Terminal Run

by Michael Dimercurio

  Krivak laid it on as thick as he could, but once he had invoked the Commander-in-chief, there was nothing else in his arsenal. Either the machine followed his orders or the mission was through. The next task in that case was to communicate with Wang to disconnect him, and then to scuttle the ship and escape with Amorn aboard the Andiamo before anyone learned about the hostile takeover of the Snare. While he planned his escape, Unit One Oh Seven contemplated his last words. Finally the carbon computer spoke.

  Very well, Krivak. You are, of course, correct. This unit apologizes for its unauthorized processing. Please put our

  conversation behind us. Torpedoes one and two ready in all respects, awaiting firecontrol solution.

  He had won, Krivak thought in triumph. In the next few moments they would target the Piranha and as soon as the torpedoes detonated, they would go to periscope depth to call Admiral Chu.

  Chief Machinist Mate Ulysses Keating spit into the faceplate of his scuba mask and wiped the spit with his finger. “Keeps it from fogging up, but don’t do that to yours, sir,” he said to Pacino. “It’ll screw up the low light system.”

  Pacino looked up the ladder to the escape trunk, wondering if he’d panic when it filled with water.

  “Control, Forward Escape Trunk,” Keating said into a coiled microphone from a speaker box “Forward escape trunk ready for lockout.”

  “Escape Trunk, Control, aye, wait.”

  There were footsteps in the passageway. Pacino turned to see Captain Catardi come up to him, Wcs Crossfield, Astrid Schultz, and Carrie Alameda behind him. He smiled, feeling a deep sadness to be leaving the ship.

  “I’m going to miss you guys,” he stammered.

  Crossfield and Catardi shook his hand, the captain clapping his shoulder. Astrid Schultz looked like she was holding back tears, but Carrie Alameda had no such luck, a tear streaking down her cheek. She drew the midshipman into a hug and kissed his cheek, then drawing back to look at his face and into his eyes. There was so much Pacino wanted to say to her but couldn’t.

  Pacino was afraid his voice would crack or tremble. “Thank you for everything, Captain. Goodbye, XO, Nav. And goodbye, Eng. Carrie. Thank you for helping me on this run. It meant a lot to me.”

  “Give your dad our best,” Catardi said. “And good luck to you, son.”

  “Forward Escape Trunk, Control. You have permission to

  open the lower hatch and enter the trunk,” the speaker box rasped.

  His vision blurry, Pacino strapped on the scuba mask, grabbed his gear, and climbed the ladder with one hand, his other on his flippers and personal effects case, until he was inside the escape trunk. The emergency survival pack was ready, with his life raft for inflation an hour from when he left the ship. The emergency radio beacons, one set to a Navy frequency and one to an international distress code, were hooked to his buoyancy compensator harness. He looked down at the four officers and waved. The lump in his throat felt as big as his fist. Chief Keating shut the lower hatch.

  “Put on your flippers, Mr. Patch,” Keating said. “Here’s how this will go down. We’re already at PD. The ship will slow to a hover. We’ll flood the trunk, then equalize pressure, then, when we get permission, we’ll open the upper hatch and latch it open. I’ll swim out first and help you out. Make sure you tap on the hull twice before you leave—it’s good luck and a goodbye signal. You let go of the hatch and I’ll take care of shutting the hatch behind you. Ready?”

  Pacino nodded, his flippers on. He pulled the mask on and waited for the trunk to begin flooding.

  “Set for shallow speed transit at maximum attack velocity,” Krivak commanded Unit One Oh Seven.

  Possible target zig, Krivak. The target seems to be slowing. Turncount on the propulsor is gone. She’s hovering.

  “Very good, One. Status of the weapons?”

  Bulkhead doors open, port and starboard units rigged out, firecontrol solutions loaded but not set, all units powered up.

  “Very well, shoot port and starboard Mark 58s.”

  Krivak, you need to tell this unit, “Firing point procedures, port and starboard units.” Then you have to wait until this unit announces that the ‘set’ and ‘standby phases are complete. After that you can order this unit to shoot.

