Fiction Week
By Vince Vanterpool
LT Corbin Jasmin wandered down to the wardroom to get some “fresh” coffee. The lights in the wardroom were dimmed for darkened ship, creating a very relaxed atmosphere despite the persistent shuddering of bulkheads from the high-speed transit. The ship, an older Flight III Arleigh Burke, has been travelling east at top speed for two days now, taking seemingly random maneuvers in a strange, evasive pattern. Corbin stood in front of the Japanese coffee machine, something more akin to a soda dispenser with bright lights and vibrant colors. There were a series of options available on the touch screen above the spout, from dark roast to long espressos. Corbin stood before the screen and hesitated about which one; his finger hovered over the various options. It feels like an eternity, a full sixty seconds, before he settles on simple medium roast black coffee.
Corbin trudged up several ladder wells to the bridge. “Request permission to enter the pilothouse,” he asked softly. “Enter the pilothouse,” the boatswain’s mate of the watch lazily replied. The pilothouse was completely dark with only the faint glow of the electronic chart emanating from a heavy red-tinted filter laid over the screen. Even the small LEDs for the different systems around the bridge were taped over with opaque, black masking tape to preserve every ounce of night vision the bridge team could muster.
Careful not to trip over the knife edge, he stepped forward and cautiously approached the shadowy figure he assumed was the Officer of the Deck, ENS Kamala Karolina.
“OOD, anything significant?”
“Nothing tonight, sir. Traffic has been non-existent and we’ve been adjusting course per SESS’s direction without any issues,” the ensign said casually.
She was right, the traffic picture was in fact empty. The view outside the windows looked like the ship was flying through empty space as the stars shown above them in the moonless sky and below them, reflected by the dark ocean. Corbin mulled over how boring his upcoming watch downstairs was about to be and lamented over having to be in CIC vice enjoying the view up there when, just for a second, he thought he saw the hint of a shadow of a slim mast just poking over the horizon. Kamala must have seen his worried face and quickly replied, “Oh, that’s Betty.”
“Who?”
“Sorry, sir. I meant Ronin 17. All the vessels have been keeping station with no issues from what we can tell without radar.”
Corbin forgot how the bridge teams, notably the more junior officers, have developed affectionate names for the unmanned surface vessels, USVs, in their company. The unmanned vessels also had their radars secured and were maintaining station visually with their mast cameras trained on his ship, a neat trick with properly trained computer-vision models, but can result in interesting maneuvers with the right sea state.
“Very well. Anything to pass down to the next watch?”
“Yes, sir. Next watch has the next balloon launch. Winds have been pretty light so they shouldn’t have any issues like last time.”
Good, Corbin thought. These high-altitude balloons were the only connection back to higher headquarters they had, so any break in the relay chain would mean no updates for a while. Corbin replied back with an attempt to be as equally casual, “Alright, cool. And Stella? How has she been?”
STELLA was the ship’s updated celestial navigation system. Built off of the same named manual astronomical calculator, this version used a simple skyward-facing camera on top of the pilothouse to stare at the cosmos and ascertain the ship’s position automatically.
“Uh, well, wheels says she has been doing fine with the partial cloud coverage, but the next morning fix should help verify that.”
Corbin hummed to himself with concern, but STELLA was all they had with GPS currently as useful as fixing your position by naked eye in open ocean. Corbin thanked the junior officer for the information and made his way to the ladder wells he just climbed a few minutes ago.
In stark contrast to the pitch-black pilothouse, Central Controlling Station, or CCS, was brilliantly lit in austere white overhead lights and twinkling red, green, and orange status lights on the consoles it housed. The Engineering Officer of the Watch and the two console operators were in a loud, friendly debate about if the last Ticonderoga-class cruiser will get its service life extended one more time and actually outlive the last Littoral Combat Ship still in the fleet.
“Good evening, MPA. How’s the plant tonight?”
“Good evening, sir,” the always smiling CWO4 Patrick Rogers swiveled his chair towards Corbin.
“The plant has been temperamental as always. 1A GTM has another broken valve from the fuel service tank, but GSM2 will get to printing a new one once she is done with the part for Shirley. I mean Ronin 22,” he corrected himself holding back an even bigger grin at the mistake. “The next watch should be able to replace it and have the engine ready for use.”
“Shirley?” Corbin asked, half smirking himself. “You’ve been hanging around the ensigns too much. Is Ronin 22’s part supposed to be sent over tomorrow then? The bridge didn’t mention any preps for small boat ops for next watch.”
“Uh… let me check. No, OPS and CHENG talked and given the transit speed we need to maintain, we will just hold onto the part until the next safe box. Shirley, nothing will go wrong!”
MPA said with emphasis, his console operators trying to hold back their own laughs.
Corbin couldn’t help but actually smile at that one, “Alright, that was a good one. Have a good night.”
Amused, he left CCS and heard all three burst out laughing over MPA’s joke as he shut the hatch.
Corbin approached the hatch to Combat Information Center, CIC or simply Combat to many, and instinctually punched in the combination. The lock clicked open from inside the space, but Corbin still had throw his body against the hatch to get it to swing open. He reminded himself that he still needed to talk to Eric, the OI division officer, about getting the maintenance job for that written. He stumbled, almost fell, into Combat and was instantly bathed by the blue lights overhead. Someone long ago told him the blue helped keep watchstanders and console operators awake on watch, but he has seen enough sleeping Sailors to believe that is not the case.
