Nearing the Edge

by Eagle

Convoy

April 23rd, 2006
1150 Hours
Northwest of Hawaii

Source

The bridge of the Audie Murphy gave a grand view of the merchant convoy the destroyer was assigned to protect. In truth, the convoy had nearly as many warships as merchantmen, which in comparison to pre-war plans was rather low in number. There were only five cargo ships escorted by four warships, but as the first convoy to Equestria no great risk could be taken, nor any slack given to protection.

The Audie Murphy was joined by another of her sisters, the Laffey. Third in place in the back left of the group was the Canadian destroyer Algonquin, her red and white flag serving as a standout to the others. The largest and oldest of the four was the nuclear cruiser California, spearheading the convoy slightly to port.

“Still nothing?” Keith asked.

“Nope, nothing,” his XO replied plainly. “Laffey thought she picked up a sonar contact not too long ago, but it was just a whale. Nothing to worry about.”

“It’s still a long way to Cozumane.”

“It’s too bad we can’t land near Vanhoover and deliver everything right to the front,” Bailey lamented.

“Not while it’s getting bombed and getting that close to enemy territory. May take more time to drive this stuff over the country but it’s better than it being on the seafloor.”

The convoy churned along at a comfortable speed, ever on the lookout for hostiles. At this stage their biggest threat was submarines, and as such the active sonar was constantly pinging away. There had been some vague sightings along the way, including one particularly close contact they had been popping up more often. Few ships had passed through in the prior days, especially the unarmed supply ships, but the few that did reported a significant submarine presence.

On two separate occasions, Navy destroyers engaged hostile submarines while being fired on themselves, though neither side had any success. Not much later an empty merchant ship returning alone from a quick, impromptu supply run was sunk by a torpedo. It was clear now that with neither side achieving naval supremacy that free and safe navigation was no longer possible.

Keith’s warship and the others were now to escort the first convoy of transports from Hawaii to Equestria. There was strength in numbers and the heavier protection would go a long way to their safety. The enemy could still strike damage, especially if their numbers increased, but the first convoy was unlikely to run into major organized resistance; any solitary attacks by hostile submarines would be dealt with swiftly once they were sighted. Before long the contact strayed too close, providing the Americans their first real position as it appeared on the screen in the CIC.

“Bridge sonar contact. Bearing one-two-zero. Classified as Foxtrot class.”

“Any other contacts?”

“No Sir, she’s operating alone. Speed looks about ten knots, depth is eighty feet and rising.”

“Alright good. Arm an ASROC and get ready to fire. We’ll launch just before they reach periscope depth. We should be able to kill them quick.”

The crew carried out the task, easily preparing the torpedo-carrying rocket and awaiting the order to fire. Slowly the Foxtrot crept towards the surface, reducing her speed even further, not knowing that she had been discovered. When she reached sixty feet, Keith gave the order to fire.

The ASROC leapt from the destroyer, adjusting its course in the direction of the submarine. By the time the Foxtrot raised its periscope, its Changeling captain only saw the convoy, paying no mind to the dissipating smoke behind the American destroyer. Before any fire plan could be set for his torpedoes, the ASROC’s torpedo hit the water.

With the accuracy of the weapon drop and the depth of the submarine, the Mark 46 torpedo actually sank below the Foxtrot on its initial strike of the water. It made little difference though, as the weapon activated it quickly locked on to the nearby target. Caught by surprise and in a terrible position by default, the Changelings had barely been able to lower the periscope by the time the torpedo rose up and impacted the bottom of their sub.

Keith saw the detonation of the warhead from the bridge, sending up a large column of water and even knocking part of the Foxtrot’s bridge above the surface. With the ship rapidly flooding, the submarine captain harbored no thoughts of vainly trying to save it. An emergency surface was ordered followed with a cry to abandon ship.

The rest of the Foxtrot surfaced, and almost immediately her crew began to fly from the bridge and other exit hatches. Keith denied a request to fire on the stricken vessel, seeing no point in causing further carnage to the sinking ship, and the other American vessels seemed to think the same. Within another minute the Foxtrot was diving again, heading for the bottom of the ocean.

Her Changeling crew continued to escape as long as they could, with several falling into the water. Many of those that escaped earlier did not stay, electing to fly elsewhere in hopes of avoiding capture. Keith had already alerted the destroyer’s boats and Seahawk to prepare to rescue the crew, but seeing the few escaping Changelings surprised him. In spite of everything he had forgotten their natural flying ability, and part of him now regretted not firing on them at least.

