Crush Depth cjf-3

by Joe Buff

  "Sir, the message is very garbled by the bad sonar conditions… Sir, it's repeating."

  Van Gelder waited impatiently.

  "If they're trying to reach us at all," ter Horst said, "it must be something important."

  "Well?" Van Gelder snapped at the sonar chief. Van Gelder was surprised at his own irritation. Easy, Gunther. Everyone's under pressure. That might be okay for junior people, but first officers don't ever let it show.

  "The signal was cut off, sir," the sonar chief said. "It's like it just stopped, in the middle of a burst."

  "No more repeats?" ter Horst asked.

  "Wait, please… No, nothing, Captain."

  "The wire must have been cut," Van Gelder said, "by the shelf ice flowing and flexing in this storm." He could hear the shelf on the sonar speakers, reacting to the hurricane-force blizzard high above. Creaking and groaning and boinging sounds came from the speakers.

  "Concur, sir," the chief said. "I think the transducer wire snapped in the middle of the retransmission."

  "Did we get enough to decode?" ter Horst said. Now he sounded impatient, but that was a captain's prerogative.

  Van Gelder eyed the data and ran programs on his console. "The supercomputer needs to clean up the signal a lot more than I can." He relayed the available data to the communications room.

  In a few minutes Van Gelder's intercom light blinked. He answered, listened, then spoke to ter Horst.

  "Sir, we got most of the message intact. The header says it's in captain's personal code."

  "Send it to my console… Look away, please." Ter Horst entered his special passwords.

  Then he read.

  Van Gelder averted his eyes from ter Horst's screen, since the message must be top secret. He heard ter Horst laugh so hard he slapped himself in the side. Then ter Horst leaned over and reached, and actually squeezed Van Gelder's chin.

  "Gunther, Gunther, Gunther. You'll never believe this. They've paid us the ultimate compliment. This is fantastic!"

  "Sir?"

  "Either our code breaking is even better than I thought, or we must have an extremely well placed source in the Allied command. Anyway, it seems the enemy questions Fuller' s ability to defeat us one-on-one. They've given him twenty-four hours, and then they're going to shoot hydrogen bombs all over the top of the shelf."

  "Just to destroy us?" Van Gelder was shocked.

  "Japan detonated an atom bomb. Oops for America there! And Brazil and Argentina seem on the brink of war, thanks to meddling from our agents provocateurs. The Allies are really at their last extreme. And all because of us!"

  "It's wonderful, Captain." Van Gelder wished he meant it. He began to understand the true implications of everything he'd done. It went far beyond the small tactical view.

  World sanity was collapsing like a stream of dominoes.

  "This is wonderful!" ter Horst exclaimed. "It gives me a new idea, a whole new approach to our battle plan." "Sir?"

  "This couldn't possibly be better, even if I'd arranged it all myself in my wildest dreams."

  "I don't think I completely follow you, Captain."

  "Think of it! We destroy Challenger, then sneak out carefully before the deadline and avoid detection by other enemy forces all inferior to us… Then the Allies shoot a bunch of hydrogen bombs at the ice shelf. Then we reappear in the Pacific, not dead but quite alive."

  Van Gelder saw where ter Horst was going with this. "And sink the Stennis?"

  "The United States will be humiliated, utterly discredited everywhere, nuking the Antarctic for nothing, after crowing that we were destroyed. Their president will have to resign, Gunther, they'll be so broken by their rash stupidity.. The Allied coalition will fall apart at the seams, and neutrals will flock to sign on with our side. We'll control half the world, maybe more. American voters will have their congressmen begging us for an armistice by then, pleading for mercy as we dictate terms. We'll crush their economy, force them to disarm altogether. They'll be plunged into mediocre impotence for a hundred or a thousand years… I love it!"

  Van Gelder didn't know whether to be elated or horrified. Ter Horst's scenario, so rosy for the Axis, might easily instead become a global thermonuclear firestorm.

  The navigator interrupted just then.

  "First Officer, sir, we have reached the designated course way point."

  "Very well. Captain, it's time."

  "Thank you, Gunther. Better and better."

  Ter Horst gave helm orders. Voortrekker stopped going south, farther in under the ice.

  She sidestepped east, then turned around to feel her way back north. She began to describe the second half of a big meandering circle under the shelf.

