Deep Fathom (46 page)

The voice returned, somber. “Read you. Implosion imminent.” A long pause. “Our prayers are with you, Neptune.”

“Thank you, Topside. Over and out.”

Karen bit her lip. Finally free, she now turned her attention to more important concerns.

Where the hell was Jack?

Jack limped down the last canyon. He spotted lights ahead. It was the crash site! He was so close. He pumped the foot pedals, trying to eke a little more power from the drained batteries. The thrusters whined weakly.

If nothing else, the frantic chase through the seamounts had brought him within a quarter mile of the base. After watching David's lifeboat implode, it had taken Jack only eight minutes to reach the site. However, his computer screen was riddled with blinking warning lights in hues of red and yellow. Worst of all, the battery power level read zero.

The charge was so low that he'd been forced to turn off all immediately unnecessary systems: lights, carbon dioxide scrubbers, even heaters. After such a short trip, he was already shivering violently, lips blue from the icy cold of these depths.

And now with the lights of the base illuminating the last of the canyon, Jack turned off his sonar. This earned him another half minute of power to his thrusters. He glided the
Nautilus
forward. The sub's skids, bent and twisted, rode an inch above the sandy bottom.

At long last he pulled free of the canyons.

After so long in the dark, the lights glared. He squinted. The pillar lay twenty yards to his right, the sea base straight ahead, its three doughnut-shaped sections lit up brightly. He swore under his breath at the distance yet to travel. Why had they constructed the base so far away? He'd never make it.

Proving his words true, the thrusters whined down and stopped with an ominous silence. Jack pounded the foot pedals. “C'mon, not when we're this damn close!” He managed to earn a weak whine, but nothing more.

He settled back, thinking. He rubbed his hands together, his fingertips numb from the cold. “Now what?”

Karen wiped the blood from her hands onto her pants. She had climbed back up to Level 2 after disengaging the emergency lock-down. For the past five minutes, she had been fruitlessly trying to raise Gabriel.

Cut off, she felt blind and deaf. What was she going to do?

She stood up, trying to pace away her nervousness. She considered calling topside and coming clean. The fate of the world depended on someone taking action…anyone. But she knew her chances of convincing somebody in authority were futile. The disk with the data from the
Fathom
was gone, missing along with the body of Dr. Cortez. And who would believe a woman who had just decapitated a decorated member of the U.S. military?

Karen scratched her head, her heart pounding. There had to be a way.

As she paced, a small temblor shook underfoot. She stopped. The vibrations rattled up her legs. She held her breath. All she needed right now was a deep-sea quake. She moved to one of the portholes. As she peered out, the rattling died away. A fading light caught her eye. It was coming from the pillar.

Karen narrowed her eyes, studying it. Strange.

Suddenly, the light flared up in the pillar. The ground shook again. She gripped the walls, holding herself steady. For the briefest moment, as the light flared, she spotted the glint of something shiny and metallic.

Something was out there.

The quake ended, and the light faded.

She stared, straining, squinting—but could discern nothing more.

“What was that?” she mumbled to herself.

As she stood, arms tight around her, Karen thought of a way to find out.

Teeth chattering and weak from stale air, Jack struggled to grab another rock from the silt with the sub's manipulator arm. Of the first four stones, he had managed to hit the pillar twice. Not bad.

Earlier, as the sub had rested dead on the seabed floor, he'd remembered Charlie's lesson about the pillar's sensitivity to energy, even
kinetic
energy, like something striking its surface. He had just enough battery power to work one of the manipulator arms and lob stones at the pillar. The ground trembled, the pillar flared. But was there anyone to see his SOS? Had the base been abandoned already? He had no way of knowing.

He struggled to dig free another stone. His vision blurred. The cold and the carbon dioxide were taking their toll. As he fought to stay conscious, the manipulator arm froze up. He tugged at the controls. Not enough power.

