Thunder in the Deep cjf-2

by Joe Buff

  "Practice makes perfect," Jeffrey said. "I want to try something else, hit their torpedoes with AT rockets."

  "Sir, this deep their motor exhausts barely function."

  "They won't need to. Once they're launched they'll fall back toward our wake. Set their warheads to blow at the right moment, and the depleted uranium buckshot ought to hurt the Sea_ Lions or their wires…. Besides, what choice have we got? We can't let them take us alive."

  The Sea Lions bore in steadily. Beck and Eberhard watched for Challenger's next evasive move. Beck's heart pounded, but it exhilarated him. Up or down? Right or left? He tried to anticipate.

  "Rocket motors!" Haffner shouted. "Antitorpedo rockets." The noise was muffled, choked. There was a double boomf.

  Eberhard's Sea Lion engine noise grew ragged; it lost speed. He moved it out of Deutschland's way just in time. Beck's weapon lost its wire but not velocity. It crashed into the seafloor with a drawn-out crunch.

  "This is useless," Eberhard said.

  "Concur, Captain. We're just wasting ammo."

  "Damn him for his clever tricks." Beck hesitated. "Sir, we need some way to break contact with this Fuller, get separation, and find him again."

  * * *

  Ilse watched the latest frightening game of thrust and parry. Again it was a draw. Earlier, Challenger had to stay on Deutschland's tail to keep Eberhard from going nuclear near land. Now, Deutschland needed to stay on Challenger's tail, or Jeffrey could get off the first effective A-bomb shot. Ilse looked at the charts again. This stern chase could go on for thousands of miles, up past the North Pole and beyond.

  But it couldn't go on forever. There on the chart, on the far side of the winter Arctic ice cap, stretching from horizon to horizon, was the solid land mass of Russia. Much nearer lay Spitsbergen, owned by Norway, now Axis-controlled. Every minute, Deutschland forced Challenger closer toward unfriendly waters backed by hostile shores.

  "They're still holding position in our one-eighty, sir," Bell said. Jeffrey nodded.

  "Sonar. Oceanographer. I want you to give me some way to break contact with Deutschland, get separation, and find her again."

  CHAPTER 30

  TWO HOURS LATER

  On the gravimeter, Ilse saw the canyon Challenger followed grow narrower. Ahead lay a different formation of ridges, barring the Shetland Channel from the huge Norwegian Basin to the northeast. These new ridge lines, their crests sawtooth-jagged, ran northwest. If Challenger continued straight, she'd have to climb the wall into the Basin — the Basin was open and flat.

  Despite the stress, Ilse smiled: Above the constant flow noise on her headphones, she heard whales playing. There were many here, between Norway and the ice cap. Ilse wondered how many whales and dolphins had been killed by the fighting so far.

  She stopped smiling and pressed her headphones closer. "Oh, bizarre." Kathy heard it, too. "Captain, Deutschland is calling us on underwater telephone." Jeffrey hesitated. "Put in on the speakers."

  "…Not your fault… Your own uncaring commanders… sent you in over your head." Eberhard's voice echoed and reverbed on the gertrude, like the announcer in a sports stadium. He was almost drowned out by the steady hissing at flank speed — Challenger's hull and sail and control planes tearing through the water — but it was definitely Eberhard.

  "Jesus," Jeffrey muttered. Ilse helped Kathy's people clean up the signal.

  "Accept my truce.. Let us be chivalrous…. I promise you safe passage… to internment in Russia or Sweden." The voice was crisp, blasé, superior. The English was perfect, the accent aristocratic.

  "He can't be serious," Bell said.

  "He wants to get under my skin."

  Ilse turned to look at Jeffrey. He stood, and steadied himself against the ship's vibrations by grabbing a stanchion on the overhead. Ilse saw him frown, then smile and grab the mike for the underwater telephone.

  "Hiya, Kurt. Whazzup, buddy?"

  Jeffrey unkeyed the mike, and laughed. "That should piss him off nicely."

  Eberhard didn't answer. Jeffrey keyed the mike again. "Why should I trust you?"

  "I make my offer. sincerely… as one naval officer to another… as warrior to warrior. …across the gulf between us…."

  "Melodramatic, don't you think?" Bell said under his breath.

  "Typical Eberhard."

