Deep Sound Channel

by Joe Buff

  "Torpedo is course-correcting," Sessions said, "once more on a constant bearing off our stern."

  "It didn't work," Jeffrey said. He glanced at a chronometer. "That torpedo should have exhausted all its fuel already, even with not pinging till just now. The Axis must have an improved mod in the field. Useful Intel if we live to share it."

  "What's range to the torpedo?" Jeffrey said.

  "Eight thousand yards," Bell said.

  "Sonar," Jeffrey said, "put your broadband on the speakers." A harsh screaming filled the CACC, gradually getting louder, the last incoming torpedo. Mad hissing and rumbling filled the background, the warheads that had already gone off. There was a steady sharp hiss also,

  Challenger's own flow noise. The Axis fish's pinging was too high-pitched for the human ear.

  "Sonar," Jeffrey said, "can you clean that up and say what else is happening out there?" Sessions tapped his keyboard and spoke to his senior chief. "Sir, we're getting intermittent passive contact on something on the surface, assess it as Sierra 1. Best guess it's all their bilge and fire-fighting pumps."

  "Sounds like we really hurt them, Captain," Bell said.

  "But we didn't sink them," Jeffrey said. "Is Sierra 1 in motion?"

  "Hard to be sure with all the reverb," Sessions said, "but we have enough slant separation over the camoufletted blast zones to drive a TMA."

  "Good," Jeffrey said. "Fire Control, what's the dot stack tell you?"

  "Sierra 1 is stationary, Captain," Bell said.

  "Well done!" Morse said. "A mobility kill and fire and flooding damage too."

  "Let's just see how we make out," Jeffrey said as he glanced at a sonar speaker, then tried to ignore the constant swelling screaming from outside. "What's torpedo range?"

  "Seven thousand yards," Bell said.

  "It's almost surely set for active-sonar proximity fuzing," Jeffrey said. "We can't suppress our echo signature this close, our back end's too complex a profile."

  "If I were them, Captain," Bell said, "I'd program it to blow four thousand meters from us. Forty-four hundred yards."

  Jeffrey nodded. "If it doesn't drain its fuel tanks soon, we've had it." He grabbed the 7MC. "Maneuvering, more speed. Push it to a hundred twelve percent."

  "Range six thousand yards!" Bell said. "It's turning into our baffles!"

  "Helm," Jeffrey said, "left standard rudder, no course specified."

  "Left standard rudder, no course specified, aye," Meltzer said.

  "At least this way we'll take a glancing blow off our port quarter," Jeffrey said.

  "The floor drops off in that direction," Ilse said.

  "Good," Jeffrey said. "Helm, ten degrees down bubble smartly, head for sixteen thousand feet. We'll get more counterpressure against the warhead and more speed as our hull compresses."

  "Ten degrees down bubble smartly, sixteen thousand feet, aye."

  "Range still closing," Bell shouted. "Any second now!"

  "Phone Talker," Jeffrey said, "collision alarm and rig for depth charge. Sonar, deactivate the hydrophones again.'

  The CACC grew quieter but the torpedo could be heard outside the hull. Its screaming stopped.

  The weapon detonated with a stupendous crack and several console screens went dead. Challenger's stern dipped as COB and Meltzer struggled for control. Newly replaced fluorescent light bulbs shattered and the fixture covers failed, scattering broken glass. Insulation fell from the overhead and another freshwater pipe exploded. Smoke came out of one of the sonar workstations, flames crackled in the forward passageway, and high-voltage circuits arced and popped. The air took on a stinking bite as fire fighters struggled with CO, and foam.

  Jeffrey tried to read his damage control display, but the vibrations were so bad he couldn'

  t focus. He realized he'd been deafened—there was a painful throbbing in his head amid an eerie silence. The black smoke made him cough; it wasn't clearing. The CACC crew began to don their emergency breathing masks, plugging the tubes into the air lines in the overhead.

  The insane shaking died down enough for Jeffrey to make out his screens, but incoming reports were fragmentary. Challenger's reactor had done an autoscram from the shock. It would take a couple of minutes for Willey's people to safely restart, assuming there wasn'

  t other, fatal damage. Meanwhile the boat was drifting, getting by on batteries. COB had to try maintaining depth by pumping variable ballast alone, an excruciatingly slow process against a head of 16,000 feet of water.

  Jeffrey's hearing came back gradually. "Fire Control," he shouted, "status of the torpedo room?"

