Shadow of War, page 36
“Max! What the hell are you—”
“He’s going to detonate in his seacar at only four atms pressure! In air. The X-Rays aren’t calibrated correctly for that.”
I hesitated, pondering that. “What do you mean?”
“The first blast will go, but it won’t activate the hafnium. No Isomer explosion.”
I stared at his blue eyes. “It won’t kill?”
“Oh, it’ll kill Clarke all right. Obliterate his seacar. The concussion might damage those BSF warsubs too. But it won’t be a megaton, not even close. It’ll just kill him, that’s it.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I stared at Hyland in horror. Then I turned back to the controls and studied the sonar. The BSFIF warsubs were only a few kilometers from Clarke. I had the opportunity to warn them to stay away, to try and save their crews.
I could also warn Clarke, plead with him not to do it because it wouldn’t have the effect he wanted anyway.
Or . . .
Johnny was watching me. He could tell what was going through my mind.
We could show Clarke how to modify the bombs so they would detonate successfully, and take the enemy warsubs with him when the hafnium blew.
“What should we do?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.” We had five minutes before the warsubs set upon Clarke. They might try to take him prisoner, or they might just shoot him without questions, hoping to disable his weapon and avoid a catastrophic detonation.
I pressed a button and the fusion reactor powered down. We fell from SCAV and stopped suddenly as friction with the water took hold. The straps held us to our chairs, but the others had to grab whatever they could to keep from slamming forward.
“Clarke,” I said into the comm. “You can’t do it.”
—••—
Sahar was on my mind. Even though she was in the airlock and decompressing from her lengthy swim outside disabling the sonar arrays, I knew what advice she would give. Her words were in my ears. Taking life needlessly was pointless. These warsubs hadn’t played a role in this. Clarke’s vendetta was against the leadership structure of the BSFIF, not the crews on those vessels. And Clarke was not going to be able to get close to Diego Garcia now.
Sahar would not want me to do it, and I desperately wanted to keep her happy, especially after what had happened at The Vault. I needed her on my side for the upcoming struggle. We were going to declare independence, and she had enormous sway over people. They adored her. They followed her. She could help me bring the ocean colonies into the future. To a time when we worked together for each other, and not to serve topsiders who only used us for our resources. To a time when we traded with each other for everyone’s benefit, and formed a military partnership among the cities to protect one another in case of aggression by any other nation.
Sahar could do that with me.
People would follow her. Even topsiders would support her, and we needed their voice in the upcoming governmental debates and discussions, before nations chose military aggression as their only option.
Which was inevitable.
Johnny was still eyeing me. I turned to him. “What do you think, Johnny?”
“We need to warn him.”
“Do you think he’ll still detonate?”
He paused, but only for a brief moment. “Yes. He’ll take his chances. He’ll never know what happened, but he’ll do it.”
“It might be our chance to prove ourselves to them.”
His eyes showed his shock. “We just stole their weapon, Mac. They’re not going to trust us ever again.”
I snorted. “Good point.” I pressed the comm toggle again and said, “Clarke.”
The Commodore’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Don’t try to stop this, Mac. Get away. You need to be farther.”
“It’s not going to work. It’s not calibrated correctly for your depth. It won’t detonate.”
There was a long break. “Bullshit. I know you’re trying to keep me from blowing it up.”
“Listen to me. Hyland had to calibrate the weapons for the salinity, pressure, temperature, and other variables. The bomb isn’t in the Trench right now, so it won’t blow. I’m trying to protect you now. Don’t die in vain.”
“Then show me how to calibrate it, so I can detonate successfully.”
“I won’t do that. You can’t destroy those warsubs.”
He laughed, and it sounded maniacal. “Because they’re innocent, right? Is that what you’re about to say? Come on, Mac—how are you going to lead the independence movement if you can’t make those tough decisions? You have to be willing to do what it takes!”
It sounded awfully familiar. I glanced over my shoulder; Richard was sitting on the deck, looking miserable. He’d preached the same philosophy. So had Dad. And I’d embraced it too, at times. I’d sunk vessels and entire crews.
But only because they’d been trying to kill me.
And what about the dreadnought? The thought hit me in the gut. The Russian warsub had had a crew of over 600, and we’d sent it to the bottom after triggering a meltdown in its fission core. I’d killed them all.
To protect Trieste! I screamed inwardly. They were going to destroy the city and kill hundreds of thousands of citizens, including children. They’d destroyed Blue Downs. You didn’t murder needlessly, I told myself.
You don’t murder in cold blood.
I said, “Clarke. We’re not going to show you how to make it work. You can’t do it. Those people weren’t trying to kill anyone.”
“They’re traitors. They killed Chalam’s family. They will do far, far worse if I don’t stop them.”
“The BSF doesn’t know that. They’re just trying to punish a splinter group. But you don’t know—”
“We can’t allow them to proceed!” he screamed. “They’re traitors!”
