Invasion

“I have a targeting coordinate for Texas, USA,” he said, formally. “Mr Navigator, are we in the correct position?”

“Aye, sir,” the Navigation Officer said. The missiles had been reprogrammed as soon as they had received the orders, perhaps the final orders they would ever receive, but they were useless without an accurate position fix. In one sense, it hardly mattered, as long as it looked as if the warheads were going to come down in the midst of the Red Zone, but submarine crewmen were perfectionists. A nuke that went off-course could really ruin someone’s day. “I have an accurate fix and I have updated the missiles accordingly.”

The Captain took a breath as the timer entered its final countdown. “I have an authorised launch code,” he said, to the Exec. “Do you concur?”

“I concur,” the Exec said. Trembling hands inserted a key into the correct socket. Only the Captain knew that the Exec had had friends in the Red Zone, friends he might be condemning to death. “Mr Navigator?”

“I concur,” the Navigator said. His face was blank, unwilling to accept what they were about to do. He inserted his own key and tried to smile. It didn’t work. “May God forgive us.”

“I concur,” the Engineering Officer said. The Weapons Officer followed him in concurring. “Captain?”

The Captain glanced once at the timer and then composed himself. They’d had to rewrite several modules of programming, digging up old programs from the Cold War, back when it was all-too-possible that there was a Russian submarine closing in on their position, ready to sink them before the bundles of death were launched towards Russian targets. The irony was almost killing him; there might have been Russian submarines in the area – hell, there were Russian submarines in the area – but they were friendly. The Redshirts, as far as anyone knew, didn’t have submarines. They had orbiting Rods From God instead and if one of them hit the submarine, they were dead…

“Insert keys,” the Captain said, to the two who hadn’t inserted their keys. “On my mark…mark!” The keys were twisted almost as one. The weapons were now armed and very dangerous. The Kentucky carried twenty-four Trident II D-5 Ballistic Missiles and they were going to launch them all as fast as possible. The noise of the tubes rapidly filling with water could be heard throughout the boat. “Weapons?”

“All tubes are flooded and ready to fire,” the Weapons Officer said. His voice shook slightly, but training still held. The Captain watched him carefully; he'd known people who collapsed during drills, despite knowing that they were drills. No one’s behaviour could be really predicted until they faced a real test…and by then, it could be too late. The Weapons Officer touched a covered button and opened it. “Timer now at twenty seconds and counting down.”

“The responsibility is mine,” the Captain said, as calmly as he could. The Weapons Officer looked relieved; the Captain made a mental note to ensure that he had as much of a break as was possible on the submarine. He would have offered drink, but it was forbidden onboard American submarines. “Ten seconds…”

The timer ran down. “Firing,” he said, and pushed down on the button. There was a dull rumble as the first missile was blasted into the water, and then it’s drive ignited, safely behind the boat. The second followed, and then the third, until the Captain thought that the entire boat would shake itself apart. They’d betrayed their location now and their only hope was that the aliens didn’t have anything overhead to react to them before they could hide. The shaking stopped suddenly and everything was quiet.

“Evasive action,” the Captain barked. They had exposed themselves now. “Sonar?”

“They all fired,” the Sonar officer said. The young man looked shaken by what he’d just heard through the computers. “I counted over two hundred missiles, fired into the air…and no sign of any enemy retaliation.”

The Captain closed his eyes. Thirty missile boats – American, French, British, Russian and even – finally – a Chinese and Indian boat – firing all of their missiles towards Texas. If God was with them, the aliens would have very little to intercept them in their boost phase…and they would have to shift their orbital positions. They’d see the missiles, of course, but would they react the right way? It didn’t matter any longer, not to him; USS Kentucky was out of the war now.

“Take us down,” he ordered, knowing that the remainder of the small squadron would be doing the same. “Run silent, run deep…”

And hope that we can make the rendezvous, he thought, silently. If we can’t…

***