“How are you, Lieutenant?” Seagraves asked.
“I’m okay, Captain. A few stitches is all. I’m ready to relieve Mr. Vevera.”
“Very well, relieve Mr. Vevera.”
Pacino looked at Vevera. “What’s the latest?”
“We’re back in a normal full-power lineup, main motor ready to answer all bells. Sonar and battlecontrol are restarted with self-checks ongoing for battlecontrol. I’ve come off the bottom and hovered at three hundred feet. Master One bears zero eight five and he’s hovering also. Sonar reported sounds of him starting up his engineroom. He must have scrammed out like we did.”
“Damage reports?” Pacino asked.
“No flooding,” Vevera said. “So that’s good news. Engineer says some of her steam leaks have returned, but all systems are nominal otherwise.”
“Torpedo room?”
“All nominal also, as far as we can tell. Short Hull Cooper, the COB and Chief Fleshman are checking all weapons for any fuel leaks. Fleshman will start on torpedo self-checks after he’s sure the fish are physically okay.”
“Sonar self-checks okay?”
“Albanese says the wide-app arrays are good, the conformal array is good, sphere is good on passive with a few hydrophones out. The active self-check is ongoing. No report on that yet. But the number one scope is tits-up. And we haven’t been able to get number two to come out of the sail, so it’s broke-dick as well. Gone are the days we could count on seeing Master One on infrared.”
“What about the radio circuits?” Pacino asked.
“Radio says their self-checks are okay, but we haven’t tried to raise any comms masts. It’s a fair bet that if the number two scope won’t bump up, there may be hydraulic problems in the sail.”
“We good on the VLF loop?” If the VLF loop were a casualty, Pacino thought, the Pentagon and White House couldn’t give them any under-ice orders.
“VLF loop checks out. But we won’t really know unless we pick up another message on it.”
“Good, I’m ready to relieve you, sir,” Pacino said formally.
“I’m ready to be relieved.”
“I relieve you, sir,” Pacino said.
“I stand relieved,” Vevera said. “Captain, I’ve been relieved of the deck and the conn by Mr. Pacino.”
“Very well,” Seagraves said, not looking up from the navigation plot.
“Captain,” Senior Chief Albanese said, “Master One screw noises at low revolutions, increasing, but he’s only making way on one screw. The other one seems to be idle.”
“Maybe he had a wee bit more trouble than we did,” Quinnivan said.
“I have a loud transient from Master One,” Albanese called. “Very loud flow noise. Almost like a steam generator blowdown, but it’s muted. Maybe inside his hull.”
“He could be flooding,” Quinnivan said.
“If he were flooding, we would have had the flow noise right after the shock wave,” Seagraves said.
“The flow noise transient is dying down, Captain, but now I’ve got torpedo tube doors opening,” Albanese said, his voice excited. “I’ve got torpedo tube ejection transients, multiple doors opening. Multiple torpedo ejections.”
“Recommend firing point procedures, Captain,” Quinnivan said, looking at Seagraves. “We need to open tube doors one and two.”
Seagraves nodded. “Attention in the firecontrol party. Master One is opening doors and firing torpedoes. Firing point procedures, Master One, tubes one through four, three and four in countermeasure mode, tubes one and two in offensive mode. Coordinator, open doors to tubes one and two. Sonar, are you calling ‘torpedo in the water’?”
Albanese held his headphones to his ears as if he were straining to hear. “No, Captain, I hold no torpedo engines. But more door operations and more torpedo ejections.”
“What the hell is he doing?” Seagraves asked.
“He must be jettisoning torpedoes,” Pacino said. “Maybe he had a weapon fuel fire.”
“I didn’t think the Omega II-class had an auto-jettison capability,” Quinnivan said. “Nothing in the intel literature about that.”
“They must have retrofitted that. Nice little feature,” Seagraves mused. “The flow noise transient could have been a fire suppression system. Sonar, you’re sure none of these weapons have engine starts?”
“No engine noises, Captain. Just tube noises and ejection mechanisms.”
“Let’s get back in trail, Mr. Pacino.”
“You might have asked central command permission to deluge and eject all my weapons, Madam First,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev as she rejoined the crew in the central command post.
“I’m sorry, Captain. I honestly thought I was saving the ship.”
“Fortunately, I agree with you, Madam First,” Alexeyev said. “But our lack of weapons is going to impact this mission. As is our loss of the number two screw.”
“What happened to the number two screw, Captain?”
“Ausra’s working on it,” Alexeyev replied. “But the number two propulsion turbine may have thrown a turbine blade, and if it did, it’s dead until we can get into a drydock.”
“As to weapons, sir, we still have a Shkval loaded in tube six, Captain, but you might want to consider jettisoning it as well. Shkval’s are notorious for fuel leaks, and they’re catastrophic.”