“He’s losing it,” Johnny whispered.
“I’m signing off, Mac. Get out of here and do what I said. And Mac . . . ”
“What?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“Good luck to you in the future. You have what it takes. Be tough. Don’t ever be weak.”
He clicked off, and I snorted to myself. He sounded so much like my dad.
And my dad had destroyed my family when I’d only been fourteen years old.
I stared at the sonar. The warsubs were slowing now. They’d formed a perimeter around Clarke’s seacar.
And then the screen flared white.
“Oh my god,” Meg hissed over my shoulder.
Max was also there, staring at the screen. The white glow had obscured everything, but it was spreading outward like one massive ripple in a pond. “Hang on everyone!” he shouted.
The shock wave was spreading toward us quickly. I maneuvered to keep our stern to it, to try and ride it out. The seacar shuddered and rattled viciously. The vibration coursed up our feet, and my body shook violently. I clutched the yoke and kept us pointing south.
Red lights flickered on the forward panel.
Hyland was grabbing the back of my chair, and he was studying the sonar. “It’s a big blast,” he whispered. “Bigger than the trigger alone.”
“Did the hafnium go? An isomer blast?”
He winced. “I think some of it did. But it wasn’t a megaton.”
“How’s that possible?”
He thought for a moment, looking away and considering the situation. “His seacar was flooding. It’s possible that water had submerged the bomb and it was close to the environment at the bottom of the Chagos Trench. The X-Rays may have triggered some of the hafnium . . . ” he trailed off.
We stared at the stars marking the locations of the subs surrounding Point Zero, the focus of the explosion. They had fallen silent. Then, one by one, they started to flare.
“Bulkheads collapsing,” Max said. “Succumbing to the pressure wave. Imploding.”
I counted the stars. More than fifteen were pulsing as they released loud, crunching sounds. The algorithms would have detected anything from rushing water to wrenching steel to crewmembers screaming in fear and frustration and calling for help, and converted it to pulsing lights on the sonar display.
Clarke hadn’t triggered the full blast, but he’d managed a small piece of one.
And he’d taken some of the subs with him.
“Damn him,” I said. “I can’t believe he still went ahead and did it.”
“He wasn’t going to let them take him alive,” Johnny replied.
Sahar’s voice floated to me from the comm. “Mac, what happened? What was that shaking?”
I exhaled savagely. “Clarke detonated the bomb. He sank some of the subs. But he didn’t get close to the base. Didn’t hurt Diego Garcia.”
“How many warsubs?”
“Fifteen or more are sinking to the bottom. It’s shallow there though—only 700 meters. There might be some survivors. Other warsubs are approaching.”
Silence met my statement.
Max continued staring at the sonar. He was plugging figures into his PCD. Then he said, “About 100 kilotons. It was big, but only a tenth of what it might have been.” He shook his head. “But those warsubs were way too close. They didn’t listen to the warnings, Mac, and they paid a price.”
“I tried to tell them,” I whispered.
On the screen between Johnny and I, the stars winked out, one by one.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
We’d sustained moderate damage to minor systems, but nothing severe enough to prevent us from entering SCAV and getting back home. As I powered up the fusion reactor and began accelerating, the mood shifted from worry and fear to one of realization at what we’d achieved.
On board SC-1, we had Components Two, Three, and Four. The ten-terawatt lasers were at Trieste in Alyssna’s lab. We had all the pieces of the weapon now. We just had to get her back to Trieste so she could assemble them and use it to defend the colony against upcoming threats in the Gulf.
In the back, I hugged Alyssna and Meg. Renée and Sahar emerged from the airlock following decompression and Renée and I kissed deeply. Sahar seemed sad at what Clarke had done, but she recognized our success and smiled slightly at the burgeoning celebration on board. Music started and there was even laughter. There wasn’t a lot of space because of the particle accelerator, but we pressed beside it and chatted about what had transpired over the past few weeks.
It was a deadly and dangerous weapon, and we were standing around it smiling and celebrating. It was a vicious counterpoint.
Sahar disappeared into the back to pray, and Renée and I talked for a bit before settling in to celebrate with the others.
“It’s not your fault,” Renée told me. “Clarke did it. He was acting on his own. He and Chalam did it.”
“We should have known—”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t go there! We have to trust the people who are helping us. If they betray us . . . ” She shook her head. “We have to always be on the lookout, but they weren’t trying to hurt us. They just did what they thought was best.”
“It could have ended our mission. It could have killed us all.”
Renée gestured around us. “We’re still here, Mac. We did it!”
—••—
Meg was in the pilot chair up front. The rest of us were celebrating and going over the events. Chalam and Richard were quiet and still restrained on the deck beside the couches, but I knew they likely felt some happiness over what had occurred. The mission had been a success for them too, more or less. There was music playing and we were shouting to hear each other.
