“You signed up for a quadrupling of your pay.”
Cahill tapped an icon to open his microphone and send his voice throughout the ship.
“Prepare to dive,” he said. “All stations report status.”
He looked to Walker to digest the reports that all intakes except seawater cooling systems had been sealed.
“Starboard MESMA units report ready to dive,” Walker said. “Starboard engine room reports ready, as does starboard weapons bay.”
For his present deployment, Cahill’s modular weapons bays each held a BAE Systems railgun, both of which could employ guidance from the four-paneled phased array radar system mounted high on his catamaran’s elevated stern sections.
“Port MESMA units, port engine room, and port weapons bay are all ready to dive,” Walker said. “The Specter reports ready for dive, as well. Its ballast tank vents are verified open so that it can submerge with us.”
Cahill maintained communications with the skeletal crew aboard the Specter. The submarine needed its staff in case the Goliath-Specter tandem faced unforeseen crises, including conflicts that required the submarine’s weapon systems.
He used a touchpad and mouse buttons to restrict his voice to the ship he transported.
“Specter, Goliath, are you there, Henri?”
The French accent sounded familiar.
“Goliath, Specter, I’m here.”
Through the shared data feed, Cahill saw the status of the submarine’s systems.
“Your tactical system is down,” he said.
“I will bring it up when submerged,” Henri said.
“The Chinese have dispatched a Type Fifty-two destroyer and a Type Fifty-four frigate to investigate us.”
“I see that on the data feed,” Henri said. “You don’t intend to engage them, do you?”
“No, Pierre forbade it. The goal is to evade them. But I will engage them as a last resort. Deploy your towed array sonar and have Antoine ready at his sonar station.”
“I will. Are you also going to deploy the Goliath’s towed array?”
“Yes, to train and observe me new sonar crew’s ability, but I want Antoine listening from the Specter. I will consider him the standard by which I judge the others.”
Cahill paused for a last look at the sun, tapped icons, and then stepped to the aft of the bridge. Behind and below his window, bubbles rose from the Goliath’s submerged ballast tank vents under the starboard hull.
“Ten meters,” Walker said. “Eleven. Twelve.”
As the Goliath sank, bubbles burst from its cargo tanks under the Specter. Waves swallowed the rounded midsection of the transport ship’s starboard hull as the seas reached the Specter’s beam. As water displaced air from the main ballast tanks, gentle spray shot up from vents atop the submarine.
He looked to his monitor at the information that pressure sensors draped under the submarine fed to the buoyancy management system at his fingertips. Seeing a registered downward force, he knew that water filled the Specter’s ballast tanks, making it heavier than the water into which it submerged.
Aqua crests lapped the bridge windows, refracting sunlight into Cahill’s eyes. He turned away, and a quick glance over his shoulder revealed waves reaching the Specter’s conning tower. His continued assessment of the submerging evolution revealed that the port and starboard weapons bays at the sterns of his ship remained visible above the sinking transport vessel, as did the now-sealed laser cannon pod on the port hull’s bow.
“Fifteen meters,” Walker said.
Water crept up the bridge windows, and sunlight yielded to the overhead artificial illumination.
“Twenty meters,” Walker said. “The ship is submerged. The cargo is also submerged.”
“Very well,” Cahill said. “Make your depth forty meters.”
From the corner of his eye, he watched his executive officer tap a touchscreen. The deck took a slight downward angle, the sea over the windows became dark, and then the ship leveled.
“Steady at forty meters,” Walker said.
Cahill touched his screen.
“Coming right to course zero-four-zero,” he said. “I’m making sure we don’t drive underneath this Chinese patrol.”
“I’d be surprised if they don’t just give up and go home after they figure out that we can play submarine whenever we want.”
An ominous feeling — a possible shadow of a memory from his prior clashes with the Chinese Navy — overcame Cahill. He stiffened his back.
“I’m afraid I don’t share your optimism,” he said. “You have the bridge. I’m heading below.”
He passed through a door, latched it behind him, and descended a steep stairway to a tight, odd-shaped compartment under which welds held the rakish bow module to the cylindrical, submarine-based section.
As he reached for a watertight door, a peek in the bilge revealed the inverted triangular keel section, which provided stability and added buoyancy, continuing underneath the ship. Swinging the door open, he stepped through its machined frame and into the familiar, circular-ribbed world of a submarine.
Lacking a torpedo room, the Goliath presented Cahill its tactical control room as its first cylindrical compartment. Four men staffed the space, with three seated in front of consoles and a supervisor hovering over them.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the supervisor said.
The young leader had been an officer aboard Cahill’s submarine prior to quitting the Australian Navy for lucrative mercenary adventures. He retained his habit of addressing Cahill as ‘sir’.
“What’s on sonar?” Cahill asked.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Keep listening. I’ll buy a coldie for the entire sonar team if you guys can hear any war vessel before Antoine does from the Specter.”
Knowing that the left half of his ship lacked a tactical team, he saw no reason to repeat the beer-inspired challenge to anyone within the port hull. The far side of the Goliath held a smaller crew that tended to propulsion and weapons. To reach the starboard hull to eat, the port-side team needed to crawl through the catwalk welded behind the aftermost support beam.
He continued his sternward walk, passing electronic cabinets that appeared where he would have expected a conning platform and periscope on the Specter.
With the elevated bridge pod atop the starboard bow and with cameras mounted atop the weapons bays in the sterns providing external views, the Goliath’s design omitted half the standard submarine control room. Renard had instead allowed for a larger crew’s accommodation area, which he extended into the control room, to add both crew comfort and extra buoyancy for carrying the Goliath’s heavy cargo.
As Cahill passed into the elongated berthing area, a sailor’s snoring matched the modest rhythm that rocked the ship. Placing his weight onto the balls of his tennis shoes, he crept into the ghost-silent scullery and then continued to the mess hall.
A few men played cards at a table. Cahill nodded and continued to the first MESMA section, testing his memory to recall the term MESMA as an acronym for the French-designed Module-Energy, Sub-Marine, Autonomous ethanol-liquid-oxygen propulsion plant.
Unlike the Specter, which used one MESMA plant, the Goliath contained six, three per each catamaran-inspired hull, providing his ship the bulk of its cylindrical length. With half the battery capacity and twice the mass of the Specter, Cahill relied upon its MESMA plants for undersea power.