He turned back to Rafferty. “Doodlebug status?”
“Green across the board, sir.”
“Excellent.”
The descent was going like clockwork. In just a few minutes, they would arrive at the dig interface. And then, with any luck, soon…soon…
He spoke to Rafferty again. “Has that reading been confirmed?”
“Yes, sir. Sensor reports from Marble Two’s last dive indicate the oceanic layer is at maximal penetration.”
Maximal penetration. They had done it. They had bored through the third—and deepest—layer of the earth’s crust.
No, there would be no surprises. Except for the most important one: the riches that lay in store directly below, at the Mohorovicic discontinuity.
Whoever said the price of freedom was eternal vigilance was right—as far as that went. But Korolis knew there was more to it than that, much more. It was not enough to be watchful—one had to act, to seize the nettle. If the opportunity presented itself, it had to be taken, no matter what the difficulty. America stood alone, the only remaining superpower; the rest of the world, out of either jealousy or hatred, was arrayed against her, hoping for her to fall. Hostile governments were bleeding her dry through trade imbalances while at the same time increasing their armies and refining their own weapons of mass destruction. In such a desperate climate it was his duty—it was all their duties—to do whatever was necessary to ensure America stayed strong.
The nuclear fraternity was large, and getting larger. Nukes were no longer enough to intimidate or impress or keep at bay. What was needed was something new—something whose power was so awesome it would guarantee America’s position for the indefinite future.
And that meant appropriating—by any and all means necessary—technology to keep her ahead of the herd. And that technology lay directly beneath them. Technology that could transmit messages from beneath the earth’s crust. Technology that could store almost infinite reservoirs of energy in a tiny, iridescent chip.
The thought of passing up such technology was inconceivable. The thought of someone else claiming it was unacceptable.
“Four minutes out,” said Rafferty.
“Very well.” Korolis glanced from the engineer to the third occupant of Marble Three: the wiry old man with the blizzard of unruly white hair. Dr. Flyte, for once saying next to nothing. Korolis frowned. The man’s presence on the Facility had been an unfortunate necessity: as the foremost authority on cybernetics and miniaturization, he’d been the only person capable of devising the complex robotic arm the Marble employed. The man might have been a genius, but he was notoriously eccentric, and—in the opinion of Korolis—a security liability. As a result, he had been kept secretly aboard the Facility, more or less against his will. It seemed the best solution: not only had it kept the all-too-talkative old fellow from speaking to the wrong people, but also Flyte’s presence on the Facility meant he could maintain the robotic arms and train others in their complexity.
Korolis shifted in his seat. He’d chosen Flyte for this dive because—as with Rafferty—he’d wanted the very best. And who better to man the controls of the robotic arm than its inventor?
Another throb of pain seared his temples, but Korolis willed himself to ignore it. Nothing was going to get in the way of completing this dive; he would not allow his work to be impeded by human frailty. Something momentous was about to happen.
And it was entirely fitting that he be here in person, to make the discovery himself. After all, nobody else could be trusted. Admiral Spartan had proven himself weak—dangerously weak. This was not a time for going soft or for second-guessing. Spartan had been doing too much of both, lately, to retain the helm of an operation as critical as this one.
In recent days, it had grown clear to Korolis that the admiral was becoming unfit for command. The surprise, even dismay, he’d shown at Asher’s death—the single greatest impediment to their progress—had been only the first sign. And his unmanly grief over what happened to Marble One, in truth just a casualty of war. But the admiral’s willingness to listen to the poisonous, traitorous words of Peter Crane—that could not be borne.
At the thought of Crane, Korolis’s expression darkened. He’d known Crane would be a troublemaker from the first time he’d met him in the Medical Suite. Monitoring the doctor’s quarters, overhearing the long conversation with Asher, had merely cemented his conviction. All that cowardly talk about danger, about scrubbing the mission…Erasing Asher’s hard disk, as he himself had done—and isolating the equally suspicious Hui Ping so she could not assist with any data retrieval—should have been enough to keep the old crackpot’s crazy ideas, his alarmist pet theories, from infecting others. How was he to know that bastard Crane would be able to retrieve the data? If in fact he had, if it wasn’t all a lie; no doubt the man was capable of anything…
He calmed himself with the thought that the man was in the brig by now. There would be plenty of time to deal with him later.
The radio crackled. “Dive Control to Marble Three.”
Korolis took the mike. “Dive Control, go ahead.”
“Sir, there’s a situation we need to brief you on.”
“Proceed.”
“A few moments ago, the Facility was hit by what appears to have been an explosion.”
“An explosion?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What kind of explosion? Machinery failure? Detonation?”
“Unknown at the present time, sir.”
“What was the location?”
“Deck eight, sir.”
“What’s the present status?”
“No damage reports have come back yet, sir—automatic detectors are off-line and the situation’s still a little fluid. Power has been fully restored. There seems to be some issues with the environmental controls. Damage control and rescue teams have been dispatched; we’re waiting for a sit rep.”
“Well, pass it on when you get it. Meanwhile, have Chief Woburn take a squad up to do his own recon.”
“Very good, sir.”