“That was an easy first kill,” Bailey observed. “We got lucky on this one.”

“Yeah, we did. Feels good huh? Like fate’s not always trying to screw us over. We got any word on how many survivors we picked up?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve, alright,” Keith repeated gladly. “Go find Oliver and tell him to get some space ready for us to hold them in. I’m going to head to the flight deck and have a look at them.”

“You got it.”

After forty minutes, the Americans suspended any remaining search efforts, not finding anything else beyond an oil slick and some debris. The captured crew sat in a circle on the flight deck, their drenched uniforms drying under the sun. When Keith arrived, they formed themselves into two lines of six, much to his surprise.

Though they were formed up, they still wavered about, clearly exhausted and defeated. None of them spoke a word to the Americans or to each-other, and their shocked, tired, waterlogged look gave them an almost pathetic feeling. Keith wanted to begin asking questions then and there, but could not find the proper words to, and instead sent them below decks after a few more glances over them.

The encounter with the Foxtrot kept everyone on alert, but for the next four hours the seas were quiet. Keith handed command of the bridge over to Bailey and left for the mess for a late lunch. Thankfully there was still some grilled chicken and mashed potatoes left, and he took a seat in the mostly-empty mess across from the head of the ship’s medical department, Lieutenant Rodrigues.

“How are the prisoners looking?” Keith asked, cutting into the chicken.

“Alright Sir, I guess.”

“Guess? You looked at them didn't you?”

“Of course I did, they seem okay,” the Lieutenant answered, shoving a large piece of chicken in his mouth. “No injuries or illness I think. They just looked a little waterlogged. My guess is they’ll be fine.”

“Can you give me anything more confident than a guess Lieutenant?”

“No I can’t, Captain. I was trained for medical duties for humans, not bugs,” Rodrigues clarified. “All I can do is look for the basic stuff, like surface injuries or something. I can’t be sure about anything else. I got nothing on these guys.”

“Huh, well… guess that makes sense.”

“I don’t even know what these guys eat. Tree leaves or something maybe. But they seemed okay, pretty stubborn too. They should be fine unless you want to toss them back out into the Pacific.”

“Nah, I don’t plan on it,” Keith relented, gnawing on a tougher piece of chicken. “You know I never cared for the Pacific that much.”

“Huh?”

“I guess I just prefer the Atlantic.”

“Why? There some difference between them?”

“It’s in the water I guess. Honestly probably not. It’s just cause I grew up in New York instead of the west coast.”

“New York City?”

“A little place upstate called Elizabethtown. It wasn’t on the coast but my dad and I would go fishing at Lake Champlain. In the summers we’d drive across Vermont and New Hampshire to the ocean,” the Captain reminisced happily. “You ever go fishing with you dad?”

“Couldn’t. We grew up in Iowa so there wasn’t much opportunity,” Rodrigues explained. “Maybe when things are boring I’ll get a rod and fish over the side of the ship.”

“Good luck with that,” Keith chuckled. “But yeah, wasn’t much of a sailor before the Navy. Now Commander Bailey on the other hand, he’s from Nantucket. He’s got salt water in his blood.”

“Mhm,” The Lieutenant groaned blankly, scarfing down the last of his meal. “I’m going take another look at those bugs for you. I’ll let you know if I find anything new.”

“Thank you Lieutenant.”

Finishing his meal, Keith returned to the bridge to find Bailey and the others hard at work. Something had happened since he had been gone, but had not been notified. None of the ships seemed damaged, so clearly no attack had taken place, but he still disliked not knowing.

“What’s up Commander?” he asked Bailey as the Commander turned up to welcome him.

“California’s helo picked up a sonar contact a ways off not too long ago but they lost track,” Bailey updated him. “They need help combing the area so I sent ours up to help look.”

“Let me know next time,” Keith asked simply before moving on to the more important matter. “What kind of sub was it?”

“Unknown. But we’re pretty sure it wasn’t one of ours. As far as we know there shouldn’t be any friendly submarines near us.”

“Let’s just make sure when we do find it. Things have been so crazy I wouldn’t be surprised if one wandered too close to us. We’re taking enough of a beating as is, so no taking chances with blue-on-blue.”

