Free Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan by Peter von Bleichert

helicopters, early warning aircraft,
and fighter-bombers perched on the deck.   Just beneath their beefy landing gear was a dimly-lit and chilled
environment better suited to electronics than human beings: the combat
information center, or CIC.
    Vibrations from aircraft landing and launching overhead
transmitted down bulkheads.   The sounds
melded with the murmur of sailors speaking into headset microphones while seated
at computer terminals.   The combat
information center’s Kevlar-lined walls were covered with flat video screens that
displayed anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine tactical data.   A strike controller communicated with planes
coming and going from the ship, as four different tactical action officers
watched respective warfare teams.   Cold,
hostile stares stayed glued to perpetually refreshing data, and each waited and
watched for any threat to the George
Washington .
    The air defense officer brought up a large graphic of the
western Pacific on his screen.   Parabolic
lines represented several missile tracks reaching from China and advancing toward
a large diamond that represented the carrier strike group.   The officer in charge lifted a telephone and
notified George Washington ’s command.
    The carrier’s executive—a rear admiral with a face like an
old sea chart—stood from his flag bridge chair and ordered the strike group to
battle stations.   Aboard ship, hatches
closed and locked, and damage control parties reached their ready stations.   The anti-air warfare commander observed the
menacing advance of the Chinese ballistic missiles.
    “It’s up to Lake
Champlain ,” he said.
    Like Pallas Athena—the goddess of warfare and truth—the
American guided-missile cruiser Lake
Champlain bore her own buckler.   Her
protective shield was not of tightly woven gold tassel.   Instead, it bristled with electronics and
kinetics.   Lake Champlain ’s Aegis combat system included networked radar,
powerful computers, and capable weapons.   Aegis could track 100 targets out to 100 miles.   Under the supervision of seasoned sailors,
Aegis controlled the cruiser’s vertical launch system—the VLS—a grid of
lid-covered cells on Lake Champlain ’s
after and forward decks.   Each cell
contained Tomahawk cruise missiles in the anti-ship and land-attack variety, or
a Standard Missile—the US Navy’s primary long-range surface-to-air
missile.   Several third-generation
Standard Missiles had been loaded at Pearl onto Lake Champlain .   Each Standard
lofted a sophisticated lightweight exo-atmospheric projectile, or LEAP, able to
kill ballistic missiles at the fringes of space—a bullet to hit a bullet.   Lake
Champlain ’s crew hustled to general quarters.   Captain Ferlatto departed the bridge and rushed
below to the cruiser’s combat information center.
    The Chinese missiles advanced within range of Lake Champlain ’s radar, their steady
approach shown as white lines on the CIC’s big blue screens.   Ferlatto joined several sailors huddled
around the glowing panels.
    “Update,” the tactical action officer demanded.
    “SM-3s are targeted and ready for launch, sir,” the weapons
officer reported.
    “Shoot,” the officer barked.   Buttons were pushed at the fire control terminal.
    A sheet of crackling flame vented from between Lake Champlain ’s five-inch deck gun and her
forecastle.   The first Standard Missile lifted
away.   It roared skyward on a pillar of
fire and white smoke.   Aegis contacted
the interceptor and guided it out.   Another SM-3 fired, and then a third.   An unnatural fog wrapped Lake
Champlain as her surface-to-air missiles dashed for the Chinese ballistic
ones.
    The East Winds skirted the upper mesosphere, pointed back toward
Earth, and started their plunge at the ships on the Pacific.   Along with the warheads, polyhedral decoys released
from the East Wind’s booster buses.   They
would generate heat and reflect radar, confusing and drawing