by Nick Cook
‘You can do that?’ I said, impressed.
She snorted. ‘As if. Beyond a bit of sharpening, that’s all Hollywood make believe. However, what I can do is supply you with a satellite feed playback of that boat. It’s fitted with a two hundred megapixel camera that passed overhead about an hour ago and you’re so going to want to see what it captured.’
A new video window appeared and on it was a very clear close-up of the Russian spy ship. The submersible’s hatch was open and a man’s head was visible, talking to a woman standing on the deck. They were too small to make out any real detail other than that.
‘I don’t see the significance, Lucy?’ Jack said.
‘Oh you will. Just give it a moment as the satellite tracked closer and then you’ll get a better view,’ Lucy replied.
Sure enough the image continued to draw nearer to the ship and then suddenly we could clearly see who the two people were.
‘Oh bloody hell! I thought you got rid of him on your last mission,’ Mike said.
My stomach had dropped into my feet. The man who I saw climb out of the submersible and stand next to the woman was instantly recognisable as Alvarez, the Overseers’ colonel who had made our life a living hell on so many missions.
Ruby hissed. ‘How the hell did that bastard survive being buried alive in the sand under that pyramid?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ I said.
Ever since our last encounter with the Overseer colonel at Atlantis, otherwise known as the Richat Structure, I’d felt a certain weight come off my shoulders knowing the man was dead. Now that anxiety came rushing back with a vengeance and I could feel it crushing me down into my flight seat.
Jack leant forward, staring harder at the video footage. ‘And tell me that woman with him isn’t that bitch, Professor Evelyn Fischer?’
‘The archaeologist working for the Overseers that you ran into at Machu Picchu?’ Tom asked.
‘The very same,’ Mike said, answering the question for him.
Jack sighed. ‘Fischer’s presence has to be significant. It suggests that the Overseers already found something major on the ocean bed at that location. Lucy, any chance I could have a quick word with Poseidon? I want to pick his brains about the underwater structure.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ Lucy said with a grin.
A moment later, her image was replaced with Poseidon, the micro mind AI that we’d first encountered at the Richat Structure.
The first thing that was hard to miss was his rather significant change in wardrobe. Gone was the toga suitable for the god of Atlantis and in its place were white jeans and a cotton shirt. But somehow Poseidon still managed to look godly with his beard and penetrating eyes – just an omnipotent being who’d moved with the times.
Jack didn’t even batter an eyelid at the change of appearance as he addressed the AI. ’Poseidon, I need to ask you about the Cuban underwater formation. I don’t suppose you have any record in your database about anything that might at least give us a faint clue as to what’s down there?’
Poseidon shook his head. ‘I’m afraid as Lucy has already told you, nothing directly, Jack. That’s not necessarily surprising as there are so many gaps in the substrata database thanks to the Kimprak virus destroying much of it. However, there is one severely truncated record about a facility that drew a vast amount of energy from the E8 dimension to power its systems. Although I have no record of it being at this particular location, what I can tell you is that it was a significant facility, even if I can’t tell you what its purpose is.’
‘So, based on the fact it’s at the bottom of such a deep part of the ocean, along with the presence of a Guardian, there’s a good chance that this could be this mysterious Angelus megastructure?’ I asked.
‘I think that’s certainly a possibility,’ Poseidon replied.
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Ruby said. ‘To kick this show off, I say we take down that spy ship with an ASSAM missile right now, killing Alvarez and Fischer in the process. Then we head straight down there to retrieve the micro mind. That sounds like a great day’s work to me.’
‘No, you absolutely can’t do that, at least not yet. Let me show you why,’ Lucy said.
The video windows disappeared to reveal the virtual cockpit again. Now the spy boat was barely a spec on the horizon. But about five klicks to the right of it was a rendered 3D image of the cloaked Zumwalt class destroyer superimposed into the scene.
‘Are you trying to tell us that that stealthed-up warship is guarding that bloody spy boat?’ Mike asked.
