"If you're a computer, how can you tell if I'm upset?"
"Your vocal patterns are in considerable deviation from the norm," the Old Man said. "Body kineses are indicative of stress and frustration. Also, your respiration rate is—"
"Never mind," Nathan said. "Another option courtesy of Lucas, I suppose."
The Old Man nodded. Then he said, "Has your family come aboard with you?"
Nathan stopped in his tracks. Very softly he said, "Your data banks are a little behind. Carol and Eric are—they died."
"I see," the Old Man said—and the voice was as compassionate as could have been desired. "Is that why you left the service before finishing seaQuest?"
"Yes. I moved to an island. I thought I'd be safe there. I knew that, coming back here, I'd have to... let people in again."
"And risk losing them," the Old Man said.
"Yes."
"You must have missed your work."
Nathan shook his head. "I still had work. Plenty to do. What I really missed was this. The sea. I'd forgotten how it felt. My pulse slows down, my head is clear...” He stopped. "Why am I telling you all this?"
"Because I'm listening," the Old Man said. "Or simply because this is what I'm for, and it's working."
Nathan laughed at that, and moved to the window looking out into the dark ocean. He put his hands up against the cool glass, feeling, trying to feel, the water just on the other side of it. From the dark glass, his face looked back at him.
"There wasn't a day that I didn't think about this," he said softly, "no matter what I told myself. Why couldn't I let it go?"
"Because it's a part of you," the Old Man said. "It's the best part."
Slowly Nathan turned to look at the image of the man in his tweeds. "I'm really glad you're here," he said.
"Why is that?"
"Because so far on this trip, you're the only one who's told me the truth," Nathan said.
The Old Man smiled.
* * *
A heavy clank rang through the docking bay, and the telltales to either side of the access hatch glowed bright green in the dimness of the auxiliary lighting aboard seaQuest. There was a brief hissing of high-pressure air before the hatch swung open—and water came through it in a solid column, crashing in white foam over the emergency team waiting below.
There was too much water, far too much. Flattened against the farther bulkhead and out of the MedTeam's way, Kristin Westphalen stared anxiously upward. She knew well enough that some overflow was normal even after a hard seal had been established, but never anything like this. It had to have come from somewhere, and the only place was from inside the TeamCraft that had just docked. Two of the medics went scrambling up the ladder and came back down again carrying a man in a beige science team jumpsuit.
Westphalen stared, recognizing the man, then hurried forward. Of all the people to be involved in search and rescue, or repair and maintenance, or whatever they had been doing out there, Tim Conway was the least likely. He was puny enough in the lab that was his natural habitat, but here, outweighed by all the brutal bulk of heavy machinery, he looked fragile enough to shatter. Drenched and barely conscious, his head hung loosely back on his shoulders as the MedTeam personnel laid him gently on a stretcher and began stabilization procedures.
Overhead another jumpsuited figure eased out of the flooded TeamCraft and on board the relative security of seaQuest. This suit was black, and it contained Lieutenant Hitchcock. She looked almost as bad as Conway—just as wet, just as shaky, but at least able to move without help. She paused, making sure that her fellow passenger was in as good shape as could be expected, then came down the ladder very slowly, one rung at a time.
Bridger came into the docking bay at a half run, slowed down hastily to avoid a collision and scanned the area. He shortly found himself being scanned, acutely, as well: everyone in the place was staring at him. And at what he was wearing. His uniform. The uniform...
Nathan frowned, hoping he didn't have another shaving cut besides the two he had already patched up. This had been only his second shave since leaving the island, and he'd gotten out of the habit. His chin felt naked—and he felt naked, despite the fact that the military-black jumpsuit covered much more of him than his original clothes had.
"What's wrong?" he said, going over to Hitchcock, who was swallowing hot coffee as if there were likely to be a run on supplies. "You people never seen a uniform before?"
