Chapter 377: Widowmakers Gonna Widowmake
"How much longer until the deadline?" the captain of the Heidrek asked as he gazed at the incoming attack.
"Fifteen seconds, sir," the comms officer replied.
"If they don't surrender by the—"
The captain was interrupted by his comms officer. "Signal from the flag, sir. Admiral Gutierrez sends, 'sink the USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group. God speed and good hunting, gentlemen.'"
"Well, let's not disappoint the admiral, shall we? Heidrek, please clean my sky," the captain ordered.
[Aye, sir. Sky cleaning in progress,] the ship's AI replied, then sounded a brief maneuvering alert. [Brace for maneuvers in 3... 2... 1. Maneuvering.]
The Heidrek rotated in place on the ocean like a spinning top, allowing her to bring both her fore and aft metalstorms to bear on the incoming jets and ordnance. While there were only two of them, compared to the hundreds of air defense options in the much bigger Edenian reaction fleet, they were also being targeted by far fewer attackers.
In a matter of seconds, a wall of intercept fire went up from the metalstorms, along with dozens of individually targeted frangible flak rounds from the main guns set to proximity detonation. Their target? The twenty F/A-18 Super Hornets that were currently on approach and had already fired their full complement of missiles in support of the VLS-launched cruise missiles sent by the American carrier group.
No matter how nimble the jets were, they were unable to dodge or distract the dumb frangible rounds, and they shortly fell from the sky looking much like swiss cheese. Not only the jets, but cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles alike were swatted from the sky as though a giant palm swept them aside like a small cloud of annoying gnats or mosquitos.
In a matter of ten seconds, the wave of missiles and the jets alike had been destroyed, none of them able to approach closer than two kilometers away from the seemingly minuscule EV Heidrek.
[The sky is clean, captain,] the ship's AI reported.
"Very good, thank you Heidrek," the captain replied. He turned to his weapons officer and ordered, "They say fair skies are accompanied by following seas. Let's clean some of the trash out of the ocean, shall we? Fire for effect, cripple the enemy fleet."
"Firing for effect, targeting engines and weapons, aye, sir," the weapons officer echoed.
He turned back to his console and, with the aid of the ship's AI—which had, thanks to Nova's hard work over the years, complete blueprints for every oceangoing ship currently in use—and plotted a firing plan to cripple the opposing carrier group entirely.
Thirty seconds later, he pushed the Big Red Button on his console and the Heidrek's guns spoke in anger once again. The sound of projectile after projectile breaking the sound barrier as they exited the barrel of the guns echoed through the area, following behind the projectiles themselves. The seven destroyers and three guided missile cruisers that were frantically moving away from each other as they attempted to rapidly reload their launch systems were first hit with penetrator rounds targeting their engines, and were dead in the water. They could only run on backup systems and would need to be towed to a drydock for full refit and repair if they were to ever enter service again.
But that point was rendered moot as the Heidrek spoke again, the echoing booms of their main gun battery's first round of fire coming shortly after the second round of fire reached the beleaguered American vessels. This time, the rounds were different.
The Type XXXIII Explosive Penetrator Munition, dubbed the widowmaker for its ability to deliver high-explosive payloads directly to the internal compartments in a target and kill the crew therein, had been difficult for the Lab City researchers to get to work. They tried variation after variation, but the problems were all caused by one issue: the guns firing the rounds were simply too powerful! Thus, on impact, the round would simply pass straight through the target and detonate after exiting the other side.
Since they couldn't make the guns any weaker, they had to come up with a way of slowing down the rounds themselves once they impacted their target. Thus, the shape of the widowmaker rounds was born on their thirty-third generation of testing. The round itself was encased in a sabot shell comprised of electrical steel that would detach from the projectile upon exiting the barrel, then wind resistance would deploy eight drags, or "legs", that would break away on impact with a target but survive the punishing supersonic wind while the round was in flight. The combination of the added wind resistance with the increased surface area had proved enough to slow the round so that it would detonate inside its target rather than simply creating a small hole in one side and a similar-sized hole on the other, as penetrator rounds were designed to do.
The end result was visible here, where they had been fired in the real world for the very first time. The rounds deployed as designed, impacted as designed, and exploded as designed. Then... there was no then. The launch systems and internal magazines inside the American guided missile cruisers and destroyers were simply erased from existence, leaving the vessels dead in the water and without the capability to fight back, and most of their crews either dead, missing, or suffering injuries of varying severity.
"Targets neutralized, sir. Standing down the guns," the Heidrek's weapons officer reported.
"Very good, guns." The captain turned to his comms officer and ordered, "Signal the flag: mission complete. Request transport for rescue boarding ops."
"Signaling the flag, aye, sir," the comms officer echoed. "Flag responds, transports inbound from base, the fleet will move to our position and enter stationkeeping."
"Understood, thank you comms." The captain settled back in his chair for the wait. His mission was complete and his battle had come to an end.
It was a battle for the history books and future armchair admirals to debate in naval academies around the world. A single frigate, the smallest ship in any country's naval forces, had faced down an entire American carrier strike group and prevailed. The only "damage" the frigate had suffered in the process was a stiff wind that ruffled a few of its crewmembers' hairstyles. A battle like it had never been seen before and would likely never be seen again; at least not on the surface of the planet, anyway.