Terminal Run

14

“Diving Officer, man silent battle stations!”

Lieutenant Patrick Kingman’s order did not go out to the spaces on the 1ME announcing system, but on the JA phone circuit to each watch stander on each level of each compartment. That phone talker then walked through the spaces and informed the crew that battle stations had been manned. During a drill, a call to man battle stations required that the watches be turned over to the battle stations crew within three minutes, a tall order considering that some of the watch standers would be fast asleep and had to get dressed and relieve a watch station and that watch stander would relieve someone else, the sequence continuing until every watch was manned by the best watch stander for the station. A typical silent battle stations would take twice that long to man up, since the phone talker in the crew’s berthing areas would have to go to every coffin like rack and wake the crew members one by one.

This call to battle stations came on the dot of zero three hundred. The word had gone out that the captain would be shooting at four o’clock. No one had slept, the rig for ultra quiet demanding that the crew members not standing watch return to their bunks. But the crew were awake and murmuring through the red-lit compartment. When the call came, the crew dashed for their watch stations and battle stations were fully manned two minutes later.

Lieutenant Kingman was already at his watch station since the battle stations watch bill called for him to be the officer of the deck. Executive Officer Donna Phillips arrived, joining Captain George Dixon and Kingman. Phillips wore her coveralls with the flag patch on the right shoulder and the Leopard emblem on the left, a dolphin emblem above her left pocket, her name embroidered over her right pocket. Without a word she nodded to Dixon, took a headset, and vanished in cubicle zero, the furthest forward of the firecontrol stations, a telephone-booth-sized walled space with nothing inside it but a helmet and a set of gloves. The other members of the firecontrol party arrived, taking helmets and gloves in cubicles one through four, the weapons officer’s station in another cubicle aft of firecontrol four, the weapon control cube. Captain Dixon didn’t enter a cubicle but remained standing aft of the command console, where a set of temporary rails had been pulled out of the console section to surround his waist so that he would not fall while he wore the virtual helmet. He strapped himself in with a safety harness, so that a shock to the ship-from a torpedo, for example — would not toss him away from his console, then donned the firecontrol cursor gloves and put on the helmet.

The firecontrol helmet had a blacked-out visor, headset, boom microphone, and cool air ventilation feed. Dixon strapped it on, and his view of the control room vanished to complete darkness.

“Firecontrol display on,” Dixon said to the Cyclops Mark II battle control computer. The darkness vanished and was replaced with a three-dimensional world. Beneath Dixon, where his feet should have been, was a blue submarine showing “own ship.” The vessel appeared to be about four feet long and pointing to the left, as if it were a surfboard. Dixon appeared to be standing on an olive-colored floor that extended to a distance of about fifty feet. White range circles were drawn around him, each one about five feet apart, going to the end of the floor. Every ten degrees a line pointed out from Dixon to the ending of the floor. One of the rays pointing outward was red, the north mark, which was the direction Dixon was facing. At the far edge of the floor, the walls began to climb vertically, sloping gently away at first, then becoming more steep, as if Dixon were inside a huge bowl or virtual stadium. The circles of range began to compress. Each range circle represented one nautical mile, every tenth circle colored purple, and as the circles climbed the walls, only the purple ones remained. Eventually the olive color of the floor changed to a pink color far up the sloping wall of the bowl, indicating the range of Leopard’s weapons.

The olive floor and the pink bowl walls were the anti surface warfare display. Coexisting with the surface display was the antisubmarine ASW display, a mirror-image bowl with its walls extending downward. Dixon said, “ASW,” and the floor of the anti surface bowl came up to his face and he sank lower, as if he’d plunged into water. A new surface appeared just above his head, this surface colored blue. This was the ASW ceiling, which the computer had set just below the surface of the sea. Just like the olive-colored anti surface display, the antisubmarine display had similar range circles and bearing rays extending out to the distance, a similar curving bowl wall beginning fifty virtual feet away, this wall going down rather than up. The blue color changed to green, showing the extreme limit of the Mark 58 Alert/Acute torpedo. Further down the bowl wall the color shifted from green to yellow, showing the limit of the Mod Echo Vortex supercavitating missile, an underwater solid-fueled rocket with a blue laser seeker and a plasma warhead.

