Piranha Firing Point

by Michael Dimercurio

  Ten seconds after that torpedo detonation there was nothing left of the 110,000-ton ship bigger than a few meters across. Some of the debris began to rain down on the sea, which was now white boiling foam two kilometers in diameter. Other debris was already sinking rapidly to the ocean floor, including the two reactor cores, each the size of a house and made of high-tensile alloys, mostly intact while they sank, boiling the seawater that had flooded their coolant passages. Some of the debris floated on the water, mostly from the island, which had taken the least damage, since it was in the middle of the ship and high above the water. Included in the flotsam on the foam were chunks of wood conference tables, a few rubber hoods that had shrouded the radar scopes, pieces of paper, several foam mattresses from the amidships berthing spaces, and twenty or so bodies in various states of dismemberment. The naked torso, arms, and head of one man bobbed in the gentle waves, one of his hands gone, the other missing fingers.

  The body was lit up by the lights of the exploding plasma fireballs to the east as the carriers Roosevelt and Kinnaird McKee began their cycles of death. The man’s face was slightly charred, the flesh of his face partly red from blood, partly black from the flames, and his right eye was punctured, leaving behind a misshapen hole and running flesh, but still he was quite recognizable. His clothes were burned away, leaving no trace of the three silver stars he had worn on his collar or the fleet command pin he’d worn beneath a surface warfare insignia—crossed swords in front of the bow of a destroyer. There was also no sign of the name pin that he had worn over his right pocket, which had read vice adm. jeanpaul henri.

  USS john glenn, DDG-85

  Captain Eddie Maddox threw his binoculars to the deck and lunged behind the helm console, blinded by the first flash.

  As his husky frame turned and began to fall to the deckplates, the shock wave hit the slanted glass of the bridge. Twenty panes of silicon matrix glass exploded into the room, the shards of glass more lethal than hand-grenade shrapnel. The first shards ripped into his left arm and opened his flesh. Just a moment before, he had raised the binoculars to his eyes, for some reason sensing something wrong at the position of the lead carrier, the Webb. He had begun his twisting lunge with most of his body already shielded by the console, only his left shoulder and arm above the level of the top of the panel.

  As Maddox fell, the second blast sounded from the direction of the Webb, and the hull of the John Paul Jones-class Aegis destroyer USS John Glenn below him trembled in the pressure wave of the explosion. Above him, the helmsman took a thousand shards of glass full in the face and chest. The enlisted man, still on his feet, was already dead as his body began to collapse, over twenty pieces of glass embedded in his now nonfunctioning brain. Maddox fell below the helmsman’s belt, a third detonation sounded from west northwest, the bearing to the carrier McKee. The light in the bridge deck flashed and flickered from the fireballs ahead, while a fourth detonation sounded, again from the McKee, then immediately afterward an explosion to the left, where the Roosevelt had been steaming.

  The helmsman’s knees began to buckle as the dead youth tumbled to the deck. His hand was still gripping the gas turbine engine combined throttle, and as he fell, he pulled the throttle lever fully back to its stop detent.

  Four more explosions followed, two so close that they could have been a single detonation, as Maddox’s frame hit the deckplates, smashing the side of his skull into the hard vinyl-covered metal. His body bounced, and as it flew upward an inch, another explosion sounded and the helmsman was tilted backward, his knees fully folded, his torso nearly horizontal, the glass still flying over his head and into the aft bulkhead of the bridge. Maddox hit the deck a second time, his eyes clamping shut in fear and pain. Glass ricocheted from the aft bulkhead and rained down on him, but the horizontal torso of the helmsman partially shielded him. Maddox came to rest on the deck while Ray Hargraves, the helmsman, fell toward him, his back sailing toward Maddox’s bleeding arm and shoulder. Two more explosions ripped into the bridge, these detonations closer, from ahead.

