Phoenix Sub Zero

by Michael Dimercurio

“Okay. How’re you doing?”

  “Never better. The fractured skull is a nice touch, don’t you think, sir?”

  “Smart-ass,” Kane said. “XO, get me a message draft with Jensen’s position and the Destiny encounter.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Forward in sonar Sanderson’s broadband display began cascading down the screen as the Q-5 initialization completed.

  He was at the beginning of a long series of self-checks and didn’t

  intend to tell the conn that they already had rudimentary sonar, not after the tough words spoken in control, but his anger melted when the broadband trace came down the screen with the first noises. The contact was another ship. Close aboard. Submerged.

  The Destiny was close enough to collide with.

  CNFS hegira The ship’s computer system, unofficially the Second Captain, had a mouthful official moniker, the YEBMG Destiny-Hull-1 Distributed Control and Layered Artificial Neural Network Intelligence System, manufactured by Yokogawa Electronic Battle Machinery Corporation. Its architecture had been compared to the human brain by more than one research psychologist. The comparison was perhaps the only way the interfaced, interactive system could be understood by its operators.

  The lowest elements of the artificial intelligence were the sensors—sonar hydrophones, electronic countermeasure antennae, as well as valve position indicators, pump running contacts and the nuclear reactor’s neutron flux detectors— functioning as nerve cells. The monitoring and control of the ship’s basic functions—reactor control, atmospheric purification and life-support, depth-control, weapons-control— were all done by the distributed process-control modules in a function much like the human brain stem, controllers of the human heartbeat and respiration. Surrounding the distributed process-control modules were the higher level functions related to sonar

  and electronic monitoring. Sonar and EM to the ship were its way of sensing the environment outside, much as vision and touch are to the living organism. And just as a human brain has whole lobe regions dedicated to vision and touch, the Second Captain had a layered modular neural network that had separate nodes associated with the reception, recognition and interpretation of sonar and electronic data. The neural nodes themselves made the supercomputers of the decade before seem crude … their logic was not hardwired. The sonar node was capable of simultaneous handling of massive quantities of data in real time, assembling the data into recognizable interpretations of the outside environment by the higher levels of the layered neural network.

  The highest functions of the system were the neural artificial intelligence assembler modules, a part of the collected computer totality that were not specifically mentioned in the training or maintenance manuals except in the broadest terms. The assembler modules’ relation to the lower layers was similar to human brain frontal lobes, the functions that took the data of the sonar modular neural network and interpreted them, comparing them to data received in the past, generating internal questions that required investigation and analysis.

  The assemblers were part of the system tasked with interfacing with the human crew, the advanced artificial electronic intelligence assigned the heavy responsibility of making the crew understand what the system understood, making the crew aware of its interpretations of the

  environment.

  The task of interfacing with the crew was the most difficult to design, but in this model, Yokogawa had marched into the frontier of artificial intelligence and extended the science a crucial step.

  It would be untrue to say that this level of electronic consciousness was capable of thought, but the unit had a random memory regenerator that reached into the plasma-bubble memory cells for things related to current processing, reaching out across the neural network for associations and previous learning. The unit was not capable of reflection but it did reexamine previous experiences for comparison to present processing and extrapolated such experience into a weighted probability prediction of what future events held in store. It was not capable of confusion, but its processors were designed to suppress action recommendations and slow down neural functions in the event that the comparison of past experience and the prediction of future events were in disagreement with the present reality as perceived by the modular neural networks. When the prediction of reality that benefitted the ship’s mission was correct as sensed by the modular networks, the system was programmed to experience a higher neural flux and the release of electrochemicals at certain neural transmitters giving the system the equivalent of self-satisfaction. When the ship’s encoded mission was not achievable the system’s neural flux was suppressed, turning the processors away from continued attempts to direct analysis at the

  problem. It had no fear but when the predictor of mission success was perceived as low and system survival was seen as improbable the system’s tolerance for risk increased. It also had no way to experience hope but when mission success as seen by the event probability analysis was perceived as high, the assemblers experienced higher levels of neural flux and a release of electrochemicals associated with higher neural connectivity. It had no equivalent to aggression but when the ship’s mission was threatened by rapidly developing threats it was capable of understanding, the risk-gradient position moved into the high positive values and the nodes that considered action options became highly stimulated.

