Battle of the Persian Gulf had demonstrated so unequivocally, the supercarriers, cruisers and destroyers that were the backbone of the fleet weren’t immune to missile attacks either. America’s battle groups had been overwhelmed with swarms of simple, inexpensive, aerial and naval drones. Only after their missile magazines were expended did the more sophisticated and powerful, anti-ship ballistic missiles arrive on target.
Commander Shultz had never been possessed of the stupidity and arrogance to presume that Russia much less China were merely “near peer” threats. It had been obvious that they were peer threats to be taken seriously. China’s long range, ballistic, anti-ship missiles had been threatening to transform the entire Western Pacific into a no go zone for America’s carrier battle groups. Given the various brush fire nuclear wars, there wasn’t much left of Japan, South Korea or Taiwan to fight over anyway. Perhaps America had been spared only because China and North Korea as well as Russia had suffered so grievously. The dissolution of NATO after the destruction of Israel and the war in the Ukraine going nuclear then escalating into a regional nuclear war had compelled America to withdraw from the Mediterranean as well.
Now America was confronted by the reality of the informal invasion that had been masquerading as illegal immigration escalating to a formal invasion. Texas, Arizona and finally New Mexico were effectively at war while California attempted to remain neutral. Commander Shultz might have felt vindicated by these events if he hadn’t been a patriot. He reluctantly returned to the bridge.
Commander Shultz knew that his political views as well as his evangelical Christian religion had been a professional liability. Even greater liabilities were his blonde hair and blue eyes. He was obviously of Aryan ancestry. It didn’t matter that his grandfather had escaped from Germany as a child by hiking over the Alps with his family after Hitler came to power. Shultz imagined that the reality had been much like the scene in REVENGE OF THE SITH when Jar Jar Binks had proposed granting Chancellor Palpentine dictatorial power. His ancestors’ experience had been much the same as the Von Trapp family that had escaped from Austria, but without the subsequent musical career. Now he lived in an America that had accepted the Second Holocaust with equanimity.
Commander Shultz knew why he’d been sidelined from being promoted from executive officer to skipper of an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. The Chief of Naval Operations had reserved that prestigious assignment for an African American woman. The Navy had been committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. It hadn’t mattered that his rival had so obviously been far less qualified than he. His rival had been not just an African American but a transsexual lesbian, presumably woman or whatever the Hell he, she or it was. His current post as commander of this shitty little ship had been at best a consolation prize. Now his rival as well as the ship that he had once hoped to command were at the bottom of the Red Sea.
Fortunately; Commander Shultz was a patriot as well as an optimist. He could take solace in the fact that he was commanding an Independence class ship rather than a Freedom class ship. He’d also been one of the rebels who had been perceptive enough to recognize the implications of aerial drones long before the war in the Ukraine and Gaza as well as the Red Sea and Persian Gulf battles. Even before the Battle of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, he had dedicated himself and his crew to covertly transforming his shitty little ship into the most survivable, cost effective, air defense and surface warfare platform that she could possibly be.
Aside from their speed and stealth, the greatest strength of the littoral combat ships had always been their flexibility. It had been hoped that Interchangeable Mission Modules could customize the ships for specific missions. Unfortunately; reconfiguring the ships by swapping out Mission Modules had turned out to be far more difficult and time consuming than expected. Even worse, Congress had in its infinite stupidity refused to fund the Mission Modules even as they were building thirty of the shitty little ships! It was insane. It was almost as insane as refusing to buy ammunition for the Zumwalts.
Guided covertly by his Admiral and aided by the cabal of mavericks, Commander Shultz had worked tirelessly on the covert project. A cadre of renegade engineers from Bofors, Thales, Ratheon and other contractors had enabled him to rapidly develop, design and build the new air defense Mission Modules for his ship.
The first step had been to replace the pathetic Sea Giraffe radar system with a far more powerful sensor suite. Bill Portals had offered the Navy a novel new phased array radar system at a fortuitous time. The new, amazingly compact radar system wasn’t as capable as the much larger, Ratheon, phased array radar system that had been under development for the new Constellation class frigates much less the proposed air defense cruisers. However; it was a vast improvement. The new radar also functioned to massively upgrade the ship’s fire control and electronic warfare systems.
The upgrades to the Gabriel Giffords’ radar and fire control enabled the cabal to replace the SeaRAM with a Mark thirty-one Guided Missile Weapon System. While the SeaRAM had an autonomous search and track radar as well as fire control, it had only eleven launch cells for anti-aircraft missiles. The new GeeMeeWS had launch cells for twenty-one missiles.
The next steps had been obvious. The pair of ridiculous, above deck, quad launchers for Naval Strike Missiles that had so severely compromised Gabby’s stealth had been removed. The vertical launch cell modules for Hellfire missiles that had occupied the Multi Mission Module station aft of the turret at the bow had also been removed. Those little missiles couldn’t even equal the range of Gabby’s main gun! It was cheaper and easier for the ship to just carry more ammunition for her main turret with which to conduct surface strikes. The cracked deck plate and shell plate had been repaired and reinforced.
The obvious next step had been to install a second, fifty-seven millimeter cannon turret at the Multi Mission Module station at the bow. The new guided anti-aircraft rounds had transformed the fifty-seven millimeter cannon into a truly formidable air defense system. The cost of the projectiles was about one-tenth the cost of the cheapest surface to air missile for their GeeMeeWS.
Unfortunately; Gabby’s main gun had been manufactured by BAE systems of Great Britain. There had been a backlog of orders when the upgrade project began. Then the United States had ceased to enjoy such a special relationship with jolly old England as the war in Ukraine degenerated into yet another undeniable quagmire. International relationships had deteriorated even more after America and Europe acquiesced so eagerly to the extermination of the Israelis. America hadn’t yet been willing to violate international law by manufacturing the turrets herself. Respect for international law that protected patent rights hadn’t yet gone up in nuclear flames.
