Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (30 page)

“Excellent.” He turned forward. “Navigation—reduce to full flank speed and maneuver to evade enemy response—”

Sonar interrupted him. “Sir—a wireguide torpedo of theirs was fired. The only one so far. Coming after us at forty knots on a trajectory to impact us amidships on the portside in ten seconds and counting.”

“Navigator,” Darkwood called, “belay that previous

order. Everything we’ve got and fast! Engineering—help her out! Sebastian, plot the duration time on that wireguide.”

“Plotting now, Captain.”

Darkwood looked at the video screen. The Pillars of Woe were straight ahead, chimneys of undersea rock extending several hundred feet toward the surface, scattered at irregular intervals for several nautical miles square, beyond them a deep trench, within the trench a volcanic vent, part of the system which provided geothermal power to the Russian domes. “Lureen—hold as much speed as you can and take her through the pillars on my commands.”

He unbuckled his seat restraint and started forward toward the video screen. “Sebastian, advise the crew to maintain Collision Quarters.”

“Advising the crew to maintain Collision Quarters, Captain.”

“Sonar—how close is that wireguide?” “Twelve seconds and staying right on us, sir.” “Give me word if the gap gets below ten.” “Aye, Captain.”

Darkwood grasped the forward rail with both fists, his eyes intent one the video screen. “Lureen—we’re doing it.” “Aye, Captain.”

“Ten degrees right rudder.” A chimney was dead ahead, but the gap between it and the one off their bow was tight. “Back one third. Five degrees left rudder. Maintain reduced speed. Five degrees right rudder, ahead to flank speed.” His head was beginning to ache. “Right rudder ten degrees, back one third. Left rudder five degrees. Shoot me some air—up fifty feet,” Darkwood ordered.

The Pillars of Woe were tight here and the only way through was to come up, over, and dive. “Ten degrees on the bow planes,” he commanded. “Level bow planes and ten degrees right rudder. All ahead full. Flank speed now.” The Reagan had dipped inside the heart of the Pillars of Woe, frightened-looking undersea creatures hastening OUt of its Wav. “Sonar? Tell mp ahnnt the wire

guide.”

“Still twelve seconds out, Captain.” “Back on one third, rudder amidships. Sonar! Give me a count.”

“Twelve seconds to impact, Captain. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Only seven now, sir. Six. Five, sir. Four—”

“Navigator—twenty degrees on the bow planes, ten degrees right rudder, all ahead full.” The Reagan lurched violently, angling upward, Darkwood holding tight to the railing, legs braced against the deck. He licked his lips, eyeing the Pillars of Woe. “All back. Rudder amidships!”

He felt the shudder, the chimney off the port bow trembling, tumbling. “Sonar—tell what’s happening.”

“Wireguide detonated fifty yards off the port bow, sir.”

“Engineering—damage report.”

“Aye, Captain. Checking for damage.”

Hartnett began reciting the litany of ship’s departments, soliciting for damage reports.

Darkwood leaned against the railing. “Sonar—any new friends to report?”

“Negative, sir.”

“Navigator—you’ve got the helm. Sebastian—keep an eye out for the Island Classers and get a rendezvous set with the Scout subs. I’ll be in Scout Sub Bay. You have the con.”

“Very well, Captain.”

Darkwood started aft, past Sebastian’s station and up the three low steps and past his chair, between the sonar and computer consoles. Morris Tagachi was still at his post by the periscope controls. Darkwood shot the young man a grin as he stepped into the shaft for the utilitarian but efficient vertical conveyer, his feet positioned on the step, his left hand on the strap. Already, he was moving downward.

He could hear Hartnett informing Sebastian that damage reports were negative and then all sounds from the bridge faded.

On the next level below he stepped out, moving around

would signal for permission to step down from Collision Quarters as soon as they were out of the Pillars of Woe. But Battle Stations would be maintained until whoever was aboard the Scout subs was brought aboard, the Scout subs were gotten well away from the Reagan and destroyed, and the Reagan was well away from the Russian domes.

Sick Bay was just ahead and he turned the companionway and entered the reception area, no one apparently sick since all but one of Margaret’s Barrow’s on-duty nursing staff seemed engaged in conversation. One of the staff called, “Attention!”

