The Passage

by David Poyer

  And Voge was an older ship, as was Lexington.

  Shrobo wondered now if they were old enough that … He frowned. Could they be old enough that they would still be equipped with the USQ-20? The older computer was slow. It didn’t have the memory of the UYK-7. But it still ran the basic software satisfactorily—the same software that Barett’s computers were running. A different operating system, different machine language, but built on top of that was the same syntax of CMS-2, responding to queries from the net control station on the carrier, then transmitting its computerized tracking data to the other ships in company … .

  Transmitting its data …

  He got up vaguely and hunted around and found two more ten-pound weights. He slid them on either side of the bar, relocked the keeper nuts, and fit his long body back onto the bench. It would impress the guys if he could tell them he’d pressed two hundred before he left tomorrow. As he got his hands set, he heard the door open and close, then a rattle as someone began to set up the Nautilus. He didn’t look to see who it was. His mind was somewhere else, and his body, preoccupied with the weights, yet another place. He sucked a breath, as the lifters had taught him. Then he gripped the bar again and started powering it upward, the energy growl starting deep in his chest.

  Transmitting … the net control station polled each participating ship in turn. In response, their computers sent track data, range and bearing on their contacts, back to the central computer, which then retransmitted it to the other units.

  The bar slowed halfway up.

  Suddenly, staring upward blankly, he saw it: what the mysterious section of code did.

  That last section of the infector wasn’t garble at all; it was a machine-language program written for older, thirty-bit machines. Why was thirty-bit code in Barrett’s computer, a thirty-two-bit machine? Not because the virus had originated in thirty-bit machines. Because it had been written to operate in either of the two computers in the fleet.

  How would it get from one to the other? Not by tape, because the tapes were different; the programs were different. You couldn’t run a thirty-two-bit tape on a thirty-bit machine.

  There was only one answer: It was being passed by radio from one NTDS unit to another. That was the explanation of the “accidental” firing. The Crud had infected Voge’s computers, and presumably also those of all the other ships in the task force via radio—via the Link 11.

  Suddenly, he realized he’d done it. He was pressing two hundred pounds. His arms shook as they suspended the bar, the massive iron weights above him at arm’s length. The slow roll of the ship made them sway gently from side to side. He fought to control them, sweat bursting out suddenly on his face and under his arms. The shaking grew, took his shoulders and chest. Gradually, gradually, he let it sink. Slowly, fighting for control, he lowered it millimeter by millimeter, till at last it engaged back into the rests with a double click of steel against steel. He dropped his grip, blew out, and relaxed, letting his hands fall to the carpet, shaking the fatigue out onto the floor.

  It was incredibly devious … subtle … but it would work. Oh, yes, it would work. He should call it not the Crud, but the Plague. And now that he knew, all sorts of other unexplained phenomena suddenly made sense, such as that it had never showed up in the Link 11 module. It had been there, but dormant, undetectable, as it propagated itself over the radio net. Every time an infected ship transmitted, the virus traveled silently along with the good data. Leaping from one ship to another across miles of sea, burrowing into the memories, the tapes, gradually corrupting, degenerating, destroying every piece of programming it touched. Till billions of dollars in weapons and sensors, and the work and devotion of thousands of men, were useless, impotent either in defense or attack.

  This was no random bug. Nor was it some hacker’s amateur hatchling.

  It was a weapon.

  He had to tell someone. They had to warn the other ships who’d been in the task group—shut them down now, stop broadcasting, before the pestilence spread.

  He heard a sound behind him, a clank as iron was set down on the machine. Then two hands appeared directly above his eyes. He stared up, oblivious to everything as his mind whirred on, spinning out insight, dropping level by level into deeper and deeper knowledge.

  To the realization that if Barrett was transmitting such a signal, someone had had to introduce the virus in the first place. Someone who had access to her computers. In all probability, someone who’d been aboard when the Crud began.

  He caught his breath, suddenly seeing that they might still be aboard, watching him try to break the code. He had to tell Lenson that, had to tell the captain. Who could it have been? There weren’t many people with the combination of knowledge and access. In fact, he could think of only a few. No—actually, he could only think of one.

