Leviathan egt-4

by David L. Golemon

  "We have regained all helm controls. The command suite has been isolated."

  "About time," Tyler said as he slammed his phone down.

  "Sergeant, I suggest you get the captain secured before she attempts something else."

  Tyler started forward, grabbing the command security element as he hurried out.

  "Ten degrees down bubble. Give me full dive on the planes; bring reactor power to fifty percent and go to thirty knots. Quiet the boat as much as possible and head to the launch point."

  "We will have enemy torpedo contact in four minutes. They have to be advanced Mark forty-eights."

  "Prepare to launch forward tube twelve electrically, tube twelve only. Set nuclear yield to one megaton — after launch, take Leviathan deep to two thousand feet."

  "Yeoman, we still have flooding in the forward areas. The observation compartment is fully flooded; pumps are inoperative in that section."

  "We'll have the power to pull out toward the surface; the reactors are cooling."

  As they waited, Leviathan leveled off. The command crew felt the gentle release of air as one torpedo left the bow tube with a computerized order to detonate in the path of the incoming American weapons.

  "Give me fifty degrees down bubble; engines to flank. Take us to two thousand feet!"

  Leviathan laid her nuclear egg, and then dived for deep water where no man or machine could ever reach her.

  ICE PALACE

  The symbiants were crawling from the water onto the man-made ice shelf that ran around the circumference of Ice Palace. Sarah watched the first of the trench adults never hesitating as they came toward the building at incredible speed.

  "The pressure down here must allow for their skeletal frames to withstand this oxygenated air!" Robbins called out from one of the front windows.

  "We can talk over the fine points of sym science later, Doctor. Right now I believe they are quite capable of withstanding this level of our world," Farbeaux said just as the lead sym crashed into the window where he was standing.

  Sarah reacted faster than Farbeaux, spearing the jellylike skin of the large, five-foot-long creature. At the same moment, Alice and Senator Lee opened up with the automatic weapons, shredding the small symbiant. The boat hook and bullets made the sym scream, a humanlike, awful wail of pain. The fluorescent blood went from red to a sickly purplish color as it fought to pull its body from the hook.

  Henri raised the long, polelike spear and crushed the creature's eggshell thin, clear skull. The sym collapsed and its body fanned out as the invisible muscles seemed to dissolve into themselves.

  As the creature stopped moving, the gathered children standing against the farthest wall watched in horror. One of their kind was being killed in front of them.

  "I've got one coming through the wall," Lee said as he raised his weapon and fired.

  The next sym was using stored saltwater to burn through the three-foot-thick wall of ice. The ice started to dissolve. The head of the sym came through, the mouth opened, and it hissed at Lee just as ten bullets slammed into its head. The sym recoiled but did not back out; its small blue eyes locked onto the senator and its body started to wriggle, trying to get through the ice that was refreezing around its trapped body.

  Alice dropped her weapon, picked up one of the spikes, and speared the animal, but the sym easily dodged her meager assault and started pushing through, just as other adults began dissolving the walls around the small band of defenders.

  "Children, move down the stairs!" Sarah yelled just as another sym crashed through the lone unbroken window.

  The tail and small feet allowed the clear body the ability to slither along the floor like a snake — and it was lightning fast. Sarah thrust at it and missed, the sym dodging the tip of the boat hook easily. Then it struck, hitting Sarah in the chest as it drove her to the ground. The creature yelled something incoherent and raised its small, sharp claws to slash Sarah's face. At just that moment, a boat hook came through the clear wall of the sym's chest. Purple, red, pink, and clear fluid shot onto Sarah's heavy coat as she rolled out from under the creature and away from the sharp tip of the hook that had missed her head by inches.

  Sarah stood quickly. The smell of fish was covering her. Then she saw who had come to her aid. It was one of the children. A nine-year-old girl withdrew the dripping boat hook and then turned to assist Farbeaux as he encountered another adult.

