by Andy Remic
‘Negative, Captain. Not even on the I/J band surface-target detection. But she was there, as real as a bear in the woods. She isn’t there any longer.’
Kolgar cursed.
‘What about the Tykes?’
‘Nothing yet, Captain. They’ve spread out, and are heading away in a globe formation. If there’s anything around us, they will find it and report it.’ Their gazes met. ‘You know, Captain, as well as I that they have never missed a target.’
Kolgar nodded, rubbing wearily at his temples. ‘Have you informed Spiral Tac of this?’
‘Not yet, Captain.’
‘Do so. Their intelligence may have some records or information on this vessel. What did we find out before it…it…’
‘Vanished?’
‘Yes.’
‘Vague dimensions estimated by the BattleSubTec computers. Nothing more. An estimation of possible weapons capabilities. And the fact that it moved much, much faster than any seagoing vehicle had a right to move.’
They waited, watching the Tyke scanners. A tense silence surrounded them, filled with the glittering glow of computer read-outs and submarine-control displays. Red light scattered like rubies across Kolgar’s heavily bearded face, and his eyes narrowed as they fixed on one of the Tyke ScannerReps.
He pointed. ‘What’s that?’
There was an instant of blackness, and the light went out.
‘What does the TerminationDisplay read?’ asked Kolgar slowly.
‘Zero, Captain.’
‘That’s impossible! No last-nanosecond read-outs? No transmissions on what was around the Tyke when it was destroyed?’
‘Nothing, Captain.’
The two men stared at each other, frowning. And then, like a scene from some digital firework display across the control wall, the Tyke-linked scanners arrayed before them - each signal linked to individual Tyke scouts spinning through the voids of dark ocean all around - seemed to explode in front of their very eyes ... the red lights scattered, spun through shades of attack report from green and blue to yellow - and then, like a visual tidal wave, the lights were swept out and into darkness and death.
Kolgar stared, numbed, at the scanners. All were black.
Every single Tyke had been simultaneously destroyed.
‘Reports?’ he asked, his voice a dry croak.
‘None,’ came the soft, disbelieving reply.
A hundred scouts had been destroyed; and not a single transmission to give the submarine a clue to their attackers had been registered; not a single warning given. Nothing.
Kolgar could taste sweet vodka on his tongue and he longed for a drink.
Later, barked his intelligence.
‘Contact Spiral Tac. Tell them we have an emergency.’
‘Transmitting.’
They waited ten seconds - a long ten seconds of tense wondering filled with uneasy sweat and thoughts of death as every seaman in the Control Centre waited for a reply, looking around and up into the imaginary dark waters around their sub, imagining dark enemies with incredibly superior technology - the sort of technology that could make a massive warship disappear, the sort of technology that could evade their most sophisticated scanning equipment, and the sort of technology that could annihilate a hundred scattered scouts without giving away any indication of method or weapons.
There came the blip of reply.
‘Three TacSquad officers will be with us in just over two hours from the nearby stationed British destroyer Castle. They are deploying as we speak in an underwater Shark Attack Craft, very, very fast. They recommend that we sit still and do nothing - merely report if our situation changes.’
Kolgar nodded, and wiped the sweat from his forehead on the back of his sleeve.
The scanners remained dark, quiet; this was no help when you suddenly believed the enemy to be invisible.
The Moscow 16 received the Shark Attack Craft into its huge belly like a subterranean Leviathan swallowing its prey. Decompression chambers hissed, pumps whined, and within a few minutes the ramps engaged and two military-suited women and a man walked down the ramp and saluted Juri Kolgar.
‘I believe you have a problem,’ said the tall, red-haired female. She had cold blue eyes and high cheekbones that highlighted rather than diminished her incredible beauty. Her hand moved slowly, confidently, to Kolgar’s and they shook. ‘Commanding Officer Reyana Treban at your disposal. I am an expert in aquatic machinery and covert tracking systems, and was part of the design team that invented the Tyke Tracking Systems.’
Kolgar nodded. ‘I have heard of you, Lady Treban.’