“As you were.” Darkwood just shook his head. The woman was a Marine who had cross-transferred into Navy and she always did that. If every time he walked through the ship everybody stopped what they were doing and came to attention, nothing would ever get done. Formality was fine, but had its limits in practicality.

He entered Margaret’s surgery, not having seen her through the windows in the Sick Bay door. She was sitting at her desk. “Is all of this over with, Jason?”

“Well, more or less. Tell that ex-Marine out there to knock it off with calling everybody to attention whenever she sees me.”

“I think she likes you.”

Darkwood nodded his head. “Ohh boy!”

“You ready to take on your passengers?”

“Whoever they are. I thought you might want to come along.”

Lieutenant Commander Margaret Barrow stood up from her desk and smiled at him. “Some cheapshot date.”

“Stick with me afterward and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee in the officers’ mess.”

“Yuch.” She laughed, starting through the still-open surgery door and into the reception area. He followed her and they made their way back along the companionway toward the vertical conveyer. “Who do you think these guys are?”

“In the Scout subs? If we’re lucky, escaped prisoners.

But that’s pretty much stretching it. But they do speak English. Could all be some kind of setup. I’ve got Security down there.”

“What would I need Security for when I’m with you?”

“Can’t argue with logic like that.” He laughed, following her onto the conveyer. He looked down at her as they were carried along. Her hair had always been one of her best features, dark brown with lighter highlights when the light was just right. Just a little past the nape of her neck and not really within regs, but she was a doctor and doctors were notorious about regs. He remembered how her hair had smelled, even though it had been a very long time. Like roses.

She stepped off the conveyer and he followed after her. As they passed a squawk box, he heard Sebastian coming over the intraship. “Bridge to Captain. Bridge to Captain.

“Just a second, Margaret,” he told her, depressing the push-to-talk switch on the squawk box. “This is the Captain.”

“Captain Darkwood. Request permission to step down from Collision Quarters. We have cleared the Pillars of Woe.”

“Permission granted. Maintain Battle Stations.” “Of course, Captain.”

“I’m just about to reach Scout Sub Bays, Sebastian. Keep me informed as necessary. Darkwood out.” He walked on, Margaret waiting for him a little further along the companionway, near the entrance to the reactor complex. He hurried past it with her, and where the companionway reached a T intersection, he took the right passageway, leading toward the Scout Sub Bays. “How about dinner when we get back to Mid-Wake? I promise to be good.”

“You always promise to be good—but you never are.” “I know, but you wouldn’t want me to change after all these years.”

“Just dinner?” She smiled. The companionway lights danced in the erreen of her eves. “Hmm?”

“Well, a drink or two maybe. How about it?” “Jason Darkwood looking for Platonic companionship?”

“Plato has nothing to do with it and he was probably homosexual anyway. And if companionship is all that’s available to me at the moment—”

“That’s just the trouble, Jason,” she interrupted. “You’d want more and so would I.”

He touched her right elbow with his left hand. “Maybe I’m saying we can try again.”

“Maybe I know you’re saying that, Jase. Dinner—but just that for now.”

“Dinner—agreed,” Darkwood told her.

They had reached the Scout Sub Bays. They always reminded him of a vast auditorium but without seats. On the starboard side of the Reagan, they occupied the entire central section of the lower level, the height of the overhead some thirty feet here, the Reagan’s Scout Class vessels secured here on rails to be brought into position for transfer through one of the two massive airlocks into the sea. But all three of the Scout subs were locked down and the activity by the air locks was that of the Marine Corps Security detail under the command of Lieutenant Tom Stanhope. When Sam Aldridge had been MIA’d, Darkwood had requested that Stanhope, Aldridge’s second-in-command for the Marine Unit, be temporarily placed in charge. Darkwood realized it was simply his reluctance to accept the finality of death. He and Aldridge had attended the Naval Academy together, had been friends ever since, and when Darkwood had been given command of the Reagan, and with it the prerogative of staffing it with his pick of available officers, the two he had picked were Sebastian and Aldridge. He had been told it was a curious choice. Someone had even asked if he didn’t like people of his own race, Sebastian and Aldridge both being black. Darkwood had considered it fortuitous that the person who had asked that question had been male, approximately his own size, approximately his own age, and of neither greater nor lesser rank. All those

factors taken into consideration, he’d punched the man in the mouth.