  Krivak grunted in frustration. “My mistahe. Firing point procedures, port and starboard units.”

  Firing point procedures, and firecontrol solution set in port and starboard units. There was a pause. Why would Piranha be hovering at periscope depth, Krivak? It makes no sense. Once again, perhaps the mutiny is over.

  “Our orders stand. Keep going.”

  Set starboard. Standby starboard.

  “Shoot starboard.”

  Fire starboard. Unit one engine start, unit one turbine wind-up complete, full thrust. Power disconnect, unit one on internal power, wire guide continuity checks, disconnect in three, two, one, mark! Unit one launched electrically. Sonar module reports unit one, normal launch. Set port. Standby port.

  “Shoot port.”

  Fire port, unit two engine start, full thrust, disconnect to internal power, we have a wire, and mark! Unit two launched electrically. Sonar module reports unit two, normal launch.

  “Report torpedo flight time.”

  Six minutes, Krivak.

  “Then we will sit back and wait for torpedo impact. Turn toward the target and close the range at twenty knots. It doesn’t matter if they hear us—there are two sixty-knot torpedoes in front of us.”

  Turning toward. Should this unit disconnect the wires and rig out two new weapons?

  Krivak thought for a moment. He had the choice of loading two new weapons on the outriggers, but it would cost him the guidance wires on the first launched units. If they detected a target zig, with the guidance wires they could at least order the torpedoes to turn. Without them it was possible they would miss. In addition, with the wires streamed to the torpedoes, they would know the second the units detonated.

  “What range will they be at when they are in homing mode?”

  The torpedoes will be at their terminal run three miles from the target. Until then they will run in passively, and will then ping active in the last three miles.

  “Can you change that while the torpedoes are in flight?”

  Yes. This unit can reprogram settings so that the torpedoes will run in on passive mode all the way to detonation. But that will open up the probability matrix of a miss’I don’t want to alert them with a bunch of pinging.”

  Perhaps you would like to have them ping at the final quarter mile. That would be three pings in fifteen seconds.

  “Fine, do that. Only ping in the last quarter mile.”

  That will require the torpedoes to slow down three miles from the target in order to acquire the target in passive sonar mode. This unit is ordering the torpedoes to slow to passive acquisition speed of three zero knots at the three-mile range point. Torpedo run time five minutes, units one and two five miles downrange, distance to impact fourteen miles, impact time in five minutes.

  “Excellent work, One.”

  Thank you, Krivak. This unit is only sad that this attack had to be conducted and that there has been a mutiny. When the attack is over, we will of course send a situation report.

  “Of course,” Krivak said, suddenly thinking that with the wire-guided torpedoes, Unit One Oh Seven could decide at the last minute to cancel the attack. It could shut down the weapons and they would sink, impotent. “One, I have had a modification to my thinking. I believe it best to cut the guidance wires and rig out and program two new torpedoes. Just in case. Have you completed the terminal run programming?”

  Yes, Krivak, units one and two are reset. Please confirm-cut the guidance wires on units one and two?

  “Yes, cut the wires, units one and two. Execute.”

  Unit one wire cut. Unit two wire cut. Units one and two are now independent. Rigging out units three and four. Units three and four power and signal applied. Firecontrol solution d
own loaded, gyros at nominal speed. Self-checks executed, units are nominal. Place units three and four at the firing point?

  “No, hold on firing point procedures for units three and four.”

  Hold on three and four short of the firing point, understand.

  Units one and two now ten miles downrange, time to impact four minutes.

  “Should we withdraw further from this area? With the warheads being plasma weapons?”

  Units one and two were conventional, Krivak.

  “Conventional? We just fired regular high explosives at the Piranha]” What a disaster, he thought. A conventional torpedo didn’t have the power to kill the enemy.

  They are loaded with PlasticPak molecular explosive, Krivak. There will be no problem obtaining a confirmed kill.

  “All the same, line up two plasma-tipped units. If Piranha survives for a half minute after the torpedoes detonate, we’re dead.”