Satisfied, Dixon ordered himself returned to the anti surface display. If a submarine contact appeared, the olive floor of the anti surface display would become translucent, allowing him to see down into the antisubmarine display, so that he could fight in both environments simultaneously. It took some time for the old-timers like Dixon to get used to the new firecontrol displays, the odd three-dimensional reality at first causing motion sickness, but the junior officers walked aboard experts at it, most of them having spent hours playing video games in displays much more challenging than this virtual world. The display so far had been completely clean; Dixon decided to allow it to become more busy, ordering Cyclops to put up ship system status reports, navigation boundaries superimposed on the bowl walls, and calling for the antiair display, a ceiling above the anti surface display that would show bearing and range to an aircraft above. The ceiling met the bowl wall ten nautical miles away, a distant airplane showing up on the same bowl surface as a surface ship. The weapon status display came up, surrounding Dixon with the four torpedo tubes showing the weapons loaded aboard, two of them dark, two lit up with the glow of applied power, but each with no target solution. The upper tubes’ outer doors were open, preparing for the attack. The twelve vertical launch tubes were likewise displayed, with four Javelin antiship cruise missiles and eight Vortex Mod Delta missiles. Then the torpedo room status came up in the display, showing the number and rack status of each torpedo.

With more orders from Dixon the faces of his firecontrol team were displayed, the fisheye lenses in the helmets distorting the view, but the expressions conveying more information than their voices alone. With the faces up, he could select one person with his glove cursor and talk to him without the rest of the battle stations crew hearing, which sub crews had named the KITA circuit, for when the captain needed to deliver a kick in the ass to a particular member of the firecontrol party. By the time Dixon was finished arranging his display, his virtual world was filled with symbols and indicators.

“Predator position,” Dixon said to Cyclops. Far up on the bowl wall, on the north direction marker, a faint pulsing blue light moved, at a distance of sixty nautical miles. It was just after 0300 local time, so the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle they’d launched an hour before flew in complete darkness, using its infrared scan to search for the targets, the Red Chinese Battlegroup One. The battle group was expected to come into Predator range in a few moments.

“Cyclops, display convoy target solution.” Dixon’s order would take the information on the battle group last speed and course and distance, gained the last time they’d slowed, and put it on the virtual battle space A pulsing red diamond appeared far up the pink wall of the bowl on the north bearing line at a distance of eighty miles. Dixon was tempted to order the Predator to fly farther north and determine the exact position of the incoming battle group but that would be a risky order. To give orders to the Predator he would need to be at periscope depth with the BRA-44 antenna extended, a damned large-diameter catch-me-fuck-me telephone pole waving in the breeze for the Chinese polarized anti periscope radars to find, giving away his position. If his position were given away the Reds would disperse their formation, evacuating in different directions with zigzag courses, and he’d never connect with a single torpedo, and worse, they’d vector in the damned Julang class SSN. Even though the Reds had probably built a clanging bucket of bolts that sounded like a train wreck, with a defined datum on the Leopard, the Julang could pump out enough East Wind Dong Feng torpedoes to make life very difficult. And if the periscope or BRA-44 didn’t attract attention, the advancing Predator flying directly at the convoy would. If the Predator kept flying long sweeps east, then west, it would present a minimal threat to the task force’s air search radars, and if the gods were with them, the stealth anti radar construction of the UAV would not return a radar ping that the Chinese could see.

The other reason it would be foolish to climb to periscope depth was that it would take Leopard above the layer depth. With the summer weather, the top two hundred feet of the East China Sea was stirred by the waves and broiled by the sun, and was warm. At 210 feet, the water became frigid. The layer created a shallow sound channel, which would allow a longer range of detection of the battle group but make them blind to the approach of the Julang. With the Red SSN inbound, Dixon would have to attack the surface force from the depths. His weapons would hit them far over the horizon anyway, he thought. There would be nothing to see at PD, not even the distant smoke of their explosions. The telemetry from the Predator was coming down to them from a buoyant wire antenna, which was acceptable for receiving data but could not transmit. Between the UAV and their sonar systems, they would have the surface group in their sights in no time. Still, the fact that the Predator had not yet seen the battle group was cause for concern.

“Captain, Predator UAV detect on infrared,” the computerized voice of the Cyclops system said. “Bearing to the infrared detect is north of the Predator. Range is unknown, but Predator is conducting aerial target-motion-analysis to obtain a parallax range. Time to approximate range is ten minutes.”

“Very well, Cyclops,” Dixon said. The facial array of the firecontrol team showed his people putting on their war faces.

“Attention in the firecontrol party,” Dixon said. “We have a far distant passive aerial detect of the incoming battle group. We will be preparing to launch a time-on-target assault of the battle group Mark 58 Alert/Acute Mod Plasma torpedoes first. Vortex missiles second, and Javelin cruise missiles last. Our weapon ration for this attack is one-half of our load out which is thirteen torpedoes, four Vortex missiles, and two cruise missiles. The other half of the room will be a reserve force for counterattack and to target the Julang SSN. Once this battle group is on the bottom, our orders have us proceeding back north on the track to attack Battlegroup Two, which will take the rest of the weapons inventory. By the time Battlegroup Two is on the bottom, we won’t have to worry about Three, since it will probably slink back to port with its tail between its legs.

