He extended one index finger, pushed it into the container, made a beckoning hook—and jerked the finger out. Several wires obediently followed, and after that came a small whining noise like that of a frustrated insect. So far, so good. Straightening the finger again, he poked it at the only button visible on the casing. Out of a thin slit at the back of the casing popped a disc of shiny silver refracting plastic, thin as a sheet of paper, no bigger than an egg yolk. He just caught it by the edges as it came out, and slipped it into his breast pocket: possibly it was something Lucas could use. There were no other slots, no other discs that he could see.
It was pleasant, though, to have these few seconds alone down in the bowels of the ship, hearing nothing but the rumble of the propulsion systems and the power plant, the ship's heartbeat; a moment of peace, no voices, no crisis, no trouble. Heaven only knew what was going on up on the bridge, but it wasn't his problem, not right this minute.
Nathan breathed out softly. It was really a pain in the ass—having all the subtleties of the ship he had designed, all the systems he had intended to make life easier, effortless, for a crew, now making them more difficult—turning out, in fact, to be an Achilles' heel. Something for the drawing board next time, he thought, while in the back of his brain, something screamed, What 'next time'??! Nathan ignored it. A non-subversible backup for the submersible. Systems that can't be suborned because they're too simple to suborn—
Next time? he thought. Am I nuts? What 'next time'?
No time for that now, though. Cautiously he went back the way he had come, concentrating on not slipping in the oil. Up above him, matters would be coming to a head. He would be needed.
His mind went back to the sun on the blue water, and the place where no one had particularly needed him except Darwin—
And to his shock, he found himself enjoying this even more.
Frowning, Nathan scrambled back up to deck level.
* * *
On the bridge, Nathan was standing at the navigation table, going over projected maps of the region with Ford, when O'Neill called over from his station, "Captain, I've got her!"
"The Delta?" Bridger said, as they headed over to him.
"Yes, sir," O'Neill said, working over the console. "I'm picking up a low-band signal. A deep-ocean housing facility. The renegade sub is there, attacking. The colonists are trying to fight it off with some of their minisubs..." He paused for a second, listening, while Nathan and Ford looked at each other. Then O'Neill looked up, concerned, and said, "It doesn't sound like it's working...”
Nathan's mouth compressed. Not again. Not now. Just a little while more is all we need—
And overhead, the lights flickered, dipped down to almost nothing—then, for the first time in hours, came up to full again. There was a sort of restrained cheer from the bridge crew, and Ford looked at Nathan with great approval.
"Good boy," Nathan said, thinking of the hands flashing over a keyboard elsewhere on the ship. To Hitchcock, now working over her station at double speed to take inventory, he said, "What sort of propulsion do we have?"
"One-quarter normal," she said, sounding triumphant. "But still no weapons or defenses...”
Wonderful, Nathan thought. "Well, Mr. Ford. Suggestions?"
Ford didn't respond right away. Finally he looked up and said softly, "I don't believe this one's in the manual either...”
Oh joy, Nathan thought, and knew what Ford was thinking: time for you to take command... He opened his mouth to put the idea back where it belonged. Then he stopped—for a glance around the bridge told him that every eye was on him, waiting to see what he would say—and in all those eyes was a very obvious hope. The expressions were all those of people waiting for his orders... and all he had to do was say the word.
Nathan tried hard to think of some excuse not to take command... and could not. Horrible, he thought. But there are too many lives riding on this now. Ford is right, dammit.
I hate this!
Nathan sighed... then said to Ford, "Feed coordinates to Navigation and plot a course, Mr. Ford..."
Ford's smile was tight and glad. "Yes, sir," he said, and turned back to the Navigation table to bring up the fastest of the courses they had been examining. Nathan turned to watch the front screens, and felt that weight descending on him, the weight he had not wanted to feel. He stood straight against it and kept his face quiet: his reactions to this situation were now his own business, not the crew's—he now had their morale and reactions to think about as well as his own.
