The Savage Deeps, page 32
I spun back to the controls and checked our depth.
It was time.
“Fire, Johnny.”
We shot a homer nearly straight up and then curved around and activated the pulse drive. The distinctive thrum of sonic pulses came to us again, and I welcomed the sound. I found them comforting and calming.
Fifty torpedoes were on their way up to the fleet above us. Some of our ships had fired multiple weapons.
But before there was an impact, a Sword ventured too close to a slowly falling mine. It must have had a proximity fuse, for the explosion occurred while the ship was still twenty meters away, but it was enough. The detonation was sizable and the concussion waves pounded the little seacar. A wrinkle traced across the top of the hull, just aft of the canopy—
And in the blink of an eye the vessel folded in half, the central portion of the fuselage warping inward, the bow and canopy bulging outward, and a bubble of air burst out and floated serenely upward.
Inward . . . outward . . . upward . . .
I swallowed.
The ship crumpled in on itself and it tipped over, heading down. Strangely enough, however, the two thruster pods remained intact, and the screws turning under battery power corkscrewed the wreckage around as it plummeted into the depths.
An image of Scorpion came to me right then—pictures of the dead ship following its discovery. The engine compartment had been shoved fifty feet forward into the rest of the sub by the power of the imploding water.
I turned back to the battle and stared intently at the screens, watching every single detail.
A shiver traced down my spine.
—••—
Our wall of torpedoes soared upward from the depths and multiple weapons detonated early upon hitting a layer of churning and bubbling countermeasures. The explosions rocked the entire area, steaming layers of frothing foam rose from the blasts, and water pounded into the naked cavities to fill the voids. Concussion waves rocked outwards. But many torpedoes passed through the line undeterred, and just beyond, they began to impact the warsubs.
There had been just under a hundred USSF ships engaged at the start of the battle, but now there was half that number. Some were powering away slowly, limping along, listing to port or starboard and trailing streams of bubbles from gashes and holes in their hulls.
Some were hovering silently, seemingly dead, without any maneuverability or power. They were sitting ducks.
And some were sinking through the line of countermeasures, toward crush depth, listing aftward or forward as they took on water and their crews sank to their deaths.
I shuddered when I saw that. The barrage of French torpedoes combined with our own weapons had damaged some warsubs beyond their engineering capabilities.
Our flood of torpedoes finally impacted their warsubs, and there was a wall of flowering eruptions flaring across our sonar.
“Holy shit,” Johnny mumbled, watching the screen. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Even The Battle last year had not shown that kind of success. We had just hit thirty targets simultaneously.
And we had only lost one.
A point of light appeared on the sonar, heading straight for us. The VID system projected it on the canopy; it was a Houston class, or a Hunter-Killer. Small and fast and highly maneuverable. I heeled us around and prepared to go deep. That type of warsub could exceed our conventional speed, however, and I had noticed it too late. It was at seventy-eight kph and arcing down at us.
Our depth was just over 3000 and I pushed the stick away from me and punched the SCAV drive. “Hold on to something,” I said.
The roar built and the steam started to churn out of our aft vents, but it was going to be too late. He had us dead to rights, and in his sights. It took too long to build up to supercavitation.
Our depth was 3300. . . .
And something occurred to me.
That class of ship’s max depth was only 2100 meters, and he was already well past it.
I spun our Sword around and curved back up and toward it.
“Uh, Mac . . .” Johnny said. “What the hell—”
“Hold on!”
Our SCAV was on full as we moved toward the Hunter-Killer.
His torpedo door was open.
I could almost see the nose of the weapon nestled in the tube, ready to fire and kill us all.
And end the movement.
I pointed the ship closer to it, then heeled around and yanked the throttle back close to zero.
He didn’t want to fire and risk damaging his own ship in the explosion, as Captain Renée Féroce had experienced with me a year earlier. She had regretted not acting.
“What are you doing?” Johnny asked.
“I’ve got it,” I said, calm.
We were so close now I didn’t think he’d fire. I pushed the vessel just a bit closer—we were only meters apart now—and I thumbed the Acoustic Pulse Drive on.
Lazlow said, “We’re not deep enough—”
“Don’t worry about it!”
Our bow generator started to pulse and throb and compression waves began to resonate outward from it.
I spun the yoke to the port, just slightly, and our bow nearly touched the outer hull of the other vessel.
The compression waves continued to vibrate out. . . .
In the ocean depths, water pressure was always working to expose the slightest flaw in our fragile vessels. Our ships were always just barely able to withstand the deadly environment.
And in a blink the ship’s hull, only a meter beside our bow, imploded.
A seam opened in the Hunter-Killer and water flooded in, turning everybody within to bloody pulp in an instant.
I imagined I saw the flash of fear in the sub driver’s eyes as he realized what I was doing, but of course it was not possible. Our VID couldn’t show that kind of detail.