Lately though, just as now, Sailors were alert on watch given how quickly the situation could have changed then. The USV consoles were equally as unmanned as the vessels they controlled as the low latency short wave mesh network was disabled at that time. The warfare coordinators and their supervisors, despite having their radars secured, were maintaining situational awareness from a variety of assets and monitoring the onboard track management and assessment algorithms. Each row of consoles, Air Alley and Surface Street, monitored the recognized air picture and recognized maritime picture, respectively. Each of their weapon target assignment algorithms were deactivated at the time, but could be enabled as requested from the operators or remotely through the aforementioned high-altitude balloons.
LCDR Ryan Hayes got up as his watch relief approached. “And my favorite person has arrived!” he said to Corbin with a large grin.
Corbin replied back with a sheepish grin, “What’s up Ryan? Anything fun happen? Did you win the war?”
“Ah, not yet my friend, but I am sure your decisive and attentive watchstanding will guarantee us victory!” Ryan said with a grand wave of his arms to the mostly empty large screens in front of the TAO and CO consoles.
Corbin plopped himself in the TAO, Tactical Action Officer, chair and got situated as Ryan regaled him with the routine maintenance and reports that occurred over the last three hours.
Before he left, Ryan concluded with, “Oh, and I spoke with OPS and the boat ops is pushed to a later date for Ronin 22’s repair part. Shirley-“
“Shirley nothing could go wrong,” Corbin said as he dryly cuts off Ryan with a small smirk.
Ryan couldn’t help but laugh, “I hope MPA gave me credit for that one.”
“In fact, I think he neglected that part in the turnover.”
An hour slowly passed by for Corbin as the large screens before him remained mostly empty. Each one was an enlarged representation of either the recognized air picture or recognized maritime picture, but with more abbreviated information compared to what the coordinators saw. Both screens largely contained neutral contacts, merchant ships and commercial airliners, trying their best to maintain a sense of normalcy despite the very obvious detours they took around the most dangerous areas. And his ship was driving into the center of one. This area was a bald patch on his displays, completely devoid of visually stimulating information, much like the dark ocean Corbin witnessed just before taking the watch, and like it had been for the last two days. Despite the uniformly blank patch of pixels on the screen, Corbin knew that the area was under heavy scrutiny from both above and within the area; dozens of eyes and ears straining in the void to catch a single glimpse or inadvertent squeak of a possible target.
It all happened quickly.
A simple blip was all it required. An errant transmission under a specific satellite, sailing slightly too close to a saildrone or underwater receiver, or a Sailor trying to connect to the cellular network from a visible island. The blip, a simple glimpse or inadvertent squeak, was the final piece from numerous, ostensibly different data sources, that the autonomous targeting system at higher headquarters needed to complete its puzzle. It selected a series of available candidates to complete the strike mission: an expeditionary missile launcher, an allied airborne maritime patrol aircraft, and a surface action group consisting of a destroyed and three USVs. It sent out the information through what it assessed was the fastest available path, knowing or hoping each candidate was waiting with their finger on the trigger, as any delay would compromise the already small window of opportunity given to them by the adversary.
Corbin looked down under his seat to see where he had placed his coffee. Happy to have acquired his warm prey and while enjoying a simple sip of the needed caffeine, his eyes spotted a new contact appear in the previously empty area. A hostile surface contact fed to them by higher headquarters with fire authorization tags attached. The ship will only not fire if the CO, or TAO in this case given the short time window, feels it will jeopardize their group’s tactical situation, or TACSIT. The ship and others in company’s TACSIT was now the number one measurement of surviving the trip back out of the dangerous area. LT Jasmin didn’t have time to speculate and mull over how effective their deception and counter-targeting had been over the last few days, and had to hope the previous watches had performed well, as the window to shoot would close quickly.
Corbin, satisfied with the information they see and the information verified by his watchstanders over their tactical internal voice net, ordered the missiles to be fired. No acknowledgement back to higher headquarters was needed, nor recommended for survivability reasons, as the weapons transmitted and connected to the weapons network for in-flight updates.
The missiles fired with a familiar explosive shudder through the ship as they left the comfortable confines of their VLS cells. The bridge team reported successful missile launches from Shirley, Betty, and Louisa as well, prompting him to remember to mentor them on professional voice communications on the net afterwards. The USVs, also given the order as seen in the fire authorization tags on the contact, acted on their own accord; the last barrier to a fully autonomous weapon platform and combat system removed out of necessity for environments where communication was a luxury and decisiveness was a necessity.
Corbin could negate the launch with an order over low probability of detection, low bandwidth short wave transmissions, again if he had deemed it required to maintain the veil of covertness for a bit longer.
On his screen, the once empty area displayed the circle of weapons quickly collapsing on the hostile target. As the circle disappeared, the target does as well with a small delay. Most likely, a UAV asset conducted BDA and passed the success message to higher headquarters. Corbin ordered the bridge to increase speed as the thermal plume of the missile launch would attract the same amount of attention they just saw happen to someone else; and if not already inbound, threat missiles would be in a few minutes.
After watch, Corbin goes to get a snack from the Wardroom. The attendants started to set the tables for breakfast as best they can with the ship heeling aggressively back and forth. The maneuvers increased in frequency; if the missiles firing didn’t wake everyone up, the rolls did. With one hand on the bulkhead for support, he arrived at the basket of pastries available.
Without even looking through all the options, he picks a flavor that looks good enough before stumbling to his stateroom.
LT Vince Vanterpool is a Surface Warfare Officer with previous sea tours in FDNF-J onboard USS McCAMPBELL (DDG 85) and USS SHILOH (CG 67). Vince earned his Master’s in Operations Research from Naval Postgraduate School and is currently attending Department Head School at Surface Warfare School Command, slated to be the Chief Engineer on USS SHOUP (DDG 86) in Yokosuka, Japan. Outside of the Navy, he enjoys writing and running TTRPG adventures for his wife, kids, and friends.
Featured Image: Artwork created with Midjourney AI.
