Romanov leaned back and contemplated calling for coffee, but in a few minutes the watch relief would go down. Her relief was late, the engineer, Lewinsky, who should have been here twenty minutes ago, but lately he’d taken to standing double duty, with a watch aft in maneuvering controlling the reactor, then a watch in the control room conning the submarine. Such a schedule would make Romanov’s eyes cross, she thought. There was no doubt, Lewinsky was motivated and energetic. But his getting relieved in maneuvering was taking too long, delaying her getting off watch so she could go grab noon meal before they shut down the galley and cleared the dishes. Not that the food was anything worth showing up to the table for, she thought, the reduced rations and rig for ultra-quiet making the noon meal little more than white bread and peanut butter. Soon, the flour would get scarce, and the mess cooks would cut the flour with raisins, and the order of the day would be raisin bread for every occasion. And raisin bread was disgusting, she thought. At that point, she’d switch to crackers, but then, they’d run out of crackers.
She went to the Q-10 stack console and leaned over Petty Officer Sanders, who had the morning watch and was concentrating hard on the narrowband frequency buckets.
“Anything?” Romanov asked.
“Nothing, Nav,” Sanders said. “It’s all noise. If there’s a bad guy out there, he’s quiet as a mouse.”
“Well, I suppose that’s good news, Sanders, but keep a weather eye out. Damned if I want to limp home with a hole in the hull from a Russian torpedo.”
“You’d be lucky to limp home, Nav. You’d be on the bottom in Davey Jones’ locker.”
Romanov smiled. “Davy Jones was a fucking skimmer puke,” she said in jest, their customary insult to the surface navy, since they only skimmed the surface of the seas. She looked up and Elvis Lewinsky had walked in and was paging through displays at the command console.
“Nice of you to show up for watch,” Romanov said, making an exaggerated motion to check her watch, shaking it at her ear as if trying to see if it had malfunctioned.
“Come on, Silky, you know I have to get relieved back aft before I can come here, and I have to do a pre-watch tour first. See if the torpedo room is ready for action. And if I make you late for lunch, well, it ain’t like lunch is anything to write home about since they cut rations.”
“Yeah, all true, Elvis, which is why I have graciously chosen to forgive you.” Romanov smiled sweetly at the engineer.
“Fuck you, Silky. So, what do you have for me?”
“A million surface ship contacts, all merchants. One submerged contact, the Panther. And otherwise, below the layer, we are all alone. Looks like the Yasen-M didn’t show up for work.”
“So we get a break for once in our lives,” Lewinsky said. “I relieve you, ma’am.”
“I stand relieved. In control,” Lewinsky announced loudly, “Lieutenant Commander Lewinsky has the deck and the conn!” She looked at the engineer. “Have a good watch, Feng.”
He threw her a sloppy salute and turned back to the command console, flipping between the sonar narrowband screen, the broadband display and the acoustic daylight screen. Romanov left the control room and made her way to the wardroom, checking her thigh pocket for her pad computer, then stopped the mess cook of the watch just before he shut down service.
“What do we have?” she asked.
“Chili with crackers,” he said. “Piping hot and guaranteed to melt through your stomach lining.”
Romanov smiled at him. “You know, that’s exactly what the doctor ordered.”
She was two bites into the chili when the 1MC shipwide announcing circuit clicked — which should never happen when the ship was rigged for ultra-quiet. A rush of stomach acid flooded her, and not from the chili. Lewinsky’s voice boomed over the circuit, and she could hear the fear — no, the near-panic — in the engineer’s voice.
“Torpedo in the water! Captain to control! Man battlestations!”
Lieutenant Anthony Pacino was on his way from nuclear control to the central command post, pausing to duck into the sonar room to see how Chief Albanese was doing, but as he entered the room, Albanese tossed his headset off to the port console and stared at Pacino with his mouth open his eyes wide in panic.
“Torpedoes in the water! Multiple torpedoes!”
“What bearing?” Pacino asked, a cold calmness inexplicably flowing into his soul. This moment felt like something he’d seen in his dreams a hundred times, so that when it eventually became real, he was ready for it.
“Southeast,” Albanese choked out. “One-five-one.”
Pacino vaulted out of the sonar room and ran into the central command post, where he found Dankleff standing, half-paralyzed. Pacino lunged for the shipwide announcing circuit microphone at position two.
“Torpedoes in the water, incoming from the southeast. Prepare for torpedo launch, tubes three and four. Torpedo room, prepare all tubes and all weapons for immediate launch and report to central command when ready to fire!”
He looked at Dankleff, who seemed to be coming out of his trance. “OIC, change course to due north, and flank it!”
Dankleff yelled at Grip Aquatong at the ship control station. “Grip, steer zero-zero-zero, all ahead flank! Maximum revolutions!”
Aquatong turned the wheel, hard, and the deck tilted dramatically, the deck beginning to vibrate from the power of the reactor coming up to full output.
“Central command, torpedo room,” Varney’s voice came over the overhead speaker, “UGST torpedoes in tubes three and four ready in all respects, recommend launch.”
“It’d be nice to have a solution,” Pacino grumbled, glancing over at Dankleff, who had joined him at position two.
“Just fucking fire them southeast,” Dankleff said. “At this point, they’re just dumb evasion devices.”
Pacino looked over the console, realizing Captain Ahmadi had joined him. “Am I doing this right?” he asked. Ahmadi nodded.
“Bearing here, assumed range dialed in here, search speed here,” Ahmadi said, pointing.
“Just put in southeast,” Pacino said, “assume a range at, I don’t know, ten kilometers, and fast speed search. What happens if the target is closer, say five clicks?”
“You’ll miss, Mr. Patch. It’ll sail right by.”
“Dial it in at five kilometers, then.”
Ahmadi dialed it in. “Ready, Mr. Patch.”
Pacino looked at Dankleff, who nodded.
“Shooting tube three!” Pacino pulled the large trigger and the ship jumped for an instant, but the launch was gentler than what he’d experienced on American submarines. He dialed the rotary tube selector switch to tube number four. “Shooting tube four!” He pulled the trigger again, and again the deck jumped.
“Central command, torpedo room,” the intercom clicked with Varney’s voice, “tubes one and two are ready in all respects. Recommend firing.”
Pacino selected tube one on the rotary dial switch, checked the indicator lights and pulled the trigger, then lined up tube two, scanned the settings and readiness indicators, then pulled the trigger again. The deck had jumped again, once for the tube one weapon, then a second time for tube two. Pacino narrowed his eyes at the settings. Was it possible that even five kilometers was too distant? That the firing submarine might be even closer? And that his five-thousand-meter setting would cause his torpedoes to sail past the target, blind? He reset the range to the next unit for one kilometer, hoping the UGST torpedoes couldn’t home in on the firing ship.