The Passage (7 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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No, he thought. No! His fingers dug into his shoulder, fighting memory, hallucination, nightmare, with raw pain.
Ryan
had been in company with a carrier task group, late at night, several hundred miles west of Ireland. Dan had been junior officer of the deck.
And someone had made a mistake.
He arm-wrestled will against memory, gritting his teeth, till at last the North Atlantic, the screams of burning men thinned and vanished. He took a shuddering breath, becoming aware of someone next to him: Quintanilla, brown eyes concerned. “You okay, Dan?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” he said, swallowing. Christ, he had to get a grip.
“Attention on deck!”
“At ease,” Vysotsky said, returning their salutes. The exec was wearing one of the new green nylon jackets, with his name stamped in gold. “Who's command duty officer today?”
“Me, sir,” said Shuffert.
“Don't we have a CDO name tag?”
“I have it, sir. Sorry, I forgot to put it on.”
“Take a look at the starboard side after quarters—about frame sixty. Okay, everybody, progress on yard work is the big number one today … .”
Vysotsky conducted a fast officers' call. He reminded them that the parking lots outside the shipyard were unsafe; another sailor had gotten mugged the night before; the men should use the buddy system after dark. Radio message traffic should be held down, a worldwide Fleet Minimize was in effect. When he dismissed them,
Dan huddled with his division officers. He glanced around at them—three young faces, one older: Horseheads, Kessler, Shuffert, Harper.
“Okay, first order of business today, like the XO says, look over what we got left to do before going to sea. Progress conference after quarters. Casey, I need a sonobuoy inventory today. Write it in message format for transmittal to Gitmo.”
“Check.”
“There's something dicked about the results we got off the self-noise test. Chief warrant will help you if you need to tear down the equipment.”
“I'm not touching shit in that sonar room till you get your chief ping jockey squared away,” Harper told Kessler.
Dan waited, but neither gave any inclination of telling him what that was about, so he went on. “Ed, here's a message about servo controllers. Check it out and see if it applies to us. Burdette, the test van—”
“It's on the pier. The chiefs down checking out when they want to roll the scenario.”
“Chief Warrant, what's broke?”
“Wacky two, fleetcom downlink.”
“ETR?”
“Back to you on that.”
“Okay, everybody,” Dan told them, “XO's inspecting Zone Three today. Make sure your guys have their names on their bunks and one locker. Any locks on blank lockers get cut off. Go to it.” He returned their salutes as they scattered, carrying the word to every man in his department.
 
 
THE progress conference convened in the wardroom a few minutes later. Dan pulled out a chair, joining the XO, the other department heads, and a middle-aged civilian in coveralls.
“Attention on deck,” said Vysotsky. Dan got up again hastily.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” said the captain, taking his chair. He wore trop whites, contrasting with everyone else in khakis. Antonio put a cup of coffee at his elbow, centerlined the server, sugar, and cream, then closed the pantry door. Leighty added two cubes, considered, stirring, then lifted his head.
“Good morning, everyone. We're not far from the end of our availability. Mr. Grobmyer's here to discuss what we have left to do.”
They waited as he sipped, then set the cup down. “Now, I know things have been high tempo since commissioning. Independent operations
off Florida, weapons loadout, structural test firing. Then the final contract trials and the shock test. The delay in Key West wasn't our fault, but we end up paying for it in missed sleep.
“But in just three weeks, we'll be in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, starting refresher training. It is very important that we achieve a good score the first time through, as I think the XO has explained.”
He waited till the chuckle spluttered out. “But one thing I do
not
want is for us to take on the kind of hurry-up attitude that lets the men cut corners on safety. There's time to complete everything, if we do it right the first time instead of rushing to get a block checked off. That's not how
Barrett
's going to operate.”
He nodded to the shipyard representative. “Mr. G., have at it.” “Combat systems first today—forward and aft Mark twenty-six missile launcher guiderail modification … .”
 