  Before Sarah could stop them, the entire group of children, half sym and half human, ran forward, grabbing anything they could use to attack their brethren coming through the walls, doors, and windows. Sarah quickly realized it was no use in trying to get the children out of harm's way, so she started organizing them the best she could.

  It was a small army coming to their rescue — but more to the detriment of the defense, they were up against a determined enemy who believed their very existence was at stake.

  The human element was about to be overrun.

  LEVIATHAN

  "All hands, detonation in five, four, three, two, one!"

  The announcement went through the entire length of the ship. Even though they were expecting the hammer blow, it still caught everyone inside the giant submarine by surprise.

  The nuclear-tipped torpedo detonated five hundred yards in front of the six American Mark 48s. The pressure wave struck them and tore the heavy weapons to pieces; then they disappeared into atom-sized particles. The shock wave went aft of Leviathan and to her bow. The downward wave of heated water struck her as she fought for depth, bending her at amidships and then passing, allowing her to spring back in a whiplash motion that almost broke her back.

  * * *

  Jack cleared the access tunnel and came out onto deck five. He immediately spied Ryan and Mendenhall with more than forty crewmen as they splashed their way toward the spiral staircase ascending to deck four. Just then the submarine became a horror ride of shaking and dipping.

  Suddenly a man rolled down the staircase and landed with a thud on the deck. Carl Everett looked up at the stunned faces around him.

  Everett grabbed Jack's leg and held on as the flooded companionway rocked, sending a torrent of water that went far over their heads.

  "Come on, swabby, it's time to get control here before those assholes blow up a bunch of cities," Collins said, splashing toward Ryan and Will to organize the assault on Leviathan's operations center.

  * * *

  The giant pressure wave from the nuclear detonation — which was low in yield but multiplied a thousandfold because of the dense sea — ran toward the center of the Ross Ice Shelf. The heated water hit the underside of the shelf and actually lifted it by one and half feet. The fault line running the entire length of the world's largest sheet of thick ice separated completely. The giant walls of the crevice started crumbling, and the two halves moved — minutely at first, then picking up speed with the change in currents.

  The Ross Ice Shelf started to come apart from the continent of Antarctica.

  ICE PALACE

  The syms realized something was wrong long before the human defenders. The attack stopped as suddenly as it started, and the syms started retreating from the walls.

  "Bastards are quitting," Henri screamed in triumph, as blood poured from the open stitches at his hip. He was leaning on the boat hook for support just as the first tremor struck the area of the shelf where the ancient ice bubble had created Ice Palace.

  Dr. Robbins and Niles Compton were the first to realize what must have happened. They turned and saw several of the slower-moving, older syms as large chunks of falling ice fell and crushed them. The ceiling was collapsing; they heard ice the size of small houses strike the second floor of the man-made shelter.

  Suddenly everyone fell to the rubberized flooring as the shelf separated. The curious sensation of floating hit them all at the same moment — but it was Robbins who voiced it first.

  "The shelf has broken away!"

  "Look!" Alice said, hanging on to Senator
Lee for dear life.

  The bright sun was showing through the massive crack above them. It penetrated the darkness like a magical laser beam, obviously caused by the ice particles in the air. The Ross Sea heaved and crashed in toward the ancient cave, and then smashed into the carved-out buildings of Ice Palace.

  A loud and deafening explosion sounded as the Ross Ice Shelf separated from the continent.

  USS MISSOURI (SSN-780)

  The nuclear shock wave struck the Missouri in a bow-down attitude, flipping her over onto her back and sending her crewmen wheeling and grabbing for anything they could hold on to. The lights went dead, and red emergency lighting took their place. Alarms started sounding throughout the boat as seals broke loose. Her outer torpedo doors, still in the open position after firing her spread of torpedoes, could not absorb the pressure that was slammed back into her. One inner door in the forward weapons room bent, curled, and then opened to the sea. Missouri took on ten tons of water in her forward torpedo room.