He tried the radio one last time. The batteries' remaining dribble of juice was enough to power a final call. “Can anyone hear me? Charlie…anyone…”

Groaning, Jack collapsed back into his cold seat. No answer. He shivered and trembled all over. Waiting. The deep waters had sucked all heat from the small sub. His vision dimmed again. He began to swim in and out of consciousness. He fought it, but the ocean was stronger.

On his last flicker of consciousness, he spotted the large monster bearing down at him…then darkness swallowed him.

Karen sat before the control station on Level 1. She manipulated the joystick for the ROV robot named Huey, guiding its arms to grab onto Jack's sub. On the monitor before her, she watched her work from remote. The grips extended and latched onto a section of the sub's titanium tubing, clamping tight.

Satisfied she had a firm hold, she backed Huey along the
path toward the base. The sub seemed to resist for a moment, then budged slowly. Karen wiped sweat from her eyes. “You can do it, Huey.”

The Volkswagen Bug-size robot continued backing, dragging the sub with it. As it retreated, Karen swiveled the remote camera's eye, making sure to avoid obstructions while ensuring that she didn't lose Jack and his sub.

Through the acrylic dome she watched Jack's form jostle around as the sub was hauled. His head lolled and his arms hung limp. Unconscious? Dead? She had no way of knowing, but refused to give up.

Working quickly, her eyes darted from the screen to the clock on the wall. Her grip grew slick on the joystick. Less than two hours. How could they possibly hope to succeed? On the screen, she watched Huey trundle backward, hauling the dead sub. Either way, she wasn't going to leave Jack out there.

Struggling with the joystick, she steadily drew the sub along the silt. Luckily, the track between the pillar and the station had already been cleared by workers. Even the stray bits of jet pieces had been vacuumed from the silt. Karen worked as quickly as safety allowed, praying for more time.

Then a familiar voice rose from the control station's speakers.
“Dr. Grace, if you can hear us, please respond.”

Karen cried out with relief. Keeping one hand on the joystick, she used her free hand to patch into the communication system. “Gabriel!”

“Good morning, Dr. Grace, please hold for the
Deep Fathom.”

On the monitor, Huey finally reached the station. Karen slowed the robot and carefully pulled Jack's sub underneath the base. She tilted the camera, coordinating to position the sub under the docking bay doors.

“Karen!”

“Miyuki! Oh, thank God!”

Before her friend could respond, a new voice came on. It was the ship's geologist, his Jamaican accent giving him away. “Professor Grace, time is of the essence. Have you
heard from Dr. Cortez? What is going on?”

Karen gave him a summary as she initiated the docking bay pressurization. The two quickly compared notes. She learned the support ships topside were all leaving, steaming under full power away from the site and abandoning the
Fathom
. Once they were gone, communications had reopened.

“Why are they leaving?” she asked.

“Gabriel picked up a coded transmission. He was able to decrypt it. Apparently some fail-safe command was initiated. To wipe out the area. It seems they're not taking any chances on losing whatever resources lie down there to a foreign power. The place has been targeted for a missile strike.”

“When?”

“Gabriel is still trying to work that out.”

Karen suddenly felt faint, light-headed. From how many different directions could death aim their way?

“What about Jack?” Charlie asked.

Karen focused back on the monitors. “I'm trying to get him on board, but I don't know. The robot can't lift his sub into the bay. Jack has to do that himself, and I think he's out of power.”

“I'll have Gabriel patch you over to the sub. See if you can wake him.”

“I'll try.”

As she waited, Karen leaned over and peered through the observation window. The bay was flooded and the doors were gliding open.

“
Dr. Grace, you are hooked up to the deep-water radio of the
Nautilus.”

Karen spoke into the microphone. “Jack, if you can hear me, wake up!” She kept an eye on the monitor, focusing Huey's camera on the glass dome. She used the robot's arms to shake the sub. “Wake up, damn it!”

