by Dayle, Harry
“We see six aboard. Transponders operational,” Ralf reported.
Two of the green dots started climbing up the gantry that supported the helipad.
“Blue Team: Red Team is in place. Proceed with caution.”
The screens didn’t give any indication as to what was happening, but Jake knew the plan by heart. It had been covered in detail, refined and honed. When he’d tried to sleep, early in the evening, in preparation for this moment, he had turned it over again and again in his head. Right now, two divers were feeding thick rope into the Lance’s propeller, choking it up completely. The engine would protest as it tried to spin the shaft without success. Jake hadn’t been on any kind of scientific vessel before, but he knew ships, and he knew that right about now, a series of warning lights and alarms would be going off in the engine room and on the bridge.
Movement on the thermal image caught his attention. Then, through Brian’s open microphone, he heard shouting in a language he didn’t recognise. Someone on the bridge was barking orders at the men down on the deck.
Just as they had planned it.
Two red blobs sprinted to the rear of the Lance, sent to look overboard and see what was fouling the propeller. They were met by members of the Red Team armed with Taser X3s they had extracted from waterproof equipment pouches. On the middle screen Jake saw the scuffle, and he heard the crackle of electricity as fifty thousand volts were blasted into the necks of the enemy men, who crumpled to the ground almost silently.
“Two down. Both targets Asian in appearance, and in uniform. Both armed. If these men are polar scientists, I’m a fried-egg salesman—” Brian whispered into his microphone. He was interrupted by the sound of someone shouting. They were swiftly cut off with another blast of electricity. “Make that three. You didn’t tell us about that one.”
“Didn’t have eyes on. Must have come from the dark side,” Ralf said, with no hint of remorse or emotion in his voice.
With the immediate rear guard taken care of, the divers began to work their way forwards, edging along the deck. Two of them took the far side, out of sight of the Ambush’s sensor array. Brian stayed on the starboard side, relying on Ralf’s aid. At the same time, the second wave of divers, Blue Team, began to haul themselves out of the water and onto the ship. They took the same route, climbing the stern, out of sight of the bridge and any remaining lookout.
“Red One: OD ten metres ahead of you, another ten metres after. That’s all I see.”
There was no confirming tap on the microphone; Brian was too busy concentrating on his task. He had his back against the wall. The lifeboat suspended over his head meant he was in shadow. A set of steps leading up to the bridge partially blocked the line of sight. It was a good place for an ambush. He pushed himself as far back as he could, then let out a whistle. Jake watched as the image on the left-hand screen zoomed in closer. With the lights glaring out from the Lance it was difficult to see much, but he caught a movement to the right of Brian. The thermal image confirmed that one of the lookouts was moving towards him.
“Red One: OD headed your way.”
As the guard rounded the steps, Brian’s hand shot out and grabbed him, pulling him into the darkness. He was dispatched with a dose of current, and folded away beneath the stairway.
The last guard made no move to follow. Brian tried whistling again, but he must not have been heard over the noise of the engine straining to overcome the bindings around the propeller. Very slowly, he edged out of his hiding place and crabbed along the deck, keeping his back to the wall.
He almost made it, but the guard was more alert than anyone had really expected, and he must have heard Brian’s approach because he whirled around, gun raised, and shouted something that nobody understood.
Brian, like the other divers, was armed only with a Taser and a knife. Close-combat weapons; discreet, silent. They hadn’t come to kill, only to take control of the Lance and find out what was really going on there. He had no means to defend himself against the man standing ten metres from him. Jumping overboard would be too risky; the guard could easily get off a shot or two before he hit the water. Instead, he raised his hands above his head.
“Red One in trouble. If anyone is nearby, assistance is required at the mid-section, starboard side.” Ralf remained as calm and detached as always, relaying the information to the other divers.
Jake could barely bring himself to watch, so looked away, choosing to regard the thermal scan rather than the terrifying view from Brian’s shoulder cam: the image of a man pointing a gun directly at him. He couldn’t block out the sound though, and the sound was of the guard shouting incoherently. He was raising hell, and now their cover was well and truly blown.
Several things then happened at once. A face appeared at the starboard-side bridge window, looked down at Brian and the guard holding him at gunpoint, then disappeared just as quickly. A siren blared out across the Lance. Jake could hear it outside without the aid of the video links.
At the same instant, on the thermal image screen a red blob with a flashing green dot popped into view, coming round the mid-section of the ship. Jake’s eyes flicked back to the middle screen and he saw the submariner approach the gun-toting guard from the rear. As he raised his Taser to the guard’s neck, Brian dived to the ground. A second later and he would have been comprehensively perforated by the spray of bullets that erupted from the weapon as the man’s muscles contracted around the trigger, a side effect of the intense electric shock.