  "Blow ballast, blow everything! All back full, full rise on the planes!"

  "We're going to lose her, skipper!"

  "Do we still have fish in the tubes?"

  "Aye, but we are flooding in all the forward spaces."

  "Weapons release, now!"

  As the reactor on Missouri went to full power, the crew could hear her one screw bite the water, but they all knew it might be too late — they were getting too heavy, too fast. Still, they listened to the new girl fire off her last punch.

  Jefferson knew he was about to lose his command as the new Virginia class submarine slowly started heading for the bottom of the Ross Sea.

  LEVIATHAN

  "All sections report damage," came Alvera's voice over the loudspeaker. "All hands, USS Missouri is on her way to the bottom. Commence preparations for weapons launch in five minutes."

  "Damn efficient little bitch, isn't she?" Everett said to Jack as they headed down the main companionway.

  They met Ryan coming around the corner from the armory, where he had been sent two minutes before.

  "Report, Mr. Ryan," Jack said.

  "Too well guarded; we would have been shot to hell before we got within twenty feet. There are at least twenty of Tyler's men there. But we did manage to get ten of these," he said, holding up one of the strange automatic weapons. "All we can figure is that they were left by the cutting crew when they went to work on the hatches."

  "Well, they will have to do," Collins said.

  Everett handed out the automatic rifles to the oldest of the crewmen.

  "What is it, Jack, a full-out frontal assault?" asked an angry Everett as he thought about those boys on the Missouri.

  "Right now it looks like we have little choice. Hit them from both ends of the control companionway, and hope we don't run into Sergeant Wonderful before we get there."

  Everett suddenly swung the rifle up, and all fifty-six men and women and the three children turned as one as one of the floor hatches popped up. A slim hand came out holding a thick coil of insulated wire, then Virginia popped her head through and tossed the wire onto the deck. She reached back down into the hatch, brought out a large rolled schematic, and laid it beside the wiring. Then she leaned back into the hatch, struggling with something else.

  "Don't just stand there — help me. She's damn heavy!"

  Several Leviathan crew ran forward, relieved Virginia of Alexandria's weight, and pulled her the rest of the way up through the hatch.

  "It was a close-run thing, Colonel," Virginia said, out of breath. "Tyler and his men broke through only moments after Alex lost control of her command suite. I swear I never saw so much firepower concentrated in one small area. I'll never know how your guys can deal with crap like that — I thought we had had it."

  "Her condition?" Jack asked, leaning over the captain.

  "Exhausted, hemorrhaging, and her systems may be starting to shut down." Virginia held her hand on Heirthall's still features. "She did real good, Colonel."

  "Try and bring her around. We have two helmsmen here. We were lucky there, but we lost the entire complement of chiefs in their staterooms. We need her awake."

  "You're going to try and take the command bridge?" Virginia asked, looking from face to face.

  Mendenhall and Ryan answered by slamming home magazines into their weapons.

  "No other choice."

  "Look, Jack, Tyler has both ends of that sealed passageway covered. You'll be fighting in a blind alley, and he has reinforcements he can call up; you don't."

  "We will have to—"

  "Jack, Alex had a plan. She made me strip this wiring from auxiliary control before we evacuated. I just don't know what it was."

  Collins looked at the coiled wire. He tilted his head in thought.

  "Shock… electric shock — under control center."

  Virginia knelt and listened, but Alexandria had blanked out once more.

  Jack heard the captain, and then he knew what her makeshift plan consisted of.

  "Virginia, I need you to pull off that engineering stuff you're so fond of bragging about," Jack said as he reached down and took the wiring. He then explained that she had to return to the crawlspace.

  Everett, Mendenhall, and Ryan watched as Jack detailed his plan to Virginia. They all raised their brows when they heard it, but they knew it would be their only chance without losing a lot of the people. Virginia nodded and accepted the task.

