The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  Chu’s boat, the Meg, passed through the gap on the surface by night, with the Leaping Maiden smiling down on it and the faint glow from the moon, Hecate, in its final quarter glowing above. There were plenty of fixed lights to guide them through. Once past the Isla Real-Isla San Juan gap, the Meg had continued almost due north, with its clicker going at normal speed.

  The clicker was a trick developed by OZ, Obras Zorilleras, the legion’s research and development arm. The idea was that as long as an enemy thought they could track a Meg class easily, they wouldn’t try looking for better ways to track one. The clicker—each one in each boat, each just a little different—simulated a badly cut gear, giving off, as such gears would, a steady clickclickclick that varied with the speed of the boat. The very latest boat, the one not yet ready for service, had three clickers on it, to simulate several badly cut gears, as one might expect under wartimes pressures.

  In practice, the clicker was used to let an enemy know exactly where a Meg was. Then, when it was cut off and the boat moved off under its rather quiet jet pump, or by gliding, none but the crew would be any the wiser.

  On the other hand, the clicker had been used twice already. It was possible that either the FSN or Zhong Navy, or both, were familiar with it and would not be fooled.

  With the islands behind them, Chu gave the orders to dive, descending down into the pressure hull himself after dogging the hatch behind him. Coolant surged through tubes running through the rubbers inside the ballast tanks, chilling the ammonia inside the rubbers.

  The Meg had an odd—really a unique—method of flooding and evacuating its ballast tanks. Like the pressure hull, these were cylindrical. Basically, the boat took advantage of the very low boiling temperature of ammonia. The ammonia was kept inside flexible tubing made of fluorocarbon elastomer with a seven-hundred-and-fifty-angstrom thick layer of sputtered aluminum, followed by a five hundred angstrom layer of silicon monoxide with an aerogel insulation layer. Heating elements inside the tubes—called “rubbers” by the sailors and designers, both—heated the ammonia into a gas, which expanded the “rubbers” and forced out the water. To dive, the ammonia was allowed to chill to a liquid rather than heated to a gas. Chilling was really only a factor when quite near the surface, and then only if the water was warm. It was, of course, warm here and now, hence the provision of refrigerant.

  It was slightly quieter to dive than to rise, since the boiling of the ammonia made more sound than its condensing.

  As originally conceived, the Meg-class SSKs were intended to carry up to five, but more typically three, Volgan supercavitating torpedoes, each. They’d gotten kills against the Gallic Navy using those. But, on reflection, the classis had come to the sober, and sobering, conclusion that those kills had been flukes, that the Gauls had just panicked at finding subs that weren’t even supposed to be armed, armed with something approaching state of the art, or what was believed to be state-of-the-art.

  The key to getting rid of most of the supercavitators had been the Gallic captain, the skipper of The Gallic Navy’s Destroyer 466, the Portzmoguer. He was the Gaul who had not been surprised and had not panicked. And he had survived as, reasonably, one would expect any skipper to survive who was neither surprised nor panicked.

  The problems with the supercavitators were probably not surmountable short of mounting nuclear weapons on them. They operated in a very noisy, self-created bubble. This ruled out sonar while travelling, and did nothing good for wake homing. They moved very quickly, spewing hot gasses out their rear. This meant there could be no wire or fiber-optic guidance. The noise they created lasted for a longish period even after they stopped to reacquire a target. This screwed with their on-board sonar. Electromagnetic sensing from a torpedo was too short ranged to be useful.

  The one good thing that could be said of them was that some of the potential targets may not have worked out the proper solution to them, or may have believed Volgan (or Sachsen) marketing propaganda about them. This wasn’t enough of a chance to base one’s fighting load around. Thus, the supercavitators, all but one per sub, had come out and been replaced by Volgan super-heavy sixty-five-centimeter torpedoes. The bulk of the load remained the twenty-one inchers, with a smattering of twelve-and-three-quarter-inch defensive, which is to say, antitorpedo, torpedoes, developed by a consortium composed of Obras Zorilleras, Yamato Celestial Armaments, and a Volgan concern that was effectively an arm of their government.

