April 8: It's Always Something (30 page)

"Are there still any in active military service?" his captain asked.

"Yes, they are still quite usable if you can go slow. This one isn't. In fact he is still accelerating."

'Come west thirty degrees and let's open up some angle on this thing," the captain ordered the helm. "I'd like a range before he is too close and some idea what it is. Increase speed to six knots. They probably can't hear us anyway, but certainly not over their own noise now. We can go to throat mics and earphones."

"Aye," was all the helmsman posted to his screen.

* * *

"I'm going to ease back the speed on the tube drone a bit and let it continue on autopilot. Let's see what the number two unit can do," Billy said. He was enjoying having an audience.

"I understand the hollow drone sucks water through. The other one had the oddest pods hanging off the back, were those the propulsion units?" Havilland asked.

"They are. Three of them, and I know they look odd. I can't tell you much about them, because the fellow who designed them tried to explain them to me and I still don't get why they work better than plain old props. He assures me they do and I have to accept he knows what he's talking about. Dave assured me they worked in a scaled down test. They are steerable and nobody expects them to be very quiet, just efficient and terribly
fast
."

"I'm no engineer," Havilland admitted up front, "but it's rare you can build something to do
everything
well. It's usually a balance and compromises."

"Yes Sir," Billy agreed, with a nod. "Starting number two up. Then I'll take her off to the west to see if I can get a look at our target from a better angle. No point in going slow with this one. I'll take her up to ten knots right off."

"That's sweet," Billy said after a few minutes. "She is up to twenty knots on seventeen percent power and no cavitation activated at all. It's going to be fast alright."

"OK. Getting forty three knots before I really hit the drag wall," Billy said after a few minutes.

"That's better than they estimated. Turning west. Let's see what we can do with some cavitation." Billy flipped a switch and activated the ultrasonic panels at low twenty percent power. A mere two tenths of a megawatt.

* * *

"The first vessel has eased back on power but still in motion," the sensor tech reported on the
Silverfish
. Another source is turning screws. It sounds more like a torpedo but with multiple screws. It's hard to tell how many with the heterodyning. The computer says three or five. I don't believe five. Nobody in their right mind would make it that needlessly complex. The artificial stupid has no common sense."

"Picking up screw counts," he said after a pause. "From Dopplering shift relative to the first screw noises I estimate it is making about forty five knots. Ahhh..."

"Ah what?" the captain asked, sharply.

"The second noise source is moving west the same as us."

That wasn't good. Was it moving to block them? "Is it a ship or a weapon?" the captain demanded.

"It's unlikely to be a ship. It's simply too fast," the rating insisted. "It doesn't match the profile of anything, Chinese or otherwise. You can't test something like this in total secrecy. Somebody would have recorded the sound even if they couldn't connect it to a definite vessel."

"The way they're speeding up and down, turning and maneuvering..." the captain said.

"Yes Sir?"

"They're testing it
now
," he deduced.

"I concur. That makes sense Sir, but it's the Spacer ship up ahead," he said confused. "They bought a bulk carrier, but had to hire crew," he repeated needlessly. They'd all had the same briefing. "I wouldn't expect them to have any expertise in
wet
navy matters."

"Apparently they are not as naive as we thought, to plan a large loitering platform with no protection. And they have detection. The one device might have started towards us as a coincidence. But it strains credulity to think they launched a second one which just happens to be on an intercept vector. They saw us with that big ping."

The sensor tech said nothing. The helmsman was frozen like a statue. The captain was thinking, and what he decided might mean their lives.

"Ohhhhh!!!" The sensor tech called out, louder than was prudent. This time he did snatch his earphones off. The captain didn't reprove him. He could hear the rasping horrid noise from the earphones clear over at his seat. It was like the Almighty's own nails drawn down the blackboard of the heavens. It sent a chill up his back and raised the hair on his neck.

"Supercavitating action," he said, without even looking at the computer for confirmation. Nothing else sounded remotely similar. When he did get his wits back and looked it was ugly. "Computer estimates the device has sped up to a hundred twenty knots. It will cut across our heading in under three hours. It..." the nasty buzz from his earphones changed pitch and got louder as Bill doubled the power to the panels. "Correction. The device is accelerating. A hundred forty knots, one sixty, one seventy...stabilizing near one eighty knots."

"Surely that's as fast as it can go," the helmsman said, unbidden. Nobody offered any bets on that, but they looked unhappy.

"You can't track the first object through that noise can you?" the captain asked.

"No Sir. It was headed straight at us on our previous heading. It would eventually pass astern of us if it continues, but I have no way to know if it maneuvers."

"I have
no
desire to be bracketed by vessels or weapons capable of a hundred eighty knots, and no idea of their weapons' capability and reach. Turn sixty degrees west and bring her up to twenty knots. Make your depth five hundred meters, slowly. Cut speed back to six knots without further orders immediately if the cavitation noises stop."

"Aye Sir," the helmsman said and sounded relieved. There was a slight surge forward as he brought it up to speed smoothly, but he banked perfectly and they couldn't really feel the turn.

The captain typed carefully into his Moniker communication unit. "Target vessel has high powered sonar and has detected us near five hundred kilometer range. Unknown vessel or weapon was launched at our previous position. A second unknown platform with supercavitating propulsion capable of one hundred eighty knots is maneuvering in relation to our altered course. Both platforms display Space systems neutrino emissions."