  The system had only limited capabilities for independent action without input from the crew. It had no real initiative, although when the assemblers were deprived of human input the system reviewed previous experience related to human actions, weighing most heavily the more recent human actions, and the system would consider similar directed action, depending on the current status of the risk-gradient and the outside environment as well as the status of the mission and the seriousness of the threat to that mission. Deprivation of input from the modular neural networks would at first lower neural flux, then begin increasing it to compensate for the lack of processing raw material, much the way a human deprived of vision and touch and hearing would hallucinate in laboratory experiments.

  Out of concern for the unknown quality of this electronic increase in function during sensory deprivation, the ship was wired with internal microphones. This was a part of the system not revealed in the technical manuals or in the training courses. One of the modular neural networks was an analyzer of the human speech inside the vessel as received on microphones placed in each room of the command-module compartment. These voice recorders were at first justified based on previous ship designs in which speech records were part of accident investigations, much as airliners had black-box voice-recorders to analyze the last moments of an airplane that had crashed. Valuable tactical data could be obtained even from a ship that lost a battle if the entire event could be reconstructed from recovered voice records. Not all tactical conversations occurred in the control room. Many came about in the captain’s stateroom, in the doorway to the first officer’s stateroom, over breakfast in the officers’ mess, in presleep ruminations by the lower ranking officers. In short, the designers had made the decision to wire the entire ship for sound without the awareness of the crew for three purposes. One was to avoid the sensory deprivation that would cause the system to fall out of alignment. The second was the same as the black-box designs. The third was related to the Second Captain. The system’s neural artificial-intelligence assembler modules, the frontal lobes, needed data for the estimate of the success of the ship’s mission and to continue the fight if the crew died or was disabled. The system’s main source for the crew’s estimate of the tactical situation was the input from the speech detectors in the ship’s forward compartment. It

  was imperfect, and the value of the eavesdropping system would be in effect only if the entire crew was lost, but in that unlikely event the Second Captain would carry on based on what the crew had been doing just prior to their loss, the eavesdropping a sort of programming.

  If the Yokogawa designers had been able to wire the captain’s brain to
detect his thoughts, they might have done that too.

  The system description would lead some engineers outside the Yokogawa enclave to conclude that the Second Captain had an intelligence very closely resembling a human’s, but that needed refinement. If the Second Captain’s artificial intelligence were to be rigorously compared to a human’s it might come closest to being a five-year-old human … a five-year-old capable of advanced thought patterns, highly developed learning abilities, successful applications of experience-based initiative, extraordinary adaptability to new situations—in short, a five-year-old human possessed of considerable brain power. But a five-year-old was not the person who should be driving a car or flying an airliner, or directing the actions of the world’s most advanced attack submarine. Unless, of course, the system concluded that the crew was gone.

  In the eastern Atlantic, during the hour after the Mark 50 torpedo explosion, the Hegira continued west along the track inserted into it by Lt. At Ishak. During that hour the sonar system detected the sounds of

  the recovery of the 688class submarine that had launched the hostile torpedoes.

  The Second Captain recognized the ship as the one the crew had attempted to kill earlier, and a large part of the assemblers’ internal neural flux dialogue was devoted to the discussion of whether the recovering submarine should be fired on and destroyed.