“The initially launched torpedoes will orbit at range five thousand yards until all thirteen weapons are in the water, and will then proceed down the track at medium speed run-to-enable with a bearing fan-out to prevent inter weapon interference. At acquisition of targets, the units will speed up to high speed, and will detonate on their targets at time zero. Just as the weapons are departing their orbits for the transit to the convoy, we will be launching Vortex units. The Vortex time of-flight is one-sixth of the Mark 58 run, so Cyclops will coordinate Vortex launches to ensure the missiles hit at time zero, with a boomerang trajectory on the east side of the convoy track so that the Vortex units will not home on the Mark 58s or interfere with the Mark 58 sonar searches.

“Because of the large weapon inventory being launched, the first-fired weapons will be orbiting for some time, which means they will be low on fuel, which means that at time zero the battle group will be much closer to us than if we were launching a single torpedo. The range to the closest unit at time zero will be inside ten thousand yards owing to this reduced torpedo range and to the speed of the incoming battle group. This is damned close, and it is possible that we could be counter detected by a streamed towed array or by a dipping sonar of an ASW chopper, probably not from a detect on the ship, people, but on the launched weapons. For this reason, we will slowly, stealthily drive away from our launching position as soon as the last weapon is released. We will clear datum to the east, proceed fifteen miles, then turn north to perform a battle damage assessment. Everyone clear on the tactical plan?”

“Coordinator, aye, sir,” Phillips said.

“Pos one, clear, sir.”

“Pos two.”

“Pos three.”

“Geo clear, Captain.”

“Secondary, aye.”

“Weps, aye.”

“Officer of the Deck, aye, Captain.”

“Sonar Supervisor, aye.”

“Very well,” Dixon said as he looked at the faces of the firecontrol party. “Now listen up for our antisubmarine tactics. I expect the Julang to be ten to twenty miles ahead of the convoy. That is fairly unfortunate, because if the convoy is at range five miles at zero time, it means our weapons will be going by the Julang on their run to the targets. The Julang could be alerted either by our weapons or by our launching transients, or both. Our launching time period will end while Julang is still outside the fifteen-mile range circle, but if he detects on the first weapon, we should expect Chinese torpedoes in the water to come before we complete our last launch. Sonar, this means you’ll need to be searching for the Julang and an incoming salvo of East Wind torpedoes at the same time we’rein the middle of launching, while you’re still keeping an eye on the convoy to make sure he doesn’t zig. You’ll have a very busy watch, Chief. Are you up for it?”

“Captain, Sonar Supervisor, we can do this in our sleep.”

Dixon smiled, as much at the confidence in Chief Herndon’s voice as to show the firecontrol party his own confidence. Perhaps the biggest indicator to the crew of the status of the battle was the expression on the captain’s face, which made command at sea that much harder — he had to act like he was winning, even in defeat, or he would lose the crew.

“Captain, Cyclops,” the computer said. “Incoming battle group at range six four nautical miles from own ship, bearing zero zero six, course one eight five, speed thirty-five knots.”

The previously pulsing diamond became a solid bloodred color, no longer flashing.

“Sonar, Captain, any detection at bearing zero zero six?”

“Conn, Sonar, no.”

“Torpedo Room, Captain,” Dixon said. “Report status.”

“Tubes one through four selected to auto for turnover to Cyclops, Captain,” the torpedo chief reported. “Rack loading system selected to auto, all systems nominal.”

“Conn, Sonar, new broadband and narrowband sonar contact, multiple surface contacts merged to a single bearing, designated Sierra nine five, bearing zero zero four, probable surface convoy,” Chief Herndon’s raspy voice reported in Dixon’s ear. He looked over at the window where Herndon’s bony face was pictured, the chief’s expression a frowning mask of concentration.

“Very well, Sonar,” Dixon said. “Designate Sierra nine five as Master One, Red Chinese Battlegroup One.”

“Master One, Conn, Sonar, aye.”

“Coordinator,” Dixon said to XO Donna Phillips, whose battle station was the firecontrol coordinator, “we’re on a launch hold until you can classify the high-value targets and achieve torpedo bearing separation.”

“Coordinator, aye, Captain, we’re correlating Predator and sonar data now.”

Dixon waited impatiently. He couldn’t just put out a baker’s dozen of Mark 58 torpedoes down the bearing line to the convoy — he could, but they would all make their way to the loudest or biggest target. He’d end up putting thirteen plasma warheads on one aircraft carrier, and all the antisubmarine warfare destroyers would survive and hunt the shooter down. The only way Dixon could launch his salvo would be to discriminate between the targets, to determine the location of each ship not just now, but thirty minutes in the future, with respect to the other ships of the convoy. The Predator data and sonar data would be fed into Cyclops, and the computer would determine the location of each of the target heavies, and relay that data to the firecontrol virtual display and to the memory of each of the torpedoes. Once that was done, the torpedoes would not interfere with each other or gang up on a single target, which was a beautiful thing, but took valuable time.

