Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  Tanaka cursed, wondering how one of the torpedoes had managed to get in. Without the Second Captain he was blind, deaf and dumb. And defenseless. Computers?

  They were as unreliable as humans.

  USS Piranha

  “Captain, I think I can do this!” McKilley nearly shouted in triumph. The only problem, Phillips thought, was that by now it was probably too late. The torpedoes in pursuit of the Barracuda were catching up—the detonation of the first-fired Vortex came then, the noise rumbling through the hull, marking the death of the Destiny submarine.

  “XO,” Phillips ordered Whatney, “get ready to recommend a detonation point for the next Vortex so we can put a blast zone around the Nagasaki torpedoes homing on the Barracuda. And bear in mind it would be nice if we could avoid putting a friendly submarine on the bottom.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Attention in the firecontrol team, we’re taking an active bearing and range to the Barracuda so we can put a Vortex out there that can screw up the Nagasakis following her. Carry on.”

  “Captain, Sonar,” from Gambini. “We’re ready.”

  “Go active, Master Chief.”

  “Active, aye sir.”

  The BSY-2 sonar suite was configured so that the spherical array in the nose cone could transmit an active pulse out into the water. The array was capable of putting out so much sonic power that water would actually boil on the surface of the fiberglass nose cone when the pulse went out. Gambini hit the cover of the active key, the switch configured so that no one could just accidentally hit the key, then punched the key. The pulse went out, not as deafening as a torpedo launch or a Vortex ignition, but loud, the sound reverberating throughout the ship. The pulse traveled through the water, going south and reaching out to the USS Barracuda, still running from two Nagasaki torpedoes. The pulse hit the hull of the Seawolfclass submarine, which was wrapped in tiles, anechoic coating especially designed to avoid returning an active sonar pulse. But like any kind of shielding it did not make a return pulse impossible, it simply lowered the intensity of the return pulse.

  The listening spherical array of the BSY-2, quiet since the pulse, strained to listen for the return. Unfortunately the sea around her returned the sound, some from the waves overhead, some from bubbles in the water, a pulse coming back from the Nagasakis, one from the Barracuda, many from the biological content of the water.

  In sonar, Gambini tried to correlate the active return signals the BSY-2 had collected to the passive listening set and the towed array’s narrowband detect of the Seawolfclass ship. There were all three indications at the bearing he knew to be the Barracuda. The range cursor on that one ping return, just a blob on the video screen, read a distance of 7.8 nautical miles.

  “Conn, Sonar, range to Barracuda is sixteen thousand yards.”

  “Go, XO,” Phillips ordered. “Come on, come on!”

  “Aye, sir, recommended Vortex detonation at bearing one seven five, range twelve thousand yards.”

  “Weps, one seven five, twelve thousand yards.”

  “That’s too close. Captain,” McKilley objected. “The blast zone will kill the Barracuda.”

  “So will the Nagasakis. Enter the god damned bearing and range.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Firing point procedures, phantom target. Vortex unit eight.”

  Phillips collected his reports and ordered the Vortex to fire. The ignition again blasted his ears, and as the missile left the ship, he said a silent prayer for the Barracuda.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent

  “Second Captain is reinitialized, sir.”

  “Open tube doors thirteen and fourteen, programmed to the bearing of the launch of that weapon. Get them out on the bearing now, immediate enable, safety interlocks off.”

  “Yes sir,” Mazdai said, flashing through the software displays of the weapon-control consoles of the Second Captain. “Ready to fire.”

  “Tube thirteen, fire.”

  “Thirteen away.”

  “Tube fourteen, fire.”

  “Fourteen away.”

  “Excellent.”

  USS Barracuda

  The ship continued on its run from the Nagasaki torpedoes.

  Pacino and Paully looked at each other. It was grim, the same scenario that Pacino had put Bruce Phillips through.

