This unit lowers the periscope and checks status of torpedo tube outer doors. All now open, all torpedo units reading back nominal, self checks all back showing satisfactory units, gyros on all twelve units spinning at full revolutions.
At event time minus two minutes all torpedo fuel tanks are pressurized. At minus one minute fifty seconds gas generators on all tubes are armed, mechanical interlocks removed to allow tubes to fire torpedoes as soon as this unit’s software decides to shoot. Torpedoes now fully ready to fire. All that remains is to wait for event clock to come down to time zero and to ensure that carrier, the target, is on its new course so its position at future time can be calculated. The point is that torpedoes are not aimed at target. They are aimed at point in space where carrier will be in future when torpedoes and target occupy same space at same time.
Episode elapsed time minus one minute. This unit extends periscope and finds target steadied up on course southwest. Approach angle shows carrier approaching this unit. This unit watches and determines that carrier’s course remains steady. Weapon control unit is calculating torpedo launch courses and speeds and presenting to this unit’s upper functions for check. This unit reviews calculations. They are acceptable.
Episode elapsed time minus thirty seconds and this unit decides to confirm the range to the carrier with brief pulse of laser light. Light bounces back and shows carrier to be 6756 meters away. Light confirms weapon controller’s estimate of target speed.
Episode elapsed time minus ten seconds. Calculations to target are sent to each torpedo and locked in. Torpedoes know where they are going. They no longer need this unit. Signal and power feeds to units now disconnect. All twelve units now independent of this unit.
Episode elapsed time minus five seconds. Initial torpedo launch will commence with tube one’s gas generator ignition in three point five seconds. Tube two will be next after ten seconds, then three and so forth.
Episode elapsed time minus one second. Tube one’s gas generator ignition sequence is started. Gas generator lights off, pressure at aft end of tube rises to ten atmospheres, continues to rise, pressure pushes on aft end of torpedo. Fifteen atmospheres in tube, now eighteen. Pressure in tube declines hack to seawater pressure. Torpedo unit one is away.
Pacino found Admiral Donner on the bridge in his customary starboard wing V.I.P chair.
“Sir, you called.”
The ship was rigged for night wartime steaming, the nav lights out, the bridge lit only by two weak red lamps.
It was all Pacino could do to find Donner. The ship was also at full antisubmarine warfare alert, which Pacino found comical, since by itself the carrier was helpless against submarines. Only the ships of the task force could help her, and most of them had gone to the northeast or southwest to patrol the exclusion zone boundary, leaving the Ronald Reagan with a token force — the cruiser Port Royal, an AEGIS-class unit that was excellent at fighting incoming aircraft or missiles and adequate at antisubmarine warfare, the towed array sonar systems and her LAMPS helicopters the main means of defense, and the destroyer John Paul Jones, the Arleigh Burke-class ship that was now refitted to handle its own LAMPS helicopter. Pacino noted that none of the helicopters was now flying. He would take that up with Donner.
It was also time to think about bringing one of the submarines back in close to act as their escort. In Pacino’s opinion, the carrier position was also too close to the islands.
“Have you heard about the Cheyenne?”
“Yes sir.”
“What do you make of it?”
“Officially, I can’t say until we can vector one other submarine to the area. I think it’s more important that the other sub, the Pasadena, be recalled to protect the carrier, even if it means leaving the Sea of Japan open for now.”
“You said officially. What do you think unofficially?”
“I think the Japanese MSDF subs put the Cheyenne on the bottom.”
“So the way you see this, you were right all along. The Japanese are fighting back.”
“Admiral, I don’t form opinions so that they will confirm my earlier predictions. I’m calling it the way I see it.”
“I’m sorry. Patch. I have to say that I agree with you. I’m just worried about Warner.”
“Why? What’s the president going to do?”
“If word gets out that we lost a submarine? In exchange for a tanker? We’ll be relieved the same day.”
“Sir,” a young lieutenant commander said, coming up to the admiral, “we’ve got a detect of a laser off the starboard beam. I’m calling battlestations.”
Before the admiral could respond, the officer of the deck’s call blared out over the ship’s circuit-one announcing system.
“MAN BATTLE STATIONS. MAN BATTLE STATIONS.”
The ship’s general alarm went off while Pacino and Donner moved to the center of the room.
“I’m laying below to ASW Control,” Donner said.
Pacino nodded, deciding to remain on the bridge.
Laser detect, Pacino thought. That meant a submarine was out there. A submarine that was not a friendly.
Current position — thirty kilometers west of island Onaharajima, forty kilometers south of the mouth of Tokyo Bay. This unit is at mast-broach depth observing the American aircraft carrier hull number CVN-76, as it steams southwest on a pace pattern.
Episode elapsed time is plus forty-five seconds. Tubes one, two, three, four have been fired. Torpedoes one through four are on their way to the aircraft carrier the target.
Episode elapsed time plus fifty seconds. Tube five is launched, the torpedo now away. This unit keeps the periscope up.
Pacino stood on the bridge feeling helpless. The men in ASWC, the combat-information center for antisubmarine warfare, would fight the ship, fight the task force.
He stood behind a row of video consoles and watched, the ASW Control scenes of little value to him but the sound being piped in telling him the story.
Paully White appeared.
“Admiral,” he said in his high-pitched voice, “I couldn’t find you. You weren’t in ASW Control or flag plots—”
“This is as good as ASW Control. We can get the audio feed.”
“They’d better launch the Vikings and the helos or we’re in deep shit,” Paully said.
“I think they’re setting up to do that now. Looks like we’re turning to the south so we can launch aircraft. And check out the Port Royal and the Jones. Their helos are taking off now.”
“All I can say is that those choppers should have been up a long time ago.”
“Ditto.”
“They don’t listen to me. Admiral. They just tell me where to put my submarines, your submarines, and ever since they sent Pasadena and Cheyenne to the other side of the world, I’m pretty much irrelevant. I told the captain he’d better get one of the subs back but he didn’t want to hear it. Same story you got from Donuts up here.”
“Careful, Paully. Admiral Donner isn’t fond of that moniker.”
White pulled out a cigarette. “Ah, he’s a sweetheart, he just don’t know dick about submarines.”
“I’d say that’s why—”
The audio feed from ASW Control grabbed Pacino’s attention.
“Did you hear that?”
“No, sir, what?”
“They called torpedo in the water.”