Crush Depth

Jeffrey clicked off.

“Helm, right full rudder, make your course one five zero.” South-southeast, directly away from the Tirpitz.

Harrison acknowledged, shouting, and his voice cracked. The ship turned, banking too hard. Harrison lost control, and Challenger went into a snap roll — she’d heeled so much from the turn, her rudder began to act like sternplanes, forcing her down in a flank-speed dive. She plunged below three thousand feet before Harrison could recover.

If we had a steel hull, Jeffrey knew, we’d’ve gone right through our crush depth.

COB called on the intercom to complain about the wild maneuvers. They made it that much harder for his men to do their work.

“Get that unit loaded, COB, and load another as soon as I shoot.”

The second Shkval was louder and louder. At last tube three was reloaded. Jeffrey and Bell armed the nuclear fish. Jeffrey ordered it fired. The unit rushed at the incoming Shkval. The Shkval kept rushing at Challenger. This time the range to intercept was barely outside the Shkval warhead’s kill radius against Challenger.

Bell detonated the wire-guided torpedo as a preemptive blast to smash the Shkval. The Mark 48’s maximum yield was a tenth of the Shkval’s. But the desperate interception was so close to Challenger, the shock force was almost unbearable. The ship was slammed from astern. Challenger bucked and heaved hard. Objects broke loose and flew around the control room. Sonarmen’s headphones were knocked from their heads. The vibrations were so vicious Jeffrey’s vision was blurred.

As the reverb cleared, Kathy shouted that another Shkval was already in the water. Jeffrey waited impatiently while another nuclear Mark 48 was loaded by hand in his only working torpedo tube. He ordered it fired at the incoming Shkval, and ordered another fish loaded.

Again Bell smashed the inbound Shkval, too close, and once more Challenger rocked. Once more things broke loose and crewmen were injured.

Again torpedomen rushed to load another Mark 48. Again the Tirpitz launched another Shkval. Jeffrey reached for the handset. “COB, we need to get that tube reloaded faster.”

“We’re trying, Captain!” COB panted from exertion. In the background, over the handset, Jeffrey could hear clanks and thunking as the men struggled with block and tackle; he heard the torpedomen grunt and curse as they worked.

At last the unit was ready in the tube. Bell fired. The interception range was getting closer and closer to Challenger.

Jeffrey realized this engagement was a battle of attrition: an endurance contest trading blow for blow. But the enemy captain must see I’ve got a very slow rate of fire. How many Shkvals does the Tirpitz still have? How long can my men keep loading and firing like this, with just one tube and by hand, before they all drop from exhaustion?

How much more punishment like this can Challenger take?

Again Bell smashed the inbound Shkval, much too close to Challenger. Once again Challenger rocked, worse than before. Sweating, swearing men rushed to load another fish. Again the Tirpitz fired.

They’re shooting their Shkvals faster than we can shoot back. We lose more ground with every salvo. Our margin to intercept each inbound weapon wears thinner and thinner — soon it will be lethally small.

“Tube three ready in all respects!” Bell shouted.

“Tube three shoot!”

Another atomic fish leapt from the tube, and turned, and charged the Shkval as Challenger tore in the opposite direction.

But the German captain was smart. This time he’d set his Shkval, with its much bigger warhead, to blow before Bell’s fish could get in range.

The blast was so loud it went past Jeffrey’s real ability to hear. There was just a terrible pressure in his head and a painful dissonant ringing. The sharp force of the blast caught Challenger’s hull and pounded Jeffrey’s feet and bruised his ass. Crewmen were knocked to the deck, and some were knocked unconscious. Light fixtures shattered, console screens darkened, locked cabinets burst open. Manuals and clipboards and metal tools became projectiles. Chips of paint and particles of heat insulation, and leftover construction dirt, were thrown into the air. Jeffrey felt the grit in his eyes and he coughed as he breathed it in.

Jeffrey’s hearing came back slowly. As the numbness in his battered brain subsided, he saw Bell waving urgently to get his attention. The phone talker also was yelling something, and Jeffrey’s intercom light flashed.

“A Mark forty-eight has broken loose in the torpedo room!” Bell shouted in Jeffrey’s ear.

The noise and shaking and aftershocks of the Shkval blast went on and on. Jeffrey answered the intercom. It was COB, repeating Bell’s terrible news, telling Jeffrey there was no way they could load the one working tube. In the background, over the handset, Jeffrey heard desperate orders, and shouting, and agonized screams.

“Get more damage-control teams in there!” Jeffrey said to Bell. Jeffrey turned to the phone talker. “Medical corpsman to the torpedo room on the double!”

Jeffrey waited. He forced himself to sit and exude a sense of control and let his crew do their jobs.

Jeffrey squeezed his armrests involuntarily, and just rode the ship.

Challenger shimmied and rolled, fighting her way through troubled water, still making flank speed. Jeffrey knew each shimmy and roll would throw that errant fish in the torpedo room even more, as it darted and veered and banged around, literally like a loose cannon.

“Weapon in torpedo room is fractured!” Bell reported.

Then Jeffrey heard the thing he dreaded most. “Weapon’s fuel is leaking, Captain. Fuel leak in the torpedo room!”

“Countermeasures tubes are inoperable,” the chief at the ship-control station yelled, almost as an afterthought.

“We’re defenseless,” Wilson said. “One more Shkval and we’ve had it.”

“This can’t be happening,” a fire controlman whined.

“Cut it out,” Bell told him. “I’m too underdressed to die.” Bell was still wearing his boxer shorts.

Crewmen laughed at Bell’s remark, but Jeffrey knew the laughs verged on hysteria. The wait for the next incoming Shkval was driving everyone mad. “We’ve been in worse fixes than this,” Jeffrey said in a loud voice to Bell. Jeffrey tried to sound much more blase than he felt, pretending to make idle conversation, to reassure and steady his men.

Bell nodded, his neck muscles visibly tight. The control-room crew grew silent.

Jeffrey listened to the ocean around them boil and roar, from all the effects of the nuclear blasts that had already taken place.

Another aftershock from the most recent Shkval hit Challenger.

The phone talker looked up, very alarmed. “Fire, fire, fire in the torpedo room. Fuel spill in torpedo room has ignited.”

Jeffrey turned to Bell, and the two men made eye contact. Bell’s face said more than words could: there were fifty weapons on the holding racks around that fire, with tons of volatile fuel, and tons more of high explosives and a lot of fissile material.

“Get down there, XO. Take charge at fighting the fire.” Jeffrey dearly wanted to rush to the torpedo room himself. But his job as captain required that he remain in the control room, to stay in overall charge of the ship and maintain the big tactical picture. He caught himself squeezing his armrests in a death grip as he sat there. He forced his fingers to lighten up by a supreme exercise of will.

Jeffrey deeply trusted Bell. But Jeffrey knew Bell’s efforts would only prolong the inevitable — any moment Tirpitz would set loose another Shkval. There was nothing Jeffrey could do now about it but make Challenger continue to flee, and the Shkval, once launched, would gain on