Panic Switch полностью

A snapshot was a quick reaction torpedo launch and usually ejected a torpedo with no firecontrol solution, just shot it out on a bearing line and hoped for the best. Ironically, it was a tactic picked up from the Soviet submarine force in the Cold War.

“Weapon ready!” Styxx said.

“Fire!” Seagraves ordered.

The deck jumped and Pacino’s ears slammed. He glanced at Lewinsky, then at Short Hull Cooper. A one megaton torpedo was inbound, and based on how badly they’d fared from the Gigantskiy detonation six miles away, if this one got closer than that, this mission was definitely over. Hell, the ship itself might be destroyed, he thought. For Pacino, there was no fear of death, not after the Piranha sinking and his near-death experience. He knew down to the marrow of his bones that life and consciousness didn’t end. But still, there was regret, regret at failure. At failing to win in battle against the Belgorod. And sadness at the thought of never seeing his father again. Or Rachel Romanov. Or his friends from the crew. And about Rachel, did she ever come out of the coma? Would she live? And if Pacino died, how would she react to the news?

“Snapshot tube four in countermeasure mode, bearing two six one, immediate enable, high-to-medium passive snake!” Seagraves ordered.

“Weapon ready!” Styxx said.

“Fire!” Seagraves ordered.

The deck jumped again, and again Pacino’s eardrums slammed.

“Line up tube three and four in CMT mode,” Seagraves ordered Styxx.

“Tube three is ready, Captain,” she replied.

“Snapshot tube three!”

The torpedo firing in countermeasure mode continued with tube three fired, then a second torpedo fired from tube four, when the sudden bang sound came from the west, the direction the ship was pointed. It was loud and abrupt, but there was silence afterward. Was it from outside the ship or from their own bow?

Quinnivan looked at Seagraves, his eyes wide. “Was that from us?”

Albanese turned to face the captain. “That was from the west,” he said. “Not our SUBROC, obviously. I’m guessing it was from Master One. Maybe something happened to him.”

“Isn’t it time for the SUBROC detonation, XO?” Seagraves asked Quinnivan.

Gigantskiy unit two experienced the signal from central command to start its engine and proceed on its assigned path to seek out the submarine target.

The engine started and the turbine spun up, the propulsor’s revolutions increasing until the build-up of thrust pushed it forward. The walls of the oversized torpedo tube rolled by the sonar seeker in the nosecone as the unit surged ahead, the open water cooler than the heated up water in the tube. The unit sped up to the ordered transit speed of forty-five knots, headed toward the estimated target’s position seven miles to the east-northeast. A few ship lengths from the launching point, the unit enabled and armed the one megaton nuclear warhead, the safety plate rotated to establish a clear and open channel between the low explosives and the high explosives, which would collapse the segmented plutonium into a dense sphere and start the fission explosion, which was the trigger for the thermonuclear reaction.

The sonar set for the active search went through a self-check, and when it showed all circuits and systems nominal, it lit up the active pinger, seeking forward for the submarine target. In case the target were closer, the weapon would detonate upon driving up to a close range of a hundred meters. If not, and there were no submarine target detected, the unit would proceed to the aim point. If there were no target in the sonar seeker window by the time it approached the far side ice wall, the unit would execute what was called a default detonation, the logic behind it that a one megaton blast didn’t need to get close to destroy a target.

But the sonar seeker, instead of hearing a pulse return from a target, heard a ping at a much higher frequency from something else. It was faint at first, but then louder as it got closer. The weapon was confused. It had no protocol for hearing this oddly insistent pinging sound.

At a distance from launching point of two miles, that pinging sound got extremely loud and a sudden impact cut the Gigantskiy torpedo in two, and an explosion started from aft of the warhead and the computer controls. There was a protocol for something like this happening. When the accelerometers registered over one G in any direction, a default detonation command would be programmed, the thinking that a countermeasure torpedo would not prevent the weapon from exploding. Rather, it would just explode early.