Dixon tapped his Academy ring on the stainless-steel handrail surrounding the conn, until finally Phillips had the answer.

“Captain, Coordinator, target discrimination and assignment complete. The nineteen priority heavies are loaded into the battle space. We have a firing solution.”

The display suddenly changed. Instead of a single pulsating diamond, a multitude of diamonds appeared, each with a different symbol. There was the aircraft carrier, the ASW destroyers, the missile cruisers, the heavy battle cruiser the frigates, and the fleet oilers. There had to be two dozen combatants, but the most dangerous nineteen had been identified in bright red, the untargeted stragglers becoming a dull rust color. Hopefully, those ships would turn north to assemble with Battlegroup Two, or lose heart and head home. If they were foolish enough to try to search for the shooting submarine, they would not succeed, and would soon grow discouraged. There were more torpedoes in case one of the untargeted carried a dipping sonar, but odds were the survivors would be far out matched, and they carried no cruise missiles to endanger India in any case.

“Firing point procedures,” Dixon announced. “High value heavies one through nineteen, time-on-target attack, torpedo salvo with tubes one through four with reloads to fire units one through thirteen, Vortex battery firing missiles one through four, and Javelin ship killer cruise missiles last, units one and two.”

“Ship ready,” Kingman reported.

“Weapons ready,” Lieutenant Commander Jay Taussig, the weapons officer, reported.

“Solution ready,” Phillips snapped.

“Cyclops ready,” the computer said in its calm voice.

“Cyclops, take charge of the torpedo room, all tubes and all weapons, and shoot on programmed bearing,” Dixon barked. He had never given this order other than in exercises, and inside the firecontrol gloves, his hands shook.

“Take charge of the torpedo room, all tubes and all weapons, and shoot on programmed bearing, Cyclops, aye,” the computer replied, the system’s cadence now faster, sounding almost excited — a recent improvement to the software since the computer’s calmness during a casualty or a battle situation was out of context and irritating. “All systems nominal at launch minus sixty seconds.”

There was nothing to do but wait, Dixon thought.

“Launch minus thirty seconds, Captain,” Cyclops said rapidly. “Water round torpedo tank air ram bottle pressurizing. Air ram bottle fully pressurized. Units one and two on internal power. Units one and two, firecontrol solution locked in. Launch minus ten seconds.”

Dixon bit his lip. This was the point of no return.

“Units one and two solution set,” Cyclops announced. “Unit one standby. Unit one — shoot. Unit one — fire.”

A burst of sound punched Dixon in the eardrums and the deck shook, the sensation coming not directly from the torpedo launch but from the violence of venting inboard the air ram that pressurized the water round torpedo tanks, the interior of the ship jumping from the high-pressure air.

“Conn, Sonar, first fired unit, normal launch.”

“Unit two standby,” Cyclops continued. “Unit two — shoot. Unit two — fire.”

The helmet seemed to detonate a second time as the second torpedo was launched.

“Conn, Sonar, second fired unit, normal launch.”

“Cutting wires to units one and two,” Cyclops said. “Outer doors one and two shutting. Outer doors tubes one and two shut. Draining one and two. Opening outer doors tubes three and four. Outer doors tubes three and four open. Units three and four on internal power. Units three and four, solution locked in. Unit three standby. Unit three — shoot. Unit three-fire”

Another tube launch transient smashed Dixon’s ears, and the sequence continued as Cyclops continued to pump out torpedoes. Dixon waited for the first Vortex tube launch. The three-hundred-knot missiles were so fast that they would be fired last but impact first.

At three in the morning Beijing time, Captain Lien Hua was in his rack in the captain’s stateroom with four blankets and a down comforter covering him. The cabin was comfortable when Lien was awake, but for some reason it always felt cold in the night, perhaps his reaction to missing his wife. And more nights than not, the twins liked to sneak into their parents’ bed, and Lien typically went to sleep wrapped around the warm body of his wife, but in the morning found himself separated from her by two snoring five-year-olds, and he would awaken in happiness. Here, while he enjoyed command at sea, he hated going to sleep and hated waking up in the narrow bunk even more.

Usually Lien was a light sleeper at sea. A tap at his door, a noise from the ship, the soft buzz of his phone to the control room, or a change in the flow from the air handler would make him sit bolt upright, alert and on edge. Sometime during the night, he was inevitably awakened by a noise, and he would get up and walk the ship, usually not more than ten minutes. Once he assured himself that all was normal, he could return to a light sleep before the morning meal. But tonight he slept more deeply than he could remember. At four bells of the mid watch the messenger had knocked quietly, and he did not react, the knock coming louder. Lien woke to the man standing over his bunk holding a clipboard of the radio messages. He forced himself to sit up, turn on the reading light, and scan the pages, initialing each one, then doused the light and collapsed back into a deep sleep.

