Choosers of the Slain

29

She knelt down once more in the narrow aisle beside the sickbay bunk.

"How's it going?"

Erikson gave a weak thumbs-up. "Pretty good, Captain. I think I'm doing a little better."

Amanda glanced back to where Chief Robinson stood in the ward doorway. The Corpsman gave a minute shake of her head.

"That's good. That's why I came around. I was hoping to hear something like that."

"Yes, ma'am. I've been telling everyone who's come through that I'll be back on duty soon."

"A lot of visitors today?"

"Yeah, a couple of my buddies from Deck Division. My chief, Mr. Nichols. Even the new lieutenant that came aboard at Rio. The helo pilot."

"Lieutenant Arkady?"

"Yes, ma'am. And I don't even know him."

Amanda mentally cocked an eyebrow. "Well, I guess he was saying hello while he had the chance. The fleet will be coming up with us in a few more days and we'll be shifting you over to a carrier."

"Just getting used to this ship, ma'am."

"Well, don't worry. We're going to get you back."

"Good. Like it here."

His voice trailed off and his eyes closed. Amanda rested her hand on his shoulder for a moment, then got to her feet. Moving forward into the sick-bay office, she met the eyes of Chief Robinson again.

"So?"

"I'd like to think that I'm holding him stable, Captain, but I'm afraid I'd be lying to myself."

"Understood, Chief. Carry on."

Amanda stepped out into the corridor and started. Arkady was there, his arms crossed and his back against one side of the passageway. He had one boot raised and braced on the farside grab rail, wedging him in place against the increasing pitch of the ship.

"Any change?" he asked.

"Not for the good. I helped to set up the projected crew roster for the Cunningham-class, and it never occurred to me or to anyone else that a doctor would be an absolute necessity for a ship intended for independent operations. Damn, damn, damn! How could I have missed that?"

"We got spoiled. The surface navy's gotten used to looking back over its shoulder and seeing that big old flattop out there, serving as the font from which all blessings flow."

It was a good analysis.

"You're right," Amanda agreed, leaning back against the bulkhead beside him. "Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it now."

"Beyond the best we can with what's available? Nope."

"More Arkady honesty?"

"Yep. There's always plenty of that to spread around."

Amanda smiled in spite of herself. There were other places she could have been just then, not the least of which was topside, looking into the way the weather was kicking up. But she elected to stay and stretch out this exchange of words for a few moments more.

"Erikson said that you'd been in to visit him," she commented. "Why? Do you know him from somewhere?"

"Can't say that I do. But he's a point of concern for the ship and the mission. I've got a hunch decisions are going to have to be made about this kid, and I figure I should at least get to know him well enough to say hello."

Amanda glanced sideways at Arkady. Could he know that this was the same way she felt about Erikson? She'd learned that this man had the knack of being able to touch her emotionally. Now she suspected that he could also read her the same way, and she wasn't sure if she was as pleased about that. Again she found herself wondering just what might have happened back there in Rio, given a little more time.

She turned to face her Air Division leader, one shoulder still resting against the bulkhead. "When I came into my first command," she said slowly, "I learned that it was like inheriting a family. A family of strangers mostly, but the sense of responsibility is there."

Arkady nodded an agreement. "At OCS they kept harping about how a good officer must maintain a degree of detachment from their personnel. I gather the concept is that the more personally involved you are, the tougher it is to send your hands into a high-risk situation."

"I was fed the same line at Annapolis," she replied, "and I've known a great number of our profession who stick to it religiously. It always seemed to me, though, that the best commanding officers I ever had were the ones who had the guts to give a damn, even when it cost them."

"I concur."

Amanda suddenly realized that Arkady was studying her again, using the same look of frank, level-eyed admiration he had used back on the beach at Ipanema. Only this time, it was her emotional clothing he was stripping away, momentarily making her feel very naked indeed.

The Duke lifted heavily into an oncoming swell, and with her attention diverted, Amanda missed the shift of the deck. She stumbled against Arkady and his arm came around her waist, catching and supporting her. She caught a whiff of him, the mix of aftershave, healthy male, and aviation fuel. The warmth of his body jolted her like a charge of electricity. She jerked back, Arkady's arm resisting for a moment before releasing her.

She backed away a couple of steps and caught the grab rail. Looking into his face, she could see that he had felt the same sensation.

Only, he hadn't been afraid of it.