 
HE stood in the passageway, wondering what was going on. As the meeting broke, the captain had bent to the XO's ear. A few seconds later, Vysotsky had said, “Dan, Norm, can I see you a second?” He and Cash had moved up a couple of chairs. “The skipper wants to see you two later. Eleven hundred, his stateroom.”
“Yes, sir. Anything we should bring?” the supply officer said.
“I don't think so.”
“We'll be there, sir.” And Dan had nodded, too.
Now he glanced at his watch. Time to get moving. He liked to see all his spaces once a day, every day—especially now, when they were getting ready for sea.
He started all the way forward, in the handling rooms for the forward five-inch. The gunner's mates were lubing the projectile hoist. Dan went over the Gitmo checkoff list with them, how they were going to fix the way the batten pins were secured in the projectile magazine. Aft of that was the handling room and magazines for the forward missile launcher. Horseheads and Chief Alaska were helping the yardbirds replace the guiderail. He observed briefly, then headed aft and upward.
In the data processing center, two computers hummed in the chill air. The others stood silent, shut down or racked open for maintenance. The bulkheads were lined with shock-mounted tape drives, memory units, racks of data tapes. His breath was a plume of white. “Coldest computer room in the fleet, sir,” said Chief Mainhardt, looking up from where schematics and circuit boards were spread out over the spotless gray diamond-tread matting. “Want a Coke?”
“Sure,” he said. One of the DSs reached up into the air duct and handed him an icy can. Dan drank half at one swallow, then looked around, shivering as frigid air crept under his khakis.
The DP center was
Barrett's
brain. The five general-purpose mainframes, gray machines each the size of a refrigerator, ran four major systems. The first was the Naval Automated Communications System, which processed messages in and out through the high-frequency fleet broadcast and the new geostationary communications satellites.
The second was the Naval Tactical Data System, which shared target data automatically by radio among ships and aircraft over long distances.
The third was the sonar. Modern sonars depended on computers to filter distant sounds out of noise. So when
Barrett
was operating against submarines, one computer was devoted full-time to signal processing.
Most warships had these systems, or some variation of them. But the fourth, the newest and most sensitive, was one only
Barrett
had.
Surrounding him in these humming gray machines was the first operational installation of the Automated Combat Decision and Direction System in the fleet. ACDADS evaluated the threat picture from NTDS, calculated how the ship should react, and generated engine, rudder, and weapon orders.
After two months aboard, Dan was familiar with all this. But the thought of what it actually meant, when you put it all together and flicked the switches to automatic, still sent a chill up his spine. Because ACDADS didn't just advise you what it thought would be good tactics.
It could fight the ship without assistance from human beings.
Since ordnance now moved mechanically from magazine to gun or launcher, or else fired from sealed canisters like Harpoon, it didn't even need sailors to throw shells in the hoists.
In automatic mode,
Barrett
would be the first truly autonomous war machine ever created: a 560-foot, nine-thousand-ton fighting robot.
Of course, ACDADS was also incredibly complex; it had a mean time between failures of about an hour and a half. But past it, he could glimpse the dim shape of futurity: a warship with no men aboard at all.
“Sir, can I talk to you a minute?”
Dan turned. He studied the young, uncertain, yet somehow impudent face; the hand, holding out a special-request chit.
“What is it this time, Sanderling?”
“Application for Boost program, Lieutenant.”
“Have you run this past the chief?”
“All I got to do is take the test; I got the time in rate.”
One of the other men said, “Hell, Sanderling, you haven't hardly been off the dock yet.”
“Shipyard counts as sea time. I'm eligible, the career counselor says.”
A black petty officer said, “Yeah, maybe you better try bein' an officer. You sure ain't so hot as a seaman.”
“You got to talk to me with respect, Petty Officer Williams. It ain't that hard. Is it, Mr. Lenson?”
“You get all the respect you deserve, you no-load peckerpuffer—”
“Knock it off, people,” said Mainhardt.
When Dan let himself out into the passageway, he almost ran into Casey Kessler. He looked pensive, but he snapped his head up when he saw Dan.
Dan liked Kessler. His antisubmarine officer was Academy, too. When he said he'd check something out, he did; he had common sense. His wife was Navy, too. “How's Candace like the new billet?” Dan asked him.
“Good, but she's always hopping up to Norfolk or D.C. or Mayport.”
“Your mom doing any better?”
Kessler traced a chill waterline with a finger. “She's still about the same. She hates the dialysis, but she'll die without it.”
Dan couldn't think of anything to say but “Hang in there. Maybe it'll work out.”
“Yes, sir.” He looked back along the passageway, to see the big lieutenant still standing there, looking blankly at a fire alarm box.
He stopped at a scuttlebutt and drank as much icy water as he could hold. He had several more spaces on the 01 level, but they were unmanned. He made sure they were locked and then climbed the ladder.
The hangar smelled of isobutyl ketone, rubber, and cleaning compound, aircraft, MIL-C-43616C. It was empty and echoing, a huge cube of space that on deployment would house two helicopters. The 02 level was built around the five-foot-wide interior passageway leading forward from it. It was nonskidded instead of tiled, so supplies could be forklifted from the helo deck straight to the stores elevator for strikedown. The whole ship was built that way so weapons, food, parts, and fuel could be loaded without allhands working parties. In the passageway, he stopped at a plaque that read: RESTRICTED AREA. KEEP OUT. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. A smaller plaque read
Crypto and Registered Publications Room.
When he tried the handle, the vault was locked from inside.
The lights were on in the Combat Information Center. Dan looked around, blinking at tote boards and radio remotes. Usually CIC was dark as a cavern. Lieutenant (jg) Lauderdale, the CIC officer, was thin and ash-blond. Dan asked him if the exercise had
started yet. Looking surprised, he said it was over, that the guys were down decoupling the van. Dan squinted at the bulkhead clock, surprised to find it almost ten. “How'd it go?”
“Okay, except the ASWO console keeps going down. I called Harper; he's sending a guy up.”
“How was the training?”
“Rough. Bombers and fighter attacks, an antisurface action, then more bombers simultaneous with a low-level missile attack from a patrol line of
Echo-
class subs.”
“Did we survive?”
“No, but the carrier did.”
He was feeling better now; the massive infusion of fluids helped. He ran up another ladder and went forward to the bridge. The IC men were reassembling a gyro repeater; the quartermasters were correcting charts. He went up another, external ladder and talked briefly to the fire controlmen working on the Phalanx. Then he continued aft, checking the rest of his spaces and lockers as he went.
 
 
AT 1100, he found Norm Cash waiting outside the commanding officer's stateroom. Dan knocked and went in, the supply officer following him.
Leighty's cabin was pretty much as issued: low table, sofa, armchair, desk, with bedroom through another door. There were books, though, secured in a steel rack, and a brass desk lamp tempered the overhead lighting. A studio portrait of the captain's wife and children was mounted over the desk. They stood waiting as water ran in the head. Then Leighty's voice: “Sit down.”

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