  “Skipper,” announced Nav, “past phase line Zulu.”

  “Kill the clicker,” ordered Chu. “Bring us down to seventy-five meters.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The most complete and happy victory is this, to compel one’s enemy to give up his purpose while suffering no harm oneself.

  —Belisarius

  Combat Information Center, BdL Dos Lindas,

  Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  A rating set a cup of coffee down in the slot on Fosa’s command chair, then backed away hastily and scurried for safer pastures. The commander of the classis was in a vile mood and nobody really seemed to know why.

  Aboard the carrier, they’d worked out a trick of sorts between Chu’s Megalodon, the two corvettes, the Jaquelina Gonzalez (ship’s motto, “A whore, yes, but our whore.”), the recently christened Inez Trujillo (ship’s motto, “Follow me, you cunts.”), and Archangel.

  It was supposed to work like this: Archangel—which had, at best, only poor plots for the submarines, given the escarpment, trench, and ridge, plus the fact that they weren’t moving much—would give best-guess center of mass coordinates to the two corvettes. These would move toward those coordinates, actively pinging, then turn around and take a back azimuth, then repeat. Megalodon, with its towed array behind it, would take those azimuths and draw out where they intersected. Those intersections would be the center of mass of possible submarine activity. Meg with its clicker turned off, would then move there, and measure, and listen, and determine if there was a Zhong or FSN submarine there.

  The direction program was to start in the east and work west. Moreover, after each set of azimuths had been “broadcast,” the corvettes would go to a set point and enter a period of at least twenty-five minutes’ physical inactivity, this being a sort of period, a punctuation mark, added to the statement, “they might be there.” It would also give the Meg two sources from which it could triangulate its own position without having to surface, as a backup for their inertial navigation which was, at best, second rate.

  The nice thing about it was that no surface ship or submarine had to use its underwater telephone, or Gertrude. This was expected to serve to keep both FSN and Zhong in the dark about Meg’s activities. The bad part was that other than the simple information already arranged, nothing else could be sent by those methods. On the other hand, for real emergencies, the Gertrude was still there.

  In addition, the Yakamov YA-72s would continue laying passive sonar buoys and actively dipping. There was also to be a special trick for the Zhong and FSN, both, a kind of deception and distraction operation. ’Finches were lined up on the airfield on the island for just that trick.

  The real problem for Fosa, then, was half intellectual and half emotional. When Chu turned off his clicker, Meg went invisible. One second it was there, happily clicking away, and easily loud enough for Archangel to pick it up with precision. The next the pump jets were cut to next to nothing, the ammonia had silently condensed, and the thing was gliding along with just enough push from the pumps to keep from stalling.

  Maybe if there’d still been something to do besides wait, but, no, after air, ship, and base crews had worked all night, everything was pretty much ready.

  Fosa sipped at the coffee, fuming inside, I can’t see a goddamned thing or say a goddamned useful word to influence this any more than I have. I’m powerless and I fucking hate it.

  Ah, screw it. I’m going topside to do a little leadership by walking around.

  Fosa stopped at deck level and went out ont
o the flight deck through an oval hatchway. He stopped for a moment and watched a Cricket, a light recon plane with an extraordinarily short take off run, bounce twice down the deck, and seemingly leap into the air. There were two men inside the Cricket, one to drop lightweight mini-Athaliah sonar buoys over the side.

  For now, as far as Fosa could see, the forward parts of the flight deck were the domain of the Crickets. He turned aft to where nine of his dozen Turbo-finches were lined up, two-two-three-two. Deck crews worked on jacking up ordnance, all practice, onto each of the ’Finch’s thirteen hard points. The square elevator whined behind him. Fosa turned to see a tenth Turbo-finch emerge from the hangar deck. A dozen men, including the pilot, physically manhandled the plane over and around to make the first row go from two to three.

