"What in the fuck is going on in here?" a voice boomed from behind them. It was the captain of the vessel. He had just emerged from his quarters after being jarred awake by the sounding of the alarm. He was dressed only in a pair of navy blue underwear, his hair mussed, his eyes furious, looking for blood.
"Sir," the second officer told him, "we've detected what appears to be a WestHem torpedo at close range. It seems to be closing with us. I thought that under the circumstances..."
"A WestHem torpedo?" the captain interrupted. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Sir," the spacer said, his face going pale. "I have a good return on it. It's just over two thousand kilometers out, it's course directly towards us, closing at a speed of eighty-three kilometers per second."
"Jesus," the second officer said, his mind performing a quick piece of arithmetic. The missile would be in lethal detonation range in less than thirty seconds. Without bothering to wait for the captain to digest the information and give an order, he gave it himself. "Lock onto it and fire all anti-missile lasers!"
"Locking on," the spacer said.
"A torpedo?" the captain repeated, still trying to come to grips with the situation. "Moving in on us? How in the hell is that..."
"Sir!" the spacer barked. "A jammer just went active on the weapon! I've lost the range data!"
That piece of information brought it home to everyone just how real the situation was. The jammer was an electronic device installed in the seeker head of torpedoes. Designed to activate when a fire control radar started probing, they sent out a confusing array of infrared and radar noise that would foul a defensive system's ability to lock onto it exactly, which would make it very difficult to guide an anti-missile laser beam to a lethal hit. The fact that one had just come on told them that this was not a weapon accidentally dropped by one of their own ships. This was a weapon that had been deliberately fired at them and that was undoubtedly armed and ready to blow them to pieces. And it was less than twenty seconds out!
The captain finally realized that they were in mortal danger. He took over and gave the only order he would have time for. "Increase the power of the fire control radar," he shouted. "Try to burn through it!"
The burn through never came. The weapon closed to fifty kilometers from the port corner of the ship and then detonated in a flash of light.
When a nuclear weapon is detonated within the atmosphere of Earth its destructive force comes from the explosion itself pushing the air away from the flash point and slamming it into structures, people, or anything else in its path. In space, there is no atmosphere to be pushed out and no pressure wave forms. Instead, the destruction comes from a huge pulse of electromagnetic energy that expands outward at the speed of light. At a range of only fifty kilometers, this energy burned through the hull of Camel, igniting the air within, melting the steel of the bulkheads, and incinerating nearly everything within. The entire ship was ripped open by the pressure of superheated air expanding under the onslaught. Then the propellant tanks ruptured, the hydrogen within them mixing with the oxygen in the ship's environment and the storage tanks. Another bright flash of light occurred as a cataclysmic explosion took place, blowing the ship and everything in it into literally billions of pieces that went flying off into space.
In the blink of an eye, 20,000 marines, 1200 naval personnel, and more than a million tons of equipment, ammunition, fuel, and other supplies were gone forever.
"Good detonation," Sugi reported excitedly as he saw the double flash of the thermonuclear weapon on his screen. "I repeat, that was a good detonation. Jesus fucking Christ was it ever!" His display went momentarily blank as the electromagnetic pulse cluttered the ship's sensors.
"Damn," Brett whispered. Though he had spent his entire naval career aboard Owls he had never actually seen one of the weapons detonated before. He only admired their work for a moment however before turning back to business. "What's the time to torpedo number two detonation?" he asked.
"I've lost guidance on it," Sugi reported. "The EMP from the first weapon broke the laser link. Last position had it at twenty-four minutes to detonation though."
"See if you can reestablish the link," Brett ordered. "We have the last known position and the estimated position now. Tell the computer to sweep the area with the beam."
"Right," Sugi said, banging furiously away on the panel. After a moment he gave a thumbs-up signal. "I got it back," he said. "The torpedo is still tracking normally, still on course."
"Good. And the status of target twelve? Have the sensors come back up yet?"
"Coming on line now," he said, peering at his display. "And I'm picking up nothing in the last known position of target twelve. Nothing at all, not even debris."
"Jesus," said Mandall, "we vaporized it."
"That's 20,000 less marines for our troops to worry about," Brett said. "And hopefully that second torpedo will get rid of another 20,000 for them. Remember, this is what we came out here to do. It's our job."
"Right," Mandall said, looking at the track of target number 15, which was slated to be next. "Our job."
"Now all hell is going to break loose in that formation in a minute. As soon as they get over the shock of what just happened, they're going to start launching attack vessels to sweep the area, looking for us. We've had our free shot. From now on, they're not going to be underestimating us. So let's look alive out here. Mandall, keep us at point zero eight for now. As soon as the attack ships start circling, we shut the engine down and drift."
The blaring of the general quarters alarm is what woke Admiral Jules from his contented slumber. He jerked up, the silk sheet falling away from his chest, his heart hammering alarmingly from the adrenaline. "Holy God," he barked.
"Tanner?" said Mandy, his mistress for the night. She was even more frightened, although seemed to be recovering quicker. "Why are they having a GQ drill at this time of the morning?"
"A better question is why in the hell is that alarm going off in my quarters? I programmed that computer so it would never do that unless it was actual situation." He jerked the covers off and stood up, not bothering to grab a robe off of the hook by the bed. He was ready to chew some ass and it was best to chew it while the outrage was still fresh. He walked angrily over to the Internet terminal at the desk.
Before he could activate it, however, it came to life itself in the intercom mode. The face of Rear Admiral Brannigan, the direct commander of the naval task force, was on the screen. It was a face that was pale and scared.
"Brannigan!" Jules yelled. "What the hell is going on here? Why is that GQ alarm screaming in my quarters?"
"Sir," Brannigan said, "I've put all of the ships in the fleet at general quarters. There's been an attack!"
"An attack? What kind of attack? Start making some sense, man, right this second!"
"A nuclear weapon just went off near the Camel — that's one of the lead Panamas in the line. It was a torpedo."
"A torpedo?" he said. "You'd better be shitting me!"
"No sir. Camel's active systems went on line four minutes ago and were tracking an incoming object. We received their telemetry here and the object has been positively identified as a torpedo. It was detonated just two minutes ago now."
"Damage?" he asked.
"She's gone, sir," Brannigan replied.
"Gone? What do you mean gone?"
"I mean destroyed completely. The weapon detonated inside of fifty kilometers. A direct hit. There's nothing left of the ship, sir. She's gone. She never even had a chance to radio in a report."
"Are you telling me," Jules asked carefully, "that we have just lost a transport ship and that the 20,000 marines and all of the naval personnel inside of it are dead?"