Fortunately; the United States Coast Guard had been utilizing that same, fifty-seven millimeter gun turret that was mounted on the Gabriel Giffords for over half a century. The Coast Guard had lots of old cutters in mothballs. Gabby’s new turret had been cannibalized from an old, laid up cutter. The turret had been lovingly refurbished and updated with modern electronics. A stealthy barbette that provided space for magazines and was tall enough to enable the second turret to fire over turret one had been fabricated then installed in the forward Multi Mission station. Stealthy gun houses and barrel shrouds had been fabricated and installed on both turrets. Gabby was now almost as stealthy as she could be. Even better, she could now deliver a broadside! The Littoral Combat Ship now resembled a Zumwalt destroyer before they had been transformed into hypersonic missile ships.
The mavericks had been to ambitious to be content with merely installing a second, main gun turret at the Multi Mission Module at the bow. Some imbecile had conned the Navy into installing a pair of Mark forty-six gun turrets at the Multi Mission stations port and starboard, aft of the bridge. These turrets had been developed as a derivative of the turret for the Marine Corps’ now defunct, Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program.
The slow firing, thirty millimeter, chain guns might have been appropriate for ground combat against dismounted troops and not so heavily armored personnel carriers. However; they were entirely inadequate for modern warfare at sea much less air defense. The turrets couldn’t even elevate the cannon sufficiently to engage aerial targets! The various angles and facets of the turrets also compromised Gabby’s stealth. They might as well have installed radar transponders on his supposedly stealthy ship!
To make those cannon turrets even more insanely inadequate, the Navy had squandered the volume below deck. Rather than install deeper magazines, the Navy had utilized the volume of the turret basket to provide a station for an on mount gunner as a backup for remote operation from the bridge! The scuttle butt was that some admiral who was soon to retire had been persuaded to select that defunct turret system. The admiral had been influenced by offers of a lucrative position on the defense contractor’s board of directors as well as hookers and cocaine.
The preferred alternative, that should have originally been selected for the surface warfare Multi Mission package, was the Rheinmentall Millennium turret. The somewhat larger caliber, thirty-five millimeter, revolver cannon could fire up to a thousand rounds per minute rather than only two-hundred. The turret could also elevate the gun to a nearly vertical orientation for air defense. Programmable AHEAD ammunition enabled the Millennium cannon to be devastating against surface targets as well as aircraft and missiles.
Unfortunately; the Germans had become just as uncooperative as the British. The persistent, pernicious rumors that America, rather than Russia, had blown up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline that had supplied cheap and plentiful natural gas to Germany had strained relations. Why should the Germans be offended by the credible suspicions that America was the culprit who had effectively nuked their economy? America’s assertions that the Russians had blown up their own pipeline rather than just turn off the gas had been rejected.
It would have been feasible to install two more GeeMeeWS at the port and starboard Multi Mission Module stations. However; the entire point of the upgrades was to transform the Gabriel Giffords into a cost effective as well as more effective air defense platform. The most obvious alternative had been to install a pair of the old Phalanx gun systems. The Navy had replaced the Phalanx cannon with SeaRAM launchers. The Navy had put the old Phalanx systems in storage rather than scrap them. However; the Navy had replaced the Phalanx cannon with SeaRAM installations for good reason. The twenty millimeter cannon had become woefully inadequate for air defense.
It had been suggested decades earlier that the twenty millimeter Gatling cannon of the Phalanx could be replaced with a more powerful, twenty-five millimeter cannon. Oerlikon-Contraves had even manufactured a prototype. That defunct system had inspired the mavericks.
The mavericks had been further inspired by the Goalkeeper point defense system. The Goalkeeper was essentially the much bigger brother of the Phalanx system. The Goalkeeper was equipped the thirty millimeter, seven barrel, Avenger, Gatling cannon. While the preexisting, single barrel, Bushmaster chain cannon could fire only two-hundred rounds per minute, the Avenger Gatling cannon could fire forty-two-hundred rounds per minute or seventy rounds per second! The rapid fire cannon system was so devastating that it had once been considered as a point defense system to protect silos for Peacekeeper missiles from a nuclear first strike!
Certain officers of the United States Air Force had been amazingly cooperative. The Air Force had decommissioned many of its venerable Warthog, close air support jets. Many of these aircraft were beyond resurrecting, even in the current crisis. In return for a few bottles of Kentucky bourbon, these cooperative United States Air Force officers had been willing to turn a blind eye as a pair of Avenger, thirty millimeter, seven barrel, Gatling cannon were covertly pilfered, no cannibalized, from the boneyard.
The cabal of conspirators had proceeded to adapt the new cannon to the Littoral Combat Ship. Utilizing components from old Phalanx systems and traditional Computerized Numerically Controlled machining combined with the newer Three Dee printing technology to fabricate other components, they had rapidly designed, developed and built a pair of not so close in weapons systems. They’d even fabricated stealthy gun houses as well as trapezoidal barrel shrouds for the new Gatling cannon. A pair of nested, helical magazines with a massive capacity of over three-thousand rounds had been fabricated for each turret. The high capacity magazines had been installed in the turret baskets of the remotely operated turrets in lieu of a superfluous gunner. The new air defense turrets were a profound embarrassment to the military industrial complex. The traditional defense contractors would have required years if not decades to develop and produce a far less capable system.
Of course the new cannon systems were heavy. The mavericks had utilized Aluminum and other light weight materials as much as possible to fabricate the new mounts. The new point defense turrets massed barely half as much as the Goalkeeper cannon system that massed over six tons. However; the three thousand rounds of ammunition in their magazines also weighed a few tons. Fortunately; the Gabriel Giffords trimaran hull gave her a wide beam. She’d been designed to carry over two-hundred tons of equipment in her Multi Mission Bay. Mounting the same cannon on a Freedom class Littoral Combat Ship would have caused her to capsize.
