The convulsions hit him then, their impact continuing as his body trembled and his lower body seemed to light up with a hot warmth, and he could feel himself pouring into her as she began to convulse herself, a small tremble at first growing to a violent shaking and a gasping cry in his ear as her teeth bit his earlobe and she said his name over and over, and soon the world grew dim at the borders and all of him was now a part of her and she of him, and his legs trembled with weakness as he sank slowly to the deck, her bare smooth legs still wrapped around his waist. He pulled his fingers through her hair and kissed her, gently this time, her breathing slowing from a desperate gasp to deeper breaths, an angelic smile coming to her face.
She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, opening them to look deeply in his eyes, her dark gaze shifting from his left eye to his right as if she were looking for what he was thinking. He smiled at her and said her name.
“That was great,” she said, her eyes half shut, her dark eyes gazing at him from under her long eyelashes.
Suddenly the deck tilted far to port and dipped forward, the battle lantern skittering down the deck. The room began to vibrate, an odd trembling. Alameda’s expression immediately changed from that of a woman romanced to the ship’s chief engineer.
“What?” Pacino asked.
“We’returning and going deep,” Alameda said, pulling herself off him and lunging for her coveralls. “And speeding up to flank. The deck only shakes like that when we’re on a flank run.”
The deck became level again, but the shaking of the hull grew worse, Pacino’s teeth buzzing as he donned his coveralls. He grabbed her panties off the deck and wadded them in his pocket, then retrieved the battle lantern.
“DSV, Control,” the speaker box suddenly crackled.
When Alameda toggled the switch, it was as if she had left, and he was alone again.
“Engineer,” she said in the iron voice she’d had when he first met her.
“Engineer, Control, OOD wants you to close out the DSV and report to the conn.”
Pacino blinked as he tried to adjust to the new reality. Pacino straightened his hair, wondering if anyone would know when they saw him. Alameda zipped her coveralls to her throat and slipped into her sneakers as she hit the toggle switch to reply.
“Engineer, aye. Powering down the DSV.” She looked at Pacino, not the glance of a girlfriend but of a full lieutenant looking at a midshipman. “Follow me.”
She rapidly clicked through the checklist to power down the DSV, the lights extinguishing except for a dim light at the inner hatch. He followed her to the airlock and stood out of the way as she shut the hatch. She glanced at him for an instant.
“Obviously, Mr. Pacino,” she said, her voice still that of the chief engineer, “this never happened.” She stepped into the access tunnel. He followed her and she shut the hatch, the sound
of it seeming to lock the events that just happened inside a vault, and in the harsh light of the access tunnel it seemed like what had happened had been a dream.
“Control, Engineer,” Alameda said on the tunnel side speaker box “DSV powered down and rigged for dive by me, checked by Midshipman Pacino. Tunnel secure.”
“Conn, aye,” the speaker squawked.
Pacino followed Alameda down the tunnel to the forward compartment, unable to avoid watching her move, wishing they’d met under different circumstances. She was right, he told himself. There was no way they could acknowledge what had just happened even to each other. He tried to convince himself that it had just been their bodies fulfilling a human need, but he knew there was more, and the worst part of this was that now he felt more alone than he could ever remember feeling.
The control room was crowded. For an instant Pacino’s stomach tensed, wondering if they had been found out, but everyone in the room was looking at a printout of some sort, Captain Catardi in the center of the crowd of officers. He looked to see them approach, a serious expression on his face. “NSA found the Snare,” he said. “Obviously they didn’t tell us how, but they know she was at Pico Island in the Azores and will be heading south. If we can sneak up on her before she hears us we can fill her with holes and get going to the Indian Ocean.”
“How far away is Pico?” Alameda asked, her voice deep and authoritative.
“Two hours at flank,” Navigator Crossfield said.
“Where will we slow down? And should we cut the corner and attempt an intercept on Snare’s southern track?”
“We were just going over that,” Catardi said, looking up at Alameda, then back to the navigator. “Nav, get together an op brief in fifteen minutes in the wardroom.”