On the upper-level deck, First Officer Zhou Ping sat in the captain’s chair on the command deck of the command post. The command post was a brightly lit room with a white tile floor, a collection of yellow-painted consoles with broad sloping lap sections. The port and starboard walls were not straight, but horseshoe-shaped consoles with four wheeled chairs in front of each. The port side was a ship control sector — the control panels that ran the ship wide systems, such as high-pressure air, ballast tank vents, the trim system, the drain pump and bilge tanks, the sanitary tanks, and the forward electrical systems. The starboard panels were the tactical units, starting with the forward weapons control panel, then four combined sensor and tactical control panels, where the data from sonar could be displayed on an upper screen while the lower screens displayed the Second Captain computer system’s calculations of the whereabouts of the enemy. The two horseshoe consoles joined at the forward wall of the room at the wide single console of the helmsman’s station, which looked like a fighter plane’s cockpit with a stick and rudder pedals, an engine order telegraph, and several computer screens. In the center of the space, elevated by twenty centimeters, the periscope stand and captain’s console were surrounded by stainless-steel handrails, the area known as the command deck. The room was quiet and loud at the same time — the sound of the air vents a low-pitched roar, the four hundred-cycle computer systems and the gyro a high-pitched whine.

During the mid watch Zhou was accompanied by the helm officer at the helm console, a ship control officer at the port console, and a tactical systems watch officer at the starboard console. The other seats were empty, the chairs prevented from rolling around the room by a floor lock. The room seemed much too bright, suddenly. Zhou ordered the room lights switched to red, which was his usual mid watch preference, but sometimes it made him feel drowsy and he would fight the sensation with the room lit more brightly. In the red light, he felt more relaxed. He took out the pack of cigarettes, a popular White Chinese brand, and stared at it, telling himself he had to quit. But not this watch. He put one in his mouth and brought the flame to the tip, the smoke making him feel more alert. He exhaled and glanced at the sonar display on the command console, flipping screens from the broadband to the narrowband processors to the acoustic daylight imaging.

The sea behind them, to the north, was full of the angry thrashing screws of the task force. But other than the sonar traces from the convoy, the sea was empty. Of course, at the convoy transit speed of thirty-five knots, the flow noise of the water over the hull and the increased machinery noise from running at fifty percent reactor power would make detecting an unseen submarine in the sea impossible. The signal from such an adversary would be faint, the noise level high, and the signal-to-noise level below the minimum threshold for detection. It was insane driving ahead of the convoy like this, matching their speed, it made them deaf. There was an alternative — a gallop-and-walk tactic, which would allow them to slow to a five-knot sonar search speed to clear the seaway, then speed up to a greater velocity than the surface force to avoid being run over by them. Except to average thirty-five knots, if he lingered at five knots for even ten minutes, his gallop speed would have to be forty-one knots, which would be a sonar search disaster, since any speed over thirty-nine knots required the reactor to be shifted to forced circulation. The intricacies of the reactor were not Zhou’s concern, since that was the domain of the comrade chief engineer, Leader Dou Ling, a stubborn grime covered bastard who acted as if he were in command of the Nung Yahtsu. But Zhou did know that rigging for forced circulation meant starting four reactor coolant pumps, each the size of a small truck, and the noise from the pumps was the loudest noise the ship could make. Not only would that risk detection by a Western submarine, it would make sonar reception completely impossible, and signal-to-noise ratio would crash. But then, the ten minutes would be worth it to allow the narrowband processors to check out the sea for a contact.

Zhou shook his head, knowing that the narrowband sonar processors were a gift and a curse in one package. They would require far more than ten minutes to integrate the sonar data from a small slice of ocean just ahead of them, the discrimination circuits requiring more like eighteen minutes per slice of ocean. With narrowband taking too long to be useful, a gallop and-walk could only use the broadband sonar, and in truth, a few minutes of reduced ambient and own-ship noise would be a beneficial thing for the broadband sonar. Accordingly, Captain Lien had ordered a five-minute drift at five knots for every hour, the remaining fifty-five minutes spent at thirty eight knots to allow the ship to average thirty-five knots. The next drift period had arrived at the top of the hour as the chronometer needle on the beautiful instrument Lien had donated to the ship came to twelve of three o’clock.

“Helm Officer, dead slow ahead, make turns for five knots.”

“Dead slow ahead, turns for five knots acknowledged, Leader Zhou.”

A bell rang at the helmsman’s console, the engine order telegraph. The ship would slow to five knots, and he, the tactical systems watch officer, the sonar officer of the watch, and the Second Captain computer system would scan the sea to search for the Westerners, despite the intelligence that indicated that the Americans were far over the horizon and the British were coming from the other side of the hemisphere.