She started to speak again, not quite knowing what she was about to say, when the raucous blaring of the klaxons cut her off.

"General quarters! General quarters! All battle stations close up and rig for surface and ASW engagement!"

They split apart, bolting for their duty stations.

"Captain on the bridge!" Ken Hiro sang out as she brushed past the light curtain behind the center console.

"As you were." She shot her first look forward, over the heads of the helmsmen and out the windscreen.

She'd been right to come up here instead of to the Combat Information Center. You could fight men off a CRT screen, but the weather you had to go face-to-face with.

The seas were running at least Force Five: steep-sided gray combers with twenty-five knots of wind peeling spray off their crests. A roiling overcast hung low over the ship and hazed into a dense bank of sea smoke to the north.

The sky was brighter to the south, but it was with that odd, yellowish pale tint that denoted what polar hands called "ice blink," refracted sunlight trapped between the cloud cover and the frozen sea. Not far out that way was the outermost fringe of Antarctica's icy armor.

The more immediate problem lay straight on beyond the Cunningham' s bow. To the west, an ominously dark smear ran across the joining of the sea and sky.

A glance at the meteorological repeaters verified that she was looking at a squall line running vanguard to a mean-looking localized cold front.

"Okay, Ken," Amanda said to her exec. "We're going to be keeping the con up here. Get us a line on the squawk box to Combat Information Center and keep it open."

"Aye, aye, Captain. Glad to have you with us."

She circled the helm station and took a position leaning into the grab rail that ran just beneath the curved row of battle data repeaters at the front of the bridge. Most of the strike damage had been repaired. A new thermoplastic door had been inset in the portside bridge-wing access and the shattered flatscreens had been replaced. Only the shrapnel scarring on the decks and bulkheads and the stark white bandaging on the side of Hiro's face served to recall what had happened here the day prior.

"Okay, CIC. This is the Captain. What do you have for me?"

Back aft, freezing air boiled into the hangar as the helipad elevator sank down to accept Retainer Zero One. At their equipment lockers at the head of the bay, Arkady and his SO geared up quickly, survival suits over flight suits and Mae West life jackets over both.

Snagging up his helmet, Vince reached over and slapped the actuator key on the flight-status board inset in the bulkhead. The bar graphs of the pitch-and-roll inclinometers and the wind-velocity gauge shot up their scales and began to blip an ominous red as they intermittently drifted above their safety levels.

"Hey, Lieutenant," Grestovitch asked uneasily. "We're not actually gonna launch in this shit, are we?"

"The fates will decree, Gus. Let's saddle up."

"It was a single thirty-second signal intercept off a low-powered surface-search radar." Christine Rendino's filtered voice filled the bridge. "Bearing about fifty degrees relative off the starboard bow. Range indeterminable but pretty close. Couldn't make the system signature, maybe a Terma.

"The thing is that the signal broke intermittently and there was a lot of output waver, like maybe you had waves breaking over the emitter head."

"Like we might have a sub out there who stuck his radar mast up to have a look around?"

"Exactly, boss ma'am. He didn't get us, though. McKelsie reports that his signal strength was way below anything that could get a return off of us."

"Oh, he's got us, Chris. He probably picked us up on his passive sonar arrays, then he executed that radar sweep to verify who we are. When he failed to get a radar return off us, that would give him his positive ID."

Amanda called back over her shoulder to the control stations. "Lee helm. Rig for silent running. All stop on main engines and feather your propellers. All power rooms to idling output. Activate Prairie Masker and convert to hydrojet propulsion, one hundred percent power."

"Aye, aye, converting to hydrojet propulsion. Prairie Masker is on-line. Ship now rigged for silent running."

In acknowledgment of the fact that the modern submarine was possibly the single deadliest enemy the surface warship must face, the Cunningham's stealth defenses extended below the waterline. Her power plants were "rafted" in heavy sound-suppressive insulation and she was equipped with a Prairie Masker compressor system that could sheath her hull in further layers of noise-killing air bubbles.

In addition, she mounted a set of auxiliary pumpjet drives in her propulsor pods, a silent propulsion option that did not produce the churning cavitation of conventional ship's screws.

"Tactical Officer, bring up your V-ROC nights."

Down on the sweep of the Duke's long foredeck, a series of small, hexagonal doors snapped open on the upper surfaces of the three Mark 42 Vertical Launch Systems. Beneath each door was a watertight plastic cap sealing a missile silo, and beneath that, a V-ROC, a vertically launched antisubmarine rocket, the fleet's premier long-range sub killer.

