The Lotus Eaters

Under the sonar barrage of Diamant, closer to the same ocean level, very powerful, and much more discriminating, Orca stood out clearly.

'Target is found, captain,' said sonar.

'Range and bearing to target entered.'

Weapons was only a few moments slower in reporting, 'Fire control. Firing solution is ready. Torpedoes are ready, one programmed to go direct, the other three to bracket the target and veer inward.'

'All tubes in sequence: Shoot!'

'Unit One away. Running straight and normal. Good wire.'

SdL Megalodon, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova

Charlemagne was just ahead, five kilometers. They couldn't hear it through the hull, not at this depth, but Auletti had it firm on the sonar. At the current speed of the carrier it would pass almost directly overhead within the next six minutes.

'You sure this is a good test, skipper?' Aleman asked. His tone of voice made it clear he was dubious.

'Sure,' Chu answered, 'why not?'

'Because Orca drew the escorts away.'

'Not all of them. There are enough here for a test and we did go right under that Amethyst Class' nose.'

Aleman nodded. 'That's true, I suppose. Even so—'

Auletti interrupted. 'Skipper, the frog sub just pinged the Orca! Continuous pinging . . . oh, shit, she fired! Orca's returning fire with a supercavitating torpedo! I've got . . . JESUS!' Auletti pulled the headphones from his head and cupped his ears with the pain of multiamplified noise assaulting his eardrums.

S806 Diamant, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova

The supercavitator was much faster than the more conventionally propelled torpedoes launched by the Diamant. Flying, for all practical purposes, in a vapor bubble created by a combination of its own speed and the shape of its nose, it closed the five and a half kilometer range to the Gallic sub in just at one minute. Guiding by sonar from the Orca and vectoring itself by thrusting out small fins just past the gaseous supercavitation envelope, it reached the Diamant and detonated at a point very near and just forward of where the sail met the hull. The resulting shock wave breached that hull, allowing very high pressure water to burst inside.

The captain knew he, his crew, and his boat were dead as soon as he saw the wave of water coming for him. Pressure built up almost instantly to the point of agony. The flooding being more forward than aft, the Diamant's nose sank quickly to point at the ocean floor. Crew, though by this point few if any were aware of it or much of anything else, were thrown from their feet and down into the collecting mass of water.

Crew further back were likewise catapulted from their feet and tossed against bulkheads. One of them, known but to God, managed to get a watertight door shut after of the hull breach. This didn't matter in the slightest as, without control, the submarine continued its plummet into the depths. At a point in time, that depth exceeded the hull's rating. It collapsed. The pressure, thus the temperature, of the air inside shot up so much and so rapidly that it, and anything it surrounded that was combustible, ignited.

The death shriek of the Diamant could be heard halfway across the ocean.

SdL Orca, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova

Yermo had had enough warning to remove the headphones from over his ears before the Orca's torpedo exploded. He replaced them immediately after the shudder that ran through sea and ship told him it was safe to do so. Thus, he heard the death of Diamant clearly.

'Poor bastards,' he muttered, voicing the thoughts of every man of Orca's crew.

Sympathy however was short-lived, mainly because the Gallic sub had gotten off four torpedoes before Orca had fired. With their main guidance platform—Diamant, with its greater computational power and better sonar—now gone, the torpedoes were on their own.

'One,' said Yermo, 'two . . . three . . . four fish in the water, skipper. Marking them one through four. They're pinging and hunting independently.' The sonar man forced a degree of calm into his voice he in no way felt.

'Deceptive countermeasures,' ordered Quijana.

The defense station pressed a button to release a small pod from the hull. It began to rise like a cork. Once it was about three hundred feet above the still passively diving sub, the pod let in a minor quantity of sea water, which reacted with a chemical inside to release a massive cloud of bubbles. The pod also generated a major magnetic and electronic signature on the chance that a pursuing torpedo might be MAENAD (Magnetic And ElectroNic Anomaly Detector) equipped and proximity fused.

'Two of the fish have locked onto the pod, skipper,' Yermo announced. 'I make them as one and four. Two—two and three—are still hunting, and . . .' Again, Yermo pulled his headphones away from his ears as twin explosions rocked the water and the sub. 'I guess they are MAENAD equipped.'

Yes, Quijana mentally agreed, since the pod's too small to hit and the bubble cloud too insubstantial. Proximity fused, based off the MAENAD or sonar return. Think clearly, Miguel, think clearly if ever you did.