“1200 yards and slowing.”
“Bill, can you come around to her port flank after she’s stopped and fire on her from amidships?” Seven asked in a virtual whisper into his headset.
“Sorry, sir, the Leviathan has lost communications with the ROV,” said the officer of the watch.
“800 yards, her engines aren’t reversing with enough energy to stop, sir.”
Seven’s eyes were now glued to the screen. If the sub’s engines did not gun themselves in reverse with a real purpose in a few seconds, they would ram Pacifica ’s main sphere. Even a relatively gentle tap could sink them. With horror, he watched as the distance closed and the Chinese sub was not backing down.
“They’re turning away now, sir,” said the officer with obvious relief in his voice. “Contact turning to the northeast.”
Seven could see the huge submerged warship making a slight curve away. They would sail by the eastern wall, missing them by a paper thin margin in a terrible game of sub-sea chicken.
“Striker, they’re turning northeast right toward you!” Seven said aloud into his headset.
“Yep, they are,” Legend responded flatly. “In a few minutes they’ll be inside our cloaking and we’ll be goners. These cockroaches have done this to me before.”
“What did you do?” Seven asked.
“Got religion… fast.”
“Well you’d better get it again!” Seven offered.
“Don’t need to,” Legend replied dryly. “I’m a Baptist.”
“Blakely, when will we get the Leviathan’s SROV back? I need it now!” Seven urged.
“I’m working the problem, sir,” came the calm voice. “The bot will be in range in 20 seconds or so.”
“I don’t have 20 seconds or so!” Seven shouted. He could feel the sub’s wake rock the entire colony violently as it passed by what seemed like mere inches from their outer wall. As he gripped the console in front of him to keep his balance, Seven cried, “Striker, hold your bots where they are! He’s definitely coming back, trust me on this one.”
“No, Aaron. I’m parkin’ ‘em right in front of your window so they won’t have far to go when the pinhead comes back for his little talk. He’s just tryin’ to spook us now – make himself look real bad and all that.”
“Well, it’s working!” Seven said with a pained grin, watching the submarine now pointed directly at the Phoenix and closing. “If he pings you right now, you’d better smile real big.”
“He’s not gonna ping anybody,” Legend responded with less than noticeable confidence.
“Well, if I read his strategy correctly,” Seven responded, “he’s turning around and will be looking over his shoulder for the Leviathan. I predict a ping any second now – as soon as he swings all the way around. He’s going to be looking and he’s gonna see you standing there with your skivvies down around your ankles right outside his big picture window!”
“If you’re right, then he has us,” Legend replied matter-of-factly.
“Not if I can position the Leviathan to blow him out of the water first,” Seven shouted, working up a new strategy real-time in his mind. But it was too late. The Chinese sub illuminated the ocean around them with a powerful burst of sonar energy.
“That’s it! We’re officially shark food,” Legend’s voice said from the circuit. “It was nice knowin’ ya, pard.”
“No, wait!” Seven responded. “He may have seen you, but he has too much momentum to slow and fire on you. He’s coming around too fast and he’s too close to get a solution. This is awesome!”
“What’s awesome? What’s awesome? That we’re now a fruit fly sitting in front of a 12 gauge double barrel freakin’ shotgun?”
“No!” Seven said with a wide grin, standing tall and confidently adjusting his headset. “He never in his wildest dreams expected to see you in his sights. He not only thought you were long dead and missing, he was looking for a horizontal target, not a vertical floater. At this very moment’s he’s trying to figure it all out, and when he does, boy is he gonna be pissed! But once he does, and now that he has you in his cross-hairs, he’s gonna pour all his energy into sinking you. But in order to accomplish that, he’s gonna have to come around one more time to set it up. By that time, we can get the Leviathan into position and blow his Chicom ass out of the ocean!”
“Nice plan, Aaron Seven. Now let’s see if it really works out that way.”
Just as Seven had suspected, the massive 421 swung away from the Phoenix in a wide circle that would put the submarine’s port side in full view of the Command Center as it circled around again for the kill.
“I have the Leviathan on the line, sir.”
“Bingo! Bill, spare no power and don’t worry about your acoustics,” Seven virtually shouted into his headset. “Come around at flank speed to the port side of the dome from the north end facing 180. Be ready to fire one fish on my command. Rig them for firing and be in position in about three minutes. You’re about to sink the commie bastard. Churn and burn, partner, we need you and your fish on station, like yesterday!”
“Roger that,” Harper said crisply, then Seven could hear him furiously barking orders to the Leviathan’s helmsman.
Seven considered the plot as it unfolded before him. It was going to be a perfect one-shot-one-kill set up.
“Enemy torpedo doors are now opening,” the Pacifica sonarman said loudly.
“It’ll do you no good,” Seven whispered. “Too little – too late.”
“Enemy torpedo away!” the sonarman shouted, his eyes reflecting fear.
“What?” Seven gasped. It was far too early to fire on anything.
“One rocket torpedo away!”