Of course the mavericks had elected to install electro optical systems on the new gun turrets to supplement the ship’s radar. However; they’d elected to exploit the opportunity to utilize the sensors incorporated in a coaxial, Iron Beam system in lieu of a normal electro optical system. The Israelis had very generously shared the technology for the compact, highly effective laser system. Prototypes had actually arrived just as the Israelis were being nuked, overrun and exterminated. The beam power of Gabriel Giffords’ lasers was over two-hundred kilowatts! Gabby could shoot down smaller, slower, less sophisticated, inexpensive yet threatening drones without expending any cannon ammunition much less a missile. She could also blind excessively inquisitive surveillance aircraft and drones. Even surveillance satellites could be dazzled if not damaged by the lasers.
In an apparent effort to demonstrate just how obsessed they were with upgrading firepower, Commander Shultz and the cabal of conspirators had taken notice of the quartet of stations for fifty caliber machineguns that could be mounted on the main deck. It is said that God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal. It was undeniable that John Moses Browning had made some men more equal than others. However; the design for the Ma Deuce was over a century old. More importantly, the gunners who operated the fifty caliber machineguns were extremely vulnerable.
The mavericks had abandoned the idea of manned, pintle mounts in favor of Remote Operated Weapons stations. They had contemplated replacing the venerable Browning machinegun with a fifty caliber Gatling gun. However; they’d eventually decided to upgrade even more to a twenty millimeter Gatling cannon. While the twenty millimeter round was no longer considered adequate for air defense, it was devastating against boats and sea drones as well as aerial drones. Commander Shultz wasn’t going to be loosing men to the drug cartels and human smugglers again! Helical magazines with more reliable, linkless feed systems that could hold a thousand rounds of ammunition had been incorporated into the cannon pedestals. There would be no need for the deck crews to jeopardize their lives to reload the cannon.
The profusion of automatic cannon on the Gabriel Giffords might seem archaic. However; all were extremely effective anti-aircraft weapons. Most of the new guns could be directed by Gabby’s radar and other primary sensors as well as on mount electro optical systems. The two, fifty-seven millimeter cannon at the bow could even fire the newest, guided anti-aircraft rounds! Admiral Willis Lee would have approved.
The profusion of rapid fire cannon on the Gabby could continue to engage aerial threats long after the new GeeMeeWS launcher at the stern had expended its compliment of twenty-one missiles. Perhaps almost as importantly, the cannon were extremely cost effective systems. Expending an anti-aircraft missile that cost nearly half a million dollars, to shoot down a drone that cost about as much as a gently used car was a loosing proposition. The cannon on the Gabby were definitely more cost effective than the more sophisticated missiles that armed an Arleigh Burke. Those missiles could cost many millions of dollars each. America was no longer wealthy enough to afford such profligate expenditures.
Perhaps the biggest surprises of all about the Gabriel Giffords were now stowed in the hanger and sitting on the helipad at the stern. The Navy’s fetish for transforming many of its amphibious assault ships into Lightning carriers had been vindicated. This of course had compelled the Marine Corps to reevaluate its aviation preferences. The Corps had been experimenting with alternatives.
The Marines really couldn’t fault the Navy for wanting to repurpose amphibious assault ships. The VTOL version of the new, supersonic stealth fighters were a quantum leap in capabilities over their old Harrier jump jets. The repurposing of the amphibious assault ships with the big flight decks into medium aircraft carriers to supplement the Navy’s supercarriers had been an expedient tactic to double the number of aircraft carriers in the fleet. The debacles of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf had unequivocally confirmed the wisdom of developing such an alternative.
The Corps had recognized that lobbying Congress to fund more of the big amphibious assault ships was futile even before the crisis. Persuading the Navy to repurpose the Littoral Combat ships into miniature amphibious assault carriers had seemed far more plausible. Amazingly; the Navy had embraced the idea. Experiments had been authorized.
Commander Shultz shifted his attention to the screen with the video feed from the camera that monitored the flight deck. The Osprey tilt rotor that was parked on the flight deck had validated the Marine’s concept when it landed on the Gabby just over an hour ago. While the Gabriel Giffords couldn’t accommodate the tilt rotor in her hanger, it was hoped that she could refuel the aircraft to extend its range or even carry it into battle on her flight deck.
As deck apes unchained the aircraft from the flight deck, the Osprey rotated its wing from the compact position for stowage to flight configuration. The engine nacelles rotated to a vertical orientation so that the rotor blades could be deployed. The rotors began to rotate as the engines powered up. Two dozen heavily armed Marines marched out of the hanger then boarded the aircraft. The tilt rotor lifted off the flight deck.
Not for the first time, Commander Shultz noticed that this Osprey was different from the rest. Years ago the Marines had experimented with installing a retractable, thirty caliber, Gatling gun in the belly of an Osprey. It had been a kluge. The aerodynamics of the deployed gun had sucked. A thirty caliber was really ineffective beyond a range of half a mile anyway.
Years earlier, a cadre of less influential mavericks had suggested the installation of a chin turret on the Osprey with a fifty caliber machinegun. The Corps along with the folks at Bell Helicopter had finally decided to implement the idea. However; they had adapted the turret that could accommodate the three barrel, thirty millimeter Gatling cannon that had been developed for the FARA program! A similar, remotely operated turret for a four barrel Gatling gun chambered for the new three-thirty-eight Norma, Medium machine gun round had also been installed aft between the twin tails. The external, remotely operated turrets at nose and tail were vastly superior to the crew chief having to hang from a monkey harness to shoot from the open rampdoor. This Osprey now had some formidable talons to fight with!
Commander Shultz watched intently, but only for a moment, as the Osprey flew away towards the East. He returned his attention to the video display. The mavericks had experimented with deploying the Marine’s Viper, attack helicopter from the Gabriel Giffords. They’d also experimented with adapting the SeaHawk helicopter as a medium assault, troop transport. However; they’d been motivated to explore even more radical options.
Commander Shultz watched as the completed, modified and massively upgraded prototype of the Sikorsky Defiant was rolled out of the hanger. The compound helicopter quickly deployed the blades of its coaxial, twin rotors as a squad of twelve fully armed Marines boarded her. The remotely operated weapons stations that mounted three-thirty-eight caliber Gatling guns that were installed on each of the stub wings above the gunners’ windows traversed and elevated to point aft so as to minimize aerodynamic drag.