From outside, the WSKRs relayed to the screens their multiple views of seaQuest: now coming to life, lights coming on sparkling along her hull, and slowly heeling a bit over to starboard and easing forward, away from Gedrick and out into the dark waters in the shadow of the Long Chain Mountains. She leaned upward and southward, heading for one of the gaps in the Long Chain, for the deep research facility that had called for help.
Bridger watched her move out, graceful even on such low power, and hoped that they would have time to finish the work they had to before they caught up with the attacker. Otherwise...
And there was no otherwise.
CHAPTER 11
Even a quarter of seaQuest's normal available thrust was no crawl. She swept along through the waters on the far side of the Long Chain, making depth and building her momentum. Ahead of her, Loner surveyed the path, matching found terrain to mapped terrain, relaying what it saw and storing new data for current scan and later improvements of the maps of this area. Behind it, Mother came along, checking Loner's data and compiling it with side-looking sonar, while running checks en passant on the mineral content of the bottom terrain. In the rear, Junior hurried to keep up, acting as eyes-behind and monitoring the water above them for signs of any other craft in the area—not just the Delta: it could be inconvenient for deep-draft ships if a submarine battle broke out directly underneath them.
Inside seaQuest herself, the desperate business of hardware rerouting of circuitry and systems was still going on at best possible speed. Half the ship looked like a careless gastroenterologist had been conducting surgery on the run: the thick gut-looking conduits now lay down both longitudinal corridors, and reached up in ugly and haphazard fashion to wall panels, into ceiling vents, down into hatches on the floors beside the cetacean tubes. It was a mess—but increasingly, it was becoming a working mess.
Or so Nathan desperately hoped. He stood in the middle of the bridge, watching the science and military crew work feverishly to make the last systems connections to the bridge consoles. Fat conduits were running all over the place, so that you could trip and break your neck if you weren't careful, and all the watertight doors had had to be overridden—one more thing to think about, for if the fighting suddenly got bad and the ship took hits enough to start letting water again, the only way to seal her up would be by literally cutting off their newly resumed control of ship's systems. Nathan tried not to worry about this prospect more than he had to... though the problem ticked along in the back of his head, insisting that it could yet need a solution; right now, having to seal up compartments would amount to suicide.
Now Nathan leaned over O'Neill's comms console, watching him monitor the messaging that was coming in from the housing facility. They were "hopscotching" their available transmitters, using several of them in series and switching hurriedly from one to another, probably to keep the Delta from guessing which one was being used and taking that one out. It was a wise move, for if the rogue sub wanted to shut down the facility's comms entirely, it would have to target everything that looked like it might be a transmitter, and that would take plenty of time, and use up crucial weaponry. Smart people, Nathan thought. Hang on, just hang on a little while longer: we're coming—
O'Neill was following the housing facility's transmission from frequency to frequency, frowning at the difficulty of the chase, but at the same time enjoying the challenge of it. "They're using everything from Q-band to low-band to null-prop to orange
-juice cans and string," he said, sending his board into another run of scan mode to pick up the facility's latest shift of frequency. "God knows what the attacking sub must think—possibly even that their comms are iffy, and that the colony's messages might not be getting through." He grinned a little. "Good for us if they think so."
"They'll be furious if they think that," Bridger said. "I'm betting that the rogue desperately wants those messages to get through. Otherwise we won't come... and then where are they? All dressed up and no one to party with..."
O'Neill smiled grimly. "Well, if they get careless and don't watch their butts while they're hammering that place—"
Bridger shook his head, finding the possibility minimal. "I don't think we can count on that," he said softly. "I wish to God we could, but what that ship's commander wants more than anything else is the sight of us—"
O'Neill stopped, then, and listened intently. "More of the colonists' minisubs are amassing now, sir. Trying to block the—" Then he caught himself. "Delta-IV has fired!"
"Two torpedoes away," Ortiz said, and paused. "Impact. Two direct strikes!"
