Tube eight, firing point procedures on the incoming torpedo.'
'Solution ready,' Jeffrey said. 'Ship ready. Weapon ready.'
'Chief of the Watch,' Wilson said. 'On the 1 MC, rig for depth charge.'
'Rig for depth charge, aye.'
Ilse saw Jeffrey glance at Commodore Morse. The Brit winked back and gripped a handle on the overhead. 'Depth four four zero zero feet,' Meltzer said.
'Very well,' Wilson said, 'match sonar bearings and shoot.'
'Unit from tube eight fired electrically!' Jeffrey said. Sessions tried to clear his throat. ' Unit is running normally, sir.'
Jeffrey looked up from his console and again met Ilse's eyes. 'Thirty seconds to intercept! Incoming torpedo should exhaust its fuel and blow any moment!' Jeffrey turned to Captain Wilson. 'Unit from tube eight has,
With a deafening wham, pile drivers slammed the bottom of Jeffrey's feet and spine. His entire skeleton rattled. Challenger — still moving in reverse — lurched sternward violently. Jeffrey was thrown against his seat belt, his skull bouncing off the headrest. Commodore Morse went flying.
Red shadows shifted wildly as the CACC's spring-loaded fluorescents jiggled crazily in their mounts. But the lights and shockproof monitors didn't flicker once. Then Jeffrey's ears registered a painfully loud sssss and the air began to fog. He ran his tongue along his lips and blinked. Good, it wasn't the blinding salt spray of ambientpressure seawater. Instead a compressed air leak, cold as it expanded through some failed pipe joint or valve, was condensing the moisture in the CACC atmosphere. The force of the leak blew dust and papers everywhere. Jeffrey saw COB work his panel, bypassing the fault.
'Nav gyros have tumbled,' the assistant navigator called. 'Reinitializing now' Another shock wave hit as the giant gas bubble of the fireball fell in upon itself and then rebounded hard, trading kinetic and potential energy back and forth. Jeffrey eyed a depth meter. The boat was falling slowly, rocking badly in the disturbed water all around.
'Chief of the Watch and Helmsman,' Wilson said, 'watch our buoyancy but do not let her broach. If we can play dead now convincingly, it'll make our next job easier.' Wilson grabbed the red handset for Damage Control, located back in Engineering.
'Fire, fire, fire in the ESM room,' a sound-powered phone talker said. Probably a short in one of the electronic support measures consoles, Jeffrey told himself, or maybe one of the multiband receivers kept warmed up on standby. That might impair Challenger's intelligence-gathering ability later, and her detection of enemy radar. As fire fighters hustled along the after passageway, someone opened the ESM door from inside. 'It's out, it's nothing,' the technician said, holding up a CO, extinguisher. Thin smoke drifted out of the small compartment and was sucked into the overhead vents. Jeffrey, now standing, was doubly relieved: the air-conditioning meant the boat couldn't be in such bad shape. The Enj wouldn't run the fans on batteries, he wouldn't waste the power. So the reactor and heat exchangers had to be okay, along with at least one shipservice turbogenerator. The speed log on Jeffrey's digital display told him both steam sides survived and Challenger's propulsor jet still worked.
Then Sessions shouted, 'Flooding sounds! We're taking water somewhere!'
'Localize it,' Jeffrey ordered.
'I'm getting flooding forward!'
'Phone Talker,' Jeffrey said, 'have all compartments near the bow check in.'
'Sir,' the phone talker said a moment later, 'torpedo room does not respond.'
'No feeds from the torpedo room,' Jeffrey stated, studying his screens.
'We're taking water forward,' COB confirmed.
A messenger arrived. 'Sir,' he said to Jeffrey, 'Weps reports torpedo room is taking water. We looked through the hatch port. It's impossible in there.' COB stopped juggling the variable ballast and safety tanks, reaching instead for the fore and aft emergency blow handles. He flipped up the protective plastic covers and looked meaningfully at the captain.
Wilson nodded. 'Chief of the Watch, emergency blow on high-pressure air, do not use the backup chemical gas generators.' There was a great roaring sound. 'Start to vent again at four hundred feet. I don't want us surfacing a leaky boat right under a pair of mushroom clouds.'