The engines of the Defiant were started. It had been suggested that the Army had conspired to tip the scales in the vertical lift program by delaying delivery of the new engines for Sikorsky’s helicopter. The delay had given the already operational tilt rotor prototype an unfair advantage. No one could explain why the Army hadn’t just purchased the existing, higher capacity, far more cost effective Osprey for the Future Vertical Lift program. It had been exactly the type of corrupt insanity that America could no longer afford.
Now that the engines had been installed, the compound helicopter had proven itself. The rotors spun up. The helicopter lifted off. The acceleration generated by the pusher prop at the tail was impressive. Although the helicopter was far from supersonic, it had seemed appropriate to informally designate it as Airwolf.
As the Defiant prototype was flying off to the coast, the prototype of the Sikorsky Raider X was rolled out onto the helipad. Airpup as it was called, was armed with a chin turret that sported a three barrel, thirty millimeter cannon, just like the Osprey. The gullwing doors on either side of the fuselage were still raised, displaying her missile armaments. Aside from two quartets of Hellfire antitank missiles, she was packing a pair of Stinger, air-to-air missiles!
Any competent fighter pilot will concede that an attack helicopter can be a formidable foe, provided that it remained at low altitude. Just like the Warthog from Hell, ground attack jet, a helicopter can be especially dangerous if it is armed with air-to-air missiles. The Raider was faster and more maneuverable as well as longer ranged than any normal attack helicopter. Airpup closed her doors to stow her missiles. Then the compound helicopter lifted off.
Commander Shultz watched the countdown as the trio of aircraft flew towards the target area. He had launched the aircraft from far beyond the combat radius of traditional helicopters. The extended range should enable them to take the opposition force by surprise. If so, Mexico and other hostile, Latin American countries might soon be in for a rude surprise. Brazil as well as Argentina had recently been getting uppity after demonstrating that they had joined the nuclear club.
Commander Shultz’s ship continued on towards the target at flank speed. When Gabriel Giffords was a hundred miles from shore, he ordered, “prepare to fire missiles.” He returned his attention to the video feed from the flight deck. A quartet of hatches, two at port and two at starboard, were opening.
The cabal of heretics had been inspired by the Russian’s old Admiral Kusneysov aircraft carrier. The Soviets had been constrained by the terms of the Montreux Convention. They had circumvented those restrictions by installing silos for massive anti-ship missiles under the flight deck. The Soviets had been able to argue that their carriers were actually guided missile cruisers. This had enabled the ships to transit the straights between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean without violating international law.
The nascent concept had been validated by an experimental launching of a cruise missile from an Army Typhon launcher that had been secured to the flight deck of the Gabriel Giffords. However; the heretics hadn’t screwed around with above deck launchers that would preclude flight operations. They had designed rotary, vertical launchers for the smaller Naval Strike missile that could be installed in the multi mission bay below the flight deck. The launchers occupied far less space than containerized launchers might have. The Gabriel Giffords had been transformed from a schizophrenic cargo ship into a proper warship!
The new launchers were ridiculously simple. Groups of six cells that could accommodate Naval Strike missiles were arranged in a circle. It was analogous to the cylinder of a revolver. The cylindrical clusters of launch cells rotated so that six missiles could be sequentially cold launched through a common firing port. Up to a dozen launchers could now be installed in the Multi Mission bay at specially prepared positions at port and starboard. When configured to maximize her missile firepower, the Gabby could pack as many as seventy-two Naval Strike missiles! At the moment, only four of the cylindrical launcher clusters with a total of twenty-four missiles were actually installed.
The launch cells in Gabby’s rotary launchers could also accommodate other missiles. Currently; only four of the ATACMS missiles employed by the Marine Corps’ HIMARS system were loaded. Gabby could attack surface targets from a standoff range of nearly two-hundred miles! Lengthened variants of these missiles that were even longer ranged or could carry heavier warheads were being developed. A variant of the revolving vertical launch cells was also being developed to accommodate a modified version of the Rolling Airframe Missile. Once that project was completed, the missile launcher mounted above the hanger could be replaced by a third, fifty-seven millimeter cannon turret.
Commander Shultz didn’t enable the fire control mechanism. This exercise was to be only a simulation. Neither the Naval Strike missiles or the ATACMS missiles were as expensive as a Tomahawk, but they weren’t cheap. America could no longer afford to expend expensive ordinance on training. However; he continued to observe as the four launchers rotated to sequentially bring each of their six missiles in line with the firing ports then simulate a launch.
With her radar operating in passive mode, Commander Shultz was obliged to rely on passive, electro optical sensors. He was also relying on infrequent updates relayed through a satellite link to monitor his aircraft. He was therefore taken by surprise when his air defense operator warned, “contacts! Multiple bogies detected by infrared search and track sensors. Confirmed by electro-optical sensors. Rising rapidly. Bearing two-ninety. Range unknown.”
Commander Shultz shifted his attention to the monitor that displayed the imagery from the FLIR system. The bogies were obviously missiles rather than aircraft. Two dozen missiles were gradually pitching over from their vertical trajectories towards the East.
The spectrometry data displayed on Commander Shultz’s monitor confirmed his suspicions. The missiles were primitive liquid fueled rockets rather than solid fueled rockets. The missiles were burning almost archaic, hypergolic propellants, consisting primarily of kerosene and nitric acid. The obviously primitive missiles were most likely variants of the infamous Scud missile. Unfortunately; Scud missiles were like ass holes. Almost everyone had ’em. Even Brazil and Argentina as well as Mexico now had them. It was impossible to know whose Scud missiles these ass holes were.
Commander Shultz barely hesitated. After observing the rocket plumes that were rising aft and port of his ship, he made a command decision. Exercise be damned. If this apparent threat was real, it took absolute priority over their experimental exercise.