  "Excellent, excellent, Gunther. I think we've left enough of a trail that Fuller can't possibly miss it. When we finish doubling back, we hide behind that nice pressure ridge you found, and our ambush setup will be absolutely perfect."

  Simultaneously, on Challenger

  On the sonar speakers, Jeffrey heard the ice shelf make strange rushing and banging sounds as it was battered by the storm raging topside.

  On the gravimeter, he saw the bottom terrain become more rugged. The gravimeter also picked up larger boulders frozen into the ice shelf. On the display, they seemed to float in space above the sea floor like blimps. This eerie environment began to give Jeffrey the creeps. He realized that with all these dangling boulders, an enemy nuclear sub could afford to hold perfectly still if it wanted — its reactor shielding mass concentration wouldn't stand out on Jeffrey's gravimeter.

  "Captain!" Kathy called out. "Contacts on acoustic intercept!"

  "Voortrekker pinging? Her under-ice sonar?"

  "No, sir. Message bursts. Transducers dangling down through the ice."

  "For us?"

  "Negative. Format indicates Axis origin… They're repeating… Transmission ceased abruptly."

  Jeffrey remembered what Ilse had said about the ice shelf pinching off boreholes. "Did we get enough to try to decode?"

  "I'm not sure," Kathy said. "I'll pass the data to the communications room."

  "XO," Jeffrey said, "go there. Help the comms officer, keep an eye and give him encouragement. See if he can extract anything, anything useful at all." Challenger received high-baud-rate data dumps each time Jeffrey and Wilson talked to Pearl Harbor — this was one advantage of raising the satellite dish in a war zone. That data included the latest guidance on breaking Axis naval codes.

  Bell left the control room, and the other officers played musical chairs. Sessions took over as Fire Control. His senior chief, the assistant navigator, became the acting navigator. Jeffrey asked Meltzer, who'd been at the helm awhile now, if he wanted a break. He agreed and traded with Harrison. Now Harrison had the wheel, and Meltzer took the relief pilot's seat.

  "Captain," Ilse called. "Chemo-sensor contact. Temperature sensor contact. Definite contact on wake of an unidentified submarine."

  "Unidentified means Voortrekker," Jeffrey stated. "Oceanographer, relay your data to the ship-control station. Give the helmsman steering cues so we follow the trail and track Voortrekker down."

  "Yes, sir," Ilse said.

  Jeffrey grabbed the intercom mike. He recalled Bell to the control room.

  "Nonacoustic contact on Voortrekker," Jeffrey told him. Bell resumed as Fire Control.

  Bell's eyes looked slightly wild, probably from excitement and concern, exaggerated by the corpsman's stimulant.

  Bell had a wife and newborn son back in the States. But Bell's voice was firm and clear — he was steady and focused.

  Sessions returned to the navigation plotting table. He carefully kept track of their course as Challenger twisted and turned. The ship went farther and farther in under the ice shelf, following Voortrekker's lingering signs of intrusion. Jeffrey knew Sessions's data might prove vital as that red countdown timer ran down: any weapons fire under the shelf would knock loose big chunks of the roof, creating added obstructions. Challenger might hav
e no choice but to go back out the same way she'd come, and even that might not work. The green number under the red — Sessions's estimate of time to the turnaround bingo point — guaranteed nothing in terms of survival.

  Some while later, Bell's intercom light blinked. Bell answered. He listened, then said, "

  Are you sure?" Bell turned to Jeffrey. "Captain, they've broken a piece of that enemy message. All the supercomputer could get is the fragment, `twenty-four hours.' "

  "Twenty-four hours?" It fell into place for Jeffrey at once. "There's only one possible reason the Axis would try so hard to get such a message to Voortrekker. The deadline for the H-bombs. They found out somehow. They know, and that means Jan ter Horst knows."

  "Torpedoes in the water!" Kathy screamed.

  FORTY-FIVE

  On Voortrekker

  Ter Horst made sure Van Gelder saw he was gloating. At the very last moment, ter Horst had changed his weapons-loading scheme. Every tube held a powerful high-explosive Series 65.

  "All tubes fired!" Van Gelder said.

  "Reload:' ter Horst ordered, "all working tubes, more Series Sixty-fives."