“Sir, engine room answers dead slow ahead, making turns for five knots,” the helm officer reported.

Zhou nodded. “Very good.” He reached for the microphone at the command console. “Sonar Officer of the Watch, five knots, conduct a complete sonar search and report all contacts.”

“Sonar Officer, well received, conducting search.”

Zhou selected his left screen to the broadband display, the central screen to the narrowband frequency buckets, even though five minutes was not enough to integrate narrowband on one sector, they might get lucky. On the right panel he displayed the transient analyzer, a computer module that listened to the short-duration noises in the sea, and trained to recognize the sound of a slammed hatch or dropped wrench or the stomp of boots, and able to discriminate between those sounds and the click of shrimp or the blowhole venting of a whale.

After thirty seconds slow Zhou knew the sea was empty. There was nothing on broadband. The narrowband search would only hold meaning after it had percolated for the full five minutes, but the key was the transient display, which was empty. Zhou ground out his cigarette and pulled out another. While he lit it, the transient display blinked, an odd, full throated noise out there that suddenly died away.

“Deck Officer, Sonar,” the speaker rasped.

“Deck Officer,” Zhou said to his microphone.

“Sir, distant transient received, bearing one seven three, to the south just to the left of our track. Transient is unrecognized by the system.”

“Deck Officer, well received,” Zhou said, donning a headset and ordering his console to replay the transient. It was not much more than a whooshing sound that died quickly.

“Deck Officer, Sonar, no correlation on that bearing to broadband contact or narrowband bucket. Transient probable designation is biologies.”

“Deck, well received,” Zhou said, puffing the cigarette, his eyes on the transient screen. It was almost a disappointment, Zhou thought. A whale venting at the surface, most likely, and the sonar gear wasn’t calibrated for that species. “Sonar, Deck Officer, is there any chance this could be mechanical?”

“A whoosh like that, sir? We don’t have bubble sounds and there is no sign of metal-to-metal contact in the frequency analyzer. Also no pulsing sounds, so this is not a pump.”

“Any other activity at that bearing?”

“Nothing, sir. The sea is empty. I am calling it biologies.”

Zhou nodded to himself. “Keep the trace in the memory, and record latitude and longitude and time.”

“Sonar, well received.”

Zhou glanced at the intercom phone to the captain’s stateroom. By Lien’s standing orders, an unknown transient had to be reported. He considered the option of advising the captain when he woke, but decided against it. Zhou hoisted the phone to his ear and buzzed the captain. It took several minutes for Lien Hua to answer, and when he did, his words were slurred and faint.

“Captain, Deck Officer, reporting an unidentified transient.” Zhou Ping made a concise report, leaving out nothing.

“What is your recommendation?” Captain Lien asked sleepily. “Catalog the noise and continue, sir,” Zhou replied.

“Very good. Make it so,” Lien yawned. “And change my wake-up call to eight bells of the morning watch.”

“Well received, Captain.” Zhou hung up and yawned.

The chronometer’s needle passed the five-minute mark. It was time to speed back up, or else they would be overrun by the convoy, and if sonar reception was bad with them twenty miles astern, he couldn’t imagine the racket they would make ten miles closer.

“Helm Officer, ahead full speed.”

The ship sped back up to fifty percent power, surging back to her thirty-eight-knot transit speed, on the way to the Strait of Formosa. Zhou pulled out the cigarette pack and lit his last one for the night, yawning again and rubbing his eyes, waiting for the watch to end so he could get a few hours of sleep.

The Alert/Acute designation for the Mark 58 torpedo stood for Extreme Long Range Torpedo/ Ultra Quiet Torpedo, the acronym initially ELRT/UQT, but as early as the initial design stages, the DynaCorp defense contractor’s personnel had nicknamed it Alert/Acute and the name had stuck, even formalized in the technical manual. The Alert/Acute units launched from the tubes of the submarine Leopard had all detected their surface ship targets within minutes of each other, then sped up to attack velocity, a roaring fifty-nine knots.

The surface force was never warned of the attack. The ships of the task force — including the Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier Kaoling, two Beijing-class battle cruisers three heavy cruise missile destroyers, four antisubmarine destroyers, five antiair destroyers, four fast frigates, and several oilers and support ships — steamed southward. The fleet commander and his staff and the commanding officers of the convoy were all asleep, the clocks all showing a few minutes past three in the morning.

Mark 58 Alert/Acute unit one’s sonar never needed to go active. The massive hull of the Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier had been detected tens of miles ago, beckoning the torpedo in every foot of the journey. The hull was so massive and so gigantic that the sonar signal grew and grew until the world contained only the torpedo itself and the target. Soon the proximity hull detectors went off-scale, and the torpedo hit the ship. The direct-contact circuits bloomed into electronic activity, the processor routing the signal to the detonation circuits of the plasma warhead.

