by Diane Duane
Shuttles had been coming and going for an hour now, bringing aboard the families from the station, taking seaQuest personnel over to help save what equipment could be saved, and to help shut down what was too complex or dangerous to move. The docking bay looked like an impromptu refugee camp—a dim one, for the boat was running on auxiliary power, and in the low glare of the emergency lighting stood a crowd of men and women and children, all wet, frightened and cold, being helped by seaQuest crew with blankets and medical aid. The medical team had already partitioned off one area of the docking bay for triage: blanketed forms huddled or lay there, and the medics were moving hurriedly from one to another of them.
All the crewpeople around him were the picture of efficiency, and Bridger knew that everything that could be done, was being done; but he still felt sorry for these poor station people, whose quiet lives had suddenly been shattered by renegades ... and for what? The answer to that one was still beyond him: the memory of that ruthless and implacable pursuit of seaQuest by the Delta still made him want to shudder. He still couldn't understand it. But in the meantime, these folks were suffering for what, to them, must have seemed no reason. Where would they go now?... What would they do?... Nathan heard them asking each other the questions, in tears sometimes, and wished he had some kind of answer.
The sound of tears reached him again, and he glanced over to one side to see a small girl, near two lost-looking adults who he suspected were her parents. The child was standing by her small self, crying, grinding her little fists into her eyes. He saw the father look down, his hands and arms already full with a bitterly weeping wife, and simply unable to cope; he buried his face in his wife's shoulder, just not wanting to see.
Bridger went over to the little girl, hunkered down in front of her, took those small hands away from her face and wiped her eyes, wondering what to say to comfort someone this small. Finally, at a loss, "Tell me something," Nathan said. "Have you ever talked with a dolphin?"
Very big-eyed, sniffing, but not sniffing nearly as hard as she had been, she shook her head. Nathan picked her up.
O'Neill was not far away, working on one of the wall panels. He leaned in toward Nathan and said, very softly, "Sir... uh, I believe that particular project is very top secret."
"Right," Nathan said, and walked off with the little one toward the sea deck.
* * *
It was a good while later before Nathan found time to make his way down to the engine room. The place was now nine-tenths drained of the water that had come rushing in from the torpedo strike—and that torp had been entirely too cannily aimed: Nathan found himself wondering exactly how it was that the Delta's commander had known where to put a single shot to best advantage. Too damn effective, he thought, looking around at the dripping walls and ceiling. The damage crews were still busy welding and patching the inflexible inner hull and its struts and bulkheads, vacuuming the water out of the ‘tween-hulls space and adding more "memory" compound to the exterior hull, in the places where it was exposed, to help rejuvenate the polymer weave where it had been damaged by the torpedo. Others were busy trying to salvage the soaked electronic equipment: besides the usual hygroscopic "drying" foam, someone had brought in buckets of fresh water to get rid of surface brine, and portable battery-powered hair dryers were much in evidence, nothing better having yet been invented for drying out wet chips and system boards. Panels the damage control people hadn't yet gotten to were spitting and sparking: the sound made Nathan wince as he stepped in through the watertight doors. Commander Ford was off to one side, supervising the replacement of a computer console. As he looked up and registered Nathan's presence, he re-acquired that troubled look which Nathan had noted before. Ford got up from where he had been bent over one of the technicians and came over to Nathan.
"How's she holding up?" Nathan said.
Ford sighed. "Exterior hull integrity isn't great, but acceptable. The outer pliant skin resealed itself. .. as designed." He glanced at the busy men and women working on the machinery around him. "The tech equipment in here—we'll do our best. Even at that, we won't have full engines."
"What you're saying," Bridger said, "is that we have four flat tires and a defective spare."
Wearily, Ford nodded. "Lieutenant Hitchcock reports eleven other systems have crashed in other parts of the boat so far. Primarily systems having to do with propulsion and weapons."
Too damn effective… Nathan thought again. If this is a malfunction, it's a damned useful one for whoever's gunning for us out there... "Cause?" he said.
Ford shook his head, looking embarrassed. "Unknown."
Nathan considered several words that would be satisfying to say, loudly; but there was no telling whether someone's children might wander by outside. "Anybody checked to see if the warranty's run out on this thing...?" he said.
Then he let out a long breath. There was no point in dwelling only on the negative side of the situation. "We've room enough to bring all the survivors from the power station on board," Bridger said, looking at Ford. "We should feel good about that."
Ford didn't look like he felt good about anything: he looked like a man with a mental bellyache, or maybe a moral one. "What's bothering you, Commander?" Nathan said.
Ford hesitated. "Captain," he said, "about what happened back on the bridge. I—I shouldn't have—"
Nathan shook his head. "It's okay. I doubt this situation was covered in the manual."
"Yes, sir," Ford said. But the look on his face did not change.
It's got to be dealt with, whatever it is, Bridger thought, despite all his misgivings. Dammit— "Is there something else, Commander?"
Ford looked around him at the frantically working crew, then said: "He knew, sir."