Commander Shultz ordered, “activate our radars. Communications, transmit to San Diego. Multiple missile launches detected. Current trajectories suggest that they are targeted at the San Diego and Camp Pendleton area as well as the Naval Base San Diego. I suggest that any Arleigh Burke’s that are in port bring their radar on line and prepare to intercept.” Pausing to think for a moment he ordered, “recall our aircraft.”
The radar data confirmed Commander Shultz’s worst fears. The bogies were not quite thirty miles astern and to port of his ship. There were twenty-four bogies at an altitude of about four kilometers or thirteen-thousand feet. The bogies were not yet supersonic but the bogies were continuing to accelerate at just a bit over one gee. The bogies’ rate of acceleration was gradually increasing as they consumed their propellants. The bogies were gradually pitching over even further eastward. The bogies were obviously being launched on depressed trajectories. The missiles were sacrificing potential range to minimize flight time as well as warning time.
Commander Shultz took barely a moment to make the most momentous decision of his career. There was no chance that this was some legitimate, civilian satellite launch. He would have been informed. He also should have been informed of any military launch. This had to be an attack. Given recent as well as current events, it would be stupid to presume that these missiles weren’t armed with nuclear warheads.
Commander Shultz understood that he had to react quickly. There wasn’t time to contact superior officers. Even with her recent upgrades, the Gabriel Giffords wasn’t an Aegis destroyer. Her air defense weapons weren’t capable of intercepting high altitude much less exoatmospheric missiles much less ballistic warheads. It was perhaps fortunate that these missiles were boosting on depressed trajectories.
Dumb luck had enabled Gabby to be at such close range of the launch site. The missiles were heading almost directly towards his ship. He had been presented with a golden opportunity to engage the missiles while their rocket motors were still boosting. Tracking the missiles while they were in the boost phase was ridiculously easy. The missiles were also far more vulnerable to damage than a warhead.
Commander Shultz took the key that was on a lanyard around his neck and inserted it into his console. As he turned the key he ordered, “weapons free. Engage the missiles with GMWS as they come within range. Allocate only one interceptor per missile. Helm, rudder hard to port. Come about to course thirty-five degrees. Traverse the main turrets to bring them to bear. You are authorized to commence firing utilizing MAD-FIRES rounds. Engage each missile with multiple MAD-FIRES if you can.” Mindful of the limitations on magazine capacity in the turrets and the time needed to reload Commander Shultz ordered, “once the MAD-FIRES rounds are expended, continue firing with standard three-Pee rounds before pausing to reload with more MAD-FIRES rounds. Commence firing the cannon as soon as the missiles are within range and you have firing solutions.”
While his priority was fighting his ship, Commander Shultz knew that he was also a de facto scout. He needed to alert the fleet. He ordered, “communications. Inform San Diego Naval base that they have twenty-four ballistic missiles incoming. I suspect that these warheads might be nuclear. Upload our radar data. I recommend that all Aegis ships bring their radar on line to engage the threat.”
The GeeMeeWS launcher began firing interceptor missiles. The Block Zero version of the missiles had been merely modified versions of the venerable Sidewinder missile. Gabby was packing Block two missiles. The effective range of the more advanced missiles was increased considerably.
Commander Shultz wisely observed but remained silent as his bridge crew executed his orders. They shouldn’t need to be micromanaged if he had been doing his job. If he hadn’t been doing his job, trying to micromanage them now wouldn’t help.
Commander Shultz’s faith in his crew was vindicated. All twenty-one interceptors were launched by the GeeMeeWS launcher in not as many seconds. Each interceptor was targeted on a different bogie. It was not quite a head on engagement, but the closing velocity was high supersonic. It wasn’t the somewhat easier point defense engagement that the SeaRAM system or the GeeMeeWS had been designed for.
The infrared imagery was informative. The interceptors that were based on the venerable Sidewinder air-to-air missile didn’t actually hit the incoming missiles. They weren’t that precise and agile. The interceptors merely detonated their warheads as they came within range, unleashing expanding swarms of shrapnel.
The missiles had a velocity of almost Mach two as they were met by the swarms of shrapnel. The interceptors had accelerated to nearly the same velocity for the head on engagement. The relative velocity between missiles and interceptors was comparable to the muzzle velocity of a sabot round from the cannon on an Abrahams tank! The detonations of the explosive charges increased the impact velocity of the fragments somewhat but not significantly.
At these velocities, even small fragments of shrapnel could be devastating. The shrapnel might or might not be able to penetrate the casings of the warheads to destroy them. However; the shrapnel didn’t need to destroy the actual warheads to mission kill the missiles. Shredding the thin skinned propellant tanks was sufficient to destroy the missiles.
Great fireballs erupted as tons of the hypergolic kerosene fuels and nitric acid oxidizers were unleashed from propellant tanks. The hypergolic propellants burned spontaneously and explosively. The radar revealed a few of the warheads separating from the remnants of their missiles. However; most of the warheads remained attached to the remnants of the missiles’ shredded fuel tanks.
Commander Shultz was not alarmed by the warheads that had separated from the remnants of their missiles. The warheads didn’t have nearly enough velocity to reach the California coast much less cities in the interior. The loose warheads no longer posed a threat.
In spite of the difficult engagement, the eleven Rolling Airframe Missiles managed to intercept twelve of the twenty-four missiles. Twelve missiles remained. The twelve missiles continued to boost towards the California coast.
The remaining twelve bogies drew nearer. The Gabby’s two, fifty-seven millimeter cannon turrets were already traversed and elevated, obviously poised to target the missiles. However; the guns hadn’t fired yet. The missiles were not yet within range.
Several seconds later, the missiles were within range. However; the missiles had risen to an altitude of almost ten-thousand meters and were still rising. The missiles would be near the maximum engagement altitude of the guided, rocket assisted rounds by the time the rounds could reach them.
The two, fifty-seven millimeter cannon began to fire. Each cannon could fire one-hundred-and-twenty rounds per minute. The Gabriel Giffords was launching a quartet of guided, anti-aircraft projectiles every second! Fortunately; the recent upgrades to the Gabby’s fire control systems combined with the autonomous guidance systems of the rounds would enable the ship to manage the simultaneous engagements against so many targets.
