Sea of Shadows

doctrine for incoming Vipers: fire two missiles at each Viper, take a peek with radar to see if they’ve been destroyed, and then fire two more missiles at each Viper that survived the initial salvo.

Captain Bowie nodded at the Aegis display screen and said quietly,

“Whiley, you stubborn bastard, still playing it by the book. And look what it’s got you.”

The battle seemed to unfold in slow motion on the big display screens.

Six friendly-missile symbols and three hostile-missile symbols vanished as Antietam’s first salvo took out three of the incoming Vipers. Ten seconds later, the scenario repeated itself as Antietam’s second salvo of six destroyed the remaining three in-bound Vipers.

The Towers CIC team began to cheer.

“I’ll say this for Whiley,” the captain said, “that son of a bitch can shoot!”

The cheers were suddenly chopped off by a voice over the 29-MC speakers. “All Stations — Sonar has multiple hydrophone effects off the port bow! Bearings three-one-five, and three-one-seven. Initial classification: hostile torpedoes!”

“Crack the whip!” Ensign Cooper said into his comm-set. “Bridge — USWE. We have in-bound hostile torpedoes. I say again — crack the whip!”

“Bridge, aye!”

In the background came the muffled wail of the gas turbine engines as they spun up to flank speed.

The Officer of the Deck’s voice broke over the 1-MC. “All hands stand by for heavy rolls while performing high-speed evasive maneuvers.”

The deck began to heel to starboard as the big destroyer whipped into the first in a series of tight, high- speed turns. The crack-the-whip anti-torpedo maneuver would take the ship through a rapid succession of near-hairpin turns, designed to create multiple propeller wakes at very close intervals. A torpedo attempting to follow a ship through the aftermath of a crack-the-whip maneuver would find itself faced with a confusion of wakes to choose from, not to mention a wall of acoustic interference as the millions of bubbles churned up by the ship’s screws collided, collapsed, and popped. Coupled with the towed acoustic decoy system called Nixie, the maneuver was highly effective. Some tactical analysts rated its probability of success at nearly seventy percent. And in the world of torpedoes, it didn’t get any better than that.

Ensign Cooper gripped the edge of the CDRT to maintain his footing as the deck surged first one way, and then the other. The symbols on the screen had devolved into a mad little dance as every ship in the formation executed its own torpedo evasion maneuvers.

“Antietam is outside the screen,” he said quietly. He braced one hip against the side of the CDRT and let go with his right hand so that he could key his mike. “Captain — USWE. Both of the enemy torpedoes are locked on Antietam, and Antietam is outside of our defensive screen.”

He stared at the CDRT’s tactical display, and then looked over his shoulder at the big Aegis display screens. They all told the same story.

From the wild movement of her tactical symbol, it was obvious that Antietam was running her own crack-the-whip maneuver. It was just as obvious that the maneuver was going to fail. The hostile torpedoes had been fired from too short a range. They had far too good a sniff of the cruiser’s real acoustic signature to be distracted by decoys and tricky maneuvers.

Ensign Cooper watched helplessly as the flashing red hostile-torpedo symbols began to merge with the symbol that represented Antietam.

* * *

DMA37 Torpedo:

Powered by a four-stage axial-flow turbine and a sophisticated planetary gear drive train, the German torpedo was capable of slightly over fifty knots. And at the moment, it was using every scrap of that power to close the range to its target.

The target was fast, but not fast enough. And it was tricky, but not tricky enough.

Inside the torpedo’s acoustic seeker head, an array of 152 miniature sonar transducers were bombarded by a powerful source of white noise.

Under other circumstances, the interference might have been enough to mask the target entirely, but the target was close, and the acoustic seeker could still detect it clearly through the cacophonous barrier of sound energy.

The transducers detected another sonar contact, with acoustic characteristics that closely resembled the target. For a few milliseconds, this confused the targeting algorithm running through the torpedo’s digital processors. Two targets to choose from, both displaying acoustic characteristics within acceptable parameters, both easily within the weapon’s attack envelope. It could strike either target in a matter of seconds.

With no compelling criteria to use for target selection, the torpedo’s computer did exactly what its programmers had intended: it locked on to the closer of the two potential targets and started the final arming sequence on its warhead.

Slightly less than ten seconds later, the weapon’s acoustic sensors determined that it was nearing optimum range for detonation. The torpedo dove to twelve meters, a depth calculated to place it beneath the hull of the target. The algorithm’s calculations were precise; the torpedo reached the twelve-meter mark at the exact instant that the target’s acoustic signal strength reached its peak. The torpedo was under the target.

The warhead contained 250 kilograms of plasticized-hexite high-explosive. It detonated with a destructive force equivalent to nearly 500 kilos of TNT.

The target was vaporized.

* * *

USS Towers:

“Holy shit!” the Sonar Supervisor shouted over the net. “They just blew up the Antietam’s Nixie! The torpedo fell for the decoy! Yeah! Fuckin’-A!” The sonar team was cheering in the background.

Ensign Cooper jabbed his comm button. “Sonar — USWE. Can it! Maintain net discipline! This is no time to get excited anyway. There’s still another torpedo out there, and there’s no way Antietam can get her backup Nixie fish deployed in time.”

* * *

USS Antietam:

About five seconds later, the second of the DMA37 torpedoes proved Ensign Cooper right. With the other distracting target out of the way, it dove to an optimum depth of twelve meters, slid neatly under Antietam’s hull, and detonated.

The explosion flash-vaporized a huge volume of water directly beneath the cruiser’s keel, simultaneously ripping and burning an enormous hole through the steel hull plates of the ship’s bottom. The keel, the structural backbone of the ship, fractured like bone under a sledgehammer. With its spine shattered and nearly all support snatched out from under its hull by the still-expanding bubble of vaporized water, the cruiser bent near the middle, and then broke. The sound was unbelievable, an ear-rending cacophony of tearing metal and roaring water, punctuated by the screams of the injured and dying. The overburdened steel hull plates separated completely, ripping the old ship in half.

The aft section of the ship rolled over on to its starboard side and began to sink immediately.

The forward half of the ship remained afloat somehow, without power, as the generators had been destroyed along with the engineering spaces.

Fires raged through the powerless steel hulk that — ten seconds ago — had been a United States warship.

* * *

Samurai Seven-Nine:

“Jesus Christ,” the copilot whispered. “Oh Jesus …”

The pilot stared down at the flaming remains of their ship. “SENSO, did you get a fix on the spot where those Vipers left the water?”

In the rear of the helo, the Sensor Operator stared blankly into space, too stunned to even answer.