The three original members of the team, Hamlin, Strack, and Harkness, were all sitting at their desks awaiting word about the flight to Eris Island.
Harkness had the propaganda machine ready, waiting to unleash it the moment the plane touched down safely. He passed the time by nervously watching the ever-changing word clouds on his monitors as they told him what people were saying about the flu and the Alliance, and no doubt fantasizing about how the displays would change when the cure was announced. Strack nervously shuffled papers at his desk, the latest mortality reports, also no doubt hoping that his daily diet of statistics was about to change radically.
As for Pete, he busied himself with rough calculations using approximate speeds of transport planes. He didn’t know the exact plane or its speed, of course, but had a feeling it might be trying to approximate a drone, meaning it would travel very slowly—at least until it was a safe distance away, or closer to areas that the Alliance controlled. He kept adding variables to the equation, wind speed and rates of fuel consumption for a plane fully loaded with passengers, but soon the results all started converging on a single number. It was a complicated problem but allowed Pete to use his extensive knowledge of military aircraft, and gave him a comforting refuge to occupy himself. His slowest estimate had the plane touching down on US soil in twelve hours. The fastest: six.
That’s why Pete felt a stab of dread when he heard someone buzzing their office door for access after just three hours. He knew it had to be bad news.
Especially when General Cushing himself walked in.
They all stood up, automatically. Cushing was in a dress uniform, a step more formal than what Pete saw him in weekly at their Tuesday briefings in Silver Spring. He carried nothing but his hat. His face was grim. He was alone, without the aides that were as much an insignia of his rank as the stars on his collar.
He looked them over for a moment before speaking, and cleared his throat. “They’re gone,” he said.
Harkness almost jumped. “Gone? What do you mean? General?”
“Missing without a trace,” he said. “The plane from Eris Island. Missing and presumed dead.”
“Shot down?” asked Hamlin.
“We have no direct evidence of that,” said the general. “But they were a warplane, on a strategic mission, flying unescorted in a war zone. They went missing a few minutes after takeoff. Draw your own conclusions.”
Strack went pale. All that work in pieces over the ocean, or drifting to the bottom. Colleagues of his, too, now dead. Scientists killed by the war machine they had all tried to avoid.
Harkness, too, looked stunned. More than Strack, he looked bewildered. A huge, enthusiastic consumer of his own propaganda, he couldn’t believe the Alliance could suffer a defeat like this. “Maybe it was a mechanical failure,” he said, wanting to believe it.
“Maybe,” the general said. “Doesn’t make a difference to me. To us.”
Pete looked up at that. Even as his two colleagues digested the news in their own way, he realized that the general wasn’t there just to deliver bad news. He was there to tell them what was next. And he was staring right at Pete.
“What now?” he asked.
“There’s a chance there’s still usable information on the island. The plane was small, and the medical team couldn’t bring much with them. They were supposed to bring just the essentials, and destroy everything they left behind. But they didn’t have much time. Maybe they left something useful behind. If they did, we have to get it. We need it, and we need to keep it away from our enemy.”
Pete shook his head. “You’ll never get close, General. And neither will Typhon. It’s surrounded by drones, and shoals, and thousands of miles of open ocean. If there’s anything of value on Eris, it couldn’t be in a safer place.”
“No fortress stays secure forever.”
Again Pete noticed that the general was staring just at him, not the other two members of his detachment. He wasn’t surprised. A realization dawned on him. In a way, it confirmed a feeling he’d had ever since he learned that the flu research was being done at Eris—he would return to Eris. It was his destiny.
“You want me to go there.”
“You’re the only man who can,” said the general. “You’re the only man in the Alliance with a working knowledge of the drones, the island, and the epidemic.”
“How?” asked Pete. “Want to put me on the next transport plane? Because that didn’t really work out so well.”
“Not a plane this time,” said the general. “A submarine. The Polaris.”
The thought of flying a plane there had seemed reckless to Pete, but the mention of a submarine sent a chill through him. All the stories he’d heard about life onboard a nuclear submarine—the stale air, the bad food, the claustrophobia, the constant risk of death. He’d personally worked on the drones’ anti-submarine algorithms, and the MAD sensors that made them work. He’d rather take his chances on a plane, where at least the end would come quickly.
“It won’t work,” said Pete. “The drones won’t let you approach on the surface, or at periscope depth. The shoals won’t let you approach submerged.”
“We think there’s a way in,” said the admiral.
Pete shook his head in disbelief. “It’s a suicide mission.”
“I feel that way about every submarine patrol,” said the general. “But we’ve spoken to the best minds in the submarine force. They think there’s a way.”
Pete laughed out loud. “Sorry, but you’re talking to a guy who knows better, General. I picked that island, I’ve studied the charts probably more than any man on earth. I programmed the drones that surround it on how to kill submarines.”
“We think there’s a way,” the general said again.
Pete scoffed, looking at his two colleagues for support. “Care to share the details?”
“In due time,” said the general. “But first … we have to teach you how to drive a submarine.”
The door to their office burst open again, and a small man in a khaki uniform limped inside. He was wearing a black leather patch over his left eye, the same half of his face covered in pink wrinkled scars, the distinctive scars of a man who’d lived through a ferocious fire. He had the oak leaves of a commander on his collar, but the front of his uniform was devoid of military decoration save for two things: the gold dolphins of a submarine officer, and below that, a war patrol pin. His nametag said ASE.
He nodded at the general and then stared down Pete with his one good eye. Pete felt an old, rebellious urge to say something sarcastic, to show he wasn’t intimidated by this show of military brass.
“Is that pronounced ‘aze’?” he said. “Like purple haze?”
“No,” said the submariner. “It’s pronounced ‘ace.’ As in: I’ve killed a bunch of people.”