Piranha: Firing Point

A rivulet of sweat ran into his eye, forcing him to blink it away. He gritted his teeth, edging the ship deeper as he felt it start to stray toward the waves overhead.

Just as he evaded the suction pulling him upward, the suction of the hull pulled him back down. All this depth-control struggle would exhaust the onboard coils if he couldn’t complete the rendezvous in a few moments.

Again Chu wiped his mind blank — only the waves above, the sub below, and the heads-up display constituting his world. For the first time since putting the submersible between the sub and the surface, he allowed himself to read the digits of the heads-up display.

One number of the display read off the range to the aft lip of the sub’s fin. The second number showed him the distance to the aft escape trunk hatch just forward of the X-tail.

The display numerals confused Chu for a moment.

The distance to the escape hatch was negative — he had gone too far. The fin trailing edge was far ahead, but the escape trunk was behind him. The aft part of the submersible hull would actually be between the surfaces of the X-tail when the docking skirt was over the escape trunk — at least it would be if Mai’s data were correct.

Chu throttled back, allowing the submarine to surge slightly ahead. With the after escape hatch this close to the X-tail and the suction of the propulsor, the approach was much more difficult than it had been to the Korean ship, where the hatch had been far forward of the screw.

At least this ship had a thicker anechoic coating, the dolphin skin, designed to minimize drag and reflected sonar noise. It would provide a rubbery cushion in the event Chu smashed down onto the hull. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to do that than prolong this energy-wasting dance with the submarine.

The numerals of the display rolled back until the docking skirt was within two meters of the calculated position of the hatch. Chu energized the bottom-scanning video camera at the docking skirt, looking for the hatch, and then released control of the submersible to the onboard computer to allow it to bring the vessel in for the docking. But as Chu released the yoke, the Red Dagger began to shake and oscillate, finally heading for the surface, then plunging toward the deck. Chu cursed and grabbed the yoke, frustrated and angry. The computer had failed him, and the dolphin skin surface of the ship was making the location of the hatch impossible to see.

Chu put the submersible close to the fin and again slowed down, this time knowing he would have to approach the hatch on his own. After five exhausting minutes he worked the submersible back to where it had been before, keeping station over the sub’s escape hatch.

He drove the craft on while searching the video image for the hatch. The more he tried to do it, though, the harder it got to control the submersible. Lo Sun would have to help him.

“Mr. First, quickly, do you have the docking-skirt video up?”

“Yes, Ad—”

“Fine, you talk me into the hatch. I can’t maneuver and look for the hatch at the same time. Computer’s broken. Hurry!”

“You’re at plus two, starboard one point six—”

“Dammit, just tell me how much to come left or right—”

“Back slow, come left, just a hair, good, ahead a half meter, more, more. Now! Down!”

Chu brought the vessel down to the deck of the submarine, the contact light, the surface of the sub rubbery.

“No, now we’re too far ahead. Don’t pump down yet.

Can you back us up? You’ve got ten centimeters, maybe less.”

Chu pulled back on the throttle, the suction from the sub keeping him down, the submersible sliding in increments until Lo called that he was centered over the hatch. Chu flooded the small ballast tank, trimming the vessel heavy so that it would stay down on the slippery hull. A high-pressure air bottle pushed air into the skirt and water out of a slot at the skirt bottom. The pump, at deeper depths, would suck the water overboard and allow the space to be filled with air. Since they were shallow, the air pressure alone pushed the water out.

The heads-up display showed the vacuum established.

He should be able to kill the engines, the powerful suction from the docking skirt keeping the two ships together.

Chu gently pulled back on the throttle until the engines were idling. He kept waiting for the disaster of the skirt failing or flooding, eliminating the link between the vessels, but the vacuum held. At last Chu cut the motors and toggled off the coil power, unbuckled his harness, and withdrew from the control couch. When he stood, shaking out his cramped limbs, he found he was soaked from head to toe with sweat. He wiped his forehead and accepted a towel and water bottle from one of his men.