“Was that the ship announcing system?” he asked Lo.
“What did it say?”
“Sir,” Lo Sun huffed, his own air low, “it said, ‘The reactor is in the power range.’ We’re being fried right now—”
“Get a hold of yourself. First,” Chu spat.
At the hatch-dogging mechanism, he leaned far over the chrome wheel, putting his face down to the hub.
There a circular chrome ring surrounded the wheel shaft where it entered the hatch bearing — but only from the top did it look like a ring. On the right side a small protrusion extended from it, a small nipple. Chu felt the nipple, moving his fingers slowly around the outside of it. On the other side of the nipple was a set of gear teeth ground into the shaft of the dogging wheel, and pushed into the gear teeth was a single protrusion of metal from the ring. It was a simple mechanical interlock. The hatch wasn’t chained and padlocked; it was just interlocked to avoid inadvertent opening from vibrations of the ship.
All he had to do was pull up on the nipple and disconnect the key of the ring from the gear teeth of the shaft, and the wheel would be free to rotate. He turned the wheel clockwise, as if to shut the hatch, freed the ring key from the teeth, pulled up the locking-ring nipple, then turned the wheel counterclockwise. The wheel spun rapidly as if oiled that very morning.
The hatch dogs unlatched, the wheel spinning quickly, until the hatch was ready to be opened, outward toward the forward compartment. Suddenly their situation had changed. No longer were they fighting for their survival, running from a nuclear reactor about to cook them like mice in a microwave oven, but were now about to assault and capture a foreign warship. The difference was startling. They were about to change from prey to hunters in an instant.
Chu had to restrain himself from pushing the hatch open and bolting for the safety of the shielded compartment.
He had to prepare the men, ready their weapons, and ready himself to attack. It would take only a second, but it was a second he couldn’t afford to let slip by. He turned his back to the hatch, and eyed the men steadily while he grabbed his AK-80 and dropped his air bottles.
The men, just as panicked as he had been, immediately realized what he was doing. Discarding their air bottles, they put in their earphones to their VHF radios, strapped on their boom microphones. Without saying a word, he looked quickly at each of his men, then turned back around.
He put his hand on the hatch, ready to charge into the middle level. On the other side a half dozen armed officers of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force could be waiting for him. His heart rate climbed, his breathing coming rapidly. There was no turning back now.
* * *
Commander Suruki Gama felt a sickness settle in his stomach like a cold rock. What he’d expected to be the most eventful day in his life — the maiden voyage of the Rising Sun-class submarine fleet — was in fact eventful, but in a hideously twisted way.
Perhaps it was the way the day had begun. The phone call that had awakened him at one o’clock in the morning started the day. The Second Captain computer system with its female human voice interface called him to tell him the status of the submarine. “Automatic sequence notification for Captain Gama. Please authenticate.”
The voice would repeat those words over and over until Gama spoke his rank and name. The call reported that the reactor was critical. It took Gama twenty minutes to fall back asleep. The two o’clock call reported that the reactor was at operating temperature. At three a.m. the steam plant was up and functional. At four the ship was on internal power, being divorced from shore power. At five a.m., with dawn’s light seeping into the bedroom from a part in the curtains, the alarm clock buzzed insistently, and Gama, enraged and sick from the sleepless night, picked up the clock and hurled it across the room.
He had arrived at the pier and gone to the plateglass windows of the concourse pier building overlooking the submarine tied up at the berth below. SS-403 was the hull number of his Rising Sun-class attack submarine.
Gama had been given the opportunity to name the ship himself, and in line with the orders of fleet headquarters that the Rising Sun class be named after natural phenomena, Gama had given SS-403 the name Arctic Storm.
There was something deeply important in christening an oceangoing ship, and this name resonated with Gama, for reasons beyond the grasp of his conscious mind.
The ship was a stubby-cylinder, the hull extremely wide compared to conventional nuclear-submarine designs, and relatively short in length. The fin protruded starkly from the hull, its shape rounded and tapered aft, and it jutted impossibly high above the vessel, the fin height roughly equal to the diameter of the hull itself.
