“I have no idea, but the evidence is clear.”
“Which means it’s formally declaring war.” Senator Croft immediately took on an air of authority. “I’m sick of this. I’m going to make a call to the Department of Defense. By the time the Bimini Road has been the recipient of about a thousand bunker busters, there will never be a rogue wave here again.”
Sam stood up. Opened his mouth to speak. Then closed it and sat down again, having thought better of his argument.
She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to take ownership of it. No one will ever know we just eradicated an ancient site in foreign waters. Besides, if it starts a war with our neighbors, at least they’re an opponent we can see with the naked eye. Anyone have a problem with that?”
“No, we need to destroy this before it gets any stronger and more lives are lost,” Sam agreed.
“Good.” Senator Croft stood up. “Mr. Reilly, once the Bimini Road is destroyed and I have removed the teeth from this beast, I would be most obliged if you could help me by locating its nest, so we can destroy it completely.”
Chapter Seventy Five
The next day, the Maria Helena approached the main harbor in Florida. Three tugboats moved towards them and took over the control of the damaged Mississippi supertanker. Released from her towing duties, the Maria Helena was taken into the local harbor for refueling and provisioning. Tom returned to the Maria Helena by a local runabout, after he’d overseen the towing of the Mississippi throughout the trip from the bridge of the stricken ship.
Sam stretched his legs with a walk to a diner at the end of the dock. Tom joined him for the walk. It was a greasy twenty- four- hour diner, used to servicing needs of dock workers and guaranteeing large amounts of fresh bacon, eggs, and rich coffee at all hours. They sat down at a booth. Sam ordered something big and greasy from the menu. Ignored the pot of coffee. He began to fill Tom in on their discovery about the nanobots, their theory about the symbiotic machines having a nest and preparing to colonize. Finally he finished by telling him that Senator Croft had arranged to have the Bimini Road bombed.
At the end of it Tom filled his cup with a second round of black coffee and smiled. “So then, I guess I don’t need to worry about you making me dive Bimini Road anymore?”
“No. But we have work to do.”
“She wants you to find the nest?” Tom guessed.
“They’re still out there. And they’re evolving fast. Right now they’re harmless, but in the future they might work out a way to attack again.”
“So, how do we find them?”
“The same way as last time. Elise has been given control of a series of satellites specifically to search for it,” Sam said.
“There’s a lot of sea to cover.”
“Elise has developed a program to specifically search for fast growing plankton and phosphorescence.”
“And once we find it?”
“Veyron’s developing a plan to kill the microscopic machines.”
Chapter Seventy Six
Two weeks later they’d failed to find any signs of the nanobot hive. Samples of live plankton had been retrieved in more than forty locations throughout the Atlantic Ocean, focusing on areas along the equator where conditions were perfect for plankton proliferation. Three unusually large algae blooms were noted, but each one came back negative for nanoparticles.
At 8 a.m. Sam called his entire team to the mission room to discuss their next step. He sat down at the head of the table. It was rectangular and he sat down at the end of it. He valued everyone’s opinion on board, but his job was to receive the best information and then make a decision with it. Elise was the last person to sit down.
“Okay, is there a possibility the nanobots have simply perished?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s surprising, but not impossible.” Veyron switched on the overhead projector. He slid his hand over his laptop and opened up a document. On the wall, an image of statistics opened up. “I have four samples from our own hive of nanobots that Mr. Bower retrieved from the Mississippi. The first is the healthiest. As you can see, I have provided it with both organic nutrients for the host plankton and building materials for the nanobots to use. The hive is multiplying rapidly and as a consequence, I’ve been able to use them regularly for further tests to see how to destroy them.”
Sam looked at the numbers. It had grown from a 1 gram hive two weeks ago to now having a mass of 4 kilograms. And that hadn’t even taken into account the fact that Veyron had been sourcing his sample nanobots to experiment on from that hive. “That’s a frightening image.”
Veyron continued. “In the second one, I have provided nutrients for the plankton only and no building blocks for the nanobots.”
“That’s more promising,” Tom said. “The plankton hasn’t multiplied at all.”
“Technically, Mr. Bower, the plankton has continued to multiply every 24-48 hours as they would in normal conditions. However, the nanobots have simply moved from older, and weaker cells to younger cells. 1 gram of nanoparticles, without further building materials, can only ever weigh 1 gram.”
Sam nodded his head. The concept made sense, although it was a bit of surprise when he first saw the results.
“Now, in the third sample, I have deprived the plankton of organic nutrients.” Veyron smiled. “This is interesting. It also shows how dangerous these machines can be. Anyone care to guess whether the number of plankton increased or decreased?”
“They decreased,” Elise replied. “The same equation as the nanobots without building materials. They can’t reproduce without the materials. There can never be more than there were to begin with. Of course, I would assume they would lose a few more cells than the opposite equation because, although the cells could cannibalize their own proteins, with each equation of mitosis, cellular waste products would be lost from the equation.”
“Correct, but only partially so. You were right about the amount of cells being slightly lower, but would you believe the hive became stronger. Can anyone care to guess why?”
