Chapter 11: Test BasisGeneral Marc McCampbell looked outside of his carrier's bridge. It was almost dawn now, and the fleet was only a hundred miles from the enemy base. Three hours to H-hour.
"Launch the first wave," General McCampbell ordered. Beside the island* superstructure of his carrier Sierra Madre, a squadron of navalized Fly Manthas rocketted off the carrier's deck. The Himalaya class carriers were based on an flawed old Russian carrier design**, and thus had only one flight deck directly beside the bridge. Not only did it prevent launching and recovering aircraft at the same time unlike the late 20th Century's Enterprise and Nimitz class carriers, it also meant that they would NOT be able to launch any planes at all if it got damaged. McCampbell grunted, but what's built was built, it was too late to change it. Besides, he didn't have THAT many planes to launch anyway. A second squadron of Fly Manthas followed the first, and behind them, their escorting squadron of Tin Cods were also preparing for launch.
Alfonso smiled as he watched JP napping at his post. John had always insisted that he should NOT leave his post during a combat operation. Weird, but he said he was more comfortable there rather than on a bed. Well, at least the kid didn't snore, but he was worried a bit of his lead sonar man. A mere twenty-one years old, he'd probably seen enough death to last him a lifetime. Worse, his home, the Philippines, was still largely in Zeon hands. How could he handle it? The Major wondered, even himself, an officer, had plenty of problems with that. He lit up a cigarette and took a puff. Well, one of those mysteries of life he guessed. She should be sleeping, Sylvie knew, but somehow she HAD to stay out here on the deck and marvel at the ocean. She'd never really been at sea, and only now after all the hectic activity of the past day had she realized how peaceful it seemed. Almost like... almost like space. So vast and seemingly infinite. And she didn't have to breathe from a tin can either. "AHHH! Maurice! Don't do that here!" a voice suddenly shouted behind her. Sylvie looked behind her just in time to see Maurice run past her holding her mouth with both hands. OH SHOOT... she thought as she quickly stepped out of the way. She just made it as Maurice fell on the deck and started barfing. Damn it, she thought angrily... it had felt SO peaceful and she just had to... "Sorry Sylvie," Pat explained. It had been him who had shouted earlier, "Maurice forgot her sea sickness pills again..."
"Well, it's her first time, like all of us," a new voice explained. It was Max, who was very close to what seemed to her as a smile. Sylvie sighed and smiled lightly herself. Maurice was now just about the only person that Max would ever smile to. Ever since that day... but now wasn't time for a history lesson. "What is TAKING them..." Cynthia moaned angrily. The fleet was late. Not THAT late but if a Zeon transport came in to bring reinforcements then... "There they are!" Shoji reported. Suddenly, several explosions rocked the Zeon base as the first wave of Federation aircraft began to bomb the base. The first wave's job was to destroy the entrances to the submarine pens. Hopefully, it would prevent Zeon subs from docking with the base at least until the main fleet arrived. The first squadron of three managed to destroy the entrances of two of the pens. However, the third was only slightly damaged. The second squadron of Fly Manthas then began their attack run to finish the job.
They were not as fortunate as the first squadron, however. As they approached the sky grew alive with anti-air fire, and one Fly Mantha was surprised and taken down. The second unit was killed just after releasing its bombs, only to miss. But his effort was not completely in vain, as the third Fly Mantha broke through the dense fire and dropped his load. The bombs impacted precisely on top of the sub pen. "Damn it, Major!" Brigadier General Charles Kennings, commander of the Zeon base, shouted angrily as he saw the bombs of the third Fly Mantha completely demolish the base's submarine pen no. 2. He couldn't believe it had just happened. The pens had been to designed to take on a nuclear blast, and now three CONVENTIONAL bombs had just demolished it like it was nothing. And the Major was SUPPOSED to have kept a strict watch. A series of explosions behind the General then announced the destruction of his radar facilities as a second wave of Fly Manthas bombed his base. "Sir..." the Major started as he arrived at the control tower. "Sergeant Mannings, arrest this officer for negligence and throw him in the stockade! Shoot him at dawn!" the General ordered angrily. "But sir..." the Major started before he was taken away by the fearful Sergeant. General Kennings was one tyrannical and unforgiving commander. One of the real diehard Zabi supporters who tolerated little but their own extreme ideologies and egos.
