Phoenix Sub Zero

“Listen up,” he said to the watchstanders, “we’ll be launching the counterattack now, then launching a radio buoy in the signal ejector telling the boss we’ve been attacked and to watch out for the Destiny’s shutdown-and-hide tactics. I’m going to order us to slow to twenty knots to launch, then we’ll throttle right back up and keep running.

Ready? Helm, all back two-thirds, mark speed two one!”

The helmsman rang up the order on the engine telegraph.

Back aft in the maneuvering room the throttleman answered the bell, shut the forward turbine throttles and opened up the astern turbines. The ship shook hard, as if rattled by the hand of a god. A bookcase above the chart table dumped its contents to the deck, one of the volumes hitting the plotting officer in the head on its way down.

“Speed two one, sir,” the helmsman called.

“All stop! Snapshot tube one!”

“Set,” Skinnard called.

“Standby and fire,” Hackle said, rotating the trigger. The blast of the tube firing sounded more violent than the previous four.

“Snapshot tube two.”

“Standby and fire.” The second tube fired. Daminski shouted over the second blast, “All ahead flank, maneuvering cavitate, 150-percent reactor power, T-ave five twenty!”

The deck trembled again with the power of the screaming main engines. The speed indicator needle climbed slowly, too slowly, to forty-two knots.

“Conn, Sonar, both own-ship units, normal launch.”

“Sonar, Captain, what’s the pulse interval?”

“Sir, active sonar from the torpedo has shut down.”

“Jeez, what the hell does that mean?” Daminski mumbled to Kristman. “Danny, have we got that radio buoy loaded?”

Kristman nodded. “Loaded forward, tube flooded, muzzle door open.”

“Shoot the forward signal ejector.”

Daminski looked around the room at the watchstanders, trying to maintain his war face. There was nothing more he could do. He had shot back at the enemy submarine. He had warned cincnavporcemed that they were on the business end of five UIF torpedoes. He had launched evasion devices, for whatever good they would do. And he had taken the reactor far over the redline, overpowering it as far as he dared without melting the core or breaching the steam piping or blowing open a turbine casing.

He had Augusta running for her life.

He had always wondered whether he would want to know in advance if he were going to die. He had decided he would want five minutes warning, no more. Not enough time to worry about it, just time to think about the children and perhaps make peace with the angry Catholic Church God of his youth. Maybe say goodbye to the good things in life, tip back a Coors or down a shot of Wild Turkey. He tried to remember the last time he had made love to Myra but it was a blur. He fingered the letter from her, imagined her face. He had a momentary memory, sharp as a new razor, of the faces of his three little children, then one of his father, his dad angry even in this reflective memory—

“Conn, Sonar, active sonar from one of the torpedoes.”

“Range gate?”

“Sorry, Cap’n, the unit is pinging a ramp wave in continuous.”

Daminski shared a look with Kristman. The incoming torpedoes were so close that one of them was transmitting a continuous waveform, getting a precise fix on Augusta’s location.

There was only one thing he could do, Daminski thought. If he did an emergency surface, he might get above the ceiling setting of the weapon, or perhaps it would blow its warhead at the bubbles the ballast tanks left behind. And even if they got hit, maybe if they made it to the surface he could save some of the men, maybe not all, but some.

“Chief of the watch, emergency blow fore and aft! Diving officer, take her up, twenty degree up-bubble!”

The COW slammed two large stainless-steel levers into the overhead while the diving officer ordered the ship up.

The room filled with the blasting noise of high-pressure air as the bottles emptied the air into the ballast tanks, pushing out the seawater and making the ship lighter. The deck tilted up, the helmsman overreacting, the ship coming up in a thirty-degree angle before the diving officer could push the control yoke forward to get the bubble back to twenty degrees.

The depth indicator numerals spun as the ship climbed out of the depths, heading for the surface, her speed aided by the buoyancy in the tanks, the speed indicator reading forty-five knots, then forty-six. Augusta was screaming for the surface.