There was no target ship in the vicinity to vaporize, just endless depths of ocean water. The target was distant at that point, some 2.2 kilometers away, but close enough that the explosion force would likely still sink it.
The shock wave traveled through the sea at sonic velocity, taking only a second and a fraction to reach the hull of what was, for a brief moment, still a submarine.
When the violence of the Nagasaki plasma detonation was over, the ship no longer met the definition of a ship, a vessel that kept water out and people in for a sea voyage, for the water had come in to join the people.
Dante didn’t know dick about the inferno, thought Captain Jonathon George S. Patton IV.
While he had been contemplating the universe at the plot table not ten seconds ago, things had comparatively been fine. But in the next second the fabric of his entire world had been ripped apart.
One moment he was surrounded by his nuclear submarine, steaming at emergency flank, deep, almost at test depth, following orders to clear datum, to get the hell out of the East China Sea and rendezvous at the Point Bravo Hold Position.
Except that now the Annapolis would never make it to Point Bravo.
From what Patton could understand, an explosion had happened aft in the engine room. He still couldn’t tell if the problem had been caused by the nuclear reactor or came from outside, from a torpedo or depth charge.
Both reactor-plant troubles were equally nasty — the reactor going supercritical and exploding in a blast of steam and radioactivity was not a pretty sight, nor was a double-ended shear of a twenty-four-inch steam header, blasting high-energy steam into the compartment so fast that the crew would be roasted lobsters in less than thirty seconds. And if a torpedo or depth charge had hit them, who knew if the ship could survive?
It was as if he had been suddenly awakened, like the time when a senior in high school when he had been struck broadside by a driver speeding through a red light. One moment he’d been behind the wheel, not a care in the world. The next, after the loud, resounding bang, passed in a whirlwind of impressions: being tossed across the seat, fighting a spinning steering wheel, tires shrieking, engine racing, until he had hit a tree, the horn sounding, engine dead, the silence until the siren sounded far in the distance. This was an identical feeling, down to the banging noise, the tremendous energy of the explosion deafening him, throwing him into a bulkhead aft of the starboard periscope, the deck careening sideways.
He felt his feet swept out from under him. On pure instinct he screamed, “Emergency blow both groups! Blow!” He smashed into the deck on his chest, his arm folded under him, breaking his fall but bruising his forearm.
The world spun around him, black at the very edges, the blackness growing until Patton saw the world through a tunnel of light that grew dimmer every second.
He blinked, struggling to hold on to consciousness. He vaguely heard a clunking noise and a grunt, then a tremendous roar surrounding him, a white fog enveloping him. For a split second he thought he was floating in clouds, but then realized with gratefulness that the fog was the condensation boiling off the ice-cold high-pressure air piping behind the ballast-control panel. The ultrahigh-pressure air banks would pressurize the ballast tanks — if they still existed — to try to drive out the water and give them buoyancy to get to the surface.
“We going up?” he asked to no one in particular.
When there was no answer, just the tremendous roar continuing, he shouted it. “Hey! Chief! OOD! Anybody — we going up?” He struggled to get to his feet, but the room was crazy, fog everywhere, the surface beneath him hard and solid, but was it a deck, a bulkhead?
A second explosion followed, an eruption from a deck below. The ship lurched from the force, and then the roar increased. Just then Patton smelled smoke, and the lights nickered out, every one of them. In the darkness a hot, rolling, heavy cloud of a horrible chemical smell swarmed over him, the first taste of it souring Patton’s mouth, crawling down his throat and grabbing his lungs.
He felt himself begin to convulse, vomit spurting from his mouth.
It was as if a rocket had ignited under him. He fairly sailed to his feet, his hands instinctively reaching into the overhead. He missed the first time, missed the second time, the third time grasping a box nestled in with the other equipment. The latch of the metal box snapped open, and his hand scattered a dozen breathing masks down to the deck.
The hot black chemical smell was overwhelming him.
With his arm he tried to lift a mask, but a shooting pain exploded in the forearm. Dimly he remembered hitting the deck with the arm cushioning him. The thought was instantly discarded as his other arm reached for the mask and put it on his forehead, down to his chin, then cinched up the straps. Yet there was no air. His eyes bulged and his lungs were bursting. Chemicals! Fire! No air! Dying!
Desperately he struggled for control against the surge of panic. With his right hand he found the hose from the mask’s regulator, touched along to its end, the hose connection a cone of metal. By feel he reached up to the manifold, a series of pipe stations six rows across, each row a place to plug in a mask. He’d done this a thousand times in drills, blindfolded, feeling his way, but in those drills there had been one element missing — raw animal fear. Finally the hose connection clicked into the manifold, and he sucked in a huge, whooshing breath of air. His rib cage expanded to three times normal size, like some kind of cartoon character, and he breathed out his lungful of chemical smoke, the smell of it rank in the mask. He sucked in a second breath. With the air came mental clarity, his faculties returning.
He realized that he was standing in a dark room, full of noxious smoke, with a dying crew, a sinking submarine, and he had no idea what was going on. With his good arm he reached into the overhead and found a battle lantern. It was supposed to click on automatically but hadn’t. With a flick of a switch a beam of light came on, yet the smoke in the room was so thick, the beam penetrated only halfway to the deck. He then located a portable flashlight in its cradle and shined it until he found the ship-control panel. There two unconscious men lay half out of their seats. He was peering through the smoke when the deck seemed to throw him forward, into the panel this time. He shook his head feeling dizzy.
That sense of being thrown hadn’t been his equilibrium, but the deck suddenly coming level, he realized.
The depth gauge on the ship-control panel read 33, and Patton could feel the deck moving beneath his feet, rocking gently. The ship was on the surface. The chief must have heard his order and hit the “chicken switches” that had activated the emergency ballast-tank-blow system.
For a second Patton searched for the chief who’d followed his orders, thinking that the ship had emergency-blown from damned near test depth, and now they were safe on the surface.
The third explosion in sixty seconds disrupted his fleeting sense of safety. His thoughts shifted to the smoke and what could be causing it. An oxygen fire?
Burning torpedo self-oxydizing fuel? A battery fire, hydrogen lighting off in the compartment? Or was it chlorine gas generated by seawater flooding into the battery well? Or even the cyanide gas that would come from burning rocket fuel from the Vortex Mod Charlie missiles?
Or was it all of them? Did he and his ship have mere seconds left?
A fourth explosion went off, the roar of it not dying down but continuing. The darkened room was lit by glaring flames climbing up the aft door to the room. Its light diffused by the heavy smoke, the flames spread onto the overhead, making their way toward him, eating the insulation of the hull, creating more black smoke. Patton shook himself. He’d been staring transfixed into the flames, not moving.