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For twenty hours the special ops team dozed while the fast transport pounded along on its enormous hydrofoils at nearly sixty knots, heading for New Zealand. When their GPS told them they were near the rendezvous, Colonel Nguyen initiated the first stage.
Tension brought the stink of unwashed bodies to a new level, subtle smells the passive air scrubbers couldn’t filter out. Just like a parachute drop, Repeth thought. All you want to do is get the hell out of the vehicle and into the open air.
She unsealed the hatch at the colonel’s signal, and then threw the lever that initiated the machinery that broke open the cargo container. The sides of the big box, forty-eight feet by ten feet six inches by ten-six, split open along the seams. Three of the four sides fell only a few inches to rest with slight clangs against the sides of nearby containers; one long side fell all the way to the deck with a loud metallic thump. This set the clock ticking; the noise couldn’t be hidden.
Whirring servos pushed the top of the container sideways in the direction of the opened side. That flat metal piece soon joined its twin on the deck with an even louder sound reminiscent of thunder.
As soon as it was clear, Repeth rolled out of the hatch to take up a position on top of the submersible, the muzzle of her weapon sweeping the open space. The rest of the team followed her, scanning the cargo hold for freighter crew.
The lights were low, bare emergency glows to comply with regulations. So much the better; the invaders’ vision was well adjusted to darkness. No one was in sight so they fanned out, four teams of two forming in front of the personnel doors to the hold. At Spooky’s mark they opened the doors and began to hunt down the crew with brisk efficiency.
Ten minutes later the six-member complement of the highly automated fast transport lay in a crew cabin, tranquilized and newly Plagued.
Standard procedure was to infect everyone they encountered on these operations. It not only saved lives in the long run, it drastically reduced the chance of some hero trying to retake the ship. Edens were never suicidal, and had to be motivated by a higher purpose to be belligerent. In this case it should be all over by the time they woke up.
Bitzer took the helm of the ship, slowing it down to its most stable speed for the exhumation of the mini-sub. They stripped off the shielding from the submersible and dumped that over the side. Then, opening the top cargo hatch, they brought the vehicle up on deck using the ship’s crane. There they checked it over one last time, topped off its electrical charge with the ship’s power feed, then prepared to put it over the side. They also turned off the Stetson’s identification transponder that reported the ship’s position by satellite, and brought the ship to idle in the open ocean. The sun stood low in the eastern sky.
Just over the horizon, if their intelligence was correct, the submarine tender UGS Frank Cable should be preparing its own rescue submersible, a remote-controlled behemoth much larger than the team’s little sub. Called a Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System, it was scheduled to exercise its capability with the UGS Nebraska, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, or “boomer.”
Passive radar emissions from the Cable over the horizon, and some quick calculations of signal strength, confirmed the presence of the naval ship. Stetson stayed far enough away not to be seen on radar, and there was no reason for the Cable to be looking for them.
FC Intelligence had said this was to be a comms-out exercise, simulating a damaged submarine resting on the sea floor, needing crew rescue. The Cable’s unmanned pressurized rescue module would be lowered into the water, and then remotely piloted via an armored cable reeled out by the enormous system above. Two thousand feet of wire wound on the cylinder, enough to reach most potential crashes.
As soon as they confirmed the presence of the U.G. ship, the team boarded the mini-sub, setting the computerized and automated controls of the crane to put them over the side into the water. The Stetson, acting on a programmed command, would resume its journey toward New Zealand. Its crew would wake up in a few hours and regain control of their ship.
The hatch of the little submarine slammed with chill finality. It was do or die now; there was no going back.
They descended rapidly toward the massive nuclear submarine waiting silently below. The team yawned and swallowed as the internal systems adjusted to the hull pressure. Minutes ticked off and the depth gauge showed five hundred feet before Bitzer flipped the switch that enabled the low-powered but highly accurate computer-processed sonar system.
A picture appeared on the color screen in front of him, a torpedo shape more than five hundred feet long showing off to one side. He steered the mini-sub quickly in the direction of the gigantic Nebraska. Inside it they would have heard the sound of the submersible’s electrical engines, their propulsion screws, and now the high-pitched ping of the sonar, and mistaken them for the Cable’s remote rescue sub.