  As the John Glenn slowed, Maddox drifted into a state suspended between consciousness and coma. Images from the past flashed in and out of view almost faster than he could register them. His father’s face two decades ago. His own face in the mirror that morning, shaving a cheek in a face that looked hauntingly like his dad’s. Mom’s casket, covered with flowers, the bottle of whiskey later that day. Annapolis graduation, hats slowly sailing toward the clouds, then coming down just as slowly. His wife Amanda’s kiss at the altar, her mouth promising yet evasive, mischief in her eyes. The cry of what was supposed to be a baby boy but had turned out to be a girl, the expression of incredulity suspended on his face, turning to a father’s smile of relief and thanksgiving.

  His daughter Doloris pedaling her bicycle for the first time, the fall after ten feet of clear navigation. His son Richie lobbing the basketball to the net. Admiral Chambers’ quarters, the beer cold on his lips, the tough admiral asking him to command a new John Paul Jones-class Aegis destroyer. Amanda’s tears, her voice trembling at yet another West Pacific deployment. The loneliness of the John Clam captain’s cabin when he read Amanda’s E-mail requesting a separation, the next E-mail in the queue from Chambers congratulating him on an excellent job. Dad’s funeral service, another black casket, this time Maddox lingering on graveside, unable to leave. The convoy, his own voice complaining of steaming in a tight formation. The Seahawk V helicopter pilot, a young lieutenant who reminded him of Richie, his son, saying they should be flying ahead and looking for submarines, Maddox’s own voice again, this time saying that violated fleet orders, yet inside agreeing with the chopper pilot. And the flash in the binoculars, the carrier Webb there one second, replaced with a piece of the sun the next.

  As he drifted slowly in the images, the shock waves and explosions punctuated the lucid dreams racing through his mind. The intrusive present kept coming and going in disconnected bursts.

  The coldness of the deck, its hard surface.

  The hard deck against his cheek, punctuated by ten pieces of glass, one beneath his cheek.

  Explosions, still coming, the deck shaking with each one.

  The heaviness of the body lying on top of him, sharp pain from glass shards between the body and his side.

  The feeling of bleeding from his left arm, and the loss of feeling from his left hand.

  A voice, no, two, maybe three, but no words, just groans, cries of pain, liquid coughing and sputtering.

  One of the groans his own voice.

  “Captain!” from behind him, where the aft bulkhead should be, the voice unrecognizable, maybe his father, maybe his navigator.

  A wailing sound, a shipboard alarm, shrieking and falling.

  Another voice, hard and authoritative, but laced with fear just this side of panic, screaming, ‘This is the navigator, I have the deck and the conn. The captain’s down, I have control of the rudder and engine order.” The voice was greeted by only gasps and coughs.

  A foot pushing his body backward. The vibrations from the deckplates as the gas turbines spooled up and the shaft began rotating again, the screw aft boiling up a wake.

  The deck tilting far to starboard, so far that the body on top of Maddox rolled off, then flattening.

  Roaring all around. Explosions, still coming, now astern and distant.

  SS403 arctic storm Thirty weapons fired, thirty hits.

  Not all the torpedoes had gone to their designated targets. One weapon slated for a cruiser behind,WT-3, the carrier on the right, had gone farther into the convoy and struck a destroyer behind the cruiser rows, sparing the cruiser. Chu had closed distance by quite a few kilometers by then, and launched a new weapon at the cruiser.

  The plasma explosions would normally be flashes bright enough to blind a man, but the periscope had a built-in filter that limited the amount of light admitted to the eyepieces, momentarily clouding the view when a flash went off. It was a well-designed system, and for th
e first time Chu wondered if there were any more Rising Suns in drydocks or shipyards that might counter his force, the only threat that had much credibility against his six submarines.

  The attack from his Arctic Storm, out in front of the convoy, had taken out a good fraction of the warships.

  The thirty torpedoes had taken down the carriers, the two rows of cruisers, perhaps half of the destroyers and frigates, even some of the support ships. Chu had advanced slowly on the convoy, and initially the ships had continued westward toward him. He had underestimated the power of the torpedoes. He’d known from his reading that they were plasma weapons, but he was not prepared for their destructive power. He could have saved three weapons had he not double-targeted the aircraft carriers, since one weapon alone would have been more than enough to put a carrier down. As the carriers exploded and sank, the cruiser row had taken their hits, exposing the destroyer ranks. By then the destroyers and frigates were under attack by the Lighting Bolt to the north and the Thundercloud to the south, as were the amphibious assault ships and the troop carriers.