The thought would haunt my dreams.
But there’d be time for that later.
The ship crunched into a ball before our eyes and tumbled downward and out of sight; bloody bubbles rose before us to the surface.
Johnny’s expression was shock. “Oh my—” And then he shook his head. “Wow.”
The acoustic drive was actually an effective weapon. At certain depths, that is. It had simulated a higher pressure and taken that Hunter-Killer straight past crush depth in an instant.
Explosions continued to rock the sea around us. I wondered absently what the surface far above resembled at that moment. We were too deep for explosions to ripple the water up top, but the flood of air and vaporized water would be churning the surface like a storm.
Johnny pointed at the sonar. The French forces had pressed their attack.
There were over two hundred of them still, and they were coming.
—••—
Our comm system blinked and I pushed the button to receive audio only.
“McClusky!” Heller said. “What the hell is this?”
I touched the transmit option. “What’s wrong, Captain? Can’t take the heat? This is something you caused.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You chose to occupy us. You chose to steal our produce and take our ore and our fish without proper payment. Now this is your payment.”
“You are terrorists!”
“We’re Triestrian, Heller. American citizens. And it’s about time you realized it.” I had no ill-will for the people topside. They hadn’t asked for us to be treated the way we were.
But the USSF had harmed us. They had killed us. They had repressed us. They exploited us and raped us and hurt our citizens.
They’d killed my father.
And I didn’t feel sorry for Heller.
Not one bit.
“You killed Rafe Manuel,” I said. “You did that, didn’t you, you son of a bitch?”
“He was a traitor.”
“He was a patriot.”
“He was lying to me!” Heller was screaming now, and Johnny painted me with a worried look.
I said, “He was following my orders, and you killed him.”
He hesitated, then said, “So what? Why do you care? He was a casualty of war.”
I said in a soft voice, “He wasn’t the only informer, Heller.”
“What? What’s that?” A series of nearby explosions muffled his voice. I thought I could hear water spraying into the command deck of his warsub.
“I know about Robert Butte. I fed him false information, or no information at all. I used him to bring you here.”
There was no reply.
“And there’s more,” I added. “I have an informant on your ship still. Someone who’s been giving me information about you.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s true.” I steered us deeper and kept an eye on the scope to make sure there were no warsubs or weapons nearby. Then I said to Johnny, “Get another torpedo ready. We’ll ascend and fire again.”
“Got it,” came the crisp reply.
I said, “Heller, he’s on your ship, right now.” I cut the signal.
Let him stew on that.
Johnny said, “Is that true?”
I nodded. “He’s given me some good intel. He’s helped me over the past year. Told me what Heller was doing and how much he knew. I used Butte to feed him information, then got my informant to tell me what was getting through, and if Butte was really a traitor. He confirmed it, sadly.”
“And who is it?”
I sighed. “A friend. Someone who might not make it through this battle.” I put my finger on the scope and Impaler zoomed on the display. She was badly damaged, taking on water, barely moving, and there were multiple holes in her hull.
She was foundering.
—••—
“Fire,” I said.
Johnny pressed the button and another torpedo shot from our bow, trailing a stream of cavitating bubbles. “Away,” he said.
I keyed the comm for my sister. “Meg, are you there?”
“I’m here!” came the instant reply.
It brought a smile to my face. A year earlier she’d been totally against this type of thing. Against war. Against the fight for independence. Against what our father had wanted.
What he’d wanted more than life itself, apparently.
But now Meg was enthralled with the activity, with the undersea action, with the realization that each day brought independence closer for us.
“Be careful here,” I said to her. “This is getting really dangerous. Stay deep.”
“Tru, aren’t these Swords incredible? The Acoustic Pulse Drive . . . it’s magnificent!”
“It is. Take care of yourself and stay away from those warsubs.”
“I have four torpedoes left. I’m taking my time with them!”
Other calls were coming in and I listened silently to the battle as we evaded missiles, dove deep, ascended, fired, then dove deep again. There was a barrage of overlapping signals, all workers from The Ridge, some men, some women, some I recognized, and some I didn’t.
“Jane—that Matrix is almost out! Take another shot at her!”
“Got it!”
“That rock outcropping over the Typhoon! It’s ready to go. Can someone fire on it?”
“Just did.”
“It’s crumbling onto the ship! The damage is— Whoa! The Typhoon just imploded, everyone! The rock must have ruptured the hull!”
“Watch out for that homer! It’s a SCAV!”
“Get out of there!”
“That Trident is trying to use his grapples for fuck’s sake! Does he think we’re slow-moving or something? I’m taking him—”
“Another USSF warsub just left the battle!”
“Another just imploded!”
