“Yeah,” said Danny.
“Look at it once the mines are clear.”
“After we secure my sergeant’s body, yes.”
“We’re ready,” said Jennifer. “We should have it.”
Zen stared at the screen. “Nothing. Didn’t work, Jen.”
“All right, hold on.”
Zen pushed back in the seat. The sim program included a short-handoff module, but it wasn’t much of a workout — on the program, the screen appeared and you went.
No screen, no go.
“All right, let’s try again,” said Jennifer.
Zen’s main screen turned green. White axis lines dissected it into four quadrants. Two white blobs sat in the upper quarter, percolating like tiny Alka-Selzer tablets.
“Hey, got radar feed,” said Zen.
“Sonar!” corrected Jennifer.
“Yeah, sorry. Got it. Okay, this is the synthetic thermal feed?”
“Right.”
“Looks like I’m flying in soup. Except for the grid, there’s no reference.”
“You’re swimming, not flying.”
“Whatever. Running diagnostic set. You out there, Delaford?”
“I’m watching everything you do,” said the Navy commander from Iowa, which was orbiting the ocean a short distance away.
Zen’s Flighthawk controls had been replaced by two oversized keyboards and a control stick large, but considerably less flexible, than the Flighthawks’. While Piranha’s full range of commands could be entered through the keyboards, Zen’s interest — and training — was confined to a very small subset, which could be handled by preset buttons carefully marked with tape. He could flip between a view synthesized from either passive sonar or temperature-deviant sensors. The computer automatically processed the contact data, displaying a small amount of its information in captions beneath each of the white synthesized images on his main screen; more information on each could be called up on the auxiliary screen. His speed controls were also worked by dedicated keys on the left board.
“How are you looking over there, Quicksilver?” asked Delaford.
“Uh, well, the sea is kind of a brownish green,” said Zen.
Delaford laughed. “I can tell you how to change the colors if you want.”
“I’m just fine,” Zen told him.
“All right. Those two white blobs are our submarines. We’re twelve miles behind the closest one. This is as close as we want to get. They’re oblivious to us. All their attention is ahead. Pretty soon they’ll be turning around,” added Delaford. “They’ll pull a quick spin in the water to make sure there’s no one behind them.”
“What do I do then?”
“Just stop. Their active sonar can’t see us beyond roughly five miles, if that. Truth is, we could probably get right on their hulls and they’d never know we were there.”
“Okay.”
“Temperature sensors are not nearly as sensitive. Here, look at the screen.”
Delarod fed in the display. It took Zen a second to realize the orange funnels in the milky greenish-brown field were the target subs.
“Very obvious what sensor you’re looking at,” noted Delaford.
“Clever.”
Delaford ran through some of the routine, then repeated things Zen had already heard from one of the Navy briefers as well as Jennifer. Zen felt a little like a high school backup quarterback being crammed with information on the sideline after the star went down. Best things to do, he thought, was just get into the game and work it out on his own.
“Okay, so eventually these guys split up. It’s not going to matter who you go with, but once you do, you have to stay with him. Just make sure the other sub doesn’t come back around and try and sniff you out,” said Delaford.
“I thought they couldn’t see me.”
“Hear you. Probably, they won’t.”
“Probably?”
“If we could sneak past an American destroyer, I wouldn’t worry about a Chinese sub,” said Delaford. “On the other hand, that’s kind of why we’re here, to figure out what they can do.”
“All right, I’m ready.”
“I would go with the sub that heads west,” said Delaford. “That’s the one that will be likely to be closest to the Indian ships, so if they’re going to do anything fancy, that’s the one that’ll do it. We want to see if they lay mines, fire torpedoes, that sort of thing. Be an intelligence bonanza, as long as you don’t get in the way.”
“Okay, I’m ready.”
“When they surface, just hang back. They come up every so often to use their radio. You know the auto- destruct sequence, right?”
“Yes, we do,” shot in Jennifer.
“Our preference is to pick up the probe when we’re done. You can hit the home sequence. You remember?”
“Yeah,” said Zen. “You know, I’m really ready to go. Let’s do it.”
“All right, do a ten-degree dive for a hundred meters, then return to three hundred meters depth,” said Delaford.
Zen pushed the joystick forward, remembering he needed to move very slowly. A bright red number appeared on the grid line as soon as he pushed on the stick to its right, what looked like a compass with an artificial horizon appeared, showing the attitude of Piranha’s nose. The depth climber — or rather, dropped — through 310 quickly, but the attitude of the probe barely budged. It was like flying in thick honey. Or swimming in thick honey — Zen had trouble conceptualizing what he was doing.
“Good enough,” said Delaford as he hit the mark, then brought the probe back. “Every movement is very gentle. Very Zen-like, Zen.”
“Ha-ha,” said Zen.
“So when do I get to fly the Flighthawks?”
They ran through a few more maneuvers and the detection modes. Delaford then transferred complete control and watched over Zen’s shoulder for a while.
“We’ve got great data so far,” the Navy commander told them. “What we get from here out is just icing on the cake. Anything you find out — how deep they go, weapons — it’s all icing on the cake.”
“Chocolate or vanilla?” asked Jennifer.
Delaford laughed, then signed off.
Dog’s brief to Breanna was simple and quick, filling her in on the position of the Chinese, where they’d dropped Piranha’s com buoys, and their encounter with the fighters. There were some civilian commercial vessels at the far eastern end of the patrol sector, heading south but obviously trying to avoid the Chinese fleet. They also counted three Taiwanese spy ships in the search range. Breanna already had the tanker tracks and contact info, and there wasn’t much to say about the weather forecast, which was still predicting clear skies for thirty-six hours or so.
He told Breanna that at least one SSN had been detailed south to try to intercept and trail the Chinese subs; Delaford though Woods would end the Piranha mission once he was sure the attack sub was on the trail. In the meantime, other ASW assets were moving in on the eastern side of the Chinese fleet. It was possible they too would make contact, at which point their job would likewise, be ended. The idea was to switch to the least sensitive method of data-gathering as soon as possible.
That, and to make sure Dreamland couldn’t grab all the credit.