They just needed something to use them on. The tactical displays showed only empty water.

"Sonar, are you getting anything at all?"

"Nothing passively, Captain. Conditions in the surface sound duct are deteriorating due to the weather, and we're getting some background noise from the ice pack."

Christine's voice cut in on the circuit. "If this is that Argentine Kockums 471 we lost track of a few days ago, we're not talking about a submarine as much as we are a large chunk of solidified silence."

Amanda gave a nod that her friend could not see. Of all of the weapons in the Argentine arsenal, those Swedish attack boats were probably the closest to being on a par with the Cunningham's technology. One of them was out there now, hovering in the deepwater darkness, listening, trying to line up a killing shot.

"What do you think, Ken?"

Hiro gave the bill of his officer's cap an uneasy tug. "I'd say that without putting a helo up, we don't have much chance against this guy."

"I agree." Amanda hesitated a moment and again scanned the clouded horizon. "We'd really be stretching the air-operations envelope, though."

A wind-driven slash of spray across the glass in front of her made her decision.

"Let's hold off on the helo launch. Helm, come left to two six zero. Let's open the range a little and see if we can sneak past this guy."

Minutes passed. Amanda frowned down into the tac displays as they remained obstinately empty. Snapping the jack of her headset into an access point on the console, she called up the direct sound feed coming from the hydrophones. Bypassing the cascade display, she used the computer filters to separate out the different movements of the Antarctic sea's life song.

On the surface, the hiss-and-break turbulence of wave action was dominant, the boiling intermix of ocean and air being whipped up by the oncoming storm. Beyond that, Amanda could make out the soft sizzling of a bank of krill, running deep just off the bottom. And then there was the rolling, over-the-horizon rumble of the pack, the accumulated sound of a billion tons of ice, butting and splintering in its glacial-speed dance around the southern continent.

Whatever noise the Argentine sub was producing was being lost in that acoustic environment — as was the Cunningham's trace, Amanda hoped.

Amanda unplugged the jack with an impatient yank.

"It's a pain when some other stealthy bastard turns the tables, isn't it," Hiro remarked with grim humor.

"Tell me about it," she replied, lifting herself into the captain's chair to take advantage of the couple of extra inches of vision height it gave her. Almost at once, just off the bow she caught a paler flash against the gray of the sea.

"Watch it! Ice to starboard! Come left to two four oh!"

A bergy bit the size of an automobile swept slowly past the destroyer's flank, drifting away aft.

"Return to previous heading. Damn, Ken, if we angle south much more, we're going to start having some real ice problems."

"I agree, Captain. Helm! Steady as she goes! Watch your course line!"

"Ship's fighting the helm, sir. I'm having trouble holding the heading."

The hydrojets were low-powered units, not designed for fighting a sea like this, and the Duke was beginning to wallow sluggishly in the growing force of the storm.

Amanda could feel the snowball starting to build. A number of different tactical factors were converging to produce the potential for disaster. Swiftly, she called up the Global Positioning Unit display on her chair-arm screen and confirmed another fear.

"Ken, this is no good. Bucking this weather, we're barely making any way over ground at all. We're just hanging in this guy's sights."

"Captain, may I make a suggestion?"

"Of course."

"What about turning away to the east and running with the weather for a while, then circling north?"

She considered her exec's counsel for a moment, then shook her head.

"It's a temptation, but if we start running in front of this storm, we could get blown clear out into the South Atlantic before we could come about again. I am not going to be driven off station, Ken, by either the weather or the Argentines.

"Lee helm, bring up your power rooms," Amanda said, lifting her voice to key the overhead microphones. "Sonar and CIC, look alive. I'm going to try and pull us out of here."

"Aye, aye."

"Lee helm, maintain one hundred percent power on the hydrojets. Main engines ahead slow. Make turns for ten knots. Trim screws for minimum cavitation."

The Duke shuddered and then steadied as she began to drive cleanly against the sea again. Amanda accessed the hydrophone output again, now dominated by the swishing rumble of the destroyer's own accelerating propeller beats. Two minutes passed. Three.

Then, from somewhere out in the wet dark, there came a single, piercing tone.

"Ranging ping! Bearing zero six zero relative off the bow!"

Amanda lunged forward out of the captain's chair to the tactical displays as the sonar operator continued to call off the situation.