There was a row of shaking heads throughout the room.
Veyron smiled and pressed the play button on his computer screen. “This is a digital recording of the cells dividing without additional nutrients.”
The plankton began attacking each other. The nanobots quickly determined the strongest cells and removed the weaker ones. They didn’t wait for the mitosis to provide dead cells to scavenge from; they simply killed the weak cells for their materials. By the end of it, although some of the plankton had been lost, the hive of machines hadn’t decreased. In fact, the remaining cells are now functioning better than before.
“And the fourth sample?” Sam asked.
“In the fourth sample I deprived the single gram of nanobots and plankton of both organic nutrients and building materials.”
Sam grinned when he saw the results. “The entire hive died out.”
“Starvation’s a bitch,” Tom said.
“Okay, so back to the original question. Do we think the main hive is dead?” Sam persisted
“No,” Veyron replied. “Although I said it was possible, it’s highly unlikely. The question is how much access they have to optimal conditions of growth, such as warmth and sunlight, and can they obtain organic nutrients and building materials?”
Elise connected her laptop wirelessly to the projector. She then opened up a document titled Weather Reports - Atlantic. “If you look at the weather, the mean temperature of seawater is up by 2 degrees Fahrenheit for the regions surrounding our last known sighting of the hive for five hundred miles. These are perfect conditions for plankton to proliferate.”
“Okay, so they have the right conditions, but do they have organic nutrients?” Sam persisted, looking for a reason, anything that might lead them to believe the hive was truly destroyed.
“There’s no reason to suggest they don’t.” Elise brought up images of three large algae blooms within the area. “These are all p
lankton growths that have proliferated to dangerous levels, suggesting the seawater is currently teeming with organic growth.”
“Any chance those could have killed the hive?” Tom said, hopeful.
Veyron laughed at the thought. “If you were a betting man, would you put money on the nanotech enhanced cells losing to the regular drifter cells?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean that the large areas of plankton growth didn’t starve them out. We all know that red algae blooms can kill everything within the sea by depriving them of oxygen and sunlight.”
Veyron thought about it. “Elise, bring up the locations of those recent algae blooms.”
The overhead projector showed an area spanning the opening to the Gulf of Mexico, out towards the Bahamas and as far north as Bermuda.
“You know if we suffocated the areas here and here with the algae– then anything south of Bimini Island would have been stifled,” Veyron pointed out.
“Okay, it’s a pretty big if. But we might have gotten lucky.” Sam turned to Elise. “I want to keep monitoring this thing. I’m looking at this like I would a wild fire. You can put out ninety-nine percent of it, but it’s that other one percent that causes spot fires.”
“Understood. It’s also important to remember, even though we’re effectively starving the nanobots of building materials with the destruction of the Bimini Road, they’re able to keep replicating by cannibalizing themselves. In theory, they could remain dormant for years and then our luck could change when a ship carrying microchips sinks, at which point the nanobots would swarm again.”
It was a scary thought.
Sam stood up, effectively ending the meeting. “Okay, I want to keep on top of this thing. No one lets up until we’re certain they’re dead.”
Matthew was the next to stand up. “Now that we’re back to the waiting game, where would you like me to take the Maria Helena?”
“Since you mention it Matthew, I’d like to move close to the original source. And while we’re there, I’d like to take the opportunity to dive the Antiqui Nautae’s wrecked trimaran.”
Chapter Seventy Seven
The Maria Helena’s twin engines slowed to an idle. The powerful ship cruised on its momentum for about a quarter of a mile before coming to a complete drift. The chime of anchor chain running through its hold replaced the engine’s sound. Within minutes the sound ceased and the ship turned as the anchor took its bite.
Sam walked downstairs and into the dive room. The moon pool’s doors had been opened already, and Tom was preparing their dive equipment.
“You look happy,” Tom said.
“I should be. I’m finally getting to dive this ship. After years of being told that my theory was crazy, you got to dive it before me. Still, I’m very excited to see it firsthand.”
“And for what it’s worth, I’m looking forward to diving it with you.”
Sam wrote a number on his dive slate and handed it to Tom. “Oh, and there’s another thing to be happy about. The owners of the Mississippi, keen to avoid the formality of going to Lloyd’s Court, agreed to pay 50% of the value of the ship and cargo. At today’s prices.”
Tom looked at the number. “You made 20 mill out of the process?”
“No, that’s your portion of the reward.” Sam watched as his friend’s face went blank. “You see the ship was one of three remaining ultra-large crude carriers. The ship alone, factoring in depreciation of wear and tear, was valued at 100 million. Then we had the value of the 2 million barrels of crude oil on board. At conservative oil prices, a barrel of crude oil is 50 dollars. There’s another hundred million.”
“We were given a hundred million dollars for being stupid and risking our lives?” Tom asked, shaking his head.
“Yep. It was exceptionally stupid of us, I must agree. But there you have it. The benefit of Lloyds Open Form. We salvage the vessel and let the courts decide how much value we deserve. You see in this instance, the value was always going to be high. The courts would have looked at the cost of us not saving the supertanker, including the cost to clean up the spill. Once they start factoring that in with the significant risk of life and to our own vessel, the courts were bound to give us a pretty high percentage. As it was, the owners made the offer before it went in front of Lloyd’s assessors.”