‘You may address me as Reyana. I have no time for rank when we need to work together in an emergency situation. This is Alice Metrass, bio-weapons expert, and James Rothwell, who has an incredibly detailed working knowledge of practically every submarine utilised by most world governments.’
Formalities were speedily dispensed with, and Kolgar led the trio straight to the Command Centre.
‘We have your reports, as issued by our connective ECubes; they inform us that a hundred Tykes were destroyed within a few seconds of one another, and not a single scout reported back anything as to their situation?’
Kolgar nodded.
Reyana seated herself at a console, and began to type; she integrated with the sub’s computers and for a while all was silent as data flashed across the screen. Eventually, she stroked her cheek, eyes distant. ‘I think we are in grave danger.’
‘You found something?’
Reyana nodded. ‘It was hidden in a data structure; you did receive the reports, but they were scrambled so that the sub computers would not recognise the codes.’
‘What destroyed them?’ asked Kolgar slowly.
‘I don’t know. But you were tracking a huge ship, is that correct? A surface vessel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now it is tracking you. And it is closing fast.’
‘Weapons?’ asked Kolgar.
‘Break out every fucking gun you’ve got.’
The Moscow 16 glided through silent dark waters. Fish darted from its path as engines roared, all need for stealth thrown off as the machine surged forward towards the protection of the nearest Spiral naval outpost. A distance of two hundred and thirty miles.
As the submarine increased its speed, so it increased its depth; nose dipped, it powered down deep below the surface, cutting through shoals of silver glittering fish, deep deep into the abyss of darkness that was the Tremanan Valley, scraping into the deep trench of scythed-out rock filled with stagnant dead water from a million years past.
Unidentified debris floated past in the depths, several of these huge metal casks thumping against the sub’s hull with distant echoing booms that made all the inhabitants shiver - even though scanners confirmed that these objects were not mines. On Reyana’s instruction they slowed their speed and once more she analysed the sub’s scanners, calling for Rothwell’s help in disassembling navigational data.
Suddenly, a siren sounded and data started flashing across all the screens in the Control Centre simultaneously; Kolgar leaped forward as Lieutenant-Captain Lyagarin burst in and the sonar operator turned to him.
‘Active sonar acquiring! The bastards have locked on!’ came the panicked voice of the det-ops seaman.
‘It’s above us!’ hissed Lyagarin.
‘That’s impossible!’’ snapped Kolgar. The 941 Typhoon Class was fitted with active/passive sonar, surface target detection, ESM, radar and direction-finding systems, and a contemporary combat-control interface. The Moscow 16 was supposed to surprise the enemy - the enemy was not supposed to surprise it.
‘Arm and lock-on the VA-III’s!’ snapped Reyana as the Command Centre exploded with activity. Every man and woman present knew their jobs and knew them well; this was war, and they all had a job to play.
‘There it is,’ snapped Kolgar.
Suddenly, as if uncloaking, the huge warship became visible. It was directly above them. It had
them locked in its sights, ensnared in its net; caught in its trap.
The submarine rocked; there was a distant boom, a scream of steel and a rumbling like distant thunder. The whole submarine started to shake, vibrating, and Kolgar looked helplessly down at his hands as they trembled before his very face.
‘The pressure hull,’ he croaked, suddenly white-faced as he met the stare of Lyagarin. Reyana and Rothwell were screaming orders to the seamen, and understanding passed between them all, and their faces were bleached, with shock and horror, at the terrible implications.
Some form of advanced depth charge or torpedo had cracked the supposedly ‘unbreakable’ parallel pressure hulls. You could have as many SLBMs or torpedoes as you could carry, but the pressure hulls were the only substance between life and the terrible, crushing sea which surrounded the deep-sea vessel.
The 941 was going down ...
More than that, it was being crushed by the sea.
The rumbling increased in volume. Men charged across the Control Centre, panic their master, but Kolgar and Lyagarin just stood staring at one another. They were deep; far too deep. They both knew; they both understood. They were dead men savouring their last breaths.
Reyana grasped Kolgar’s arm. ‘The attack craft; we can still escape!’