  "More misting round the tube eight door," Bell said. "Tubes three and seven appear to be operational."

  "Reload tubes one and five with Mark 48s!" Jeffrey said. "Navigating, get our gyros reset! Sonar, reactivate the hydrophone arrays!"

  Morse put his hand on Jeffrey's shoulder. "Don't," Morse yelled. "You don't know what shape Voortrekker's in, how many nuclear torpedoes she has left."

  "We'll have four ADCAPs in the tubes," Jeffrey said.

  Morse ducked to keep his head below the thickening smoke. "Unless we scored a firepower kill, we'll be defenseless against more A-bombs once we show ourselves."

  "She's dead in the water up there," Jeffrey yelled. "So are we right now."

  "We'll do a stationary rise and get in range on emergency diesel if we have to." Morse shook his head firmly. "If their AT rockets are still functional, the chance of our success isn't worth a damn. It isn't worth the risk to this ship and her crew and intel payload!"

  "Sir," Sessions shouted, "Sierra 1 has started active pinging!"

  "Any torpedoes in the water?" Jeffrey said. "Impossible to tell yet."

  "And remember Axis air support from the Prince

  Edward Islands," Ilse said, pointing to Meltzer's nav display for emphasis.

  "Enemy Mach 2 nuclear-capable fighter-bombers are only minutes away," Bell said.

  "Captain," Sessions yelled, "I'm getting acoustic coupling through the air/ocean interface, sonic booms. Assess many inbound aircraft bearing one three zero true!"

  "You mean just let him go?" Jeffrey said.

  "Captain Fuller," Morse said, "don't get emotionally involved now. We've more than accomplished what we came for, Umhlanga Rocks and everything else."

  "Sir," the phone talker said, "Lieutenant Willey reports pump-jet turned over well on the battery, full propulsion restart in one minute."

  Way to go, Engineering.

  "Sir," Bell said, "you turned a standoff here from a loss into a win. You cleared the pathway home." Jeffrey glanced at Ilse. She nodded ruefully.

  "But . . . ," Jeffrey said.

  "Jeffrey," Morse said. "To lay Voortrekker up for even a month or two at this point in the war is a vital achievement for the Allied cause."

  Jeffrey sighed. He ran his hand over his face and looked at Ilse again. Again she nodded, giving him a crooked smile.

  "There'll be other chances," Ilse said. "Jan will wait."

  "Remember Jutland was a draw, Captain," Bell said, "but a strategic victory for the Allies in World War I."

  Jeffrey hesitated. "Very well, Commodore. Very well, XO." He glanced down at his console screens. Power had come back already and Challenger's speed was building. The smoke began to dissipate.

  Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Helm, maintain flank speed. Left full rudder, make your course one five three. We'll turn around, jink randomly, and use the extended sonar whiteout to disappear inside the Fracture Zone."

  Van Gelder and ter Horst glanced up at the sky. Waves slapped and sloshed against the hull. Friendly aircraft flew overhead in escort as Voortrekker chugged along on her emergency diesel. Occasionally other aircraft dropped more parachute-retarded nuclear depth bombs at a safe distance, all camouflets in the abyss, hoping to hit Challenger. But it was obvious they were shooting blind, just as Voortrekker had been when she fired another salvo at the enemy sub once stabilized on the surface. That last torpe
do in the first bunch had been the clue, blowing when its fuel would've run out but on a divergent course, as if chasing a sonar contact that got away. A bottom search would tell for sure—

  they knew exactly where to look for wreckage—but ter Horst said he wasn't optimistic.

  "Things are falling into place now, Gunther," ter Horst said.

  "Captain?" Van Gelder said.

  "You were right, you see, about there being just the one blast at Durban. It's all too neat. It wasn't a coincidence.,,

  "I don't quite follow you, sir."

  "Challenger," ter Horst said, "and an A-bomb. . . . The bomb was designed to get our boats to sortie in a hurry, and it worked. That's why Challenger was laying mines just there and then. They found a way past all the armor in the bluff, and a way around our hostage strategy, by clever indirection."

  "Except their timing was off, sir," Van Gelder said. "The explosion came a bit too soon, or Challenger too late."

  "Yes. . . . And you say it went off at Umhlanga Rocks?"

  "I thought so, Captain, right at the peak of the headland. It would be easy enough to find out, from the crater."