  "I make this offer… for old times' sake…. We once worked together…. Let us do so again, for peace."

  "Old times' sake?" Jeffrey said to Bell. "Wrong thing to say."

  "You have one minute… or I withdraw my offer.. and you die."

  "Ooh," Bell said. "Think he means it? Has some new secret weapon up his sleeve?"

  "It's bull. If he had something, he'd've used it already." Jeffrey keyed the mike. "You're a mass murderer, Eberhard…. I'd love to see you hang for war crimes."

  "You fool. I'll crush your ship like a cheap cigar."

  "No. I'm gonna blow your Teutonic ass to Hell." Prolonged silence. Jeffrey hung up the mike.

  * * *

  Both ships kept charging north along the bottom. Ilse eyed her gravimeter once more.

  "Captain," Sessions said, "we're at the way-point."

  "V'r'well, Nay. Helm, left standard rudder. Make your course three one five." Northwest.

  Meltzer acknowledged. Challenger settled on course, still making flank speed, down in a new canyon — a different valley squeezed between parallel ridge lines that ran on for another hundred miles.

  The water got deeper and deeper. Deutschland followed close behind. Over the speakers, Ilse could hear a steady rumbling now, not from flow noise, nor from Deutschland, not from crunching icebergs on the distant ice cap edge, nor from some far-off nuclear battle.

  "Live volcanoes on the seafloor, Captain," Kathy reported. "Bearing three one five. Range one hundred nautical miles, matches the latest charts." These volcanoes, Ilse knew, lay at the northern extremity of the tectonic-plate spreading seam that formed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. They were a recent offshoot of the same magma hot spot that caused lava flows on Iceland. Ilse knew, because it was her job to know, and it was her recommendation to head there.

  "Perfect," Jeffrey said.

  * * *

  Eberhard hung up the gertrude mike, and smirked.

  "Aspect change on Challenger," Haffner said.

  "Confirmed," Beck said. "Challenger steadying on new course three one five."

  "Exactly as I predicted. Pilot, steer three one five." Coomans acknowledged. Beck could just make out a rumbling and burbling over the speakers. "Live volcano field now one hundred sea miles ahead."

  "Perfect, Einzvo. How are you and Haffner coming on the new acoustic holography module?"

  "We'll be ready, Captain."

  "Perfect."

  CHAPTER 31

  TWO HOURS LATER

  Jeffrey sat at his console. Challenger at this point had run at flank speed, with her reactor pushed as hard as he dared, for longer than ever in her short but exciting life as a warship.

  The ride was still very rough. Jeffrey knew from Bell that crewmen who took their coffee with milk and sugar had taken to not bothering to stir; the constant tossing and bouncing did it for them.

  The men thought this was funny; morale was high. Everyone aboard had heard by now of Jeffrey's strange conversation with Kurt Eberhard. Whatever the German had sought to achieve, his ploy backfired. The crew was more determined than ever — their fatigue, and any self-doubts, melted away.

  Was this because the crew saw Jeffrey, and their banged-up boat, as the underdogs?

  What had Eberhard been trying to achieve? The enemy Fregattenkapitan was a coldly rational man.

  Jeffrey stared at the gravimeter and listened to the sonar speakers. There ahead of him, close enough now to be sharply resolved on the screen, was a group of active volcanoes. The noise was like a mix of rolling thunder and ten thousand boiling witches' cauldrons. Jeffrey felt a tightness and a tingling in his chest: This was the most risky, if not
downright insane, maneuver he'd ever even thought to pull in a submarine. Now here they were, actually doing it, and not even on their own but with a determined opponent on their tail fixated on sinking them before some natural phenomenon could. Challenger began to rattle and buck in a different way than before; the ride was choppy, the ship rolled back and forth. She rose and dipped, forcing Jeffrey into his seat, then forcing his stomach toward his Adam's apple.

  "Captain," Meltzer said as he fought his controls, "advise encountering volcano-related turbulence."

  "Maintain course and speed." Jeffrey knew this would be very dangerous.

  "Sea temperature and chemical content fluctuating rapidly," Ilse said. "Average water temperature rising almost one degree per second."

  "Constant variable ballast adjustments needed," COB reported. He worked his panel actively.

  "Very well, Oceanographer, Chief of the Watch."