“‘Hades is relentless and unyielding,’” Dr. Flyte said, more to himself than anyone else. Then he lapsed into a quiet, singsong recitation in what Korolis assumed to be ancient Greek.
“Over and out.” Korolis replaced the mike. Woburn could be relied on to deal effectively with the situation—he and his agents had been carefully selected for their reliability and their devotion to him, forged over countless clandestine missions in past years.
He now realized that, in the back of his mind, he’d always known this would happen: that he would need the loyalty and support of the black ops team; that at the ultimate moment he would be here, inside the Marble, to claim the prize.
Rafferty looked over from his perch. “Two minutes to interface.”
“Spin up the tunnel-boring machine.” Korolis turned to the old man. “Dr. Flyte?”
The cybernetics engineer fell silent, glancing back with his bright blue eyes.
“Commence final diagnostics on the robotic array, if you please.”
The response was another quotation. “‘Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier of your teeth?’” But—a little grudgingly—Flyte busied himself at his station.
As Korolis turned back to his own control panel, he allowed himself a grim little smile. Let Chief Woburn clean up the mess overhead. His own destiny lay below—three hundred meters beneath their feet.
54
Crane took an involuntary step backward, bumping his shoulders hard against the metal flank of the Facility. He stared in disbelief.
The platform they stood on jutted out roughly thirty feet over the sea floor, into which the base of the Facility had been embedded. Below, a bizarre, almost lunar landscape spread out toward the dome: the exposed sea bed. It rose and fell crazily, in small, alien hills and valleys and ripples, partly submerged. It was a dark-chocolate color, and in the half-light of the dome it shone with an eerie luminescence. It
appeared to be made up of a fine, muddy, foul-smelling silt.
But this was not what arrested his horrified gaze. It was the view above.
The dome that surrounded and protected the Facility rose in a gentle curve until it was almost lost from sight, far above. To one side of their little platform, a vertical line of heavy rungs had been bolted onto the Facility’s outer skin. These rose, in a straight and unbroken line, up the sheer metal face. Near the top of the Facility, Crane could barely make out the narrow catwalk that led out to the receiving platform for the Tub—the catwalk he himself had crossed the week before. Between this catwalk and their own small ledge, Crane could see one of the massive, tube-shaped pressure spokes that ran like a hollow skewer between the dome and the Facility. This, too, he had seen before.
Except now it looked very different. At the spot where the spoke met the wall of the Facility, torrents of water were spitting and boiling outward and downward in huge, angry spumes. This was the source of the awful roar: a violent cataract of water, jetting from a rent in the pressure spoke with the murderous intensity of a machine gun. Even as he stared, the tear seemed to widen and the gush of seawater increase.
Although half dazed by the awful sight, Crane was immediately aware of several things. Whether structural failure or sabotage, this was the explosion he’d heard. And despite the business-as-usual atmosphere inside the Facility, things were far from all right; if damage control hadn’t realized that by now, they would at any second.
With this single glimpse, all Crane’s fears, hopes, and goals reversed themselves in an instant.
For a moment he turned instinctively toward the hatch, as if to duck back inside and warn the workers in the Drilling Complex of their peril. Then he remembered that the escape hatch was one-way: reentry at this level was impossible. Besides, the sea floor beneath them was now almost entirely covered in black water, and more was raining down all around them from the widening breach above; within minutes, their tiny platform and the exit hatch would surely be underwater…
He suddenly became aware of a sharp pain in his hand. He looked over to see that Hui Ping was squeezing it as she stared upward at the whirling kaleidoscope of water, her face and hair damp from spray.
He gently freed his hand. “Come on,” he said. “We can’t stay here.”
“I can’t do this,” she murmured.
She had said much the same thing within the airlock. “We have no choice,” Crane replied.
Her eyes moved to his for a moment. Then she lowered them. “I’m afraid of heights,” she said.
Crane stared at her. Shit. Oh, shit.
He took a deep breath. Then—trying to ignore the furious storm of water overhead and the icy rain that fell around them—he put a hand on her shoulders and stared kindly into her eyes. “There’s no choice now, Hui. You’ve got to.”
“But—”
“It’s the only way. I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”
She looked at him a moment longer, water streaming down her cheeks. Then she swallowed, gave a faint nod.
He turned her toward the gray metal wall of the Facility, placed her right hand on the lowest rung. “Just take it one step at a time.”
For a moment she remained motionless, and Crane wondered if her fear had immobilized her. Then—slowly, tentatively—she placed her left hand on the next rung; tested her grip; pulled herself up, fitting her left foot onto the lowest rung.
“That’s it,” he said encouragingly over the roar of water. “That’s it.”
She pulled herself up another few rungs and he began climbing as well, staying as close to her as possible. The rungs were cold and treacherously slippery. The smell of salt water was thick in his nostrils.
They climbed very slowly, their silence broken only by Hui’s faint gasps of effort. The roar grew louder, and Crane ventured another glance upward. Vast sheets of water were coruscating out from the breach now, curling and twisting away in downward spirals. A faint mist, born of the violently atomized water, was rising everywhere in ragged sheets; illuminated by the weak sodium lights, it looked ethereal and strange, treacherously beautiful.