  There had to be something they could do. Shut down the ship, scram the reactor, emergency blow to the surface, ping active sonar at the Nagasakis, anything. But there was nothing he could do without being in command, and Kane was too intense to reach without shaking him by the shoulders. Besides, if Pacino thought he had a clear course of action that would save the ship, he would be happy to dress down Kane in front of his men, but Pacino knew his guesses were no different than Kane’s. On second thought, all they could do was wait— The detonation erupted into control, throwing bodies forward into the equipment like dice against the border of a crap table. Pacino went into the pole of the number one periscope, shoulder first, ribcage next, knees last. He slipped down to the deck, but the deck had become a bulkhead as the ship rolled far to the left, so far that the decks had become vertical. He slipped down the deckplates, conscious enough to see the blood pooling beneath him, hearing the screams of the wounded and dying, feeling the ship try to right itself, the deck coming back to being a deck, but when it was done with the recovery, he realized that it was not level at all. The ship had taken on a steep down angle, the lights off, the blood running downhill. Barracuda was busy dying.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent The detonation from the northeast—the Nagasaki torpedoes hitting the first Seawolfclass ship—blew the Winged Serpent into a tailspin as the Second Captain lost control of the X-tail aft. The computer then regained control, but Captain Tanaka had been thrown to the deck. He picked himself up and looked up at the sonar console. The Nagasakis launched against the intruder to the north were still tracking. The first target was now gone, its sonar signature lost in the fireball of the Nagasakis. Tanaka smiled. Winged Serpent was winning.

  USS Piranha Phillips learned almost immediately that his prayer should have been said for his own ship, the Piranha.

  “Conn, Sonar, two torpedoes in the water, bearing two zero zero! Both of them Nagasakis.”

  “Shit,” he said. “Attention in the firecontrol team, apparently Target Six isn’t as dead as we thought he was. And I’m not running, I’m shooting.” He paused, noting the eyes of the crew on him. “Firing point procedures, Target Seven, Vortex unit nine.”

  The combat litany rolled through the room again until the Vortex roared off into the darkness of the sea, its destination the Destiny that had caused all the hell.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent

  “Sir,” Mazdai reported from the sonar panel, now that he was back from recovering the Second Captain, “we’ve got another strong broadband contact. This is some kind of torpedo, sir. We’d better evade it.”

  “No, First. The SCM will take care of it. Prepare to engage the Second Captain in ship-control mode. We’ve evaded eight torpedoes before, we’ll evade one more now—”

  “But sir—”

  “Mazdai!” Tanaka was furious, even raising his hand as if to strike Mazdai, but then they both froze, hearing the sound of a submerged rocket motor. There were no words capable of describing the power of that roar as the missile came shrieking in toward the Winged Serpent.

  The Vortex missile detonated, raising the temperature of the vicinity around it to that of the sun’s surface.

  Toshumi Tanaka was vaporized, the atoms of his body so elevated in temperature that they lost their electrons and became a plasma, glowing brilliantly in the depths of the sea.

  Nothing was left of the ship, its steel becoming a plasma of iron and carbon atoms. The Second Captain died along with every living being aboard, the computer able to watch itself die, its consciousness much quicker than the processing of the human mind. It sensed the collapse of the hull, the propagation of the plasma front, the sequent
ial vaporization of its process-control modules, watching the plasma eat it alive, finally howling in electronic pain as the plasma devoured it. There was nothing left then but a cooling bubble of gas and a shock wave of a pressure pulse moving through the ocean. An external observer would never have suspected that one of the world’s greatest designs had passed with nothing left to mark its passage.

  USS Piranha XO Roger Whatney looked up at Phillips.

  “Sir, now that the missile is away, maybe we should evade those Nagasakis.”

  Phillips looked down at Whatney and thought about Pacino’s simulation in Norfolk. He’d be damned if he’d experience in reality what he’d experienced in that simulator, running from the Nagasakis and dying on the run.

  He would die with his boots on, his Vortex battery empty.

  “No, XO. Goddamned if I’m going to run.” Phillips raised his voice to the men in the room. “Attention in the firecontrol party. We’re going to do the same thing for ourselves as we did for the Barracuda. Helm, right two degrees rudder, steady course two three zero, all ahead two thirds.

  Mr. McKilley, give me a phantom target straight ahead, range four thousand yards.”

  “We won’t make it, sir.”

