Seaquest DSV

by Diane Duane

  * * *

  "Sir, seaQuest has flooded all her torpedo tubes; outer doors are coming open."

  Stark rose from her chair and gazed levelly at her sensor chief. "Well, now... Any targeting sweeps detected?"

  The man checked his panel. "None," he said, sounding wary, as if he thought this must be some kind of trick.

  Stark shook her head and looked smugly over at Maxwell, smiling again as her certainty reasserted itself. "Bridger used to drum it into us at the Academy," she said. "The first thing you do before a torp launch is perform your targeting sweeps. If he's not targeting, he has no weapons. He's bluffing. The seaQuest is a sitting duck."

  She stepped forward, her heart swelling, for at last, at long last, this was the moment of her revenge. After this, her life lay open before her: she could do anything...

  "Initiate fire sequence, Mr. Maxwell," she said softly. "All six tubes."

  "But that'll take almost a minute."

  "I know." Stark was dreamy-eyed as she watched the pictures forming in her mind. "I want to blast her out of the water. It's time the student became the teacher..."

  CHAPTER 13

  "Okay, Weapons Control," said Nathan. "Talk to me..."

  Phillips's voice from the Weapons Control station sounded fairly bleak, as bleak as his own prospects. "You've got your one E-plasma torpedo, sir—tube number one! I'm afraid that's all! And still no targeting!"

  Ford looked up from his station. "Delta is settling into attack position!" he said. "Getting ready to fire!"

  Bridger sat there weighing his options. However little he liked them, there was nothing to do but exercise them.

  He reached down and hit a switch on his control panel. "Okay, my friend," he said softly. "You're on your way. Do the deed." And Godspeed...

  Bridger glanced aside to one of the screens on the WSKR panel, and craned his neck to see past Ortiz. Junior's screen showed what he was look ing for: the starboard controlled egress port, a tiny dimple on the dark exterior skin—small enough, in contrast to the rest of a thousand-foot hull, to miss if you didn't look very closely. A slim, silvery shape flashed out through it at speed, its paleness broken toward the front of its body by the straps of a harness. Darwin..., Nathan thought. Hunt...!

  A few seconds later, O'Neill called out to him, "Smaller craft have all retreated from the area, sir!"

  That at least was a relief. Ortiz looked up as well. "The renegade is targeting on us now, sir!"

  Terrific, Nathan thought. But better on us than the colonists—I guess. "Sir, our torpedo doors are open and ready to fire," said Ford.

  Nathan did nothing, said nothing; just waited. "Captain," Ford said urgently, "our only chance is to fire first!"

  Nathan would have grinned all over his face at the sight of his ex-o trying to teach his grandpa how to suck eggs—except that he was waiting for something, and didn't dare breathe, hardly dared think, until it happened. He held up his hand to keep Ford quiet for just a little longer; then he leaned forward in the command chair, and swallowed, waiting...

  “Delta-IV is flooding all her torpedo tubes!"

  Nathan glanced at Ortiz. "All her tubes? You sure?"

  "Yes, sir. Six tubes. The bow caps are still closed—no... Pressure equalization, bow caps cycling open now...!"

  Indeed, Loner, the foremost WSKR probe, was already quite close enough to the Delta to show this on its screens: the dark pits of the doors opening, and deep down in their throats, perfectly visible to the superacute vision of the probe, the dully glinting noses of the torpedoes, ready to fire. Nathan gazed at them, fascinated by the view, as a bird might be fascinated by a snake. He swallowed. Don't let her rush you. Wait for the moment. Wait...

  "She never did know when to quit," Nathan muttered as he stared at the screens, and at the outline of the Delta-IV hanging there, black against the dimness. It's meant to be complete, isn't it? he thought. No chance of us making it home—any of us—especially not the innocents who saw you get the worst of our last skirmish. Well, I have news for you. Yet at the same time, he pitied Stark— plainly unable to cope with what years of living on the edge of violence had made of her. Her only remedy had been to dive wholly into it. Nathan didn't flatter himself that his solution had been in any way superior; but at least he hadn't killed anyone doing it.

