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Authors: John Schettler
Kirov
Saga:
Fallen
Angels
Nine
Days Falling
Volume II
By
John Schettler
A publication of:
The Writing Shop Press
Kirov Saga:
Fallen
Angels
, Copyright©2013, John A. Schettler
Discover
other titles by John Schettler:
The Kirov
Saga:
(Military Fiction)
Kirov
-
Kirov Series - Volume I
Cauldron Of Fire -
Kirov Series - Volume II
Pacific Storm -
Kirov Series - Volume III
Men Of War -
Kirov Series - Volume IV
Nine Days Falling -
Kirov Series - Volume V
Fallen Angels -
Kirov Series - Volume VI
Devil’s Garden -
Kirov Series - Volume VII
Award Winning
Science Fiction:
Meridian
-
Meridian Series - Volume I
Nexus Point
- Meridian Series - Volume II
Touchstone
- Meridian Series - Volume III
Anvil of Fate
- Meridian Series - Volume IV
Golem 7
- Meridian Series - Volume V
Classic Science Fiction:
Wild Zone
- Dharman Series - Volume I
Mother Heart
- Dharman Series - Volume II
Historical Fiction:
Taklamakan
- Silk Road Series - Volume I
Khan Tengri
- Silk Road Series - Volume II
Dream Reaper
– Mythic Horror Mystery
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Kirov
Saga:
Fallen
Angels
Nine
Days Falling
Volume II
By
John Schettler
“Nine days they
fell: Confounded Chaos roared,
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall
Through his wild anarchy, so huge a rout
Encumbered him with ruin: Hell at last
Yawning received them whole, and on them closed;
Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.”
—
Milton, Paradise Lost
Kirov
Saga:
Fallen Angels
9 Days Falling
~ Vol. II
By
John
Schettler
Day
Four
Part I –
Ziggy
Part II –
Argos Fire
Part III –
Quantum Sleepers
Part IV –
The Bull
Day
Five
Part VII –
The Mission
Part VIII –
Twilight
Day
Six
Part IX –
The Black Hole
Day
4
“I
think and deem it for thy best that thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, and
will lead thee hence through the eternal place whew thou shalt hear the despairing
shrieks, shalt see the ancient spirits woeful who each proclaim the second
death. And then thou shalt see those who are contented in the fire…”
Dante Alighieri, The
Inferno - Canto IV
Part I
Ziggy
“For
in this modern world, the instruments of warfare are not solely for waging war.
Far more importantly, they are the means for controlling peace. Naval officers must
therefore understand not only how to fight a war, but how to use the tremendous
power which they operate to sustain a world of liberty and justice, without
unleashing the powerful instruments of destruction and chaos that they have at
their command.”
Admiral Arleigh
Burke
Chapter 1
CV Ticonderoga -Flag-
TF.38.3
Ziggy
Sprague
signed off and placed
the handset in its overhead cradle. So it wasn’t over yet, he thought. Some
son-of-a-bitch wanted to carry on the fight. First Babe Brown gets mixed up in
a surface action and loses ships without ever setting eyes on the enemy…Now
this. I send five
Hellcats
up to have a look around and not one comes
back. Sprague turned to the ship’s Captain, William Sinton, where he was
standing by the flag plot.
The
celebration on the news of Japan’s unconditional surrender the previous evening
was apparently premature. Sprague was reading the communiqué, shaking his head.
‘…
it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved, by
enduring the unendurable and bearing the unbearable, to pave the way for a grand
peace for all generations to come.’
Time and fate, he thought. They had
nothing to do with it. The US Navy decided the matter, but apparently something
was left undone.
“Looks
like we hit the bottle a little early,” said Sprague.
“Admiral?”
Captain Sinton had just returned to the bridge and was checking the positions and
status of other units in the task group as TF.38.3 steamed north off Hokkaido.
He had been with the ship six months after relieving Captain Dixie Kiefer, who
had been seriously wounded by a Japanese kamikaze attack in January. Two planes
hit the ship and caused serious harm, one on the flight deck and a second right
on the superstructure of the island.
Ticonderoga
had to steam all the
way home to Puget Sound after that. When the repair job was finished, the lines
of her “measure 33 dazzle scheme” camouflage had been painted over with new
slate gray. Yet even without her old war paint or skipper, “Big T” was still a
hard fighting ship.
Captain
Sinton worked into his new position well enough, bright, competent, and eager to
please. But with an Admiral on board you never quite warm the seat in a command
position. Sprague was an old salt, with as much raw experience as any man in
the fleet, and Sinton admired him greatly, though he did tend to feel he was
always walking in his shadow.
“We
lost Redeye One,” Sprague said flatly.
“The
whole flight?”
