Piranha: Firing Point

“Admiral, I’m coming on this operation. Scrub this personnel transfer or whatever you call it. I need to stay with the Cyclops. You and your country-bumpkin computer operators can’t do this without me.”

“Colleen, I don’t have your father’s permission to take you into a hot operation area. Are you willing to get it from him in writing that you can penetrate the op area?

And enter a war zone?”

O’Shaughnessy’s voice rose a full three octaves as she made her attack. “What is this, Pacino? I’m an adult, I speak for myself. What are you doing, talking about my father? Are you just trying to cover for yourself because he’s your boss?”

“Get a hold of yourself. Colleen,” Pacino said, his voice iron. “You’re a civilian and you’re not authorized in the op area. Furthermore, I have to go to your father, because he’s the only man in the Navy who outranks me right now. And I’ll tell you one more thing. If you were my daughter, I’d shoot any man who put your life in danger. You signed on to design the computer for this submarine, not fight it in combat.”

“I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to—”

“Tomorrow. Eighteen hundred. You’ve got twenty hours. I suggest you use them.”

O’Shaughnessy cursed at him, a word he never thought would come out of that pretty mouth. He shut the door and found himself looking at Paully White.

“Can she deliver?” White asked.

“All I can tell you, Paully, is what I think. And you know what? It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what she thinks.”

“Chilling thought,” White muttered, rolling his eyes.

“Shut up, Captain,” Pacino said harshly. As he walked past him down the passageway to control and aft to their stateroom. White was left staring after him.

“Listen up, scumbags,” Lieutenant Commander Christopher Porter commanded, standing up in front of the crowd in the officers’ wardroom. “Sorry, Admiral, Captain, Captain White, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, I meant them,” Porter amended, suddenly realizing that his favorite way to start a briefing might not be appropriate with the brass.

Porter’s position was the ship’s navigator, the new title a return to the old days, when the navigator was the lead tactical officer. The other officers were all gathered for a training session. A black, curving screen had lowered around them, an expansion of the eggshaped bubbles in the control room. The officers in the room had donned helmets, the eyepieces clear, but each one containing a filter to cause the image of the wall of the surface to seem three-dimensional. The lights lowered, and the screen shimmered with a yellowish light, the appearance of the acoustic daylight. A red form grew close on the yellow background, the form appearing three-dimensional in the glasses of Pacino’s helmet.

“Identify,” Porter called.

One of the junior officers spoke up. “Fish!”

“Correct.” The picture changed as the fish went by, a more distant bluish blob floating into view. “Identify.” “Submarine contact,” another voice said.

“Correct. Friend or foe?”

The crowd watched for some time.

“Bad guy, Nav. Rising Sun class.” “Wrong,” Porter said, seeming to enjoy the hapless supply officer’s confusion. “Anyone else?”

“688-class American,” Patton spat out.

“You cheated, Cap’n,” Porter said, smiling.

“The hell.”

“That’s okay, sir. Shows motivation.”

“Let’s wrap, Navigator. The weapons brief is next, then the war plan brief. Anyone needing a cup of coffee, get it now. I don’t want anyone racking in here.”

“Aye, sir.” The lights flashed back on, and the dark screen retracted into the overhead. Porter tapped a remote, and the wood doors covering a widescreen panel opened. “Gentlemen, weapons briefing.” Porter flashed the remote at the screen, and a profile view of the submarine came up, black lines on a white field, a naval architect’s plans. “Lead weapon in the attack is the Vortex Mod Charlie swimout missile. Speed of attack is three hundred knots, warhead is plasma, guidance is blue laser. The weapon is a thirty-six-incher, for tubes four or three. Range is forty to fifty miles. At max range, that’s a time of flight of ten minutes. There’s no evading this baby; it has a wide blue-laser search cone with a reattack mode. Questions on the Vortex?”

Porter paused and scanned the room. When his eyes lingered on Colleen O’Shaughnessy, a pang of annoyance unexpectedly flashed through Pacino’s chest. He shot a look at Colleen, whose expression was a blank mask. He felt a moment of discomfort, realizing that he was jealous, which was absurd. After all, he was in his forties and Colleen was not even thirty yet. And even that meant nothing, because he was still trying to make sense of life after having lost Eileen.

Yet he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he admired Colleen, liked her, found her attractive. And what sense did that make? What would she want with a dinosaur like him? What business did he have getting involved with a combat-systems vendor representative, who coincidentally just happened to be the daughter of the number one admiral in the Navy and Pacino’s boss?