Archerfish Ch. 10
13:00 hours (UTC +10), 34°58'17.1"N 154°48'42.1"E
Day +5
We had headed north, but angled east to skirt around the Abyssal storm and come in from behind. They had changed radically from their original course in order to intercept our fleet; there was no doubt about that. They moved steadily, and with purpose. They were still fairly slow, and we were able to overtake them easily. I had been worried about being detected, but my Fairies were confident that they wouldn't notice us; couldn't notice us, in fact. Due to my special wetsuit (anechoic tiles?) I would absorb active sonar and attenuate any sounds I was making. Nicole and Michele were equally as quiet, but for other reasons. Cap called us "holes in the water". The WWII ships couldn't pick us up; for all practical purposes, we were invisible. We were using passive sonar to catalog what we were seeing, and our hydrophones to record their engine noises.
Fifty. There were fifty distinct propeller noises. Most likely, that meant slightly more than fifty ships. Fifty Ships. We didn't have that many torpedoes. I only had ten left, and my eight tomahawks. Well, six, actually; two of them were nukes, and I wasn't going there.
FIFTY ships! That was like, the Spanish Armada! Okay, those were galleons and armed merchantmen, and over 100 ships. So this was half the Spanish Armada. A Halfmada. I was growing more and more concerned. We couldn't transmit our information while we were underwater. We really weren't built for this kind of reconnaissance mission. Our kind of subs were meant to stay at sea to wait until WWIII started, and then wreak terrible revenge, not to get under enemy ships and report back strength and type.
We regrouped after our initial pass, and used hand signals to indicate that one of us should head further to the north, and transmit the information to Bri. If we sent the "catalog" of ships we had recorded, Blue Ridge's computers could identify exactly what kind of ships we were facing. If the Abyssals picked up the signal, they might turn back or split their forces. Either way, it would delay them. And if they didn't pick up the transmission, well, so much the better. Nicole decided to do it, and Michele and I stayed under, watching and waiting.
They must have heard her, because a force of 10 ships peeled off in the direction that Nicole had gone. We followed them and were rather surprised when half of them sunk down under water. Subs! They had subs, too!
We started to drop down deeper, and Michele grabbed my arm. She pulled out her dive knife, and pantomimed drawing it across her throat. Then she threw her arms up and pulled them down forcefully, fists closed. I shuddered. It was a good plan, but I couldn't get comfortable with the idea of just killing these things out of hand. I took a deep breath through my regulator to calm down, and nodded. When we got to Yokosuka, I was going to find myself a good, discreet psychologist. But to get to Yokosuka, we were going to have to survive this. And to do that, we were going to have to kill Abyssals. Shudder. I squared my shoulders and dove deeper.
I came up under one of the subs that was trailing the break-off group. The surface ships were pulling away, due to their speed. I said a quick prayer for forgiveness, and then reached out and bear-hugged the sub from behind. I slashed my knife across her throat, and dropped, feet first, as fast as I could, still holding her. She struggled, and it was awful. I had grabbed her at 10 meters down. At 20, she was still kicking up a fuss. At 50, she started to flag. At 75, she went limp, but started to convulse passing 100. At 150 meters, when I finally let go, she continued drifting down, silently, into the abyss from whence she'd come, parts of her hull separating.
You can cry underwater, but no one else will notice.
I wanted to take a moment for myself, but Cap kept reminding me that my friends were still under threat. So I pushed my grief and horror deep, deep down, and made for the surface with all speed. The small group was even smaller, down to eight. I caught up with Michele, and she looked as haunted as I felt. Nicole had dived deep under the approaching group, and joined us as we followed them, while they converged on an empty point. I looked at the girls, and mimed pulling pistols with my hands, and shooting finger-guns at the ships. They both nodded. Elizabeth held up three fingers, and pointed to me, and then Nicole. Got it. Three torpedoes each. We swam away from each other, to get in better positions.
Better position, for me, was periscope depth. I used a laser to get distance to one of the destroyers, and my fairies calculated its rough coordinates, using GPS. Cap had explained that once we had those, we could send the torpedoes to that point, and then have them turn on their own sonar and track individual targets.
They never knew what hit them. Three fish in the water: two destroyers and another sub gone. Nicole took out the last two subs, and a third destroyer with hers, and Michele sent a torpedo each to the remaining two destroyers. We knew that this would further alert (and alarm) the main Abyssal fleet, but that was all to the good. If we could keep splitting their forces, it would make it that much easier to defeat them.