  Van Gelder relayed commands. He watched his weapons status screen. The port-side autoloader shuffled units on the holding racks in the torpedo room, then rammed one through each open tube breech door. The doors were closed and locked.

  "Reloaded."

  "Flood and equalize and open outer doors. Tubes two, four, six, and eight, match generated bearings and shoot."

  "All tubes fired." Four more big 65s screamed from the tubes, a second salvo. Now eight were in the water all together.

  Van Gelder watched his tactical plot. The weapons technicians steered the units through their fiber-optic wires. They came at Challenger from almost every direction, from behind the slabs and hummocks in the ice-shelf roof, and past big boulders and terrain ridges on the roofed-in Ross Sea floor.

  With half his tubes unusable, ter Horst was forced to leave Challenger one escape path.

  He'd purposefully chosen south, further in under the shelf.

  On Challenger

  "Eight torpedoes in the water," Kathy shouted. She called out bearing after bearing of the incoming threats.

  They're closing in from all around us.

  Jeffrey heard their engine noises scream. With the 3-D quadraphonic of the sonar speakers, and sound rays bouncing and bending- crazily outside, each torpedo seemed to come from everywhere at once. Kathy's people needed the signal processors to sort things out.

  "Sonar, weapon types?"

  "Series Sixty-fives, Captain."

  Ter Horst is somewhere close. Too close to go atomic. "Fire Control, stand by on antitorpedo rockets." "Ready on AT rockets, aye."

  "Target each incoming weapon, smartly."

  Bell began to launch the antitorpedo rockets. "Targeting is difficult, Captain."

  The rockets were very maneuverable on their own, but they weren't wire guided. Their sensors were meant for a clean, straight shot at an inbound weapon in open water.

  Rumbling roars began as each small rocket left its launch bay. The roars mixed with the screams of the inbound torpedoes.

  Jeffrey's chest tightened as he heard the 65s begin to ping in terminal homing mode.

  Clearance between the roof and floor was tight, so tight that Challenger dared not go to flank speed and run. If I use noisemakers now, while we're cramped by all these obstructions, they'll blind us as much as or more than they confuse ter Horst's torpedoes.

  I could run us straight into one of his inbound weapons by mistake. Jeffrey ordered all stop, then told Harrison to hover motionless near the roof, to try to hide amid the crags and projections.

  A 65 homed on a pressure ridge near Challenger's hull and detonated. The blast force hit, then echoed harshly. Challenger shuddered and jumped. Above the echoes came the sound of breaking glass and shattering ice, as stalactites and bummocks were smashed.

  Ice shrapnel and loosened boulders slammed against the ship, and Challenger rolled and pitched uncontrollably, as if trapped in some disgruntled giant's cement mixer. Harrison and COB fought to hold Challenger steady.

  The sudden change from being the ultraquiet hunter to being the prey amid such immense sonic mayhem badly stretched everyone's nerves. Just like that, Jeffrey told himself, the ocean had gone from the silence of a literal tomb to the inhuman cacophony of an all-out naval engagement. He forced himself to make the mental transition as fast as he could, and to exude by sheer charisma a steadying presence for his crew.

  An antitorpedo rocket connected with a Series 65: There was a sharper, high-pitched crack, then the rocket warhead's burst set off the explosives in the torpedo. Again Challenger was pounded. Blast waves reflected unforgivingly from the roof and from the bottom, from ice-shelf pressure ridges hanging down and sea-floor ridges sticking up.

  The surviving 65s bobbed and weaved, as somewhere out there Voortrekker steered them with deadly intent.

  More torpedoes and AT rockets blew. The noise drowned out the engine sounds of the remaining 65s, which still bore in on Challenger from all sides. On Jeffrey's order, Bell blindly launched more rockets — a desperate move. One hit on Challenger's hull by a 65 and they were finished.

  We're totally on the defensive now.

  "Sir," Kathy shouted, "acoustic sea state is too high! We're losing situational awareness!"

  "Captain:' Bell yelled, "unable to update tactical plot. True range and bearing to remaining Sixty-fives unknown."

  On the imagery from the photonics sensors, Jeffrey saw a huge fragment of roof ice streaming by. It tumbled madly, propelled by conflicting shock waves. It barely missed Challenger's bow. That chunk must weigh hundreds of tons.