Aft, the rudder was an X-shape, the surfaces of the X at once rudder and elevator plane. Other than the forward hatch opening and the windows set into the forward edge of the fin, the hull was smooth and unmarked, its skin slick like that of a shark, the material a sonar-evading foam coating over high-tensile steel.
After he had met with his first officer and spoken to the Second Captain computer system. Admiral Tanaka, the fleet commander, had come aboard, greeting Gama warmly, then leaving without saying much. Gama looked after him, knowing that the old man had lost his only son in the American blockade battle. At that point Gama went to the surface control space on top of the fin, and he and his first officer had taken Arctic Storm to sea.
A hundred kilometers south, Gama submerged the Arctic Storm to a depth of a hundred meters. Five hours later, the ship was taken through her paces, a highspeed, maximum-depth run, including a torpedo-evasion maneuver when the ship was under the control of the Second Captain system. The hull groaned from the pressure of the depth, the deck rolling deeply through the turns. A single tenth of a degree of control surface-angle error potentially could put the ship below crush depth, where the weight of the water above would rupture the hull like a steamroller crushing an egg.
An hour after that the ship had come to mast-broach depth to connect with Yokosuka headquarters for the video conference linking each ship’s captain to Admiral Tanaka. It was then that the nightmare had begun.
The reactor had been tripped. Gama had broken his video connection and run to the control room. Strapping himself into the command console’s cocoon-like wraparound panels, he investigated why the ship had lost the reactor. To his back, his chief mechanical officer insisted on starting the emergency diesel, but Gama held him off, equally insistent that they find out what was going on. Finally he traced the problem to the after escape trunk hatch relay, which made no sense. The loss of electrical power from losing the reactor had killed the video surveillance system, and by the time it was back up, the trunk appeared dry, yet the lower hatch had registered being opened and then shut.
Meanwhile the ship began to behave oddly, acting as if the vessel was heavy aft. After three minutes of interrogating the Second Captain, the computer finally reported a sudden addition of weight near the X-tail rudder minutes before the shutdown. That weight had been added over the exact location of the after escape hatch.
Fumio Sugimota, Gama’s first officer, had gone white, saying that it must be a DSRV, a deep-submergence rescue vehicle, that had added the weight. At first Suruki Gama had disagreed with him. The thought of some sort of commando force trying to take the ship was ludicrous.
But then the video camera on the steam module middle level revealed what looked like a large group of frogmen assembled at the forward hatch, all of them carrying large machine pistols. In what was seeming like a dream, he found himself giving rapid orders to prepare to fight off an invasion of his submarine.
“Ship Control Officer, take the deck,” Gama ordered Lieutenant Jintsu at the ship-control console. Releasing his five-point harness, he tossed his headset to the deck and hurried out of the room.
As Gama dashed aft along the wood-lined passageway, the Second Captain’s voice rang out throughout the compartment, “The reactor is self-sustaining.” That meant the chief mechanical off
icer had recovered the nuclear reactor. Simultaneously the fans came on, their deep bass reverberating overhead, the ducts blowing frosty gusts into Gama’s sweat-soaked hair. At least one casualty was over.
Halfway down the passageway toward Gama’s stateroom, a few steps from the ladder to the middle level, he saw his stateroom door slam open and his three most senior officers burst from the room. Sugimota was in the lead, carrying an R-35 automatic rifle in each hand, as if he’d known Gama would come. Without a word Sugimota handed over one of the rifles and then followed Gama down the steep staircase to the middle level.
In contrast to the upper level’s functionality, the middle level was more lavishly furnished. Bright crystal light fixtures protruding from the bulkheads near the overhead shone down on polished wood grain paneling and carpeting with a vine and leaf pattern on a blue field.
The bottom of the stairway emerged into the centerline passageway. On the right, a row of doors opened onto the officers’ staterooms. The doors on the left led to the recreational center — the galley and messroom, officers’ conference room, and exercise area. The passageway continued aft to the compartment bulkhead, dead-ending at a hatch to the steam compartment. The hatch on this side was covered with wood paneling, disguising its presence.