"Transitories on the bearing! Possible outer door opening… Possible fish swim-out! Torpedo in the water!"

"Sonar, initiate active sweep!"

The time for stealth was over. The Cunningham's sonar transducers began slamming their own sound waves out into the water, lifting echoes off the hunting sub. In moments a target hack and a bearing line appeared on the tactical display, a torpedo track sliding along it toward the Duke's position.

Amanda's hands flew across the display keyboards again, calling up the data annex of the torpedo recognition and alertment processor.

Only a single shot in the water. They must be using the wire guidance. A spinneret aboard the racing torpedo would be unreeling a hair-thin metallic filament in its wake, back-linking to the fire-control systems of the submarine itself. The sub's weapons officer would literally steer the fish into the belly of its target with a joystick controller.

"Lee helm, all engines ahead full!"

"Engines answering all ahead full, Captain!"

The Duke lunged forward with a palpable surge of acceleration. A steam turbine warship might take twenty minutes to work up to flank speed; a gas turbine vessel like the Cunningham could do it in four.

"CIC, prepare to drop LEAD decoys."

"LEADs prepped to drop."

The big destroyer struck a seventh wave and bucked through it in an explosion of spray, gaining way with each turn of her screws. Up on the bridge, Amanda tightened her grip on the grab rail and continued to stare down into the flatscreens with a fierce and total concentration.

Come on, friend. Listen to all that beautiful noise my props are making. You don't need to switch that torpedo over to active pinging, not yet.

"We have a firing fix on the sub," Dix Beltrain declared over the squawk box. "Ready to launch V-ROC."

"Time in flight to target?"

"Projected forty-five seconds."

"Right. Set LEAD decoys for… ninety-second activation delay."

"Decoys set, Captain."

"Drop LEADs."

Back aft, a pair of Launched Expendable Acoustic Devices slid down their deployment chute and into the Cunningham's boiling wake.

"LEADs deployed."

"Launch V-ROC."

There was a muffled thump up forward and a white cylinder shot up and out of its cell in the number-three Vertical Launch System. It seemed to hover for an instant over the deck, then its booster spewed flame, kicking it up into the sky and away toward the enemy.

Amanda tracked the V-ROC's flight path both on the tactical display and in her mind: the long curving trajectory, the separation of the payload from the booster and the deployment of its drogue parachute, its dolphinlike dive into the sea, the shedding of its nose and tail shrouds, and the power-up of the deadly little Mark 50 Barracuda torpedo.

"Our round is in the water," Beltrain announced over the circuit. "It has gone active and is circling to acquire target."

Okay, out there. Now it's your turn to do some ducking and dodging. Break that wire! Cut that fish loose!

"Sonar is now getting prop cavitation and warble from the Argy. He's increasing speed and turning."

Yes!

Forcing the Argentine sub to maneuver would force it to break its control link with the torpedo. The human aspect would be cut out of the loop, leaving the weapon operating on its own resources. That shifted the odds, for so-called smart weapons were frequently stupid enough to be decoyed.

God grant enough time and sea room.

"Losing sonar discrimination due to flow noise."

"Secure transponders, Mr. Beltrain. Cease active pinging."

"Stop all engines! Power down!"

The trick had been to try to catch the incoming torpedo in its moment of confusion between the breaking of its control wire and its independent reacquisition of its target. The LEAD decoys, now well astern of the Duke, were producing an acoustical clamor in the same range as a ship's propellers. With the Cunningham's own engines still, the torpedo should veer off after the new sound source.

At least that was the theory. With their sonar deafened by the turbulence of their own passage through the water, they would know for certain when the explosion came.

Ignoring the savage bite of the wind through her work khakis, Amanda stepped out onto the starboard bridge wing and looked aft. Hiro followed her out, coming to stand at her shoulder as she keyed her interphone.

"All hands, this is the Captain. We've been playing tag with an Argy sub and he's thrown a torpedo at us. I think we've got it foxed, but we'll know for sure in a minute. Just in case, brace yourselves and stand by."

She surprised herself with the casualness of her own voice. Glancing over at her exec, she noted that Ken had removed his wallet from his pocket and was carefully studying the picture of his family.

This was the difference between a missile and a torpedo engagement. Missiles didn't give you a chance to think, just experience. With torpedoes, though, you had time enough to wonder.