With a deft touch Bitzer brought their mini-sub over the top of its larger cousin, using the ultra-accurate processed image mode of the sonar, then the lighted video camera underneath, to drop their docking mechanism and flexible transfer skirt over the Nebraska’s deck hatch. This arrangement, just like the real pressurized rescue module, used the force of the ocean to seal the two vehicles together like a rubber stopper in a bathtub drain.
The team gathered around the floor hatch that led directly to the Nebraska’s forward hatch. “Switch on comms.” They used UWB, ultra-wideband secure tactical radio headsets; even in the restrictive environment of a submarine, as long as there was the tiniest opening in a bulkhead not blocked by metal – such as where cabling or fiber optics penetrated – signals would find their way through the maze of the sub’s interior.
“Comms set and synching, three, two, one, mark. Nose plugs.”
Everyone fit filter plugs into their nostrils and began breathing in through their noses, out through their mouths.
“Prep the gas.”
Doc turned a wheel on a steel tank. A faint hissing began as a valve released a colorless, odorless, tasteless soporific gas into the interior of their own submersible. Between their Plague and the filters, the team would be able to operate in the stuff for a while. If not, stims would keep them awake until it wore off.
Spooky stared at the hatchway of the sub below for a full minute. “It’s opening,” he finally observed. The hatch below swung back and he shone a powerful flashlight downward to blind the crewmen below.
An annoyed voice came from below. “Hey, they didn’t say anyone would be coming down. Can you get that light out of my eyes?” His voice trailed off as the heavy gas drifted silently downward into the larger submarine. Two thuds came in quick succession.
“Go.” Spooky led the team, dropping like a gymnast down through the tube, barely touching the rim to break his fall. Muzik handed down another heavy metal pressure tank and the colonel manhandled the container of compressed sleep gas onto the deck next to a ventilation intake. He opened the stopcock, beginning its hissing release into the rest of the sub. The others followed rapidly, exactly as rehearsed.
Two crewmen sprawled awkwardly near one of the open pressure doors, empty cardboard boxes dumped on the deck. It looked like they had planned to receive some fresh food from the real rescue module. Doc put a portable tranquilizer gun against each of their necks and pulled the trigger. Compressed air shot Eden Plague and sleep drugs into their bloodstreams. In eight hours they would wake up new men.
“Let’s go. We’re on the clock.” They split up, each team with a separate mission.
Jill darted through her chosen hatch, Doc Fitzhugh right behind her. They passed two more unconscious crewmen, and Doc doped them too. Down two narrow ladders they passed a dozen more crew members in various states of unconsciousness. One had tumbled through a floor hatch and broken his neck. Jill grabbed her companion’s webbing, hauling him away from the fallen man despite his hoarse whispered protests.
“No time for heroic measures, Doc.”
“If I could EP him, then do CPR for long enough, he could live!”
“Sorry, this is too important and you know it. No time. Just dope him. Maybe he’ll get lucky.”
Doc shot the fallen man with his trank gun and Jill dragged her comrade forcibly down the corridor.
Thirty seconds later they ran up against a closed pressure door. Jill put her eye to the tiny vision port and swore under her breath. “I see two guys up and around. The gas hasn’t got here yet. They don’t look concerned but that could end any moment. Help me get this thing open.”
She twisted the dogging handles and they both seized the lockdown ring. Like the perfectly maintained machine it was, the wheel spun on its axis several turns until it slammed to a stop. Jill was already pushing the heavy door open.
Aiming low, she fired a short burst at each of their feet from her PW10, a FreeCom submachine gun specially designed for the Needleshock ammo. Sounds like ripping paper accompanied the groups of ten or a dozen needles that stitched across their calves. Some bounced off the deck and ricocheted around the room, discharging their capacitors as they struck anything conductive. One fragment stung her cheek. The two crewmen convulsed as they fell, out cold.
“Damn, I told them we should have developed a lower-velocity round for these soft missions. Put on your ballistic glasses. We can’t afford to lose eyes, even for a little while.”
“Right.” Doc popped a dose in each of the fallen, then began rooting around in his waist pack. “Not something I thought I’d need right away...ah, here it is.” They slipped on the clear eye protectors.
“Come on, come on, where’s the air system? Is that it?” This comment was just to get Doc moving on his next task; he tended to start woolgathering if he was allowed to think too much. Jill slapped the tall metallic cylinder for emphasis and then moved to the other hatch to peer out the thick glass vision port.
“Whah...”