  “Five thousand yards and that’s it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Firing-point procedures, phantom target at five thousand yards bearing two three zero. Vortex unit ten.” The reports rolled in, and Phillips called for the launch. He put his fingers in his ears one last time, feeling sad that the last Vortex was gone. If only the icepack hadn’t eaten up the first missile, he would still have a ticket home.

  USS Barracuda Admiral Pacino pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the conn. He and four other men remained conscious, one of them Paully White, the other the helms man, the third the executive officer, Leo Dobrinski, the fourth, the chief of the watch at the wraparound ballastcontrol panel. The survivors seemed to have picked at random. Dimly Pacino registered that David Kane was collapsed on the deck of the conn. He bent down, fighting his dizziness, and rolled Kane over. Kane’s face was shattered, blood coming out of his nose. Pacino put his face down near Kane’s and heard rattling sucking breathing. Kane must have taken a hit in the chest as well as his face. Pacino lowered him to the deck. The ship was dying, he reminded himself. Save the ship, save the plant, then save the men, his old mentor Rocket Ron Daminski, long dead now at the bottom of the Mediterranean, had taught him back on the Atlanta. It sounded coldblooded but it made sense. A dead ship ensured a dead crew. Karie was wounded and down. Pacino was the senior submarine-qualified officer aboard. Navy Regs said he was now in command. Ironic. All the time since Seawolf had gone down he had missed command, and now it was his—a submarine crippled, drifting, probably flooding and sinking, hit by a Nagasaki torpedo, an enemy Destiny out there to be fought, a ship’s company that probably numbered more dead than living. Get with it, he ordered himself, and stood upright on the conn. “This is Admiral Pacino,” he said in a ringing, probably foolish sounding voice. “I now take command of the USS Barracuda in the absence of her commanding officer in accordance with US Navy regulations.” He paused, wondering if anyone would dispute his claim, but all he saw were the eyes of Paully White and Leo Dobrowski, both ready for orders.

  Pacino reached for the circuit-one microphone. “ALL STATIONS, THIS IS ADMIRAL Pacino. CAPTAIN KANE IS WOUNDED. I HAVE ASSUMED COMMAND. ALL STATIONS REPORT DAMAGE STATUS IMMEDIATELY.” “Paully,” Pacino said, “get the reports off the battle circuits. Helm, keep this damned thing level.” Pacino pulled the 1JV phone from the conn cradle. “Maneuvering,

  Captain. Maneuvering! Pick up if you hear me.” There was nothing.

  “XO,” Pacino said to Dobrowski, “lay aft and get the reactor back up.”

  Dobrowski was gone before he had finished the order.

  “Goddamnit, Paully, what’s on the phones?”

  “There’s no one reporting. Admiral. We’re it.”

  “Get into sonar and see what you can do. Just stay on the phones.”

  White ran into sonar, leaving Pacino with the helmsman and the chief of the watch.

  “Get the battle lanterns going. Chief. Mark ship’s depth.”

  “Sir, we’re at one thousand feet and sinking. Speed is one knot, we’re showing no power and I have all ahead flank rung up.”

  Were any more torpedoes coming in? He was helpless if they were. If the ship sank any deeper he’d have no choice but to surface the ship. He grabbed the 1JV phone to maneuvering.

  “XO, what’s the status?” Pacino shouted into the phone.

  “Sir, it looks like the plant scrammed on shock. I’ll have to do a fast recovery startup but I’m all by myself!

  I can’t do this by myself.”

  “Hold on, I’ll send Commander White aft.”

  “Paully!” Pacino shouted into his headset.

  “Yes sir. Sonar’s down and Omeada’s dead. So are the other guys, there’s blood everywhere—”

  “Paully, get aft now and help out the XO. I want power yesterday, you got it?”

  White rushed out of sonar and ran through control, one hand up at Pacino as he rushed by on the way to the aft compartment.

  “Depth thirteen hundred, sir!”

  Crush depth was coming up in another six hundred feet. If Paully and Dobrowski didn’t get power up by then, he would have to emergency blow, and then it would be all over, the Japanese air force would blow the Barracuda to the bottom. Assuming another Destiny didn’t do the job for them.