“Sounds
that way. I was just on the TBS with Mulholland on the
Benner
.” He was referring
to the “Talk Between Ship” radio system in use late in the war. “Five planes,
five missing. That’s lousy math any way we look at it, Captain. So now we put
some real iron in the sky and get up there and see about this business.”
“You
figure the Japs are still fighting, Admiral?”
“Someone
is, and on this watch
I
do the fighting.”
“Scuttlebutt
says the Russians might be involved.”
“Yeah,
I heard that too. Well, I don’t care if it’s the Russians or the Japanese. We’re
going north in force and if we have to knock a few heads together, so be it.
Would you get down to Flight One and Brief Ingalls and Kanaga on this?”
“Of
course, sir….But what are we looking for, Admiral?”
“Anything
with a rising sun painted on it. You see any meatballs—they get the deep six, no
questions asked. As for the Russians, that’s a different matter. Word is they’re
involved in amphibious operations up in the Kuriles, but Halsey thinks they’re
getting pushy over Hokkaido. We don’t want Russian troops of any sort on the
main Japanese islands. That’s official, so that’s the line on this one, Captain.
If we see evidence the Russians are planning such a landing we let them know,
in no uncertain terms, that it will be opposed by the United States Navy.”
Sinton
raised an eyebrow at that. “I hear Patton was spitting tacks and ready to go after
the Russians in Germany a while back,” he said. “Now here we are facing them
down over Japan. It seems to me we could send this message via radio.”
Sprague
nodded. “Something tells me we’re going to be holding the line in both places for
a good long while, Mister Sinton, and it starts right here. This is my watch,
and I intend to lay down the law. If we can do it on the radio, well and good.
If not, I want
Helldivers
and
Avengers
in the air, and well escorted.
Coordinate this operation with
Wasp
as well. No fooling around this
time. Have the flight crews ready in thirty minutes.”
“I
understand, sir, but what exactly are the rules of engagement here?”
“Get
up there and find out who put five of my planes and airmen in the deep blue sea.
Cover any search and rescue operation being mounted by
Benner
and
Sutherland
.
If we find as much as a Japanese fishing boat out there, it goes down. If we find
Russians, then here are the rules of engagement—just one— either they back off
or we come in shooting. We order them to do a 360 and stay 20 miles off the coast
of Hokkaido at all times. Any ship that crosses the line will be presumed hostile
and engaged. End of story.”
The
Fighting 87th was the air wing assigned to
Ticonderoga
, comprised of four
squadrons: two fighter squadrons, one dive bomber, and one torpedo squadron,
eighty-six planes in all. Lt. Commander Chuck Ingalls was already hopping mad
after the news that he had lost five planes and airmen before noon that day.
All the planes were from VF-87, F-6F5
Hellcats
on a simple recon
operation up north. That left him with 24 more planes, and 12 in reserve with VBF-87.
He was told to have 18 ready to go within the hour, half his total fighter
force. Ingalls men would be escorting
Helldivers
, the business end of
Ticonderoga’s
air wing that day, with all of thirty two dive bombers reporting ready for
action. There would also be a dozen TBM-3
Avengers
from VT-87.
The
dive bombers of VB-87 were the first to get the word whenever the ship wanted to
flex some muscle. The squadron had been busy in recent days, and was ready for
action. In previous weeks they had flown strikes against the surviving Imperial
Japanese Fleet units at Kure on July 24 and 28, and then bombed factories near
Tokyo. When “Big T” led the task force north in August the squadron hit targets
at Aomori and Ominato, their final strike being mounted just a few days ago
against the Yokohama docks on the 13th.
One
lucky pilot, Lt. JG Everett Wheeler, received the Navy Cross for gallantry in the
face of intense anti-aircraft fire, holding steady to put a 1000 pound bomb right
smack on the forward deck of the Japanese heavy cruiser
Tone
, another
ship with lines of fate deeply entangled in this strange new twist of history’s
rope. The dour Captain Iwabuchi was not present when
Tone
was finally
put out of action. He had already slit his belly open in the last awful hours
of the massacre in Manila, refusing to surrender to the bitter end.
After
a taste of the bubbly, the pilots of the 87th thought they would be on Easy Street
for a while until word came down to assemble in the briefing room for yet
another mission. Lt. Vern Higman was already seated and ready for the briefing
as a number of other pilots reported in. His wing mate, Wendell Stevens spied
him in his old favorite chair and was quick to his side.
“What
do you make of this one Higgs,” said Stevens. “Word is the Russkies are mixed up
in this brawl now.”
“Russians?
They’re a little late to the party, I’d say.”
“Me
too, but that’s what I heard in the radio room. That recon flight thought they were
overflying three Russian ships in the Kuriles up north. They made one pass,
then came round a second time for the photo run and
bam
, one of those
bastards lit up Billy Watts, and he went right into the drink. Flight leader
was so pissed he swung round for a strafing run, but that was the last they
heard from any of them.”
