Thunder In The Deep (02) (44 page)

"Captain," Beck said, "advise separation now is fifty-five hundred meters." Beck called the master weapons status page onto his main console screen. Nuclear Sea Lions were loaded in tubes one through eight, and armed—the port-side autoloader had gotten jury-rigged repairs at Trondheim; the starboard-side tubes still needed manual loading by chain fall.

"Very well, Einzvo. Set weapon yields, odd-numbered tubes, to minimum." Defensive, antitorpedo shots. "Set weapon yields, even-numbered tubes, to maximum." Offensive shots, against Challenger, who any moment would go weapons free by Allied ROEs. Beck repeated the orders for confirmation, then relayed commands to the weapons officer. He confirmed to the captain when the orders were carried out. Beck shuddered to think of the cataclysm to come: Any detonation in deep water was fifty times as destructive as in air—water was very rigid, and had a much higher speed of sound. At close enough range, a one-kiloton Sea Lion could do to Challenger what the Americans had done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Challenger's warheads, one tenth the size of Deutschland's, were deadly enough.

"It's time to finish Challenger off," Eberhard said. "Make tubes one through eight ready in all respects." "All tubes ready, Captain."

"Fuller won't hear it behind us. Open all outer tube doors."

"Outer doors are open." Beck was much happier now; they'd reached an isolated, unpopulated area, with ecologically favorable currents and winds. A good choice for the final battleground. The target separation for Deutschland's weapons was still narrow, but aggressive warshots followed by skillful tactical maneuvers might make up for that.

"Tube two," Eberhard ordered, "target Challenger, load sonar bearings, and los!" Ilse listened on her sonar headphones, while she studied data on the Norwegian Sea, and tried to refine Kathy's ray traces.

Ilse heard it; Kathy said it. "Torpedo in the water! Inbound torpedo bearing zero one five, a Sea Lion!"

It's started, Ilse told herself. The final confrontation, deep and with atomic weapons. Everyone in the CACC felt the tension mount.

Jeffrey ordered a nuclear countershot, then a turn away, due east. Meltzer had to use the rudder gently, so they wouldn't break the wire at flank speed—which didn't help them any to evade the inbound torpedo. This countershot had better be telling. Jeffrey had to husband his ammo carefully; Challenger's rate of fire was dangerously slow. Bell launched noisemakers and jammers, which were also running low.

Ilse heard the two torpedoes, one Axis and one friendly, their nerve-jarring racket Dopplered up or down as they came at her or receded. She heard the gurgling hiss of the chemical noisemakers, too, and the undulating siren scream of acoustic jammer pods. How can we possibly win? Deutschland has twice as many working tubes. Kathy reported that Deutschland had fired another Sea Lion. Deutschland changed course west, still making flank speed, and launched noisemakers and jammers. Jeffrey fired another fish, this one aimed at Deutschland. Bell launched more noisemakers and jammers, then Jeffrey ordered another turn, south. Deutschland launched a Sea Lion to intercept Jeffrey's incoming fish, then launched another to intercept Challenger.

Deutschland launched another weapon at Challenger, then made a hard turn north. Jeffrey .watched the tactical plot. There were seven nuclear torpedoes in the water, tearing in • all directions. Some chased Challenger, some chased Deutschland, some chased each other's torpedoes as nuclear counter-shots.

A sharp crack sounded through the hull. Jeffrey felt a big shove from astern, and the ocean all around was filled with terrible rumbles.

"Unit from tube one has detonated!" Bell said. "First incoming Sea Lion destroyed!" Aftershocks hit over and over, as the fireball shot for the surface, throbbing as it blew outward against the sea pressure, then collapsed, then rebounded hard: The blast echoed off the surface, then hit hard. The ocean heaved as the fireball broke the surface and drove into the sky. The blast echoed off the ridge terrain to port and then hit hard. Bell detonated another antitorpedo torpedo, and the punishment started again.

"Fire Control," Jeffrey yelled above the noise, "maximum yields, reload tubes one and three smartly!" Kathy said they'd lost sonar contact with Deutschland. The ocean shattered. Sledgehammers pounded Deutsch-land's hull. Fireball aftershocks hit again and again, then blast echoes off the surface and the ridge. Beck watched meaningful target data cease as the atomic sonar whiteouts blossomed. " Best guess for next snap shot at Challenger is due south, Captain."

"Too obvious. Let's bracket him." Eberhard ordered a two-eel spread; Beck complied. Another of Challenger's weapons went off. It snapped the wires to two of Deutschland's Sea Lions.

