A few seconds after the frigates and destroyers of the Poseidon Navy ceased fire, exactly one hundred waterspouts bloomed where speedboats had once existed. The boats had never even entered visual range of the oil convoy... but the waterspouts certainly did. The impact of thirty kilograms of depleted uranium wrapped in electrical steel traveling at ten times the speed of sound imparted over 166 million newtons of force, enough to evaporate thousands of cubic meters of seawater, along with any hapless object that happened to be within that area. The resulting waterspouts reached hundreds of meters into the air and were clearly visible over the horizon, where both the supertanker convoy and the "hidden" submarine could see them.
The tripartite batteries of 18" guns on each vessel were capable of firing rounds massing up to, or in excess of, 300 kilograms, but 30 kilograms was the smallest round they could fire. Anything bigger than that and they would have to come to a full stop and engage their inertial dampening system anyway, so 30 kilograms was deemed enough to make a statement without impacting the speed of the task group. They had places to go, after all.
(Ed note: electrical steel is an alloy that contains silicon. It has a higher conductivity than other steel alloys, but is tougher and more able to withstand stress than softer conductors like gold.)
Hundreds of kilometers away, the frigates and destroyers that'd fired the devastating salvo had yet to come back to an even keel that was displaced by a few millimeters before their targets had simply vanished from existence.
The captain of the EV Pacific Voyager dusted his hands and ordered, "Helmsman, bring us to one third speed and come about to our original heading in thirty seconds from my mark. Comms, flash the course and speed change to the rest of the convoy." He raised his hand, feeling somewhat grandiose, then dropped it and said, "Mark."
Precisely thirty seconds later, the supertanker convoy came about in a synchronized movement and resumed their original course and speed. The entire incident had only caused about a fifteen-minute delay in their schedule, and they could easily make that fifteen minutes up during the rest of the journey.
.....
"Well, there's something you don't see every day. I never thought I'd see a stage magician perform a vanishing act hundreds of nautical miles away from anything." The commander of the submarine responsible for jamming the radio communications in the area around the supertankers could only make a bleak, sarcastic joke after witnessing the result of the beyond-the-horizon strike against the pirate speedboats through the submarine's periscope.
"Did you see what exactly happened, captain?" his chief officer asked. Just like the speedboats, the submarine was an entire horizon away and far outside the range at which they could detect the convoy escort, given that they were currently running silent and relying solely on passive detection systems.
"I have no idea. But what I'd really like to know is how they managed to get a distress call out when we're jamming every possible radio frequency. What that strike was, exactly, is secondary to that." The captain had naturally seen the results of the That Direction Remover that had been fired during the short Eden-Esparia War, so he assumed the strike was something like those missiles.
"If I were to hazard a guess, my bet is on them having a system set up to 'phone home' at regular intervals, and as soon as one, or at most two, scheduled calls is missed, Eden will respond with overwhelming force," the chief officer mused. "Either that or they could have tasked their satellite system with tracking the convoy and acted as soon as the pirates were discovered by the eye in the sky." He gestured to an area vaguely above his head.
"Leave the thinking to the brains at HQ, COB. Flood the ballast tanks and make our depth one five zero meters, fifteen degree down bubble," the captain ordered. "Sonar, continue tracking the convoy, helm, continue pursuit. Maintain silent running and wait for a signal from HQ."
"Aye aye, sir," the crew in the Combat Information Center chorused and got to work.
After more than twelve hours passed with the tankers at one-third speed, the commanding officer asked himself, "What the fuck are they doing?" The convoy had barely moved even a few kilometers from where they had been during the attack more than twelve hours ago.
But before his COB could even give him his hypothesis, the sonar tech announced, "Contact bearing one niner five degrees. It's a destroyer, sir, and I'm getting active pings on the sonar."
The captain immediately paled; active sonar meant they had likely been discovered and were now being hunted by a destroyer.
As red emergency lights began flashing through the sub, the captain grabbed the 1MC handset and announced, "Emergency dive, emergency dive, emergency dive. Prepare for 30 degrees down bubble." He hung the handset back in its cradle and ordered, "Helm, down bubble 30 degrees, make our depth four zero zero and come about to zero nine zero true. Maintain silent running, let's make ourselves scarce. Mission is a fail, calling no-go at," he checked his watch, "1928 hours zulu time."
No one in the sub stopped to think about anything but the consequences. Just like during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, two nations were now on the brink of war. And whether or not that war began depended on this specific submarine's ability to escape its hunter. Either they survived, and peace would continue for the near future, or they sank, and a war broke out; there was no third option. Thus, their reaction to the hunt was understandable.
Nobody wanted to die, after all.
And with that assumption in mind, whether they could survive or not would rely on his actions over the course of the next few hours. A cold sweat beaded on his brow and down his spine; all he could do now was pray.
The helmsman wasted no time and immediately started the emergency dive sequence, bringing the submarine about in an attempt to get as far away from the convoy as possible to avoid being detected in the area.
What they didn't know was that no one planned on attacking them; the active sonar pings were just a warning to them and the country behind them that they were suspected of foul play for today's incident. They also didn't know that a submarine that'd been attached to the Poseidon Merchant Marine had been tailing them for more than eight hours, using them as a real-life training scenario while collecting evidence for future use.
...
After the escort fleet caught up with the convoy, they increased their speed to two-thirds, or "normal cruising speed" and sped away. The supertankers' role as bait had come to an end, and now it was time for them to do their primary job: delivering their load of crude oil to China. While the escort could only go to the border of Chinese territorial waters, anything that happened there would be entirely China's fault, so the convoy itself would have its safety assured once they reached that line.