  Except Carol—

  He shook that thought away. There was no point in dwelling on it.

  And maybe Darwin— "Come on, now, come on, talk to me...!"

  And on one of the screens, something silvery gleamed against the darkness, something moving fast, striped with the bands of a harness...

  Nathan leaned forward, watching, his heart genuinely feeling as if it were in his throat: he could scarcely breathe, and his heart hammered like native drums in some bad old movie. Darwin was swimming swiftly along the underside of the Delta's hull, heading for the ship's centerpoint. Near his head, a tiny spark of flashing light paced him. It was at that moment that the ship's size really registered on Nathan for the first time: for Darwin was only five feet long, and it was taking him a long time to get to the target zone, much longer than Nathan had thought it would. Come on—come on, Darwin—!

  The rest of them watched him too, frozen. Then there was a sudden burst of speed, and Darwin was flashing along, was almost there. He dropped out of Loner's sight, just around the curve of the Delta's bottom—

  And the view shifted to Junior's: the number three WSKR had been drifting quietly downward all this while, too slowly to register, possibly, as anything but another bit of wreckage from the minisub the Delta had blown away. With his view they could all see Darwin slide right up against the Delta's hull. Junior's view zoomed in on the dolphin's head as he turned and slapped the strap he held up against the renegade sub's hull. Something dark seemed to adhere there: the strap dangled, twisting in the current. Darwin twisted downward, turned and swam back toward the seaQuest like lightning; and as he did, a small green flashing light came from the dark thing he had left on the Delta's hull—and flashed again—

  * * *

  "Get us a bit closer," said Marilyn Stark. "I want to make sure we split her right in two—" Then her head snapped around with terrible suddenness as, all through her ship, a high, intense pinging noise rang out.

  She spun around in her seat. "What the hell is that?" she cried. Her officers stared at her helplessly, and just as helplessly she stared back. Not at them, but at the hull-incursion indicator. Small mass, emitting radio as well as sound. The ping rang out again. And again...

  "No," Stark muttered, refusing to believe what the indicator was telling her. "How could he do that...? He—he tagged us!"

  * * *

  The ping echoed through seaQuest as well, and Nathan was gladder to hear it than he ever had been to hear a noise in his life. "We have a targeting signal, Captain!" Hitchcock shouted in triumph. "Hot and steady! Range, eight hundred twenty—"

  Weapons Officer Phillips swung around from his control board, his face that of a man reprieved on the scaffold. "Torpedo is locked on target, Captain!"

  Bridger's jaw set hard, and all of a sudden he felt horribly sure that everything and everyone was spiraling down on him, waiting for one word. One command. He gave it.

  "Fire!"

  * * *

  Stark flicked open the security panel of her command console and daintily pressed one long, slim finger down on the firing switch. The six confirmation lights came on—but instead of the steady glow of a launch, they were flashing, blinking small simultaneous red eyes at her, defying her to do anything about it. She hit the firing switch again, mashing her thumb down on it, once more, and again—and still nothing happened but the blink, blink, blink... Failed, she thought. Machinery failing me as men have failed me. It's not fair; it can't be happening—! Not now! As her mouth twisted into a snarl, she swung around and bent all her baleful regard on Maxwell. "Why aren't we firing, dammit?!"

  "Our tube doors aren't locked open, Captain!" he said
desperately. "Launching sequence will be ready in... another eight seconds!"

  But the pinging went on without a break, and Stark could already hear the upscaling whine of a torpedo. Whether it was real or just inside her own head, it didn't matter. When her own sensor chief turned toward her with a face as white as salt, she knew which was the truth. And still it didn't matter. Not now. Not anymore. Not ever...

  "seaQuest has fired! One torpedo—locked on target... ninety meters now and closing...!"

  Marilyn Stark glanced at Maxwell, and her expression slumped into resignation. "We haven't got eight seconds," she said. "We haven't any time at all." She shook her head slowly, and showed her teeth in what might once have been a smile.

