Piranha: Firing Point

“Set 13 for target ST-3, 14 for ST-4. and so on,” Chu ordered.

“Thirteen and 14 ready, sir. Fifteen and 16 coming up now.”

“Shoot 13 and 14,” Chu ordered.

The difference between a high-impulse gas-generator torpedo launch and an ultraquiet slow swimout was dramatic.

Under the action of a solid-rocket motor impinging a reservoir of water that instantly vaporized to high-pressure steam, the tube spat out the weapon like a cannon.

The torpedo’s engine lit off, and it soared into the sea at full throttle, the water jet pumping at maximum thrust, all provisions for stealth discarded. Within mere minutes Chu launched the torpedo battery at the twelve submarines of the American submarine wave, settling down to wait the fourteen minutes until torpedo impact.

It would be interesting to see if the target vessels took flight, or it they kept coming. Chu watched tensely from his command seat, wishing he could have a cup of tea, but there had been no time to fill the thermos since the aircraft contact had approached. Impatiently Chu waited.

“ST-3 through 14 remain inbound,” the navigator reported.

They hadn’t heard the torpedoes. Excellent Chu waited, flipping through his displays, trying to think ahead to the next move. If this worked, perhaps there would be no next move required, because the Americans would give up and go home, as they should have since the beginning.

“ST-3 has detected the torpedo. Aspect change, he’s turning. Admiral. Turning and speeding up. He’s running, sir. Same with ST-5, ST-8, now ST-4. All across the board. Admiral, the submarines have counter-detected the torpedoes and are turning away.” “Very good.” Was it? he asked himself. Or was this part of an elaborate deception? And yet it wasn’t good, because the longer the fast 688s ran, the less chance they had of being hit, the 85-click torpedo going up against a 90-click submarine. All he could hope for was the termination plasma detonation of the weapons would kill the running submarines.

The first explosion sounded in the room, audible to the naked ear, although it was twenty kilometers away.

Then the second, the third and fourth explosions came.

Finally Chu lost count. The corner of his mouth rose slightly. The Americans were paying for costing him so many sleepless nights.

USS DEVILFISH, SSNX-1

“What the hell was that?”

Paully White stood in the ring of officers, waiting for their battlecontrol system to come back up. The vessel was blind without the Cyclops system. A single loud explosion had registered in the room, two more following shortly afterward, then more, with uneven intervals between them.

Pacino arrived in the forward door to control in a dead run.

“How many explosions?” he asked.

Patton gave him the bad news. “Twelve, Admiral. I think the 688s took hits.”

“Dammit,” was all Pacino could say.

“Cyclops?”

“Down hard. Colleen thinks—” Just then the eggshell canopies flickered, went dark, then nickered again, then held, each one reconfiguring. The officers on the room’s port side ran back into their stations and donned their helmets.

“Control, Computer Room, Cyclops is initializing now and back on-line.” Colleen’s voice was low and measured, giving no trace of the hopelessness Pacino had seen twenty minutes before.

“Sonar, Captain,” Patton’s voice rang in Pacino’s headset. “Report the situation.”

“Captain, Sonar,” Demeers’ answer came. “Still initializing, stand by. Captain, Sonar… we have six Rising Sun contacts, twelve unidentified large-diameter, low-density spheroids, and multiple objects—”

“What?” Patton was annoyed. “Do you have the twelve 688s?”

“Cap’n, Sonar, the twelve spheres are explosion zones from plasma weapons, and the multiple objects we interpret to be broken submarine hulls. Cyclops is showing them traveling vertically downward. They’re sinking. All twelve show that they are now between two thousand and twenty-five hundred feet deep. Some are hitting the bottom and are disappearing from Cyclops as being bottom clutter. Captain, Sonar… as of now I only show six Rising Suns and the Piranha.”

“God damn that son of a bitch,” Pacino spat. “That’s almost two thousand of my men that bastard just killed.”

A murderous rage choked him. He wanted to kill the Red force commander with his bare hands.

“Admiral, Piranha is in range of three Rising Suns with his Vortex missiles.”

USS PIRANHA, SSN-23

Captain Bruce Phillips stood on the conn and squinted down on the battle stations crew arrayed at the attack-center consoles.

“Sonar, Captain, status!” he barked into his boom microphone.

“Captain, Sonar,” Master Chief Henry said in his baritone voice, the tone of it fitting perfectly with his shaved head, tree-trunk neck, and wide shoulders — the only thing missing his earring, which went on immediately when he left the ship. “We’ve got no contacts, just sonar blueouts at the previous bearings to the 688s.”

“Sonar, Captain, I’m going upstairs and getting on the radio. Maybe Uncle Mikey on the D-fish can give me better information than you and your sonar girls.”