"We'll put out a filtered salvo of twenty-three torpedoes." Filtered salvo, each torpedo fired at almost the same time, but each one tuned to listen to a particular ship so that twenty-three fish would not gang up on a single target. "The firing sequence is as follows—Navigator, Weapons Officer, listen up—the first fired unit to target one, aircraft carrier. Unit two to target two, one of the cruisers. Then the other three cruisers get one fish each. That's five launches for the five high-value targets.
Then one torpedo for each of the eight frigates, that's thirteen total. One torpedo for each of the six destroyers and four amphib transports, that's twenty three, leaving three torpedoes. I'm going to fire ten Vortex Mod Deltas from the forward vertical launch system to target the two oilers and any surviving surface hulls."
Vortex Mod Ds were solid-rocket-fueled torpedoes that traveled at three hundred knots. The Deltas were new, fired from the forward vertical launch tubes in the forward ballast tank near the bow. Each of the missiles could be launched only from deep depth, swimming upward and turning to the horizontal, then lighting off the solid rocket charge to make their way to a surface target. Once close to a surface ship, the Delta would dive deep—over a half mile—then turn and "fly" straight up at three hundred knots with the blue laser seeker looking for a surface-ship hull. The combination of high-density PlasticPac explosive and the upward velocity would blow most ships into a half-dozen pieces, all of them bursting into flames. It took only one to put down an aircraft carrier.
"That will give us a reserve of three torpedoes in the room and two Vortex Mod Deltas in case the Severodvinsk is with the task force, and in case any of the units of the filtered salvo double-team the targets instead of discriminating. By the time the fleet is within ten miles of us, within our visual horizon, the weapons should begin hitting. We need to be alert for antisubmarine jets off the carrier, ASW helicopters from the carrier or the destroyers and frigates, and the Severodvinsk. We'll begin the
assault from periscope depth. Later on we may go deep and disconnect from the topside datalink. Everyone clear? Carry on." He looked over at Dietz. "Take her up to PD, sharp angle, no baffle clear."
As Dietz shot the ship up, the reports and commands only dimly registered in McKee's mind. Yet he was plugged into the sounds and rhythm of the ship.
Dietz hugged the periscope optic module as the ship rocked in the swells at periscope depth. "Raining outside, Captain. Coming down pretty hard now. Sky's dark, too."
"Dammit," McKee cursed, glancing at Petri. "That's going to hose the overhead satellite view."
"We'll still have infrared, sir."
"Better than nothing."
"Plus it'll shield the periscope."
McKee was deep in thought, wondering where the surface force was.
"Sonar, Captain," he called into his boom mike. "Report all contacts."
"No contacts, sir," the sonar chief, Chief Cook, replied. Cook seemed to have stepped aboard from the 1950s, sporting a whitewall haircut, black frame glasses, a pocket protector, and white socks. He was the ultimate sonar geek, and proud of it.
McKee pulled out a Cohiba torpedo cigar and lopped the end off with the cutter Diana had given him, the inscription For my dearest Kelly seeming odd in this setting. But McKee was so deeply involved in the moment that the memory of her face was lost to him. The lighter flared up, the smoke making a cloud around him, the first cigar of the
day smooth and calming. He wanted his crew to see him like this, a cigar clenched between his teeth as they went into battle.
"Nothing to do now but wait, XO," McKee said to Petri, glancing over at her to see how she was bearing up. She seemed calm enough, nodding back at him.
McKee looked at his watch. Eleven o'clock on the nose. The Keyhole intelligence satellite would have broadcast its data to the CombatStar satellite, which would be ready to link them in. The antenna in the periscope would receive the data and make the Cyclops computer a node in the theater bat-tlespace system, all obtainable information on the approaching enemy fleet available in seconds. The navigator, who was responsible for the information from the datalink, had ducked into the forward virtual-reality station, an egg-shaped hood some five feet in diameter rolled down from the overhead all the way to his feet. The interior was the display field for the Cyclops computer.
"Captain, Navigator, datalink is up. We have the surface force."
