don’t let me down, I’m willing to put all the past controversy behind me.”
“GWI will do its best to do so, you can rest assured, Mr Chairman of the Commission of the Ministry of Defense,” Cruz told me with a solemn official voice.
“That’s great. Well, gentlemen,” told I the invited persons, “What you’re about to see is a demonstration of our new torpedo, which is fundamentally different from what our fleet is equipped with. At the moment we have only one torpedo, but I’m sure you have the imagination to imagine that there could be dozens, and in order for that to become a reality, I brought you here. Come to the ship’s command post, gentlemen, Captain Clark has graciously allowed us to observe the tests from there.”
We chose as our target the shipyard where the badly damaged battleship New York was being repaired. We have, of course, informed the Dock management and the Metropolitan Fleet Patrol Force in advance that a training attack was planned on the facility under their supervision, and now corvette commanders and shipyard anti-aircraft operators, who have long been bored with no real business, enthusiastically probed space with scanners, waiting for a hypothetical adversary to appear.
We did not yet have a carrier for the command plane and torpedo, so we asked Captain Clark to make the aircraft carrier accelerate in the direction of the shipyard, release our experimental products and change course, gradually slowing down.
Our supposed adversary tracked the aircraft carrier’s maneuver. Of course they’d notice a carcass like Wellington, but as I hoped, the start of our machines went unnoticed. By the terms of the test, the shipyard’s defenders should not have paid attention to the aircraft carrier, since it played a purely auxiliary role, and they didn’t.
And that was where it got interesting. The command pursuit plane, controlled by one of the pilots, who had already had experience with this machine, has carefully diverted its course to the enemy’s unexpected attack vector. The torpedo he controlled was moving just behind the command plane, like a dog on a leash, carefully repeating his maneuvers. The distance to the autonomous space dock was still quite large, and our machines began a cautious acceleration to reach the target at maximum speed. Shipyard scanners and patrol ships still didn’t notice the danger, and the command plane pilot saw the ships, which were larger and more detectable, quite clearly, he was maneuvering, trying to get his machines to the target as far away from them as possible.
10,000 kilometers from the dock, the pursuit plane made a circumspect maneuver, set a course that diverged from its target, and the torpedo turned off the engine and went to the target by inertia, using EW systems to conceal itself from detection.
Now the pursuit plane pilot wasn’t supposed to go unnoticed. He put the torpedo on target, and then it had to operate automatically. Therefore, the pilot of the command plane decided to help his ward by diverting the attention of the defense forces. Having switched the engines into overdrive mode, he drastically changed course and attacked one of the patrol ships. The pursuit plane, virtually, fell out of the void and slightly shocked the commander of the corvette. The distance at which his scanners detected the enemy was completely out of line with his understanding of the capabilities of modern EW means. As a result of the brazen attack, the corvette was hit by a rocket, and the computer displayed a list of conditional damage to the projection screen. The pursuit plane that ran at maximum speed past the corvette went unpunished, despite the fairly heavy fire from the patrol’s anti-aircraft guns. Two more corvettes tried to intercept a single pursuit plane, but their guidance systems were hard-pressed to capture a quick-moving target, and consistently missed it.
Meanwhile, the torpedo continued to approach the autonomous space dock. The idea of a torpedo capable of reaching the enemy ship on its own after leaving an aircraft carrier came to my mind when I watched our torpedo bombers being destroyed, because they were very vulnerable to enemy pursuit planes.
Of course, this ammo turned out to be very expensive. In fact, it was an unmanned pursuit plane, equipped with electronic warfare systems, powerful engines, which provided for high speed and maneuverability, and instead of rockets and cannons it was armed with an internal binary charge of considerable power. But the main advantage of this weapon was its ability to effectively counter the enemy scanners and aim-capturing systems.
Shipyard scanners spotted the threat at the moment when it was already impossible for the anti-aircraft systems to respond to it, furthermore, the high intensity of radiation from the scanners made the torpedo start chaotic maneuvering, that made it difficult for the enemy to point the guns.
The torpedo didn’t hit the dock, after all, it was a combat drill, and no one wanted to lose the only experimental product yet, at the risk of crippling the shipyard. During the next maneuver, the torpedo passed close to the dock structures, signalled by a bright flash the conditional detonation of the warhead and headed back towards the aircraft carrier.
“Target hit,” aircraft’s computer stated, “Industrial object of the hypothetical enemy critically damaged.”
“It was spectacular, Mr Lavroff,” Captain Clark noted with satisfaction, “Congratulations on your success. When can the Fleet expect to see these weapons on our ships?”
“Sooner than you think, Captain, Sir,” I responded smiling, “and thank you for congratulations. Gentlemen,” I turned to the representatives of the weaponry companies, “In a month and a half, I need 500 of these torpedoes and 50 command pursuit planes to control them in battle. The technical documentation for the products is ready and will be handed to you by representatives of the FAWC. You will have unrestricted access to the designs of our engineers required for the serial production of the torpedoes. I’m not gonna do a competition, I just don’t have time for it. The decision to enter into direct contracts with you will be made by me under my own responsibility, based on the prices and schedules you will give us. I expect your offers tomorrow, gentlemen. I can’t give you more time.”
“What is this, Captain?” The Minister of Defense looked at me in surprise, taking his eyes off his tablet, “Are you doing this again?”
“This is a plan of battle tests for a new type of torpedo, Fleet Admiral, Sir. Since its primary purpose is a covert surprise attack on the enemy’s major ships and space infrastructure, the quarg shipyards where they are currently building their superbattleships have been selected as targets.”
“But where did you get the resources, the ships and the production capacity, Captain? This is actually not a combat test, but a major raid on the enemy’s rear with the involvement of serious fleet forces.”
“The ships were provided to me by Colonel General Knyazev, with the permission of Fleet Admiral Nelson, as part of the agreement on the testing of new equipment, which has not been rescinded since the name of the FAWC was Lavroff Weapons Company. Minister of Military Production Zwerev agreed to provide me with shipyards for their reequipment. I can’t say he did it willingly, but he did it. And as for resources, the FAWC had its own funds after the sale of battleship Titan to the Fleet.”
“Captain, you are a pure adventurer. You put yourself at risk, you injure me as your immediate superior. Couldn’t you have checked with me in advance?”
“You wouldn’t approve of my plan, Mr Minister, if I’d informed you beforehand.”
“Fine, Captain! Just fine! You knew I wouldn’t let you do this and you did it without my knowledge, and now you have the audacity to say it looking me in the face.”
“I always prefer honest answers, Fleet Admiral, Sir, unless a lie is necessary.”
“Ghm…” Bronstein choked on another angry tirade,“What should I do with you, Captain? I can’t sanction this operation, obviously. I’m gonna