  Another Axis torpedo detonated against the bottom, mistaking a large volcanic bomb for Challenger. An antitorpedo rocket hit something, but there was no secondary blast of a torpedo warhead this time, just more echoes and reverb and buffeting. The laser-scan photonics pictures grew dim, as bottom mud was stirred up higher and higher and ice shrapnel flew or floated on all sides.

  There were more punishing explosions, much too close.

  Jeffrey couldn't shoot back. He had no target. No one and nothing on Challenger could tell him where Voortrekker was.

  That bastard ter Horst's ambush setup was perfect. "Strongly recommend clear datum!"

  Bell urged. Submariner talk for "Run for your life."

  Jeffrey stared at the gravimeter. The bottom still showed crisply — the image was immune to ice shrapnel and billowing silt and noise. Jeffrey saw hovering boulders — frozen into the ice shelf — suddenly disappear, as they were blasted from the roof by other Series 65 near misses on Challenger. He saw the same boulders appear again when they hit the floor and stopped moving. Some landed dangerously close to Challenger's delicate stern parts and made loud thumps.

  More 65s and AT rockets hit things and went off, or embraced each other and blew in double eruptions as Bell had intended. Some of Bell's intercepts were on weapons that by skill or sheer luck in the chaos had located Challenger — those enemy 65s were halted dangerously near.

  Each blast slammed the ship sideways. She rolled to port and starboard hard, surging and heaving from the aftershocks. Everyone was tossed against their seat belts or knocked to the deck. Each blow, each blast, each hair's-breadth escape left the control-room crew more disoriented.

  Challenger's hull was still intact, but this punishment couldn't go on. The under-ice sonar picture was totally garbled. Forced to improvise in impossible conditions, Jeffrey brought up older data, from before the ambush began. He prayed he wouldn't hit new slabs or fragments dangling down.

  Bell was right, to clear datum. Ter. Horst had bested Jeffrey again. He'd seized the initiative again. When Kathy reported yet more 65s in the water, another incoming salvo, there was no choice left to Jeffrey but to flee. There was only one sure gap in the ring of inbound enemy weapons.

  "Helm, make your course one eight zero!"
South. "Maximum practical speed!… Fire Control, launch noisemakers and jammers, now!"

  On Voortrekker

  "Sir," Van Gelder said, "enemy appears to be running south." "Good," ter Horst said. "

  Send the remaining torpedoes after him."

  "Captain, all wires have been broken by warhead blasts or secondary projectiles.

  Torpedoes must rely on preprogrammed instructions."

  Ter Horst sighed. "Well, so be it. I didn't think sinking him would be that easy. We accomplished our main objective. We forced Challenger farther in under the ice…

  Helm, sidestep the area of disrupted water and ice chunks. Then proceed due south."

  "Understood," the helmsman said.

  "Sonar," ter Horst ordered, "reestablish contact on Challenger's tonals as soon as possible."

  The sonar chief acknowledged.

  "See what I'm doing, Gunther?"

  "Trying to scare Jeffrey Fuller?"

  "I'm using our secret weapon. We know he has that twenty-four-hour deadline. If we push him in far enough, toward the point of no return, he'll start to crack… For now, we soften him up. In the next melee at a time of my choosing, we'll go nuclear and blast his ship to pieces."

  FORTY-SIX

  One hour later, on Challenger

  Challenger ran south, weaving through a maze of obstructions-, and then slowed for better sonar sensitivity. The crew was settling down from their latest battering, and Challenger' s most important equipment continued to function. Jeffrey listened to the rumbling on the sonar speakers, the echoes of the battle still dying off in a broad arc sternward of his ship. The ice shelf right overhead continued to protest from those torpedo blasts, and from the blizzard. Everyone in the control room could hear groaning, rushing, creaking sounds coming from above — the thick shelf reacting to massive horizontal and vertical forces. Unlike the lingering torpedo noise, the blizzard sounds were getting stronger.

  Jeffrey glanced to his left. Bell stood between Ilse and Kathy, leaning over their shoulders as they worked at their consoles. At Jeffrey's orders, they were hurrying to analyze sound recordings of the skirmish with Voortrekker, to learn whatever they could.