On our sonar screen, approaching from the joint USSF/BSF base, were clusters of stars.
Ships from the base.
They were moving to intercept at 70 kph, likely on course for The Vault following the calls for assistance. I wondered if Clarke had called ahead and informed them of his identity. He was probably trying to bypass them, to get close to DG.
I wondered if they’d just let him in.
If they did, they’d pay a terrible price.
Johnny, at my side, said, “What are you going to do?”
I tried to speak, but nothing came out. Chalam’s words had rattled me. Then I managed, “We can warn them. Tell them what’s on the way.”
“Mac,” he replied in a soft tone. “They’ll sink him.”
I stared at my Deputy Mayor. “Yes, they will.”
“Can we disable his seacar maybe? Prevent him from getting closer?”
I checked the torpedo complement. Meg has used some while we were on board Aurora, stealing the second component. She’d been engaged in battle against two other BSF warsubs.
We had only two torpedoes remaining.
“Let’s do both,” I said. The BSF warsubs were still a few minutes away. We had some time.
“They’ll think we’re attacking a senior officer in the BSF, Mac. They’ll attack us too.”
I snorted. “I guess we’ll find out in a minute if they believe us.” I steeled myself. “Prepare a torpedo.” I triggered the comm and set it to the common frequency that all subs and underwater traffic monitored. I made sure to disguise my voice using a simple software application, though they’d eventually figure out that we were in SC-1 and were from Trieste. Sadly, we had no other options here. “Attention BSF warsubs approaching from Diego Garcia. The seacar you’re nearing has an Isomer Bomb. Commodore Clarke is on board. His intention is to destroy your base. Do not let him approach. Our goal is to damage him, to stop him. Repeat, he has a nuclear-sized Isomer Bomb on board.”
A minute passed with no response.
We were closing on the seacar and had him in our sights. We had dropped from SCAV, and were ready to fire.
Then came the response, “Attention traffic approaching from the west. You are to stop immediately. Both of you. Do not approach. We’ll fire on you.”
My comm squawked and I stared at it. It was a private signal from Clarke’s transport. “Commodore!” I said between clenched teeth. “Don’t do it! You can’t get close to the base. We’ve warned them.”
“Don’t stop me, Mac,” came his angry voice. “I’m getting this bomb close to the base. You can’t fire on me, or they’ll destroy you. You have to get the neutral beam accelerator back to Trieste. Assemble that weapon and declare independence!”
I shook my head. “Clarke, don’t do this. You’ll kill thousands. You’ll die too. You’ve already killed people at The Vault. You’ll have to live with that for—”
“I was following orders!”
“You can tell yourself that, but you can’t live like that. The guilt will crush you.”
“The British Submarine Fleet will not stand by as right-wing splinter factions try to dissolve our forces. I’m going to put an end to it now.”
“You’ll die, Clarke. Do you want that?”
“I’ll do what I have to. You just get the weapon back home.”
“You’re forcing me to fire on you, Clarke.”
“Don’t you dare!” he growled. “You know this is the right thing to do. You know we have to weaken the superpowers to really gain a foothold in the oceans.”
“No,” I snapped. “There will be battles, but I want to do it with economics too! I want to forge treaties, to prove that we’re essential to their existence on land. To show that we are self-sufficient.”
He laughed. “You’re dreaming. They won’t just let you have independence, Mac. You have to fight for it! You have to kill for it! That’s what your dad taught you. Hell, that’s what you’ve been doing for the past two years! That’s what you did at Seascape. That’s what I’m doing here. Don’t stop me!”
“We don’t need all-out war! We can try with treaties first.”
“War leads to treaties, not the other way around, Mac.”
“Listen to me, Clarke. You promised us. We trusted you. You can’t do this.”
That stopped him, and there was a long, long break. I approached his stern; his single large screw was churning the water savagely before us. Johnny had targeted it, and our torpedo was ready in the tube. The shutter was open, and his finger was poised just over the red FIRE button. Then Clarke said, his voice a husk, “Mac. Tell Sahar I’m sorry. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but I had to.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Tell her I said I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this. Orders, you know, old chap. Tell her to declare independence. For Churchill and her people. Tell her that this wasn’t her fault. The guilt is mine, not hers.”
I decided to try one last thing.
Pushing a button, I looped Sahar into the conversation.
“Tell her yourself, Clarke,” I said. “You can’t detonate that bomb.”
I suddenly noticed that Max Hyland was over my shoulder. He said, “But Mac—”
I hushed him with a gesture.
Sahar was on the line. “Commodore, please don’t continue this. Please don’t kill anyone else.”