  "Bridger..."

  * * *

  Juniors view showed it more clearly than Bridger had ever seen it before, or had ever wanted to see it. The torpedo went barreling in, shifting slightly as course corrections passed from its homing head to its control surfaces, until the Delta was blotting out everything else. Then, finally, the strike: the casing of the torpedo blasted apart under the impact and its own internal explosive charge and unleashed the activated E-plasma charge. This burst out with terrible force, fastening like a hungry starfish against the Delta's hull, sending tendrils of blinding blue-white energy crawling all over it, and even the twenty-percent charge it carried was too much for the elderly steel hull beneath the patchwork of retrofitted armor. The hull started to crack, peeling outward like the shell of an egg smashed from within, and all six torpedoes blasted uselessly from their tubes, spiraling away upward, uncontrolled and harmless.

  Slowly, slowly, the Delta began drifting downward, the cracks radiating wider and wider through her hull, any remaining helm control now completely gone, her inertia still carrying her gently forward, toward one of the huge jagged rifts in the undersea prairie—and slowly, slowly, down and into it. It was odd how something so massive, so ponderous, could suddenly seem so ephemeral, like a feather, drifting down into the dimness, into the blackness of the rift, even blacker than she.

  The three WSKRs passed by and hovered over the trench. First Loner, then Mother, went down after the sinking ship. Behind them, Junior hesitated only a moment, hanging above the edge of the rift, sorting conflicting signal traces. Then, as if the probe had made up its mind to discard some small target for a much bigger one, it hurried down after the others.

  * * *

  seaQuest's bridge was in pandemonium: the crew cheering, laughing with relief, shaking hands.

  In the command seat, Bridger sat and gazed forward for a few long moments, thinking—or trying not to. Presently he glanced down at his hand on the switch: quite steady, as if the control on which it rested were nothing more important than a light switch.

  Ford had come quietly up beside him. "Where's Darwin?" Nathan said, his mouth still dry.

  "Back aboard five minutes ago," Ford said. "Westphalen's down getting the rebreather off him."

  Nathan nodded, not moving. Ford looked down at the hand which still rested on the switch, still rock steady. "I guess you never lose it, sir..."

  Nathan shook his head sorrowfully. "No," he said, his voice full of regret, a voice haunted by the past inevitably come home to roost. "No, I guess you never do...”

  * * *

  Nathan saw to the stabilization of the situation: the WSKRs deployed to keep an eye on things; crews sent out via TeamCraft to help the people at the research station repair any damage, and to help them recover their dead; other TeamCraft sent out to examine the wreckage of the Delta for any possible survivors.

  Then Nathan headed out to have a look around his ship, to see how the continuing repairs were going, and to see that people were all right after the attack. Practically the first thing he saw down the port passageway was a group of military crewpeople walking past a couple of science crewpeople, and eyeing them warily, as if they might go off. So much for us all becoming fast friends after our great trial together, Nathan thought as the military crew approached him. A lot of work to do yet...

  As the three military crewpeople passed Bridger, they saluted. "Hello, sir," one said, and "Good job today, sir...," said another. They held salute.

  Nathan just nodded at them and kept going, letting them take it as they would. It was going to take a lot of work for him too, to get used to the formalities of the service again. A lot of old habits to break, for if you chose to be in a service, you had to agree to be in it without subverting it...

  ...much.

  Nathan grinned and went on his way: farther down the passageway, then down a stair, making for the sea deck. Halfway down the stairs he spotted Ford coming along the hall toward him, apparently looking for him. "Excuse me, sir."

  Nathan finished coming down the stairs, and they fell in together as Nathan headed down the hall. "The recon party has just returned from the downed Delta. They have survivors with them."

  Bridger thought a moment. "Secure one of the aft compartments—set it up as a makeshift brig until we get back to Pearl." He paused, then said, “... Stark?"

  Ford shook his head. "But according to the recon party," he said, "she wasn't among the casualties, either."