Jeffrey tried to visualize the action in his mind. The computer data was meaningless and stale. Somewhere in that maelstrom Sea Lions sought him. Somewhere beyond the fireballs and tortured bubble clouds, Deutschland would

launch more. Somewhere northeast a Sea Lion blew, set on maximum yield, lured perhaps by a noisemaker. Challenger rocked.

Jeffrey ordered a snap shot due north.

"Unit is running normally," Kathy said. Then she jotted. "Inbound torpedo. Sea Lion bearing zero six five! Range eight thousand yards and closing fast. Torpedo has gone active!"

Jeffrey heard the hard metallic dinggg. He ordered a defensive countershot; Bell acknowledged.

"If that inbound weapon's set at one KT," Bell said, "we won't intercept in time."

"Helm, hard left rudder. Make your course two seven zero." West.

"Lost the wire, tube seven! Inbound weapon tracking us due west."

"Helm, hard right rudder!"

"Unit from tube seven will fire on backup timer now.

The sea convulsed again. Fireball aftershocks, and terrain and surface blast echoes, were becoming almost continuous. Demons punched the ship from every side.

"Helm, hard left rudder!"

"Inbound torpedo still running," Kathy shouted. "Confirmed," Bell said. "Interception not successful." "Status of weapon reload?"

"All tubes empty. None will ready in time."

"Fire more noisemakers. Fire more jammers. Helm, make a knuckle smartly."

"Inbound weapon now in range-gate mode."

The dingggs came very fast.

"Helm, another knuckle." Challenger lost ground.

"No effect," Bell said. "Weapon separation now three thousand yards."

"More noisemakers and jammers!"

Bell complied, Jeffrey waited. Seconds ticked away. "No effect. Separation now two thousand yards."

Close enough to smash our stern wide open, even set on lowest Axis yield. Bell dutifully watched his screens, and uselessly reported, "Inbound weapon will blow any moment. No tubes ready to fire."

There was nothing more Jeffrey could do. He glanced at the back of Ilse's head, as she sat there in her earphones, bravely typing. What wasted opportunities. Jeffrey waited to die. He'd failed the one hundred twenty people in his crew, and all their loved ones. There was a thud behind the ship.

"Weapon has fizzled!" Bell shouted. "Assess warhead was damaged by our countershot!" In his mind, Jeffrey saw Eberhard's face. We're not dead yet, you smug Prussian SOB.

"Helm, hard right rudder. Make your course two seven zero." West again, and toward the volcanic ridges.

Jeffrey watched his weapons status screen. A Mark 88 was presented to the tube-one breach. Jeffrey and Bell did the arming procedures.

"Tube one is ready to fire!"

"Snap shot tube one due north shoot."

SIMULTANEOUSLY, ON DEUTSCHLAND.

There was a wall of noise and heat between Deutschland and Challenger. To Beck, the reverb coming through the hull was painful, deafening, and the sonars were virtually useless. Torpedoes, their wires broken by the blasts, ran out of control. Something exploded—a kiloton, one of Beck's own. Did it home on Challenger, on a bubble cloud, a noisemaker, or another torpedo? Impossible to tell.

The even-numbered tubes were reloaded. Beck and Eberhard entered their passwords and turned their keys; the weapons were armed.

Suddenly Haffner at sonar shouted, "Inbound torpedo has come through the whiteout!

Bearing one six two! Torpedo is one of our Sea Lions!"

It must have been damaged by blast, its safeties and guidance awry

"Sea Lion has gone active! Sea Lion range-gating on Deutschland!"

"Snap shot, tube five, one six two, los!"

Beck launched the countershot. It would be barely in time, if that Sea Lion was preset at one KT—without the wire he couldn't tell its yield, let alone control it. Deutschland still raced north, depth now fifteen hundred meters. Eberhard ordered more noisemakers fired. The errant weapon ignored the distractions. Noisemakers were almost useless this deep: the pressure.

It was time to detonate the defensive countershot from tube five. Beck punched the commands. "Unit from tube five has—"

The blast force struck. The noise was indescribable.

"Another inbound weapon bearing two nine one!" Haffner shouted. "A Mark eighty-eight very close! Near-field effects!"

"Range too short for a countershot!" Beck yelled above the cacophony. "We'd be wrecked by our own eel! We're too deep for effective antitorpedo rocket fire!" The motor exhaust would be strangled: again, the pressure.

"Verdammt," Eberhard cursed. "Make sure we take Fuller with us! Snap shot, tubes two, four, six, and eight, diverging spread northwest through southwest. Los!" The Sea Lions leaped from the tubes. "All weapons fired!" The inbound Mark 88 came closer and closer. Its dingggs came through the hull. Ernst Beck waited to die. He thought of his wife and sons—he felt sad and angry. Something struck Deutschland's sail a jarring blow.