McKee stepped into the aftmost eggshell, VR4, and leaned against a rail while pulling on a hood with wide-aperture glasses, allowing the three-dimensional view the computer would use to display the approaching fleet. "Battlescreen up," he commanded the computer.
Instantly McKee was in a different world. Instead of standing on the deck plates of a nuclear submarine, he was standing in a virtual computer world, which looked like a huge valley, the floor of it flat.
At what looked like a football field away, the floor of the valley sloped upward, gradually at first, then steeper as the distance grew. It was like being inside a stadium, but without seats, just a smooth surface colored an olive drab. Superimposed on the olive bowl of the valley were lines, circles around him climbing up the sloping walls, and lines drawn out radially from his position at the center of the bowl. The lines were range and bearing marks, and the slope of the bowl was the computer's depiction of the earth. The flat part of the bowl, the floor, represented the space near them, the flats inside the horizon. If he could see a ship through the periscope, the computer would show that contact somewhere on the flat part of the bowl floor.
Contacts outside the area of the horizon would show up on the sloping portion. The more distant the target, the higher it was up the wall. When the surface battle group appeared in the computer's battlespace, they would be high up the bowl on the line representing their bearing from the submarine. The battle group would descend closer and closer, until they reached the floor of the bowl. The color of the bowl changed from olive to pink at about halfway up the rise. The change in color showed the far range of their weapons. The virtual setup took some time to get used to, but after a few weeks it was hard to remember how they had ever put weapons on a target before.
"Captain, Navigator, datalink contact information coming into the battlespace now, bearing zero one zero, range eighty-seven miles."
"Very well," McKee replied. He turned so that
he was facing true north, and ten degrees to his right, far up on the sloping bowl, the dots of the battle group appeared.
"Datalink cascading into Cyclops, Captain," Jud-ison said. The dots changed from simple spheres to shapes. One grew into a beachball-size three-dimensional diamond, its color changing to bright red—the aircraft carrier. A second turned into a blue box the size of a hat box, a frigate. The other dots dissolved into shapes until the cluster was as bright as a Christmas tree, all of them descending slowly down the sheer smooth wall of the otherwise empty virtual arena. Kelly blinked, and a cursor floated in front of him. He moved his eyes, and the cursor moved with it. He rolled the cursor to the diamond shape, then blinked. A mass of data appeared in space floating in front of him, to the right of the diamond, but at a distance that allowed him to see the text and the diamond without refocusing his eyes. The text was the computer-stored information on the carrier.
"Time," Kelly said to the computer, and a time display came up in front of him, also floating in space. "Cyclops recommendation on Sharkeye launch, unit two on left flank, range eighty-thousand yards from own ship, unit one on right flank at forty thousand yards, transit speed low. Calculate."
In front of McKee two orange beams of light shot out from the center point of the bowl, from his feet. One of them extended up to the right of the surface force, the other to the left. Launch times came up in front of him in countdown style. Two minutes to launch the left-running Mark 5
Sharkeye pod, seven minutes until they had to launch the one to go right.
Ten minutes later, the Mark 5s had been launched from the Devilish's tubes, and McKee wa
tched the units climbing up the walls of the virtual bowl. He puffed his cigar, the ventilation system high in the egg pulling out the smoke, fresh air blowing in the bottom. He waited another ten minutes while the Mark 5s ran to their positions and detached from the torpedo bodies, streaming their cables to small buoys on the surface, which would communicate with the CombatStar satellite, which would communicate with the Devilish.
"Captain, Navigator, Mark 5s deployed. We have the battle group on own-ship datalink." The incoming fleet was now detected on sensors launched by the ship rather than something boosted to earth orbit, the navigator's report indicated. The fleet was still too far distant to be heard on the Cyclops sonar system. By the time it was, half the weapons would be fired. The color of the fleet's shapes, still coming slowly down the incline of the bowl, brightened, showing the data to be another notch more reliable. The shapes approached, crossing the sixty-mile-range circle high over McKee's head. A few more miles and the fleet would cross from the pink section down into the olive-drab area, within weapons range.