His voice was barely a whisper. “Sahar. Mayor. I’m so sorry, but I had to do this. Please don’t hold it against me, and don’t feel guilt. This was my doing, not yours. Command gave me orders, and I’m carrying them out. But you can declare independence and take Churchill into the future.”
I shook my head at that. He was a conflicted man, fighting both his history and his future. He wanted independence from the BSF, but at the same time he was following their orders. But what he said next clarified things, but not much.
“This splinter faction will be worse than the BSF, Sahar. They won’t tolerate anyone breaking away. They’ll come down on you harder than you can imagine. We can’t let that happen. The BSF will be tough, but the BSFIF will be a monster that you don’t want to face. I’m going to deal with them now. I took care of Hitchens at The Vault, but the real threat is at Garcia.”
“Mac,” I heard from behind me.
I turned. It was Max again. “I can’t right now, Doc. We’re in the middle of—”
“He can’t detonate that bomb.”
“I know! That’s what we’re trying to avoid!”
“No, that’s not what I—” Hyland paused to gather his thoughts. His hair was disheveled and he looked exhausted. “Well, I mean, he can detonate it, but—”
Johnny called out, “Mac! It’s Clarke! He’s diving!”
We had a clear shot and only two torpedoes. I swallowed, knowing we wouldn’t have a better opportunity. “Go,” I said.
Johnny pushed the button.
There was a whine and whoosh as the torpedo shot from our bow tube. It soared straight for Clarke’s seacar . . .
On the sonar screen, the torpedo showed as a line arrowing forward . . .
I pulled back on the throttle and backed off.
The comm blared. “Attention SC-1! You did not have permission to fire on that seacar!”
“Calm down,” I muttered. “We’re saving your lives, dammit.”
“But Mac!” Max blurted from behind me.
The torpedo hit the seacar. The churning screws sliced the water directly in its path. The torpedo’s onboard systems detected the impact, and performed its single purpose.
It detonated.
The blast flared around the transport’s stern. Bubbles exploded outward, enclosing a red flame and rapidly vaporizing water. The blades bent forward instantly, the engines stopped turning, and the vessel shuddered to an immediate stop. It started listing, stern down, and began to descend.
I checked the depth.
Only 783 meters here; not Crush Depth, thankfully for Commodore Clarke.
A flood of bubbles was soaring toward the surface. It was not a small leak. The entire aft compartment of the vessel was flooding.
“Close the airtight hatches,” I said. “Come on, man.”
The ship kept sinking.
Alarms started blaring from the sonar console. I jerked my gaze to it. The BSF warsubs were on approach but were still a few minutes from the area. They had opened their torpedo shutters, and our sonar had recognized it.
Johnny said, “Mac. We need to get out of here. Now.”
I glanced at him. “We can save him, maybe. We can—”
He grabbed my arm. “Mac. No. We can’t. You know what he’s going to do. Think about it.”
I paused and stared at the sonar. The warsubs were approaching. There were several clusters of them—twenty-nine in total. Clarke’s vessel was about to hit bottom. The bubbles were continuing, but it was a trickle now, and not a stream. I considered the situation.
Then I nodded. He was right. When the warsubs arrived, he’d detonate the weapon, taking as many of them as he could. He wouldn’t allow them to capture him. And he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of it, at least not after they found out what he’d done at The Vault.
He wouldn’t allow them to take him.
“You’re right,” I hissed. I turned the seacar to the south and pushed the fusion reactor button. The SCAV engine roared to life, thrusting us through the water. “Max, what’s the blast radius?”
“Of these weapons, ten kilometers on the surface. But underwater, the blast wave will be much larger. But Mac, that’s not what I mean. It won’t be that big here! Not now!”
I stared back at him. “Max, what the hell are you talking about?”
He took a breath and grabbed my shoulder. “The bomb is a two-stage weapon. Remember? The first blast is the X-Ray trigger. It’s the X-Rays hitting the hafnium that releases the real energy.”
“Yeah, I remember. Back at Seascape, we used two torpedoes.”
“But these bombs have both blasts enclosed in the shell. But the X-Rays here won’t trigger the hafnium! His bomb isn’t going to work.”
Max looked frantic. There were bags under his eyes, his hair was a mess, and he was having a hard time speaking.
“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Again.” He did, each time. “Now, get it out.”
“Mac,” he said, putting his hands on the seat backs, looming over me and Johnny. “The bomb’s X-Ray trigger needs to be calibrated for the exterior environment. Remember I said that? I calibrated these for the bottom of the Chagos Trench, at the slip fault. For that environment! Just over 2,000 meters, submerged in salt water.”
“What’s your point, Max?”
“The density, salinity, and temperature of the water determines how the X-Rays travel. I had to calibrate the bomb so they would hit the hafnium at that depth and trigger the nucleons back down to ground state in an instant—”
“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.”