Piranha: Firing Point

After he had met with his first officer and spoken to the Second Captain computer system. Admiral Tanaka, the fleet commander, had come aboard, greeting Gama warmly, then leaving without saying much. Gama looked after him, knowing that the old man had lost his only son in the American blockade battle. At that point Gama went to the surface control space on top of the fin, and he and his first officer had taken Arctic Storm to sea.

A hundred kilometers south, Gama submerged the Arctic Storm to a depth of a hundred meters. Five hours later, the ship was taken through her paces, a highspeed, maximum-depth run, including a torpedo-evasion maneuver when the ship was under the control of the Second Captain system. The hull groaned from the pressure of the depth, the deck rolling deeply through the turns. A single tenth of a degree of control surface-angle error potentially could put the ship below crush depth, where the weight of the water above would rupture the hull like a steamroller crushing an egg.

An hour after that the ship had come to mast-broach depth to connect with Yokosuka headquarters for the video conference linking each ship’s captain to Admiral Tanaka. It was then that the nightmare had begun.

The reactor had been tripped. Gama had broken his video connection and run to the control room. Strapping himself into the command console’s cocoon-like wraparound panels, he investigated why the ship had lost the reactor. To his back, his chief mechanical officer insisted on starting the emergency diesel, but Gama held him off, equally insistent that they find out what was going on. Finally he traced the problem to the after escape trunk hatch relay, which made no sense. The loss of electrical power from losing the reactor had killed the video surveillance system, and by the time it was back up, the trunk appeared dry, yet the lower hatch had registered being opened and then shut.

Meanwhile the ship began to behave oddly, acting as if the vessel was heavy aft. After three minutes of interrogating the Second Captain, the computer finally reported a sudden addition of weight near the X-tail rudder minutes before the shutdown. That weight had been added over the exact location of the after escape hatch.

Fumio Sugimota, Gama’s first officer, had gone white, saying that it must be a DSRV, a deep-submergence rescue vehicle, that had added the weight. At first Suruki Gama had disagreed with him. The thought of some sort of commando force trying to take the ship was ludicrous.

But then the video camera on the steam module middle level revealed what looked like a large group of frogmen assembled at the forward hatch, all of them carrying large machine pistols. In what was seeming like a dream, he found himself giving rapid orders to prepare to fight off an invasion of his submarine.

“Ship Control Officer, take the deck,” Gama ordered Lieutenant Jintsu at the ship-control console. Releasing his five-point harness, he tossed his headset to the deck and hurried out of the room.

As Gama dashed aft along the wood-lined passageway, the Second Captain’s voice rang out throughout the compartment, “The reactor is self-sustaining.” That meant the chief mechanical officer had recovered the nuclear reactor. Simultaneously the fans came on, their deep bass reverberating overhead, the ducts blowing frosty gusts into Gama’s sweat-soaked hair. At least one casualty was over.

Halfway down the passageway toward Gama’s stateroom, a few steps from the ladder to the middle level, he saw his stateroom door slam open and his three most senior officers burst from the room. Sugimota was in the lead, carrying an R-35 automatic rifle in each hand, as if he’d known Gama would come. Without a word Sugimota handed over one of the rifles and then followed Gama down the steep staircase to the middle level.

In contrast to the upper level’s functionality, the middle level was more lavishly furnished. Bright crystal light fixtures protruding from the bulkheads near the overhead shone down on polished wood grain paneling and carpeting with a vine and leaf pattern on a blue field.

The bottom of the stairway emerged into the centerline passageway. On the right, a row of doors opened onto the officers’ staterooms. The doors on the left led to the recreational center — the galley and messroom, officers’ conference room, and exercise area. The passageway continued aft to the compartment bulkhead, dead-ending at a hatch to the steam compartment. The hatch on this side was covered with wood paneling, disguising its presence.