As Alameda hurried out of the control room Pacino caught
her eye, but the look on her face still belonged to the chief engineer.
Victor Krivak climbed carefully onto the horizontally reclined couch in Interface Module One and shut his eyes as Dr. Wang gently put the interface helmet on his head. There was nothing but darkness.
“Well, when are you going to connect it?” Krivak asked.
“You are connected, Victor, but the interface isn’t a display made for a human, it’s more of a view into a part of One Oh Seven’s thinking. You’ll need to be patient with this. You may see some strange things. But as soon as you become used to it, you will be satisfied.”
“Fine.”
“One,” Wang said, “this new entity is Mr. Krivak, the man I told you about.”
Hello, Mr. Krivak.
“Just call me Krivak, One.” Krivak felt an odd sensation, a cascade of sounds. “One, I can hear the sonar sets. Is this the same as what you hear?”
have it set on background, Krivak. If you would like, I can connect us into the sonar module.p>
“I would appreciate that, One.”
Instantly Krivak was plunged into a different world, this one visual and aural. The surroundings, previously an unmarked white, suddenly became the blue and green of the deep Atlantic. He could see all the way to the distant bottom below and high above to the bottom of the thermal layer and far out in every direction at once. In addition to the visual spatial perception of the sea he could see the frequencies of every incoming sound, the frequencies seeming like so many added colors in the spectrum. For a time it seemed better than the undifferentiated white, but soon Krivak felt he was becoming exhausted by the wealth of sensations.
“Disconnect me from the sonar module, now, please, One.”
The world returned to being the way it was before.
“Where are we?”
The chart appeared in front of Krivak’s field of vision with their position flashing, now fifty miles south of Pico Island.
“Very well.” It was time to communicate with Admiral Chu and let him know the Snare had been hijacked.
“Officers, I have an announcement to make before the op brief,” Captain Catardi said. “Lieutenant Alameda, could you please stand up here?”
The wardroom was crowded with officers. Patch Pacino sat on the couch at the end of the table, his stomach suddenly churning when the captain called on Alameda. He looked up at her, but her eyes were on the captain.
She brushed the hair out of her eyes and tried to keep a sober expression on her face.
“Lieutenant Alameda,” Catardi announced in a projecting voice, his Boston accent even thicker than usual, “your dedication to the United States, the U.S. Navy, and the USS Piranha is a credit to the naval service and to this command. Based on my recommendation and on your outstanding performance, Commander Naval Personnel Command has deep-selected you for the rank of lieutenant commander, United States Navy, and authorized me to frock you to that rank as of today. XO, the envelope, please.”
Schultz handed him the manila envelope. Catardi pulled out the certificate and placed it on the table, then shook out the gold oak leaf collar devices. Alameda stood in front of him at attention, her face still crimson. Catardi reached over and removed the double silver bar on her collar and replaced it with a gold oak
leaf.
“Hope this doesn’t stick me.” He grinned, pinning the device to the fabric. “Engineer’s revenge, eh, Commander?”
He pinned on the second oak leaf and stood back.
“Officers, I present to you Lieutenant Commander Carolyn Alameda, United States Navy.”
The wardroom broke into applause, Pacino clapping the loudest. Alameda smiled and bowed. Catardi shook her hand, pumping it and grinning. Lieutenant Phelps snapped a picture.
“Now, as with all promotions in the Navy,” Catardi said, “the performance of the individual comes long before the rank, which comes long before the paycheck. However, we all expect the first lieutenant commander paycheck to host one of the most memorable Piranha parties since this ship returned from the Japanese War.”
“Yes, sir,” Alameda stammered. “Thank you, sir. Thanks, all of you.” She made her way back to her seat. Catardi sat in the captain’s chair and looked over at the navigator.
“Let’s start the op brief, Nav,” he said.
Pacino tried to concentrate, but all he could think of was the new lieutenant commander.
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.
Terminal Run Page 20