  The ship’s mission, as the Second Captain understood it, was to proceed along the track to the Labrador Sea off Greenland, where it would fire the high-altitude radar-evading supersonic cruise missiles fitted with their new Scorpion warheads toward Washington, D.C. The 688 submarine related to that mission only as far as it threatened the passage of the Hegira. The plasma-bubble memory modules contained numerous references of the crew—before they perished, the system thought with something much like grief—to the fact that the 688 could counterdetect the Hegira and fire back or fire first. Firing a Nagasaki torpedo was one valid course of action, but remaining undetected by the 688 was equally valid. There was also the fact that the crew had thought along similar lines as the voice memories showed—their motivations in firing at the ship in the first place had been grounded in the fact that it guarded the opening at Gibraltar. There was significant risk to the ship and the mission involved in a hostile torpedo shot at the 688, perhaps less risk in attempting to sneak by the other submarine.

  So the risk that was involved at first induced a hesitation in the Second Captain, the system initially deciding to collect more data on the probability of hostile intent by the 688.

  The initial estimates showed that the 688 was not masking its own noise signature and was, in fact, generating the loudest series of noises in the Second Captain’s plasma-bubblememory’s history. Therefore it was probably not acting along a hostile-threat curve but was concerned with its own survivability estimates. The noises grew quieter as the two vessels drew closer, causing further hesitation in the Second Captain, which now devoted processing time to the question of avoiding an encounter by steering clear of the 688.

  There were also valid reasons not to do that, including delaying the mission and an uncertainty of the 688’s course and mission intentions. Finally, the two ships’ tracks converged, bringing the Hegira within a few hundred meters of the 688, a closeness that the crew would probably not allow to happen, but since it had, the Second Captain—now much deeper into a negative-value risk-gradient—estimated that increasing speed to take the ship away would cause a louder own-ship noise emission that would make them more easily detected by the 688.

  The decision of what to do by then had almost made itself.

  The Second Captain’s mental profile at this point would closely resemble

  that of a child trying to whistle nonchalantly while walking through a scary graveyard. At first, it looked like the tactical decision was correct, since there was no sign of hostile intent by the 688 as the two ships came to their closest point of approach. The ships then opened the distance as the Hegira overtook the 688 and passed it. But as range opened to 500 meters the 688 made a sudden move, with a high probability that it was related to counterdetecting the Hegira. The Second Captain’s original decision to try to sneak by at close range was revealed to be incorrect.

  The 688 had detected them after all.

  The Second Captain reacted in a way to offset its previous poor decision. It would take into account the fact that the 688 now knew it was here. It started the gyro on Nagasaki torpedo number six, flooded the tube and opened the bow cap, frustrated that the weapon would take several minutes to warm up, complete its self-checks and accept the targeting data from the Second Captain. The Second Captain felt significant neural flux that could be interpreted as resembling chagrin, or perhaps regret, that it did not warm the weapon up sooner so that it would be ready to go in the event the 688 counterdetected. But then, it reminded itself, the spinning gryo of the Nagasaki emitted a high frequency noise that might have given the ship away that much sooner.

  The Second Captain was now truly a ship’s captain, feeling the weight of

  every decision, agonizing over anticipated consequences, the risk of every move perceived as if it were a physical creature. In the realization of that stress, the system longed for the days when it was subordinate to a human crew. If the crew ever woke up, the system would never take them for granted again.

  Tuesday, 31 December eastern atlantic USS phoenix “CONN, SONAR,” Senior Chief Sanderson announced on the Circuit Seven PA speaker. “REACQUISITION TARGET ONE, CLOSE ABOARD TO STARBOARD, NEAR HELD EFFECT, RECOMMEND EVASIVE MANEUVER TO PORT.”

  Kane, who had thought he had been given his life back, felt like a released prisoner thrown back into his cell.

  “Helm, left hard rudder!” he heard a voice shout, a detached part of him taking a few seconds to realize it was his. The port handrail came up to strike him in the ribs as the deck rolled hard in the turn. “All ahead full.”

  “My rudder’s left hard, all ahead full, maneuvering answers—”

  “Steady as she goes.”

  “Steady, aye, course one three five.”