  "Leave the captain here with her people. They aren't trained to take on people like Tyler, plus the captain may need them if this damn thing works. Doctor, you have to rig this thing in five minutes."

  * * *

  Tyler waited with fifty of his men at the forward access companionway into the control center. He was angry, as he knew he had lost a chance after finally breaking through into the auxiliary control suite, only to find that Heirthall had vanished. They had emptied weapons into the crawlspace beneath the deck, but he now knew that that woman had nine lives. He surmised that attacking the control center was the only logical move for the captain. Thus far, he had to give Heirthall and that damnable Collins credit — they had thwarted him at every juncture in trying to subdue them. However, he now knew their only choice was to come through him and his men.

  ICE PALACE

  Farbeaux formed a plan in a split second. His mind started clicking just as it had before the death of Danielle, his wife. It felt good to have purpose once more.

  As the sea crashed against the carved buildings, the salt deteriorated the walls, and the giant halves of the ice shelf separated for good. The sky one mile above the ancient ice hit the sea for the first time in two hundred thousand years. Ice Palace was floating, and its ice shores were only thirty feet from the cresting swell of sea.

  "Sarah, get the children in order. This section of ice will be unstable in the next few minutes."

  "What?"

  "He's right, look!" Niles called out.

  Sarah and the others looked around and saw that the building had a decided tilt to its foundation. The children were starting to lose their footing as the giant ice floe started to tilt backward.

  "I believe this shelf is now what is called an iceberg, dear Sarah. It is going to flip over. The Ross Ice Shelf is no more. If we don't do something, we'll be thrown into the sea, and with my injured hip, I don't think I could swim to McMurdo Station."

  Sarah responded quickly, gathering the children together with the help of Lee, Alice, and Robbins.

  "I hope you have a plan," she said.

  "As a matter of fact, the answer to our situation is right in the lower rooms of this enclosure. Now, we need everyone to go down and assist in taking the items we need." Farbeaux started down first, followed by Sarah just as the enclosure tilted to thirty degrees. The stable half of the remaining shelf was starting to drift farther away.

  They had but moments remaining before the section they were riding would flip over into the freezing sea.

  LEVIATHAN

/>   As the second group of Tyler's mercenaries waited, Collins caught them off guard from behind when he cleared his throat. He and Everett stood facing the men with their hands up. Ryan and Mendenhall were standing behind them, angry at having to surrender without a fight.

  As Tyler's men rushed forward to take them into custody, Everett looked over at Collins.

  "Ballsy, Jack, I'll give you that."

  "Yeah, but can you think of a better way to get into the control center without getting everyone shot to hell?"

  As they were pushed out of the companionway toward the rest of Tyler's men, Everett had to smile.

  "It is good to have you back from the dead, Colonel. My life would have been as boring as hell without you."

  ICE PALACE

  They had struggled to get one of the oversized Zodiacs to the main level and out of the steep incline, which had become even more dangerous. As Henri pulled the air bottles that inflated the giant Zodiac, a massive cracking sound rent the air around them. As they looked up, the far-back portion of Ice Palace disappeared into the water and the surviving half went skyward, tossing everyone off their feet. Then it slammed back down into the sea. The Zodiac flew from the small shelf and went flying into the water, eighty feet away. The rough seas started tossing it about like a toy boat.

  "We've had it!" Sarah said. "We wouldn't last three minutes in that water trying to retrieve it!"

  "Can we get one of the others?" Alice asked loudly over the cracking of ice, with Lee assisting her in standing.

  "We're out of time," Henri shouted as a large crack zigzagged through the center of the main building's remains. It was an exact center cut, separating the front half from its middle. The stairwell leading to the lower level was starting to separate from the front.

  As they stood on shaking ice, they didn't see Gene Robbins looking about him, his eyes settling on the frightened children. He was shocked when he closed his eyes and his thoughts went to Captain Everett, a man he outwardly despised but inwardly envied for his blind bravery. Robbins quickly made a decision.