Gama paused, aware that he was at a severe disadvantage, despite the fact that defending a piece of territory was easier than attacking it. He thought back to his days as a midshipman, his cross-training with the Self-Defense Force, dashing through a forest with a helmet, dark green facial camouflage, an R-35 automatic rifle in his hand. The whole drill had seemed like a childish game of playing soldier. So it felt now, except his stomach was churning with anxiety — anxiety that he would lose his command, the ship he’d been entrusted, the trillion-yen miracle machine for which he held absolute responsibility.
That, and fear he was about to get killed.
Gama fought to clear his mind, to flush away such negative thoughts. No matter what, he would conduct himself as a commanding officer, the ship’s captain.
His next order was made with a deep voice, hard as steel, without a single tremor. “First, stand by the hatch to the steam module. Navigator, take the doorway of stateroom three. Ops Officer, you take the doorway to the messroom. I’ll help Sugimota. When these men come in, all of you shoot low. They’ll come in crawling, expecting you to aim high. Everyone clear?”
The others were suddenly reassured. Off they ran to their tasks, unaware of the struggle Gama was fighting inside.
Lieutenant Commander Umigiri, the young navigator, looked at him with narrowed eyes, any fear he was feeling masked. Gama frowned at him, surprised that the youth could exhibit such self-control. “Sir, what if these are our men, sent on an exercise by Admiral Tanaka to test us?”
“Impossible,” Gama spat, continuing aft with Sugimota. “I’d have been briefed on it. No more discussion. Everyone, take your safeties to the off position. Here they—”
* * *
Chu was about to shove the hatch open when a speaker overhead suddenly blasted out a female Japanese voice.
“The reactor is self-sustaining.”
“What did she say?” Chu asked Lo, but in the next moment he already knew. The eerie quiet of the ship was replaced by a booming roar, coming from the overhead.
Chu realized the air conditioning was coming back on.
“The reactor is back on-line,” Lo said, glancing over.
“Hold it, men,” Chu said quietly. Defenders might already be coming, so it would be best to enter the space prepared. “Weapons at ready. Insert on my mark… three, two—”
Chu was amazed to discover that he fully expected to die. Never before, not even when he had ejected from the exploding wreck of his Yak over Go Hai Bay, had he ever thought he was anywhere near death. But now he could feel it, just on the other side of this hatch.
Beyond was not some uncaring darkness but an animated spirit, ready to take him. It was as if a voice had trumpeted into his skull: Chu Hua-Feng is a dead man.
With that thought he became filled with violent fury, anger at himself, at this fouled-up mission, at the killers of his father, at the Japanese, and at life itself. The anger was like a fireball that burned him from the inside. He sneered viciously, baring his teeth.
A furious scream erupted from his lips the instant before he smashed the hatch open with an explosive thrust.
He surged into the compartment, his weapon lowered, the silenced rounds bursting from his pistol.
* * *
Just before the hatch, Fumio Sugimota lifted his R-35 rifle, his index finger just barely brushing the trigger. The rifle’s safety was off, the clip loaded, a round in the chamber.
Suddenly the hatch exploded outward at him with a speed he never thought possible for such a heavy device.
With iron force it smashed him in the forearm and spun him around. Even before he could register the snap of his bone breaking, the hatch smacked into the wall of the passageway, then rebounded from the bulkhead rubber stop and cracked into his face, shattering his nose.
He had the briefest impression of figures standing inside the open hatchway. One of them let loose a rasping, phlegm-laced war whoop. Just before the hatch swung back in his face, he tried to raise the weapon to fire it.
He did not hear the thump of the AK-80 firing in automatic mode, the supersonic crack of four 9-mm heavy-grain rounds.