  Ter Horst nodded. "I believe there was a secret installation on that hill. I know there was a missile bunker there."

  "You think they're all connected somehow, Captain?"

  "I do, Gunther, I do. The bomb may have been sabotage from within, coordinated with the so-called Allies. The fallout mix will tell. .. . And how else could they have known precisely where the daily safety corridor lay?"

  "It doesn't seem possible," Van Gelder said. "We have such tight security everywhere."

  "Treason," ter Horst said. "There'll have to be a formal investigation of it all. . . . Voortrekker will be laid up for a while—I'll use my influence to get to chair the board personally."

  "While we're in dry dock, Captain, in the bluff?"

  "Yes," ter Horst said. "And when I find out who among our people were responsible, I'll put the nooses round their necks myself!"

  Two ex-French Mach 2 interceptors roared by low off the bow, like arrowheads with their canard winglets under the canopies—under the winglets the aircraft now wore Iron Crosses. They vanished over the horizon, then a messenger popped his head out of Voortrekker's bridge hatch—Van Gelder resolved some minor matters quickly.

  "Saved by a bunch of fly-boys, Gunther," ter Horst said a minute later. "Who'd have ever thought?"

  "We did our best, sir," Van Gelder said. "The important thing is that we live to fight another day."

  Ter Horst sighed. "This engagement was like in their Civil War, the battle between the world's first ironclads, Monitor and Merrimack. They fought each other to a standstill, then withdrew, and not for lack of courage on either side."

  "Virginia, sir, not Merrimack," Van Gelder said. "The South renamed her when she was rebuilt."

  Ter Horst stared into space, then set his jaw. "I underestimated the Americans. I took much too much for granted, and I fell for their clever tricks. So be it, but I swear to you, no longer. Next time we meet Challenger, she and her crew will die." NIINDELO, SAO VICENTE ISLAND,

  REPUI3LIC OF CAPE VERDE,

  10 DAYS LATER

  The music blaring off the crowded patio was a kind of reggae with an African beat. The rhythm stirred Jeffrey's blood as he gazed across the narrow strait to Santo Antao, the next island in the volcanic chain, the 6,500foot-high peak of Tope de Coroa bristling with antennas and missile sites. He glanced at his watch and his heart started pounding—

  thirteen hundred local, finally. Jeffrey turned back toward the hotel. Ilse was coming.

  "Hi," she said. "I got your message." She wiped some loose strands of hair from her forehead. "I ate already, but . . ."

  Jeffrey smiled. "So how were your first two days of so-called R&R?"

  "More like an interrogation than a debriefing," Ilse said.

  "Mine too," Jeffrey said. "Let's find some quiet." They walked together closer to the edge of the sheer cliff. The trade wind blew steadily from the northeast, as it always did. The weather was sunny and warm, as usual in Cape Verde. The slopes around were covered with sparse desertlike scrub. There were grains of sand beneath Jeffrey's feet, blown all the way from the Sahara, from four hundred miles east across the equatorial Atlantic.

  "I'm sort of surprised they didn't fly you out immediately," Jeffrey said. He checked over his shoulder, then whispered, "You know, so you could work on the archaea."

  "Others are at least as qualified as me, and they're U.S. citizens. They told me I have such a low travel priority it might be a couple of weeks before there's an open seat."

  "Strange," Jeffrey said. "Clayton's gang's supposed to be on the next flight out today." Ilse shrugged. "They gave me chits to use at the hotel. I don't even have any money. . . . I guess they need to drain Otto dry first, before I'd have much to do." "Makes sense," Jeffrey said. Then he just looked at Ilse. "They're playing Christmas music," she said.

  "The words sound like some kind of Creole," Jeffrey

  said.

  "It's called Crioulo, actually," Ilse said, "made from Portuguese and some African languages. There're bits of Portuguese in Afrikaans too. I can make out words here and there."

  Jeffrey hesitated. "So what are your plans now, Ilse?" "Sleep for about three days," she said.

  "That's when I have to go," Jeffrey said.

  "You mean with the ship?"

  "Yeah," Jeffrey said. "We're being sent to dry dock on the East Coast. I'm not sure where yet, which yard or base. Repairs, upgrades. . . ."

  "How's Captain Wilson?" Ilse said.

  "Better," Jeffrey said. "I visited him this morning in his hotel room. They won't let him off the premises till we sail. Mandatory rest. He still gets terrible headaches."