The warhead ignited in plasma incandescence at the forward starboard quarter of the aircraft carrier, the plasma blast vaporizing everything in its vicinity to a distance of fifty feet, carving a spherical hole in the hull where there was no longer steel or plastic or paint or jet fuel or bunks or personnel. In the ‘milliseconds after the vaporization, the plasma bottle collapsed and the blast was allowed to blow upward and outward, disintegrating every molecule of the forward third of the ship, and burning much of the rest. The shock wave that penetrated the ocean surface smashed the island like the fist of a god.

In the flag plot level of the Kaoling, the leading member of the fleet’s tactical duty officers, Commander Cheng Chi, had been glancing through the window at the flight deck below when the solid deck beneath his feet suddenly and violently rose up in a tenth of a second and threw him to the bulkhead, as if he had been standing on a huge spatula. The bulkhead became a wall of flashing stars, each of them containing an infinite amount of pain in a thousand varieties, the pain of his skull crushing, of his bones breaking, of his flesh gashing open, of his organs smashing, of his arteries severing. The dimming world, viewed through the blood flowing down his forehead, erupted in acrid black smoke as the bulkhead hurled his disfigured and broken body back to the deck. The navigation plot tumbled on top of him, shattering glass over him. The bare 220-volt electrical cables mercifully electrocuted him in the last second before power was lost, and his last thought was relief that the pain was certain to end. His consciousness ceased like a light suddenly shut off.

What remained of the aircraft carrier Kaoling was driven by the momentum of the city-sized vessel plowing through the sea at thirty-five knots and forced underwater. The aft deck disappeared into the violent foamy sea, the aft half of the ship misshapen and crushed as it departed the surface and sank in the deep water quickly, vanishing below the two-hundred-foot layer depth where the light from the surface ended, and proceeded deeper in the dark cold sea until several minutes later it smashed into the rocks of the bottom, eleven thousand feet beneath the still-foaming waves.

The other ships of the Kaoling’s task force were not as lucky. Most of those vessels were blown to pieces smaller than trucks, the scattered pieces of the ships sinking rapidly. Three minutes after the explosion of the carrier Kaoling, eighteen other major surface combatants no longer existed in any recognizable fashion, and the Red Chinese Battlegroup One was gutted. All that remained were a radio relay ship, four large fleet oilers, and six support ships containing food and spare parts for the fleet.

The commanding officer of the radio relay vessel Dong Laou, a hundred-meter ugly monstrosity of radio antennae, was a lieutenant commander named Bao Xiung. Bao stood on the deck of the starboard bridge wing and watched the fires burning on the surface where the fleet had once sailed.

He dropped his binoculars and let them hang on the leather cord around his neck as he turned to his deck officer.

“You wanted a fight, Leader Meng,” he said dryly. “Now you have one. And what would your recommendation be for me, since all that appears to be left of the task force are a few support vessels?”

Young Lieutenant Meng Lo swallowed hard, then lowered his own binoculars slowly. “Sir, there must be an entire fleet of enemy submarines out there to have caused this damage. We have no choice. We must withdraw to the north and form up with Battlegroup Two. And radio the Admiralty to tell them about the disaster.”

Bao nodded, feeling guilty that he had been sarcastic to the idealistic youth. “Turn to the north, Leader Meng, and radio the support vessels that we have taken tactical command of the remnant of Battlegroup One, and order the others to continue north on a zigzag pattern. Perhaps zigzag pattern bear would be appropriate.”

“Yes, sir,” Meng stuttered, his face noticeably pale even in the dimness of the bridge lights and the light of the fires of the graves of their comrades. “It will be so, sir.”

Meng hurried into the bridge, leaving Bao behind, shaking his head sadly as the Dong Laou turned to the north to run from the vicious Americans.

Damn them to the seventh layer of hell, Bao thought. Damn them forever.

The last of the cigarettes ran out an hour ago. Lieutenant Commander Zhou Ping sat back in the command chair and allowed himself the luxury of a yawn. The captain had extended his wakeup call by two hours, which meant Zhou would be here for two hours longer than his body was used to, the very thought making him feel tired. There was absolutely nothing he could do for the next four and a half hours but sit here at the command console in the command post, waiting for a submerged contact. That would be wonderful, he thought, fantasizing about detecting an American submarine and alerting the captain. The ship would set wartime readiness conditions, the command post would fill up, and the captain would obtain a passive range on the contact, then shoot a salvo of Dong Feng torpedoes, or perhaps the new Tsunami nuclear-tipped weapon. Both types of torpedoes were supercavitating, with solid rocket fuel that would make them sail through the water at nearly two hundred knots, but a Tsunami could pack a punch so severe that it did not even need to get close. Of course, launching one was something of a suicide maneuver, since in all likelihood the one-megaton blast of the warhead could damage the shooting ship. The Admiralty obviously believed shooting a Tsunami was suicide, because each ship had been loaded with only one Tsunami. Why waste torpedo room space with more than one if shooting one meant the firing ship would sink? But Zhou was not convinced. The Tsunami would head toward the aim-point at two hundred knots, with a maximum range of fifty miles, so its time-of-flight could be as long as fifteen minutes, and in fifteen minutes the Nung Yahtsu could travel twelve miles in the opposite direction, for a total of sixty-two miles, and that distance from a submerged megaton detonation should prove more than enough for ship survival. Zhou had long since decided that the Tsunami suicide issue was unfounded.