She looked up at him as if she hadn't. "What happened?" Nathan asked. It wasn't such a pointless question as it seemed. Flooding, for sure. He could see that much already. Though most of the water had drained away by now, the residual splashprint across the deck was enormous. Far too big for the few gallons caught in a TeamCraft's docking collar. The real question wasn't so much what as how.
Hitchcock shook her head. "Our aft pressure seals blistered," she said. "We started taking on water fast, and I had to rig a temporary patch."
She gave Bridger a rueful smile, because that was obvious enough already, and glanced past the approaching Dr. Westphalen at the skinny beige-clad figure on the stretcher. The medics had an oxygen mask over his face, but his chest was rising and falling steadily and the readouts were showing a heart rate that was standard enough, if a bit rapid. In the circumstances, that was hardly surprising.
"We were at a crucial point in the patching procedure. He didn't want to let go until we got it done." She shook her head. "I gotta admire the little fella. I could tell he was scared to death, but he stuck it out..."
"So did you..." Westphalen sounded just as admiring, if reluctant to show it.
"Hey." Hitchcock looked at her, then at them both, shrugged and drank more of her salty coffee. "Gotta save the little fishies..."
Nathan took note; however casually she tossed the line off, she meant it. This might be the first step toward getting the two halves of his—no, dammit!—of this crew working together. He just hoped that it wouldn't need any more near-fatal incidents. What was it they said? Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action. Great. They'd had the accident already, and the enemy action was out there somewhere, blowing helpless victims to blazes while seaQuest sat here, helpless and unarmed. So where was the coincidence...?
"What about the hull?" Nathan said.
Hitchcock pitched the paper coffee cup away from her. "It's not leaking, but it's temporary. We won't be able to fix it right until we get back to Pearl."
Nathan nodded. "How much longer are my people gonna have to be out there?" he asked.
Hitchcock looked at him in astonishment. "Your people ... ?"
Nathan glared at her, having no time for this. "Lieutenant—?"
"Two hours, sir," Hitchcock said.
He looked around him at the busy medics, and beyond them, beyond seaQuest's hull, out to where the rogue Delta was doing ... what? "I'm not letting anybody die anywhere again if I can help it." He swung back to Hitchcock, and the look on his face was that of a man who had run out of excuses, from himself or anybody else. "You've got one hour. Then we're pulling everybody back and going after that renegade sub."
He turned at the sound of footsteps. Lucas had come in. "You find anything?" Nathan said.
"I'm still trying to get at the virus," Lucas said. "It's real well guarded. But I was able to nail the time of entry."
"And?" Nathan said.
"Based on the data accretion above it, I'd say it was planted thirteen months ago."
Nathan thought about that for a moment, then nodded and headed out. Behind him, he heard Lucas say softly to Hitchcock with some bemusement, "Did he look different to you?"
Nathan smiled.
* * *
At almost fourteen thousand tons submerged displacement and near enough five hundred and fifty feet in length, the Type IV Delta was one of the largest submarines ever built. She was surpassed only by the U.S. Navy's Ohio-class SSBNs and the huge Typhoon PLARBs that had been Fleet Admiral Chernavin's last a
nd mightiest children.
Then came seaQuest.
The Delta IV had met her match at last, and she didn't like it. Though it was only the sound of her own engines driving the gleaming pair of phosphor-bronze screws, it seemed as though the huge boat grumbled softly to herself as she slid through the deep dark. A great white shark swung warily to one side and watched the submarine go by with blank black eyes as big as a man's fist, giving way not from fear—the tiny brain in its huge fanged head didn't know such an emotion—but from respect for something more deadly than itself. The shark was right—but not about the sub.
Marilyn Stark sat at the small desk tucked into her cramped quarters and stared at the faces in a photograph, lost in thoughts of long ago and far away. She could remember the day the shot was taken, and the photographer bustling around the bridge with his archaic, expensive spool-film camera, clicking away as he arranged and rearranged people until he was satisfied. If she had bothered to recognize anything as useless as happiness now, she would have called those happier days. And a better boat. Her boat. seaQuest, not this ex-Soviet antique.
