The Emperor's Revenge

THIRTY-FOUR

Golov had to admit it. He was impressed. He thought the intriguing warship disguised as a rusty old cargo vessel would go down with two shots, but her commander was doing a fine job dodging the Achilles’s automated targeting system. In the end, though, his efforts would be useless. The ships were getting close enough to each other that evasion would soon be impossible. The end was near.

He smiled as he took control of the firing solution. This was just like hunting ducks as a child, back in Ukraine, when he learned to lead the target. He centered the crosshairs on the center of the ship. No matter which way the Nogero turned, it would suffer catastrophic damage.

“Fire at will,” he ordered.

“Firing,” came the reply.

But nothing happened. The hypersonic railgun remained silent. The weapons operator stabbed futilely at his console several times, then turned to Golov with a puzzled look.

“The railgun is off-line, Captain!”

Golov jumped from his seat. “What?”

The officer frantically worked the controls. “I… I don’t know. According to all of the readouts, the weapon status is nominal. It should be firing.”

“Is there a jam in the gun?”

“No, sir. The round loaded correctly.”

“Did the barrel overheat?”

“Temperature gauge shows normal heat dissipation. The barrel is cool and true.”

If it wasn’t a mechanical issue, then it had to be a problem with the software. Without Ivana here, diagnosing the error could take hours.

“How long to reboot the system?” Golov demanded.

The weapons officer shook his head. “At least thirty minutes. Captain, I thought I saw…” He hesitated.

“You saw what?”

“For a moment, just as I was about to fire, there seemed to be a signal interrupt as if the system were receiving new commands. Then it went back to normal.”

“A signal? From where?”

“I don’t know.”

Golov blanched. Could it be sabotage? Did he have another traitor on board? It would be the most opportune moment for someone to disable his offensive weapons…

Then he had an even worse thought. If someone had deactivated the railgun, then they could have shut down all of the weapons simultaneously, including the defensive systems.

“What’s the status of the laser?”

“Nominal, Captain.”

“Fire it.”

“What’s the target?”

“I think we’re the target. Fire it at the water, starboard side. Make it boil.”

The officer shrugged. “Aye, sir. Firing.”

Again, nothing happened.

Golov’s stomach went cold. Now he was the duck. And he was firmly on his seat.

“Get us out of here!” he yelled. “Turn one hundred and eighty degrees!”

“Turning, aye!”

“Full speed! I want everything we’ve got out of the engines.”

The Achilles slewed around and raced away in the opposite direction.

Golov slammed his palms on the wood console in frustration. Despite a worthy adversary, certain victory had been at hand. But instead of savoring the taste of winning a hard-fought battle, he was fleeing with his tail between his legs and readying himself for the announcement of another incoming missile, one that he would have no way to shoot down this time.

He loathed being on the other side of the crosshairs.

It worked!” Murph cried out as they watched the Achilles come about. “The weapons must be off-line. She’s making a run for it.”

“Not so fast,” Max said. “They’re not slinking away that easily. Murph, can you get the missile launcher back up?”

“No can do. It’ll need some serious attention from welders.”

“What about our guns?”

“Ready to go, but we’re way out of range.”

“Then let’s get closer. Eric, full speed ahead. We’re not letting him get away.”

“Power at one hundred percent,” Eric replied.

Max felt himself pushed back in his chair as the Oregon leaped forward. Soon the ship was pushing forty-five knots.

The stern of the Achilles was solidly in their sights. All they needed was to close the gap.

After a few minutes, the Achilles didn’t seem any closer. In fact, it looked like it was getting smaller on the screen.

“My eyesight must finally be going on me,” Max said. “Linda, what’s our distance to target?”

“I don’t believe it,” she blurted. “Distance is fourteen miles — and increasing. She’s outpacing us by at least ten knots, maybe fifteen.”

Max couldn’t contain his shock. “That’s impossible!” He took pride in the Oregon’s speed. No other ship her size could even come close to her pace. Yet here was the exception receding into the distance on-screen.

“Think she’s got magnetohydrodynamic engines like we do?” Murph said.

“No,” Linda said with a headset pressed to her ear. “I can hear screws on the sonar. But they seem to be muffled somehow.”

Eric looked at her. “Muffled?”

“Like they’re covered in Styrofoam.”

He thought for a moment, then turned to Max. “Remember the Shkval torpedoes we stole from the Iranians? Could the Achilles have that kind of propulsion?”

Max shook his head. “Those were rocket torpedoes. Incredibly high-speed, but short-range.”

“Right, but they also pumped out air bubbles for supercavitation to reduce drag in the water. We could be seeing the same thing here, but with screws doing the job instead of rockets.”

“I’ve heard of it in experimental ships, but nothing of that size. The bubbles would have to encase the entire hull.”

“Well, they’re getting away from us somehow,” Murph said. “Eric may have pegged it.”

“I’m reading a pressure loss in our cooling system,” Eric said. “We’ll have to check it, but it’s likely that one of the pipes was punctured when they took out our missile launcher.”

“How bad?” Max asked.

“If we keep running at full power, we might do irreparable damage to the engines.”

Max grimaced. He hated to let the Achilles get away, but following them farther would be futile at this point. And if the Achilles figured out how to get the weapons back online quickly and turned around to attack again, the Oregon obviously couldn’t outrun her.

He sighed and said, “Let them go. Reduce to half speed and put us on a heading to Naples. I know a guy there who owes me a favor. If we need any additional equipment to make repairs, he’ll get it for us.”

As the ship came about, the looks of worry on the faces of the rest of the op center crew mirrored Max’s own concern. It was an unfamiliar sensation, contemplating a scenario that had been to this point unthinkable. If they ever again had to battle the Achilles, a ship that was faster and more powerfully armed than the state-of-the-art Oregon, how could they possibly win?