"Upping the ante," Nathan muttered. He had been afraid this would happen: yet another massacre of the innocents. Ford hurried over to him; Nathan turned. "Talk to me, Mr. Ford."
Ford did not look like a man bearing good news. "We've recovered minimal weapons control," he said. "Tube number one only. With manual firing capability only."
Not great, but sure as hell better than nothing, Nathan thought. A helluva lot better than what we had a couple of hours ago... "What about the targeting?" he said.
"Targeting systems are still down," said Ford.
Bridger frowned hard. "So," he said, "we may be able to fire one torpedo manually—but we have no means of telling it where to go..."
Ford nodded, looking unhappier yet.
Nathan stood there and considered, turned to pace... and found himself looking at the bridge tank, Darwin's "station." Darwin was hanging there, idle but interested, watching him, waiting. I am going to get you out of this, if no one else, Nathan thought, and turned away. None of this is your fault.
He tried to concentrate. Think laterally, Danielson always said. Because thinking linearly is what your opponent expects: nine times out of ten, it's the best he can do... and he won't suspect you of something he can barely conceive of himself...
Nathan found himself being dreadfully thankful that Marilyn Stark had never had much time for the Old Man. It was one of the things about her that had caused comment among the cadets of her year, who by and large practically worshiped Danielson. Stark, Nathan had heard, had found him "inefficient"—too warm, that was taken to mean—for Stark herself had usually been referred to by the other cadets as "the Snow Queen." At the time, Nathan had thought it was just envy for her admittedly brilliant scholastic and military performance. Now, though, he knew otherwise. A cold mind, that one, very fixed, very disciplined and focused; but that very focus could turn out to be Stark's weak spot, and exploitable. A collimated laser beam is unquestionably brighter than an uncollimated spot—but a spotlight shows you what's going on around the perimeter of a point, as well as at the point itself. Stark's very fixedness could well blind her, narrowing her preparations and confining them to options that her prejudiced worldview would make her consider likely or possible. The unlikely or seemingly impossible would be ignored...
Our only advantage, Nathan thought: that I know she's there, but she doesn't know I'm here. God, I hope it's enough...
Which still left Nathan with his biggest problem: targeting. How do you hit your target when you've got no way to tell the torpedo where to go to...? The nasty truth of it was that Stark had hardly needed to bother with the damage to the computer control of seaQuest's propulsion systems: removing targeting ability left her helpless to do anything but ram. For a brief second Nathan considered that. Even out the odds, ram the Delta's sail and take out the command center beneath it: would the damage seaQuest would incur be a fair enough trade? How many of the crew would die? How many of their passengers?...
You're crazy even to think she would ever let you get that close to her boat, he thought. And anyway, it's too linear a response... She'll be expecting you to consider it. No, try something else...
Nathan paced away from the command chair again, staring at the floor. If only there were a way to circumvent the computer's own targeting routines—but there's not: the virus is planted more securely in and around those routines than anywhere else, or so Lucas said. Stark took the route of least effort with that—and the most elegant route: even if we did recover a torpedo or two, she knows they'll be useless. Nathan laughed soundlessly, a bitter under-his-breath "hah," as he came back to the command chair again, turned his back on it, stared at the back of the bridge. She's succeeding even as we think we're beating her—making us waste our time on repairs that won't really help. Damn her! He walked toward the back of the bridge, past Ford, who was looking at him with concern again. Pity we can't just program a torpedo to hit anything that looks like a Delta. He laughed again, this time at the way his desperation was beginning to manifest as lunacy. Why stop there? Pity we can't just paint a big target on the Delta, and the words Open Here, and tell the torpedo, "Sic 'em."
He stood there, unfocused, then looked at the tank at the back of the bridge, and at Darwin again... and the idea formed. On the instant, Nathan hated himself for having it; but it would work, and there was nothing else to do. At least, nothing that he could conceive and execute in time.
Bridger turned quickly back to Ford. "Do our present torpedoes have manual tracking options?"