The Delta was a capable enough weapon, but it lacked sophistication. It was a cudgel. But seaQuest had been a rapier. And what had they done, the UEO powers that be? They had taken the rapier from the hands that knew how best to wield it—her hands, a warrior's hands, last of many generations of warriors—and they had broken the blade and blunted the edges. And then they had sent it out again, the poor blunt broken thing, and hoped that it would work as well as it had before. Stark knew differently. She had seen the response of seaQuest's commander to that one torpedo: try to run away. If that was the best that UEO could do, they'd have been better advised to pull some Nor-Pac pigboat captain out of retirement and drop him into the bridge chair. At least he might not turn tail after the first exchange of fire.
There was a knock on the frame of the open hatchway that led into her cramped quarters, and Stark flicked the photograph into a drawer and out of sight. "Come," she said, and watched Maxwell step across the threshold. He moved like a man entering a lion's den. That was just as it should be. "Anything yet?"
The sensor chief shook his head. "Long-range sonar still shows nothing. They're not coming after us."
Stark uttered a derisive laugh. "They will. That's their mission. Whether they have full propulsion, whether they have weapons or not— they've got to try to stop us in any way possible. That's the UEO mandate."
She reached up to the bookshelves built into the head of her bunk, pulled out a thick volume, glanced casually at it and then tossed it onto the low table at Maxwell's side. Its impact was like a gunshot, and she saw him jump at the sound. Her lip curled scornfully. To think that this... this thing was the best of her present crew. She looked back at the photograph, at all the bright, hopeful, enthusiastic faces. Maxwell was there too. All of them were there. All of them...
"I could have commanded her as a peacekeeper. It should have been a Stark. That would've been my entrée into the history books. First commander of the UEO peacekeeper seaQuest. Instead I'm the first Stark to be relieved of command. The first Stark disgraced..."
Her eyes went as distant, dull and emotionless as any shark's. "What I did that day—tried to do that day—at the Livingston Trench, wasn't just for me. It was for all of you—my crew. And they all bore witness against me. Their captain. All except you, Mr. Maxwell..."
She had not expected a response to the compliment, because it had been nothing more than a statement of fact. For all his keeping faith, for all his being the best aboard the Delta, he had been nothing like the best aboard the seaQuest. But the worst honest man among traitors and mutineers has to be the best; otherwise the world stops making sense. There were occasions when Stark thought that her world, and her future in it, had stopped making sense a long time ago; and then there were times, like now, when all the sense came back.
When the seaQuest had come back, and given her a chance to recover her proper command—or take it away from anyone else forever.
"Captain," said Maxwell, reluctant as always to break into her dreamy moments. She glanced at him, and gave him as much attention as he deserved. "I don't mean to question you, but the crew's— They don't understand why we're provoking this fight."
Stark raised her hand and he fell silent at once. She shook her head. "This 'crew,' as you call them, were nothing more than a ragtag bunch of mercenaries with a broken-down ship and no one to run it before I came on board."
He knew that; they all knew that. And they didn't like it. Marilyn Stark didn't care whether they liked it or not, so long as her orders were obeyed without question. And if they weren't... Pollack had learned the answer to that, and in learning, had taught the others as well.
"I organized them, I gave them a sense of purpose, and now they want me to run? Well, I won't do it! Not as long as seaQuest is out there. You tell them well satisfy their petty greed and pirate all the colonies they want... after we complete my mission. After whatever incompetent the UEO's brought on to command my ship either radios his surrender, or rides her down into the abyss..."
CHAPTER 9
Gedrick Power Station was still little more than a confusion of twisted piping and perforated containment chambers that would take heavy equipment a couple of months to clear, but the Worst ecothreat was over. One by one, the swarm of TeamCraft and welder crabs that had been fussing around the main derrick and its damaged vent pulled back toward the seaQuest. The uncontrolled billowing of waste gases had been reduced to no more than a thin, dirty plume in the water, and as the last TeamCraft was silhouetted by the actinic flare of its welding torch, even that feather of poisonous filth dwindled to nothing The TeamCraft crew laid another patch, just for luck, then disengaged and headed gratefully for home.