Jill turned around to see Fitzhugh swaying on his feet. “Dammit, Doc, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Here...” She grabbed his aid bag and located a stim. Removing the cap she slammed the big exposed needle into Doc’s thigh, pouring a maximum dose into his system to counter the gas.
“Ow, okay, I’m good now, I’m good.” He took the needle back from her, replacing the cap and sliding it back into his aid bag. “Damn, my heart’s beating like a jackhammer.”
“Doc, shut up, pay attention and do your job. Get that stuff into the air system.” How she wished they had been able to find a special operations medic of some kind, but Doc had a ridiculously long list of technical skills, and that overrode purely operational concerns, given the eight-person limitation.
“Right.” He popped the enormous housing, feeling the air rushing past now that the seals weren’t dogged down. Opening a lockblade, he cut a hole in the material of the man-sized cylindrical filter. It took him several minutes, as the material was over a foot thick. When he finally broke through, the suction almost took the knife out of his hand.
Jill was ready with the tank. A pressurized plastic canister the size of a small fire extinguisher, instead of carbon dioxide it held Eden Plague suspended in a tranquilizer that would aerosolize and spread throughout the sub. Doc stuck the nozzle into the hole, opened the stopcock to start the fine spray, and let the suction pull it into place like a cork in a bottle.
Jill keyed her UWB mike. “EP-sleepy deployed, no problems.”
Clicks of acknowledgment echoed in her earpiece.
***
Muzik and Harres departed the cargo hold toward the stern, immediately descending two ladders. As they reached the third and lowest deck, Murphy showed up in the form of the powerful arm and heavy wrench of Machinist’s Mate Second Class Harold Showalter. The tool slammed into the back of Harres’ head with a sickening crunch.
Muzik immediately turned his weapon toward the sailor but had to flick it sideways to avoid another sweeping blow of the wrench. He let the gun go in favor of closing to grapple. Stepping inside the next swing, he grasped the attacker’s arm and thrust his hip to contact. Muzik then bent over, his powerful core muscles levering the sailor across his own back and hip and into the air. The man’s feet bounced off the low overhead and then onto the deck as the major body-slammed him.
Stunned and gasping, Showalter feebly tried to crawl away, finally collapsing into unconsciousness when the trank gun hissed against his neck.
“Shit,” muttered Muzik, staring down at Lieutenant Harres bleeding all over the spotless deck. He awkwardly stuck an IV in the man’s arm, getting it into the vein on the third try, and started a food solution drip, standard treatment for wounded Edens. The liquid carried vital nutrients directly into the bloodstream, giving the Plague healing something to work with.
He grabbed his tranquilizer gun and PW5 pistol and roamed the area around the ship’s nuclear reactor and power plant, doping everyone he could find. There wasn’t much else he could do, unless he wanted to attempt to control the power installation himself. He barely knew enough to shut it down safely; no way he could do Harres’ job, which was supposed to include exerting some control over ship’s electrical systems, controlling the power feeds to the helm, the ballistic missiles, the torpedoes, communications – anything that might be used against them.
Muzik took off his tunic, balled it up and slid it gently under Harres’ ear as he lay sideways on the deck. There was a sickening depression, a dent in the back of his head, deformed by swelling and the pulsing of blood. He keyed his microphone.
“Muzik here. Harres is down and alive, but I’m not sure for how long. If the Doc is handy, send him to the power plant, deck three. We still need to sweep the ship for more crew and dope them.”
Back by the air processor Jill grabbed Doc in response, steering him down ladders and along passageways until they found the major and Harres.
The Corpsman immediately dropped to his knees, rolling out his medkit and muttering. He palpated the tall man’s skull, then said, “I’m going to have to trepan. Craniotomy. His skull is healing in a position pressing on the brain. Let’s get him to the infirmary. Infirmary! Now!”
Suddenly Fitzhugh became a figure of authority instead of an absentminded technician. Jill and Muzik immediately lifted Harres up to carry him to the medical space. It was tiny, with just one bedlike platform bunk that pulled down from the bulkhead, but at least it had a mattress and there was a concentration of medical supplies in nearby drawers and cabinets.
Doc had them place Harres face down, his long legs hanging off the end of the bunk. He pushed pads under the wounded man’s noggin and ordered Muzik, “Hold his head, please, very still. This should be routine but it won’t be pleasant. I’m going to cut through his skull and pull this piece back, then replace it in a position that does not press on the brain. He should be awake in an hour or two and all healed in a day.”