Hui’s foot slipped, her shoe skidding dangerously close to Crane’s face. She let out a cry and pressed herself tightly against the rungs.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Just take it easy,” Crane said soothingly. “Nice and slow. Don’t look down.”
Hui nodded without turning her head. Taking a fresh grip on the rungs, she began climbing again, breathing hard.
They continued upward at the same, plodding pace. Crane estimated they’d climbed about forty feet so far. The torrents of water were growing stronger, spattering hard against his hands and face. The closer they got to the actual breach, he knew, the more violent it would get.
Another minute or two of climbing, then Hui stopped, gasping. “Need to rest.”
“No problem. Make sure you’ve got a secure grip, then lean in against the rungs. You’re doing great.” Secretly, Crane was glad for a break, as well: his chest was heaving, and his fingers ached from gripping the cold metal rungs.
He guessed they were now probably just outside the Barrier. The skin of the Facility stretched out from them in all directions, a vast, gray monolithic cliff face of metal. Crane looked down, between his feet. The rungs they had already climbed fell away, a straight line leading into the spray and mist below. He could just make out the small platform they had first emerged onto, barely more than a speck far beneath him. Still farther down, at the extreme limits of visibility, the sea floor was now entirely covered by restless, roiling ocean.
“There’s something I haven’t asked,” he shouted over the roar of the water.
Hui kept her gaze on the metal rungs. “What?”
“Where do we reenter the Facility?”
“I’m not sure.”
This stopped him. “Excuse me?”
“I know there’s one, maybe two access hatches on the upper floors. But I don’t know what decks they’re on.”
“Fair enough.” Crane wiped his dripping eyes, shook the water from his hair.
They had, he estimated, perhaps as many as a hundred more feet left to climb. From his precarious vantage point, he glanced uneasily up at the damaged pressure spoke. It was just two floors or so above them now, a massive, horizontal spar half obscured by the cascades that jetted from the rupture in its skin. The blizzard of water was so intense Crane was unable to tell if the Facility had been punctured, as well. He let his eye travel farther up the line of rungs. Luckily, they were bolted at some distance from the spoke. Even so, the rungs directly overhead were being lashed and buffeted by wave after wave of black seawater.
It would be a bitch to climb through that.
He felt his heart accelerating, and the muscles of his legs begin to spasm. He glanced away. The sight was paralyzing; if he didn’t start moving again right away, he never would.
“Let’s get going,” he called out over the cataract.
They resumed their slow climb. With each new rung they ascended, the force of water against them grew stronger. Where before it had felt like a drenching downpour, now—as they began to draw level with the breach—the water was coming at them more and more horizontally.
Crane could barely see Hui’s legs amid the water. “Careful!” he shouted. “Be sure you’re secure before taking a new step!” He opened his mouth again to say more, but salt water abruptly filled it and he turned away, coughing and choking.
Pull up…anchor feet…reach for a rung…pull up again. Crane tried to think of nothing but climbing, to lose himself in the rhythm. The water was driving straight at him, filling his eyes and ears, tugging at his fingers, trying to pluck him bodily from the face of the Facility. He had lost track of how far they’d ascended now; and with water all around him—flooding over his limbs, blinding him, chilling him to the bone—it was impossible to determine by sight. It seemed his whole world was water. The
very breaths he gulped were more water than air. He began to feel light-headed, disoriented.
He stopped, shook his head to clear it. Then he reached up, grabbed another rung; his hand began to slip and he grasped the rung tighter, steadying himself. Turning his face away from the water, he took a deep breath, then pulled himself up. We must be opposite the spoke by now, he thought. This can’t go on much longer. It can’t.
Suddenly, he heard a shriek directly above him, the sound all but lost in the thunder of the water. A moment later something struck him violently in the head and shoulders, and he almost let go of the rungs. A weight now hung around his neck, jerking and thrashing. He stood in the blinding, choking whirlwind of water, fighting to keep his hold.
Then there was another cry, almost in his ear, and he abruptly understood. Hui had slipped and fallen. In a desperate attempt at self-preservation, she’d managed to grab him.
“Hui!” he yelled.
55
“Hui!” he shouted again.
She moaned, her cheek cold and wet against his.
“Hold on! Tight as you can! I’ll try to climb out of this!”
He steadied himself on the rungs, the muscles of his calves and arms screaming under the extra weight. Summoning all his energy, he freed one hand and reached up, feeling for the next rung. With her arms around his neck, it was torture; his fingertips touched the rung, then slipped away. With a grunt of effort he tried again, grabbing it this time. He half pushed, half jerked himself upward with his legs, grabbed another rung. He felt her knees press hard against his hips, her ankles lock around one of his knees.
Another grab for the next rung, another heroic thrust upward. And suddenly he realized that the awful torrent of water was ebbing slightly. This brought renewed hope, and he pulled upward again. Now his head and shoulders were above the jets of water. He paused to rest—chest heaving, every muscle dancing and jerking—then he pulled the two of them up another couple of rungs.