  He didn’t realize until it was too late that someone standing directly behind him had taken hold of the two hundred pounds of iron, lifted it off the rests, and was holding it directly over his outstretched throat.

  VI

  THE PASSAGE

  46

  The Windward Passage

  A frantic peeping, as if a cricket was being crushed, pulled him from confused and frightening dreams through a fuzzy black tunnel into his bunk. Dan groped for the clock and got it shut off. For a few seconds, his heart still hammered, till he remembered that the crisis was over, the face-off past, that there had been no war and no battle after all. Lying back, he yielded to the temptation to stay cocooned under the sheets, the warm blanket.

  Then he remembered: He had the watch. He groped for the handhold and swung his legs out, dipping bare soles inch by inch into the darkness till they rested on the cool tile floor. Red light bled faintly around the joiner door. He flicked his desk light on, pulled khakis from a hanger, ran a hand over his chin. Then noticed the clock again. He’d have to shave later. He found his cap, stuck his flash in his back pocket, and shut the door quietly behind him.

  The ship slept around him as he threaded the passageways, swimming through corridors of dim red light like a diver picking his way through a flooded wreck. Surrounded by the familiar hum of machinery, the uneasy creak and slam of a ship in a seaway.

  The bridge was pitch-dark, as usual. The big square windows shone faintly, framing tilting blocks of stars. The helm console hummed and ticked to itself. The fathometer flickered. Tiny jeweled orbs shone from the corners like the eyes of watching creatures. He felt his way across it, noting the course as he passed the helm gyro: 250. The surface tote board showed only one contact, past and opening. He closed one eye and bent to the surface scope. It was set to close range. The mountains and bays of Punta Maisi sparkled like kryptonite foil along the edge of the picture. They were rounding the island, transiting the Windward Passage, the channel between the easternmost point of Cuba and Haiti.

  A yawn grew in his throat. He was rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand when he became conscious of a shadow in front of him. He didn’t know how long it had been there. “Who’s that?” it said.

  “Lieutenant Lenson,” he snapped, sliding past it to the chart table. He felt for the light and clicked it on.

  The shielded scarlet glow pulled from nothingness the outlines of the Oriente coast, a bow of shoal stretching out from the headland of Punta Maisi, the tiny triangles of loran fixes. Thirteen miles off the coast was the faint pencil line of Barrett’s intended course, laid off by Dave Cannon. It paralleled the north coast at 120, then turned south to round the point with two course changes. Dan bent forward, blinking to clear his gaze as he studied it. The next course change would be at 0500. His fingers walked off the distance to the Guantánamo Bay entrance. He judged they could make it on time.

  He studied it for a moment more, still rubbing his eyes, then clicked the light off. He started to swing away, then frowned.

  He turned back, clicked the light on again, and studied the pencil trace again.

  According to the chart, they should be heade
d due south now, course 180. They weren’t scheduled to come west to 250 until 0500.

  But the course he’d noted sliding past the helm, that hadn’t been 180. Had it? He thought it had been 250. A faint unease made him clear his throat, check the chart yet a third time. Everything was probably fine; he was just groggy. But he’d better—

  “Dan.”

  Harper’s voice, from across the chart table. Dan blinked. He hadn’t realized he was there. “Evening, Jay. Calm tonight.”

  “Yeah, pretty calm.”

  “This Punta Maisi light, it in sight? You getting bearings on it?”

  “Oh, yeah, we picked that up about an hour ago.”

  “I’m just about ready to relieve. One question.” He put his finger on the penciled course. “This turn west to two-five-zero. That’s not supposed to go till oh-five hundred, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What course are we on now?”

  “Two-five-zero.”

  “We’re on it now?”

  “That’s right,” said the shadow. It came a little more into the backwash of light. Funny, though, he still couldn’t make out Harper’s face.

  “Uh-huh,” Dan said. “When did we come to it?”