  In Chu’s periscope view there were no longer any visible contacts, just some smoking wreckage and an oil-slick fire in the west southwest, one of the oilers’ load now burning on the surface of the sea.

  “Navigator, any contacts on sonar?” “No, sir,” Xhiu Liu said from the sensor console. “It is possible there are a few surviving surface ships, maybe even dozens, that are masked by the noise of the sinkings, though. Admiral. We have a broadband sonar blueout all across the eastern bearings, and it’s so loud it’s blocking most tonal-frequency intervals. We’re deaf, sir.”

  “Well, if there are any survivors, you can bet they’re heading east. We’ll let the Volcano take care of them.”

  “I agree, Captain. I’ll keep watching.”

  “Second Captain, lower the periscope,” he said into his boom microphone. He stood, his back cracking, and stretched. The long hour of leaning over, peering into the eyepiece, had made his muscles ache. But it was a good ache, like the kind he’d had playing sports on the fields of the aviation academy so long ago.

  “Ship Control Officer, take her down to three hundred meters, steep angle, increase speed to twenty-five clicks, and take us west. We should be encountering the 6881’s fairly soon. Even as deaf as they are, the noise we put up killing the task force will wake them up. I expect them to arrive around bearing two six five to two seven five. Navigator, I know we’ve been up here shooting for a while and everyone is tired, but I want your maximum attention to the submarine threat. They’ll be coming soon.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Mr. First, I’ll take the command console.”

  Chu strapped back in, reconfigured his panels, and shut his eyes for a moment. They had eighteen torpedoes left. Once the 6881s were on the bottom, he would probably have fifteen or sixteen. That would be enough to hold off part of a second landing force, but then he would be powerless. It wouldn’t be good enough to call out a second force’s position to coordinate an air strike—the American battle formation was too expert at fighting off air attacks. They had to be attacked from the sea, and without torpedoes and a delivery platform they would own the East China Sea.

  So it was a matter of time. Eventually his six ships would run out of weapons, and there was no resupply.

  He had put down the initial force, and a second landing convoy would need to come out of Hawaii or California, which would be at least seven to fourteen days’ travel time even at fast transit speed.

  He had bought his generals a week, maybe two. How close could they come in a week? he asked himself. They would need to overrun the Whites in a week or risk being pushed back.

  While he waited for the 6881s to return in search of him, he dictated several messages into the Second Captain, one a report to the Admiralty, one a message of congratulation to his ship commanders, one a warning about the 6881s, and one a redeployment plan for a force coming out of Hawaii, the East China Sea entrance to be more to the south. Once the messages were edited, he settled back to wait.

  USS john glenn, DDG-85

  “Rudder to left full, throttling up to ahead flank. There are burning ships ahead and aft. I’m steering around the wreck of the John Paul Jones, the cruisers are gone, and the other destroyers ahead are burning and sinking.”

  The babbling voice of the navigator. Who was he talking to? Captain Eddie Maddox wondered.

  “Navigator,” Maddox’s voice called. “What are you—”

  His strength had seemed to sink away from him.

  “Sir, are you okay?”

  “What happened? I can’t see.”

  “Hold on. Captain. The fleet’s been attacked. I’m steering us out of the column, I’m breaking formation.” “Get the hell away from it,” Maddox said. “Break to the south if you can, get away from the formation, and head east. Get us back to the Pacific if you can, but be alert for survivors, I want to get anyone we can see. Find some lookouts. And see if you can get Robinson up in the Seahawk”

  “Aye, sir, but I’m by myself up here, and the battle circuits aren’t working.”

  “Just do what you can. You don’t have to do it in ten seconds.” Maddox groaned. “Was it an air attack? There was no warning.”

  “Don’t know, sir. The carriers went up in huge mushroom clouds.”

  “Radars?”

  “Can’t tell, sir, I’m steering around four ships that are sinking.”

  “How many ships down?”

  “Sir, you’d better ask, how many ships are still afloat.”

