“What’s the good news?” said Simmons.

“Ship’s afloat, and we’re still breathing, you and I,” his father responded.

“We need the ship in the fight. How long before I can get the laser and rail gun back online?” said the captain.

“Martin will be graduating college before that laser’s back in business. Ninety minutes at least on the rail gun to clear it, and even then, who knows. But I’m not sure you heard me… sir. We’re taking on water below. Even if it works, we can’t shoot the rail gun and keep the ship afloat with no auxiliary power. We gotta have power for the pumps.”

“Chief, just get the rail gun back online,” said Simmons.

“Aye, Captain,” said Mike. He paused and then added, “Or should I say Admiral? Heard you got a promotion.”

“Not really,” said Simmons.

“Well, congratulations either way,” said Mike. “Wear it proud. I am.”

“Just get the rail gun ready, Chief,” said Simmons. “We’re counting on you all down there.”

Mike turned to address the crew, most of whom were working slowly, unable to shake their dazed looks.

“You heard the captain. Take stim tabs if ya got ’em, and then let’s get to work,” said Mike. “Brooks, have your team concentrate on getting this debris cut away topside. Dr. Li, you’re with me, we’re going to unfuck this wiring. Captain wants us back in the fight, and we’re not going to let him down.”

The crew scattered, foraging in their pockets for whatever stims they had left, not thinking about the last time they had had something to eat or a stretch of calm to sleep.

Vern, her hair matted with sweat, began to head down the passageway toward the rail-gun turret, but then she stopped and turned, her face angry.

“I thought I found you — your body,” said Vern.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” said Big Mike.

“It was Davidson,” said Vern. “He’s gone.”

“You confused me with that reeking tub of guts?” said Mike, knowing his old friend wouldn’t want him to answer any other way.

She reached into a pocket on her vest just below her heart and pulled out two square foil packets. “This thing’s stocked like a pharmacy,” she said, handing one of the stim tabs to Mike.

He shook his head. “Not sure my heart can take it. I think, though, when we get back to shore I’ll have a stiff drink. I think we’ve earned it.”

“It’s a date, then.” She smiled.

If it was possible to be calm aboard a sinking ship, the Z’s crew was managing it. There was a studiousness in the mission center, as if the hull breaches below decks were the least of their problems. And to the captain of the Zumwalt, they were.

Cortez was below decks, checking on the largest breach. One of the monitors near the captain’s chair, which Simmons still hated using, showed the view from Cortez’s glasses. It was just aft and below where the superstructure joined the hull, a foot-long opening two inches wide. The worry was that it had ripped open on its own, almost like bark peeling from a tree. There were sure to be more such breaches soon.

“Sir, we’ve got a homing-pigeon drone coming in. It’s from the Orzel,” said the communications officer.

“Let’s have it,” said Simmons, feeling his stomach knot. If the Poles, safely hidden away beneath the ocean’s surface, had broken cover to pass along a message, it had to be bad news.

“ ‘Three enemy carriers detected,’ ” the officer read. “ ‘Quadrant seventy-four X, fifty-six G. The Shanghai and two Admiral Kuznetsov — class carriers, one believed to be the Russian original and the other the Liaoning, accompanied by five escort ships. Will engage after communications drone launches.’ ” The communications officer stumbled through the next sentence. “ ‘Za wolność Naszą i Waszą. For our freedom and yours.’ ”

“Anything more?” said Simmons.

“That’s all we have, sir,” said the officer. “Database has the closing lines as something from their history, a saying by doomed Polish resistance fighters.”

Simmons was silent, thinking not of the Polish sailors, he shamefully realized, but of the need to decide the next course of action.

“Order the combat air patrol to that quadrant,” said Simmons.

The tactical action officer cleared his throat before speaking in a parched voice: “Sir, they’re armed only for air-to-air. They’ll be able to engage the remaining enemy planes, but that’s it. They’re not carrying any bombs or anti-ship ordnance.”

“You neglected to mention that tasking out our combat air patrol will also leave us naked without overhead cover,” said Simmons.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good; don’t be afraid to challenge me when it is needed. Just not too often,” said Simmons. “I understand your concern, but they’re an asset we have to use, in this case just like the original designers of drones intended. Deadly, but disposable. Order them out, command protocol Divine Wind.”

The remaining Shrikes climbed steeply up to sixty-five thousand feet and raced toward the coordinates provided by the Orzel. They flew in a tight stack of wedges, each pilotless aircraft programmed to hold itself exactly seventeen inches away from the next. The distance had been chosen by the Shrike software designer after reading that the closest that human pilots would risk was the eighteen inches of distance that Blue Angels pilots put between their planes during their Diamond 360 maneuver. The effect was to blur the drones’ already small radar signatures into one.

Within minutes, the formation crossed the white wakes of the Russian and Chinese surface-ship formation, arced out in a wide curve.

They relayed the image back to the bridge of the Zumwalt.

“Sir, we have a video burst from the flight. They’ve got visuals on the enemy surface task force. Looks like the Puffin missiles took out three of the smaller ships, but four biggies, including the Zheng He, are steaming in our direction at flank speed, fifty-five miles out,” said the tactical officer. “We’re in their missile range now. I’m not sure why they haven’t fired again.”

“They’re likely as low on missile stocks as we are,” said Simmons. “Looks like they’re planning on making it personal, finishing us off with guns.”

“Redirect the drone flight at them?” said the tactical officer.

“No, taking out the enemy’s remaining carriers is more important than even us,” said Simmons. “Proceed as planned.”

The drones flew onward past the surface ships, indifferent to both the tension that this bypass caused the American fleet and the relief it gave to the surface ships below.

The shouting on the bridge of the Admiral Zheng He subsided as the aircraft flew on. It had not been visible, but radar had initially picked it up at over thirteen miles overhead. They tried to shoot it out of the sky but it was impossible to get a radar lock. That it had not come in low pointed to its being one of the Americans’ surveillance aircraft, perhaps one of their rumored high-altitude drones. They passed on the information to the aircraft carrier element’s combat air patrol and ordered a pair of fighters to intercept.

A single surveillance plane would confirm the surface screening force’s position to the Americans. But they would also know it didn’t matter. His force was closing in on the remains of the U.S. task force to finish them off. Any kind of follow-up attack from the American mainland would come too late. They were alone, soon to be cut off, and as vulnerable as any enemy commander could hope. It would be an absolute victory, the kind Sun-Tzu had written about but never achieved in his own career.

Wang considered for a moment that perhaps, once his staff reviewed his command footage and records, he should write his own book.