“Yeah, I agree. We do think it’s a nuke boat though, considering how quiet it seemed.”

Keith let out a long breath, running his hand along his jawline. Nuclear powered subs of any kind were much harder to deal with than conventional ones, being much quieter and having a near-limitless fuel supplies. With enough patience and skill a silent submarine like that could take its time and sneak in to launch a deadly attack. It would take much more work to track it down.

“Well let’s stay on him. We can’t let him outlast us. Let’s coordinate with the other ships to get proper sonar coverage. We’ll see about rotating helicopter sorties with them too so we don’t get burnt out.”

Now began a long game of cat-and-mouse as the escort’s helicopters searched for the sub, hoping to find it before it could get into position and launch an attack. It was a painfully tense experience for the crews on both sides that dragged on slowly. Naval warfare required patience, more so than fighting on land or in the sky.

The hunt lasted for three hours without further contact, but the Americans never stopped. An enemy submarine was known to be close by, tracking them from the deep, waiting for an opening. The Changelings would not quit, and so neither could they.

The dusk began with the onset of the evening, with the setting sun painting the sky and Pacific waters with a beautiful orange. The no trace of the submarine had been found by either the ships or their helicopter patrols. There was some talk of breaking off one of the ships to hunt it down, but the idea was rejected in favor of keeping the ships close by.

This was suiting for Keith, who preferred to stay with the others rather than go off searching for the enemy. Their objective was to escort the merchant ships, not sunk subs, and that meant against possible long-range bombers as well. The convoy had to stick together, meaning they could not outrun the submarine either.

Before the sun could set, the ship’s phone on the bridge started to buzz. Keith fully expected it to be another SITREP at first as many others had come in on an approximate hourly timetable. It was only after picking up the device that he realized the call was too early to be a SITREP.

“Bridge, CIC.”

Keith recognized the voice on the other end as Lieutenant Stepanović, the destroyer’s ASW officer.

“Bridge, did you find something out there?”

“One of California’s helos picked up a sonar contact to the east at bearing one-one-zero at a little less than ten miles. We lost it but we know where they are.”

“Alright, let’s get our Seahawk over there to help.”

Three American helicopters began to prowl over a smaller stretch of ocean, stopping to hover here and there to dip their sonars into the water. The Changeling submarine still proved difficult to find, even with the area narrowed down. In order to track the enemy, and subsequently kill him with a sonar-guided torpedo, the helicopters needed them to make noise. The Changelings beneath them must have realized their detection, as now they were either crawling forward slowly or not moving at all. They could wait indefinitely, but the fuel-limited Seahawks could not.

The Audie Murphy’s helicopter, ‘Crowbar’, pinged the waters below constantly. It’s pilots, and those of the other helicopters, were getting frustrated. They knew the submarine was somewhere close, but did not know exactly where. Dropping a torpedo in the general area would possibly lock on to the submarine, but it would also be alerted and have to move. If it was far off, it stood a chance of outrunning the weapon, and the helicopter would have to make the time-consuming trip back to the ship for a reload before flying out again.

There was some slight comfort knowing they were stopping the submarine from moving in more quickly, and keeping it away from the convoy, but that was not enough; it had to be killed. The sub could stalk the American ships for days while the helicopters were still limited, and abandoning the search meant the process would have to start over again. With lengthy searching and heavy use of sonar, they steadily narrowed down the search area, but fuel was running low and they still had no definitive track on the submarine.

“I think he’s near me, still can’t point him,” the California’s helicopter pilot, 'Sunny', complained. “Listen I’m going to drop my fish here, see if they home in on anything and get that bastard moving. Crowbar, keep your ears open and see if he takes off, you copy?”

“Copy,” the helicopter pilot answered.

One Mk46 torpedo fell from the bottom of the Seahawk, followed by another shortly after once it had moved a short distance. The weapons plunged into the water and swam deeper, pinging away with the active sonar within them, searching sonically for targets. The helicopter crews did not have to wait for the payoff to the gamble.

Spurred by the sudden appearance of torpedoes, the Changeling submarine began to move again. The Murphy’s helicopter detected it almost instantly as it began to speed away from the searching weapons. It was in fact not just close by, as they had thought, but was just ahead of Crowbar and moving closer.

“Oh shit, there!” The second crewman of the Seahawk jumped. “He’s right there! Right in front of us!”

“I see him! Hang on!”