Muzik reported this over the tactical radio, trying not to look at the Doc working for fear of losing his last meal. Funny that violence doesn’t bother me but surgery turns my stomach.
Then everyone heard Kelley’s voice come over the net.
“Fire in the hole.”
***
Spooky moved quickly and silently down the passageway. He felt very uncomfortable and exposed by the complete lack of maneuvering room, the close confines of the underwater steel tube they inhabited. He had stepped over several unconscious crewmen. Behind him he heard the hiss of the others pumping tranquilizer into each of them.
He’d had no choice but to shoot a couple more, and the noise might have alerted anyone still conscious. There was nothing for it but to push onward, hoping the control room was not sealed off and forted up.
Following behind, Bitzer carried the trank gun in one hand, a PW5 Needleshock pistol in the other. Then came Kelley with his PW10, and Alkina brought up the rear, pistol ready.
Spooky heard the popgun sound of a PW5 behind him. It fired a cartridge smaller than a .22; most of the noise came from the needle passing Mach one as it left the barrel. He looked back and saw Alkina pointing her weapon through a hatchway to the right. He didn’t stop.
Not until the closed watertight door. The team pressed up against the bulkhead around the rim. Kelley tried the dogs, the locking handles and the wheel. No luck. It was secured from the inside. Several inches of thick steel, it was designed to keep out the pressures of the deep in case of compartment failure, and now it was keeping the team out.
The colonel slid a flexible tube out of his cargo pocket, put on his VR glasses, and carefully raised the end of the optical probe over the lip of the hatch’s small vision port. The tiny camera transmitted the view to his glasses, and he saw figures moving inside the darkened control center. He thought he detected a certain tension in their stances that indicated they knew something was wrong, but the screen was so tiny and the resolution was inadequate in the variable light. All he knew for sure was that the hatch was closed tight. “Kelley, how do we get it open?” The thick barrier prevented anyone from hearing their low conversation.
The PA system came to life abruptly. “Now hear this: all sections report status immediately.”
Kelley waited for the announcement to end, then replied, “You can’t, if they don’t open it. It’s deliberately manual. There’s no override.”
“How about cutting through the floor or ceiling?”
“Their ceiling is the sail – the conning tower – the only way to get through there is externally. From below...sure, with time. But it would be obvious what we were doing.”
“I don’t believe they have any weapons – perhaps a pistol – so it hardly matters if they know. What else can they do?” Colonel Nguyen’s eyes were intense, inquiring.
“Fire off the missiles or torpedoes? Drive the boat into the ocean floor...maybe sink it? Come up to radio depth and send a message? We can’t let them think of something. And in less than an hour the un-tranked crewmen will be waking up, and they’ll be confused and unhappy.”
“Then you have to blow it.”
“It’s going to be ugly. Maybe deadly.”
Everyone winced except Alkina, who just looked down at the deck as if avoiding the thought.
“Just do your best not to kill anyone.”
Kelley quickly began laying out charges, tools, detonator, wires, blasting caps in their no-static covers. Everyone else moved back and stationed themselves to watch all the entrances.
Spooky opened up a pouch and took out two grenades: one flash-bang, one sleep gas. Both of them – in fact, almost all FC weapons – had the latest Eden Plague incorporated in them, in hopes of exposing whomever they were used on. Every infected enemy was a loss for them and a gain for the Free Communities.
He shook his head and thought to himself how foolish the Big Three were – desperate to hold on to their superpower status, but all they could do was fight a bloody rearguard action; watch their people trickle away and their economies stagger along with no growth as the Free Communities and the Neutral States rapidly rebuilt.
“Ready.” It had only taken Kelley seven minutes. Now the hatch was ringed with an array of shaped charges designed to cut through the closing bars and blow it off its hinges, all without killing those inside.
He hoped.
Spooky gave it about fifty-fifty to work. “Wait,” he said, going to check at the hatch port. This time he raised his head to look with the naked eye, not concerned with the slight chance he would be noticed.
He could see three men. None of them were nearby. Now was as good a time as any. He scuttled back to cover with the rest then gave Kelley the signal to go.
Kelley called the traditional phrase for “triggering an explosion now” over the radio net. “Fire in the hole.”
The noise of the shaped charges was deafening in the close confines of the submarine, even with their sound-cancelling electronic earbuds. The vibration and concussive shock transmitted not only through the air but through the metal and the very bodies of the team. If they had not been bolstered by the Plague, they might have been incapacitated.