  “At oh-three-thirty.”

  “Making better speed than we thought, huh? You got a fix and had to correct?”

  “No.”

  Dan sucked a tooth, the sense that all was not well growing. “Did my watch stop, then? I’ve only got oh-three-fifty.”

  “That’s right,” said Harper. “Oh-three-fifty. That’s what I’ve got, too.”

  Dan found himself getting annoyed. Harper had better not be dicking off again. With a shoal to the west, they could get into trouble fast. He turned his head. “Quartermaster of the watch,” he said sharply.

  No one answered, but he felt someone behind him, the faint radiated warmth of another person’s body. Then something hard rammed into his spine.

  Across the chart table, Harper said, “You win the prize, shipmate. It’s oh-three-fifty, and we’re on two-five-zero early. That thing sticking in your ribs, that’s a forty-five. Just like this one here in my hand.”

  He stared, unable to react or even think as the service automatic emerged into the red light. The hole in the end of the barrel looked big enough to put his thumb into. “Put your hands up,” the chief warrant said. “And don’t get any smart-ass ideas; we already had to kill one guy tonight.”

  His first thought was that it had to be a joke. Harper loved to play jokes. But holding a gun on someone was off the scale, even for the King Snake. And now, as the chief warrant moved forward, Dan saw why he hadn’t been able to make out his features. He was wearing a balaclava, from the foul-weather-gear locker. The olive drab wool covered his face, his whole head, everything but his eyes.

  “What exactly are you doing, Jay?” he said through a suddenly dry mouth.

  “Simple, shipmate. We’re taking charge of this shrimp boat.”

  “Uh-huh, right.”

  “Hard to believe? Look over there.” Dan didn’t move for a moment, and whoever was behind him pushed him so hard, he almost fell. “Open the chart room door,” Harper said to no one Lenson could see.

  The curtain slid back, and he saw where the rest of his watch section had gone. The lookouts and helmsmen were crammed together, looking out into what to them must be the darkness. They looked frightened, and he saw why. Just as the curtain rattled closed again, he caught the outline of a shotgun.

  He was moving toward them when Harper’s hand shot out to stop him. He halted instantly. “Uh, don’t you want me in there? With them?”

  “No,” said Harper. A snap sounded. Dan recognized it as a safety going back on. The chief warrant moved away, into the darkness. He said over his shoulder, “Come on out on the wing, Hoss. We got a couple things to discuss.”

  THE stars were a brilliant scattering of diamond dust, the Milky Way a silver band like an immense ring. Far off to starboard, a powerful beam glowed into life, wheeled through the black, then faded slowly away. Punta Maisi light, marking the headland of Cuba, Dan thought. It ought to be on their quarter, falling astern. Instead, it was abeam. They were headed under the point, into the vicinity of the Bahia de Ovando. The bow wave made a crashing noise below them. Everything was so normal, so routine, that part of his mind tried again to convince him this wasn’t happening. While another, very frightened part insisted that it was.

  Harper’s voice again, clearer now, and as the beam swept past again, Dan saw that the warrant officer had taken off his mask. His bald spot glowed like a monk’s tonsure. He rubbed his face, but the other hand, the one with the gun, held steady on Dan. “So, you probably wonder just what the fuck is going on.”

  “That’s kind of an understatement.”

  “It’s technically known as a mutiny. I looked it up. First one in the U.S. Navy since 1842.”

  “A historic occasion,” Dan said. “Look, I haven’t done a fix, but we’re headed in toward a shoal area—”

  “Don’t worry about that. We ain’t gonna hit any shoals. History? We’ll probably make some headlines, yeah.” Harper sounded as if the prospect pleased him.

  If this was a joke, he was fished all right. Dan found his legs trembling so badly, he had to grip the splinter shield. “Great, but … What’s the point, Jay? You can’t go pirating around the sea lanes. The Navy will be out here on your ass tomorrow.”

  “That kind of depends on where I’m taking her, doesn’t it?”

  He thought about that. And gradually, he began to understand.