Jack swam through darkness, chasing a whisper. A familiar voice. He followed it up toward a bright light. The voice of an angel…

“Goddamn it, Jack! Wake your ass up!”

He jolted in his seat, groggy and blinded. He threw his head back. Lights shone all around him. He couldn't see.

“Jack, it's Karen!”

“Karen…?” He wasn't sure if he spoke or if it was all in his head. The world swam with light.

“Jack, you have to raise your sub fifteen feet. I need you to enter the bay over your head.”

Jack craned his head up. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a large open hatch above his head. Understanding seeped through to him. “Can't,” he mumbled. “No power.”

“There must be a way. You're so close.”

Jack stared up, remembering Spangler's death. Maybe there was a way.

Karen spoke, desperate. “Jack, I'll see if the ROV robot's arms are strong enough to push you inside.”

“No…” His tongue felt thick and slow. He searched between his legs. His fingers found the release brake for jettisoning the external sub frame. He yanked on it. It was stuck, or he was too weak.

“Jack…”

Taking a deep breath, he grabbed it again with numb fingers. Bracing his feet, he used both his arms and his upper back to crank the lever up between his legs. He heard the muffled pop of the manual pyrotechnics. The external frame locks blew off, freeing the inner pilot's chamber.

Buoyant, the chamber rose from its shell, like an insect shedding its old carapace. Pressures thrust it upward through the open hatch.

Jack saw none of it, passing out again.

On the screen, Karen saw the sub appear to crack in half.
She gasped with fright until she saw the inner chamber shoot upward—right through the open hatch. She hit a button on the controls, initiating repressurization.

She stepped to the observation window. Jack's escape pod bounced and rolled along the ceiling. Under it, the bay doors closed. The thump of the pumps began to sound.

Karen watched, holding her breath. Jack hung slack in his harness.

The five minutes to drain and equalize the pressure was interminable. She briefly contacted the
Fathom
, updating them. She learned that Charlie was working on some plan of his own with Gabriel.

Karen, afraid for Jack, barely listened.

At last the green light flashed above the door to the bay. She twirled the lock and hauled the hatch open. The pilot pod, half acrylic, half titanium, lay on its side. Karen had already been instructed over the radio by Robert on how to open it. Snatching an emergency oxygen bottle from beside the bay door, she ducked through the hatch.

She ran over to the pod, grabbed the manual screw pull, and began winding it around like a car's jack handle. She stared inside. Jack's face was blue. She cranked harder, pumping her arms. The seals peeled open with a hiss of escaping air. Karen smelled the foulness to it—stale, dead.

She reached to the loosened dome top and kicked it open. Kneeling down, she freed Jack's harness and hauled out his limp body. His skin was cold and clammy. She was sure he was dead.

Sprawled on the bay floor, Karen checked for a pulse in his neck. Faint and thready. His breathing was shallow. She slid on her knees and collected the small oxygen bottle, unhooking the tiny mask. She twisted the flow valve and placed the mask over his mouth and nose.

Leaning near his ear, she whispered, “Breathe, Jack.”

Somewhere deep inside, he must have heard her. His chest rose and fell more deeply. She turned and zippered down his neoprene dive suit, freeing his rib cage.

As she did so, a hand rose and weakly took her wrist.

She looked down at Jack's face and found him staring at
her.

He spoke through the mask. His voice was hoarse. “Karen…?”

She began to cry, and hugged him gently around the neck. For a moment neither one tried to move.

Finally, Jack struggled to sit up. Karen helped him. He shoved aside the oxygen mask and minitank. His color was already improving. “Tell me what's happening,” he asked, teeth chattering.

She did.

Jack rolled to his knees and coughed thickly. “What's this plan of Charlie's?”

“He wouldn't exactly say.”

“That sounds like Charlie.” Jack stood with her help, rubbing his arms. “How much time do we have left?”

“One hour.”