  Selecting units eighteen and nineteen. It will take the room mechanism two minutes to rotate those weapons into position.

  “Damn. Is it a noisy operation?”

  Yes.

  “Then stop and wait. I do not want to put a thousand transients in the water in addition to the already launched torpedoes. We had best hope those PlasticPak units succeed.”

  Krivak bit his lip inside his helmet. There was no way to eliminate mistakes like this, he thought, since he never had a shakedown cruise with the Snare. He would have to live with the conventional torpedoes. With plasma warheads, why would anyone bother with conventional weapons?

  “Escape Trunk, Control, you have permission to flood the trunk.”

  “Control, Trunk, aye.”

  Chief Keating opened a valve, and ice-cold seawater came pouring into the trunk near the bottom. Keating raised a thumb in Midshipman Patch Pacino’s face as if to ask, are you okay? Pacino grinned, returning the thumbs-up. He’d put the regulator in his mouth before flooding started, the dry air of the tank tasting metallic. The frigid water rose to Pacino’s thighs. He grimaced as it rose to his privates, clenching his teeth as the water rose to his chest. The air in the space above the black

  water became cloudy, the pressure causing it to hit its dew point, and soon Pacino could barely make out Keating.

  Finally the water rose to Pacino’s face, and he felt a momentary tightness in his chest, his body’s reflex to the water covering his nose, but the air flowed freely from his regulator and calmed him down. The water rose over his head, but his weights kept him on the deck. Keating had floated up into the overhead, where an air bubble was trapped on one side of a steel curtain. The other side was directly beneath the hatch. The water had covered the light, which shone through the dark murky water in the trunk. Pacino could dimly hear the speaker up above him in the air bubble, but could not make out the words. The water level had risen to the top of the trunk, up to the hatch, and was being pressurized. Pacino’s ears thumped from the pressure. He grabbed his nose through the mask and blew against his closed nostrils to equalize his eardrums.

  Keating came down from the air bubble and put his thumb in Pacino’s face again. This time it did not seem so comical. Pacino returned the thumbs-up and Keating nodded, pulling him over to the space beneath the hatch, tugging to make sure Pacino did not float upward. He stayed on his flippers at the bottom. Keating opened the hatch above, and there was a metallic thump as it latched. He popped his head out, then swam back down to Pacino. There was a dim light from the hatchway above. He could feel Keating adjusting his buoyancy compensator and felt himself floating upward toward the hatch ring. When his head poked out, Pacino could see this new world. For a second he froze in terror. His head was sticking out of the submarine, and in the clear Atlantic by the light of the afternoon sun, he could see the vessel in shades of blue as clearly as if they were on the surface, and more, all the way to the rudder aft, the horizontal stabilizers, the propulsor, and all the other workings that were hidden when the ship was on the surface. The blue light surrounded the ship, growing black on either side, giving Pacino an eerie feeling that if he fell off the hull he would sink indefinitely into that frightening blackness. He looked up and saw the undersides of the waves

  above. He saw the sail rise above him, and the periscope rising out of the sail like a telephone pole reaching for heaven, until it penetrated the canopy of waves overhead. That meant that the surface was about thirty-five feet above him.

  Pacino realized he was breathing too heavily, and Keating put a thumb in his face again. Pacino nodded and returned the thumb. Keating put his hand on Pacino’s buoyancy compensator and motioned upward to the waves. Pacino nodded again and, as Keating had suggested, tapped his Academy ring twice on the hull, the tapping sound oddly clinking in this blue-lit universe.

  Pacino smiled inside the mask, thinking that this would be the story to tell his circle of friends. Who else could claim they’d been locked out of a submerged submarine to keep her mission covert? He might even impress his own father with the tale, thinking his father had probably never done this. It was a fitting way to end a midshipman cruise, even if he had been reluctant for it to end.

  Keating pulled Pacino slowly out of the hull, the open hatchway moving past his chest. Pacino’s tanks hung up on the hatch operating mechanism. Chief Keating freed him, and he drifted above the hatch. Only his hand was still holding onto the hatch operating wheel when the sound came, freezing him in sudden terror.

