“Still trying to find out, sir.”
Phillips bit his tongue, knowing that yelling at the lieutenant would make him feel better but would only mess up McKilley’s efforts. Nothing like the heat of battle, Phillips thought. There was something about pressure that made most human minds start to go to hell. The fluster factor was with them now. The simplest things could become immensely complicated under pressure. Phillips took a deep breath and waited.
The Vortex missile speeding toward Target Six should have had an unobstructed shot at the target, but the Mark 50 torpedoes shot by the Barracuda were sent off course by the ventriloquist sonar set of the Winged Serpent. The torpedoes were all lagging by several miles, directly astern of the Destiny II ship, their sonars convinced that the target was 4000 yards closer than it actually was because of the Destiny’s rear-facing active sonar sending false pulses that mimicked the Mark 50s’ pinging sonar sets. The Mark 50s all tried to slow down and detonate where the Destiny should have been, but when the weapon computers said the Mark 50s should be right on top of the target, they instead found only empty ocean. The sonars tried again, pinging out to the target, hearing now that it was straight ahead, then speeding up and positioning themselves where the target should have been, only to meet nothing. In spite of a Mark 50’s ability to do seventy knots, they followed the Destiny in a tail chase at fifty-five knots, a constant distance behind the Destiny as it evaded to the southwest. After a few miles down the track, the Mark 50s would run out of fuel and sink.
From the viewpoint of Vortex Seven’s blue-laser sonar, eight Mark 50 torpedoes and their combined turbulent wakes met the target parameters for a valid submerged target. The Vortex got within twenty yards of the aftmost torpedo before exploding into white-hot plasma, destroying every single torpedo. Still, the Destiny II-class submarine did not escape undamaged. The blast effect and underwater shock wave hit it hard.
The explosion from the stern took Tanaka by complete surprise. The detonation extinguished the lights and killed the Second Captain, and the ship went into a dive since the computer no longer controlled the ship’s attitude.
“Override in manual!” Tanaka ordered the ship-control officer. “Bring us back up, two hundred meters. Kami, get down to the lower level and reinitialize the Second Captain. Mazdai, help him while I try to see what else is damaged.”
There was no questioning Tanaka’s frantic orders. Kami and Mazdai rushed out of the room. Emergency battle lanterns flickered in the space, then came alive, lighting the compartment in a ghostly incandescent glow, patches of light and darkness spreading throughout the ship.
Tanaka cursed, wondering how one of the torpedoes had managed to get in. Without the Second Captain he was blind, deaf and dumb. And defenseless.
Computers? They were as unreliable as humans.
“Captain, I think I can do this!” McKilley nearly shouted in triumph. The only problem, Phillips thought, was that by now it was probably too late. The torpedoes in pursuit of the Barracuda were catching up — the detonation of the first-fired Vortex came then, the noise rumbling through the hull, marking the death of the Destiny submarine.
“XO,” Phillips ordered Whatney, “get ready to recommend a detonation point for the next Vortex so we can put a blast zone around the Nagasaki torpedoes homing on the Barracuda. And bear in mind it would be nice if we could avoid putting a friendly submarine on the bottom.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Attention in the firecontrol team, we’re taking an active bearing and range to the Barracuda so we can put a Vortex out there that can screw up the Nagasakis following her. Carry on.”
“Captain, Sonar,” from Gambini. “We’re ready.”
“Go active, Master Chief.”
“Active, aye sir.”
The BSY-2 sonar suite was configured so that the spherical array in the nose cone could transmit an active pulse out into the water. The array was capable of putting out so much sonic power that water would actually boil on the surface of the fiberglass nose cone when the pulse went out. Gambini hit the cover of the active key, the switch configured so that no one could just accidentally hit the key, then punched the key. The pulse went out, not as deafening as a torpedo launch or a Vortex ignition, but loud, the sound reverberating throughout the ship. The pulse traveled through the water, going south and reaching out to the USS Barracuda, still running from two Nagasaki torpedoes. The pulse hit the hull of the Seawolf-class submarine, which was wrapped in tiles, anechoic coating especially designed to avoid returning an active sonar pulse. But like any kind of shielding it did not make a return pulse impossible, it simply lowered the intensity of the return pulse.
The listening spherical array of the BSY-2, quiet since the pulse, strained to listen for the return. Unfortunately the sea around her returned the sound, some from the waves overhead, some from bubbles in the water, a pulse coming back from the Nagasakis, one from the Barracuda, many from the biological content of the water.
In sonar, Gambini tried to correlate the active return signals the BSY-2 had collected to the passive listening set and the towed array’s narrowband detect of the Seawolf-class ship. There were all three indications at the bearing he knew to be the Barracuda. The range cursor on that one ping return, just a blob on the video screen, read a distance of 7.8 nautical miles.
“Conn, Sonar, range to Barracuda is sixteen thousand yards.”
“Go, XO,” Phillips ordered. “Come on, come on!”
“Aye, sir, recommended Vortex detonation at bearing one seven five, range twelve thousand yards.”
“Weps, one seven five, twelve thousand yards.”
“That’s too close. Captain,” McKilley objected. “The blast zone will kill the Barracuda.”
“So will the Nagasakis. Enter the god damned bearing and range.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Firing point procedures, phantom target. Vortex unit eight.”
Phillips collected his reports and ordered the Vortex to fire. The ignition again blasted his ears, and as the missile left the ship, he said a silent prayer for the Barracuda.
“Second Captain is reinitialized, sir.”
“Open tube doors thirteen and fourteen, programmed to the bearing of the launch of that weapon. Get them out on the bearing now, immediate enable, safety interlocks off.”
“Yes sir,” Mazdai said, flashing through the software displays of the weapon-control consoles of the Second Captain. “Ready to fire.”
“Tube thirteen, fire.”
“Thirteen away.”
“Tube fourteen, fire.”
“Fourteen away.”
“Excellent.”
The ship continued on its run from the Nagasaki torpedoes.
Pacino and Paully looked at each other. It was grim, the same scenario that Pacino had put Bruce Phillips through.
There had to be something they could do. Shut down the ship, scram the reactor, emergency blow to the surface, ping active sonar at the Nagasakis, anything. But there was nothing he could do without being in command, and Kane was too intense to reach without shaking him by the shoulders. Besides, if Pacino thought he had a clear course of action that would save the ship, he would be happy to dress down Kane in front of his men, but Pacino knew his guesses were no different than Kane’s. On second thought, all they could do was wait—
The detonation erupted into control, throwing bodies forward into the equipment like dice against the border of a crap table. Pacino went into the pole of the number one periscope, shoulder first, ribcage next, knees last. He slipped down to the deck, but the deck had become a bulkhead as the ship rolled far to the left, so far that the decks had become vertical. He slipped down the deckplates, conscious enough to see the blood pooling beneath him, hearing the screams of the wounded and dying, feeling the ship try to right itself, the deck coming back to being a deck, but when it was done with the recovery, he realized that it was not level at all. The ship had taken on a steep down angle, the lights off, the blood running downhill. Barracuda was busy dying.