Читаем Barracuda: Final Bearing полностью

Tanaka was raised on military compounds, Mazdai had never left Tokyo until he went to sea. Tanaka had sweated through five grueling years at the Self Defense Force Maritime Academy, Mazdai had breezed through Tokyo University. Tanaka was a loner, Mazdai was married to a beautiful Tokyo girl eleven years his junior. Tanaka was just short of 170 centimeters tall, almost towering for a Japanese, but slight, almost frail. Mazdai was short, stretching to reach 155 centimeters, solid and wide. “The crew is ready, sir,” Mazdai said. “We have completed the ready-for-sea checklist. All the weapons have passed their electronic checks.” Far out on the right, blue in the mist, their submarine, the Winged Serpent, lay tied up next to several other submarines of the Destiny II class. Down below, an odd-looking truck drove up. Several men in yellow suits jumped off the rear. All wore full helmets with clear faceplates and carried automatic rifles. A door in the pier building rose slowly, revealing bright interior lights shining down on the weapon-loading gear. “We won’t be going to sea,” Tanaka said flatly to his second in command. “Sir?” Tanaka looked directly at Mazdai, disgust clear in his face. “That Three-class down there, that robot sub is doing our mission. Our weapons will be removed as soon as that… thing is done being loaded.”

“They took the mission away from us?” The men in yellow suits surrounded the truck as it opened, splitting like a clamshell to reveal encased weapons painted yellow and magenta.

Stencilled on the side of the capsules were large words, unreadable from that height, but Tanaka knew what they spelled: “danger— RADIATION HAZARD — PLUTONIUM.”

“Some wizard at fleet headquarters has decided that an unmanned submarine is more appropriate in the land-attack role than our Winged Serpent.” Mazdai paused, weighing his words. “Sir, you are telling me that Winged Serpent has been taken off the strike mission. We have lost it to a damned robot? And someone at fleet HQ downloaded our mission to one of the Three class.”

“That, Mr. First, is correct.”

“Do you think your father had anything to do with this?”

“Whatever, I doubt our orders will change.”

“What are our orders now?”

“We pull into the loading bay and give back the Hiroshima missiles, then we go back to Pier 17.”

Two hydraulic cranes had pulled up to the open clamshell truck beds. The men in yellow suits fastened lifting slings to either end of the first weapon. Behind the truck a flatbed weapon transporter waited, ready to move into the weapon-loading building. Tanaka noticed that the yellow-suited men’s full-face helmets were connected to air bottles on their backs, precautions in case of a plutonium loss of containment.

“The Three class is flawed, sir. How can they trust it with a land strike?”

Tanaka shook his head. “I agree, but if the robot submarines prove themselves in a combat situation, the Two class will be phased out. They will claim manned submarines devote too much volume and weight to hotel accommodations.

The computer-driven subs have no living quarters so they can carry more weapons. Command and control is supposedly more assured.”

“Until, sir, the computer has a malfunction. And a computer-driven ship can only fight the way it’s programmed.

No midbattle learning, no human ingenuity, no intuition.”

“And no wives at home to worry about, no babies about to be born, no monthly bills distracting the crews’ minds.

The computer never gets tired, it never longs for a woman, it never gets sick. It’s just always there, driving the submarine. So goes the opinion of fleet HQ.”

As they spoke, the cranes lifted out the first weapon canister and loaded it gingerly to the waiting transport bed, then turned their booms to pick up the second unit.

“You once mentioned inviting your father on the ship, sir, perhaps for dinner? Maybe together we could convince him.”

Tanaka controlled his face to hide thoughts about his father. “Perhaps we will do that soon, but there is no time now.”

The cranes lowered the second weapon to the transport bed. The clamshell truck closed and drove off, the cranes also departing. The men in yellow suits stayed behind, walking slowly behind the low transport, which rolled into the loading building and vanished into the portal. The rolling door came down, leaving the seawall area deserted except for two guards with their rifles at the ready.

“You’d better get back to the ship and inform the men about scrubbing the mission,” Tanaka told Mazdai, who was astute enough to know when to withdraw and leave Tanaka alone.