Jack sat buried in warm towels. He was finally starting to feel his toes. Charlie's image flickered on the computer screen in front of him. “First tell me about this missile strike. What's that all about?”

“A fail-safe mechanism was initiated from a radio transmission from below. I thought you might know more about it.”

Jack glanced at Karen.

“It wasn't from here,” she said. “I was with Rolfe at the time.”

“Then it must have been Spangler,” Jack said with a scowl. “His final attempt to kill me from the grave.”

“He must have
really
hated you, Jack,” Charlie chimed in. “A nuclear-tipped ICBM has our names on it.”

Jack's eyes grew wide. He forgot about the chill in his limbs.

“How long do we have?”

“From Gabriel's estimation, fifty-seven minutes. One minute after the solar storm hits.”

Jack shook his head. “So even if we can block this pillar and save the world, we still die in a nuclear blast.”

Charlie shrugged. “Pretty much.”

Jack sat quietly, stubbornly considering their options, then sighed. “What the hell. Heroes aren't suppose to live forever. Let's get this done. What's this new plan of yours, Charlie?”

“It's a long shot, Jack.”

“Considering our current state of affairs, I'll take any damn shot.”

“But I really wanted to run my calculations by Dr. Cortez first.”

“Well, unless you have a Ouija board, that ain't happening. So spit it out. What's this plan?”

Charlie looked grim. “You gave me the idea, Jack. We overload the pillar with energy.”

“Try to short-circuit it?”

“Not exactly. If we overload the crystal with
precisely
enough energy, pulse it at exactly the right frequency, it should fracture the crystal without a kinetic backlash, like shattering a crystal goblet by striking the right note.”

“And you know the right note?”

Charlie nodded. “I think I do. But the hard part was finding a way to
deliver
the note. The energy has to be precise and sustained for three minutes.”

“And you figured this out?”

“I think so.” Charlie sighed. “That's what Gabriel and I have been working on since you left—and you're not going to like it, Jack. For this type of sustained power, we'll need a particle-beam weapon.”

“How are we supposed to get our hands on such a thing?”

Charlie just stared at him as if he should already know the answer.

Then understanding struck Jack between the eyes. He jerked to his feet. “Wait…you can't mean the Spartacus?”

“Gabriel obtained its specs. It should work.”

“What's this Spartacus?” Karen interrupted.

Jack sank back down. “It's a Navy satellite. The one I was putting into orbit when the shuttle
Atlantis
was damaged. Its equipped with an experimental particle-beam cannon engineered to knock out targets from space. Airplanes, missiles, ships, even submarines.” Jack turned back to Charlie. “But it's defunct. Damaged.”

Charlie shook his head. “Only its guidance and tracking systems—which, of course, makes it useless to the government. For it to work, they'd need an operator sitting up there aiming the thing by hand.” Charlie paused. “But luckily,
we
have that operator right here.”

Jack did not understand, but Karen realized the answer. “Gabriel!”

“Exactly. I sent him earlier to try to access the satellite's central processor. With the current global crisis and with the Spartacus classified as dead in space, he and Miyuki succeeded in slipping past the old firewalls. The satellite's processor is still active.”

“You're kidding…after all these years?” Karen asked skeptically.

“It's solar powered. An infinite energy source.”

As the others talked, Jack sat quietly, flashing back to the bright satellite lifting from its shuttle bay cradle, silvery solar wings spreading wide. He tried to close his mind against what happened afterward but failed. The explosion, the screams, the endless fall through space…

He shivered—not from cold, but from a twinge of superstitious dread. The Spartacus was cursed. Death surrounded it. Nothing good could come from the wretched thing. “It won't work,” he grumbled.

“Do we have any other choice?” Karen asked. She placed a hand on his shoulder, then spoke to Charlie. “When can we try it?”

“Well, that's the clincher. We'll have only the one chance. The satellite won't come within orbital range until forty-eight minutes from now.”

Jack checked the clock. “That's three minutes before the solar storm hits.”