Higman
didn’t like the sound of that. The
Hellcat
was a fast, reliable, and sturdy
workhorse that could take a good deal of punishment and still come home in one
piece. To lose five like that was reason for raised eyebrows, but he said
nothing, arms folded on his chest as he watched the other pilots finding seats.
He still remembered that harrowing day when a Japanese ship put a 4 inch shell
right through his wing and fuselage near the canopy. His baby, “Round Trip
Ticket” had a hard ride home after that, but the plane lived up to its name and
brought him safely back to his carrier.
Now
Stevens had more to say.
“Heard
something else, Higgs,” he always called Higman that, and the other man instinctively
leaned his head to one side as Stevens lowered his voice.
“More
scuttlebutt, or was this from the radio room intercepts?”
“This
stuff was right in the clear! The pilots on those
Hellcats
said something
about rockets before they went down.”
“Rockets?”
“Damn
right. How you figure it? I mean, we use ‘em ourselves. Old
Holy Moses
packs
quite a punch.” He was referring to the HVAR, or High Velocity Aircraft Rocket,
a 5 inch (127mm) weapon that was unguided, but could penetrate four feet of
reinforced concrete.
“Yeah,
but I’ve never heard much about ships using the damn things,” said Higman.
“Brits
use ‘em. They’ve got a thing they call the Three Stooges, or something like that.
I hear they named ‘em Curley, Larry and Moe.”
“They
call it the Stooge,” Higman corrected him. “Probably because you have to be stupid
to use the damn things. I saw one once on one of their carriers a while back
when I had to land there. The Brits tried those out on the Kamikazes, but they
only had six, or so I heard. You can’t do a whole hell of a lot with six rockets,
and good luck hitting anything with those anyway. Ask me and I’d just as soon
stick with my MGs and a good 1000 pound bomb.”
“Tried
and true,” said Stevens, yet he was still thinking about those rockets, and wondering
what it would be like to get a couple
Tiny Tims
under his wings. They
were much bigger than the HVAR rockets, and hit much harder. Before he could
say anything else Lt. Commander Ingalls called the briefing to order and laid
it out, plain and simple.
“Alright,
listen up,” he began. “Somebody took down Billy Watts and Tom Haley’s group. Bushwhacked
the whole bunch on a photo run. You find me a Jap ship still floating and I’ll
believe it was Tojo trying to paddle his way north out of harm’s way. So we
think this might have been a group of Russian ships. The damn commies are
getting a little too big for their britches, so we’re going up to say hello and
let them know who’s running the show around here.”
This
received an enthusiastic murmur in response, and Ingalls nodded his considered approval.
“Alright,” he continued. “These ships were flying a white naval ensign with a
blue letter X across the whole field. Someone says that could be Russian Navy,
at least on the colors, but we’ll see soon enough.”
“Yeah,
soon enough, LTC,” Stevens piped up. “We get rockets this time out, or do we just
sink ‘em like Higgs says here and use the old dead lead?”
“Use
whatever they put on your plane, Stevens, but nobody drops an egg on these ships
unless Iron Mike or I give the say so. We’re to find them, and then I’ll do the
talking from that point on.”
“What
if they give you some lip, LTC? Russkies speak English these days?”
“If
I can’t raise them on radio we’ll show them the whole damn formation and see if
they feel like taking any more sucker punches like that. If they get stupid,
I’ve got authorization to plaster them.”
More
murmurs, all happily raring to go. “And one other thing,” said Ingalls. “
Benner
and
Sutherland
are heading north to look for our downed pilots, which is
another reason nobody needs to get trigger happy unless I give the word. They’re
watching these ships on radar, and we’ll handle the rest. Now, suit up and be
up on the flight deck in twenty flat. Dismissed.”
Stevens
was excited and ready to go. After all, he thought, this may be the last chance
he would get to plaster somebody with anything. But he was about to learn more about
rockets than he ever wanted to know.
* * *
Far
to the north US destroyer pickets
Benner
and
Sutherland
had joined up and were steaming together towards the site
of the action. It was their intention to get in and rescue their downed pilots in
the water before the sharks or the cold finished them off. If need be they could
also find and shadow the ships the US Navy wanted to hold responsible for the
incident. Each destroyer was fast at 35 knots, and packed six 5 inch guns along
with a set of five torpedo tubes on one side of the ship with 533mm fish. The other
torpedo mount had been removed for electronic and radar equipment to give
Benner
and
Sutherland
better eyes. Commander John Mulholland, the squadron
leader on
Benner
, figured he still had enough punch to move in close and
get the contact in his field glasses for a good long look. He had heard the
order from Ziggy Sprague, “steady as you go,” and he knew the whole of TF.38.3
was right behind him.