The Lotus Eaters

Aloud, he said, 'Friends, we're dead. But we're going to sell ourselves dear. Weapons?'

'Aye'—gulp—'aye, sir.'

'We've still got two supercavitators?'

'Yes, sir, two.'

'Good. Fire one on self guidance at target three, the other at target . . . ummm . . . two. Fire when ready. Once they're away fire two standard torpedoes at targets one and four. Guide those yourself to the extent you can. Stand by to drop guidance on those and guide the close in defense torpedoes. Helm?!'

'Aye, sir.'

'Turn on the clicker. Flank speed ahead.'

'The clicker?' the XO, Garcia, looked aghast.

'We're dead anyway,' Quijana said. 'But the secret can be preserved.'

The exec started to object, then admitted, also aloud, 'Yeah, you're right.'

Quijana nodded. His XO then added, 'Miguel, I never believed before that old Pedraz booted you off the Trinidad. I thought you jumped. I believe it now.'

D 466 Portzmoguer, Gallic Navy, Shimmering Sea

Mortain went white, not because the counterattack from the Balboan sub was unexpected, but because of the speed of the torpedo coming for his ship. That wasn't unexpected either; it was still shocking. Bending over the sonar screen, the naval officer simply couldn't bring himself to credit the way the supercavitator ate up the kilometers.

The 'major' running the sonar station whistled and said, 'Dear God, I don't think we can escape it.'

'Head straight towards it,' ordered Portzmoguer's captain.

The helmsman turned his head and eyes in the direction of the captain. 'Towards it, sir?' He sounded as if he thought that the stupidest order he'd ever heard.

'The things are so noisy they can't use their own passive sonar,' the captain explained. 'They slow down at a preset point and ping, then adjust and start moving again. If we're not in a position for it to get a bounce from us, there's a fair chance we can lose it altogether. And stop wasting fucking time. Do it! And, Mortain, pass that to the'—the captain looked briefly at his operations board—'pass it to the Montcalm.'

D 469 Montcalm, Gallic Navy, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova

'Tell that stupid bastard aboard Portzmoguer to stuff it,' snarled the captain. 'Helm, hard away from the torpedo. We'll outrun the bitch! It's got to have limited fuel.'

Montcalm heeled over as the helm applied full rudder to turn the ship away from the oncoming torpedo. Men all over the ship either swayed on their feet or fell on their rear ends. Down by the galley a cook, Matelot brevete—or ordinary seaman—Dupre, managed both to keep his feet and to keep upright the tray of sandwiches he was bringing to the bridge. The cook was just congratulating himself when the frigate came out of its turn and took off at flank speed. Not expecting this, Dupre slammed his head into a bulkhead and bounced to his arse as the sandwich tray went flying.

Leaving the sandwiches behind, Dupre began to stagger topside to give the bridge crew a piece of his mind. Imagine the nerve; treating a chef like this. What do they think; that we're an Anglic vessel?

* * *

'A stern chase is a long chase,' so it was said. It was even true when first said, in the day of sail on Old Earth. But when the chaser has a speed nearly six times greater than the quarry, and the quarry's less than ten kilometers away, a stern chase is likely to be very short indeed. When that quarry has to waste time turning about . . .

Captain Bertin stood over the sonar board, watching the torpedo eat up the distance between the two. Hmmmf. Maybe that asshole Casabianca was right. He sighed. I so hate it when he's right. Why my sister married him, I simply can't fathom.

Suddenly Montcalm's own sonar major and the captain exclaimed in surprise. The torpedo had stopped. Perhaps it ran out of fuel. Hah! I'll show that bastard of a brother in law who's right . . .

The exultant shout coming to Bertin's lips cut off as the torpedo began pinging furiously, only to stop that and commence moving at fifty. It rapidly accelerated to a blistering two-hundred knots.

Bertin raced topside. If he was going to die he wanted to see what would kill him. He didn't have long to wait.

The sea underneath Montcalm was suddenly lit by a bright orange flash. The flash itself lasted but a moment before being replaced with a green and black and sea foam circle of Hell, rising to both sides of the ship. Bertin felt his frigate lurch upward from the center. Driven to his knees on the hard steel deck, he felt as much as heard the tortured metal below bending with the force of the blow. Water, moving faster than the ship's upward twist, blew upward along both sides of the hull.

As the pressure underneath was relieved, both by collapse of the cooling explosive gasses and by the movement of water upward to either side of the hull, Montcalm found itself supported on the two ends by water, and with no support below. The hull which had so recently been half broken by the upward pressure in the center now found itself unsupported in the center by either water or its own structural strength. It collapsed into the hole thus created, continuing the work of destruction. To add injury to insult, water rushing back into the vacant space met the sundered hull halfway down into the vacuum. This blow was the end; Montcalm lifted again and split in two.