He didn’t feel the bullets as they pierced his chest, his upper arm, upper back, lower back. It seemed as if he were pushed, hard, back into the hatch, and then he had the strangest sensation of floating, his body suddenly boneless and unable to support his weight. He was falling in slow motion toward the deck, and as he fell he looked at the intricate pattern set into the carpet, repeating dull-colored interlacing vines and leaves. He’d never really noticed before, but it suddenly seemed fascinating as he plunged toward it. The pattern expanded rapidly and vibrated as he bounced once on the deck, then stopped moving.
He kept watching the vines and the leaves, amazed at how interesting the pattern was as a redness became added to it, a sort of paint or liquid spreading over the pattern. At the same time he noticed that he was cold, as if lying outside in the snow. The red then became a sort of grayish black, the dirty green of the vine a shade of light gray. The gray shades, synchronized, began to become darker together, the picture fading as if from a television screen that had lost its power, the view becoming dark black. At first the black was shiny, but then the shimmer began to dim until there was nothing but the dull liquid blackness, and the liquid gave way to vapor, until the blackness was nothing and he was surrounded by nothing and there was nothing.
* * *
The door crashed aside, taking much more effort than Chu had expected.
Then he saw that the hatch had spun a Japanese officer against the wall. Still screaming, Chu turned briefly toward the officer, his AK-80 pistol smoothly arcing as well. He squeezed the trigger just for a fraction of a second, enough for the weapon to cough out four rounds at the upper body of the Japanese man. A line of bullet holes popped red dots on his orange coveralls.
Instinctively the arc of the gun swung back to the only other man in the passageway. Chu had a split-second impression of a slender man, also in orange coveralls, with multiple patches and insignia on his uniform, holding an automatic rifle with both hands, the weapon aimed at Chu’s knees. Chu’s trigger, almost of its own volition, squeezed, firing three rounds. Bright red blood sprayed onto the man’s torso. At first he spun a half turn, but then froze. Chu’s sense of time had dramatically dilated with the adrenaline, and the man’s collapse to the deck took what seemed like an hour. Chu didn’t wait, he charged the man, still only a half lungful into his scream of fury. It was Chu’s push more than the bullet wounds that dropped the man to the deck.
* * *
Suruki Gama looked up and saw his worst nightmare.
The hatch flew open so violently that Gama was sure a hand grenad
e had gone off, yet the explosion sounded strange, an angry human scream, a shriek straight from the bowels of Hell. The opening hatch pushed aside Sugimota as if he were a doll, slamming him into the bulkhead.
A tall, thin phantom, covered from head to toe in black, burst through the opening. His mouth was open, his red tongue stark against his white teeth. A glaringly bright light shone from his thick chest, the glint from it momentarily blinding Gama.
Behind the phantom stood several other men in black, all clutching machine pistols. With that realization Gama raised his R-35 to aim at the invader’s chest. Before he could fire, a hot razor sliced into him. Bright red arterial blood spurted from the right side of his chest. Gama watched several droplets of the blood fly up and outward, gliding gracefully toward the bulkhead, where they splattered, and Gama realized his view now was completely filled by the bulkhead. Somehow the entire room, the entire ship, had spun around, and the men from the pantry were gone, leaving him to a blood-splashed wall of wood.
The scream continued, and Gama felt something — a truck perhaps — crash into him. He plummeted to the deck, the feeling of heat deep in his right side insistent.
It took quite a while to fall to the deck. As the carpeted deck came up to meet him, the room swiveled until the deck was vertical, turning what had been the deck to a wall. Gama stayed glued to that wall, oddly not sliding toward the pantry.
Sounds now, thumping, boots on carpeting, shaking the deck where his right ear rested. Coughing sounds, whooshing noises — bullets, he thought. Finally the scream from the first invader ended, replaced by short staccato whimpers from other men, one coming from somewhere overhead, the second from behind him. The thumping noises continued. He thought he saw a boot, close in his vision, dull black, no laces… he stared at it without blinking.
A hand on his cheek, the fingers blunt, coarse, warm, pulling his face over. The world swirled by, rotating around him. What was once the overhead of the compartment came into view. A black unfocused shape crouched beside him, the shape possessing two eyes, a slash of a mouth.
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