They'd know that, they had to run filtering to even communicate with the Moniker through their noise, but he tossed it in anyway. "Have turned right angles to primary approach and am withdrawing under cover of their drive noise. In my opinion closer approach will result in our certain destruction. Captain Chaffee,
Silverfish
."

The cavitation howl stopped and they were pushed forward a bit in their seats as the helm dropped back to six knots. "What the devil are they doing?" Captain Chaffee asked. The sonar pulse rang again like striking a bell.

"If they haven't seen us before they have now," the signals and sensor man, Church, assured them. "We had our round, soft nose to them before, but we're showing them our side now. They had to shut the cavitation down to ping us. I should note that the other platform that was on an intercept course to our initial location has gone silent again. When they stopped to ping us there was a window to listen for it."

The Moniker filled the screen with a new message.

"Orders are unchanged. Withdrawal is contraindicated. Turn to target and approach aggressively. You are confirmed weapons free. REPEAT. You are free to launch on original target or to intercept the new platforms. This Moniker channel will be temporarily dedicated to your tactical board data. Route that feed to Moniker. Confirmed, Admiral Hastings, CICUSNAPACFLT, Hawaii."

"They want us to charge in and suicide to give them data on what the Homies can do," Captain Chaffee said. "They're holding the Moniker channel open for our tactical feed so they see how we buy it. Here's the message," he said, and shared it to the bridge crew.

"I've never seen them hold a Moniker feed open like that," the sensor tech said. "My understand was PACFLT only has one to share around."

Chaffee noticed the man didn't immediately route the feed without
his
order.

"OK fellows, time for truth," Chaffee said. "Do any of you know if we have a hidden political officer? I thought maybe with only sixteen aboard we might not have one, but I
need
to know."

"No idea," the sensor tech admitted.

"I
suspect
the alternate watch helmsman," their own helmsman said. "I don't
know
, but I got the feeling he was shifty. He pays way too much attention to conversations that don't include him. He's sitting right beside your number two when he has the conn. A political officer wouldn't be much use back in engineering spaces where he wouldn't hear what is happening and
why
immediately."

"Anybody else?" Chaffee asked, looking around. The other two shook their heads no.

"Mr. Jones," Chaffee told the weapons officer. "I'd like you to get the medial officer and visit the alt-helm at his bunk. I'm releasing an Air-Taser to you," he said, reaching under his station and unlocking a gun safe with his touch. "His privacy shield will open to 7-4-7-2. I'd like him sedated and him, his bunk and locker searched carefully for any weapons. He should be cuffed and put in another bunk. That code will work for all of them if you should need to extract him."

"Yes Sir. I need to know Sir," Jones said very carefully, "in order to carry out my orders should need arise to improvise...What is your ultimate goal?"

"At the moment, I desire not to feel a pistol on the back of my neck if I don't volunteer to kill us all. After that is no longer a worry, we can discuss it," Chaffee offered.

"I hear Australia is lovely this time of year," The sensor tech muttered without seeming to address any particular one of them directly. Chaffee ignored it.

"How much force is authorized if Mr. Hastings
does
have a pistol secreted?" Jones asked.

"No lethal weapon is authorized aboard. If Mr. Hastings has one he is not only in violation, he is a direct threat to my command. I want him dealt with by anything necessary including lethal force. But I don't have a pistol to offer you, just a Taser. I'd appreciate it if you start with the selector set to less than lethal, but do what you need to," Chaffee ordered. "Best you act quietly and with speed when you open his shield, before he is fully roused."

"Aye, aye, Sir. I'll do my best."

It was quite awhile before Jones returned, long enough to worry them all.

"Sir, I recovered this," Jones said, offering a slim six millimeter pistol in one hand, and two plastic magazines full of caseless charges in the other. "It was inside his personal computer. You can't open the case without tools, but we noticed he had had a monitor cable when no use of a ship's monitor would be permitted. The case pops right open when you insert the cable."

"Ingenious," Chaffee allowed, making sure the pistol was cleared before sticking it in a pocket. "Sixteen crew on this vessel, with him, and he needed sixty rounds for his pistol?" he asked.

"Perhaps the gentleman is a terrible shot," Jones guessed. "May I ask how you wish us to proceed with his confinement, having no brig? The doc says he'll be out for about three hours and useless for another. He has nothing that lasts longer and doesn't advise using it more than three times unless you
want
him dead."

"If he's dead he's going to stink quickly," the captain said. "There's no port at which we might seek shelter in reasonable cruising range before that would happen. Our freezer is still full and I don't wish to waste stores. Most of
it
will stink, just a few days later, if we allow it to thaw."

"You could put him overboard," Jones said, practically.

"I've already shut down the Moniker while you were aft, and pulled the cables off it in case the shutdown isn't really a hard stop. They can't track us and I don't want to surface where we might show up on some satellite scan," Chaffee said.

"The five hundred and thirty three millimeter legacy weapons tube still uses a gas expulsion system," Jones said. "You don't have to surface to discard...trash. You can load it up in a bag and blow it out down to about five hundred meters. Past that I know I can still launch a weapon, but I'm not sure about expelling...debris."

"I bet they didn't teach you that in weapons school," the captain said.

"No Sir, that is a bit of legacy training from old school Chiefs," Jones admitted.

"Thank you Mr. Jones. I'll think on all that," Chaffee promised. "Mr. Wallace, take her back twenty degrees south, and bring her up to twenty six knots," he ordered the helmsman. That approximated a course to Australia, and was their fastest speed without telling every passive sonar in this hemisphere where and what they were.

"Aye, Sir!" the helm agreed. The first order that made him happy today.