Terminal Run

“Units one and two solution set,” Cyclops announced. “Unit one standby. Unit one — shoot. Unit one — fire.”

A burst of sound punched Dixon in the eardrums and the deck shook, the sensation coming not directly from the torpedo launch but from the violence of venting inboard the air ram that pressurized the water round torpedo tanks, the interior of the ship jumping from the high-pressure air. “Conn, Sonar, first fired unit, normal launch.” “Unit two standby,” Cyclops continued. “Unit two — shoot. Unit two — fire.”

The helmet seemed to detonate a second time as the second torpedo was launched.

“Conn, Sonar, second fired unit, normal launch.” “Cutting wires to units one and two,” Cyclops said. “Outer doors one and two shutting. Outer doors tubes one and two shut. Draining one and two. Opening outer doors tubes three and four. Outer doors tubes three and four open. Units three and four on internal power. Units three and four, solution locked in. Unit three standby. Unit three — shoot. Unit three-fire”

Another tube launch transient smashed Dixon’s ears, and the sequence continued as Cyclops continued to pump out torpedoes. Dixon waited for the first Vortex tube launch. The three-hundred-knot missiles were so fast that they would be fired last but impact first.

At three in the morning Beijing time, Captain Lien Hua was in his rack in the captain’s stateroom with four blankets and a down comforter covering him. The cabin was comfortable when Lien was awake, but for some reason it always felt cold in the night, perhaps his reaction to missing his wife. And more nights than not, the twins liked to sneak into their parents’ bed, and Lien typically went to sleep wrapped around the warm body of his wife, but in the morning found himself separated from her by two snoring five-year-olds, and he would awaken in happiness. Here, while he enjoyed command at sea, he hated going to sleep and hated waking up in the narrow bunk even more.

Usually Lien was a light sleeper at sea. A tap at his door, a noise from the ship, the soft buzz of his phone to the control room, or a change in the flow from the air handler would make him sit bolt upright, alert and on edge. Sometime during the night, he was inevitably awakened by a noise, and he would get up and walk the ship, usually not more than ten minutes. Once he assured himself that all was normal, he could return to a light sleep before the morning meal. But tonight he slept more deeply than he could remember. At four bells of the mid watch the messenger had knocked quietly, and he did not react, the knock coming louder. Lien woke to the man standing over his bunk holding a clipboard of the radio messages. He forced himself to sit up, turn on the reading light, and scan the pages, initialing each one, then doused the light and collapsed back into a deep sleep.

On the upper-level deck, First Officer Zhou Ping sat in the captain’s chair on the command deck of the command post. The command post was a brightly lit room with a white tile floor, a collection of yellow-painted consoles with broad sloping lap sections. The port and starboard walls were not straight, but horseshoe-shaped consoles with four wheeled chairs in front of each. The port side was a ship control sector — the control panels that ran the ship wide systems, such as high-pressure air, ballast tank vents, the trim system, the drain pump and bilge tanks, the sanitary tanks, and the forward electrical systems. The starboard panels were the tactical units, starting with the forward weapons control panel, then four combined sensor and tactical control panels, where the data from sonar could be displayed on an upper screen while the lower screens displayed the Second Captain computer system’s calculations of the whereabouts of the enemy. The two horseshoe consoles joined at the forward wall of the room at the wide single console of the helmsman’s station, which looked like a fighter plane’s cockpit with a stick and rudder pedals, an engine order telegraph, and several computer screens. In the center of the space, elevated by twenty centimeters, the periscope stand and captain’s console were surrounded by stainless-steel handrails, the area known as the command deck. The room was quiet and loud at the same time — the sound of the air vents a low-pitched roar, the four hundred-cycle computer systems and the gyro a high-pitched whine.