There was only one "he" that Nathan could think of at the moment. The same one as always. He began to consider whether losing his temper would serve any useful purpose just now. Probably not, though it would certainly have made him feel better.
"Not here," Bridger said. "Come on."
* * *
The minisub staging area with its moon pool was deserted; it also had the virtue of being big enough to pace in when you were furious. Bridger paced.
"I should have told the truth from the start," Ford said. "Orders or not. I knew as well."
"About this renegade sub," Nathan said. "And Noyce knew from the very beginning of this farce."
"The Admiral figured you'd never come back if you knew the real reason—"
"He's damn right I wouldn't!" Nathan heard the edge of his own anger and suppressed it for the moment. "How long have you known about the thing?"
"The UEO's known about that sub for almost two months now," Ford said. "It's manned by high-tech pirates—freebooters. A lot of old subs sold for scrap get grabbed up by guys like this, though until recently most of the trouble has been off Europe. The UEO's tracked this one from up in the Aleutians. She's been making her way along the Seamount Chain—raiding various outposts for supplies, some valuables. But they never took any lives ... until now."
"Until now." Until we turned up, Nathan thought. Us specifically. "So," he said, "my 'friend' Admiral Noyce sent us off on a shakedown cruise in the general territory where this renegade was reported to be. Knowing there was a chance that we'd run into her." He leaned against a bulkhead, beginning to feel positively weak with anger: possibly a good thing—he couldn't kill anyone, couldn't even punch anyone's lights out, while he felt this way. But later—! "This was supposed to be some sort of easy example," Nathan said. "For me to see how necessary I was to this... important cause."
Ford said nothing at all—which to Nathan was acquiescence enough.
Bridger began to pace again, waving his arms; the scenario was all too clear. "And if we came across her—you were supposed to hand over command to me. I'd subdue this sitting duck with my super sub—and bingo, I'm back on the team... Damn him!"
Ford had the grace to look almost terminally embarrassed. "Sir," he said. "I am n
ot in a position to judge the... merits... of the Admiral's plan. But he could not—did not foresee our current circumstances." He paused. "Dead in the water: the renegade sub now killing innocent colonists and still at large..." Ford swallowed, hard. "Considering your performance on the bridge during the critical moments of our engagement with the enemy, and taking into account your obvious superior knowledge of this craft—I strongly recommend that you do now take command of this vessel for the duration of this mission."
Nathan had to stop and take notice of that, for this time Ford clearly wasn't doing it under orders: this time he was saying what he really meant.
But— "Mission," Bridger said. "Now it's a mission." The fury started to boil up, and the urge to tell Ford where to put his command, and come to think of it, seaQuest herself. It would be a tight fit, but… No. He calmed himself.
"Let me try to explain something to you," he said. "Six years ago I turned my back on all of this. I walked away and I erased this part of my life. I did that for a reason."
"Your son," Ford said.
Nathan looked at him, shocked. "What do you know about my son?"
"I know he was in the Navy," Ford said. "That he was killed in action somewhere in the Atlantic."
The concern on Ford's face brought Nathan up short. "That's right," he said after a moment. "And I promised my wife I'd never have anything to do with the military again. I gave her my word."
Ford looked at him, his face very still. The troubled expression was all gone; but there was something there now even more difficult to deal with—compassion, but compassion with a hard, cold edge on it. "With all due respect," he said, "there's three hundred men, women and children down at that power station who couldn't care less about your 'word'... sir."
Nathan looked at him, and found that this time, no matter how much he wanted to lose himself in it, the rage would not come up at all.
Trapped, Nathan thought. Trapped.
It was no consolation to be trapped in something of his own design, a destiny he himself had literally shaped, on the drawing board, and elsewhere.
But he couldn't run out on it now.
Couldn't? Or wouldn't?
The back of his mind, often so vociferous, now gave him no answer.
Ford was still standing there: waiting, not for anything else to happen, but for his commanding officer to do something, to make his wishes known. Bridger knew the pose. God knew he had held it often enough in his .. . career.
"Thank you, Commander," he said very quietly, dismissing him.
Ford went away.
* * *
Under the harsh lights, a paper chart lay out on the map table, under glass, with calipers and T- square and the other old-fashioned navigational aids—even, off to one side, a copy of Haswell's Navigators' Pocket Book, and a slide rule—for while computers might break and calculators might wear their batteries out, a slide rule always worked, and so did a book.
The hand reached down with a grease pencil and marked the third of three possible courses on the glass. Marilyn Stark looked at the results, put down the grease pencil and sighed—an uncharacteristic sound, from her. Maxwell looked at her uncertainly.
"We're only a few miles away," he said. "We can go back and wait for her to come up ..."
Stark shook her head. "Come up? She never has to come up. Even in her crippled state she could stay right down there for months." She pursed her lips. "No, I'm afraid we have to draw her out."
