Piranha: Firing Point

The chief hit the hatch lever and opened the hatch. Pacino stepped in, not believing what he saw or felt. It was as if someone had unlatched the gate of hell itself.

Flames blasted at him through the hatchway as he ducked in. Rolling black smoke engulfed him. By feel Pacino ran around to the side, where the liquid-nitrogen suppression emergency button was. Like so many cures on the sub, this one was potentially as dangerous as the threat. The liquid nitrogen, or UN, at minus 190 degrees was cold enough to kill human tissue on contact. A splash on a hand doomed it to amputation; a drop on the skin caused a cryogenic burn. In addition, as liquid nitrogen vaporized, it filled the space with nitrogen gas.

A single breath of pure nitrogen could instantly shut down the functioning of the human respiration center of the brain. A breath of high-concentration nitrogen would kill a man, switching off his breathing like a switch. For that reason the liquid-nitrogen fire-suppression system was not entrusted to a computer or electrical system, but set off physically by a button. Pacino felt the cover over the button, yanked it off against a massive spring, and hit the mushroom cap, The room hissed like a giant cat as liquid nitrogen hit the flames and weapons. The UN system sprayed the room for a full two minutes, filling the space with the inert gas. Immediately, Pacino ducked under a hood beneath the button to avoid the fluid hitting his poorly protected skin. He could hear the hissing easing as the system ran out of LIN, and he stood.

Hanson’s voice erupted behind him. “Forward, Admiral.

I’ve got the aft hose. Jenson! Get the valve!”

Pacino advanced into the flames. Intense heat invaded every pore of his skin. His flame-resistant coveralls started to smolder, his sleeves smoking as the material caught. By the time Pacino reached the middle of the room, he realized he was on fire.

And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. The first faint breeze of fear touched him, chilling him, slowing his steps. The alarm picked up until panic filled him, a gale force forcing away all logic and reason.

The effect of the paralyzing panic was more frightening than the fact that his clothes were on fire.

He’d just about stopped moving when he felt a body beneath his right foot. The form lay facedown on the deck, dead. The scorched skin of the body crunched under Pacino’s foot. Suddenly he wondered if the body was Colleen.

Colleen! his mind screamed. She would be directly over his head, and she might be dying right now. He had to get to her, he had to save her. With that thought the panic that had grabbed him by the throat was thrown off. Pacino ran to the forward bulkhead, his heart pounding, not with fear but with anger. He had finally found the one for him, and he wasn’t going to be robbed of her before they even had a chance to get started.

At the panel, he grabbed the LIN hose, opened the valve. The liquid nitrogen blasted out at the hottest spot of the fire — he couldn’t even see it, he could only feel it. The room seemed to cool for just a second, enough for him to scream at the chief: “Jettison the weapons! Chief!”

“Mark 52s going now. Admiral,” the chief called back.

The next sound was the crash of a torpedo tube launching a weapon. Pacino shut the LIN hose nozzle, waiting. Vaguely he was aware that the nitrogen around him was putting out the flames on his clothes. He couldn’t feel any damage to his skin, but then, perhaps that was because he was numb. He pushed the thought away as a second crash sounded. The second torpedo tube had launched. A third and fourth tube-launch crash slammed his eardrums. The room grew hot again, and Pacino sprayed the LIN hose in spurts. The LIN in the aft section began to hiss as the supply ran low.

More torpedo tube doors opened. Vortex missiles rolled silently into the gaping maws on hydraulic rams as Hanson fed the tubes, then launched them into the sea. Pacino kept spraying, hoping the LIN would hold out until the weapons were jettisoned.

Finally the LIN hose ran out. Abandoning it, Pacino felt his way through the black smoke to a vertical runged ladder heading up to a hatch in the overhead.

“Chief, I’m out of LIN. Are you done yet?”

A torpedo tube-launch crash was his answer.

“Two more, sir!”

“Hurry, the flames are starting again!”

Hanson rammed in a Vortex, shut the breech door, and launched the tube. Then he opened the final breech door on the port side.