A navy man of the old school, circa the Second World War through the 1960s, would have been somewhat puzzled by the same view. For one, he wouldn't have considered a ship of the Cunningham's size to be a destroyer.
Measuring 580 feet from her radically raked clipper bow to her short well deck aft, she was the length of a treaty-vintage heavy cruiser. She also would have displaced nearly as much, were it not for the extensive use of aluminum alloy and high-strength composite materials in her construction.
The blocky, angular superstructure and cluttered upper-works that had been the hallmark of American naval architecture for three-quarters of a century were gone. Instead, just aft of the midships line, there was a single, low, slope-sided deckhouse, like the flattened sail of a nuclear submarine. Inset in the curve of its upper forward facing was the transparent strip of the bridge windscreen, and belted around it were the rectangular planar antennae of the destroyer's SPY 2-A Augmented Aegis system.
Gone, too, were the tripod masts. Supplanting them was a freestanding mast array, a towering finlike structure similar to the vertically mounted swept wing of a jet airliner. Fared into the aft end of the deckhouse, its conformal radiating and receptor panels and "smart skin" segments replaced the old open-girder Christmas tree with its tangle of radar dishes and bedspring aerials.
The overall impression was that of uncluttered, Art Deco sleekness, like something off the cover of a 1940s science-fiction magazine. Even the usual deck fittings either retracted into or were fared into the hull. A closer examination would have revealed that there were almost no absolutely flat surfaces or abrupt right-angle joinings anywhere above the waterline. All structural edges and corners had been carefully coved or rounded. Even the weather decks had a very slight turtleback to them.
This had little to do with streamlining in the conventional sense. It had everything to do with electromagnetic propagation, for the "Duke" was the world's first blue-water stealth warship. Her radical hull design eliminated all of the clean reflective surfaces and "wave traps" that could return a clear radar echo. That hull was also sheathed in the latest generation of RAM (Radar-Absorbent Material) and contained almost a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of the most sophisticated electronic countermeasures technology available to military science.
The Cunningham's stealth capacities extended into the visual spectrum as well. The traditional navy-gray paint job had given way to a duller, lower-visibility gray similar to that used on U.S. carrier aircraft. Also stolen from carrier aviation had been the use of outline "phantom" lettering for her name and identity numbers.
In addition, wavering sooty bands of a darker shade striped her sides from railing to waterline, vertically down the length of her hull and horizontally up the height of the mast array. The veteran of the Second World War would have approvingly recognized this as a variant of his era's "dazzle" camouflage.
The overall effect was strikingly similar to the markings of a tiger shark. They served much the same purpose, breaking up the ship's silhouette and rendering her harder to see and identify under adverse weather and lighting conditions.
There would have been one further point of puzzlement for the hypothetical old navy observer. For a ship of her size, the Cunningham would appear to be very lightly armed. The only obvious weaponry were two small, single-mount gun turrets, one just forward of the deckhouse, the other aft on the well deck.
Appearances were deceiving. The Duke was hypothetically capable of sinking a small fleet, downing a small air force, or leveling a small city. If the "neither confirmed nor denied" option was taken, she could incinerate a small nation.
As the gig tucked in alongside the gangway, the ship's bell sounded its four clear notes and the topside MC-1 speakers replied tinnily, "Cunningham, arriving." Reaching the quarterdeck, Amanda faced aft and gave the traditional salute to the colors. As had many generations of captains before her, she used that moment to run a quick inventory of her ship's condition.
There was a faint vibration coming from deep within the hull, and a soft, rushing roar whispered down from the stubby, side-by-side exhaust stacks atop the superstructure. Engineering had one of the mains spooled up, hopefully testing that portside anti-infrared system.
Deck Division was busy striking painting and maintenance gear below, while back aft they were doing a hurried fix on the tricky weather seal around the helipad elevator. Make a note on the to-catch-hell list, Amanda thought to herself. That piece of work has been put off to the last minute once too often.
She dropped the salute and was facing forward again when her executive officer emerged from a deckhouse hatchway. Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Hiro was a fourth-generation Japanese-American and the kind of XO captains pray for. He was an organizational animal, one who considered ship-operations management an all-absorbing challenge. Increase the load on him and the challenge just became that much more absorbing.
Now, as he approached her, he wore the headset of a mobile ship's interphone over his short-trimmed black hair and carried a computer pad tucked under one arm.
"Good afternoon, Captain. Sorry to wreck your day ashore. Just a second. I'll be right with you."
He leaned over the PVC-and-nylon-strap deck railing and yelled down into the gig waiting below. "Hey, De Lancy, get inshore and check in at the passenger pier. Start shuttling the liberty parties back aboard."
Hiro straightened and cast an approving look at Christine Rendino, who had joined them at the head of the gangway. "Good job, Lieutenant. You not only found the Skipper but you got back in time to save us from having to strike another boat topside."
"Our Christine is a very capable young officer who should go far, granted she's not hanged first," Amanda commented. "Okay, Ken, what are you doing to my ship and why are you doing it?"
"As the Lieutenant informed you, we've received orders to sortie under a potential theater-conflict alert. Beyond that, my only other instructions were to locate you as rapidly as possible."
"I'm located. Ship's status?"
"All in-port maintenance and service programs have been terminated and are securing for sea. Engineering reports that the problem with the intermix blowers of the portside Black Hole System has been corrected. They're buttoning things up now. Weapons Division was running a series of combat simulations on the secondary fire-control suites, but they should have the training programs dumped and the primaries rebooted within the next few minutes."
"What about the liberty parties?"
"I've got search details ashore and I've requested the assistance of the Brazilian Navy shore patrol."
Amanda considered for a moment whether Hiro had left any preliminary bases uncovered. She wasn't surprised to find that he hadn't.
"Very good, Ken. Buzz communications for me and have them stand by with a Milstar channel to CINCLANT in… ten minutes. I'll take it in my quarters."
"Aye, aye, ma'am."
"Chris, you get down to Raven's Roost and see if your people have picked up on anything. I suspect this will be a hot briefing, and I do not want to go into it blind."
"Aye, aye," the younger woman called back over her shoulder as she started for the hatchway.
"Ken, one other thing. Did the Boone catch the same sortie order we did?"
"No, Captain, they didn't. They aren't going to, either. I talked with her exec this afternoon. The divers confirmed that vibration was coming from a cracked propeller blade. They're out of it."
"Thank heavens for small favors. Going tactical with a Perry would have been like trying to dance Swan Lake with a bucket stuck on my foot."