Dan nodded. “Good. I’m gonna depend on you to write that up, Matt. Then get with Quincoches and Amy and Hermelinda about what we need for repairs. Maybe they can helo-lift us some spare cables or whatever from Cape St. George or San Jacinto when this fucking snow lets up.”
He ran a hand back over his hair, which felt greasy and sweaty. Unfortunately, he could forget about fresh missiles to replace the burned-out and flooded ones. VLS-equipped ships had such a large capacity to start with that the Navy had pretty much dismissed any provision for underway replenishment. He checked the status board; not surprisingly, the MISSILE READY number had dropped by half. He caught Donnie Wenck’s eye on the far side of the compartment and went over. Christ, I’m juiced, he thought. He lifted his hand and watched it shake, as if it were someone else’s. As he reached the Aegis consoles the door to CIC creaked and a slim figure slipped through. Singhe nodded, and he remembered Quincoches’s dig. “She ain’t down here.”
“Afternoon, sir,” she said. He nodded back coolly.
Wenck said, “Damn, sir, glad we got that sucker put to bed.”
“You and me both, Donnie. But now we’re down to two Block 4s. How’s ALIS doing?”
“She’s hanging in there,” said Terranova from her console. “Actually, we got a little good news, sir. The space track system’s back up.”
“You’re kidding. How’d you get that fixed?”
Wenck got that distant look. “Well, glitch was, when we downloaded the TLE data file, the Space Five wouldn’t display any satellites. Like they wasn’t there at all. So we’re like, what the fuck, over? It was like, the system just wouldn’t display any acquisition requests. Right?”
“Yeah, uh, I guess—”
Singhe said, “I can background you on that, sir. If you’d like it.”
“All right. Sure.”
She said, “When we’re in tactical mode, SCUS develops the SAR messages based on satellite orbital data, own ship position, and common Aegis time-slash-date. This queues the array to search a given volume of space for something that meets the acquisition parameters. Turns out one of Petty Officer Terranova’s team made a slight mistake. Eastwood downloaded the wrong bulk two-line element catalog data from a training-mode file. Not hard to do, by the way—”
“Just a second.” Dan keyed the Hydra and checked in with CCS. Temperatures were still falling in the affected cells. They’d gotten the hatch in 16 pried open, and dewatering was under way. “Sorry, go ahead. You were saying—”
“Sayin’, they oughta have some kind of warning flag when you’re accessing training-mode stuff,” Wenck said.
Mills nodded. “I’ll put it in my recommendations. But when the system bumps that against its own source selects for current ops, it deletes them all, because the satellite header data doesn’t match. And you go blank screen.”
The chief said, “Once we got that figured out we redownloaded from the right catalog and suddenly everything lines up cherries and bells ring and quarters start coming out.”
Dan had more or less followed this explanation. “And who actually did figure that out? Just for my own information?”
Singhe pointed to Terranova. So did Wenck. “Okay, really good,” Dan said. “Well done, Petty Officer. But I’m surprised Dr. Noblos didn’t catch it. He’s the one who’s been telling us we’re not up to expectations.”
Wenck lowered his voice. “I’m not sure he’s as much of an operator as he’s, like, more of a high-level guy, Dan. I mean, Captain. He’s got the math at his fingertips, sure. But when it’s a question of which line of code you go to to pick up satellite ephemeridae, he’s like a deer in the headlights.”
Dan blinked, trying not to look like a deer. “Uh-huh. Well, good. So all your troops are straight on this now, Terror? I mean, Petty Officer Terranova? Eastwood’s not gonna do that again?”
“Yessir, all my guys are on step. Got a checklist to run through when we download the data set.”
“And how often do we do that?”
“Every twelve hours.”
“We miss an update, what happens?”
“The solutions degrade,” Wenck said. “But gracefully. We can miss one update and it’s not a big deal. Miss two or three, the track starts to wander off. You don’t know if you’re looking at your own system degradation, or increasing uncertainty exactly where that piece of space junk you’re tracking really is.” Singhe nodded.
Dan nodded too. He started to turn away, then remembered. “Hey, any of you seen the XO?”
“They were looking for him a while ago.” Wenck shrugged. “Wasn’t here, or in Strike.”
“He hasn’t been on the bridge since before the fire.” Singhe looked concerned. “We called his stateroom several times.”
“Anybody go down and knock?”
“I’m not sure, Captain.”
Dan clicked on his Hydra, but got a blinking low-battery alarm. He swapped it for a recharged battery and called the bridge. “CO here. Anybody seen the XO yet?”
Pardees’s languid voice murmured that they hadn’t. Dan told him to send the boatswain’s mate down to check Almarshadi’s stateroom. “Tell him we need him online right away, and where’s he been — he was supposed to — no, never mind. Just tell him to contact me right away in CIC.”
Singhe frowned. “Should we put out a man overboard, sir?”
“That’s the next step, but let’s see if he’s just crashed so hard he’s not answering his phone.” Actually he didn’t want to think about a man overboard. Not when he remembered how depressed and upset Almarshadi had been at their last meeting. If he’d thrown a leg over the lifelines, they’d never find him in these seas. He pushed that vision away. “Okay, we’re still up on ALIS, our SCUS is back online, and we’ve got two Block 4s live. Eric, let Lahav know our fire’s out and we no longer need his presence close aboard. So thanks and he can resume his … uh, his station on us. Or no — just thank him. Say we’ve got everything under control. Same to Pittsburgh. Okay, any updates from the war zone?”
Mills said nothing much new had come through from Iraq or the task force. The Coalition land forces seemed to be punching through the initial defenses. “They’re saying this might not be a very long war.”
“That’d be good.” He slicked back his hair again. Why was he still perspiring? Maybe because if his defenses were crumbling, the dictator might not wait to wind up his Sunday punch. Savo might be the only shield between helpless people and that roundhouse, whatever shape it came in.
A stir at the door from aft. He lifted his gaze to Almarshadi, in darker than usual blue coveralls. The little man’s onyx eyes slid aside, wandered back. The XO nodded to Mills, who pointed to Dan. As he reached them Dan saw the darker tone was dampness; Almarshadi’s coveralls were wet through.
“Skipper? Looking for me?”
Dan kept his voice down, but with an effort. “Where were you, Fahad? We had a fire aft. I needed you on the bridge. We’ve been looking all over.”
Almarshadi glanced at Singhe, Wenck, Terranova. “Where was I? Down in the breaker. Having a smoke.”
“A smoke? We just had a magazine fire. For Christ’s sake…” Dan got a deep breath, let it out. Not now. Not in front of their juniors. “Let’s go over there and—”
Mills called, “Captain? McMottie on the line. Wants to ask about debris disposal?”
“Over the side.”
“Got it, sir.”
At the far end of Combat, by the darkened nav table, they were finally out of earshot of everybody but the Phalanx operator. Dan put his back to the console and muttered, “Damn it, Fahad. We had a burning booster in the VLS. You weren’t on the bridge. Weren’t in your rack. I was about to call away a man overboard! And you’re down smoking in the breaker? This is totally unsat. I mean, there’s got to be two of you aboard. Just one guy couldn’t mess up this bad.”