“Three minutes is all I'll need. Either it works or it doesn't.”

Jack shook his head. “This is insane.”

“What do we have to do?” Karen asked.

“To target the pillar, Gabriel will need an active GPS lock. Something upon which to focus the cannon. We're going to need you to place the
Nautilus
's Magellan GPS homing device over by the pillar. It'll feed data to the
Fathom
, and in turn I'll send it to Gabriel.”

Jack shook his head. “Then we have a problem. The
Nautilus
is still outside the sea base. I had to do an emergency jettison to enter the docking bay. There's no way to get to the Magellan unit outside.”

Karen spoke up. “What about the ROV robot?”

“It's too crude to extract the Magellan unit without harming it. Someone would have to do it by hand.”

No one spoke. Everyone sat sullenly.

Then Karen brightened. “I may have an idea.”

Standing in the docking bay, Jack watched the water level rise past the front port of his helmet. He moved his arms, acquainting himself to the deep-sea armored ensemble. It was one of the Navy diver's suits. The large helmet had four viewing ports: forward, right, left, and above. The bulbous helmet was so wide that it blended flush with the suit's shoulders, creating a bullet-shaped form with jointed arms and legs protruding from it. Small lights were mounted atop the helmet and at each wrist. There were also thruster assemblies built into the back, like the old rocket packs in scifi serials.

As Jack moved slowly about the filling bay, he found its operation fairly intuitive, similar to the EVA suits used for spacewalks.

“How're you doing?” Karen's voice came through the helmet radio. Through the seawater, he spotted her waving to him from the bay's observation window. After talking
with Charlie, Karen had taken Jack down to the docking level and shown him the “garages” where the huge suits were stored. He had to give her credit. It was a clever solution.

He waved back. “Doing fine.”

“Charlie is jacked into the radio system. He's monitoring also.”

“Charlie?” Jack called out.

“Right here,
mon
.”

“How's Gabriel doing?”

“The little bugger has finished troubleshooting the satellite's systems. They're powering up and awaiting our signal. Just get that GPS unit and haul ass. We're running out of time.”

Jack's gaze flicked to the helmet's internal computer screen.
Sixteen minutes
. “I hear you.”

Karen came back on line. “Careful. The docking bay doors are opening.”

Jack bent a bit, peering down. A few feet away the huge doors slid open. The ocean lay beyond.

Jack stepped toward the opening. “I'd better get going.” From across the way he spotted Karen's face through the window. She held a fist to her throat. Worried and scared. Jack sensed her fear was more for his own safety than the fate of the world.

With a last wave, he stepped from the bay and sank down to the ocean floor. Using a hand pad, he adjusted his buoyancy and settled in place. The remains of the
Nautilus
lay two yards away. Playing with the thrusters, Jack spun himself around until he faced the sub, then moved over to its side.

Bending at the knee, he searched the vessel. The Magellan unit was just forward to the portside thruster assembly. He shuffled around until he found it. Reaching with an arm, he used the three-pronged pincer grip to unscrew its cover plate. It took a little prying since it was bent inward from the hard use the sub had recently faced.

The plate fell away.

Jack kneeled lower, awkward in the bulky suit. He shone
the tiny wrist lamps inside.
Oh, shit…
The shoe-box-size device was smashed, its inner components open to the seawater. He groaned aloud.

“You okay, Jack?” Karen asked.

He straightened. “The Magellan is toast. The unit's fried.” Hopelessness hollowed his chest. “Goddamn that asshole Spangler!”

Charlie's voice echoed through the tiny speakers. “But Jack, I'm picking up a GPS signal.”

“Impossible. Not from the
Nautilus
.”

“Step away,” Charlie said. “Get clear of the sea base.”

Using his thrusters, Jack skimmed between two of the steel support legs and out into open ocean.

“It's you!” Charlie said. “That Navy suit must be engineered with an automatic GPS homing device. A safety feature in case a diver gets stranded!”