Kolgar shook his head sadly. He had been at sea far too long; he knew the dangers, accepted the dangers; only a miracle would even allow you to reach the belly of the sub, and the chances of escaping...
Reyana, closely followed by the other TacSquad officers, fled the Control Centre, boots stomping metal grilles, pushing past panicked seamen who were also torn between fleeing and saying their last goodbyes to their gods.
The submarine suddenly tilted, and the crew were thrown like dolls across the Centre; bodies smashed into screens and sparks showered the riveted steel decking. Kolgar hit the wall with bone-jarring force and lay still, staring at the lifeless eyes of Lyagarin. The man had broken his neck and his limbs lay splayed in some bizarre horror contortion.
Water poured in; sirens wailed; red lights were flashing in the back of his brain but all Kolgar could think about were his wife Sonya and their baby girl Olivia. Short blonde hair, a beautiful smile, ‘Papa’ she called him as he carried her in his arms and she nestled close to his chest, softest of soft blonde hair tickling his unshaven chin, her tiny fingers grasping his huge hands.
The water was cold around his legs, a heavy and suddenly powerful swirling, remorseless. Men were screaming. Sparks showered him but he did not flinch. And then the power died: there was a distant groan, a shudder, and the lights went off.
More groans began, as if the Ballistic Missile Submarine 941 Typhoon Class was an animal suffering from an incredible wound; the groans rose in pitch and Kolgar could feel the pressure forcing in on them, could sense the sea - powerful and without remorse - crushing them in her fist. Steel and alloy screamed. Rivets spat from stanchions like machine-gun bullets. Stairways buckled and folded in on themselves as the might of the sea compressed and crushed the life from the submarine.
Those last moments, in the pitch black, with ice-cold water shocking his system into a rigid spasm - those last moments were the most intense moments of Kolgar’s life; he dreamed of what Olivia would grow up to be, and how Sonya would mourn at his grave. Tears ran down his cheeks. How did they miss that ship? he thought. How did they fucking miss it?
Reyana strapped herself in at the controls of the Shark Attack Craft; both Rothwell and Metrass were dead. Rothwell had been crushed by a split steel stanchion, the huge slab of metal screaming down to cut him in half at the waist as his entire system of blood flushed from his torn flesh in a scant few seconds. Metrass had been thrown violently down a steep stairwell as the sub rolled, Reyana hanging grimly onto the rails, legs dangling over an abyss as she watched her friend and comrade for the last eight years vanish under a surge of freezing dark waters and fail to reappear. It was a miracle that she had reached the belly of the sub, an even bigger miracle that the compression controls were still active.
As the submarine groaned like an animal in the final throes of death, the fast nuclear-powered Shark Attack Craft spat from its belly and spun between deep rock formations, bubbles spewing from its exhausts. Reyana, tasting blood from the wound to her forehead, watched in horror on the ECube-linked monitors as the submarine broke in two and sank in the deep ravine of the Tremanan Valley. Tears rolled down her cheeks, mingling with the blood there, and she armed the Shark’s weapons systems with a dry, fear-filled throat.
Something bad was happening.
Something incredibly bad that she did not understand.
She increased the Shark’s speed, descending deep into the ravine and navigating using sensors alone; outside the plasti-titanium hull of the tiny Shark the sea was a dense and uncompromising black.
She sensed rather than saw the small object spin in front of her; squinting, she realised that it was a black globe, tiny - similar in concept to the Tyke scouts her team had designed several years earlier.
Reyana moved as if to lock her weapons - and realised that there was nothing on her scanners on which to lock. Swallowing hard, she switched to manual and flicked off the safety on the trigger. Beneath the Shark’s belly missiles and mini-torps slotted neatly into place. And then, suddenly, the black globe screamed towards her and there was an insane implosion of plasti-titanium and the sea rushed in towards her as she screamed, an intake of breath as the world went suddenly black and cold and the Shark spiralled down down down deep under the ocean, lost and out of control and dead...