"Navigator, tube status," McKee called to his boom mike.
"Sir, all four loaded with Mark 58s, programmed for medium-speed transit," Judison's voice said in his headset.
"Very well. Officer of the Deck, shift to computer control of the tubes," he ordered, placing the torpedoes and the tubes at the hands of the Cyclops battle-system computer. The system would ram new torpedoes in the tubes, pressurize them, flood them, open the outer doors, launch the weapons, shut the outer doors, drain down the tubes, open the inner doors, and ram in new weapons. Devilfish would pump out torpedoes at the rate of one every fifteen seconds, the twenty-three torpedoes ejected in less than seven minutes.
"Cyclops has the torpedo room, Captain," Dietz said.
McKee watched the two dozen shapes of the surface battle group crawl into the olive-drab zone, then down the range circle at forty miles where the left-flank Mark 5 sensor hovered.
"Conn, Sonar," Chief Cook's deep voice sounded. "We have acquisition of the surface force on acoustic daylight imaging. We show targets one through twenty-five. Bearings and bearing rates correlate with Mark 5 data."
"Sonar, Conn aye," Dietz said. "Captain, Cyclops shows ten seconds from torpedo autosequence."
"Captain aye."
A loud crash suddenly sounded from below McKee's feet—the first torpedo tube firing.
A bolt of blue fight shot out from McKee's feet and zipped outward to the surface force. The first was followed by another fifteen seconds later, then another, the weapons represented by blue streaks of light moving quickly outward at first, then slowing as the range circles compressed. After six min-
utes, the last of the torpedoes had been fired. As the shapes of the surface force neared the twenty-mile-range circle, at the corner of the bowl flats, the first blue bolt hit. The diamond shape pulsed slowly, fading in and out. A second flash of blue hit the diamond, the pulsing speeding up.
"Conn, Sonar, we have detonations at the bearing to Target One."
Over the next few minutes, the other symbols began pulsing as blue flashes connected. Twenty miles away to the northeast, the ships of the surface force were taking hits, if the sensors were correct.
"Conn, Sonar, acoustic daylight deflection/elevation angle shows surface force vessels sinking."
"Sonar, Captain, how many?"
"We've got ten hulls going down."
"Target One?"
"Still on the surface."
McKee blinked for more data. The headset monitoring his eyes fed the blinking to the Cyclops. Several shapes displayed data, a dozen of them coming up with the label hull sinking. It was time to launch the Vortex Mod Deltas.
"Officer of the Deck, take her deep, eight hundred feet, fifteen knots."
The deck angled down as the ship dived. The virtual bowl beneath McKee's feet changed, as if he had sunk through the floor of the arena, the gridlines above him, radiating out from him, and beneath him. The display was the antisubmarine setup, useful to determine the location of an enemy in the space around them.
"Navigator, ten Deltas targeted toward the remaining heavies."
"Targeting by remainder priority, Captain."
"Eight hundred feet, Captain," Dietz reported.
"Shift vertical launch system to Cyclops control," McKee ordered.
The vertical tubes then launched one after the other, with a one-minute firing interval. The Cyclops display showed the missile tracks in red. The speed of flight was much faster, the weapons covering the eighteen-mile range to the target in four minutes. The first of them impacted while the computer was still launching the last six weapons.
"Conn, Sonar, detonations from remaining targets."
McKee blinked to call for more data. There were some ships indicating they were sinking, but there were tenacious vessels still on the surface. Finally the computer was finished firing the Vortex missiles. He decided to drive in close and see the result of the attack. He pulled off the computer headset and rolled up the eggshell enclosure, feeling as if he were walking out of a matinee into sunlight. He tossed the cigar butt, long cold and soggy from being chewed on, into a trash can.
"I have the conn," he said to his headset and to the room.
Dietz called out: "Captain has the conn."