‘I most certainly am. Actually, the only reason that you’re able to see it at all is that I’m analysing all the visual data coming from your squadron’s cameras and I’m looking for even the slightest discrepancy between frames. By analysing this and constructing a 3D model, I can then feed through this information to the squadron’s CICs and, even more importantly, to your targeting system.’
I felt the tension ratchet up across my shoulders. Thanks to the warship’s presence and even with the new hardware at our disposal, instinct was already screaming at me that this mission wasn’t going to be anything like a walk in the park.
‘I’m pretty sure I could sink even that destroyer with a well-aimed railgun round,’ Niki said over the open channel.
‘You probably could, but you can guarantee we would quickly be dealing with a squadron of TR-3Bs pretty soon after,’ Jack replied.
‘Then as tempting a target as that spy boat is, we all need to remember what our real priority is here and that’s to recover the micro mind,’ Tom said. ‘Based on all this activity on the surface, the one thing you can almost certainly guarantee is that they haven’t yet recovered it.’
I marshalled my thoughts as I nodded. ‘Yes, we should only tip our hand about our presence here if we absolutely have to. But if we have to – and if that means taking that bastard Alvarez out in the process – none of us is going to shed a tear about that.’ As I was speaking I could feel my thoughts starting to crystallise. ‘So let’s go with our initial plan. Niki, you and your crew will command the slaved X103 and keep guard up here, ready to step in the moment things start to look dodgy. Meanwhile, Artemis and Ariel will land on the surface and then we’ll make our way below towards the site.’
Everyone nodded around me.
‘Sounds like a good strategy to me, Commander,’ Erin’s voice said over the link.
‘To me too,’ Niki added.
‘One small complication, guys,’ Lucy said. ‘That submersible has just launched with Alvarez and Fischer onboard, so you’re likely to run into them down there.’
‘Now wouldn’t that be a pity? I might just have to try out those dart rounds in our adapted miniguns for a bit of target practice,’ Ruby said, a broad grin on her face.
‘We’ll have to see about that,’ I replied. ‘Erin, get ready to land on the surface.’
‘Roger that,’ the young pilot said.
I returned my attention to the virtual cockpit. ‘Tom, please take us down and prep our underwater drive system.’
He nodded. A moment later, in utter silence, Ariel with Artemis next to us, began to descend towards the surface of that cobalt blue ocean.
Chapter Seventeen
The water lapped gently around Ariel’s hull and the sound bubbled all around us.
‘Flooding ballast tanks now,’ Tom announced, his gaze half on an electronic tablet that he seemed to be following the instructions from, which wasn’t exactly filling me with confidence. But to his credit, Tom had already been at pains to point out that if he wasn’t sure about anything he would simply ask Delphi to take over control during the dive.
Above us, thanks to the enhanced virtual cockpit, semi-transparent rendered versions of Thor and our X103 slaved to it hung in a stationary hover. The sight was incredibly reassuring. Whatever happened beneath the ocean, at least someone would be covering our backs above the surface, specifically when it came to that bloo
dy Zumwalt destroyer.
At last Tom seemed happy with his pre-dive checks. Taking hold of the controls he began to slip Ariel beneath the surface. To our port side, the Artemis was barely visible beneath the rendered version superimposed over it, but its presence was still given away by a faintly transparent bubble trail around the edge of the craft.
I pressed the comms button. ‘Artemis, is there some sort of problem with your Chameleon cloak? You still appear to be partly visible.’
‘So are you, Commander,’ Erin’s voice replied. ‘But Jodie explained that this might happen. Because of the gravity field from our REV drives, it creates a slight distortion due to the refraction effect of the water, which is impossible to completely compensate for.’
‘So in other words, we are not entirely invisible down here?’ I asked.
‘Not a hundred percent, but pretty close unless you are within a hundred metres or so of either craft.’
‘Now she tells us,’ Ruby said, shaking her head.
‘Sorry, there was just so much to brief you on before, but I should have mentioned it,’ Erin said. ‘I’ll try to do better in future, Commander.’
