Piranha Firing Point

by Michael Dimercurio

  “I’m getting a Yo-Yo display,” Porter said from battlecontrol position one. “And a confirmed target, designate submerged warship.”

  Pacino bolted upright from his leaning position at the plot table. This was serious. The P-5s most likely had come under attack from the Rising Sun’s sub-to-air heat-seeking missiles. Pacino blinked, then looked over at Patton. The Yo-Yos were scrubbed. The damned Rising Sun commander had blown Pacino’s patrol aircraft out of the sky, and now he was forced into Plan B. Fortu nately, he’d seen the need to put the Sharkeye remote sensors aboard Javelin cruise-missile airframes. Without them this mission would already be over.

  “Conn, Sonar,” a voice said over Pacino’s headset! “we have a detect on Mark 12 Yo-Yo unit one thirty miles southwest of Yakushima Island. Detect is confirmed submerged submarine.”

  “Designate the contact Target One,” Patton commanded.

  He walked across the room to the battlecontrol station zero, the first in line on the starboard side, and climbed in. Pacino followed suit, climbing into station four, the aft-most station. Lowering the canopy over his head down to waist level, he then pulled the helmet over his headset. A yellow screen came up, and the bluish orb of a contact, about a half mile away, appeared.

  “Switch to battlecontrol virtual display on Yo-Yo one.”

  The amber background with its floating specs of red and blue vanished, replaced with the viewing point of the Yo-Yo: a cool blue world, the surface of the ocean overhead, the submarine a three-dimensional shape, not far away. “Switch to geographic plot, calibrated scale.” The display changed to a god’s eye view of the Nazeyakushima Gap, the Yo-Yo’s target on the upper section, their own ship on the lower right, the land appearing in detailed relief. Pacino whistled to himself. After seeing this, it would be impossible to go back to the old-fashioned two-dimensional consoles.

  “Captain Patton, we need to launch the Mark 4s.”

  “Admiral, we’re all set.”

  Within two minutes the first four Mark 4 missiles were away. The vertical-launching-system tubes in the forward ballast tank opened their upper doors, and a gas generator blew the missiles to the surface in a bubble of steam.

  The rocket motors lit and took the missiles skyward a half mile, then detached and fell back to earth. In the meantime, the onboard air-breathing jet engines had fired up and the missiles dived for the safety of low altitude. They skimmed the surface, barely twenty feet above the waves, until they arrived at their preordained splash-down positions. Abruptly, the missiles popped up toward the sky, rising by a thousand feet, then diving straight for the water. On the way down, the nose cones popped open in a flower-petal sequence, the missile airframes breaking apart. From each missile a package detached, a streamer trailing behind it for stability, a drogue parachute coming next, followed by the main parachute, deploying just a few hundred feet over the water. The Mark 4 payload, the Sharkeye sensor, drifted gently to the water and splashed down. The parachute was ditched as the main body of the sensor sank, leaving on the surface a transmitter connected by a cable.

  Two minutes later, the second four missiles were away, and two minutes after that the final two Mark 4s were fired. All ten Mark 4 Sharkeye acoustic-daylight-imaging remote sensors survived their trips, sank to best listening depth, and began transmitting to satellites overhead.

  SS-403 arctic storm

  “Sir, we have a splash in the water, bearing zero nine five.” Lo Sun sounded extremely nervous.

  Chu stiffened in his command-console seat. He had taken the ship back deep to a depth of three hundred meters, the temperature profile indicating that to be the best listening depth.

  “That’s not all. We’ve got faint turbojet engines.” “Jets and splashes. What is that?” “Sir,” Lo Sun said, “we might have some incoming cruise missiles.”

  “Cruise missiles? What could a cruise missile do to us at three hundred meters?”

  “For one thing, drop a plasma depth charge. Splash number two, sir. Now three. I’ve got a total of four now, all points of the compass.”

  Was that a coincidence, Chu thought, that the splashes were north, south, east, and west? Were they bracketing him, putting plasma depth charges around him? Or could they be sonobuoys, listening for his ship? Or were they cruise missile-delivered torpedoes?