  The tenth and last Vortex launched by the Piranha detonated two and a half miles from the firing ship. The blast effect and fireball reached out to the surrounding waters, propagating outward spherically, the immediate blast zone a mass of high-energy steam and plasma, the effect further out a pressure shock wave moving at sonic velocity through the water. The Nagasaki torpedoes launched against the Piranha were on the Piranha side of the Vortex blast zone, the weapons passing each other on the way to their respective targets. But it hardly mattered, the blast and shock passing through the speeding torpedoes, vaporizing the one furthest behind, smashing the structural framing of the torpedo in the lead, the latter self-detonating in an explosion that was designed to rip open an enemy submarine hull but just dissipated outward in the waters of the Pacific.

  The threat of the Nagasaki torpedoes was eliminated, but the effect of the saving Vortex missile had to be endured. The shock wave hit the Piranha like a huge fist. The reactor scrammed, tripped out, the shock of the blast knocking all but a handful of men to the decks and spilling their blood.

  In the aftermath of the battle there were two submarines left, one crippled and sinking, the other shut down and whole but in deep shock. If that were all, the two submarines might have recovered without incident.

  But that was not all.

  Ninety kilometers to the south the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force Destiny II submarine Spring Sunshine made its way northward, its Second Captain reporting on the many explosions from the battle zone.

  CDAPTEB 37

  USS Barracuda

  “Sir, depth is eighteen hundred, a hundred feet from crush depth.”

  Pacino had no choice. He had no reactor, a sinking submarine a hair’s breadth from crush depth and a crew of only a half-dozen functioning men. It no longer mattered who waited for them on the surface or who lurked in the area with armed Nagasaki torpedoes. The choice: Certain death from the pressure of the deep, or possible life from the safety of the surface. Pacino chose the surface.

  “Chief of the Watch, emergency blow forward.”

  The chief stood and reached into the overhead for the chicken switch, the lever that would admit ultrahigh pressure air directly into the main ballast tanks forward.

  He pushed the lever upward, and an immediate loud roaring invaded the silence of the dead control room as the air filled the forward ballast tanks.

  The depth indicator didn’t stop its downward drift, the gag
e now reading 1815 feet, only eighty-five feet above crush depth. Around Pacino the sounds of the metal of the hull protesting and groaning could be heard—the prelude to a hull failure.

  “Chief, emergency blow aft,” Pacino commanded. The chief pushed the aft lever forward, the roaring noise doubling as the aft tanks were being evacuated of seawater.

  The ship was now tons lighter, even at this depth.

  The depth gage continued its downward drift, at 1825, 1830, 1840, until it froze at 1860, the depth staying constant.

  Pacino thought that crush-depth figures were subject to some errors, that no one really knew what pressure the hull would collapse at until it actually did, but then the deck slowly inclined upward, and the depth indicator clicked up one foot. Just one, but that was enough. The gage began to click some more, the deck inclining upward as the ship began to rush toward the surface, the digital indicator showing the vessel picking up speed.

  “Keep the ship flat if you can,” Pacino told the helmsman.

  If the up-angle was too much, the ship would come up and dump the air from the ballast tanks, then sink back down again.

  The depth gage unwound, and even with full plane angles the helmsman couldn’t keep the deck level. Pacino grabbed a handhold as the deck inclined upward past thirty degrees to forty-five, the deck becoming more of a wall than a floor. The gage whizzed through the numbers—500 feet, 450, 300, 200, 100, until the ship careened from the deep and leaped from the sea, only the pumpjet aft remaining submerged as the ship rocketed through the waves, froze in space for a long moment, then crashed back down into the sea.

  The depth gage came back down, 100 feet, 200, but then the downward plunge stopped and the ship again climbed back to the surface, bobbing in the waves, rolling slowly to port, then to starboard.

  “this is admiral pacino,” Pacino said on the circuit one, his voice booming through the ship. “we have EMERGENCY BLOWN TO THE SURFACE. CONTINUE TO BRING BACK THE REACTOR.”

  Pacino raised the number-two periscope to see what was around them there on the surface; the sea was empty.