‘The priority was getting the mission underway. It’s ok. But now we know about it, we can allow for it,’ I said.
‘Yes, Commander,’ Erin replied flatly.
Tom gave me a nod, obviously approving that I hadn’t balled the young pilot out. I knew that she would learn from the mistake and so I could leave it there. But inwardly I was less than thrilled at the news. Even though it was unlikely that anyone would get close enough to spot us, it was still a faint possibility and I needed every edge that our technology could give us when heading into the unknown.
We began to dive diagonally towards the ocean depths, our descent far faster than Leon had managed to achieve in Neptune. Part of me wished the French explorer was with us now just so I could see the look on his face.
Ruby pressed a button on her CIC screen and a depth gauge appeared over the virtual cockpit. We’d already passed the two hundred fathoms mark, way deeper that we’d managed at the rune site, yet we were still nowhere near the bottom. Above us a shoal of what might have been barracuda swam past, their changes in direction mesmerising us and catching the sunlight like hundreds of mirrors. But far below, the water was growing darker as we dropped.
Jack took in the view, shaking his head. ‘Wow, isn’t this something?’
‘Isn’t it just?’ I said, enjoying the fact that I was getting to share this experience with him in the moment of calm before we encountered whatever was waiting for us.
‘It looks seriously dark down there,’ Ruby said, peering down at the depths on the virtual cockpit.
‘That’s actually called the bathypelagic region of the ocean, also known as the twilight zone – just like our nickname for the waveform dimension,’ Mike said. ‘It runs down to over two thousand fathoms. Beneath that is the abyssopelagic zone, which is pitch black at those depths and is better known as the abyss for that reason.’
Ruby’s face lit up. ‘Just like the movie.’
‘Oh great, thanks for that. Now I’m going to be thinking of a bloody great big alien sea monster waiting to capture us,’ Mike replied.
‘Anytime,’ Ruby smirked, but she edged her hand a fraction closer towards the weapons control panel.
The gloom started to press in around Ariel. Everyone had fallen into an uneasy silence, our default setting when we were heading into extreme danger.
There was a flicker of white ahead of us, then every one of us in that cockpit jumped as a ridiculously large squid, at least two metres long, shot between both craft.
Ruby gasped, gripping the minigun’s joystick control so tightly that her knuckles went white.
‘Careful there or you’ll turn into calamari before you know it, Ruby,’ Mike said.
Our weapons officer merely humphed loudly, then relaxed her grip on the joystick.
The darkness was growing deeper. But despite that, very much unlike Neptune, there wasn’t so much as a groan coming from the hull. And that was just as it should be as the gravity bubble did its thing to keep the pressure around us at surface levels on our hull.
I opened up a comms channel. ‘Niki, are you still able to read us over this new QEC radio?’
‘Loud and clear as though you were in the next room. This quantum entangled radio system is certainly delivering what Lucy promised it would.’
Lucy’s avatar immediately appeared in an overlaid window on the cockpit. ‘Did you expect anything else from yours truly?’
‘I should certainly know better by now,’ Niki replied.
‘So your link to us is obviously working well too, Lucy?’ I asked.
‘Like a dream.’
‘Good to know that we’ll at least be able to pick your brains if we need to,’ Mike said.
‘Oh, you can pick my brains anytime, handsome,’ Lucy said, grinning at him.
‘Anyway, back to the mission,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘How are things looking on the surface for you guys, Niki?’
‘All quiet here since Alvarez’s submersible launched from that spy boat. The Zumwalt destroyer is just slowly patrolling around the area, so it looks like so far, no one knows we’re here.’
‘Good, let’s hope it stays that way,’ I replied.
The depth gauge had ticked past two hundred and fifty fathoms now. In another eighty or so we’d reach the bottom.
‘External pressure is now six hundred pounds per square inch or twenty atmospheres,’ Ruby said, peering at the display on the CIC screen that encircled her.