"Mark eighty-eight propulsion noise has ceased," Haffner shouted.

"No apparent damage!" the copilot said.

"Assess inbound torpedo as a dud." But this was no new lease on life, Beck knew; it simply meant more killing. "Get the port-side tubes reloaded now." Challenger raced for the ridge. Meltzer pulled her nose up sharply to climb the face of the basalt formation. Jeffrey watched his screens. Tubes three and five were reloaded.

"Four inbound torpedoes in the water!" Kathy said. "Contacts held on wide aperture arrays. Two weapons off our starboard quarter, two off the port quarter, closing in passive search mode." Brilliant decoys wouldn't work: At five thousand feet deep, they'd implode.

Jeffrey and Bell armed the weapons in three and five as fast as they could, and launched them as countershots. Jeffrey ordered a turn due north, down in the valley behind the ridge. The four Sea Lions closed in hot pursuit.

More weapons went off in the distance—at what targets, real or false, Beck couldn't tell. Deutschland still fled north, to put distance between her and the tortured nuclear battlefield. Another weapon might come through the whiteout any moment. One did, much too close. Eberhard ordered a counter-shot. The inbound weapon blew before the outbound one could intercept—the blast struck Deutschland at short range. Unsecured objects in the Zentrale flew. Fluorescent lightbulbs burst. The command console died, and the backup analog speed log showed Deutschland losing way.

"Give me damage reports," Eberhard snapped.

Intercoms blinked and phone talkers shouted all at once. Beck reached for the call from Engineering.

"Excessive-shock reactor scram. Propulsion power lost. Control circuits may be damaged, safe restart will take ten minutes."

Deutschland coasted to a halt. Around her the ocean fulminated. Somewhere out there, Beck knew, more torpedoes plowed through the sea, searching for something to destroy.

"Autoloader bearing pin has sheared," the phone talker yelled. "Port-side torpedo autoloader out of action."

Jeffrey ordered Meltzer to slow, to try to make less noise, to hide. Challenger was shielded from the worst of the whiteout to the east by the intervening ridge crest. Maybe the inbound torpedoes would run right past him in the chaos.

Challenger's latest two antitorpedo shots went off beyond the ridge. The shock waves bent over the crest, and rattled the ship. It was impossible to tell if there were still incoming weapons.

Jeffrey ordered Kathy to have her people listen hard, for signs of Deutschland or her torpedoes.

Something detonated against the opposite side of the ridge—again, the warhead's force bent up and over the crest. The gravimeter showed gaps in the ridge: an avalanche. The local seismic seawave struck, knocking Challenger askew The ship rolled and bucked until Meltzer and COB got her righted again.

A torpedo came over the top of the ridge off Challenger's stern. It pinged, then pinged again—Kathy heard the echoes above the landslide; it was close.

Jeffrey ordered flank speed.

Bell fired the 88 in tube seven as a countershot.

The Sea Lion warhead went off first, off the port quarter, then the blast reflected off the ridge and back again from starboard. Jeffrey's skeleton tried to fly apart inside his body. He tasted copper—his gums bled, gouged by a capped tooth.

Challenger coasted to a stop.

Propulsion power was lost. Jeffrey grabbed the red handset for Damage Control back aft. Willey said there was a fire

in Engineering, then the line went dead. Jeffrey ordered everyone to don their emergency air breather masks. He waited for the phone talker to report—the sound-powered phones were backup for the intercom. Jeffrey knew the news would not be good. Damage that halted the ship always had to be serious. Here, it could be their undoing. Ernst Beck made his way aft, past damage control parties at work. He passed the wardroom and mess, where first-aid men treated the injured. He had no time to stop and give encouragement or comfort. He noticed the ship's lay preacher, himself a first-aid tech, making his rounds.

Beck went through the heavy watertight door, into the spotless stainless steel corridor leading beyond the reactor. With all the shielding and massive machinery surrounding him now, the noise outside the hull seemed less.

Beck glanced to his right. In there, beyond the shielding, the core lay dormant, boron carbide control rods thrust between the zirconium-clad uranium-235 plates. Pressurized water still circulated, carrying off thermal energy as short-half-life by-products decayed. But there was nowhere near enough heat to generate steam to drive main turbines, or even auxiliary equipment. Without the turbines spinning, there was no current from the turbogenerators. Without that current, the permanent-magnet propulsion motors were still. The ship could hardly surface