"Sir?" Ford said, surprised.
"I mean, can we program them to lock on a designated frequency?"
"If we need to," Ford said, still looking bemused, "certainly. Radio transmissions, or..." Then he followed Bridger's glance to look over at Darwin, in the tank... and slowly Ford's eyes lit with the idea.
"We can 'tag' her!" he said.
"Keep me in the loop," Nathan said. "This shouldn't take too long."
He left the bridge, and Darwin went after him.
* * *
It was some minutes before he got to the sea deck, and when he did, he found Westphalen there before him. Inside his head, Nathan said several very bad words: this was not an interview he particularly wanted to have anyone else witness. But he would feel as guilty about throwing Westphalen out of it, as he felt about the interview itself...
Darwin's head was up out of the pool on the sea deck, and looked over toward the doorway.
"Hello!" he said.
"He told me he was waiting for you," Westphalen said, looking at Nathan, and at what he carried, with quiet concern.
Bridger stood there in the doorway, full of feelings so mixed that he was nearly paralyzed, He hadn't said a word, had barely come in—but here was Darwin, cheerful and ready, as if he had been expecting him. And he might have been, Nathan thought guiltily. I haven't been paying much attention to the access tubes in the bridge, or the tank there—it's still so hard to believe they're there at all—that whole aspect of the design was one I never thought they would really take seriously. All the same—how long has he been watching me, wondering what's going on?
And has he been wondering? He has access to ship's communications through the translator, Lucas tells me. If he's wanted to, he'll have been listening to everything that's been going on. Though how much he understands of it, I can't be sure...
The rebreather harness he was holding was heavy; Nathan had to pass it to the other hand. Darwin's glance followed it with interest, then went back to Nathan's face. How much does he understand of my expression changes, I wonder? Does he even know they mean anything?... Oh, I hate this whole thing, 1 hate it—
"Island," Darwin said, "play!"
"Yes," Nathan said. "I want to play too—but this isn't going to be like the other games we had... though boy, do I wish it were. Darwin, I need your help."
"Help
?" Darwin said immediately. "Darwin help." That cheerful tone of voice again, absolutely ready for anything. If he were human, he'd he a Boy Scout...
Nathan shook his head. "You might want to hear what it is first..." Mostly because it could kill you—!
Darwin put his head up on the edge of the coping, looking up and a little sideways at Nathan. "Trust—Bridger," the dolphin said.
Nathan was rocked to his core. The easy trust made him feel more guilty than ever, and he wondered how much detail Lucas's vocabulary program had given the dolphin on the concept. "That's my problem," Bridger said unhappily. "I almost wish you didn't." But the lives of all the people on this ship are on the line. Both the crew, who know the risks, and the civilians, who never asked for them, who're trusting us to save their lives. And his life too. There's no way out of this. Whatever needs doing, has to be done—even the possible sacrifice of an innocent, for the other innocents— Nathan did his best to swallow the lump in his throat. "And I'll hold Bill Noyce personally responsible if anything happens to you," he said.
Darwin looked at him, saying nothing. It could have been that he had no idea what Nathan's turmoil meant.
Then again, perhaps he did know—and, by keeping quiet, might be trying to leave Nathan his dignity. Who knew what passed for dignity among dolphins, or restraint?
But there was no time to deal with it now. Nathan knelt down on the coping, putting the rebreather harness beside him. Off to the side, quietly, Westphalen said, "We're at six hundred feet. It's at the limits of a dolphin's tolerance. The pressure alone—"
"He's done well over five hundred feet on the island," Nathan said. "No permanent aftereffects: he knows how to move to minimize the way the pressure works on his body."
"Dive deep," Darwin said. And was that pride in the synthesized voice...? "Hunt."
"It's taking chances with his life," Westphaien said.
The inward pain hit Nathan again. Do you think I don't know that? he wanted to shout, but instead he put the pain and the response forcefully aside, looking at Westphaien as challengingly as he could. "Do you have another idea?"