* * *
Commander Ford leaded over the communications console. Chief O'Neill was running another systems diagnostic check, the third so far, and he watched lights glow and screens flicker with the mild half-interest of a man with nothing better to do. The inactivity chafed at Ford, and this was made plain in the way he paced up and down the bridge, peering at duty stations while managing to keep himself from actually interfering. The past few hours had dragged by for everyone aboard the seaQuest, all the more so because only Engineering had been able to get out and do something. Then O'Neill blinked at something he heard, muttered a request for verification into the live mike, smiled quickly and handed the headset up to Ford.
Looking dubious, Ford held it to his ear, listened for a few seconds; and then a slow grin began to spread over his face. He nodded al the message repeated, dropped the headset back into O'Neill's hands and hurried across to where Captain Bridger was staring thoughtfully at a screenful of data.
"Sir," he said, "they've done it." The grin was still there, and getting wider, as if he'd been able to play a part in the repair operation after all. And he had, in a manner of speaking anyway; if seaQuest hadn't been there, such a fast repair would not have been possible. "We've done it. The patching is complete."
Bridger had looked up as the exec approached, and now was gazing thoughtfully at him as he made the brief report. Ford had a sudden creepy sensation of déjá vu, because Captain Stark used to go off into those same fits of silence, staring straight through you as if you weren't there. Or were there, and weren't important. That had been worse.
His words seemed to go right past Bridger as though they hadn't registered, and there was no change in his expression. Certainly it didn't show any of the satisfaction that the exec was feeling. He had hoped for some sort of response, but this... this was disturbing. The Captain was probably still brooding over the renegade Delta, and about not being able to do anything about it. He could understand that.
Then Bridger cleared his data screen and stood up. "Very good," he said. "Meanwhile, be so kind as to call Dr. Westphalen and Lieutenant Hitchcock to the wardroom: and let's go down there ourselves. I think," he said in a low, confidential voice, "I've
found it."
"The virus?"
"Better than that. Our saboteur."
* * *
Nathan sat at the table, his hands folded, and looked at the other three. He had been wary, because the information in front of him could have been a double bluff, intended to lead anyone who went looking for information down half-a-dozen wrong deductive turns. Ford was a member of the original crew, one who could have been set up—or who could as easily have set himself up, the injured innocent, the man in the wrong place at the wrong time—who had been in the right place all along. Bridger shook his head, trying to shake that sort of tangled thinking back to where it belonged, in the garbage heap of discarded ideas at the back of his mind. It was like espionage: once you started distrusting everybody, it was almost impossible to stop.
He dragged himself back to reality with an effort and studied the screen, trying to get beyond the pixels of the display, trying to get inside the mind of the calm, closed face that stared back at him, knowing where all that crooked thinking had originated.
"I went back through all the system service logs from a year ago," he said. "Nothing unusual. So I checked the daily inspection sheets and personnel manifest for that same period. The seaQuest was in dock at the time, with a minimal crew."
"So?" Ford said.
"So the manifest shows one senior officer on board during that entire period." He touched a control on the table in front of him. On the briefing screen at the end of the room, a picture of a woman came up. A woman in the uniform and rank tabs of a captain. The Navy's ID mug shot didn't do justice to Marilyn Stark's coldly attractive features; but it had managed to catch something that Ford had probably become all too familiar with during his first tour of duty on the seaQuest. There was a shuttered, icy control in that face, a locking-in of more pressure than a human being should be expected to bear. Many captains became increasingly reserved as they moved up through the ranks, and as their security clearances forced them to become ever more reticent about what they knew. That was what had prompted Nathan Bridger to propose what had become the Old Man program. Officers with that much power, with that much knowledge shut inside their heads and no way to release it, could become... strange. The face on the screen had that look.