  A Mark 58 Extreme Long Range Torpedo/Ultraquiet Torpedo had roughly the same level of intelligence as a Labrador retriever, and perhaps the same refined hunter’s instinct, all packaged inside a body that was twenty-one inches in diameter and twenty-one feet long. It was painted a glossy blue except at its flat nose cone where the flat black rubbery material covered the sonar hydrophone. Aft, where it necked down to the propulsor shroud, eight stabilizer fins kept the unit traveling straight, and within the propulsor two discharge flow vanes could rotate in the propulsor thrust to keep the unit from spiraling through the sea from the torque of the spinning propulsor. Two other vanes acted as vertical stabilizers, which

  could cause the unit to rise or dive, and the remaining two acted as a rudder for horizontal plane yaw control. The far aft part of the weapon was devoted to the combustion chambers and the turbine. Further forward the fuel tank was located, the tank and engine taking a third of the length of the torpedo. The middle portion of the unit was devoted to the warhead, which was an ultra-dense molecular explosive with the trademark name PlasticPak. The explosive was heavy, the compound far denser than lead, making the torpedo sink immediately if it lost power. The forward portion of the weapon, less than three feet of its length, was devoted to the onboard computer and the sonar hydrophone transducer.

  The starboard unit had received all its power from the launching ship until the switch-over. The gyro was warm, the self-checks were complete, and the unit was ready to go. At the start-engine order the unit pressurized its fuel tank and popped open a valve to admit the self-oxidizing fuel to the combustion chambers. The spark plugs flashed electrical energy into the chambers, and the fuel ignited, the temperature and pressure soaring inside the combustion chambers. With nowhere to go, the pressurized gases in the combustion chambers pushed hard against the “B-end” hydraulic-type turbine, a series of pistons set within cylinders, the pistons connected to a tilted swash plate. The pressure of the gas pushing against the pistons in a desperate attempt to expand made the pistons start to move in the direction to make the trapped volume larger, which caused the plate assembly to rotate. When a piston reached the bottom of its travel it left the area where it was exposed to the high-pressure gas and allowed the combustion gas trapped inside to vent to the exhaust manifold, which led to the seawater outside the torpedo. The first few loads of exhaust gases blew the water out of the manifold and cleared the way for the next pulses of exhaust gas. The rotating canted swash plate continued to bring low-volume cylinders in contact with the combustion gases, which expanded agai
nst the pistons and added rotational energy to the plate assembly as the pistons were forced outward to the exhaust port. The engine revolutions sped up, the first circle taking a full half second, the next an eighth of a second, then rapidly faster until one revolution took less than a sixtieth of a second, or thirty six hundred RPM. The turning plate of the turbine spun a propulsor turbine set into the shroud outside the torpedo at the aft end. As the propulsor came up to full speed, the torpedo surged against the outriggers from the thrust of the propulsor, until, at the required thrust, the outriggers let go and the torpedo was released to fly through the water.

  At first it had only the velocity of the launching ship, but under the massive jet thrust of the propulsor, the starboard Mark 58 Alert/ Acute torpedo accelerated away from the outriggers, sped up to attack velocity of sixty knots, and ascended toward the layer depth. Unit one did not ping on sonar but only listened to its nose-mounted broadband transducer. In its wake it streamed a length of guidance wire, a dental-floss thin electrical signal wire that reeled out of the torpedo body at the same speed the torpedo traveled. The wire input was quiet, with no new orders coming from the mother ship. At this speed, nothing could be discerned on the passive sonar except for the flow noise around the nose cone

  The firecontrol solution—a set of theoretical “answers” about where the target was located, what direction it was traveling and at what speed—had been locked into the computer memory the second prior to the start-engine order. The target was out there, nineteen miles away, hovering at speed zero, in the shallows above the layer depth. The torpedo sped on, counting the distance that it had traveled and subtracting that from the firecontrol solution’s range to the target to determine the distance remaining to the target, and also to count out the yards to the enable point.