Unfortunately; the cannon had only twenty rounds of ammunition in each of their two ready use magazines. The fifty-seven millimeter cannon could sustain their rate of fire for barely twenty seconds. Even worse, Commander Shultz had decreed that only one of the ready use magazines in each turret should be loaded with MAD-FIRES rounds. The other, twenty round magazine was loaded with standard, Prefragmented, Programmable, Proximity-fused rounds. The three-Pees were general purpose rounds for use against surface targets such as other ships, boats and targets ashore as well as aircraft. Unfortunately; the Three-Pees weren’t nearly as effective against aircraft much less supersonic, ballistic missiles as the MAD-FIRES rounds.
After expending a twenty round capacity, ready magazine of MAD-FIRES rounds then a twenty round capacity, ready magazine of Three Pees, both ready magazines of each of the two turrets needed to be reloaded. The cannon were fully elevated to enable the two pairs of twenty round ammunition cassettes to translate into place to reload the expended ready magazines. The process was somewhat similar to reloading a rifle magazine from stripper clips. The reloading process was amazingly quick, yet it required precious seconds.
The cannon were depressed and resumed firing just as the first salvo of MAD-FIRES rounds began to reach their targets. The hit probability from each round wasn’t nearly as high as the hit probability of the SeaRAMs. The hit probability from the Three-Pees was far lower. However; eight of the twelve missiles had been engaged with three MAD-FIRES rounds rather than merely two. Eight of the missiles had also been engaged with three, Three-Pee rounds rather than only two.
Any gambler could have explained the math. The odds of rolling Box Cars were only one-in-thirty-six. However; if you roll the dice enough times and you will eventually roll box cars. The Gabriel Giffords was firing a lot of anti-aircraft rounds with multiple rounds targeting each missile. However; any gambler will tell you that you’re equally likely to roll Snake Eyes as Box Cars.
Any forlorn hope that the missiles weren’t armed with nuclear warheads was dispelled. There was no way of knowing if the warheads were salvage fused or if one of the nukes had been somehow triggered accidentally by an impact. However; one of the warheads detonated.
Fortunately; in the aftermath of the brushfire nuclear wars, the Gabriel Giffords had been upgraded. The new bridge windows darkened automatically in response to the initial flash. The windows remained dark to protect them from the initial flash then the more prolonged thermal pulse. It had actually been unnecessary for the crew to duck and cover. Commander Shultz began to silently count the seconds as he waited for the blast wave to arrive while he perused the tactical display.
In the aftermath of the brief engagement, only five of the initial salvo of twenty-four Scuds continued to boost eastward towards the California coast. They were now flying away from Commander Shultz’s ship rather than towards her. The velocities of the missiles exceeded the muzzle velocity of his cannon. There was nothing he could do to intercept them.
As he observed the five missiles that were continuing to boost towards San Diego, Commander Shultz glanced at the family photos that he’d affixed to his console. His three children had their mother’s curly black hair and dark complexion. A few of his friends had teased him about marrying his wife because she looked so much like Lieutenant Uhuru from the original series. Her parents had actually named her Uhuru. His mocking friends had conceded that at least his children would never starve. Such humor as well as his marriage had not been taboo before America went woke.
Given the almost official, political hostilities towards traditionalists that had been so prevalent when Commander Shultz was transferred to San Diego, he and his wife had elected to buy a house rather than live on base. However; they still lived in the Northern suburbs of San Diego. He and his wife had selected a house in a once quiet neighborhood that was within walking distance of excellent surfing. More importantly, their neighborhood was inhabited primarily by like minded Naval and Marine Corps officers.
Like many of his neighbors, Shultz had taken the precaution of covertly building a bunker under the garage floor. Just like the floor and walls of the bunker, the new garage floor that was also the roof of his bunker was more than a foot thick slab of steel reinforced concrete. He had stockpiled food, water and other essentials in his bunker. Theoretically; the bunker could save his family from anything except a close, surface detonation. However; their bunker couldn’t save them unless they were actually in the bunker. Of course the bunker might enable them to survive a more distant detonation as well as the aftermath.
The latest crisis had provoked increased vigilance. In recent weeks, Uhuru had began utilizing their bunker as a classroom to home school their children when she wasn’t on duty at the hospital. His family had also been sleeping in the bunker, pretending to be camping to make it fun. There was a good chance that his family was at that moment in their bunker.
Commander Shultz’s worries about his family were interrupted when the shockwave from the nuke arrived. He had lost count, but it seemed that perhaps half a minute had elapsed. The nuke had probably been about half a dozen miles away when it detonated. The blast wave had attenuated as it expanded. The initially intense overpressure that could not just rupture rock but make it flow like plastic and crush even the most hardened missile silo had weakened with distance. However; the shockwave was able to shatter the allegedly shatterproof glass of the bridge.
Commander Shultz was still brushing glass fragments from his uniform when the radar operator spoke. “Bogies incoming. We have five projectiles on impact trajectories. Bearing is two hundred-and-ninety degrees. Range is twelve-point-eight kilometers. Altitude is fifteen-thousand meters. Velocity, is seven-hundred-and-fifty meters per second and accelerating.”
Commander Shultz perused the radar plot again. Although the projectiles were accelerating as they fell, they weren’t ballistic. The warheads were maneuvering. They were maneuvering almost randomly, as if they were dive bombers from the Second World War, obviously to evade any potential defensive fires. However; the maneuvering re-entry vehicles were obviously targeted on Shultz’s ship. That limited their freedom to maneuver.
A belated realization shamed Commander Shultz. Destroying the boosters had effectively mission killed the warheads. They hadn’t had enough velocity to reach their targets. However; he had been wrong to presume that the warheads from the destroyed missiles were no longer a threat. The obviously maneuverable warheads either had some type of seekers and artificial intelligences that could select new targets or they were command guided. He should have thought of this possibility.
