'They're preparing to fire,' Wilson said. 'Will our unit intercept in time?'
'It'll be close, sir,' Jeffrey said.
Suddenly Ilse saw Sessions sit bolt upright. 'Water slug transient on bearing three five five!…Torpedo in the water! Incoming torpedo bearing three five five!'
'They heard our weapon after all,' Wilson said.
'In time to launch a snap shot back at us,' Jeffrey said. 'Sir, recommend we move away from our unit's track more rapidly.'
'Concur,' Wilson said, 'but first, fire a brilliant decoy toward the incoming torpedo.' Jeffrey gave the orders.
'Helm,' Wilson said, 'take us back below the layer. Make your depth six hundred feet, make normal one-third turns and do not cavitate.'
'Maneuvering acknowledges,' Meltzer said.
'Chief of the Watch,' Wilson said, 'keep the fore-planes deployed — they enhance our maneuverability.'
'Do not retract the foreplanes, aye,' COB said.
'Lose the towed array. I don't want it tangling our stern and we don't have time to retract it.'
'Shear off the towed array, aye.'
'Second incoming torpedo,' Sessions shouted, 'bearing zero zero four!'
'Master 2 just fired at us,' Jeffrey said.
'Chief of the Watch,' Wilson said, 'on the sound-powered phones, prepare for radical maneuvers. Helmsman, make a knuckle. Hard left rudder, make your course one six zero.'
Ilse braced herself against her console as Challenger banked into the turn. Meltzer called out their course every ten degrees, finally announcing, 'Steering one six zero, sir.'
'Very well, Helm,' Wilson said.
'Incoming torpedoes drawing left to right,' Sessions said. 'They're in passive search mode, sir.'
'What kind are they?' Jeffrey said.
'Modified Russian propulsion systems, their export model VA-III Shkvals.'
'Nuclear-capable platforms,' Jeffrey said.
'We'll try to sneak away fast as we can,' Wilson said, 'see if our decoy draws them off. Helm, top quiet speed. Ahead two thirds, make turns for twenty-six knots and do not cavitate.'
Wilson gave Meltzer a moment, then picked up the
MC. 'Maneuvering, Conn, this is the captain. Stand by for high-speed operations.' Ilse watched two bright lines cascade down Sessions' waterfall displays, gradually getting thicker. She could see a third line run between them, thinning out. Those are the torpedoes, she realized, theirs and ours.
'Unit from tube seven has detonated!' Jeffrey said.
'Did those contacts launch their missiles?' Wilson said.
'Not yet, sir,' Sessions said.
'Chief of the Watch,' Wilson said, 'on the sound-powered phones, collision alarm.' COB acknowledged.
But there was nothing, and Ilse was confused. Then she understood. The fiber-optic signal, through the wire, came at the speed of light. The shock wave traveled at the speed of underwater sound
Challenger rocked, shaking Ilse against her seat belt. A thunderous blast pummeled the ship, heard right through the hull. The mike coils jerked crazily from the overhead, and navigation instruments flew. A heavy brass divider crashed to the floor, one sharp point sticking in the fleshy part of Commodore Morse's ankle. Snow danced across the sonar screens.
'Loud explosion bearing three five nine!' Sessions said.
'No kidding,' Ilse mumbled.
'Status of incoming torpedoes?' Wilson said. 'Impossible to tell.'
'Navigator,' Wilson said. 'Sounding.'
'One three five zero zero feet, sir,' the navigator said.
'Helm,' Wilson said, 'doctrine for our steel-skinned boomers says run shallow, but I want to take her deep. Make your depth ten thousand feet smartly.' Ilse thought she'd heard wrong.
'Aye, sir,' Meltzer said. 'Thirty degrees down angle on the diveplane functions.' Ilse gripped her armrests as the deck nosed down. Meltzer called out the numbers every hundred feet. They kept coming faster and faster and started getting much too large.
'Relax,' Sessions said. 'More depth helps squelch the blast.' Ilse caught her own reflection in a console screen — her eyes were popping and she couldn't make them stop.
'Our hull's ceramic-composite alumina casing,' Jeffrey said. 'We're designed for this, Ilse. I guess now you need to know.'
But knowing didn't help much, Ilse thought.
'Chief of the Watch,' Wilson said, 'disengage shallow water valves and pumping hardware, line up abyssal suite.'
Another shock wave hit, not as hard but more drawn out.
'The surface echo from our weapon,' Sessions said. Then another one went by, sharp but weaker still. 'Bottom echo that time.'
A third concussion hit, this one soft but snappy. 'Fireball throbbing,' Sessions said, ' hydrostatic oscillation, damping coefficient is dot nine.'
'I want to make another knuckle,' Wilson said. 'Keep those inbound torpedoes on our quarter, starboard side instead. Let's confuse them with some bearing rate. Helm, hard right rudder, make your course two zero zero.' Again the ship banked hard. Sessions whispered, 'That'll force their seekers to keep leading us. They can't just ride up our wake turbulence and then we get it in the ass.'
'But aren't we blind that way,' Ilse said, 'without the towing sonar?'
'We've got partial baffles coverage from the wide-aperture arrays.'
'Fire a noisemaker,' Wilson said. 'Fire another decoy onto our previous course.' Jeffrey relayed orders to Weapons Control to launch the decoy in tube six.
'Fire an acoustic jammer, starboard side,' Wilson said. 'Reload tubes five and six, more brilliant decoys.'
'Reverb is clearing somewhat,' Sessions said. 'One incoming torpedo, bearing three four five and constant, depth three thousand feet. It's ignoring the countermeasures. Doppler says it's gaining on us.'
'What's the range?' Jeffrey said.
'Fourteen thousand yards.'
'Fire Control,' Wilson said, 'fire two more noisemakers.'
'Sir,' Jeffrey said, 'we're too deep now for noisemakers.'
'Then fire another active decoy, shallow running on a reciprocal course. Program hullpopping and cavitation sounds, with a ten-decibel step-up from nominal.' Once more Jeffrey went to work.
'How close is too close?' Ilse whispered.
'If it's dot one KT like ours,' Jeffrey said before Sessions could answer, 'at this depth and with our hull, at two thousand yards of lateral separation we're a mission kill for sure, outright dead if you believe the pessimistic calculations.'
'Time to lethal range?' Wilson snapped.
Sessions punched more keys. 'Eight minutes if we can't lose it, less if it's a larger warhead…It's got passive lock, it stopped wigwagging!'
'Locked on us or on the decoy?' Jeffrey said.
'On Challenger, I think…Yes, confirmed, our initial decoy's failed, a machinery implosion.'
'How's that torpedo tracking us?' Wilson said. 'Do we have a sound short?'
'Negative, sir,' Sessions said. 'It must be catching re-verb off our stern. It's still incredibly noisy out there… Torpedo's first-stage pump-jet has switched to end-game speed!'
'Then we're committed to a dead heat now,' Jeffrey said.
'Helm, ahead flank smartly,' Wilson said.
Meltzer reached for the engine-order dial and flicked it several times. More transients appeared on the sonar screens, making Ilse jump.
