Barracuda: Final Bearing

The tenth and last Vortex launched by the Piranha detonated two and a half miles from the firing ship. The blast effect and fireball reached out to the surrounding waters, propagating outward spherically, the immediate blast zone a mass of high-energy steam and plasma, the effect further out a pressure shock wave moving at sonic velocity through the water. The Nagasaki torpedoes launched against the Piranha were on the Piranha side of the Vortex blast zone, the weapons passing each other on the way to their respective targets. But it hardly mattered, the blast and shock passing through the speeding torpedoes, vaporizing the one furthest behind, smashing the structural framing of the torpedo in the lead, the latter self-detonating in an explosion that was designed to rip open an enemy submarine hull but just dissipated outward in the waters of the Pacific.

The threat of the Nagasaki torpedoes was eliminated, but the effect of the saving Vortex missile had to be endured. The shock wave hit the Piranha like a huge fist. The reactor scrammed, tripped out, the shock of the blast knocking all but a handful of men to the decks and spilling their blood.

In the aftermath of the battle there were two submarines left, one crippled and sinking, the other shut down and whole but in deep shock. If that were all, the two submarines might have recovered without incident.

But that was not all.

Ninety kilometers to the south the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force Destiny II submarine Spring Sunshine made its way northward, its Second Captain reporting on the many explosions from the battle zone.

USS BARRACUDA

“Sir, depth is eighteen hundred, a hundred feet from crush depth.”

Pacino had no choice. He had no reactor, a sinking submarine a hair’s breadth from crush depth and a crew of only a half-dozen functioning men. It no longer mattered who waited for them on the surface or who lurked in the area with armed Nagasaki torpedoes. The choice: Certain death from the pressure of the deep, or possible life from the safety of the surface. Pacino chose the surface.

“Chief of the Watch, emergency blow forward.”

The chief stood and reached into the overhead for the chicken switch, the lever that would admit ultrahigh pressure air directly into the main ballast tanks forward.

He pushed the lever upward, and an immediate loud roaring invaded the silence of the dead control room as the air filled the forward ballast tanks.

The depth indicator didn’t stop its downward drift, the gage now reading 1815 feet, only eighty-five feet above crush depth. Around Pacino the sounds of the metal of the hull protesting and groaning could be heard — the prelude to a hull failure.

“Chief, emergency blow aft,” Pacino commanded. The chief pushed the aft lever forward, the roaring noise doubling as the aft tanks were being evacuated of seawater.

The ship was now tons lighter, even at this depth.

The depth gage continued its downward drift, at 1825, 1830, 1840, until it froze at 1860, the depth staying constant.

Pacino thought that crush-depth figures were subject to some errors, that no one really knew what pressure the hull would collapse at until it actually did, but then the deck slowly inclined upward, and the depth indicator clicked up one foot. Just one, but that was enough. The gage began to click some more, the deck inclining upward as the ship began to rush toward the surface, the digital indicator showing the vessel picking up speed.

“Keep the ship flat if you can,” Pacino told the helmsman.

If the up-angle was too much, the ship would come up and dump the air from the ballast tanks, then sink back down again.

The depth gage unwound, and even with full plane angles the helmsman couldn’t keep the deck level. Pacino grabbed a handhold as the deck inclined upward past thirty degrees to forty-five, the deck becoming more of a wall than a floor. The gage whizzed through the numbers—500 feet, 450, 300, 200, 100, until the ship careened from the deep and leaped from the sea, only the pumpjet aft remaining submerged as the ship rocketed through the waves, froze in space for a long moment, then crashed back down into the sea.

The depth gage came back down, 100 feet, 200, but then the downward plunge stopped and the ship again climbed back to the surface, bobbing in the waves, rolling slowly to port, then to starboard.

“THIS IS ADMIRAL PACINO,” Pacino said on the circuit one, his voice booming through the ship. “WE HAVE EMERGENCY BLOWN TO THE SURFACE. CONTINUE TO BRING BACK THE REACTOR.”

Pacino raised the number-two periscope to see what was around them there on the surface; the sea was empty.

It might take hours to recover the plant and resubmerge the ship. He wondered how long it would take the Japanese to realize he was there for the taking.

USS PIRANHA

“Where are we now?” Phillips asked.

“Normal full power lineup,” Walt Hornick’s voice said on the phone circuit. “We should have full propulsion in about one minute.”