'Unit from tube one has detonated!' Bell said. 'First incoming Sea Lion destroyed!' Aftershocks hit over and over, as the fireball shot for the surface, throbbing as it blew outward against the sea pressure, then collapsed, then rebounded hard: The blast echoed off the surface, then hit hard. The ocean heaved as the fireball broke the surface and drove into the sky. The blast echoed off the ridge terrain to port and then hit hard. Bell detonated another antitorpedo torpedo, and the punishment started again.
'Fire Control,' Jeffrey yelled above the noise, 'maximum yields, reload tubes one and three smartly!' Kathy said they'd lost sonar contact with Deutschland. The ocean shattered. Sledgehammers pounded Deutsch-land's hull. Fireball aftershocks hit again and again, then blast echoes off the surface and the ridge. Beck watched meaningful target data cease as the atomic sonar whiteouts blossomed. ' Best guess for next snap shot at Challenger is due south, Captain.'
'Too obvious. Let's bracket him.' Eberhard ordered a two-eel spread; Beck complied. Another of Challenger's weapons went off. It snapped the wires to two of Deutschland's Sea Lions.
Jeffrey tried to visualize the action in his mind. The computer data was meaningless and stale. Somewhere in that maelstrom Sea Lions sought him. Somewhere beyond the fireballs and tortured bubble clouds, Deutschland would launch more. Somewhere northeast a Sea Lion blew, set on maximum yield, lured perhaps by a noisemaker. Challenger rocked.
Jeffrey ordered a snap shot due north.
'Unit is running normally,' Kathy said. Then she jotted. 'Inbound torpedo. Sea Lion bearing zero six five! Range eight thousand yards and closing fast. Torpedo has gone active!'
Jeffrey heard the hard metallic dinggg. He ordered a defensive countershot; Bell acknowledged.
'If that inbound weapon's set at one KT,' Bell said, 'we won't intercept in time.'
'Helm, hard left rudder. Make your course two seven zero.' West.
'Lost the wire, tube seven! Inbound weapon tracking us due west.'
'Helm, hard right rudder!'
'Unit from tube seven will fire on backup timer now.
The sea convulsed again. Fireball aftershocks, and terrain and surface blast echoes, were becoming almost continuous. Demons punched the ship from every side.
'Helm, hard left rudder!'
'Inbound torpedo still running,' Kathy shouted. 'Confirmed,' Bell said. 'Interception not successful.' 'Status of weapon reload?'
'All tubes empty. None will ready in time.'
'Fire more noisemakers. Fire more jammers. Helm, make a knuckle smartly.'
'Inbound weapon now in range-gate mode.'
The dingggs came very fast.
'Helm, another knuckle.' Challenger lost ground.
'No effect,' Bell said. 'Weapon separation now three thousand yards.'
'More noisemakers and jammers!'
Bell complied, Jeffrey waited. Seconds ticked away. 'No effect. Separation now two thousand yards.'
Close enough to smash our stern wide open, even set on lowest Axis yield. Bell dutifully watched his screens, and uselessly reported, 'Inbound weapon will blow any moment. No tubes ready to fire.'
There was nothing more Jeffrey could do. He glanced at the back of Ilse's head, as she sat there in her earphones, bravely typing. What wasted opportunities. Jeffrey waited to die. He'd failed the one hundred twenty people in his crew, and all their loved ones. There was a thud behind the ship.
'Weapon has fizzled!' Bell shouted. 'Assess warhead was damaged by our countershot!' In his mind, Jeffrey saw Eberhard's face. We're not dead yet, you smug Prussian SOB.
'Helm, hard right rudder. Make your course two seven zero.' West again, and toward the volcanic ridges.
Jeffrey watched his weapons status screen. A Mark 88 was presented to the tube-one breach. Jeffrey and Bell did the arming procedures.
'Tube one is ready to fire!'
'Snap shot tube one due north shoot.'
SIMULTANEOUSLY, ON DEUTSCHLAND
There was a wall of noise and heat between Deutschland and Challenger. To Beck, the reverb coming through the hull was painful, deafening, and the sonars were virtually useless. Torpedoes, their wires broken by the blasts, ran out of control. Something exploded — a kiloton, one of Beck's own. Did it home on Challenger, on a bubble cloud, a noisemaker, or another torpedo? Impossible to tell.
The even-numbered tubes were reloaded. Beck and Eberhard entered their passwords and turned their keys; the weapons were armed.
Suddenly Haffner at sonar shouted, 'Inbound torpedo has come through the whiteout! Bearing one six two! Torpedo is one of our Sea Lions!' It must have been damaged by blast, its safeties and guidance awry 'Sea Lion has gone active! Sea Lion range-gating on Deutschland!'
'Snap shot, tube five, one six two, los!'
Beck launched the countershot. It would be barely in time, if that Sea Lion was preset at one KT — without the wire he couldn't tell its yield, let alone control it. Deutschland still raced north, depth now fifteen hundred meters. Eberhard ordered more noisemakers fired. The errant weapon ignored the distractions. Noisemakers were almost useless this deep: the pressure.
It was time to detonate the defensive countershot from tube five. Beck punched the commands. 'Unit from tube five has—'
The blast force struck. The noise was indescribable.
'Another inbound weapon bearing two nine one!' Haffner shouted. 'A Mark eighty-eight very close! Near-field effects!'
'Range too short for a countershot!' Beck yelled above the cacophony. 'We'd be wrecked by our own eel! We're too deep for effective antitorpedo rocket fire!' The motor exhaust would be strangled: again, the pressure.
'Verdammt,' Eberhard cursed. 'Make sure we take Fuller with us! Snap shot, tubes two, four, six, and eight, diverging spread northwest through southwest. Los!' The Sea Lions leaped from the tubes. 'All weapons fired!' The inbound Mark 88 came closer and closer. Its dingggs came through the hull. Ernst Beck waited to die. He thought of his wife and sons — he felt sad and angry. Something struck Deutschland's sail a jarring blow.
'Mark eighty-eight propulsion noise has ceased,' Haffner shouted.
'No apparent damage!' the copilot said.
'Assess inbound torpedo as a dud.' But this was no new lease on life, Beck knew; it simply meant more killing. 'Get the port-side tubes reloaded now.' Challenger raced for the ridge. Meltzer pulled her nose up sharply to climb the face of the basalt formation. Jeffrey watched his screens. Tubes three and five were reloaded.
'Four inbound torpedoes in the water!' Kathy said. 'Contacts held on wide aperture arrays. Two weapons off our starboard quarter, two off the port quarter, closing in passive search mode.' Brilliant decoys wouldn't work: At five thousand feet deep, they'd implode.
Jeffrey and Bell armed the weapons in three and five as fast as they could, and launched them as countershots. Jeffrey ordered a turn due north, down in the valley behind the ridge. The four Sea Lions closed in hot pursuit.
More weapons went off in the distance — at what targets, real or false, Beck couldn't tell. Deutschland still fled north, to put distance between her and the tortured nuclear battlefield. Another weapon might come through the whiteout any moment. One did, much too close. Eberhard ordered a counter-shot. The inbound weapon blew before the outbound one could intercept — the blast struck Deutschland at short range. Unsecured objects in the Zentrale flew. Fluorescent lightbulbs burst. The command console died, and the backup analog speed log showed Deutschland losing way.
'Give me damage reports,' Eberhard snapped.