The watertight door flew off its hinges into the control room, its dogging points cut by the superheated explosives. The temperature of both rooms climbed ten degrees from the blast.
Spooky tossed the sleep gas grenade in and then the flash-bang. As soon as it exploded he moved in, immediately angling rightwards to get out of the death funnel of the doorway. He circled the foggy room, ensuring he breathed in through the nose in the dense soporific gas.
Kelley came through next and circled left. A shot rang out from the fog, then two more, the hard cracks of a Navy service weapon. Fortunately that was all they were likely to have; a submerged boat was the last place anyone would expect to have a firefight.
Unfortunately one of the bullets ricocheted off something solid and struck Kelley in the upper jaw, shattering several teeth and knocking him unconscious. He dropped like a marionette with its strings cut.
Spooky crouched and loosed one burst from his P90 in the direction of the shots, then another. He heard a thud and a groan; as he duck-walked along the perimeter of the control room he came upon the shooter, a master chief wearing a protective mask, holding a military standard 9mm pistol. The filters had shielded him from the sleep gas; the colonel pulled the mask off and shot him with a trank.
“Open all the doors! Get this place aired out,” Nguyen called, then spotted Kelley and his shattered face. “Doc, we’re going to need you up here as soon as you can.”
“Just as soon as I stick Harres’ skull back on, okay sir?” Doc muttered something about “a little too much fun here,” then fell silent.
As soon as the control room cleared, they tranked the other two men lying there – the ship’s captain and the executive officer. Alkina reached down to feel around underneath the captain’s tunic, coming up with nothing but dog tags on a chain. “No key.”
“They didn’t have time to get them out of the safes. Bitzer –” Spooky glanced around, seeing the sub driver already sitting at the helm – “good, what’s the status?”
“Depth is five hundred five feet, sir. Inertial navigation is green and we can head for Fiji as soon as we dump the mini.”
“Just get us moving away from here, slow and quiet, before that other submersible shows up.” Spooky switched on his UWB mike. “Whoever is not otherwise engaged please come up to the control room and help carry Kelley down to the infirmary.”
“Roger, on my way.” Repeth slung her weapon, running up the ladder and along the passageway to the control room.
“You two ladies take Kelley down, please,” Spooky ordered politely.
Alkina’s nostrils flared for a moment, then she smiled slightly and shrugged. She reached for Kelley’s legs, leaving the heavier upper body to the Marine. “One, two, three, up.”
The two women carried Kelley’s dead weight awkwardly down to the infirmary. Repeth had to perform a fireman’s carry to get him down the ladder, a difficult and time-consuming operation. When they finally got Kelley to the medical space, they saw Major Muzik and Doc standing over Harres, looking pleased.
Doc said, “Excellent job, if I do say so myself. Damn, what have we here? Put him on the deck, I don’t want to move Harres yet. Ugh, looks like the bullet entered his cheek here, took out some teeth and bone, then exited the other side. Flesh wounds healing nicely...hand me that locking forceps. No, the locking forceps. Yes, that one. Got to get this broken tooth out, it’s knocked all sideways...scalpel please. Thank you...” He deftly pulled and cut, swabbed and packed.
Alkina looked expectantly at Muzik and Repeth. “The gas will be wearing off soon. Shouldn’t you two clear the rest of the boat? I am sure there are several spaces that haven’t been checked, and everyone should be tranked.” At their hesitation, she smiled faintly, an odd unnatural thing. “It’s all right; I’ll assist here if he needs anything.”
“Right. Good idea. Let’s go, Sergeant.” Muzik led off.
“That’s Gunnery Sergeant, sir.” Repeth opened doors and hatches, clearing tiny spaces one by one.
“Sorry, you know I was Army.” He found a groggy sailor, tranked him.
“Can’t all be the best, sir.”
He snorted. “You got that right. How were your last hand-to-hand scores? Or your bench?”
“I don’t remember, sir; how was your run time? Or your range qual?”
“Ouch, okay, I yield.” He grinned at her, but she didn’t smile back. Touchy...
“Hey, here’s the galley. That’s the chow hall to you Army types. Something’s cooking.” They moved into the food preparation area and turned off the electric cooking appliances, sampling the simmering food as they did it. Some kind of beef stew. Jill futilely wished it was Rick along with her instead of Muzik, if only so she wouldn’t have to keep looking at the major’s annoyingly handsome and cheerful face.