But it had been a curious choice. Sebastian, though in superb physical condition and an accomplished man of violence when necessary, abhorred violence and was best described as cerebral, although someone six foot six and slightly over 220 pounds was rarely considered that.

Aldridge was—had been, Darkwood mentally corrected—about his own height, a little over six feet. And, though Aldridge was a gifted scholar, he hardly gave that image. He looked and acted the consummate man of action. Within Mid-Wake’s closely knit black community, it was said that Aldridge and Sebastian were distant cousins, something both men vehemently denied. In an environment like that of Mid-Wake, it was almost an oddity not to be related to half the people you knew or worked with. Saul Hartnett’s mother was Darkwood’s aunt and sonar specialist Julie Kelly was the daughter of Hartnett’s father’s brother. Darkwood had always wondered if that made him and Julie Kelly cousins of some kind.

He and Margaret Barrow were not related at all—they had sat up until three in the morning once confirming that by comparing genealogies, another common pastime at Mid-Wake. As they neared the air locks now, he advised Margaret, “Why don’t you take the stairs to the observation platform and wait there. Just in case.”

“I’m a Naval officer and I’m a doctor—so in both cases I belong right here.” She smiled at him.

“Yes.” Darkwood smiled back. “But you’re only a lieutenant commander and I’m a commander, plus I’m the Captain of this ship, and why don’t we consider my request a direct order?”

“Aye, Captain,” she snarled, and broke off from him and ran toward the stairs leading up to the platform.

Darkwood watched her over his shoulder for a moment, then continued on, Stanhope starting to call his detail to attention, Darkwood saying, “As you were, gentlemen.”

“Captain, the Scout Sub Bavs are secure.”

“Somehow I knew they would be, Tom—loan me your communicator.”

“Here you go, sir.” Stanhope took the radio from his belt pouch and handed it to Darkwood.

Darkwood depressed the push-to-talk button. “Bridge, this is the Captain. Sebastian—anything new on the Scout subs?”

“We have not been able to get a cleaner transmission from the Scout subs, Captain. For that reason, I would advise caution lest it should prove to be some Russian trick. Docking, if they understood our transmissions and allowed our remote interlock, should begin in less than a minute. I was about to inform you of that.”

“Consider me informed. Once we get whoever it is aboard, I’ll have Stanhope notify you as soon as the Russian vessels are clear of our docks and Lieutenant Walenski can practice her marksmanship.”

“I will advise Lieutenant Walenski, Captain.”

“Very well—Captain out,” and Darkwood handed back the radio. “Deploy your men, lieutenant. I’ll only be observing.”

“Very good, sir.”

Darkwood wanted to say something, didn’t, drew back instead, and waited a respectable distance from the Marines and the air locks. He glanced up toward the observation platform. Margaret looked like she was angry—at least a little—and he wondered if dinner was still on.

When he had first been given command of the Reagan, he had personally involved himself in everything. He had learned that wasn’t the right way. Taking virtually direct command of the helm when they had successfully attempted to elude the wireguide torpedo had been necessity. He knew the Pillars of Woe better than anyone on board. But after a few awkward experiences, he had learned that the function of command truly was the delegation of authority, and ever since he had learned that lesson, life for everyone aboard the Reagan had been easier, most particularly himself. It was using this logic which had determined that he did not stop at the arms

locker to avail himself of a weapon. That was what he had the Marines for.

There was a loud thud and the computer’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Docking in Air Lock One accomplished. Equalizing pressure now.” The computer sounded like an English butler from one of the five-centuries-old movie tapes he had seen, and rumor at the Academy had always been that indeed the voice had been synthesized from such old films. But the English the machine “spoke” was, indeed, lovely.

Darkwood watched. He waited.

Stanhope had drawn his pistol. His Marines had their assault rifles ready. Darkwood had not reminded them that a serious firefight could put holes in the Reagan’s hull, perhaps, and that then the sea would rush in and the hull, its integrity gone, would rupture and they would all die. Hopefully Stanhope and his people remembered. Darkwood had learned that as well—it was wise to assume everybody might be an idiot but not that they actually were. But, on the other hand, some unpleasant surprises were permanent in duration.