Barracuda: Final Bearing

“Skipper, I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out,” McKilley said, reaching to the overhead for the technical manual.

“Don’t you have its tech manual on the outline software?”

“Yes sir. One moment.” McKilley was becoming flustered, flashing through the software to the help-screens, going through one after the other. It had been two minutes since the missile launch and still no explosion. Phillips looked back at the geographic plot, deciding to work on the range to the Barracuda. To do it would be violating yet another hallowed submarine tactic by using active sonar. Active sonar was the practice of pinging a noise into the sea, waiting for the ping to bounce off the object of interest and return to the listening sonar set. The time delay and the sound velocity determined the two-way-trip length, which divided in two was the range to the contact. It was a tactic unused for decades. A stealthy submarine attempting to remain undetected would never ping out a noise. It defeated the purpose and besides, passive listen-only sonar could be just as effective, although it took the ship longer to determine the range to the contact. But the entire ocean knew Piranha was there — hell, he’d just launched the loudest weapon ever known to man. Another noise in the form of a ping would make no difference and would save time to getting the Barracuda’s exact location in the sea.

The only problem was that active sonar was subject to interpretation just as passive sonar was, the human brain definitely part of the combatcontrol system. And the sonarmen were generally not too great at active sonar, an unpracticed art. Still, if anyone could do it, Gambini could. “Master Chief, I want an active range to the Barracuda. Can you do it?”

“Yes sir. It’ll just take a moment to line up.”

“Ping when you’re ready and step on it. Master. Weps! What’s the status of the answer? Can we put an explosion at.a preplanned point in space?”

“Still trying to find out, sir.” Phillips bit his tongue, knowing that yelling at the lieutenant would make him feel better but would only mess up McKilley’s efforts. Nothing like the heat of battle, Phillips thought. There was something about pressure that made most human minds start to go to hell.

The fluster factor was with them now. The simplest things could become immensely complicated under pressure. Phillips took a deep breath and waited.

The Vortex missile speeding toward Target Six should have had an unobstructed shot at the target, but the Mark 50 torpedoes shot by the Barracuda were sent off course by the ventriloquist sonar set of the Winged Serpent.

The torpedoes were all lagging by several miles, directly astern of the Destiny II ship, their sonars convinced that the target was 4000 yards closer than it actually was because of the Destiny’s rear-facing active sonar sending false pulses that mimicked the Mark 50s’ pinging sonar sets. The Mark 50s all tried to slow down and detonate where the Destiny should have been, but when the weapon computers said the Mark 50s should be right on top of the target, they instead found only empty ocean. The sonars tried again, pinging out to the target, hearing now that it was straight ahead, then speeding up and positioning themselves where the target should have been, only to meet nothing. In spite of a Mark 50’s ability to do seventy knots, they followed the Destiny in a tail chase at fifty-five knots, a constant distance behind the Destiny as it evaded to the southwest. After a few miles down the track, the Mark 50s would run out of fuel and sink. From the viewpoint of Vortex Seven’s blue-laser sonar, eight Mark 50 torpedoes and their combined turbulent wakes met the target parameters for a valid submerged target. The Vortex got within twenty yards of the aftmost torpedo before exploding into white-hot plasma, destroying every single torpedo. Still, the Destiny II-class submarine did not escape undamaged. The blast effect and underwater shock wave hit it hard.

SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

The explosion from the stern took Tanaka by complete surprise. The detonation extinguished the lights and killed the Second Captain, and the ship went into a dive since the computer no longer controlled the ship’s attitude.

“Override in manual!” Tanaka ordered the ship-control officer. “Bring us back up, two hundred meters. Kami, get down to the lower level and reinitialize the Second Captain. Mazdai, help him while I try to see what else is damaged.”

There was no questioning Tanaka’s frantic orders.

Kami and Mazdai rushed out of the room. Emergency battle lanterns flickered in the space, then came alive, lighting the compartment in a ghostly incandescent glow, patches of light and darkness spreading throughout the ship.

Tanaka cursed, wondering how one of the torpedoes had managed to get in. Without the Second Captain he was blind, deaf and dumb. And defenseless. Computers?

They were as unreliable as humans.

USS PIRANHA