  “Let’s see, where could we go?” Harper mused. “Someplace the Navy couldn’t follow us—where, if they tried, they’d find themselves in a shitload of trouble.” He thrust an object at him, and Dan flinched back before he realized they were the binoculars. “Oh, yeah, I know where they are this time. Look out there. Tell me what you see.”

  He adjusted the glasses by feel and laid them where he figured the horizon ought to be. He stared at the distant dancing glints for a long time, till he was sure.

  “Well?”

  “Two surface contacts, bow-on, coming this way.”

  “Gunboats. They’ll escort us in.”

  Dan tried to steady his voice. “This has all been figured out, then.”

  “Yeah, all figured out,” said Harper. He sounded cheerful about it, upbeat. “We’ve pretty much got it all down cold, even drilled it a couple of times. Okay now, we don’t have a heck of a lot of time before they get here. You want to hear what I’ve got to say? Because I need something.”

  “Why ask me for it? Whatever it is?”

  “Because I think you’ll be interested. Okay? Want to hear it or not?”

  Dan hesitated. “Go ahead,” he muttered.

  “First some background. Right now, we’re two miles inside Cuban territorial waters, and going farther in every minute. That’s a violation of international law. The U.S. is major, major in the wrong, okay?”

  “But you steered us in. You turned early. Where’s the captain? Did you tell him you turned?”

  “Cool your jets, Hoss. Forget about him; we’re taking care of him. Look, it don’t matter how, being here’s a no-no, okay? Now, these guys, these coastal PTs, they’re coming out to see what the hell we’re doing. Then they’re gonna escort us to Santiago. That’s the closest big port.” Harper moved a little closer. “That’s where you come in. Thing is, I’m gonna need help. I’ve got mucho shit to keep tabs on. I need somebody to handle things up here. They won’t know the ship, how to run these variable-pitch props. I need somebody to conn us in, get us alongside the pier without bashing into things, scratching up this nice new paint job.”

  Through the numbness, horror was creeping now. It wasn’t enough that Harper was taking over the ship; he was counting on him to help. He started to refuse indignantly, then stopped. “So you’re thinking I’ll do that? Conn us in?”

  “That’s the idea, yeah.”

&nb
sp; “So, what’s in it for me?”

  “Now you’re talking!” Harper slapped his shoulder. “Okay, remember the one big score you wanted? One big batch of money, without having to worry about taxes? Even if it was illegal. Remember?”

  The conversation at the beach at Windward Point came back to him then. Had he really said that? He supposed he had … but not meaning what Harper assumed he did. Harper thought he could be bought, that he’d help take over the ship. Only the pointed gun kept him from bulling into the lanky shadow, smashing him to the deck with his fists.

  Then, suddenly, the fire curtain came down, isolating his brain from his feelings, leaving him still trembling, but coid now, ice-cold.

  “You’ve got other people helping you. How many? Or is it just the guy on the helm?”

  Harper chuckled. “Oh, we got lots of guys. Thirty total, set up in teams—the bridge team, engine room, and the security teams are going through the berthing compartments.” He glanced at his watch. “We started forty minutes ago. Most of the crew’s locked down already.”

  “Where? We don’t have a brig.”

  “Told you, I thought this through. We don’t got a brig, but we got magazines, no? You lock people in there, they’re not going anywhere. And if they make too much noise, we pull the flood valve and drown their asses.” Harper looked out to where the beam lashed out, flicked overhead, dimmed away—noticeably brighter now, and higher. Dan felt the imminence of land like an encumbering shadow.

  “For Christ’s sake, slow down. The shoal reaches way out from that point.”

  “Drop to one-third,” Harper yelled into the pilothouse, and Dan heard the ping of the engine-order telegraph. The running lights were closer now, but for some reason they seemed dimmer. Then he realized why. The sky was growing pale. Dawn was on its way.

  Harper swung back, tone crisp. “Anyway, we’ve got the ship now. We have all the small arms. We got the bridge and Main Control. Just a couple loose ends and we’ll be ready for an orderly turnover.”