“Dear God in heaven,” Serea whispered. It was obvious by her expression that none of this had been considered in their wildest imaginings, although they had often discussed that a rocket torpedo was something from their worst nightmares. Once a rocket torpedo was fired, the game would be over in a few seconds. If they had not destroyed the enemy sub before that moment, their hope for survival would all but vanish. And now it appeared to everyone that it was too late.
“What are they shooting at?” Seven gasped. But from the plot before him, it appeared that the torpedo was actually going to hit Pacifica ’s main dome. He involuntarily sucked in his last breath of life and held it.
The rocket torpedo, a Russian designed Shkval, bore down on them at over 250 miles per hour, encased in a shroud of its own super compressed bubbles of air, riding though the ocean like the water was not even there.
“It’s going to miss us!” Seven cried as the torpedo curled away from the main structure. His eyes turned to the large front window as, just 20 feet in front of them, a white streak split the blue column of water as the rocket shrieked by. Again, the entire structure of Pacifica rocked violently in the water in the wake of the superfast weapon.
“It’s turning!”
Seven watched as the torpedo swung almost surrealistically in a wide arc away from them, then back toward Pacifica’s main dome in a horrible but finely executed 360 degree circle. Just when he thought it was going to strike them from the opposite side, he saw its main target in the screen: it was headed directly toward the Leviathan.
“Bill, it’s coming to you!”
But the warning was too late. The torpedo struck the Leviathan creating an explosion that made the whole structure rock and shake.
“Bill! Bill!” Seven shouted into the mike.
The sonarman activated the Command Center communications systems to broadcast his circuit. At first there was silence suddenly followed by loud pops and horrific groaning as if metal was shredding, then deep, resonant booms and sounds of large air pockets suddenly released into the deaths.
“The Leviathan’s sinking, sir,” the sonarman said in a hushed voice.
“Striker, they got the Leviathan!” Seven shouted incredulously into the mic.
“Yeah, and we’re next,” Legend responded flatly.
“Can you position your bots in time?” Seven asked, although he knew the answer well. He could see that the bots were like insignificant ants at a picnic aiming to carry the whole assembly away.
“We’re good with this, Seven. Let whatever happens happen. But don’t let ‘em take you. It’s better to go down with your ship than to let ‘em have it.” Seven could hear the large man sigh. “It was nice sailin’ with ya. Thanks for all your help.”
“It ain’t over till its over and the fat lady sings,” Seven replied with false bravado, whistling in the dark.
“You’ve been watchin’ way too much baseball,” Legend responded.
“Huh?” Seven asked.
“Never mind.”
“He’s slowing, now, sir.”
Seven could see the giant Chinese submarine actually pivoting in the water column, slowing to a stop to line up its torpedo tubes on the Phoenix.
A voice rang though the water into Pacifica’s speakers. It was the voice of the Chinese skipper speaking in his own dialect.
“Edgar!” Seven shouted.
Edgar Allen cocked her head slightly to one side, and then said, “He says he’s surprised at you, Dr. Seven, that he understood your pathetic strategy with the Leviathan and it was not a problem sinking it at all. It was not even a mentionable challenge. He says he didn’t take you to be a fool like the rest of your countrymen, but apparently, you are not only a fool but naive, as well, and it is a pity to destroy your friend in his little metal floating tube. He says he could have used the power and supplies, but it’s your fault, after all, that you should be ashamed of yourself for needlessly throwing away lives and material as you have so clumsily done today.”
Seven’s mind worked furiously. “Wait, tell him that he can’t sink the Phoenix yet. Tell him that it’s loaded with reactor uranium that was supposed to replenish the Leviathan. Tell him that we’ll trade him that material for their lives. Speak slowly, make mistakes, then repeat yourself.”
As Edgar spoke, Seven’s eyes watched as the tiny fleet of bots began to actually catch up with the Jiang Zemin , hovering between Pacifica and the Phoenix. He just needed a few more minutes engaging the skipper in a conversation to get the bots into position.
A moment later, the sonarman announced, “Enemy torpedo doors opening.”
“Tell him…tell him that his country, Communist China, is a despicable din of cockroach infested termite colonies,” Seven roared, “and that if they hadn’t stolen the technology for his submarine from the United Sates Navy, that they’d be lobbing rice balls off of leaky junks on the surface!”
“Really?” Edgar asked, now totally flushed. “You really want me to tell him that?”
“Yes, you tell him that! Right now – in perfect, fluent Chinese.”
Edgar looked to Serea, who simply nodded, and then complied. A long minute passed as the sweat beaded along Seven’s forehead and his eyes followed the explosive laden ROV’s as they inched ever closer to the sub’s hull. He watched as Legend’s skillful hands guided them remotely, each to their designated positions. At this point, the constellation of nine bots began to separate in the water and direct themselves to their positions alongside the Jiang Zemin.
“The Chinese Captain says it will be his personal privilege either to sink you and your entire company or to personally torture you to death after Pacifica is captured by force. He says that whatever death he selects for you will not be easy and it will not be fast.”