It continued for another twenty minutes. We’d lost eight more Swords, each one hit by nearby concussions from explosions that might have been avoidable. There were just so many ships, so much debris, so many countermeasures, and white blotches from our own ships performing deep dives past conventional crush depth crowded the scope. Sometimes collisions with weapons happened accidentally.
“Is there a way to filter out our own ships’ noise?” I yelled back at Lazlow. “From our own fleet? To clear this scope?”
He was frowning. “I see the problem. Perhaps. I’ll have to think about—”
A massive concussion hit our vessel and water began to spray in from the airlock hatch.
Johnny turned and swore. “The lock is flooded. Outer hatch might be gone.”
An image of the flooded seacar near the Seychelles came to me, with my two operatives dead in the command seats while fish fed on their rotting flesh.
It made me want to retch.
I didn’t want to end up like that.
Then our screws stopped turning.
And our nose tipped down.
We were plunging into the deeps.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Turn on the SCAV,” I shouted over the spraying water. Lazlow was behind me, trying to see what he could do, but he was too frail to do much more than maintain his balance in the wildly-rocking seacar.
“It’s out,” Johnny said.
Our nose was angled down, we were taking on water, we were negatively buoyant, and our screws were not turning.
The hull creaked and popped ominously, and I stared at the depth readout. We were at 4200 meters and descending fast.
“Oh, shit!” We were nearing crush depth.
I punched the acoustic pulse and thankfully the generator started smoothly and its throbbing filled the cabin. There was an instant and jarring groan ratcheting through the vessel.
Lazlow called from the back, “Mac! You have to be going fifty for that to work! We have to be able to move into the low-pressure cone that the sound waves create!”
He was right. We were only going thirty. Otherwise the compression waves would rebound and increase pressure on our hull. We had to be out of their way when they turned back on us.
I pushed the yoke forward.
“What are you doing?” Johnny asked.
“We need speed to stay this deep, right?”
He looked horrified. “But you’re diving deeper!”
“We need the speed,” I repeated. Still, we didn’t have enough, for the hull was creaking and cracking each second. I slammed the ballast to take on more water, making us heavier.
Increasing our speed even more.
Pointed straight at the ocean bottom, nearly two kilometers below.
We plummeted down now, our thrusters and SCAV out, and ballast tanks full.
—••—
We were at ninety degrees straight down. Our seacar was flooding and we were beyond crush depth. Only the acoustic generators were keeping us alive at this point, but our drive systems had no power.
When we hit bottom, either the collision with rock would implode us, or the sudden cessation of the acoustic pulses would.
We had 1800 meters to go, and we were traveling at fifty-three kph. That meant we were going 883 meters per minute.
We had just over two minutes of life remaining.
Lazlow was lying on the back of my chair, and the belt was holding me in place; my head hung toward the canopy in front of us.
The big problem right now was that we couldn’t get back to the engine compartment to see what was wrong—it was straight up, behind us!
“I’m going to level the seacar for just a second or two.”
Lazlow screamed, “But we need the speed!”
“We’re not going to wait like this for two minutes to die!” I swallowed. “I’ll right the sub and Johnny, you run back to engineering. Lazlow, you get up here and get your head under the controls.” The console underbelly was completely exposed. The flooding in the seacar had splashed water down into the control cabin and it was rapidly filling.
Water and computer circuitry didn’t mix.
“We’re only going to get one shot at this!” I said.
“What should I try to repair—SCAV or thrusters?”
I snorted. “Doesn’t matter. You see what the problem is, you decide.” I took a deep breath. “NOW GO!”
I hauled on the yoke and the ship labored to right itself. We started to pull up from the vertical fall and the water in the control cabin began shifting back to engineering. Johnny lurched to his feet and tried his best to move backward, but it was still too steep a climb.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
I pulled with everything I had and angled the stern planes to tilt the aft section of the seacar down, to level us. Then I hit the ballast controls and cleared the nose tanks of water, but it was laborious due to the depth.
Lazlow cried out and pointed at the displays.
Our speed was decreasing!
Fifty-two!
Fifty!
Forty-nine!
Our hull began to pop and groan. New water fountains started, this time from the viewports in the living area.
Oh, shit.
The sounds around us were chaotic. Water spraying in, water sloshing backward toward engineering, the acoustic generators pulsing rhythmically, all three of us swearing profusely—
Johnny finally managed to stand and stumbled back to engineering, weaving from side to side as he did so. Finally he called out, “I’m here!”
—and I pushed forward on the yoke and flooded the bow tanks simultaneously.
We were vertical again, and speed was steady back at fifty-three.
My stomach was in knots.
900 meters.
One minute of life left.
—••—
Above us the battle raged. French and USSF forces were now openly firing at one another, and the FSF had the advantage because of the damage we’d already inflicted on Heller and his group of warsubs. White explosions danced around the sonar screen—they were churning countermeasures and falling rocks from impacts with the sheer canyon wall to our east.