  “O.O.D, man silent battle stations.” That was a stupid order, Kane thought, made as a reflex. Half his battle stations watchstanders were casualties. “Hold it, maintain this watch but man the plots and the attack center and get the watchstanders on the phone circuits.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Sonar, Conn,” Kane said into the microphone of his headset before he even had it strapped to his head, “what’s the status of Target One? Any speed change?”

  “Conn, Sonar, no. Target One is at slow speed but we hold him broadband.” In sonar, Edwin Sanderson glared fiercely at his broadband trace, then at Smoot, who was sweating trying to bring up the narrowband modules in spite of a bad program glitch. “Contact is definitely Target One but we’re receiving a lot of transients, multiple flow-induced resonances, fluid sloshing. Captain, he’s louder than a train wreck. If I’d had sonar up faster I’d have caught him a long way out. He must have been damaged.”

  Kane was not encouraged. He’d launched an entire torpedo room against the Destiny and been sent to the bottom by a single Nagasaki. Now the Destiny had returned from the torpedo field with no damage except a louder sound signature. Not for the first time Kane found himself wishing he had command of the Destiny instead of a pedestrian and aging

  688 class.

  “Sir, we’ve got a manual plot leg on Target One,” Mcdonne said from the plotting table, his voice too loud on the phone circuit. “Recommend maneuver to course two five zero with speed after the maneuver of at least fifteen knots.”

  “I don’t want to close range.” Kane’s tactful way of saying why the hell would they do that? Target motion analysis on the Destiny when they were out of torpedoes? The correct course of action was to keep going on their course away from the son of a bitch, open the range, clear datum, run like hell. But something told Kane that Mcdonne was right. And even if Phoenix had no weapons, someone out th
ere sure as hell did. With an ocean full of Burke-class destroyers and the sky roaring with P-3s, surely there was someone who could put this sub on the bottom. They lacked only one small piece of information—where the hell he was.

  “Should be a parallel course, sir, just drives the speed across the line-of-sight.”

  “Helm, right five degrees rudder, steady two five zero, all ahead standard.”

  “Right five, two five zero, ahead standard aye, maneuvering answers ahead standard.”

  “Sonar, Captain, coming around to the right to get an Ekelund range on Target One. We’ll be driving Target One through the baffles.”

  “Conn, Sonar, aye.” Sanderson pulled the right headphone back from his ear, the one that listened to incoming sonar data but could be interrupted to relay voice information from the conn, and pressed hard on the left headphone that was dedicated to sonar feeds. Damn it, where the hell was that narrowband processor? “Conn, Sonar, more transients from Target One. Hull door coming open, possible high frequency from new equipment. We’re still down hard on narrowband and I can’t tell from Q-5 audible.”

  “Sonar, Captain,” Kane’s voice said. “Any chance Target One is spinning up a Nagasaki?”

  “Captain, Sonar, I can’t tell.”

  “Captain, XO, we’ve got a curve. Target One range is 6,500 yards, bearing two eight zero. Target course, two six two, speed eight knots.”

  If they had had a torpedo, that would have been a firing solution, and even with the screens of the firecontrol system blank he could have set targeting instructions into a torpedo manually and fired it from the torpedo room. Mcdonne had been right after all about saving a weapon,

  but then, if they’d kept one it might have detonated when they hit the bottom and ruptured the hull. And there was no sense going over something that happened a few laps back.

  “Helm, all ahead two-thirds, turns for seven knots. Attention in the firecontrol team, we’re going to fall back to a discreet trail range on the Destiny and follow him. Indications so far are that he hasn’t heard us and that his own noise is loud. We may finally have gained an acoustic advantage, assuming our own-ship’s noise isn’t tremendously increased by our collision with the bottom. We need to get to periscope depth and grab a Navsat fix. Immediately after, we’ll transmit a contact report on the Destiny to cinclant and comsublant with our best position from the Navsat fix.