“You tell the Captain that we’ve monitored communications from mainland China and that he’s been declared a deserter from the People’s Navy. You tell him that we’ve been offered a sizeable reward to report his whereabouts to his command, and that we’re transmitting that information as we speak. Tell him that we know his secret codes and will be happy to verify them if he so desires.”
After that report, there was a protracted silence from the Chinese submarine. It was just enough time to position the Phoenix’s underwater bots along the hull of the 421 and its rudder.
“Captain Luan says that you’re stalling, Dr. Seven. It is yet another pathetic attempt at hiding your terminal incompetence. But, unfortunately, time has run out. He’s disappointed that in you he did not find a more worthy adversary.”
Seven simply responded, “Striker, blow the sonofabitch! Do it now!”
Almost instantly, there were nine muffled thumps separated by a quarter second each that reverberated through the water followed by five seconds of penetrating silence.
“The Chinese submarine is submerging, sir!” The sonarman said.
“No, the Chinese sub is sinking!” Seven said with a shout. “She’s blowing her main ballast tanks! Striker Legend just opened up eight large holes in all her main ballast tanks and blew off her rudder. She’s on her way to the bottom!”
“Yes!” the sonarman shouted, rising up from his seat with a raised fist. “She’s going down! I can see her rotating in the water column! She’s actually spinning down by her bow!”
“Bill… Bill, are you still there buddy? Answer me, will ya? Did our little deception work? Can you talk?” Legend said from the Phoenix over the common circuit.
“Thank God for your little noise makers,” the voice of Admiral Bill Harper replied. “It pulled the torpedo away from us and only knocked our rudder off kilter, but it missed the screws. I think we’re going to need a tow back to drydock, but there’s not a scratch on anyone here!”
“I can’t believe it! Bill, I thought you were history – gone – finished!” Seven cried into his mic as he shot a wide grin at Serea.
“Almost!” Harper replied. “But thanks to our friendly Harley salesman, all’s well!”
“Torpedo away!” the sonarman shouted, interrupting the joy of the moment. “Rocket torpedo! The 421’s going down alright, but we’ve got one more fish headed this way!”
Seven’s face froze in astonishment, his eyes darting back to the status board.
“Striker, turn on your bots, now! All of them!” Seven shouted. “It’s headed straight for us! Pull it off us!”
“I’m on it…”
Seven’s eyes followed the projected trace of the rocket propelled torpedo as it streaked from the bow of the sinking Chicom boat. It was pointed down at the seamount below at first, but then, with a frightening speed, it pulled up and swung around in a 180 degree arc and headed straight toward Pacifica. It would all be over in less than three seconds now. He looked at Serea and smiled. “I love you,” he whispered to her as she returned his smile and placed her hand gently atop his. He prayed the end would be painless.
A second and a half later, the trace of the rocket torpedo ended in mid water just 300 feet from the central dome. Clearly, Seven could see that the torpedo, which had been targeted for the main structure, had instead rammed into Pacifica’s power plant that hung in the water away from and just below them – directly between them, the sinking 421 and its hellish weapon.
“The torpedo has taken out the power plant, sir!”
Even as the sonarman spoke, there was a jolting wave of energy from the explosion that threw everyone in the Command Center against the nearest table, wall or rack of instruments. Less than a single second later, another wave of energy jolted them again, followed by darkness and an eerie silence that was shattered by a cacophony of alarms..
“Give me some lights! Is the hull breached? Are we taking on water anywhere? Will someone please dump the alarms! I think we already know we have a few problems here,” Seven shouted in rapid fire succession above the din of multiple alarms ringing around him. “Somebody give me reports from the lifeboat stations. Hurry up! I need some freakin’ answers here!”
With that, a bank of lights flickered on in the Command Center as the emergency power systems were cutting on one at a time and re-powering the colony.
“All my automated systems are re-booting, sir. I won’t be back on line for at least another five minutes,” said the Command Center Watch Officer.
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“Great!” Seven said with disgust. “Who designed this piece of crap?” Then he looked to Serea, who averted her gaze, but not before shooting a steely-eyed glance in his direction.
Pacifica’s OTEC Power Station
He then repeated in a low voice, “Any breaches? I need to know right now!” he then demanded from the Watch Officer.
“No sir. Our direct readings are all down with the automated systems. But I can tell you our pressure’s remained stable and that indicates no breaches.”
“Great! Great! Some good news at last!”
“All lifeboat stations are reporting in,” Serea stated evenly. “None of them are damaged. Everybody’s pretty much shaken up and there’re a few bruises, but nothing serious. All of them want power back, as soon as possible. Your mom says the kids are pretty much freaking out.”
With that thought, Seven remembered the people working Pacifica’s OTEC power station. There had been a team of eight manning it. “Any word from the power station?” he asked. “Can you get Striker back on the line? Did his bots manage to pull that torpedo away as well?” Seven hoped against hope that Legend was able to pull off the same miraculous save for the Pacifica power station as he had done for the Leviathan.
“Sir, the power station’s gone,” the Watch Officer reported. “It’s not there anymore; it’s been sunk. We won’t be able to reconfigure our communications links until the automated systems are back online. But the power station – well sir, it’s history.”
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 63