“And you took the first offer they gave you?”
“Sure did. Why, did you want more than 20 mill?”
“No, come to think of it, why did I get so much?”
“Don’t get too excited. I gave each of the other members of the crew 5 mill and they didn’t even have to risk their lives.”
“That’s great news, because I lost about a million dollars’ worth of gold last time I dived the Antiqui Nautae’s trimaran.”
Sam laughed. “Really, you didn’t mention it.”
“Yeah, well we’ve both been kinda busy since you came back to pick Genevieve and I up from the water.” Tom handed Sam the golden eagle he’d found in the ancient trimaran’s cache. “We found it at the very depth of the trimaran’s hold. Like a secure cache, it was locked behind a formidable door. I believe it leads to their ancient homeland or their treasure. It has several holes that align to star constellations.”
“Do you know where it leads?”
“No. The stars aren’t in the northern hemisphere.”
“The ancient people came from South America?”
“It would appear so. Certainly the southern hemisphere.” Tom looked at the golden eagle, pensive. “We had an incident when we dived the ancient trimaran.”
“Really?” Sam was curious. “We’ve had a few since then, too. What happened?”
“You’re not going to believe me, but I saw something down there. Something that wasn’t real. And it took the gold we found.”
“I wouldn’t worry, you’re sure to find more.”
“It’s not that. As I said, you’re not going to believe me, but I saw something down there. A green apparition. It didn’t look menacing. Far from it. Instead, it just stared at me. Its mouth was halfway between a smile and a frown. When I reached it the entire thing came apart like a dream. It was only later when I returned to pick up the gold I had put down and it was no longer there, that I became concerned.”
“Any chance you just misplaced it?”
“A large piece of gold?” Tom laughed. “It must have been worth a million bucks. You might misplace something like that, but for us mere working mortals, I knew precisely where I left it.”
“Any chance someone’s been following our discoveries?”
“You mean another boat?”
“It’s not unheard of for grave robbers or relic hunters to follow us when they know we’re on to something. Nothing would stop them coming in and picking up the pieces.”
“I checked with Matthew. There wasn’t another ship for twenty miles. I also checked the sonar log – with the exception of a few large fish, nothing had been below the Maria Helena during our entire dive.”
“Okay, so let’s find it. And if not, you told me there was a fortune in gold down there. So, let’s go collect our second payday for a job well done!”
Chapter Seventy Eight
Sam followed Tom into the opening inside the cockpit of the ancient ship. With his green primary dive guideline tied to the ancient tiller he entered the wreck. The place zigzagged through a series of small tunnels, slowly descending. He saw what appeared to be the ancient people’s dining room, followed by an ambush room – most likely used as a last resort to destroy invaders.
Tom shined his flashlight into the smallest of the single tunnels. “Their treasure cache is down here. It gets pretty narrow. I’ll let you go first. There’s no deviations in the tunnel. Just keep following it to the end and you’ll reach the treasure, you can’t miss it.”
Following the small tunnel as it descended another ten feet Sam swallowed, relieving the slight increase in pressure to his middle ear. It looped around and back on itself before straightenin
g out in an impossibly narrow section.
Ahead, he saw the faintest glow of light. It could have had a slight tinge of green. Most likely some sort of bottom dwelling fish. Sam continued. The light increased until the area up ahead looked like someone turned the light on.
He held his Shark Powerstick in his right hand. Ready to use at a moment’s notice. He recalled what his old Drill Sargent had once told him years ago – Your weapon’s no good to you unless you have it in your hands and ready to fire at all times. Whatever it was making that glow, Sam wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
Sam passed the remains of the ancient door that Tom destroyed weeks earlier. The room was now completely lit up with the glow.
It was definitely a green color.
And it stood like a giant of a man. The features of its face were almost believable, but the rest of it was more like an apparition than something living. So this is Tom’s ghost. Sam’s heart raced as he watched it for a minute.
He heard the bubbles from Tom’s regulator.
“Tell me you can see that!” Tom said.
Sam gripped his Shark Power Stick. Ready to fire. His right trigger finger taking up the tinniest of pressure on the mechanism. “I can see it. Whatever the hell it is.”
The green creature smiled at him. It had a kind face. The rest of the body had limited structure, but the face was clear. It had eyes, nose, ears and mouth – below which, was a deeply cleft chin. There was something terribly familiar about the smile.
Well, that changes the face of the enemy. Even as the realization dawned on him, Sam couldn’t believe it was true.
Then it was gone.
And so was the gold.
“I swear it was all here when we left!”
“I’m not worried about the gold. Right now, I’m a little more concerned with reaching the surface alive. Let’s go!”
Chapter Seventy Nine
Sam reached the surface of the moon pool without saying a word to Tom. He removed his fins, holding them in his left hand and climbed the ladder into the dive room. Once there he removed his dive mask, tank, and weight belt before sitting down.
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2 Page 19