  "Captain," Kathy said, "advise acoustic sea state has risen to thirteen."

  "V'r'well, Sonar."

  Jeffrey's plan was simple: If you're blind and going into a knife fight, you lure your sighted opponent into a dark room. If you're deaf in one ear, and your opponent has good hearing, you take him somewhere deafening.

  Jeffrey heard a crunch on the speakers.

  "Hull popping," Kathy said. "Self-noise transient." Jeffrey wasn't surprised — Challenger had just gone through her test depth: ten thousand feet. The ship would have to endure every conceivable peril Mother Nature could throw at a deep-running SSN before this one-on-one battle with Eberhard was over with.

  "Deutschland still pursuing," Bell reported. "Separation twenty-two hundred yards. No sign of change in Deutschland's course or speed."

  "Very well, Fire Control."

  "Mark eighty-eights loaded and armed in tubes one, three, five, and seven, sir."

  "V'r'well."

  "Captain, advise those are our last four Mark eighty-eights." Jeffrey sighed. This was it. The finality was somehow comforting.

  * * *

  "Sea Lions loaded in tubes one through eight, Captain. All weapons armed."

  "Very well, Einzvo."

  "Sir, advise those are our last deep-capable nuclear torpedoes."

  "We know from our two skirmishes that Fuller's rate of fire is very low, and he has only four tubes working. Eight eels will be more than enough."

  * * *

  Jeffrey watched as the volcano field got closer and closer. There were five main erupting cones, formed roughly in a cross twenty miles wide: one in the center, one at each of four corners. These were young seamounts, disgorging molten rock from deep within the earth. Though it didn't — show yet on the gravimeter, Jeffrey knew they were growing steadily, as the earth's core leaked and fresh-born rock piled up. More magma — called lava once it emerged from the ocean floor — welled out of side vents on the volcanoes' slopes. The seafloor here was 11,500 feet deep; the craters at the seamounts' peaks rose two or three thousand feet above that.

  Jeffrey ordered Meltzer to steer just to the right of the volcano at the southern tip of the cross. He ordered the sonar speaker volume lowered; the rumbling and sizzling and crunching from directly ahead were extreme. Bell reported Deutschland still on their tail. Jeffrey wondered if Eberhard was frightened, too, taking his ship into a live volcano field, and so close to his crush depth. Eberhard was not a man to know fear easily, but this place, of all possible places, might well remind him of his ultimate mortality.

  Jeffrey called up the basic sonar data, a summary of what Kathy and Ilse and the sonarmen were working with. He windowed the surrounding water's temperature and density and dissolved mineral content. Chemical sniffers mounted on Challenger's hull showed him just what Ilse had told him to expect: The local ocean was a corrosive soup of sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. It was very warm, with chaotic hot spots that were impairing Challenger's cooling systems. As they approached the flank of the cone that Jeffrey called South, the acoustic sea state and hydro-graphic measurements shot higher.

  Way above their heads, Jeffrey knew from the magnetometers, the solar storm still raged. Up there, too, the gale continued; any survivor of this confrontation who somehow made it to the surface in a life vest would die of exposure rapidly. Intermittently, Kathy reported crashing and tumbling from big icebergs, broken from glaciers on the Icelandic coast, driven here by winds and surface currents. Truly this was a submariner's Hell.

  "Helm," Jeffrey said, "stand by for a hard turn to port on my mark."

  "Understood."

  "Sir," Bell said, "we'll unmask our weaker side to Deutschland, our damaged port wide-aperture array. We'll lose him."

  "He knows we've been favoring our left side, XO. He'll expect us to turn to starboard. We've a better chance of him losing us by going to port."

  Bell nodded. He and Jeffrey grabbed their armrests as Challenger dipped suddenly; water heated by lava was less dense, reducing buoyancy. They held on again as Challenger plunged upward — caught in an updraft now, as that less-dense water, itself positively buoyant, raced for the surface.

  "Helm, hard left rudder, mark."

  "Hard left rudder, aye. No course specified."

  Jeffrey watched the gravimeter, and the ring-laser gyrocompass. "Slow to ahead one third, turns for ten knots."

  * * *

  "Sir," Beck said, "we've lost sonar and wake turbulence contact with Challenger."