Jack felt hope rekindle. “Then all I have to do is reach the pillar.”

“You have eight minutes.” Charlie paused. “But Jack, if the GPS is a part of the suit, you'll have to stay by the pillar.”

Jack understood what Charlie was implying. It would mean his death.

Karen came to the same realization. “There has to be another way. What about that other plan? The last resort. To reset the explosive charges and blow up just the pillar.”

Charlie argued. “The kinetic energy backlash—”

Fingering his controls, Jack goosed his thrusters. “Folks, either way, there's a nuke with our names on it already in the air. This is the only viable option.” He swung around and flew across the seabed floor. The pillar lay fifty yards away. “Be ready.”

Lisa stood with Robert and George by the bow rail. The sun overhead shone brilliantly. There was not a cloud in the sky. They had come up to the deck to await the outcome. With
the other four belowdecks, the lab had been too crowded, too cramped. Lisa needed to feel the breeze on her cheek…if only for one last time.

George and Robert had accompanied her. George smoked his pipe. Robert had his Sony walkman over his ears. Faintly, Lisa could hear the tinny sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing “Born to Run.”

She sighed. If only they could run…

But they couldn't. The
Fathom
needed to stay nearby to aid in the flow of transmissions between the station below and the satellite overhead. There would be no escape for any of them. Even if their plan succeeded, the area would soon be wiped out, destroyed in a decisive nuclear strike.

George removed his pipe and silently pointed its stem toward the horizon.

Lisa looked. A small contrail rose from the northeast, streaking higher as it arced into the sky.
The fail-safe missile
.

George replaced his pipe, his eyes on the sky.

No one said a word.

Encased in his reinforced suit, Jack stood with his back to the crystal pillar. The ocean bottom lay dark all around him. A moment ago he had ordered Karen to turn off the grid to the lamp poles, plunging the seas back into darkness. He had also turned off his own suit lights. He could not risk exciting the pillar prematurely and interfering with his GPS signal.

“Are you registering me okay?” he asked.

Charlie answered from the
Fathom
. “Loud and clear. Transmitting data up to Gabriel.”

He gazed around him. The only light came from the yellow glow through the portholes of the Neptune sea base. Though he could not see her, Jack felt Karen staring back at him. He sighed. He would have liked the chance to have known her better. His only regret.

He waited. There was nothing else for him to do. He was
now just a living and breathing target for a space-based weapons system.

He glanced up through the upper port of his helmet, as if he could see the satellite—Spartacus. He had somehow known one day their paths would cross again. A destiny that needed to be fulfilled. He had escaped death once, the only survivor. Now he was standing in the crosshairs of the same satellite. Death would not be denied a second time.

He closed his eyes.

Karen whispered in his ear like a ghost, “We're with you, Jack. All of us.”

He silently acknowledged her. All his life he had been surrounded by ghosts. Memories of the dead. Now, at this last moment, he let it all go, finally realizing how much power he had given to the shades of his past.

Well, no longer. At this moment he wanted only his flesh-and-blood friends at his side. He opened his eyes and his comlink. “Good luck, everyone. Let's get this done!”

Charlie's voice came next. “Here we go.”

Sunlight reflected off the wings of the brilliant satellite. Upon its flank, stenciled markings, as crisp as the day they had been painted, were easy to see: a tiny flag, identification numbers, and broad red letters, spelling out its name: Spartacus.

As it swept over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the satellite slowly rotated, an internal gyro spinning like a child's top. Pinioned solar wings tilted to catch more energy, in turn powering up the high-energy chemical laser.

It was a ballet of power and force.

On its underside, a hatch opened and a telescoping barrel protruded.

Around the awakening satellite, the upper atmosphere began to be peppered with ionized particles, charging the ionosphere with tiny bursts of radiation, like raindrops on a pond. Ripples began to spread. The satellite's communication system crackled.