  "And your navigator?" Ilse said.

  "They can do amazing things now with electrode implants and mechanical assists, they told me."

  "Good luck to him," Ilse said. "Where's your submarine now?" Jeffrey turned to the sea. At the base of the cliff the strong surf pounded and creamed. " Out there, somewhere," he said. "Deep and safe. We submerged as soon as we'd reammunitioned, and epoxied the bow sphere."

  "You know where she is?" Ilse said.

  "I do, but if I told you I'd have to shoot you."

  Ilse giggled. "And you're commuting in the ASDS?"

  "Yeah," Jeffrey said. "It's like our gig or something. Wasn't designed for that, but it comes in handy."

  Ilse looked across the water, azure blue like the sky.

  "Listen," Jeffrey said, "I'm totally buried in maintenance and paperwork, but I was, uh, I was wondering, I could carve out a few hours tonight, if you wanted to have dinner, just the two of us."

  Before Ilse could respond, Jeffrey noticed someone approaching from the patio. He cursed under his breath.

  The woman wore a Royal Navy officer's uniform, like everyone else here lacking insignia and badges, for security. "Excuse me," she said. "Are you Commander Jeffrey Fuller?"

  "Uh, yeah," Jeffrey said.

  "I'm Lieutenant Kathy Milgrom." She reached out her hand and Jeffrey shook it. Since Jeffrey was uncovered—hatless—they didn't salute. "Here are my orders, sir," Kathy said.

  Jeffrey held the papers against his chest in case some satellite might be watching, and he read. Immediately he said, "Oh God. You're one of them."

  Kathy nodded brightly. Jeffrey kept reading. It seemed that after eighteen months helping see HMS Dreadnought through the final construction and operational readiness phases, and upon the recommendation of Commodore Richard Morse, RN, Lieutenant Kathy Janet Milgrom was being seconded to USS Challenger. With the concurrence of higher authority in the United

  States Navy, she would serve in a capacity to be determined by Challenger's executive officer at his discretion. It was noted Ms. Milgrom was expert in sonar. Jeffrey did a double take, then saw Kathy read his face.

  "Yes, sir," Kathy said. "Commodore Morse and my father served together, in
Conqueror during the Falklands crisis."

  "Well," Jeffrey said, "I suppose now I should say Welcome aboard." Ilse broke in, "I didn't know they had any women crew on nuclear submarines."

  "It's supposed to be an experiment," Kathy said. "It's very controversial." Jeffrey caught her giving Ilse a wink. Ilse seemed highly unamused.

  "You've talked to Captain Wilson?" Jeffrey said.

  "Yes, sir," Kathy said. "For just a moment. He told me your ship's had a bit of experience with temporary mixed-gender manning, pardon my pun. He didn't give me details."

  "Plenty of time for that later on, I suppose," Jeffrey said.

  "I'm sorry to interrupt," Kathy said to Ilse. She turned back to Jeffrey. "I just wanted to quickly introduce myself, sir, before I went down to the ASDS in the harbor and caught the taxi, so to speak."

  "I'm glad you did," Jeffrey said distractedly. "We'll get you started on settling in later this afternoon." "Good-bye," Kathy said to Ilse. Kathy left.

  "Urn," Jeffrey said. "Sorry, Ilse, I, I, I sort of lost my whole train of thought there."

  "I don't know, Jeffrey. I'm still so, so confused about how I feel, about what I did back there, that bad place we both went to."

  Jeffrey nodded reluctantly, remembering the lab, those scientists, the A-bomb. "War makes good people

  have to do terrible things sometimes. That doesn't make you a bad person, Ilse. You helped stop something evil."

  Ilse opened her mouth to reply, but a messenger from Challenger dashed up, escorted by an armed guard Jeffrey had never seen before.

  "Sir," the messenger said. "This." He handed Jeffrey the slip and Jeffrey read it to himself, first looking over his shoulder again. A Virginia-class fast-attack boat had been badly damaged in an engagement with two Axis-crewed Rubis-class SSNs near the Azores. Both ex-French boats were assessed destroyed, but the American sub had been forced to bottom on a seamount barely higher than her crush depth. The engineering spaces were flooded and the surviving crew were sheltering forward, without much power or air, and more German subs were closing in. Challenger was ordered to put to sea at once and render all possible assistance to the stricken American boat, including an attempt to rescue the crew using the ASDS, something never tried before in combat.