S. M. Stirling - Draka 02 by S. M. Stirling

Author:S. M. Stirling
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DATE: 01/08/47

FROM: Cohortarch Eurydice Skinner

Stalker Sub Procrustes

Atlantic Exclusion Zone

TO: Merarch Delia Beauchamp

Third Fleet HQ Le Havre.

Province of Normandy

RE: Contact with Alliance submarine

Intermittent contact from 0700 to 1100 this date: sensor data compatible with fuel-cell submersible in the 2.000 ton range proceeding ESE my position at 120 meters + - 20. Estimate probable Alliance Benjamin Franklin class patrol boat Subject's evasive action resulted in final loss of contact at 1100 hours.

Service to the State!

SEABED NEAR NANTES

ESTUARY OF THE LOIRE RIVER

AUGUST 1, 1947

Captain Manuel Guzman leaned against the periscope well of the Benito Juarez and felt the clammy sweat trickling down under the roll-top collar of his sweater. The control center was underlit by the eerie blue glow of the silent-running lights, and utterly quiet; even the feet of the crewmen were muffled in felt overboots, and when they moved at all it was with an exaggerated care. Natural enough, since their lives depended on it: the Juarez was grounded in the soft silt of the estuary and helpless if the Draka searchers found a trace of her. The passive sound-detection gear was in operation, but they could all hear the throbbing of high-speed screws through the hull, resonating in the closed spaces of the submarine.

Twin screws, the captain thought. He was a stocky brown-skinned man with the flat face and hook nose of Yucatan's Maya Indians, old enough to have been a sub commander in the Pacific during the Eurasian war, and there was sympathy behind the impassive brown eyes as he watched the younger members of the bridge crew. This was the hardest part: nothing to do but think, nothing to think about but the crushing weight of water outside the thin plating of the hull, and of drowning in darkness.

Twin screws, going fast, his mind continued. Boosting on peroxide turbines, much more powerful than the fuel-cell cruise motors but noisy. Over them, fading now. Probably one of the new Direwolf class stalker-killer subs, based on German research the snakes had captured, they had never been much at naval design. His mind drew in the details, long cigar-shaped hull, streamlined conning tower, cruciform control rudders with rear-mounted propellors… built to hunt other subs, but the Domination's sensor-technology was nothing like as good as the Alliance's.

And the Juarez was a fine boat for this clandestine work.

Modified from a mid-War cargo sub design, slow but ultra-quiet, with a hold capable of shipping a variety of surprises.

"What do we do now?" the man from the OSS asked in a whisper, after the noise faded.

"We wait," Guzman said curtly. He did not like the Ivy League types secret intelligence seemed to attract; this one reeked of

old-stock Yankee money and breeding. Too many of that type at Annapolis, he thought resentfully. The type who had made his first days at the Academy Hell Week in plain truth, back when indios were a government-mandated rarity and fiercely resented; when the only other Spanish-speakers there had been criollo bluebloods, the sort of hacienda-owning maricones his father had spent a lifetime working for.

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