Piranha: Firing Point

As the John Glenn slowed, Maddox drifted into a state suspended between consciousness and coma. Images from the past flashed in and out of view almost faster than he could register them. His father’s face two decades ago. His own face in the mirror that morning, shaving a cheek in a face that looked hauntingly like his dad’s. Mom’s casket, covered with flowers, the bottle of whiskey later that day. Annapolis graduation, hats slowly sailing toward the clouds, then coming down just as slowly. His wife Amanda’s kiss at the altar, her mouth promising yet evasive, mischief in her eyes. The cry of what was supposed to be a baby boy but had turned out to be a girl, the expression of incredulity suspended on his face, turning to a father’s smile of relief and thanksgiving.

His daughter Doloris pedaling her bicycle for the first time, the fall after ten feet of clear navigation. His son Richie lobbing the basketball to the net. Admiral Chambers’ quarters, the beer cold on his lips, the tough admiral asking him to command a new John Paul Jones-class Aegis destroyer. Amanda’s tears, her voice trembling at yet another West Pacific deployment. The loneliness of the John Clam captain’s cabin when he read Amanda’s E-mail requesting a separation, the next E-mail in the queue from Chambers congratulating him on an excellent job. Dad’s funeral service, another black casket, this time Maddox lingering on graveside, unable to leave. The convoy, his own voice complaining of steaming in a tight formation. The Seahawk V helicopter pilot, a young lieutenant who reminded him of Richie, his son, saying they should be flying ahead and looking for submarines, Maddox’s own voice again, this time saying that violated fleet orders, yet inside agreeing with the chopper pilot. And the flash in the binoculars, the carrier Webb there one second, replaced with a piece of the sun the next.

As he drifted slowly in the images, the shock waves and explosions punctuated the lucid dreams racing through his mind. The intrusive present kept coming and going in disconnected bursts.

The coldness of the deck, its hard surface.

The hard deck against his cheek, punctuated by ten pieces of glass, one beneath his cheek.

Explosions, still coming, the deck shaking with each one.

The heaviness of the body lying on top of him, sharp pain from glass shards between the body and his side.

The feeling of bleeding from his left arm, and the loss of feeling from his left hand.

A voice, no, two, maybe three, but no words, just groans, cries of pain, liquid coughing and sputtering.

One of the groans his own voice.

“Captain!” from behind him, where the aft bulkhead should be, the voice unrecognizable, maybe his father, maybe his navigator.

A wailing sound, a shipboard alarm, shrieking and falling.

Another voice, hard and authoritative, but laced with fear just this side of panic, screaming, ‘This is the navigator, I have the deck and the conn. The captain’s down, I have control of the rudder and engine order.” The voice was greeted by only gasps and coughs.

A foot pushing his body backward. The vibrations from the deckplates as the gas turbines spooled up and the shaft began rotating again, the screw aft boiling up a wake.

The deck tilting far to starboard, so far that the body on top of Maddox rolled off, then flattening.

Roaring all around. Explosions, still coming, now astern and distant.

SS403 ARCTIC STORM

Thirty weapons fired, thirty hits.

Not all the torpedoes had gone to their designated targets. One weapon slated for a cruiser behind,WT-3, the carrier on the right, had gone farther into the convoy and struck a destroyer behind the cruiser rows, sparing the cruiser. Chu had closed distance by quite a few kilometers by then, and launched a new weapon at the cruiser.

The plasma explosions would normally be flashes bright enough to blind a man, but the periscope had a built-in filter that limited the amount of light admitted to the eyepieces, momentarily clouding the view when a flash went off. It was a well-designed system, and for the first time Chu wondered if there were any more Rising Suns in drydocks or shipyards that might counter his force, the only threat that had much credibility against his six submarines.

The attack from his Arctic Storm, out in front of the convoy, had taken out a good fraction of the warships.