  Somehow this struck Nathan as no particular surprise. "Was the Delta's minisub in its bay?"

  Ford looked at the electronic clipboard he was carrying, to see if the information there had been newly updated. "None reported, sir. You think maybe she... ?"

  Nathan thought about that a moment, then shrugged. Right now it made little difference: though he had to think, at least briefly, about what Marilyn Stark would be like after this if she lived. Would a defeat like this break her? Or would it make her more determined than ever to get back what was her own... or what she considered her own? A little nightmare, he thought, to follow you around and haunt your nights when they get too quiet. The sea is big, and dark, and there are a lot of places to hide and lick your wounds and recoup your forces. She did it once. She could do it again...

  They walked along without saying anything for a few moments, watching the crew tidy up, looking into the occasional open doorway as they passed it. "Sir...," Ford said then.

  Nathan looked at him as they walked. "The crew is very proud of what you did today," said Ford. "It was quite a thrill... for all of us... to see the old Nathan Bridger in action…”

  Nathan nodded. Feeling more than slightly melancholy, he said, “That is who you saw today, Commander. That's exactly who you saw…”

  But why should I be so unnerved by it? he thought. Thrown back into the ship I created, the position I longed for, worked night and day for... then walked away from, thinking I'd never see it anyway. And then found I had been deluding myself. Poor Nathan, to be given your heart's desire—

  "Sir," Ford said. Nathan looked up in some surprise, thinking that the somber tone of his voice should have been enough to send most people on their way—but Ford plainly had other things on his mind just now. He hesitated: this was costing him some effort. "Captain, I—"

  Nathan let him take his time. "I want to apologize for not being honest with you," Ford said. "It was wrong, and I regret it. I was just—"

  "Following orders?" Bridger said, gently ironic.

  Ford looked at him. "Yes, sir."

  "Well, I guess somebody has to... Just remember after this that before you use your weapons, you should try using your head."

  "Yes, sir."

  Nathan sighed then. "Once the recon party is squared away, let's get under way for Pearl."

  "Would the Captain like to take the helm?" Ford said.

  "I'm sure you can handle it, Commander," Nathan said.

  "Aye, sir." And Ford went off to see about it.

  Nathan went on making his way down to the sea deck.

  * * *

  In the pool there, Darwin was swimming lazy circles, upside down half the time. A fish hit the water near him: a mackerel. He snapped it up without stopping. "Thank you!" he said.

  "I should be tha
nking you," Nathan said from where he sat at the edge of the pool. "You risked your life today. For me. For this ship."

  Darwin came about from the upside-down position to look at Nathan right-way-up as he passed in the latest circle. "Like—this ship," he said.

  "You do?"

  "Yes," Darwin said, sounding rather surprised that Nathan needed to ask. "Comfortable. Many things... fascinating. Things to do. We stay here... awhile?"

  Nathan sat there, staring at the mackerel he was holding. It stared back, not very expressively. When he looked up again, Darwin was beside him, resting his head on the coping, looking at Nathan, waiting.

  "I don't know," Nathan said. "Here."

  He offered Darwin the fish. Darwin took it, swallowed it whole and leaned there, looking at Nathan.

  Waiting...

  * * *

  It was dim in his quarters. The little frame gleamed dully gold in the soft light as Nathan pulled the photograph out of it, trying just for the moment to study it objectively, as if it were a picture of a stranger. The photograph was of a woman in her forties, wearing a cotton sundress, smiling, her golden hair blown back by some breeze—the face serene, happy.

  Slowly Nathan moved over to the imaging port of the computer and slipped the picture down onto the glass plate there; then he touched his password in at the console. The lights dimmed further...

  The hologram swirled and formed again, and suddenly, there she stood: still, almost caught between one breath and another, caught in the flush of life and joy. He moved toward her, almost unable to breathe at the sight. If she should move, if she should speak...

  He reached out to her hand.

  His hand went through it...

  Nathan breathed out then; he went to a chair nearby and sat down, looking at the image. Even if it should just seem to breathe—