  He had the deepest feeling of unease he’d had during the operation. The Americans weren’t afraid of him.

  They were marching in with aircraft and now missiles, undeterred that he’d shot down their planes. What would be next? And with the destructive power of plasma weapons, would he even know what happened?

  Hurry, my little warrior, for they are coming for you, and they are strong. Finish quickly.

  In his hour of uncertainty the dream returned to him, and he knew now what it meant. It had not been his father mysteriously speaking to him from the beyond, but his own mind putting the solution together for him, sounding a warning in the voice of the one man on earth he had always listened to. Except this time. He had not finished quickly. He had put the first convoy on the bottom, but it had not been enough. Perhaps he should have let one ship survive to tell the horrible tale—perhaps that would have made his power more real to the Americans. But there was no going back now.

  The Americans were coming. They were coming without fear, with certainty and death. And they were strong.

  And he was going to die. Today was the day. And there would be no headstone, no bones to bury.

  Chu had to admit to himself that he was deeply frightened.

  His father’s words came back to him yet again: Courage is not the absence of fear, but actions taken from the heart while under the terrible grip of fear, actions taken for your men, your ship, your fleet, your country. Someday, my son, you will show your courage. For now just know that it is in you, that courage will come from your heart when it is time. Never doubt that.

  Pacino climbed into the position four battlecontrol station as soon as he heard that the first Sharkeye had detected a submerged contact.

  He had to switch his display to the ship-centered virtual reality, to see the relative positions of the contacts as the onboard Cyclops computer analyzed the data rolling in. He allowed himself a smile as he looked at the sea and the contacts around them, even the land modeled in three-dimensional relief. He counted, not believing his eyes—four, five, six. They were all present and accounted for. He wanted to jump out and give Patton and White a high-five, but then he cautioned himself.

  The Cyclops system could cease functioning at any moment. Colleen had called it corrupt, ready to crash.

  Also, was it possible that it was misinterpreting the data?

  Did the computer see six when it should see only one?

  He left the eggshell canopy and climbed to the elevated periscope platform. A look at the computerized chart display, which was linked to the Cyclops, displayed their position, the 688s’ positions, and the position of the Piranha. There was good news here—they had in fact detected all six Rising Suns.

  But there was bad news too. The six Rising Suns were outside weapons range. Attacking with aircraft was impossible with the P-5s shot down, and the Blackbeard squadrons and Seahawk helicopters were too far away onboard the carriers and destroyers of the backup Rapid Deployment Force. His sub force would have to take them down, but they were outside his Vortex Mod Charlie’s range and outside of Piranha’s Mod Bravo’s range.

  They were also outside the Mark 52 range of the 688s’ weapons as well. Everyone would need to close range, which would bring them into range of the Rising Suns.

  He dictated a message to the 688s and the Piranha and gave it to Patton to transmit. He’d given the subs the grid coordinates of the locations of the Rising Suns.

  The force would go in. Piranha and the 688s deep at moderate speeds. Piranha at seventeen knots, the 688s at ten, fast enough that they could make speed over ground, slow enough that their sonars would be able to strain for the enemy’s noise over their o
wn noise, and slow enough that they wouldn’t rumble through the ocean like rattling old cars.

  It seemed too easy, Pacino thought. What was he missing?

  The answer came to him when the officer of the deck cursed.

  “Loss of battle control,” he called, picking up a microphone to the circuit one shipwide announcing system, shouting into it—despite it being a loudspeaker PA circuit—his voice mirroring the frustration of everyone aboard, “Loss of battle control.”

  The chart display table winked out, the surface black and featureless. The five eggshell screens at the positions of the battlecontrol system rolled up, their officers emerging like disoriented movie patrons coming out into bright sunshine. The door to sonar opened, and Senior Chief Byron Demeers came in. The men gathered forlornly in the open space on the port side of the periscope stand.

  Pacino debated with himself, then made a decision.

  He hurried forward down the centerline passageway to the computer room, punched the buttons to get inside.

  There at the console sat Colleen O’Shaughnessy, the executive vice president of Cyclops Computer Systems, subsidiary of mighty Dynacorp Defense International, the chief architect of the Cyclops Mark 72 NSSN Battlecontrol System, with her head in her hands, tears silently running down her cheeks.