Shultz’s options were limited. The SeaRAM launcher had expended its load out. Reloading would take time that they didn’t have. The twin fifty-seven millimeter turrets had also expended all of their MAD-FIRES rounds. Only a dozen Three-Pees remained in each turret. The turrets could be reloaded from the reserve magazines below decks. However; it was necessary for the gun crews to manually load rounds onto the ammunition lifts. The gun crews as well as the deck apes that might have been assigned to that task had been busy launching aircraft. They had then armed themselves and prepared to board Gabby’s small boats to participate in the simulated attack. There wasn’t time to reload the turrets.
Commander Shultz ordered, “weapons free. Engage incoming warheads with the fifty-seven millimeter cannon. Commence firing when the range is ten-thousand meters. Engage with thirty millimeter Gatling cannon when the bogies come within five-thousand meters.” While it was most likely merely a forlorn hope Commander Shultz ordered, “open fire with the twenty millimeter deck cannon when the incoming rounds are within three kilometers.”
As the incoming projectiles descended, Commander Shultz was grateful that aerodynamic drag would increase with decreasing altitude as well as increasing velocity. The projectiles, which probably massed about a ton or more, were already beginning to accelerate less rapidly. They would soon reach terminal velocity. The projectiles would then decelerate as the density of the air increased with decreasing altitude. However; the warheads would remain supersonic as they descended. Fortunately; they wouldn’t accelerate to hypersonic velocities. Only a big, massive, very aerodynamic missile or a missile with a big engine could remain hypersonic at sea level.
Commander Shultz found himself thinking about the battle of Leyte Gulf. American destroyer escorts had fought a desperate battle against Japanese battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers. Massively outgunned, the little destroyer escorts had survived by “chasing splashes.” They had intentionally steered towards the most recent impacts of shells from the big guns, presuming that the Japanese gunners would be correcting their aim. The dozen or more seconds of flight time of the shells had precluded correcting fire.
Unfortunately; such tactics wouldn’t work for Commander Shultz. These projectiles, just like the projectile that had just detonated, were almost certainly loaded with nuclear devices rather than conventional explosives. As a bridge officer, Commander Shultz had taken classes on the effects of nuclear weapons. The various tests that had been conducted, particularly at Bikini atoll, had demonstrated the potentially devastating effects of not just airbursts but underwater detonations on various ships.
Unlike the atmosphere, water was effectively incompressible. Shockwaves propagated much faster and further in water than in air. They didn’t attenuate so quickly. That was why depth charges were so effective against submarines. Modern torpedoes were normally programmed to detonate under a ship rather than impact directly because the shockwave would break the ships back. It wasn’t possible for evasive maneuvers to save his ship from a nuclear detonation.
Of course there might be another reason why evasive maneuvers would be futile. While he hadn’t actually performed the calculations, Commander Shultz was certain that the yield of the nuke that had almost nuked his ship had been at least a Megaton. He was too stunned to really recall the details of what he had been taught about nuclear weapons. However; he was almost certain that the nuclear detonation had been to distant to have subjected them to a serious dose of radiation. Unfortunately; he wasn’t certain that he and his crew hadn’t already been subjected to a lethal irradiation. Perhaps they were undead, just like mythological zombies. In spite of all of the uncertainties about weapons effects, he was certain that his ship wouldn’t survive another nuke. However; they weren’t dead yet.
There were legitimate reasons why Commander Shultz wasn’t willing to engage in evasive maneuvers. His ship was on the almost perfect heading that would enable his two, fifty-seven millimeter turrets to bear on the incoming warheads. Both of Gabby’s twin, thirty millimeter Gatling cannon would soon be able to bear on the incoming warheads as well.
There was nothing more for Commander Shultz to do as his crew executed his orders. The twin, fifty-seven millimeter turrets unleashed an agonizingly brief salvo. The wait for the supersonic, outgoing, cannon projectiles to reach the supersonic, incoming warheads was excruciating.
Shultz was actually elated when one of the incoming, maneuvering warheads suddenly veered away from them. Obviously; more than just its guidance systems had been damaged. Seconds later, another warhead exploded. Only three of the incoming warheads remained.
With the windows of the bridge shattered, Commander Shultz and his crew found themselves obliged to duck and cover again. Obviously; the detonation was far more energetic than could have resulted from just the chemical explosives that triggered the fission primary. Fortunately; deprived the carefully synchronized triggering of the chemical explosives, the detonation had been merely a fission fizzle. The explosion had obviously been insufficient to initiate the secondary fusion stage. Only two of the incoming warheads remained.
Seconds later, the twin, thirty millimeter Gatling cannon opened fire. The two cannon were unleashing a fusillade of over a hundred-and-forty rounds per second. The sabotted, armor piercing, incendiary, depleted Uranium, projectiles massed about a pound each. The combined closing velocity was over Mach two.
One of the thirty millimeter rounds must have impacted one of the incoming warheads. While depleted Uranium couldn’t produce a nuclear detonation, small particles of Uranium could be spectacularly pyrophoric. The purely chemical explosion augmented the kinetic energy from impact. The Uranium or Plutonium in the warheads was also pyrophoric. The explosion was spectacular. Only one incoming warhead remained.
The twenty millimeter Gatling cannon opened fire. The quartet of twenty millimeter Gatling cannon combined with the duet of thirty millimeter Gatling cannon seemed to singing in harmony as they continued to fire. Unfortunately; there was no detonation of chemical explosives much less a fission fizzle to suggest that the warhead had been impacted by the fusillade of cannon projectiles.
Commander Shultz’s attention was focused on the radar display. The incoming warhead was coming directly at them. However; the incoming warhead no longer seemed to be maneuvering. It seemed as if the warhead’s guidance systems had been damaged or disabled. Commander Shultz realized that it was possible that a desperate gamble might save his ship. He ordered, “helm. Reverse engines!”
Precious seconds were required to reverse thrust. However; at her current speed, the hydrodynamic drag on the ship was tremendous. It was if the Gabriel Giffords had slammed on her brakes. Commander Shultz and his bridge crew watched as the final warhead splashed down barely fifty yards directly forward from the bow of the port outrigger.
