CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

“No, I‟m sorry,” Callaghan said again. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just keep it to yourself,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Do you think it‟s going to help Sanaa?”
Ballard sighed. “...I hope so.”
UEO Commonwealth CVBN-110, Mata’utu, west of the Tongan Trench. April
12 th , 2043…
~
“All hands, man your battle stations. Rig ship for silent running,” announced the 1MC
across the ship. The atmosphere on Commonwealth‟s bridge was tense once again as the
command staff considered their position. Five hundred miles behind enemy lines, sitting
barely a hundred miles from the most heavily populated Macronesian submarine colonies,
no one even wanted to sneeze.
Admiral Ainsley rolled his knuckles as he examined the plot. SEWACS had already
picked up no less than twenty Alliance patrols since they‟d entered the Tongan Prospects,
the ship‟s helmsmen having manoeuvred the battlecruiser through the sonar-masking, dense
island chain with a level of skill and precision he‟d not seen since he was on the Atlantis.
Banick‟s crew were well-drilled, and he was counting on that now more than ever as they
took every possible action to avoid the Macronesian fleet... and a lethal barrage of Atlas
ballistic missiles that would be only minutes behind them. Crossing open water in
Macronesia was a recipe for disaster for any ship trying to reach the southern ocean as a
vast network of proximity sensors, sonar buoys and patrols identified virtually everything that
traversed the sea lanes. Terrain was difficult to use properly, but remained the only option
for anyone attempting to avoid detection. It was easy to use such techniques in something
as small as a speeder or attack submarine, but the reality was that a Reverence class
battlecruiser displaced sixty thousand tonnes, and did not come to new headings and
speeds with the response one would expect of a subfighter. It was like balancing on a knife –
a single mal-adjusted course correction or poorly anticipated change in speed would make
the ship show up on sonars for miles in every direction.
Ainsley traced a line from the tiny island of Mata‟utu north-west through the shallows
of the Waterwitch Bank and Adolph Seamount, finding the Macaw Bank barely two hundred
and sixty four miles away. At her present speed of sixty knots, Commonwealth would reach it
in a little over four hours. While she could undoubtedly get there faster, it wouldn‟t be without
the risk of her massive aqua-return drives betraying their position.
Banick looked apprehensive at the Conn, and Ainsley left him to his thoughts. He
regarded Ryan Callaghan across the chart table with a knowing smile. Silent running was
almost a joke on a submarine of Commonwealth‟s size, and the best they could hope for
was to simply reduce its acoustic signature by locking things down and shutting off any
„essential‟ systems – from backup reactors through to the galley stoves. Conversation would
additionally be limited purely to what needed to be said. Orders, reports and
acknowledgements would continue as normal, but the fact of the matter was that with a
roster of seven hundred officers and crew, the din created by so many conversing ship
mates would produce as much noise as a small rock concert.
Callaghan exhaled slowly as he felt the temperature rise. Another uncomfortable fact
was that the air conditioning plant on a ship of this size produced a substantial amount of
noise as well, and it had to be shut down. In a little as a half an hour, they‟d know which of
the bridge staff had forgotten to put on extra deodorant before they‟d reported for duty.
“Instruct the CAP to push on ahead,” Ainsley ordered quietly. “About fifty miles.”
Callaghan nodded, and relayed the order through to the FOC. In the end, her
escorting fighters could be even more of a problem as their powerful engines screamed
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