  SS-403 arctic storm Admiral Chu Hua-Feng stared at the sonar display in confusion and suspicion.

  Twelve submarine contacts.

  Twelve 688 submarines.

  Sailing right into the Naze-Yakushima Gap as if he weren’t there.

  But that wasn’t so odd, was it? They didn’t know his position—he was being positively paranoid.

  Still, twelve subs, all 688s, all clustered together at the entrance? What was going on?

  “Sir,” the navigator, Xhiu Liu, said from the sensor panel, urgency lacing his voice, “ten of the 688s are or have already opened bowcap torpedo-tube doors.

  Eleven, now twelve. Now we’re getting second bowcap door noises from each ship.”

  What the hell was going on? He wondered. All twelve coming in at once, directly toward him, all opening bowcap doors. Did they sense him here or not? They had to know he was here; he was the easternmost submarine.

  Could this be some kind of deception? After all, didn’t he have false periscopes being towed right now behind the sterns of his fleet of fishing trawlers? And weren’t two dozen of those trawlers, to the west and southwest, pulling behind them noisemakers that attempted to simulate a nuclear submarine noise? Deception was an ancient Chinese tool of war.

  But if it was an illusion, what was the purpose? To draw his fire? There was simply no way to know.

  He made a decision. If they wanted to draw fire, by the heavens he would give them fire, and he’d do it decisively.

  “Open bowcap doors to tubes 13 to 24. Ann gas generators 13 to 24. Set torpedoes in tubes 13 to 24 to highspeed transit, shallow trajectory.”

  “Aye, sir,” Chen Zhu, the weapons officer said.

  It took no time at all for the weapons to warm up.

  “Set 13 for target ST-3, 14 for ST-4. and so on,” Chu ordered.

  “Thirteen and 14 ready, sir. Fifteen and 16 coming up now.”

  “Shoot 13 and 14,” Chu ordered.

  The difference between a high-impulse gas-generator torpedo launch and an ultraquiet slow swimout was dramatic.

  Under the action of a solid-rocket motor impinging a reservoir of water that instantly vaporized to high-pressure steam, the tube spat out the weapon like a cannon.

  The torpedo’s engine lit off, and it soared into the sea at full throttle, the water jet pumping at maximum thrust, all provisions for stealth discarded. Within mere minutes Chu launched the torpedo battery at the twelve submarines of the American submarine wave, settling down to wait the fourteen minutes until torpedo impact.

  It would be interesting to see if the target vessels took flight, or it they kept coming. Chu watched tensely from his command seat, wishing he could have a cup of tea, but there had been no time to fill the thermos since the aircraft contact had approached. Impatiently Chu waited.

  “ST-3 through 14 remain inbound,” the navigator reported.

  They hadn’t heard the torpedoes. Excellent Chu waited, flipping through his displays, trying to think ahead to the next move. If this worked, perhaps there would be no next move required, because the Americans would give up and go home, as they should have since the beginning.

  “ST-3 has detected the torpedo. Aspect change, he’s turning. Admiral. Turning and speeding up. He’s running, sir. Same with ST-5, ST-8, now ST-4. All across the board. Admiral, the submarines have counter-detected the torpedoes and are turning away.” “Very good.” Was it? he asked himself. Or was this part of an elaborate deception? And yet it wasn’t good, because the longer the fast 688s ran, the less chance they had of being hit, the 85-click torpedo going up against a 90-click submarine. All he could hope for was the termination plasma detonation of the weapons would kill the running submarines.

  The first explosion sounded in the room, audible to the naked ear, although it was twenty kilometers away.

  Then the second, the third and fourth explosions came.

  Finally Chu lost count. The corner of his mouth rose slightly. The Americans were paying for costing him so many sleepless nights.

  USS devilfish, SSNX-1

  “What the hell was that?”

  Paully White stood in the ring of officers, waiting for their battlecontrol system to come back up. The vessel was blind without the Cyclops system. A single loud explosion had registered in the room, two more following shortly afterward, then more, with uneven intervals between them.