Commander Shultz ordered, “helm, record our exact position. The Navy will probably want to recover that warhead. Engines ahead one third. Put turbines on standby. Prepare to recover aircraft.”
Commander Shultz vacillated about moving to confront whatever had launched those missiles. However; the most likely culprit was a submarine. Given the number of missiles that had been launched, probably two submarines. The Gabriel Giffords currently wasn’t outfitted with the Multi Mission Module for antisubmarine warfare. The Gabriel Giffords was in no condition to fight another battle anyway. However; he could investigate. “Comm, orders to the Osprey. ‘Ascend to maximum altitude as you approache. Use the electro optical sensors on your nose turret to scan the area that the missiles were launched from.’ Relay the coordinates to them.”
Commander Shultz and his crew were compelled to remain passive observers as the five surviving warheads followed their ballistic trajectories towards California. Their radar even lost track of the stealthy warheads as the receded. However; infrared sensors were able to track them as they entered the atmosphere. Their radar as well as their electro optical systems were able to track the fusillade of interceptor missiles that rose to meet the missiles. Only one mushroom cloud appeared over the horizon. Radar confirmed that the last nuke had detonated over Tijuana.
The video feed was coming in an hour later. A flotilla of large, obviously very expensive yachts were fleeing towards the West. Who could blame them? Then the video suddenly brightened then ceased. Commander Shultz rushed to the port bridge wing. The flaming wreckage of the Osprey with two dozen Marines as well as her crew was falling into the ocean.
Hours later, a few hundred miles from the coast of North America…
Bill Portals was elated to hear his guests cheering as they watched the fight. It really wasn’t much of a fight. One of his pawns was getting his ass kicked by one of his sabras. While she wasn’t Wonder Woman, she’d actually been taught Krav Maga by Gul Gadot herself. The pawn had also gotten drunk during the hours since the nuking of America. He didn’t stand a chance against her. Just like the plebian mobs of ancient Rome who’d crowded the Coliseum to watch the games, the assembled pawns were enjoying the spectacle. Even the victim’s trophy wife was laughing.
Like all of his guests, the pawn, now no more than a thrall, had been obliged to strip naked to swim in the pool. Bill had decreed that no swimsuits were allowed. No doubt the thrall’s nudity just made the public beating even more humiliating for him.
Bill was all the more pleased as he observed the beating because the thrall was no better endowed than himself. In spite of his financial successes and the numerous carnal exploits that had been enabled by his vast fortune, Bill remained somewhat self conscious, perhaps even ashamed, of his less than spectacular genitals. Perhaps his anxieties about his anatomical short comings had motivated him to succeed? Whatever psychological twists might be involved, he found himself becoming aroused as he watched the beating. He noticed that he wasn’t the only man who was sporting an erection. Most of the women had erect nipples as well.
The thrall was finally felled by a not quite so vicious kick to the groin. Not that long ago, the sabra had been compelled to watch as her own husband was subjected to a similar beating by two of Bill’s goons. Bill could actually see the thrall’s vulnerable penis and testicles deforming under the force of the impact! However; neither testicle ruptured under the impact. The thrall remained conscious. The vanquished thrall remained laying on the deck with his legs sprawled. He was to exhausted and beaten to even try to protect his oh so vulnerable genitals.
Bill nodded at the sabra. Obviously reluctantly, the sabra jumped up then landed on the thrall’s vulnerable groin. Bill noticed that she brought her heel down primarily on the thrall’s inner thigh rather than his genitals. She remained compassionate and somewhat merciful, even at the risk of provoking Bill’s wrath. He would pretend that he hadn’t been perceptive enough to notice.
Perhaps the beating had gone to far? The thrall’s drunken, trophy wife seemed to finally sober up. She rushed forward to cradle her unconscious husband, protectively pressing his head against her larger than average breasts. “Please! Make it stop,” she pleaded.
Bill Portals nodded at one of his goons. The Uzi toting goon stepped forward to pick up the beaten thrall. The trophy wife released her husband, foolishly presuming that Bill was yielding to her entreaties. The Gul Gadot doppelganger knew better. She reluctantly but meekly stepped aside. The goon outweighed her by two to one. She knew from painful experiences that the goon was even more proficient at Krav Maga than she. He was also packing a submachinegun.
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The suddenly sobering wife finally realized what was about to happen when the goon stepped up to the yacht’s rail. Bill had recruited his goons from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Unlike mere citizens or even common criminals, they had been indoctrinated to have no integrity much less compassion.
The goon lifted the vanquished husband over his head. The surface of the ocean twenty feet below was roiled by the thrashing of the still ravenous sharks. The husband roused but his feeble struggles were futile. Bill’s guests had been enjoying the spectacle as he chummed the sharks with dead fish then live cats and dogs. Now none of his guests were cheering.
The thrall’s wife rushed up to Bill to fall at his feet. “Please” she pleaded. “Don’t kill him!” Intuition informed her. She rose to her knees to once again take Bill’s penis into her mouth. Once again she was obviously a novice cock sucker. The fact that she wasn’t a professional made her ministrations all the more arousing. However; Bill wasn’t content with just a blow job. Not this time.
Bill gently pushed the trophy wife away then laid her back down on the deck. She understood what he wanted. She pressed her knees together as she protested, “please don’t. I don’t have my diaphragm in!”.
Bill was elated. He’d focused his carnal attentions on this particular trophy wife because he knew that she wasn’t on the pill. He’d speculated that she probably hadn’t taken the precaution of inserting her diaphragm either. Bill glanced towards the trophy wife’s husband. She immediately understood. The trophy meekly wife parted her thighs, offering her unprotected womb to Bill.
This public rutting with another man’s wife was even more soul satisfying than usual. This wasn’t the first time that Bill’s goons had beaten a pawn into submission. It wasn’t even the first time that he’d taken another man’s wife after he had nuked a country. However; this was the first time that he’d taken another man’s wife after he’d nuked America. The entire world would soon be prostate at his feet! The thought of his omnipotence provoked his ejaculation.
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