Tanaka pushed aside such thoughts. He had to focus on getting Winged Serpent to sea. “Mr. Kami,” Tanaka said, taking his binoculars from the deck officer, “are you ready to get underway?”
“Yes, Captain, request permission to get underway.”
“Very good, then. Deck. Take us out and take the Curtain of Flames alongside.”
“Yes sir.” Kami, a short husky officer originally from Kobe, took up the headset and boom microphone from the control panel that ran along the forward lip of the surface control space, there some ten meters above the top of the hull.
“Control room, surface navigation space, report motor status.”
The control panel indicator light lit up, the yellow lamp showing the control room’s voice circuit energized.
“Surface nav, control, AC motor breaker shut, motor energized.”
“Very good, control. Shift motor control to the surface control space.”
“Aye, surface nav, motor control is released to surface nav.”
“Very good, control.” Kami hit a selector toggle on the control panel, tying his headset with the deck crew. “On deck forward, cast off all forward lines.”
Kami watched as the deck crew hurried to let go of the lines holding the bow to the pier. The current drove the bow outward from the concrete pier, the brackish slip water opening up.
“On deck aft, cast off all stern lines.”
The deck crew scurried to toss off the lines to the men on the pier until the last line was off and the ship was free.
“Lookout, the flag, please.” Behind the surface control space, the lookout hoisted the banner of the rising sun high atop a steel flagpole, the flag flapping loudly in the wind.
Finally, Tanaka thought, the ship was underway. A rare sense of contentment invaded his habitual bitterness. If there was one happiness left to him, it was this— taking his ship away from the landbound, petty and officious men of the base to the freedom of the sea, where there was only the crew, the ship, the sea and the enemy. He must write that into haiku, he thought. It would make a fine poem.
“Control, surface nav,” Kami announced, “I have remote control of the motor, ordering dead slow ahead.”
Kami grabbed the throttle lever and gently moved it forward until the motor tachometer read ten revolutions per minute. He looked aft to make sure the wake was making froth astern of the pumpjet propulsor, that the motor was rotating the turbine in the correct direction. The ship began to inch ahead, the pier beginning to slide slowly away.
“Control, surface nav, I have remote control of the X-tail and am maneuvering into the channel.”
Kami took the throttle lever back to stop, the ship continuing to glide into the channel, then as the fin became even with the end of the pier he rotated the X-tail rudder-control wheel clockwise to right fifteen effective degrees of rudder. Slowly the ship turned into the channel.
Kami added power again, driving the pumpjet back up to 30 rpm to push the ship into the channel, then pulled the throttle back to stop and zeroed the rudder. The ship glided to a halt in the channel. Far ahead Tanaka could see the twin shapes of the fins of the Two and Three-class ships steaming to sea lashed together.
The water of the channel foamed peacefully against the hull, the Winged Serpent motionless in the seaway.
Tanaka looked toward the west, where the sun was setting over the ridge and felt himself move into a new era in his life, realizing that his hours of contemplation on the ridge were over. The feeling was a deep certainty.
It was perhaps only the side-effect of the knowledge that he was embarking on a wartime mission — assuming the orders from the high command to attack the threatening surface group ever came in. Politicians always seemed to have a way of lying and cheating their way out of trouble, avoiding whenever possible the simple course of using the guns they had spent so many yen on. This navy would easily prevail if only it were given the chance, he was convinced.
Soon it would be nightfall. With a sense of urgency, Tanaka pulled his radio from his belt, making sure it was tuned to the tactical frequency.
“Portmaster, this is Unit Sunshine. What is the status?”
“Sunshine, Portmaster, hold your position. Your passenger is on the way.”
“Tell him he has ten minutes. Then I’m leaving without him. Your tugs can take him to sea then.”
“He’ll be there in five, sir.”
Tanaka clicked twice on the transmit key. A tug horn sounded a mournful blast across the water of the harbor, the last light of the sun winking out on the ridgeline.
The operation to tie up the Curtain of Flames alongside the Winged Serpent had to be accomplished before the dark came — it would be too dangerous and there weren’t sufficient lights on the tugs to perform the operation in darkness. Finally the tugs pulled Curtain of Flames away from its pier and steadily towed it to the deep channel.
Both tugs were made up to the helpless Three-class’ port side so that it could approach Winged Serpent on its starboard side. As the light dimmed, the Three class came up alongside, the ratings from the tugboats standing on its deck ready to toss over the lines. It was such a waste of resources to have unmanned robotic ships, Tanaka thought, although it was useless and frustrating to go down that path of thought. Still, it irritated him that once at sea his crew would have to risk their lives, in moonless pitch blackness, to disconnect the lines linking the two ships.
Curtain of Flames was now within twenty meters, the tugs pushing her slowly closer.
Tanaka sighed, looked at his watch. If not for the Three class he had to haul to sea, he would be well on the way to the dive point by now. To the point where life became worth living.
Bruce Phillips opened the door of the motel room’s suite, knowing that to call it a suite would be stretching the truth. The motel was called the Dolph-Inn, a play on the submariner’s dolphins displayed in a crumbling concrete statue in front of the motel office. The room was dark, the two small windows covered with heavy floral print curtains, the walls done up in trailer-park dark paneling, two double beds on one wall, a kitchenette with a Formica table in the other corner, a couch with a coffee table and television, the old-fashioned square-screen type. Phillips hadn’t used the kitchen or the television since he had checked in the week before.
He had spent sixteen hours a day at the manufacturing facility trying to push the working crews to get the Piranha’s Vortex missiles done sooner. Sometimes progress seemed lightning fast, but most of the time the work got done at a glacially slow pace. He could go nuts in the building yards, he thought. It was a good thing the detailers had never sent him to new construction — his ships had always been well used, not old but worn in, like a pair of favorite deck shoes. So familiar and comfortable that they were preferable to new ones.
It was now dark, in the late afternoon. Usually he got away from the ship from dinnertime until about eight in the evening, when he would go in to catch the tail end of the swing shift. He’d take that until two or three in the morning, then yield to Capt. Emmitt Stephens, who liked to come in at three a.m. to keep the graveyard shift motivated. Phillips would spend the next hours at the motel sleeping, then go back in at noon to meet with his new crew. While he was with the crews putting the missiles on the hull of the sub, his executive officer Roger Whatney was butting heads with the crew, then spending an hour or two briefing Phillips on what the men were like. Phillips was starting to get the picture, but it was coming slower than he wanted, names not yet connected to faces. Not a good situation, given the fact that he would need to take the vessel into hostile waters and soon.