ALL NOVEL Chapter 124 – Reclamation of San Francisco Part 1
0700 June 19th, 2020 CE
2 miles of the shore of San Francisco
The USS Bunker Hill sailed within a couple miles of the beaches of San Francisco. Black smoke was rising into the air from the middle of San Francisco. The captain of the Bunker Hill peered through his binoculars at the city. He started muttering. The Lieutenant Commander, the executive officer of the ship, looked to his commanding officer.
“Captain?”
“Those damn monsters. I wished we could have killed those fucking things.”
“Me too Cap. We couldn’t do much in this scenario. We just make sure that no more of these monsters get on shore.”
The Captain nodded. “Command seems to be considering an amphibious assault to push those things in from the other side. We have a ton of amphibious assault ships at San Diego.”
“Don’t these monsters have anti-air we need to worry about Cap?”
“The ships from Hawaii are enroute to take out their giant detection thing in the middle of the ocean. Although it's moving away from San Francisco, we aren’t sure about its air detection range so we are basically waiting for the pursuing ships to get it. Once that's clear, I think the Marine Corps will begin an amphibious assault.”
1000 June 19th, 2020 CE
Washington D.C.
Cralson nodded and got off the phone. “We are receiving reports of confirmed civilian deaths due to the chemical attack. They were trapped in the city and couldn’t escape in time.”
Ronell looked over from the reports he was reading. “What is the death toll predicted to be like?”
“We are expecting around 10,000 or possibly more civilian deaths. We are also expecting around 500 military deaths.”
Ronell shook his head. “This is a national tragedy. That’s two times more deaths than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined. It's been nearly 70 years since an invasion of American soil. What is the cost of the damages?”
Cralson shrugged. “Hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly even a billion. Just a guess but the city has taken a lot of damage. We will probably need professionals to calculate it.”
Ronell shook his hide in grim resignation and looked to an aide. “Arrange a trip across the refugee camps. I need to speak to them and reassure these people. Also prepare for me a trip to San Francisco once we have defeated the invasion. I want to take a look at myself.”
Around 350 miles north away from Pearl Harbor
The Arleigh Burke-class Destroyers USS Chung-Hoon, USS Halsey, USS Chafee, and USS Micheal Murphy sailed at a brisk pace in the Pacific. The four destroyers were part of Destroyer Squadron 31. The commander of Destroyer Squadron 31 was aboard the USS Halsey and was shouting into the radio with delight. “We finally get to kill one of those fucking things. Blast them!”
All four ships launched ten Harpoon missiles one after another.
0820 June 19th, 2020 CE
2 miles of the shore of San Francisco
Two Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, two San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, and a Harpers Ferry-class landing ship dock sailed closer to the USS Bunker Hill.
From his ship, the Captain of the USS Bunker Hill could see the full aircraft complement on the two Wasp-classes. Each had 6 F-35Bs stealth strike fighters, 4 AH-1Z Vipers attack helicopters, 12 MV-22B Osprey tiltrotors, CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters, 3 UH-1Y Venom utility helicopters. The Captain whistled at the sight of it. “Those monsters are in for it now.”
100 miles north of Destroyer Squadron 31
Ehruf, a massive rectangular dark red mass similar to the being that the US Air Force took out in order to destroy the monster’s air detection capabilities, floated back towards the island that it came from. It could no longer hear the voices that came from the island so it was going back to figure out what happened. If it couldn’t pass on the communication and orders, it was very useless to the forces on the ground so it was tasked with going back to find out what went wrong.
It felt that something was moving very fast towards it. In fact, it felt like many objects were moving towards it. The frog-like anti-air monsters jumped around on top of Ehruf and positioned themselves towards the incoming objects.
40 Harpoons approached the lumbering sea giant at over 500 miles per hour. The frog-like creatures jumped around aboard Ehruf in a desperate attempt to position themselves to intercept the missiles. However, the Harpoon were skimming the sea and the monsters were sitting on top of the sea giant. They had no way of actually intercepting it. The 40 Harpoons slammed into the side of the monster.
Ehruf tilted to the right as the explosive force of the missiles pushed it. It felt tremendous pain and its purple blood bushed out of its left side. Its consciousness slowly faded.
Around 350 miles north away from Pearl Harbor
The Commander of the USS Halsey received the report on the Harpoon missiles he had fired. “Sir, all missiles have been confirmed to have hit the target. Our radar is still indicating that the enemy vessel is still afloat so we do not know if it was effective.”
The Commander nodded. “Then we will have to wait and see. It's a very massive ship, bigger than one of our aircraft carriers so it will take some time for it to sink.”
A few minutes later
“The enemy vessel has disappeared from radar, sir. It should have been sunk.”
“Relay that back to Command. We got the bastards.”
0830 June 19th, 2020 CE
2 miles of the shore of San Francisco
F-35Bs vertically took off from the two Wasp-class amphibious assault ships. They hovered into the sky and flew off towards San Francisco. LCACs with M1A1 Abrams and AAVs carrying Marines were launched from the various large ships into the ocean. On the Wasp-class ships, Marines piled into MV-22 Ospreys as the tiltrotors on the Ospreys spun up.
Intersection of Farallones Street and Orizaba Avenue
At the middle of the intersection, Eric looked around him. He had to turn his head around because of the limited view offered by his gas mask. The sun was rising and giving the sky a mix of yellow and light blue. The green gas had been dissipating and was mostly gun. The intersection looked oddly clear. Not a sign of those monsters were around.