Unbidden, Amanda found her thoughts returning to Vince Arkady. She relived the encounter that had occurred outside of sick bay just a few minutes before: that momentary contact with the warm strength of him, leading to the memory of the gymnasium and the knowing touch of his hands, and on to the texture of that one swift kiss back before it all had counted.

There was a heavy thud, more felt than heard, and looking up, they saw a thick column of water lift out of the sea well behind the ship. Hiro flipped his wallet shut with a decisive snap.

"All hands, this is the Captain again. That was the torpedo, and we're still in business. Now it's our turn to ruin the other guy's day."

They ducked back into the bridge. "Helm, resume heading of two seven zero. Lee helm, bring up your hydrojets again. Resume silent running."

"This brings us right back to where we started," Hiro said, trying to rub the chill out of his arms.

"I'm afraid it does. CIC, this is the bridge. What's happened with the V-ROC?"

"We've just reacquired the passive scan, ma'am," Beltrain replied. "Our fish is still circling around out there, running a search pattern. For a second, just before we lost imaging, I thought that it might have acquired a target. I guess I was mistaken."

"What about the Argy itself?"

"He's gone. Contact broken. But there was something else, ma'am."

"Yes?"

"Back just before our passive arrays dropped out, the Argy momentarily went active with another sonar system. We couldn't get an ID on it, but it wasn't anything standard, maybe a low-powered mine-hunter set. I don't know what this guy is up to, but I think he might be working something on us."

"Speculations?"

"None at this time, ma'am."

"Acknowledged. Keep your ears open."

Amanda leaned against the captain's chair and looked out through the windscreen, acutely aware of the several sets of eyes focused on her back. That storm front was rolling down on them fast. When it hit, they'd have to use their main engines again. This deadlock had to be broken, now, before they were laid open for another attack. Abruptly, she keyed a new address into the interphone.

"Retainer Zero One, this is the bridge."

The Sea Comanche balanced on her landing gear, a dunking sonar pod and a magnetic abnormality detector on the inboard hardpoints of her snub wings, air-droppable torpedoes on the outboard. Her rotors were deployed and turning, and deck hands, cowering against the freezing rotor wash, hunkered near the tie-down points, ready to release on command. A hardline was plugged into a jackpoint beneath the cockpit rim, linking the helo's systems with those of the mother ship and the crew with the phone net.

"Arkady, I need a fast, straight answer on this," Amanda's voice sounded in his earphones. "The weather is bad and it's going to get worse. Can you launch and conduct an effective ASW sweep under the current conditions while maintaining any kind of margin of safety?"

"Hang on a second, bridge."

Arkady toggled over to the aircraft intercom and twisted around to look into the rear cockpit.

"Hey, Gus, the Lady wants to know if we can go find that Argy sub. No shit, man, this one's a volunteer job. What about it?"

"What happens if I say no, sir?"

"Then I go after this guy by myself."

"Begging the Lieutenant's pardon, and with all due respect to his rank, but the Lieutenant couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight. Tell the Lady we're doing it."

"Okay, Gus, thanks. Bridge, this is Zero One. We can do it. Ready to launch."

"Acknowledged, Zero One." She was using her ultra-professional tone. Total control. "I'm putting the ship across the wind at this time. Launch at your discretion. You are weapons clear and you are authorized to break EMCON to prosecute contacts and for recovery."

The Duke began to turn. Lifting one hand up under the canopy top, Arkady gave the spin-up gesture to the deck chief. The ordnance hand danced back and clear of the helo, holding the orange safety streamers of the torpedo safety pins over her head to prove they had been pulled. The tie-down hands followed, dragging their chocks and belaying the straps with them. The deck chief was the last, pulling the hardline and giving the side of the cockpit a farewell slap.

Keeping the ground brakes locked, Arkady fed power to the turbines and brought up the rotor RPM, all the while gauging the motion of the helipad. At the next lift of the stern, he pulled pitch and let the rise catapult the helo into the air.

The Sea Comanche staggered under the impact of the wind, but Arkady fought her through the transition and got her nose down, gaining speed and altitude. Bucking the weather, he paid off to the north, heading for the datum point on his navigational display that marked the last known position of the enemy.

On the Cunningham's bridge, Amanda heard the droning roar of Retainer Zero One's lift-off and her eyes followed the helo as it pulled away, the cold, moisture-laden air sheathing its rotors in a disk of compression vapor.

Damn you, Vince Arkady….