Piranha: Firing Point

Demeers’ face immediately changed to a frowning look of worry. He looked at Patton for a long moment.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. Skipper, but you’ve never been wrong when you’ve said that in the past.”

A shiver crawled up Patton’s spine. This was almost the same eerie conversation they’d had two years ago, a half hour before the Abraham Lincoln took its first torpedo.

“Senior, I’d give anything to be wrong right now.” “Want to take a console?” Demeers asked, holding up a headset.

“Nah. I’ll go back to control. Just keep a weather eye out.”

“Yessir.”

Patton absentmindedly wandered out of sonar, finding himself back at the chart table without remembering going into the control room. There was no shaking the feeling.

There was something out there.

Xhiu’s question hung in the air. Chu ignored it for a second to scan his console displays.

“No,” he finally said, “I’m not going to shoot him.”

“But, Admiral, he’s gone right past us and sped back up. He didn’t hear us.”

“Exactly, Nav. He’s not a threat. Not right now. And shooting him will just put a big ball of noise in the ocean, and the surface force will hear it, even over the noise of their own screws.”

“But the second submarine is nearing closest point of approach. What about him?”

Chu smiled at his console, knowing his face was being displayed at the sensor-control console where Xhiu Liu was strapped in. “You know what I’m going to say to that, don’t you, Nav?” Xhiu cracked his first smile of the watch. “Let him go.”

“Aye, Admiral”

“Now, are we set up on the convoy?”

“They’re coming in at sixty-five clicks, distance thirty-five kilometers.”

“It’s time to come up to mast-broach depth. Target ST-2, the second submarine. Is he opening distance now?”

“Past closest point of approach and opening,” Xhiu said.

“Very good. Ship Control Officer, slow to fifteen clicks, mast-broach depth, twenty-two meters, up-angle thirty degrees. Mr. First, take the command console.”

As the deck tilted upward, Chu’s seat leaned down toward his aft-feeing console. With some difficulty he unbuckled his harness. Pulling himself up with handholds placed at the top and sides of the console, he stood on a deck that was slanted at a thirty-degree angle. Lo Sun squeezed into the narrow gap between the cocoon-like console and the reclining seat, strapping himself into the harness. In the meantime Chu pulled himself to the circular platform of the periscope stand in the corner.

He hit a mushroom button, and the periscope seat unfolded and lowered, the arrangement a sort of motorcycle without wheels. Chu straddled the seat, his hands on the scope grips, his eyes to the binocular eyepieces. Because the periscope mast was retracted, the display in the binoculars was dark and dead. Chu trained the seat until it was pointing exactly forward, the way he liked to start a periscope search.

“Second Captain, control room lights on dim,” he said to his boom microphone. The room lights dimmed till he was in twilight, to eliminate glare from the room interfering with his view out the instrument

“Nav, range to the convoy?”

“Sir, twenty-four kilometers.”

“Admiral, ship’s depth is passing through one hundred meters,” Yong Wong reported from the ship control console.

“Bring her up,” Chu ordered. “Second Captain, raise the periscope mast.”

He returned to the periscope, and as it rose from its haven in the fin, the darkness in Chu’s eyepieces lightened just a bit. He rotated his left grip down, training the view to angle toward the surface high above. With his right index finger he pulled a trigger on the right grip, and the motorcycle seat slowly rotated clockwise, as did Chu’s view out the rotating periscope mast. He could see sunbeams streaming downward from a lighter portion of the sea directly above, but otherwise it was a blur. Chu kept rotating the instrument slowly, his view trained upward.

“Thirty meters, sir. Taking ship’s angle flat.”

“Very good.”

As the deck angle began to become level, Chu was able to sense the deck rocking almost imperceptibly, rolling to starboard just a little, then back to port. The waves overhead came into focus, their underside an odd silvery color. The sea was not as calm as he’d expected, but with small waves. Now that he could see the surface, he sped up the platform rotational speed.

“No hulls, nothing close,” he said into his boom mike.

Finally the lens of the fiberoptic transmitter mast, the periscope, broke the surface. Water blurred the lens for a moment as Chu rotated the platform, still looking for ships passing too close to their position. Nothing was visible as the film of water cleared from the lens. The horizon came sharply into view, the world above composed of only two elements — white overcast sky and dark blue water — and the line of the horizon was ruler sharp. Chu slowed his rotational speed, searching in low power for surface ships.

“Nav, latest bearing to the convoy.”

“Sir, zero nine four.”