"Pilot, right five degrees rudder, steady course one zero zero, all ahead full. Sonar, Captain, speeding up and heading to the southeast." McKee stepped up to the periscope stand. "Attention in the firecontrol team. I intend to approach the sur-
face fleet at close range and observe the results of the assault. First we'll move off the track of the weapons. We're turning southeast to clear torpedo tracks, and when we're ten miles from the firing point, we'll turn north. When we're abreast of the fleet, we'll approach slowly out of the east. Carry on."
The minutes ticked on as the ship made its maneuvers. Before they turned to the north the computer reported the impact of all ten Deltas. Sonar could not confirm the remaining hulls sinking—the Vortexes could have blown their targets to such small pieces that they showed up as dust to the acoustic daylight imaging system.
McKee tried for a minute to focus inward, to see what his conscious thoughts were about attacking the surface force, and he realized he had none. There was no pity, no exhilaration, no feelings of loss, none of victory. He was as empty as if he'd played a computer game, and in point of fact, that was all he had done. The enemy had never been more than computer-generated shapes in the distance of a virtual arena.
"Pilot, depth seven five feet, twenty-degree up bubble, all ahead full." With a burst of speed McKee was bringing the vessel shallow, from eight hundred feet to seventy-five. "Mark speed twelve knots."
"Pilot, aye, ahead full, seventy-five feet, twenty up. Ship's angle is up ten, up fifteen—"
As the deck became a steep ramp, McKee's fist on the conn handrail turned white-knuckled.
"Five hundred feet, sir."
McKee waited, checking the weapon tube display
panel—three torpedoes left in the room, all tube-loaded, outer doors open. Two vertical launch tubes were ready with Vortex Deltas. Their outer doors were shut but ready to be opened at a moment's notice.
"Two hundred feet, sir, speed twelve."
"All back one third," McKee ordered. "Flat angle, up bubble five degrees, mark speed five!"
"Back one third, aye, sir, bubble down to up five, up three, one five zero feet! Speed five knots, sir."
"All ahead one third. Bring her up, Pilot!"
"One four zero feet, Captain."
"Lookaround , number two scope!"
"Speed five, depth one hundred feet."
"Up scope." McKee rotated the hydraulic control ring, and the periscope mast rolled upward out of the well. McKee put his eyes to the cold rubber eyepieces when they were at waist level. With his left grip he trained the view field high upward, looking above them to the nearby waves.
"Nine zero feet, sir."
The pe
riscope was ten feet underwater. The waves rolled closer to them. McKee took a quick spin to look overhead, then kept the view trained ahead, in their direction of motion. They were steaming toward the task force, which was less than five miles ahead, less than ten thousand yards. When the scope cleared, the remaining ships should be visible.
"Eight five feet, eight four, eight three . . . eight three."
"Get us up, Pilot!"
"Eight two—"
"Scope's breaking, scope's breaking." Foam washed over McKee's view. He cursed under his breath, knowing that 7,700 tons of submarine at dead slow could take a minute to rise five feet.
"Eight zero feet, sir."
"Come on, get us up. Scope's clear. No surface search."
The control room was dead quiet. McKee's view was barely above the waves, the troughs of them low but the crests keeping him from seeing farther ahead.
"Seven nine, seven seven, seven six feet . . . seven five feet, sir."
The periscope rose over the last wave crest, and then McKee could see. Nothing in his sixteen years of operating submarines had prepared him for what was ahead in his periscope view. Because the view was piped down to the control room, Petri and Jud-ison and the others also were able to see what McKee saw. At once a gasp rose up in the control room.
Ahead of them on the rain-swept sea was a mammoth aircraft carrier, gray in the haze. The ship was listing pitifully to port, the island leaning over, the deck dipping toward the sea, fires ripping across the deck. There was no sign of life, but then the entire deck was engulfed in flames. To the left of the carrier was a cruiser, once a mighty blue-water ship, now bow down, the superstructure underwater, the aft helicopter deck and the fantail and the screws reaching for the clouds. There were no lifeboats, no helicopters, no men floating in life jackets. To the right was an amphibious ship, a cruise
Threat vector Page 5
