Crush Depth

workload would redouble, as before: endless quality control inspections on the ship, and crew refresher training — plus the lengthy interrogations of the tribunal. The final findings would undoubtedly lead to executions, grisly hangings broadcast on national TV, one more burden on Van Gelder’s troubled soul. Right now, this little stretch under way was, if anything, a respite. Van Gelder could focus on the real war effort alone, and leave the politics and infighting of the land temporarily behind. The land had never made Van Gelder happy. It was the sea, going down into the sea, being one with the sea, that he loved.

“Range to target?” ter Horst snapped.

“Er, range now ten thousand meters, Captain.” Five nautical miles.

“Very well, Number One. Tube one, target unchanged, the Collins boat. Update firing solution, and shoot.” The weapon dashed through the sea.

Van Gelder had programmed the unit to follow a dog-leg approach to the target, to sneak at the Collins from the side and disguise Voortrekker’s location. Seehechts could be used by any sub in the Axis inventory. No one would guess Voortrekker fired the shot. Van Gelder watched his data screens as the one-sided drama began to unfold.

At last the target reacted. The Collins altered course and picked up speed. She launched a decoy, and then noisemakers. Van Gelder’s fire-control technicians, arrayed at consoles along the control room’s port bulkhead, handled the wire-guided Seehecht. Voortrekker’s special passive sonars looked up through the ocean-temperature layers and pinned the real target against the monsoon’s wave action and rain noise. The Collins had nowhere to hide.

“Contact on acoustic intercept!” the sonar chief shouted.

“Target has pinged on active sonar,” Van Gelder said. “Echo suppressed by out-of-phase emissions.” With Voortrekker’s advanced acoustic masking, she was effectively invisible to such a substandard opponent.

The Collins lived long enough to fire two torpedoes in retaliation, but they were shooting blind, tearing in the wrong direction. Van Gelder knew this battle amounted to cold-blooded murder.

“Enemy torpedoes pose no threat to Voortrekker,” he stated, “even if they carry tactical nuclear warheads.” Because seawater was so rigid and dense, torpedo A-bomb warheads had to be very small — a kiloton or less — or the boat that used them could be hoist by its own petard. These yields were a fraction of the weapons America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and were a mere ten-thousandth of the multimegaton hydrogen bombs tested in the atmosphere in the worst days of the Cold War. Yet Axis tactical atom bombs were still a thousand times more powerful than any conventional high-explosive torpedo — which was why the Axis used them, and which forced the Allies in self-defense to use them too.

As if to reemphasize the Collins boat’s impotence, ter Horst ordered the helmsman to come to all stop.

“Weapon from tube one has detonated!” a fire-control technician shouted — the data came back through the guidance wire at the speed of light.

“Sonar on speakers,” ter Horst ordered.

A second later Van Gelder heard the sharp metallic whang of the torpedo hit. The blast echoed off the surface and the sea floor, mixing on the sonar speakers with a two-toned roar: air forced into the Collins’s ballast tanks as her crew desperately tried an emergency blow, plus water rushed through the gash in her hull at ambient sea pressure.

The sea pressure won. The target lost all positive buoyancy, and soon fell through her crush depth. The hull imploded hard.

The eerie rebounding pshoing of crushed metal hitting crushed metal was louder than the torpedo hit. Van Gelder knew any crew still living would have been cremated as the atmosphere compressed and heated to the ignition point of clothing and flesh.

“Excellent,” ter Horst said, almost as an anticlimax. “Helm, steer one eight zero.” Due south. “Increase speed. Make revs for top quiet speed.” Thirty knots.

The helmsman acknowledged.

Van Gelder stood and paced the line of sonarmen on his right, to make extra sure there were no threats as Voortrekker cleared the area.

“Number One,” ter Horst said a few minutes later, “we stay at battle stations. You have the deck and the conn.”

“Aye aye, sir. Maintain present course?”

“No, put us on one three five.”

“Southeast?” That was away from Durban, home base, which was southwest.

“I want to line us up with the covert message hydrophone in the Agulhas Abyssal Plain. I’m retiring to my cabin to compose a message for higher command.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” What was going on now? Well, at least Van Gelder always liked having the deck and conn. He was in almost total control of the ship, as much as anyone could be without being the captain.

Ter Horst returned a short time later with a data disk in his hand. “This requires your electronic countersignature.” He gave Van Gelder the disk.

Van Gelder placed it in the reader on his console. He eyed what came on the screen. Van Gelder was shocked, and then more shocked. Ter Horst was rendering his final verdicts as chair of the tribunal. The accused were being sentenced to death with no real regard for the evidence — or lack of evidence. The choices of guilty or not guilty seemed based more on whim or blood lust. Van Gelder noticed all of the female suspects were to be hanged. This confirmed Van Gelder’s suspicion, that ter Horst actually liked watching such executions. Since the condemned were strung up naked, the implications of erotic perversion were obvious.

But there was more. Ter Horst reported his victory over the Collins boat, and declared Voortrekker combat ready. He waived his planned return to dry dock, and insisted on permission for immediate departure on his next top-secret combat mission.

“But sir,” Van Gelder said, “we have dozens of mechanical gripes and work-order exceptions to resolve.”

“Don’t whine, Gunther. Just sign it, and have the message sent.”

Van Gelder opened his mouth to object. Ter Horst cut him short.

“Don’t spoil a good day for us both. You just countersign, and see that the message is sent.”

Van Gelder relayed it to the secure communications room.

“Thank you,” ter Horst said exaggeratedly. “I have the conn.”

“You have the conn, aye aye.” Ter Horst had taken his ship back. Voortrekker maintained course and speed, further into the Indian Ocean, and also toward Antarctica.

It took almost an hour for Van Gelder’s intercom light to flash. The junior lieutenant in charge of communications had the response from headquarters. It surprised Van Gelder. Ter Horst’s tribunal decisions were accepted as is. Obviously, within the Boer power structure, ter Horst was well connected. Van Gelder saw the entire inquest had been a travesty, a purely political show trial. And besides, the television producers in Johannesburg were always hungry for more human meat for the ever-popular gallows show.

But that wasn’t all. Higher command had news for ter Horst. USS Challenger was conclusively identified as the Allied submarine involved in an attack before Christmas on a stronghold on the German coast. Challenger was still laid up for weeks more of battle-damage repairs. And Boer freedom fighter Ilse Reebeck had been spotted as a participant in the Germany raid.

Van Gelder realized ter Horst was also reading the message when ter Horst cursed.

“That bitch.”

Van Gelder knew that for two years, up until the war, ter Horst and Ilse Reebeck had been lovers. Van Gelder had met her several times, at receptions and banquets. He thought she was sexy and smart, a suitable consort for his captain. Only now, she worked for the other side.

“I’d like to watch her squirm at the end of a rope.”

Van Gelder blanched, and was glad the red glow of instruments hid his discomfort.

“Now this is interesting,” ter Horst went on. He was calm again, so calm it scared