Within minutes we were dancing and holding each other tight. There were hugs, laughter, and people were telling stories of their adventures. Sahar reappeared after her prayers and was talking about evading the security squad outside The Vault, and how they’d had to hide behind a hummock at one point, the armed guards only meters beside them. Johnny was talking about navigating the security module in The Vault and trying to blend in as a BSF officer. He’d spent the night in a cell in Churchill Sands, and told us, with a broad grin, how he’d had to keep up the false accent while guards had screamed, their mouths only an inch away from his face. Their spittle had struck him at times. That brought groans of disgust from the rest of us, and slowly, the levity grew on board SCAV-1. The music rolled on. The volume increased. There was no alcohol, but we opened fruit drinks and laughed and spoke about the adventure and all the new stories we had.
Renée and I were holding hands, and I pulled her close. I was suppressing my true emotions, for the new information about Kat’s death was sending tremors through my body, but it was something I’d deal with later. I knew I had to put a lid on it and cope with it when I had time. It wasn’t what Meg would have wanted, but she wasn’t the best at dealing with emotions either.
An understatement, for sure.
For now, I just wanted to enjoy the end of the mission.
The ship tore through the Indian Ocean, southward, as we celebrated into the evening. More music played. People were singing. Even Sahar joined in; she was joyous and happy and reveling in the experience. The adrenaline must have been a rush for her. She would have to come to terms with what Clarke had done to our team, but I knew she would likely do that in private, alone, during prayers, or with the people she loved back at Churchill.
I realized I didn’t know much about her family there, and decided to ask when I had a chance.
After a while, I realized that Meg was calling to me from the pilot cabin, and one by one people stopped talking to try and hear what she was saying.
I couldn’t make it out at first. Hyland pointed and I stopped talking about events at The Vault and turned to look.
Her mouth was moving but I still couldn’t hear. “What?” I screamed.
The others finally stopped talking, the music paused, and her words floated to me.
“There’s a weird alert up here!” she was saying.
“Damage from the explosion?” I asked.
She shook her head, staring at the sonar.
Her face went white.
SC-1 fell from SCAV and we slammed forward into a wall of water. Those standing lurched forward and frantically reached out to grab a support to keep from crashing into the deck. Renée stumbled to her knees, and Alyssna barely managed to keep from falling by grabbing the large particle accelerator, which she’d barely moved away from during the past hour.
Then I heard the alarm.
It was an alert signaling a nearby contact.
I was on all fours; I’d scraped my face against the rough deck. I absently noticed blood trickle down my chin. I said, “What is it? And why’d we drop from SCAV?”
Meg turned to me. There was a look of absolute horror splashed across her face. “Mac. The sonar is displaying a message.”
“Well, what—”
“A nearby noise.” She was practically screaming now. “Within a hundred meters of us! It’s saying Fish farms.”
It took a moment, but in a flash of fear and terror, realization exploded through me like an atom bomb.
Fish farms.
There was a vessel nearby, and it had just destroyed our ability to stay in SCAV drive.
Chalam blurted a single swear word, his voice a strangled gasp, and he tried to say something else but only a choking jumble of words came out. His expression was one of pure panic and terror.
A cold chill fell over us in SC-1.
Nearby, an enemy vessel had the weapon.
The Water Pick.
A laser-encased neutral beam, aimed right at us, firing even as I thought it. They had melted our bow and destroyed our ability to stay in SCAV drive while traveling at 300 kph; knocked us into conventional drive with a sudden blast of deuterons. The aiming system was astonishing.
And forward, in our pilot cabin, the sonar alarm rang over and over.
Fish farms.
Fish farms.
Fish farms.
Interlude: The Mid-Atlantic Ridge
One Year Earlier
Interlude: The Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Date: March 2130 AD
Depth: 3,699 meters
Latitude: 27º 54” 09’ S
Longitude: 17º 35” 41’ W
Time: 2248 hours
Richard Lancombe and Jessica Ng stared down at the body.
Doctor Katherine Wells was in the pilot’s chair, pinned to it by a large piece of shrapnel that entered her chest just at her heart. Her face was slack, blood trickled from her mouth, there were bruises and other lacerations on her cheeks and forehead, but there was still an expression burned into her features.
It was of surprise and fear and horror.
She’d realized at the last minute what was happening, what Richard was doing, and she’d been scared.
And it showed in her face.
Jessica couldn’t believe what she’d witnessed. She’d known Richard for decades. The two had fought for independence alongside Frank McClusky—Mac’s Dad—back in the 2090s. She’d been proud of what Mac had accomplished in the past year. How he’d taken the mantle of leadership during the mayoral race following The Battle in 2129, assumed the position of Director of Trieste City Intelligence, and had begun a struggle for independence using the SCAV drive to convince other cities to join with them. Now he had encouraged other great minds to build more amazing weapons and technology, and they had just defeated a hostile force in battle in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It had been a huge success.
But for some reason, her husband, who had been by her side for so many years now, had just murdered one of the principals in the fight.
