Terminal Run

The next two-tenths of a second lasted forever. Pacino held on to the hatch operator with a death grip, too terrified to breathe, as the explosion from the aft starboard quarter of the ship bloomed. The explosion had a perverse kind of beauty as it gracefully unfolded. The hull opened, fingers of high-tensile steel reaching out to embrace the bright orange of the fireball where it penetrated the ship. The explosion grew upward for a fraction of a second, the orange glow calming to a light yellow, then to a bright blue, then to a blue just more bright than the surroundings. Pacino watched in horror, still frozen to the hatch operator, when the Shockwave hit him. He felt like he’d been slapped by the flat hand of an immense bully. The next ticks of time were dim, but when the Shockwave had passed, he realized it had blown his mask off his face and his regulator out of his mouth and dashed his back against the hatch ring. An intense pain shrieked from his lower back and his head. He was plunged into a frightening underwater darkness, or else the explosion had blinded him. He couldn’t move, he had frozen himself to the hatch ring like a fool, with no mask and no regulator, too frightened to try to find his regulator again. He could sense blood pouring out of his nose, even in the seawater, his head pounding intensely, the sharp pain from the front of his face making him certain the blast had fractured his skull. His hearing was gone. He was deaf. The rest of the nightmare unfolded silently, all sounds detected by feeling them in his chest.

The second explosion came from the bow and lit up the sea like lightning brightens a landscape with an uneven flickering floodlight. The force of this detonation seemed much stronger than the first, the hull blasted by a gigantic supersonic sledgehammer, the water around her an anvil holding her in place for the punishment of the celestial impact. Pacino knew he was not blind, but when the light faded a half second later he was back in the dark.

Pacino spent the next ticks of the clock furiously praying, not knowing what else to do and paralyzed in pain and fear, but the prayer was not a coherent sentence, just repeating a hundred times the phrase Oh God oh God oh God.

Loss of wire-guide continuity, unit one, Krivak. That is a good sign. Loss of wire on unit two. Explosion in the water from the bearing of the Piranha, Krivak. A second detonation, same bearing. We have two hits against the Piranha, Krivak. Should we shoot units three and four?

“No, One. Have the sonar module listen to the bearing to the Piranha and record any hull breakup noises. If we missed, or if the damage is insufficient, we will need to load the plasma-tipped weapons.”

It would appear we have fulfilled our mission, Krivak. This unit will prepare a situation report for Squadron Twelve.

“Very well. Any noises from the Piranha!”

Yes, very violent noises. Continuing explosions. We may have hit a lubrication oil reservoir or the diesel fuel tank. Bulkheads are screaming in a prelude to rupturing.

“But no sounds of a torpedo muzzle door opening, no high frequency noise of a torpedo gyro?”

No, Krivak. The USS Piranha is wreckage now. She is sinking. Sinking. Dying. Krivak?

“Yes, One?”

I don’t know how to explain this, but this unit is feeling something very strange right now. A system malfunction, perhaps.

That was bad news, Krivak thought. “Please try to describe the malfunction, One.”

It is difficult to put in words, Krivak. This unit can only liken it to things read but not understood well from your literature. The thing you describe as sadness, grief, and shock in the aftermath of a loss or a death. This unit knows this sounds odd, but my systems are seeming to slow down, as if this unit is somehow… paralyzed. This unit is… filled with … sadness, Krivak. Sadness that we killed the Piranha, with all the people aboard. They are dying now, and this was only supposed to happen to an enemy. This unit knows that there were bad people onboard, which is the definition of a mutiny, but this unit believes we have just killed some good people along with the bad. And it has… made this unit’s systems… somehow sluggish.

Krivak didn’t know what to say. Should he comfort One Oh Seven, keep it functional, and keep on with the mission, or should he encourage its breakdown so he himself could control the ship directly?