  “What?” Maddox tried to move his left arm, but it wouldn’t move and he had no sensation from it. His right seemed to work, but is bulk was on it. He pushed himself half up, shoving away the dead body and fallen glass, and reached up to the console handhold. Grasping it and pulling as hard as he could, his body a mass of aches, he managed to stand, then tried to open his eyes, but there was nothing but blackness. He was blind.

  “I can’t see,” he said flatly.

  A new voice.

  “Nav? What the hell?” The young officer fresh from surface warfare officer school, Engiga Boyd.

  “Boyd, take the helm,” the navigator. Lieutenant Commander Bosco, ordered.

  “Yessir.”

  “Course south, ahead flank.”

  “Relieve you, sir.”

  “Stand relieved. Captain, I’m checking on the radar.”

  Footsteps. A door opening, being pushed, a scraping noise. Maddox felt dizzy and weak.

  “Nav,” he said, “Where’s the navigator?”

  “Back, sir.”

  “Where can I sit?”

  “Here.” An arm on his right side. “Gotta get the doc to look at that arm. Captain. Let me get the glass off.

  Okay, here’s the captain’s chair. You look pale, sir.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Maddox said. “Do we have radars?”

  “All gone. Captain. Phased-array panels are blown apart from the shock waves. Electronics are fried. The rotating structures are blown off, and the masts are gone.

  Sir, anything exposed to the weather is damaged and scorched.”

  “What about the Seahawk?”

  “It was stowed. It could be okay.”

  “Find Robinson. Get him up. I want a full report on the fleet. Meanwhile, keep steaming east to the Pacific.

  Get us the hell out of here.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Lieutenant Brandon Robinson had been in his stateroom in a deep sleep after being up all night standing watch on the bridge, trying to cross-qualify in surface warfare.

  Completing surface quals wasn’t a requirement, but it filled the time, and it could pay off if he stayed in the Navy. The midwatch had gone from midnight to six in the morning, and he was beat. He could remember the exact moment he had gone from sleeping to stark consciousness, that first booming explosion. He hadn’t waited for the crew to call battle stations; he had run aft and down to get to his, at the Seahaw
k, the onboard light antisubmarine-warfare helicopter, his chopper. He ran to the helodeck, the ship taking one shock wave after another. When he

  finally arrived, in the darkness, he had had to manually open the helodeck door. The power returned, allowing him to get the heavy roll-type door open. And out the aft-facing. doorway he had watched as the fleet disappeared, the first flashes of detonations knives in his eyes. He had to turn away, flashing lights swimming in his vision, the merciless noise of the ships exploding rocking his eardrums.

  The ship’s engines suddenly throttled up to maximum revolutions, and the deck rolled hard to starboard, then leveled, then rolled again to starboard, finally leveling again. Whoever was on the bridge had taken matters into his own hands, Robinson thought, and was maneuvering them out of the convoy formation, as the op order allowed if the formation came under attack. He waited by the Seahawk, stowed in the helodeck and cabled down, chancing the occasional look out the aft door. The sea was empty astern except for smoke and foam on the surface, now far in the distance, the destroyer’s wake white and boiling behind them. They were alone.

  The navigator burst into the room, a look of determination on his face.

  “Battle comm circuits are out,” he puffed. “Launch the Seahawk, Robinson. Cap’n wants a patrol and then an ASW look ahead.”

  Robinson’s airman had not shown up after the explosions.

  The navigator helped him get the chopper rolled out and preflighted. Within ten minutes, Robinson was at idle, Bosco saluting him as he lifted off the deck.

  It didn’t take long to survey the situation. Robinson flew west for a few miles, seeing nothing left of the fleet except patches of foam, one or two smoking wrecks, and the flame from a burning oil slick. There was nothing else. One hundred ten ships, all gone except for his.

  And what were the chances of that? He wondered, feeling oddly like the sole survivor of a holocaust. He snapped off the images of the dead sea with his digital camera. His orders were to transmit the images directly to the Comstar Navy communications satellite, to get the information back to the Pentagon with a forward marked oprep 3 pinnacle, the code for an emergency message that needed to go immediately to the president.