Of course, releasing a nuclear weapon could normally only be ordered by Beijing with a nuclear release code. The party leadership tended to get rather annoyed at unauthorized nuclear warfare, but if the captain of a submarine decided it was launch or die, he would have Beijing’s blessing. Zhou called up the weapon control panel, and saw that tubes one through five were loaded with Dong Feng torpedoes, with a Tsunami in tube six, as Captain Lien Hua had insisted. He was midway through selecting the on-line technical manual for the Tsunami when his world seemed to crack in half with a dozen terrible things happening at once.

“Command Post, Sonar, we have multiple explosions to the north, in the baffles. Request you turn the ship immediately to the north!”

“Helm, right full rudder, steady course north, half ahead!” As the helmsman put the rudder over and acknowledged Zhou’s order, Zhou called the captain on a speaker intercom. “Captain to the command post, Captain to the command post!”

The deck tilted violently over as their high rate of speed put the ship into a snap roll, the torque of the propulsor and the drag of the fin putting the ship in a slight roll that became worse with time.

“What’s going on?” Captain Lien Hua shouted as he entered the command post.

“Sonar, report!” Zhou screamed to the overhead speaker.

“Command Post, Sonar, I say again, we have multiple explosions to the north, now out of the baffles. We also have distant sonar traces of weapons in the water.”

“Dammit to the bottom of hell, Mr. First,” Lien said. “The American SSN has attacked the task force. You were correct to turn the ship. That trace, the one we thought was biologies—”

“Wasn’t biologies at all, Captain.”

“Draw a circle from the position of the phantom noise trace we had. Designate it Target Number One, and give it an assumed speed of twenty knots. Show me where the target could be now.”

Zhou manipulated his firecontrol console, the range circle generating over the geographic plot. It was a damned large area, he thought.

“It’s too big to cover, sir. We’ll have to do a gallop-and walk search.”

“Command Post, Sonar, more explosions from the north. We no longer hold sonar contact on weapons in the water.”

“I have the deck, Mr. First,” Lien said. “Get to sonar and make sure we’re doing a maximum sensor scan for the American SSN. I’ll see if I can plot the weapon tracks backward in time to see where they originated, and maybe I can collapse this probability circle.”

“Yes, sir,” Zhou said as he hurried to the sonar space.

“American bastard,” Lien said, biting his lip. For the next few minutes he wondered if he should make an excursion to mast broach depth to warn the Admiralty and Battlegroup Two of the submarine attack, but decided they would know on their own soon enough. The highest priority was to find the American submarine and sink it.

“Sonar, Captain,” he called into one of the intercom microphones. “Have you scanned to the north for Target Number One?”

“Command Post, Sonar, yes. Recommend you commence a twenty-five-knot gallop to the north-northwest to attempt to close the probable locus of Target Number One.”

“Captain, aye,” Lien said. “Helm, all ahead full speed, turns for twenty-five knots.”

Zhou Ping returned. “Sonar has the picture, Captain. We’re on the gallop now. When will you slow down?”

“Twenty minutes,” Lien said. “We’ll spend fifteen minutes at eight knots, then speed up again. The American has to be to the north, probably in pursuit of the second task force.”

“If he is, sir, then he’s sped up to his maximum speed, hasn’t he?”

“Perhaps. But if it were me, I would linger to get a damage assessment, and to torpedo any lingering hulls.”

“If anything is left, it won’t be a high value target. Just a few oilers or supply ships.”

“If he departed the area, we may never catch him, but we can’t proceed north at maximum speed, because at some point he’ll clear his baffles, hear us coming in with our noisy pumps on, and he’ll have an easy down-the-throat shot. We have to preserve stealth, even in this miserable situation.”

“Yes, sir. But if we get him, I want to pull the torpedo trigger with my own hands, and spill his blood personally.”

“I can see why, Mr. First, but why do you hate the Americans any more than the rest of the officers?”

“Because this miserable failure happened on my watch, Captain. I want vengeance and I want my honor back.”

“Then you shall pull the torpedo trigger, Mr. First. Whether that returns you, your honor, I will leave that to you.”