CHAPTER 5
JAM
The busy London traffic sloshed through the rain, horns blaring, engines revving, lights cutting personal slices from the darkness with thin metal skins shimmering under amber light. Snakes of cars wound across the city, past burnt-out husks of buildings standing stark and forlorn, blackened fingers pointing accusingly at the God who had not saved them. Euston Station was nothing more than a crater of war detritus, guarded by five blackened stumps that had once been tanks, fire-torched turrets and twisted guns evidence of disharmony in this major UK city. As the snakes wound on, they would pass buildings smashed by shells, razed by fire, windows gaping tooth-holes and razor glass littering pavements. People treading the pavements did so warily, eyes watching one another with unease, guns hidden badly under coats.
The tall man stood by the kerb, long leather coat pulled tightly about him. His eyes were dark, hooded, his face a half-beard, hair short and spiked by the light rain. He drew on a cigarette and flicked the butt into the gutter where it mingled with the broken bottles and petrol-bomb remnants as a break appeared in the traffic; boots stomped puddles and he weaved his way through the rush-hour jam, picking his way between Porsches, Volvos, Fords and Fiats, interiors dark and gun-laden. He mounted the opposite kerb and halted, momentarily attracted to a shop display showing digital receivers and the latest in computer-guided weapons. The window was guarded by thick razor-mesh, further evidence of a city that was on the brink of internal collapse and war.
The man scratched tiredly at his beard, obsidian eyes reflected in the window. His hand flitted across his hip, then he turned and walked briskly down the street, boots thumping the pavement. He passed a gathering of Justice Troops - JT8s - drafted in after recent civil unrest who eyed him through their evil black masks before he turned right down a narrow alley stinking of long-unemptied bins, rat disease and the pungent aroma of tom-cat piss.
The rain fell, cooling his face, making his long leather coat glossy. As he walked, he undid three buttons down the front and rested his hand lightly on a dark metallic object within.
Jam knew.
Knew that he was being followed.
The footsteps were almost inaudible behind him and he increased his pace. He blinked, raindrops falling from his eyelashes, and reached out as he passed a huge metal waste bin overflowing with stink; the tiniest of clicks revealed his DP - a ‘detection plant’ t
hat would lock to his ECube and signal him if he was being pursued.
Jam halted, listening, the hairs on his scalp prickling.
He lit a cigarette, hands cupped against wind and rain. Smoke plumed, dragon’s breath, and as the lighter was replaced so a silenced machine pistol found its way into his grip, still shrouded by his coat, still hidden by the gloom.
He turned -
A casual glance -
Nothing.
Jam walked on down the alley, under rusting metal fire escapes adorned with graffiti, under heavy drips from a dark and brooding evening sky that looked down upon this decaying city with malevolence. In the distance neon porn invitations glittered in a puddle and Jam felt the vibrating buzz of his ECube, a relayed signal from the DP. Three. Four. Five. Six, he counted. Shit.
Somebody wanted him bad...
Jam increased his pace yet again, tossing the cigarette aside and switching left, down another narrow alleyway. He brushed past parked cars, many battered and bullet-scarred, and his eyes moved up, checking, scaling, adjusting. He reached a parked Mercedes, long and sleek and black, almost new and standing out from the other battle-wounded vehicles. He crouched behind it, sighting the machine pistol down the glossy machine’s flanks, using the coach line to steady his aim.
Six...
Shit, thought Jam again. Which group? Which organisation?
Were they a terrorist group? After the URG Bill of 2010 and the closely following Anti-NBC Laws, which carried immediate death penalties, terrorists of every nationality hated Spiral with a fervour.
Or maybe it was just a random gang, heavily armed and out for cash and guns?
Or maybe even the JT8s ...
Rain fell.
Jam waited ...
A noise, behind the poised man, alerted him. He turned, eyes still watching the distant entrance to the alley. The noises were too loud to be made by these secret followers. There was no element of stealth...
Five huge black men, bedecked in chains and sporting expensive suits, were making their way down the alley, lacquered shoes dodging puddles. Their gazes alighted on Jam, crouched and leaning nonchalantly against their Mercedes SL2i, and their teeth bared in a curious cross between humour and anger.