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Chapter 371 The Hunt for All the Octobers

The first to take the stage were Eden’s newly printed and crewed submarines.

The brand-new fleet of submarines had been ordered to patrol a 500-kilometer radius around Eden and sink any vessel that encroached on that arbitrary exclusion zone, which would soon be filled with Edenian fleets. It was time to finally build the reaction fleets, and the atomic printers at Poseidon HQ were working overtime producing Hugin class aircraft carriers, Odin-class battleships, and Thor cruisers in various configurations, along with a whole host of Heimdall-class destroyers, Njord-class frigates, and Sigyn-class tenders.

“Captain, signal bearing 018 relative, distance 3 kilometers. Closing at 6 knots,” the sonar operator on the EV-616 Sigurd Hart reported.

“IFF returns invalid, captain,” the comms officer added.

“Tentative identification, Shang-class Chinese nuclear boat,” the sonar operator said.

“We’ve been ordered to sink all non-Edenian vessels,” the captain said. He would be more than happy to collect some interest on the debt China owed Eden for the hijacking attempt on their first oil delivery.

“Flood tubes one and two, load penetrators. They’re at crush depth for that class and it’s time to remind them that the sea is a dangerous mistress,” he ordered.

The charming voice of the boat’s AI came seconds later. “Armed.”

A wait began as the six bridge officers—captain, comms, sonar, nav, weapons, and COB—watched the progress of the Chinese submarine in the HUDs of their AR glasses.

(Ed note: COB is short for Chief Of the Boat, a vital component of a submarine’s bridge crew. Trivia tidbit: in the Navy, surface vessels are only ever called ships, and submarines are only ever called boats. The reason? Ships float, boats sink.)

A few tense minutes later, the target crossed into the range of the Edenian penetrator torpedoes. The captain wasted no time and ordered, “Fire one, fire two. Cease fire, evacuate tubes one and two. Nav, adjust course zero four five degrees relative, make our depth five zero zero feet, emergency dive 40 degrees down bubble.”

A chorus of aye-ayes sounded on the bridge as the weapons and navigation officers performed their tasks. It wasn’t like the boat’s AI was incapable of carrying out all of the captain’s orders, but no military in all of recorded human history would ever eliminate redundant operations.

With a slight shudder, two Mk. VI Cassiopeia penetrator torpedoes were fired and the Sigurd Hart went into evasive maneuvers to confuse any potential counterfire, as well as to avoid the shockwave caused by any explosions. Water transmitted shockwaves much better than air did, as it was incompressible, so even though they had fired penetrator torpedoes and would be relying on the immense pressure to crush the Chinese submarine like a beer can on a frat boy’s forehead, it was still better to be safe than sorry.

And just like that, the Edenian hunt had begun.

......

Inside the doomed Chinese submarine.

“All stations report,” the captain ordered.

“All clea—” just as the sonar operator was about to report the all clear, he paused, then shouted, “Contact, contact, contact, torpedo launch detected. Bearing one eight eight. Estimated impact in four five seconds!”

“Full right rudder! Launch decoys! Emergency dive! All hands, brace!” the captain shouted.

The weapons officer pushed a button and two sonar decoy buoys detached from the submarine and moved in the opposite direction, broadcasting a sonar signature that matched the vessel’s.

The sub began its evasive maneuver, hoping that the incoming torpedoes would be fooled by the decoys and they could escape any potential shockwave from an underwater near miss.

“Flood torpedo bay one and fire at the location the launch was detected,” he ordered, hanging tightly to the railing around his raised seat.

“Bay one flooded,” the weapons officer reported.

The captain gave the order to fire and the submarine shuddered as a torpedo launched from it, headed toward what the crew hoped would be a direct impact with the enemy vessel.

“Decoys failed. Incoming torpedoes are still on course—estimated time to impact one five seconds,” the sonar operator reported.

The captain broke into a cold sweat, then reached for the 1MC microphone and announced, “BRACE FOR IMPACT!”

Then... there was no then. Two Mk. VI Cassiopeia penetrator torpedoes impacted the Chinese submarine and it suffered an extremely rapid decrease in size. The pressure from the ocean crushed it like a tin can and it lit up in a brief flash as all of the air inside of it spontaneously combusted from the almost-instantaneous overpressurization. Then all of the people inside the submarine liquified and were ejected through cracks in the wreck with great force before spreading out in a red cloud that drifted away in the current.

“May Davy Jones keep them,” the captain of the Sigurd Hart said with his head bowed. He had seen the gruesome scene of the imploding Chinese submarine through his AR glasses, which provided him with a real-time view of the surroundings of the sub anywhere he looked, as though the submarine itself was transparent. It had taken him time to get used to the visual, but now he greatly appreciated its usefulness, though he had initially cursed at the vertigo caused by being in a moving vessel while “seeing” himself floating in the water.

“Let’s clean up after ourselves, shall we? Flood four, load interceptor torpedo. Target the wandering ordnance and fire when ready,” he ordered.

“Armed... firing four,” the ship’s AI reported.

The weapons officer and captain watched as their interceptor torpedo, which had been designed to counter torpedos via supremely violent “face-to-face introductions”, tracked the incoming torpedo, then violently introduced itself.

“All clear, resume normal operations,” the AI announced.

“Comms, send a sitrep to base. Nav, bring us back to our patrol route,” the captain ordered. “And good job, all. One target sunk is one enemy less. They send one, we’ll kill one. They send ten, we’ll kill ten. They send a thousand... well, that’s just a target-rich environment,” he chuckled.