“This is CentCom. Check message traffic and comply ASAP. Minimize voice comms. We’re also seeing crashes on GCCS and the SIPRNET. Check your redundancy. Request confirmation via another channel if you receive orders that seem doubtful. Confirm. Over.”
Dan’s mouth was suddenly dry. The Navy ran on communications as much as on distillate fuel. If something, no, someone, was corrupting encrypted voice and GCCS, and even SIPRNET was no longer secure, the effect would be devastating. He muttered, “This is Savo Actual. I confirm. Over.”
“This is CentCom, roger, out.”
He reclipped the handset and met Mytsalo’s gaze. The ensign looked shaken. “Did you copy all that, Max?”
“I–I think so. That’s not good. Sir.”
“No, it isn’t.” Dan blinked past him, then remembered what he hadn’t seen when he’d looked out over the forecastle. “Where’s Mitscher?”
“Off the port quarter, sir. In a squall.”
Right, they were still in the monsoon season. Which explained the everlasting overcast, the eternal wind. And the never-ending seas, stiff and jagged, breaking and toppling as they cannonballed past.
“Captain?”
The radioman chief this time, instead of the messenger. But the same clipboard. Dan swallowed sudden nausea. Now what? He took it reluctantly. Ran his eye down it, disbelieving, then stared at the last line.
CO USS SAVO ISLAND REPORT NONRESPONSE TO ORDERS, REF A. INTERROGATIVE WHY SAVO TASK GROUP NOT EN ROUTE TASK FORCE POSIT. REPLY ASAP VIA MULTIPLE COMM PATHS.
He snapped, “What the hell’s this about? What’s Ref A?”
The radioman chief’s Adam’s apple pumped. “Captain, we have no record of that date time group.”
“I don’t understand. No record?”
“No sir. I mean, that’s right, sir. We never received a message with that date time group.”
This was baffling. Higher was referencing a message that, so far as Savo’s always-competent communicators were concerned, didn’t exist. “Did you check with Mitscher? Do they hold it?”
“Yessir, first thing. They don’t have it either. We requested a retransmit. Still waiting for that.”
Dan stood turning it over in a foggy, slow brain. A voice transmission that said, “Don’t trust voice messages.” That expected him to leave station, citing a broadcast message that didn’t seem to exist, or that, at least, they’d never gotten. Then a message reproaching him for being on station, and referencing a previous message that he didn’t hold. He muttered doggedly, “There’s got to be a record. A way you can check what you have and haven’t received.”
The chief consulted his wrist, which Dan saw wore two watches. “That’s the daily date time group summary message, Captain. Comes in at midnight Zulu. We’re in Echo.”
“Okay, but we can request a retransmit, can’t we? Since we have the date time group of the missing message… the one they referenced. Have you done that?”
The chief looked ill at ease. “Soon as it came in, Captain. I, uh, I already told you we did that. Asked for a retransmit. Which we’re waiting for.”
“Okay, sorry. You did. But this isn’t reassuring, that messages seem to be slipping past us. I don’t want to get down in your pants, but could we be out of timing? Missing parts of the scrambled broadcast?”
The chief seemed to be starting to protest, then quelled himself. “That used to happen, yessir. With the old KW-37s. They got out of timing. But with the 46s, it’s pretty much impossible.”
“So what’s wrong?”
The ITman hesitated. “I’m just not sure, sir.”
“Well, get to the bottom of it! Our satellite voice comms are degrading, Chief. We have to be able to depend on broadcast.”
The chief said yes sir, waited a moment, then saluted and turned away. Leaving Dan leaning on his chair, still too weak to get up into it.
So he checked the nav console. Took a range and bearing to the nearest land. A queerly shaped, low-lying peninsula poked out toward them, shaped like a flaccid, drooping penis. It didn’t seem to have a name, at least that the software knew.
The own-ship symbol glowed at the inner edge of his oparea, which the console was displaying outlined in yellow. The area he should have already left behind. All right, if he was supposed to rejoin the task group… He recalled the last GCCS picture, estimated a course. “Officer of the deck.”
“Yessir, Captain.” Mytsalo straightened. “OOD, aye.”
“Come to one-nine-zero. Tell Main Control, secure low-fuel-consumption maneuvering regime. When they’re ready, increase to fifteen knots.” He slewed the cursor, guesstimated their time to rendezvous at the most economical speed. “And have Mr. Danenhower contact me.” He’d need to make sure he actually had enough fuel to get there, maneuver, wait in line, and get a drink off the tanker. A lot of our plans are in flux right now. “Pass that to TAO. Secure from condition three ABM. Set condition three self-defense. Have Sonar continue maintaining a sharp watch. And let Mitscher know, so she can follow us around. I’ll call their CO in a minute, bring him up to speed.”
He sagged into the console, coughing from deep in his chest while the bullnose dipped, rolled, and precessed around to the new course. Maybe Higher was right. Nothing more for USS Savo Island to do here. In his eagerness to help, he might even have made things worse. Helped trigger what the world had hoped never to see: a nuclear war.
He’d tried his best. But hadn’t all the diplomats, generals, kings, and prime ministers done theirs, too? In August of 1914.
The leaden seas surged in. The cruiser headed into them, pitching until sharp crackles and bangs crepitated aft, ghostlike and unsettling. Far off on a shrouded horizon the silhouette of a Burke-class destroyer, Mitscher, mirrored their turn.
Leaving it all behind. But taking it along, too.
Well, he had his orders. Let it burn out.
He only hoped it would.
V
AUGUST 1914
18
Two days later he stood with lids clamped tight, fists buried in the pockets of his coveralls, swaying as the deck beneath his boots rose and fell. Spray cooled his uplifted face, and from his lips he licked the salty kiss of the sea.
He opened his eyes to a bright sky. The monsoon ceiling was wearing thin as Savo charged eastward, revealing blue above it, and here and there high wind-strained cirrus like shredding gauze. Her turbines sang at full power. Her intakes susurrated a continuous rush of intaken breath. Her wake tumbled and burbled like bluegreen and white wildflowers blooming on a heaving heath.
The fantail was cramped with equipment. Mount 52 in the middle, with the Harpoon launchers to port. The HF receive antennas nodded over the wake like tuna sticks. On the missile deck, the gunners’ mates were doing lift checks on the aft module hatch and plenum covers. Fresh paint gleamed glossy, spray-beaded. Looped cables snagged sliding sheets of moisture in tidal pools.
After an economical-speed transit, they’d joined the battle group at dawn. After Savo’s deep, satisfying drink from the tanker, with Cheryl in the driver’s seat while he got some much-needed kip, orders had come in. After replenishing, take station as directed by the ISIC — immediate superior in command, in this case, the rear admiral commanding the Carl Vinson battle group — and accompany it east. Their track lay past Sri Lanka, for the Malacca Strait. No one had yet mentioned a destination, but it was self-evident.