“Sunny, Crowbar! We found her, enemy sub caught and classified! She’s a November! We’re trying to catch her, out!”

“Alright alright! I got it! This is perfect!” Crowbar’s pilot shouted as the Seahawk leveled out. “Drop the fish! Quick!”

"Madman! Weapon away!”

The Mk48 fell into the water directly ahead of the November as the Seahawk pulled away to avoid any blast. Running from the torpedoes behind them, the Changelings had no time to react to the oncoming weapon. Sonar had scarcely announced ‘weapon homing’ before the fish struck the nose of the November, punching through the hull and exploding against the torpedo tubes. The submarine’s own torpedoes, intended for the convoy, were set off, and the eruption blew open the bow and sent a large column of water skywards from the sea.

"Got her, damn. Took long enough," the pilot exasperated. "A November? How'd we have that much trouble with that?"

"Bugs do some fishy stuff with their subs, something they do that makes them a little harder to find than the average Soviet-era trash. Heard it's been spreading to the other Bloc ones, too," his companion vexed, slouching in his seat a bit as he observed his work. "Or we could just be really shit at our jobs."

The pilot chucked as he brought the helicopter around and began the trip back.

"Murph, this is Crowbar. Enemy November is KIA and we're heading back now, out."

“Nice work,” Keith relaxed from his spot on the Audie Murphy. “Now we-”

“Vampire! Missiles inbound!” one of the panicking crew interrupted. “Vampire! Vampire! Missiles from the west at two-eighty-eight!”

“What missiles!? Where the fuck did they come from!?” Keith yelled, not waiting for an answer to the new threat. “Launch SAMs! Don’t wait! Fire what we’ve got! Don’t let them hit!”

The oncoming missiles were much closer than anyone believed, but the escorting warships quickly followed the Audie Murphy’s lead and fired their own SAMs. Thankfully, despite the lack of coordination, there was little risk of friendly fire. Only the Algonquin’s helicopter was in the west and was well out of the way of the flying ordinance.

In spite of the shock, luck was with the humans, as they targeted the few enemy missiles. Two were quickly destroyed by the Murphy’s fire, three by the Laffey, and a fifth by the Algonquin. The final closed in on the convoy quickly, but was struck by a burst from Laffey’s CIWS and exploded in the air, rattling the ships. Though the sudden attack scared every man in the group, there was no damage or casualties.

There was a moment of stunned silence that seemed to go on for an extensive time. With no other dangers about them, the sailors tried to collect themselves, trying to shake off the surprise and catch their breath. Finally, their Captain shouted and broke the quiet.

“Where did those missiles come from!?” Keith demanded.

“Not sure Skipper. There’s no planes at all on the radar. I think it might have been sub-launched, but they were far off.”

“Sub-launched? You think?”

“I think so, Captain. Turns out they were cruise missiles, but like I said there’s zero air or surface contacts.”

“Well keep looking, and see if the other ships saw anything, too. Any other unknown contacts anywhere? Sub or surf?”

“Negative Captain, no contacts. I think we’re in the clear now.”

“Good… good, but keep your eyes peeled. I don’t want anymore dirty surprises like that for the rest of the mission… God… feels like we got lucky that time.”

The remainder of the trip passed without major incident. Local reports by maritime patrol aircraft suggested the cruise missile attack had indeed originated from a submarine firing them off from long range, but the submarine itself was not pinpointed again, nor did any other subsurface contact appear close to the convoy. The last enemy sighting was from a scouting maritime bomber of the Shadow Navy, sighting the convoy possibly to pass on information for a bomber attack, but an American F-16 flying from the coast quickly shot it down.

The convoy arrived safely in the harbor at Cozumane without having suffered a single loss. However, Keith and many others were not lulled into a false security by this. The convoys were vital to supporting the war in Arcaia, and as such the Bloc would assail every cargo ship they could with increasing pressure.

Watching the merchants unload their diverse cargo further showcased their importance. Replacement equipment in the form of tanks, and planes, fresh men to fill in for those lost, a variety of supplies from bombs and bullets to food and medical stock and spare parts for mechanics; the convoy carried some of all of these. Keith knew these were what was needed to win the war, and he understood the enemy knew that too. Each transport the Bloc could send to the sea floor meant their own troops did not have to face its contents on the front. Escorts like the Audie Murphy now bore the lifeline of the war on their shoulders.

Author's Note: