Quinnivan’s tactical 1JV phone circuit buzzed. He held up a finger to interrupt the discussion, put the handset to his ear and said, “Command Duty Officer.” He listened for a moment, nodded and said, “Very well, Officer of the Deck.”
“Well lads,” Quinnivan said, “I need to get to the radio room. We’re getting a signal on the VLF loop. Odds are, our overlords are trying to send us a preformatted message. Doc, see to it that Mr. Fishman gets a meal sent to his berthing, and bottles of water.”
“Thank you, XO,” Fishman said, and he and Thornburg left down the passageway.
Quinnivan debated with himself whether to wake the captain. If they were receiving a signal on the VLF loop, it would take two hours to get it onboard, and the stomach flu situation wouldn’t change in that time. But Seagraves was a light sleeper and he’d probably want to know. Quinnivan went to the head between his stateroom and the captain’s and knocked on the door to Seagraves’ stateroom.
Captain Seagraves and XO Quinnivan stood in the crowded radio room. Seagraves yawned, then frowned at Communications Officer Eisenhart.
“Communicator, what do we have so far?”
“Two letters, Captain,” Lieutenant Don Easy Eisenhart said to Seagraves. He stood behind the console that was occupied by Chief Bernadette Goreliki, the radio chief. “They’re our call sign for today, letters alpha delta.”
“Let me see the codebook,” Quinnivan said, accepting the red binder from Eisenhart. He looked at the column with the date. For today,
“Well, nothing to do but wait for the word,” Seagraves said. “Care to join me in the wardroom? Fresh coffee would go down nicely about now.”
The senior officers walked aft to the wardroom, where Navigator Lewinsky, Engineer Kelly, and Weapons Officer Styxx were playing cards. When they saw the captain and the XO, they dropped their cards and stood.
“At ease,” Seagraves said. “We’re just here for coffee and conversation.”
“Something going on, Captain?” Styxx asked.
“We just got a hit from the VLF loop,” Seagraves said. “Pentagon is calling our name.”
“Whoa,” Kelly said. “That could mean we’re in for action.”
“Or orders to break trail and come home,” Lewinsky said. He looked at Styxx and Kelly. “We have time to make a betting pool on what the message will be.”
“That could be bad luck, yeah?” Quinnivan said. “No betting pool.”
On the conn, Ensign Eli Short Hull Cooper stared over Chief Albanese’s shoulder at the number one sonar stack displays, which were crowded with indications of the Omega II. It had a strong trace on broadband, bearing 045, directly ahead of them, with several tonals tracking from its 50 Hz electrical generators. On the transient plot, the Omega’s under-ice sonar high frequency pings showed up on a graph of intensity versus time, the.75 second pulses going up like a square wave, then the sound going to zero, then sounding again, making another rectangular shape on the plot. A second plot, identical to it, showed the low frequency pulses, which alternated in time with the high frequency graph bars.
Lieutenant Pacino walked up to Albanese’s stack. “Can I listen?” Pacino asked the sonar chief. Albanese handed him a headset without taking his eyes away from the complex screen displays. Pacino handed his tactical headset to Cooper and put on the sonar headset. The sonar pulses from Master One’s under-ice sonar were loud in his ears, but there was more than just the high and low frequency pulses now. A faint sound began in the bass register and slowly ramped up to a high-pitched shriek, then descended suddenly to the lower note. “You’ve got a new sonar signal on that under-ice sonar,” Pacino said.
Albanese nodded. “They turn that on every few minutes with no repeating pattern. Seems to be activated randomly.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Probably a three-dimensional sonar enhancement of what’s in front of them.”
“Damn,” Pacino said. “I’d like to stand a watch at
“That’s their secure bottom-sounder. Fathometer. They’ve been steady at thirty RPM,” Albanese said. “No trouble so far and they haven’t had to change course more than five degrees this entire watch.”