'Vent at four hundred, aye,' COB said.
'How bad's the flooding?' Jeffrey said. The enlisted talker relayed the question on his big chest-carried mouthpiece, then listened on his headphones as the damage control party reported back.
'Bad, sir. Water's gaining on the bilge pumps fast, rising over a foot a minute. The spray's still taking paint right off the bulkheads.'
'XO,' Wilson said, listening on the damage control handset, 'that's our biggest problem now. You head down there and take charge, get Weps in here as Fire Control.' Wilson picked up the 7MC with his left hand. 'Maneuvering, maintain back flank. We need speed for depth control and the pump-jet's got lousy pickup in reverse.' Wilson turned to Meltzer. 'Helm, how are the waterfoils?'
'Sir, foreplanes will not deploy. All after control surfaces are nominal, but functioning is awkward going backwards.'
'Make your depth one hundred feet and try to hold her steady there. That'll reduce the outside pressure and give us some protection from the fallout.' As the boat came up, she began to roll and pitch. 'Captain,' Meltzer said, 'we're too unstable!'
Wilson held the mike open as he continued, 'Right standard rudder.'
'Right standard rudder, aye, sir. No course specified.'
'As our bow swings left to two seven zero,' Wilson said, 'steady her there and stop the shaft. Then go ahead to one third smartly. I want us clearing datum upwind, just in case. The lower speed'll relieve some of the force of the water on the bow. Use down-angle on the sternplane function if we get too heavy forward.'
'Understood, sir,' Meltzer said.
'XO, tell me if you can't stop the flooding. Besides the radiation problem, I'd hate to surface and make a datum for some overflying satellite.'
'I concur, sir,' Jeffrey said. He started for the ladder aft of the CACC, the one leading down to the weapons spaces.
On the way he grabbed a portable radiac — radiation, detection, indication, and computation. This one measured alpha particles, the heaviest and slowest-movingthus least penetrating — fallout emission by-product. But alpha sources were the most carcinogenic if inhaled, lodged in the alveoli of the lungs. At another locker Jeffrey donned a self-contained Scott air pack. He sealed the mask very tightly, drawing in the metallic-tasting oxygen from the heavy tank. He put on thick work gloves. When he reached the torpedo room lower level, the damage control parties were inside. Jeffrey quickly sized up the situation.
Challenger's eight torpedo tubes, her war-fighting business end, were grouped vertically in sets of four, starboard and port of her centerline. The tubes were located abaft the bow, canted outward nine degrees to clear her sonar sphere — gantries between the four tall weapons racks created an upper mezzanine. Tube eight was on the lower left of the port-side, even-numbered group. Water gushed from around its inner door, blasting harder than a fire hose.
By the time Jeffrey climbed through the hatch and dogged it shut behind, the boat was trimming noticeably by the bow from all the weight of added water. The lowest pair of three-foot-wide gleaming titanium inner doors was half submerged. The next pair up, tubes five and six, wore small signs, WARNING WARSHOT LOADED.
The water was tinged with red and flecked with bits of plastic and raw flesh. Shoved out of the way behind one weapons rack were the remains of the torpedomen who manned the room at general quarters. The force of the incoming spray at depth had battered them beyond recognition. Electronics cabinets near the tube-eight door were smashed as if hit by cannon fire. The fore-ends of the weapons in direct line to the door had all been shredded, their blue protective covers and fiberglass nose caps gone and their guidance packages in tatters. The conventional Mark 48 highest on the inner port-side rack teetered menacingly, its support clamps knocked asunder by seawater jetting in at a thousand psi. Jeffrey wondered what state its arming circuitry was in. He sloshed forward through the thigh-deep freezing water, his head just clearing the gantry overhead, his shoulders brushing the weapons racks on either side. He wriggled past the damage control party, then bent over and took a good look at tube eight, which projected from the forward bulkhead through a mass of pipes and fittings. Thick wooden beams pressed against the damaged door, placed there before the concussion by the nowdead crewmen. The sea spewed out all around the
