water.
But the American submarine was not his only problem. Even with the aircraft carrier’s escorts a few days out, the tension had already started to affect his crew in more subtle ways. No longer were they the premier warship in the water, a pretense they’d been able to maintain with only the
That was the down side, as the American’s said. The up side was that the Chinese task force seemed to have stopped dead in the water. They remained approximately two hundred miles off their own coast, ostensibly conducting training operations, perhaps to draw attention and resources toward the surface ships and mask covert maneuvers by their submarine. Chang felt a flash of pity for the ground troops sweltering in the close confines of the troop transport ships.
“And?” Chang prompted gently, waiting for the watch officer to continue.
“I am not sure they listen to our reports, sir. Oh, they are quite polite on the circuit — sometimes I must repeat numbers and names, but eventually they understand. But look at the display,” he turned to point at the newly installed tactical data system.
Unfortunately, it was a one-way system on their ship. They received an integrated tactical picture from the battle group, but could not manually input their own contacts. “Why have they a need of our reports when they have all this?” the watch officer asked.
Chang had wondered the same thing himself, but the decision had been made at higher levels. “It is to develop coordination,” he explained, hoping to sound like he meant it. “We will get used to working together, now, when there is time. There may not be time later.”
“Yes, Captain.” His watch officer said nothing further, but his eyes mirrored a shadow of doubt.
Lieutenant Commander “Bird Dog” Robinson clicked down on his mouse again, this time punching it harder. Nothing happened. His JTIDS, or joint tactical information display system screen remained infuriatingly locked on what the sailors called “the eagle prompt,” meaning that the giant American Eagle logo was displayed. A nice logo it was, indeed, with the eagle well drawn and suitably fierce, but no substitute for the array of tactical data that should have been there.
Bird Dog glanced over at the watch supervisor’s console, the small one mounted directly under the racks of computer gear. It showed a complete tactical data picture.
“Why the hell has he got it and I don’t?” Bird Dog demanded. He glanced over at the lieutenant sitting at his side, his watch officer. “It’s just not fair.”
“I don’t know, sir.” The watch officer paused for a moment, as though wondering whether to proceed. “Were you adjusting the background color displays again? Or the geographical features?”
“Maybe. What’s that got to do with it?”
“It’s just that if you overload the computer with high-density graphics, sometimes it drops offline.”
Behind Bird Dog, Taiwanese Major Ho Kung-Sun walked into the compartment silently, and stood at the back to study the screen. Even in his few days on board, he knew what the eagle prompt was.
That American officer, abusing his computer again. Ho Kung-Sun had listened to the technicians and other officers explain to him time and time again what would drop it offline, yet the lieutenant commander never seemed to understand. If he did, he certainly didn’t modify his behavior. Instead, he insisted on experimenting with different color mixes, changing the range displayed continuously, tracking contacts and putting up graphics, all of which quickly overloaded the system.
“Well, call the geeks and tell them to get up here,” he heard the brash lieutenant commander say.
Ho Kung-sun stiffened. That word — how dare he! Long exposure to American culture, as well as a careful reading of the documents provided to the American officers, had made it clear to him that the term “geek” was an old, offensive word, a racial slur applied to many Asian races. And to use it here, in front him — well, no matter how they protested about their desire to work together in harmony with the Taiwanese Navy, this made their feelings clear. Had there been any real desire to work together as equal partners, no American would have even thought — much less spoken out loud — the racial slur.
Ho Kung-Sun turned and stalked out of the room, infuriated beyond measure. This would be reported, it would indeed, and the American officer would rue the day he dared to use such language.
The watch officer turned as he heard heels staccato on tile, and caught a glimpse of Ho Kung-Sun leaving the room. Bird Dog swiveled around as well to follow the man’s gaze. “Wonder what he wanted?” the watch officer asked.
Bird Dog shrugged. “Who knows? He seems like a nice enough guy and pretty sharp. That little boy of theirs, he’s a hell of a good station keeper, isn’t he?” He concluded in an admiring way. “They’ve got that Helen Keller sonar on board, but once they’ve got something, it’s not getting away. And aggressive?” He pointed at the watch officer’s log. “They’ve called in more detailed contact information in the last hour than our lookouts report in two weeks.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. It’s a shame that there’s a language barrier — I bet he’s a hell of a nice guy when you can get him to loosen up.”
“Oh, his English is pretty good. He just has problems with a couple of the vowels, that’s all.”
The watch officer turned to stare at the door, an odd thought crossing his mind. No, it couldn’t be — of course not. He dismissed the thought. And it wasn’t until much later, when the situation had deteriorated considerably, that the watch officer first voiced his hesitant thought. “He has a problem with vowels.”
The senior submarine officer on board copied down the coordinates then plotted them quickly against his detailed area chart. Certain areas of the ocean were exclusively for the submarine’s use, at given depths and at given times. The
The submarine officer laid down his two-point dividers and said, “Admiral, the
Coyote sighed. Yet another problem, another one arising out of incomplete information exchange between the two forces. It was bad enough that the LINK was not a full duplex operation, although it certainly made safeguarding classified information easier. But in times such as this, when Captain Chang inadvertently stumbled into areas of waters they didn’t want him in, it could be hard to explain. Nevertheless, the
Coyote turned to his TAO. “We can’t tell Captain Chang why, but he’ll figure it out. He’s a smart man — the second we start moving him out of some operating areas, he’s going to get suspicious — and, based on what he’s already seen, if there’s a problem with our submarine, he’ll know it. So tell him I’m setting a restrictive EMCON condition and he is to use only passive sensors. That’s at least got some basis in reality, and I won’t have to change his station to keep him out of the way. Plus, his chances of detecting our submarine by passive means alone are pretty darn low.” He glanced over at the submarine officer. “Aren’t they?”
The submariner nodded vigorously. “Absolutely. If he’s on passive only, he won’t see us at all. But active—” he shook his head, “even with the special coating on our hull, he’s going to get a return. And as sharp as those guys are, there’s no way we’re going to convince him it’s a whale.”
“So it might work,” Coyote said.
“Might. But it’s absolutely a violation of standard operating procedures. Admiral, with all due respect, there’s not supposed to be