  Between the domain of the Crickets and the domain of the attack aircraft, there was a space given over to the comings and goings of the YA-72s. For the most part these—maintenance hogs, every one—were struck below. Still, the ASW versions were getting a steady workout, while some of the maintenance crew were reconfiguring the non-ASW Yakamovs for ASW work.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Terra Nova

  There were any number of ways to detect, albeit imperfectly, submarines from space. More of those ways were available to the Federated States and Tauran Union than were available to the United Earth Peace Fleet. What the UEPF had were repurposed whale, shark, and school of fish detection systems, dating back to the days when Old Earth had been concerned with Terra Nova’s ecology more than with the barbarians from Terra Nova breaking free and changing Earth’s domestic political arrangements. To say nothing of looting the place and burning it to a cinder.

  Thus, for example, Commander Khan, the husband, was able to track Meg nicely on a feed sent from UEPF Spirit of Harmony, in orbit over Balboa . . . right up until the Meg slid below fifty meters, at which point it didn’t give off enough heat nor, being on the small end for subs, create enough disturbance to be noticeable, especially given jet pumps and gliding. Nor was synthetic aperture radar worth a damn at that range and to those depths. And using lasers was likely to garner unwanted attention from the Federated States, something devoutly to be avoided.

  The primary method of submarine detection below, acoustic, was completely outside of the UEPF’s capability, barring only a limited capability on Atlantis Base.

  Khan didn’t worry about it overmuch, anyway. The Balboan submarines were reputed to be very noisy. Surely the Zhong could keep track of the one that had, like a ghost, just faded away and disappeared off of Peace’s screens.

  Still, he sent what he had to the Tauran Union and Zhong navies. Maybe one of those could get some use of it.

  In fact, the TU’s sailors would have gotten nothing from the information. But the Zhong submarines could have, if the information had gotten to them in a timely fashion. This was, of course, impossible, as it was impossible for the FSN’s Oliver Rogers, albeit for different reasons. But a key piece of information, there to be seen from the time stamps, was that the Meg continued to move after the clicking stopped, and still at a speed greater than the gliding alone could quite account for.

  Submarino de la Legion 1, Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  The submarine had gone about two hundred and fifty meters north of the escarpment when Chu ordered, “Make your depth one hundred and twenty meters.”

  “Aye, Captain,” answered Junior Warrant Huerta, a new submariner, still under instruction. “One twenty—one two zero—meters.”

  The sailor at the diving station responded, “Make my depth one hundred and twenty meters, aye, sir.” The one beside him checked his panel and announced, “Rubbers are collapsed; no chilling needed, ready to apply minimal heat to maintain neutral buoyancy.” A third along the same bank said, “Helm, fifteen degrees down angle on planes. Making my depth one hundred and twenty meters.”

  The exec said, without facing Chu, “Forward group admitting ballast, Captain . . . aft group admitting ballast.”

  The boat nosed over and slid silently into the trench until it reached the ordered depth. At that point Chu ordered a heading change to sweep the north side of the escarpment all the way to where it ended, with the towed array deployed and the magnetic anomaly detector searching for the enemy, as well as for the neutral FSN boat. Speed was fairly slow, though not as slow as they’d adopt when the intersection of Trujillo’s and Gonzalez’s sonar runs said a sub was probably near. Still this was probably going to take a couple of days.

  Huerto turned around and bent his head slightly. “Skipper, if I may ask . . . ?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why here?”

  “I’m giving the Zhong the benefit of the doubt, assuming that they’ll take advantage of the . . . of the ground, so to speak . . . and take cover behind the escarpment.”

  “And they won’t hear us?”

  “Doubt they have their towed arrays out, or that they’ll deploy them until they hear a clicker making for open water. And, yes, Huerta, before you ask, it’s a risk.”