‘Any sign of any leaks yet?’ Lucy asked, with a totally unnecessary amused tone.
‘I’ll give you bloody leaks,’ Jack muttered under his breath.
It had grown so dark now that it was getting hard to see beyond twenty metres outside.
‘Any chance you can enhance the view, Ruby?’ I asked.
‘Our thermal cameras won’t work well down here because of the cooling effect of all this water. But I can overlay the passive sonar information if it detects anything interesting alongside the existing map data. The problem is that we can’t use active sonar; it would give our position away to that damn destroyer.’
‘Okay, then let’s give the overlaid sonar data a whirl please.’
She nodded and toggled a few buttons on her screen. Immediately the gloomy view on the walls was superimposed with pixel points for the seabed stretching away below us. In the distance, radiating circular lines were pulsing around an object above, which was descending far more slowly than Ariel.
‘Is that Alvarez and Fischer’s submersible by any chance?’ I asked.
‘Damned right it is,’ Ruby said. ‘Just one little flechette round and we could open that thing up like a can of sardines.’
‘No doubt, but then we’d have to deal with all the fun it would bring down on our heads,’ Tom said.
‘You can’t tell me you’re not tempted,’ Ruby sniffed.
He held a forefinger and thumb out with the slightest gap between them. ‘Maybe a tiny bit.’
‘So where is this underwater formation anyway?’ Jack interjected, peering at the enhanced view.
‘I’m overlaying its position for you now,’ Lucy said.
A pulsing blue marker appeared dead ahead of us in the distance with a four-kilometre marker next to it. It was also exactly where Alvarez’s submersible appeared to be heading.
‘Not long till the big reveal then,’ Mike said, glancing across at Jack.
‘If it really is a city of underwater pyramids, I’m all ready to have my mind blown,’ Jack smiled.
The sense of anticipation was growing inside me. Whatever this was, I knew it was going to be significant, but the question that kept looping through my head was how so?
Tom dropped us to less than twenty metres above the ocean floor and Erin matched his manoeuvre precisely in Artemis. If she was trying to impress me with her piloting skills, she w
as certainly doing a good job of it so far.
Ridges rose and fell away in front of us like a series of gentle rolling hills. Far above, the rendered hull of the Zumwalt was growing steadily closer as we neared the site. Holding further back in the sky were the familiar shapes of our X-craft squadron on the surface.
Beneath the enhanced view of the dots, following the contours, the ocean bed was just visible in the twilight. At these depths, it was barely illuminated by the faint light, creating a palette of muted greys and dappled greens.
Once, while visiting the London aquarium, I’d almost dropped into a trance while watching the fish swimming around their alternate universe. It was the same here; caustic light patterns rippled across the ocean floor and strange fish darted away as we approached them. Then I became instantly alert as I spotted hundreds of tiny blue points of light ahead of us.
‘What the hell are those things?’ Ruby said, peering forward.
The question was soon answered for us as we drew closer to one of the floating blue lights. It was a jellyfish, its delicate undulating structure lit up with blue and green beads of light, tentacles wavering in the water behind it.
‘Wow, they almost look like space ships straight out of that film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ Jack said.
I shot him a look. ‘You do realise that you’re impressing me again with sci-fi knowledge?’
‘Maybe that’s because I have something of a relentless teacher.’
‘Hey, you love it really,’ I said, smiling at him.
‘Yes, maybe I do,’ he replied, giving me an equally wide smile.
‘They may look innocent enough, but have you ever been stung by a jellyfish? They sting like a bitch,’ Mike said. ‘Happened to me once when I was surfing and I had to get a mate to pee on me.’
‘Ewww, gross!’ Ruby said.
‘No, you don’t understand. Apparently it’s meant to take the pain away, but it made absolutely no bloody difference.’
‘I’m afraid that’s just one of those urban legends, although the idea is sound enough,’ Jack said. ‘What you really need to do is use a strong salt water solution to bathe the area, which neutralises the venom.’