Terminal Run

In the dim blue world outside the submarine, the bizarre sound that had suddenly filled the sea around Midshipman Pacino had started as a deep moan and quickly climbed the register to a high screech and abruptly stopped. Pacino’s skin crawled, and he shivered inside his wet suit. The eerie haunting sound seemed like the caw of a giant evil crow, the sound powerful enough to fill the entire sea. The way sound traveled underwater, there was no way to determine the direction of the sound. It seemed to come from all around him. What manner of sea beast would emit such a sound? he wondered. For the next fraction of a second, in the returning silence, he thought he must have heard some sort of auditory hallucination.

An instant later the sound came again, and if possible it was louder this time, and as soon as it ended another of the undersea crow calls came, but this one was more distant. There were two of them, Pacino thought, his eyes wide. What was happening? Keating had let go of him and had drifted upward a few feet. Pacino grabbed the hatch-operating mechanism, a terror like he’d never felt rising in him. What the hell was that noise?

One final ping, unit one thought. The target was sailing toward it at sixty-two knots, at least, that was how it seemed. In reality the target was stationary and the torpedo was flying in. The left third aim-point was barely five torpedo lengths away. One final ping, aping return, and it was time to get a final proximity signal from the magnetic hull detector.

When the unit was within a half-torpedo length, the iron of the target hull and the magnetic lines of force surrounding the hull registered on the rag-detector, and the processor had all it needed to detonate the PlasticPak explosive. The low explosive detonated in an incandescent flash, the fire traveling along the metal passageway to the high explosive, which began to react and explode. The torpedo sailed on, its nose cone actually making direct contact with the curve of the target hull and slamming into the metal. The impact flattened the nose cone destroying the sonar transducer and rupturing the computer compartment. The consciousness of unit one began to wink out as the computer was shredded by the impact, even before the explosion of the PlasticPak blew it apart from the aft end. The fireball of the explosive reached out for the curving hull, the arms of the combustion gases embracing the metal, the pressure pulse striking the target and ripping through it, vaporizing it, splintering it to its component molecules. The high temperatures of the fireball erased all matter that had been there, the structural bulkhead, the hoop frames of HY-100 steel, the walls of the maneuvering room and the control panels mounted there, three men standing in the space, the deckplates, the after end of two propulsion turbines, and the metal block of the AC propulsion motor, all were liquefied and then vaporized in the advancing heat of the fireball. The

Shockwave from the explosion reached out for the inside of the vessel and reflected from the far bulkhead, the force of it splitting the target in two at the after portion. The fireball by that time had vaporized all the molecules that had been the unit one Mark 58 Alert/Acute torpedo, and the torpedo died in the instant that the target began its death throes. The fireball swelled upward from the buoyancy of the water and shrank as it cooled, blowing out the top surface of the water to a hundred feet in the sky.

A few milliseconds later unit two hurtled toward the target, its vanes turning to position it toward the right third of the target.

Another crow call sounded. Midshipman Patch Pacino clutched the hatch operating wheel in panic. He searched the sea to try to determine what the noise was, but he could only see the surrounding blackness. He was looking at the long hull aft stretching to the rudder two hundred feet away when he heard an even louder crow call, saw something flash toward the ship, and then felt the hull suddenly shudder violently as if a giant fist had slammed into her.