The counterattack had failed. It hadn’t reached the enemy torpedo when it exploded. White noise from the foam created by the explosion meant they couldn’t confirm its presence, but it had to be out there, and still speeding towards their ship...
By their calculations, one second left—
“Next, halt reverse course. Forward, two-thirds speed. Course 0-6-7. Move to periscope depth,” Mardukas said through the commotion, as if he’d already moved on to the next phase of combat.
“What?” The whole crew, including Goddard, couldn’t believe their eyes. The ultrafast torpedo was gone; all the data on hand made that clear. Their torpedo hadn’t hit it, and yet...
“We’ve cleared the first. The second and third are still coming. We’ll deal with them in the same manner,” Mardukas instructed. “Then, just as you counter, fire MAGROCs to the surface from all MVLSes. Set the coordinates just as I tell you. Understand?”Shark-1
Shark-1’s captain was shocked. An explosion from an enemy torpedo had caused the Burya he’d launched to self-destruct. “Impossible... they knew about that?” he asked incredulously.
It was one of the Burya’s few weaknesses: to move a torpedo at such tremendous speeds, it needed to negate drag from the water around it. This was accomplished through supercavitation—wreathing itself in a membrane of foam. The result was a delicate balance; at certain distances, the impulse currents from an explosion could throw it off course and render it unable to fly straight, like a plane going into a tailspin.
Once that balance was lost, the Burya would lose its resistance to water pressure, and its own speed would break it in half. And the commander of the Tuatha de Danaan had known...
Before Shark-1 could even react, the enemy vessel moved, and took out their other two Buryas the same way. He could hear the explosions play out from afar, like a deafening underwater capriccio. The discord of millions and millions of bubbles made it impossible to hear anything the de Danaan was doing.
Not good... They were basically blind. First, they had to slow down to eliminate their own noise generation, then listen carefully. Shark-1 called for an all stop. Once the noise from the currents had faded, and everything returned to silent darkness around them, he could resume gathering data from the sonobuoys.
He didn’t know exactly where it was, but he knew the de Danaan must still be out there. It had to be hiding somewhere near where the explosions had occurred. But the minute it attacked, they’d know where it was.
“Be careful. If we find them first, we win.” The ocean, echoing with cacophony just seconds ago, was a dark, silent void once more. His two wingmen slowed down with him and switched to silent running.
“The foam around the enemy ship has cleared. Let’s turn the sonobuoys to active and find their location,” his first officer suggested from behind.
“Right,” Shark-1 agreed. “It’s not as if they can hurt us. Hunt them calmly.” They’d gotten past the Buryas commendably, but the same trick wouldn’t work twice. If the enemy tried to attack, that would give away their location, and this time, they’d fire a shot they couldn’t dodge. They could even fight them in melee range, if they had to. Either way, the enemy boat would end up as sea scrap.
“Wasting our time... heh.” Shark-1 let out a brief chuckle, then picked up a new sound. It was five loud splashes, coming from all around his two allies, Shark-2 and Shark-3.
Something was descending from above.
“MAGROCs?! When did they—”
MAGROCs were anti-submarine missiles. They could be fired from beneath the water like Tomahawks or Harpoon missiles, and after flying swiftly out of the sea, they’d plunge back into it, activate sonar, and track and destroy enemy submarines.
The de Danaan must have fired a large number of MAGROCs at some point. Normally, they’d have been able to pick up on the sound of the enemy firing a flurry of missiles like that out of the water—the sound would be deafening, after all—and they’d be able to wait and easily dodge them before they hit, forcing the enemy into a stalemate.
But Shark-1 hadn’t detected the sound of the de Danaan firing the missiles. The enemy must have masked it behind the explosion of the Buryas. They’d used those few seconds when the shockwave was still rocketing outward and the sea was filled with chaotic noise—
“Impossible...” A shiver went through Shark-1’s captain as he realized the cool-headed audacity of the enemy commander. His allies, caught unawares, never stood a chance. The torpedoes caught them in a net. The targeting, landing just a few meters away, had an almost godlike precision to it.
Shark-2 and Shark-3 didn’t even get to make use of their prodigious maneuverability as the de Danaan’s MAGROCs blew them to pieces. That much was clear from the merciless sounds of explosions and noise echoing from behind him.
“A-All ahead full. Course 2-7-5. If we stay here, the MAGROCs will hit us, too!” he declared to the first officer behind him. He had to force his mind to a different topic, so as not to be distracted by his frustration.
It was fine either way, he decided. He’d already launched an ADCAP at the cruise ship. It was a normal torpedo and not a Burya, but it would be enough for a civilian passenger vessel. That would have less than five minutes until impact, and his primary mission was as good as achieved. The Pacific Chrysalis would sink, taking its hundreds of passengers with it.
So will the de Danaan, he promised himself. I’ll have my revenge.
“We’ll approach from the north and hit it with our remaining torpedo,” Shark-1 suggested. “If it dodges that, we’ll close in