  Pacino arrived in the forward door to control in a dead run.

  “How many explosions?” he asked.

  Patton gave him the bad news. “Twelve, Admiral. I think the 688s took hits.”

  “Dammit,” was all Pacino could say.

  “Cyclops?”

  “Down hard. Colleen thinks—” Just then the eggshell canopies flickered, went dark, then nickered again, then held, each one reconfiguring. The officers on the room’s port side ran back into their stations and donned their helmets.

  “Control, Computer Room, Cyclops is initializing now and back on-line.” Colleen’s voice was low and measured, giving no trace of the hopelessness Pacino had seen twenty minutes before.

  “Sonar, Captain,” Patton’s voice rang in Pacino’s headset. “Report the situation.”

  “Captain, Sonar,” Demeers’ answer came. “Still initializing, stand by. Captain, Sonar… we have six Rising Sun contacts, twelve unidentified large-diameter, low-density spheroids, and multiple objects—”

  “What?” Patton was annoyed. “Do you have the twelve 688s?”

  “Cap’n, Sonar, the twelve spheres are explosion zones from plasma weapons, and the multiple objects we interpret to be broken submarine hulls. Cyclops is showing them traveling vertically downward. They’re sinking. All twelve show that they are now between two thousand and twenty-five hundred feet deep. Some are hitting the bottom and are disappearing from Cyclops as being bottom clutter. Captain, Sonar… as of now I only show six Rising Suns and the Piranha.”

  “God damn that son of a bitch,” Pacino spat. “That’s almost two thousand of my men that bastard just killed.”

  A murderous rage choked him. He wanted to kill the Red force commander with his bare hands.

  “Admiral, Piranha is in range of three Rising Suns with his Vortex missiles.”

  USS piranha, SSN-23

  Captain Bruce Phillips stood on the conn and squinted down on the battle stations crew arrayed at the attack-center consoles.

  “Sonar, Captain, status!” he barked into his boom microphone.

  “Captain, Sonar,” Master Chief Henry said in his baritone voice, the tone of it fitting perfectly with his shaved head, tree-trunk neck, and wide shoulders—the only thing missing his earring, which went on immediately when he left the ship.
“We’ve got no contacts, just sonar blueouts at the previous bearings to the 688s.”

  “Sonar, Captain, I’m going upstairs and getting on the radio. Maybe Uncle Mikey on the D-fish can give me better information than you and your sonar girls.”

  The master chief’s answer was as professional as Phillips’ was casual: “Captain, Sonar, aye. Do you intend to clear baffles?”

  “Sonar, Captain, no. Offsa’deck, upstairs now!”

  “Aye, sir,” the officer of the deck snapped back, a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant named Gustavson.

  “Dive, make your depth six six feet, steep angle. Helm, ahead full!”

  “Sixty-six feet, aye, twenty-degree up bubble.”

  “Ahead full. Helm, aye. Maneuvering answers, all ahead full.”

  The deck inclined upward, and the crew grabbed for handholds. Their bodies strained against seat belts as the deck became a staircase-steep ramp.

  “Eight hundred feet, sir.” “Very good,” Gustavson said.

  “Six hundred feet, sir.”

  “Sonar, Conn, coming to PD, no baffle clear,” the OOD said to his boom mike. He was standing behind the number two periscope, which was still stowed in its well because the ship’s speed was too high to raise it.

  “Conn, Sonar, aye.”

  “Four hundred feet, sir.”

  “Helm, all back one-third. Dive, flatten the angle to up ten.”

  The deck trembled as the backing bell was answered.

  Phillips had to slow the ship before it emerged above the thermal layer, where a dangerously close surface contact could be lurking.

  “Two hundred feet, sir!”

  “Helm, all stop, mark speed seven knots.”

  “Helm, aye, maneuvering answers all stop. Speed ten knots.”

  “One five zero feet, sir,” the diving officer barked.

  “Mark speed seven knots, sir,” the helmsman called.

  “Lookaround number two scope,” the OOD called, an order that required the diving officer and helm to report the ship’s depth and speed to avoid shearing off a periscope and opening a huge hole in the hull.