The General looked back at the sub pens. Pens 1 and 3 were still relatively intact, but their entrances had been destroyed and it would take days to fix. "Damn it! Those stupid engineers," he thought angrily, he'd have them shot too with that Major. Now he would be unable to house any submarines for at least two days. And he was quite sure that he didn't have two days. He muttered a curse before ordering, "Tell the Kamchatka and Iberia!" "Sir, transmission from the main base, Sir. Oh, crap, they say the pens are unusable Sir and radar is down," the Kamchatka's chief communications officer reported. "Damn it! What the hell happened?" the skipper asked angrily. Probably because of that stupid General Kennings, he didn't add. Most of the Zeon fleet command was competent enough, but Kennings was a moron whose "political reliability" was the only thing keeping him in command of the base. Well, that and the Kamchatka of course, he thought with a slight bit of pride. "Sir, carrier-based planes knocked out the pens. They say we should link up with the Iberia and resupply from them."
"Great, just great," he replied angrily. The Mad Angler class subs did have limited resupply capabilities. However, it wasn't as good as a base. Moreover, replenishment took longer at sea, a delay that could take as long as two hours... "Sir, Fly Manthas report mission accomplished, but they have lost two planes and another is damaged," an aide reported to General McCampbell.
"Alright, at least they did it," he replied quietly. It had been a risky mission for the planes, but it had worked. And it may have bought them more time. He looked back at the horizon. It was around an hour to dawn. Around the same time it would take for them to reach that damn base. "Sir, I have a transmission over the gertrude," the Kamchatka's comms officer reported, referring to the submarine's underwater telephone. "I confirm the presence of a Mad Angler class submarine, Sir," Dirk reported, "No further contacts, looks like the coast is clear, Sir." The skipper nodded. It had taken an hour to reach a safe rendezvous point, but at least they had found each other relatively quickly. "This is Colonel Mathew Conrad of the Zeon submarine Kamchatka, who are you?" "I am Colonel Yevgeni Ivanovich of the Iberia, glad to hear you Kamchatka." "Are you prepared for the resupply operation?" Mathew asked, straight to the point. "We are ready to surface. We have fuel and some new MSMs for you, but unfortunately we do not have enough spare ammunition..."
"Let's do it, we may not have time." "Dangerous Ground indeed," JP said he did a quick sweep of the sea bottom. The waters just west of Palawan had been called as "Dangerous Ground" by the Japanese Navy in WWII. It was a prime hunting ground for submarines then, and so it remained even now. The sea was now littered with so much wreckage and rocks that it would reduce sonar performance and make detection of submarines a whole lot harder. Not good since an amphibious assault was only minutes away, he thought, as the island of Palawan became steadily visible over the horizon.
"But it's still your home John," Major Alfonso commented. John nodded. Palawan was just one of the many islands of the Philippines, but it was a start. As long as they got there in one piece, of course. "Systems check," Sylvie ordered as Pat and Earl manned their positions in her Type 74. One of the nice things about this operation was they were issued with brand new equipment, and much as she missed her lucky old Type 74, it was SO much nicer to have a brand new truck... "Ground sonar is good," Earl reported. "The engine is also a beaut, Sylvie," Pat reported. "Alright! Sir, this is Home Plate," Sylvie reported to Captain Karl using her Type 74's new callsign, "We are ready." "Good, Harper, Evans, what is your status." "Harper here, my GM is ready," Max reported coolly. "I'm ready, too, Sir," Maurice reported.
"Good. All of you, rehearse the plan in your brains one more time. And prepare to synchronize your watches. We are now 16 minutes to the landing. It is now 0614 hours, ready... Mark!"
The Sea Lance was perhaps one of the most under-used machines in the Zeon Navy. It was a small, practically one-man craft that was akin to a midget sub or PT boat of a bygone age long ago. Usually too small for actual combat operations, its only real use in this war has largely been in reconnaisance roles where its small size and good sensors made it ideal for that mission. The Zeon Palawan base had three of these units, and one was being prepared for launch just before dawn for a routine patrol...
