Intercoms blinked and phone talkers shouted all at once. Beck reached for the call from Engineering.
'Excessive-shock reactor scram. Propulsion power lost. Control circuits may be damaged, safe restart will take ten minutes.'
Deutschland coasted to a halt. Around her the ocean fulminated. Somewhere out there, Beck knew, more torpedoes plowed through the sea, searching for something to destroy.
'Autoloader bearing pin has sheared,' the phone talker yelled. 'Port-side torpedo autoloader out of action.'
Jeffrey ordered Meltzer to slow, to try to make less noise, to hide. Challenger was shielded from the worst of the whiteout to the east by the intervening ridge crest. Maybe the inbound torpedoes would run right past him in the chaos.
Challenger's latest two antitorpedo shots went off beyond the ridge. The shock waves bent over the crest, and rattled the ship. It was impossible to tell if there were still incoming weapons.
Jeffrey ordered Kathy to have her people listen hard, for signs of Deutschland or her torpedoes.
Something detonated against the opposite side of the ridge — again, the warhead's force bent up and over the crest. The gravimeter showed gaps in the ridge: an avalanche. The local seismic seawave struck, knocking Challenger askew The ship rolled and bucked until Meltzer and COB got her righted again.
A torpedo came over the top of the ridge off Challenger's stern. It pinged, then pinged again — Kathy heard the echoes above the landslide; it was close.
Jeffrey ordered flank speed.
Bell fired the 88 in tube seven as a countershot.
The Sea Lion warhead went off first, off the port quarter, then the blast reflected off the ridge and back again from starboard. Jeffrey's skeleton tried to fly apart inside his body. He tasted copper — his gums bled, gouged by a capped tooth.
Challenger coasted to a stop.
Propulsion power was lost. Jeffrey grabbed the red handset for Damage Control back aft. Willey said there was a fire in Engineering, then the line went dead. Jeffrey ordered everyone to don their emergency air breather masks. He waited for the phone talker to report — the sound-powered phones were backup for the intercom. Jeffrey knew the news would not be good. Damage that halted the ship always had to be serious. Here, it could be their undoing. Ernst Beck made his way aft, past damage control parties at work. He passed the wardroom and mess, where first-aid men treated the injured. He had no time to stop and give encouragement or comfort. He noticed the ship's lay preacher, himself a first-aid tech, making his rounds.
Beck went through the heavy watertight door, into the spotless stainless steel corridor leading beyond the reactor. With all the shielding and massive machinery surrounding him now, the noise outside the hull seemed less.
Beck glanced to his right. In there, beyond the shielding, the core lay dormant, boron carbide control rods thrust between the zirconium-clad uranium-235 plates. Pressurized water still circulated, carrying off thermal energy as short-half-life by-products decayed. But there was nowhere near enough heat to generate steam to drive main turbines, or even auxiliary equipment. Without the turbines spinning, there was no current from the turbogenerators. Without that current, the permanent-magnet propulsion motors were still. The ship could hardly surface and run on emergency diesel here. All power had to come from the batteries. The batteries were needed to restart the reactor, once the safeties triggered by the battle shock were reset, and the fast-unscram procedures were complete. But the batteries were also needed to run the combat systems, which used very high electrical demand. Time was of the essence.
Beck went through the watertight door at the far — end of the corridor. He was in the engine room now — it was hot and humid here, and much too quiet. The engineer stood and supervised, as senior enlisted technicians and junior officers checked the status of control circuits and equipment. Others studied readings from the reactor core, of temperatures and neutron flux.
Everyone worked confidently and efficiently. Beck was hardly needed. He watched as the first group of control rods was lifted, by just enough to enter the restart power range. The operators went through their automated checklists. One Leutnant zur See flipped through thick hard-copy reference manuals, independently verifying key parts of on-line procedure.
The engineer nodded, satisfied. 'Very well, Reactor Operator. Lift the next control rod group to restart-level power.' This step also went well.
Beck palmed an intercom mike and reported to Eberhard. Eberhard ordered Beck to the Zentrale. Eberhard told him Coomans had gotten the port-side torpedo autoloader working again.
SIMULTANEOUSLY, ON CHALLENGER
Jeffrey fidgeted as he watched his automated damage control displays. He drew a breath arid exhaled. Around him twenty other air masks hissed and whooshed. Jeffrey was still so used to being at the scene in drills or combat — with
Commander Wilson in charge in the CACC — it was emotionally trying to just sit and wait.
But Jeffrey trusted Bell, his XO now back aft; Jeffrey made himself relax. He told himself he still had a ways to go to learn the captainly ways Commander Wilson had long since mastered.
'Captain,' the phone talker said. His voice was muffled through his mask. Jeffrey looked up. 'Damage Control reports fire extinguished, sir.'
'How long to propulsion restart?'
The phone talker relayed the question.
'Five minutes till the ship can answer Maneuvering bells.'
'Very well.' Jeffrey knew there was no point in asking Willey to hurry — he already was. When would another torpedo come over the ridge?
'Call the XO forward,' Jeffrey said.
'Aye, aye.'
Bell was there in moments, slightly breathless from his dash in a heavy air pack. Jeffrey made a point of thanking Bell for his help.
'Navigator,' Jeffrey said, 'take the conn.*
Sessions unplugged his mask, came to the command console, and plugged in again. 'This is the navigator. I have the conn.'
The watchstanders acknowledged through their masks.
Jeffrey cleared his throat, and pointed around the CACC. 'XO, Sonar, Oceanographer, Assistant Navigator. Strategy session at the plotting table.' Everyone took deep breaths, pulled on intercom headphones, put their masks back on, and used duct tape to get good seals; the local CACC intercom circuits were working. They joined Jeffrey at the horizontal nav console, and plugged back in. The assistant navigator, a senior chief, brought up a large-scale nautical chart.
'We've broken contact with Deutschland,' Jeffrey said. 'Now, fight or flight?'
'Deutschland has more options than we do, sir,' Bell said. He pointed to the digital chart.
'They can try to come after us, or evade. If they want to evade, they can head northeast, into the Barents Sea, and take refuge in Russian waters.'
Jeffrey nodded. The Joint Chiefs' global ROEs forbade American warships from entering the Barents Sea, to avoid a confrontation with Russia that might escalate.
'They could go southeast,' Kathy said, 'back the way we came, to Norway or the Baltic.
…They could even run the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. Gap, sir, into the North Atlantic, and head for a base in France, or threaten our convoys again.'
'Concur,' Jeffrey said. 'And if they head north under the ice cap, they can sneak up over the top of the world and try to run the Bering Straits, on the Russian side, and break into the Pacific past Alaska. From there they could go anywhere.'
'We have only one real choice,' Bell said. 'Under the ice cap we might blunder into Russian SSNs, guarding