She reached across the map and tapped one spot with two sets of red-penciled lines leading to it. "There. The West Ridge Undersea Farming Community." She looked at the map thoughtfully. "Sounds pleasant, doesn't it? The kind of place I'd like to retire to someday. Someplace I can sit on the porch and tell stories of battles hard fought and won to my grandchildren. Like my grandfathers did with me..."
She looked off into the shadows of her bridge. What were they farming? she wondered. The temperature fluctuations in these parts would make kelp an untrustworthy crop, and the farm was much too deep for the littoral crops like carrageenan or dulse. No, it would probably be one of the midrange crops, either farmed protein plankton or calciferous yeast; labor-intensive, but high-yielding and bringing a good price on the open market. They probably did a little sediment processing too, scavenging the plentiful manganese nodules from the surrounding ocean floor, and maintaining a few small robots to "pan" for the more valuable nodules of copper, cobalt and nickel. In these parts there might even be the chimney of a "black smoker," one of those natural hot-water vents where they could collect settled- out iron and manganese and zinc for their own use. It would all be difficult, tedious work, a hard life; but there would be satisfying evenings at the end of it, spent around the warmth of the family hearth. They might even have the satisfaction of burning natural gas from their own little well in those hearths—
She looked up from the map and found Maxwell staring at her. The man looks like he's seen a ghost, she thought; what ails him? He used to be able to manage stress so well, but it's the old problem, I suppose: men just lose the ability to cope after a while... It was too bad, but she had no time to waste worrying about him. "What is it?" she said.
He gestured at the map. That's nothing but a bunch of homesteaders ..."
Stark stared him down, then smiled a small, cold smile as she marked a cross squarely over the center of the community. "Exactly," she said. "That's the whole point."
CHAPTER 7
The seaQuest lay still and silent, hovering in the dark water over the dimming lights of the power station. Bit by bit, Gedrick Station was seemingly vanishing into the darkness as mechanical and support systems were shut down or failed. In some places, the inhabited parts of the station were simply abandoned, though the inhabitants, as carefully as if they were coming back, turned out the lights behind them.
Down among the towers—the few of them that still stood upright, and the ones that were bent and twisted—a small, strange device spurted past in the dark, leaving a tiny trail of bubbles behind it. An untrained observer might have thought it was some kind of squid, if a squid could swim without moving its tentacles; if a squid was made of metal, with odd glass and metal protuberances apparently glued onto it here and there. It was not a squid. It had numerous arms, but they were metal, not meat; it had a beak, but one made of sensor probes rather than bone; it had a brain, but the brain was elsewhere.
The device swam downward, toward the power station, through an eerily clear landscape: one from which all the water seemed to have been removed, so that every physical detail stood up sharp and real, almost too real—a view more like flying than swimming.
On the bridge of seaQuest, Hitchcock sat at her station, being the brain for the distant "body," seeing the hyperreal view. She was wearing the HyperReality probe's headset and gloves. They were very new yet, having been installed barely last week; and they were prototypes—there had been no time to streamline them or cover up the unsightly "techie" bits, the chips and conduits. Both were simple steel-wire frames with lots of exposed cabling and connectors. Hitchcock's eyes did not need to be covered by the helmet: virtual-reality technology had come along that far, at least, in its last thirty years of development, and had bypassed clumsy output methods like screens and retinal projection for the elegance of direct neural contact. Hitchcock had an optic nerve implant laid under the skin of her left temple, ready for such business, and now a single fiber-optic touchplate was pressed gently over the implant, snugged down secure against its pad of neural-conductor foam. The fiber ran from it down to the control console, interfacing with the port fibers from the gloves.
Hitchcock sat there, her eyes open, observing; but not observing anything in the room—seeing things elsewhere, hearing, feeling, things outside. "The next best thing to being there," she said softly.
The probe looked where she looked, moved where she moved. It was easier and safer than sending out a diver—especially at such depths and pressures: few suits and fewer people coul
d handle diving this deep. Now, she sent the HR probe zipping among the damaged buildings of the power station. She glanced off to the left; the probe glanced with her, and then up as she looked up. Above her was a bundled tangle of large, ugly pipes. She blinked to change the view, switched to a colorful thermographic view of the same pipes, seeing directly where hot gas ran, where it was cool, and where, in the skins of the pipes themselves, recent friction still lay latent as heat, betraying stress spots and fractures.
Hitchcock stretched her fingers, considering what the best way was to continue with her investigation. Following her gesture, the probe reconfigured its arms to fit more easily among the pipes.
She sat there a good while more—a muscle twitch, a slight move, serving to guide the probe through the shattered forest of pipes and conduits. And suddenly, she saw what she had been half- suspecting would be there: what she had been afraid of. "Uh-oh..." Then, louder, "Uh, there's something here—I think you two'd better take a look at it..."
Nathan had been watching Ford working over his own station: now they stepped over to Hitchcock's and peered at the screen. Ford looked at Nathan, extremely concerned. "Wardroom," he said. "Let's get everyone in there we can."