"Good luck, men," General Marc McCampbell said as the two LSTs and the destroyers Wahoo and Skate began to speed up towards land. The Sierra Madre, the Veneto and the two submarines were incapable of navigating the shallow waters near land and thus were forced to stay some fifteen miles from the coast. Though they would have lots of support from the Sierra Madre's aircraft, the four ships would be on their own. And it would take ten long minutes for the LST to reach the beach. And if that wasn't bad enough, they still had to trust some guerillas... "What the hell are these?!?!" Mathew exclaimed as he observed the new Zeon underwater MS as the crew hurried with the resupply effort. Two were easily recognizable as an Acguy and a Gog. But the rest looked weird, in fact they looked downright ugly. "These are the newest MS that our California development team has come up with for our assault on Jaburo. The one with the tentacle hands is the Acguguy, a close-combat type suit. The one with the 230-mm rocket launchers on its hands is called the Juagg and it's a long range assault..." Colonel Ivanovich started. "They look ugly. And these are PROTOTYPES?! Damn it we have a ton of Gogs and Acguys and they give us these!?" "Calm down. You'll like their performance. It's not that great but the design team wanted us to try it out before Jaburo..." "We might lose a very important base if we don't..." "I'll make sure we don't sir, if you don't mind," a new female voice said confidently. Mathew turned and saw a short black haired Japanese woman wearing a pilot's uniform, "And who are you?" "Captain Yoko Nagato. Pilot of the new S-Type Zugock, Sir," she replied with an air of superiority about her. "Watch this lady, Mathew," Yevgeni advised, "She's a MSM ace. And the new prototype MSM-08 Zogok her team has is a wonderful machine. And we've managed to test it out a bit, too. A great MS. We'll be unstoppable when we mass-produce it."
With the loss of Odessa, Mathew thought pessimistically, good luck mass-producing it. However, he HAD heard about MIP's new Zugock, and it was theoretically one hell of a machine. But he knew nothing about its real performance, nor its FEMALE pilot that had somehow become "ace." He had never heard her name before, though somehow the evil black color scheme of her Zugock told more than he wanted to know... "I have a new radar and sonar contact, Sir," Magic reported, "Looks like a Sea Lance just preparing to leave the coast." "Is it heading for us?" Alfonso asked. "It is, Sir. I think we should take it down. There's a good chance they have picked us up already." "Ready the five-inch gun! JP, direct their fire!" the Major ordered.
"Alright gun crew... aim for bearing 1-0-7... elevation 90, declination..."
The Sea Lance had just left its tiny dock when it detected several unknown ships approaching port. The dark sky made visual contact impossible, but its sonar clearly showed emissions from several surface vessels. And Zeon had almost no surface ships... its pilot had just begun to to send a warning when a huge plume of water appeared just off its port side...
"Miss!" Magic reported, "Shift fire 15 degrees right, drop two hundred, fire three round burst!" Outside the bridge, the five-inch gun made the proper adjustments and fired off three quick rounds, all heading right for the Sea Lance.
The Sea Lance's pilot never knew what hit him. He had swung violently port side only to meet a trio of five-inch shells that blew him and his reconaissance craft to pieces. Ironically, his death had been the key to accomplishing his mission. The explosion was seen by soldiers near the dock and was quickly reported to the command center, giving the base a few more seconds warning before the onslaught came. "Damn it! What happened to the lookouts?! How did they let the fleet get this close!" General Kennings screamed at his new aide. "Sir, no watch orders were given due to your orders to concentrate fixing the pens..." "Alright, enough! We will discuss your court-martial later! Prepare the anti-air guns, the initial assault will probably come by air." He was almost right.
Consistency notes: - *Island is the term for the carrier's control tower. - **Personal observation: The Himalaya bears a stark resemblance to the Soviet Kiev class Submarine-Hunting Aviation Cruisers (to use the proper term:)) that were first introduced in the 1970s (and they ARE crappy, compared to the awesome US carriers). The only big difference is that the Himalaya has a double gun turret in place of the Kiev's cruise missile launchers. Good bet is the Himalaya was taken from that design (since it was built around the time Gundam [0079] TV series was released and "seemed" to be a good ship at the time). It also has the "ski jump" launching system instead of the traditional catapults of American and Japanese carriers. The Kiev though, is far smaller than the Himalaya. It can only carry the Yak-38 Forger jumpjet, the Russian (and VERY inferior) version of the British Harrier. The full depiction of a Kiev class carrier can be seen in the site Warships of the World (as well as the aforementioned Kidd class). A glorious ANIME depiction (YES! THERE IS!) can be seen in Neo Genesis Evangelion's Episode 6: 'Asuka Strikes.' This episode had some of the finest depictions of real world modern day warships I've EVER seen. The names of most ships were even right (i.e. Kirov, Udaloy) or according to naval conventions (i.e. Tennesee, Kentucky)! Nice one Gainax!
Notice: This story and all related material is copyrighted by Thomas E. "Zinegata" Ting, no part of this story may be taken by any other person. If you wish to use any material, please contact me first. Gundam and all related trademarks are owned by their respective companies. |