  "Good," Eberhard said. "Then they've surely lost contact with us. Pilot, slow to one-third speed ahead, RPMs for ten knots. Starboard twenty rudder, steer zero four five."

  Coomans acknowledged.

  "Status of the acoustic holography routines, Einzvo?"

  "Engaged and working, sir."

  "He thinks he's evened the odds, coming here. He's no idea how well we can see in his supposed darkened room."

  Beck nodded. These brand-new signal processing routines used Deutschland's wideaperture arrays to map out the entire three-dimensional noise field structure, on both the near and far sides of a sound source, no matter how chaotic and intense that field might be. Originally invented to analyze jet and missile engine performance in wind-tunnel testing, and ideal for use with both Deutschland and her quarry in a slow-speed stalking game, they should spot Challenger even here amid the live volcanoes.

  * * *

  All around Challenger, five live volcanoes roared and burbled. There was constant seismic activity, too, adding to the noise. A volcanic eruption, or a massive avalanche, or an earthquake and resulting seawave surge — any one of them could do in Deutschland and Challenger both. As Jeffrey had reasoned earlier, an even exchange here — both vessels sunk — was a big strategic gain for the Axis, with Germany's new SSGN almost ready for sea.

  Jeffrey scratched his head. His scalp itched; he needed a shower badly. He made himself stop; it didn't look good.

  "He'll probably patrol in a circle," Jeffrey said.

  "Eberhard needs to keep moving, or we might spot his reactor shielding and core on our gravimeter…. If one of us goes outside the outer ring of cones, the other might spot him there while still concealed. So neither of us is gonna leave the inner maelstrom till this issue is resolved."

  "May I ask your intentions, Captain?"

  "You may ask, XO. If I were sure of the best next steps, I'd've told you already…. So, what do we know?"

  Bell opened his mouth, but was interrupted by a big blast from outside. Ilse shouted that it was a magma eruption on the left flank of the central cone, the one they were calling Middle. The noise lessened, and the buffeting died down. Kathy reported she detected no torpedoes in the water — that blast hadn't given Deutschland a hole-in-ocean or ambient-echo sonar contact on Challenger, but the threat was always there. Jeffrey ordered Meltzer to move the ship, just in case.

  There was a sound like rolling thunder, and once more Challenger rocked.

  "Seismic event on West," Ilse reported. "Probable magma subsidence, resulting lava dome collapse."

  Jeffre
y waited while Kathy's people listened again for an inbound weapon. "XO, Sonar, Oceanographer," Jeffrey said, "we need to do a recon. Get more water measurements, and better gravimeter resolution, too. We'll patrol clockwise for now, take the chance Eberhard's gone the other way, off on the other side of Middle. Helm, take us closer to volcano West."

  Soon Lieutenant Willey called; at least the intercom was repaired. He warned Jeffrey that the temperature of seawater intake to the main condensor cooling loops was rising rapidly, and the efficiency of the propulsion thermodynamic cycle was being degraded. They might suffer boiler-feedwater vapor lock, and stall the turbines. If Jeffrey's ship did stall, Deutschland could spot the stationary mass concentration on her gravimeter; gravimeters were immune to the local acoustic conditions and turbulence. And with propulsion degraded, we couldn't evade an inbound weapon either.

  Jeffrey saw Bell hesitate.

  "Captain, I must advise, with only four remaining Mark eighty-eights, both self-defense and sure destruction of our target will be difficult."

  "I know it, XO."

  Another terrible rumble came through the hull. "Magma outburst!" Ilse said. "South flank of volcano North."

  Challenger shook, then dipped and rolled.

  "Seismic seawave," Ilse shouted. "Assess an avalanche on North."

  Jeffrey had the glimmer of an idea. If they could somehow predict one of these outbursts, and get into proper position, they might use the noise to get a sonar contact off Deutschland. Of course, this could backfire and give Challenger away, and Eberhard might get in the first and fatal shots. Or, the outburst might not behave as expected and itself deal Challenger the lethal blow. But with his own port-side wide-aperture array in bad shape, and some of his other sonars wrecked completely, Jeffrey knew he had no choice; time was on Eberhard's side.

  Jeffrey told COB to activate all ship's passive photonics sensors, and window the pictures onto one of the vertical wide-screen displays. So far there was just darkness.

  "Oceanographer."

  "Captain?"