  “Okay, Skipper. Just curious. . . . Skipper, why just us? We could do it in half the time if there’d been two of us, one to sweep east, one west.”

  “Friendly-fire issues,” answered Chu, “those, and paranoia on the part of the enemy issues, coupled with it was just too much of a pain in the ass to try to coordinate the corvettes’ directional runs. We thought about it, yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “And one other thing, just to put your mind at ease, Huerta.”

  “Yes, Skipper.”

  “The air wing’s going to start distracting them here real soon now. And when it comes time for the major show, there’ll be two out here. But they won’t, as we’ve had to, be going in blind because we’ll have pathfindered the way for them.”

  Zhong Submarine Mao Zedong, Mar Furioso, north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova

  Captain Liu leaned back in his chair, calmly reading the Analects. It was one among a number of traditional works that enjoyed special status in Zhong society. A seaman showed up at the captain’s open door, bowed as deeply as the cramped space would permit, and said, “Sir, sonar has something weird. The watch officer requests your presence on . . .”

  The seaman never quite finished, as Liu had the book closed on “weird,” and was pushing past the seaman on “presence.”

  The watch officer was an up-and-comer, well-connected at the imperial palace. Somewhat to Captain Liu’s surprise, Senior Lieutenant Kuang had actually proven to be—if a little too elegant for comfort—also intelligent, competent, and diligent.

  Who would have expected this from the bowels of the imperial hierarchy? The captain had wondered. Is nothing sacred? Is there nothing we can depend on?

  “Captain,” said Kuang, pointing to the plotting table, “we’ve had three . . . plonks. Not quite overhead. Here, here, and here, sir.”

  Liu refrained from asking if there were any ships nearby to account for the plonks. The plotting table showed there were not.

  “Aerially dropped somethings, of course,” judged Liu, “but what?”

  “They hit the water like bombs, Captain,” Sonar said. “But . . . no booms? If they were bombs, there should have been a sea-shaking kaboom.”

  “Mines?” asked Liu.

  “It’s possible, of course, sir,” said Kuang. “But one expects a pattern with mines or destructors. There was no pattern here.”

  “No pattern yet,” Liu corrected.

  “Yes, of course you are right, sir. Not yet. Should we change position?”

  Liu looked as the chart again, noted again that Mao Zedong was in a cut in the escarpment, as good a position as one might hope for, then answered, “No. I think that’s what they’re trying, to spook us out of our position. But this is too good a spot to give up lightly. No . . . we stay here for now.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kuang, doubtfully.

  FSS Oliver Rogers, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  T
he Rogers had three huge advantages over the Zhong Dynasty-class boats. One was the sheer sophistication and power of its sonar. Nothing else could match it. Another was its own quietness, which allowed it to take full advantage of its sonar. The third was a crew, to include the sonarmen, of exceptional experience and ability.

  “It was a big fucking rock, Skipper,” said Sonarman Lester. “Or concrete. Rather they all were. And all were inert, in any case.”

  Meredith asked, “How can you tell?”

  “Combination of things, sir. One, the sound it made entering the water. Streamlined, yes, but not quite like a bomb or mine or destructor. Metal is different from rock is different from metal with explosive inside. Another, density, which affected the speed at which it fell. It fell with the speed of a rock. Third, the sound it made when it hit bottom. Not sure how to explain it except as being ‘dead,’ sir. Like a rock. But, since nobody is likely to go to the trouble of carving a rock to sound like a bomb, I’m going with cast concrete.”

  “Trying to scare off the Zhong then,” the captain said.

  “Intel analysis and estimates are above my rating, Skipper. I can say it wasn’t anything live. And I can say they’re not getting close enough to the Zhong to really scare off anybody.”

  “Certain?” asked the captain, with his left eyebrow raised.

  “Oh, c’mon, sir; you know nothing’s a hundred percent in this. But I’m pretty sure.”