That wasn’t the only gun to fire. Windows behind the bridge had been thrown open and gun barrels were poked through, firing indiscriminately towards the deck. The middle screen in the situation room flickered then went black, the images replaced with the words: “No Signal”.
“What happened?” Jake asked.
“Is Brian shot?” Amanda shrieked. Her hands flew to her mouth.
Nobody answered.
There was movement on the left-hand screen and Jake realised it was the two divers who had been climbing the scaffold-like structure. They had run across the helipad and were now on the roof of the bridge, pulling open a hatch and throwing something inside.
“Red six: where are you?” Ralf’s voice again.
“Almost… Shit!” Jake didn’t recognise the voice that spoke. There was the sound of a struggle, a shout, then the unmistakable crackle of another stun-gun going off. “Sorry, the engine room was manned. Okay…”
Smoke began billowing from the bridge hatch as the tear-gas canisters discharged their payload. Some of the shooting stopped, but it was replaced by more from the middle deck.
Then, quite suddenly, the left-hand screen also went blank.
“Generator cut. I repeat, generator cut. Blue Team: go, go, go.”
It was very difficult to make out what was happening from that point forward. With no video aside from the thermal camera, Jake had to rely on the occasional clipped voice report, and the movement of anonymous red blobs, some of which were accompanied by the tell-tale blinking transponder signals of the submariners. Even so, he had a good idea of what was going on from the planning. The Blue Team divers equipped with night-vision headsets were now sweeping through the Lance, taking out anyone who looked like they were a threat. Anyone and everyone they found was to be restrained and bound. They could ask questions later.
To everyone’s great relief, Brian’s voice came back over the speaker. Not whispering this time, but shouting to make himself heard over the sound of the gunshots. “Outer deck is secure. Red Team is heading down.”
“Your camera is out, Red One.”
“Affirmative. Broken whilst avoiding fire.”
Once below the line of the outer deck, it was no longer possible to follow the Red Team, even on the thermal camera. The thick reinforced ice-breaking hull masked their body heat, and played havoc with the signal from their transponders. The green dots popped up every now and then, but they skittered across the screen like penguins across ice. Voice communic
ations were similarly intermittent, with bursts of sound breaking through. From the snippets of information they had, Jake believed they were working their way through the two levels below the deck, from the stern to the bow. He thought he heard more tear-gas canisters being deployed, although the hissing sound could simply have been static on the radio channel; it was hard to be sure.
Sixteen
HE HAD HEARD them coming, of course. They were hardly discreet. As soon as the first shot had been fired many decks above, its distinctive sound filling every corner of the small ship, even finding its way into the deep storage room in which they were held, he had known they were going to be saved.
Until then, until that first gunshot, nothing had been certain. He had relayed their situation to the diver outside, through the tapping of Morse code. But the replies had stopped. There had been no message to suggest someone was coming to get them; no indication that this rescue would happen.
He’d been turning that fact over in his head since tapping the last dot of the last letter of the last message. Had the diver been captured? Killed? Or was the correspondent one of the terrible men who had taken their ship from them, and not a potential rescuer at all?
After that first shot there had been more. Many more. He had kept his eyes shut tight as he hoped and wished that whoever had come to them would not be overpowered by their ruthless captors. Above all, he hoped that his wife would be safe. She was up there, somewhere, among those animals. It would be so easy for her to be caught in the crossfire.
The firing had calmed down then. Just the occasional shot. Other sounds took their place.
Screaming. Shouting. Hissing.
The sounds were getting nearer. Whoever had come aboard was closing in. He’d tried to call to them, to make his position known, but his voice had long since abandoned him. The others were conscious though, roused by the gunfight. Some of them began to grunt and groan.
And then the bulkhead door had been opened. Just a crack at first. It was hard to tell for sure because unusually, no light spilled through. It was as dark outside as in. He’d had the feeling he was being watched, examined, like a research specimen in one of the labs up top. It was the only time his faith that they were about to be rescued had wavered. Why weren’t these people bursting through and freeing them? He had worked it out just before the submariners entered the room. They hadn’t known for sure that this was where the captives were being held. They’d been scouting, making sure it was safe.
And now, here they were: divers, peeling off night-vision masks and filling the room with light from pocket torches.
Their saviours had come at last.
Seventeen
BLUE TEAM REPORTED back first.
“We have the bridge. Repeat, we have taken the bridge.”
“Understood. Red Team is advancing below.”
There was a collective sigh from around the situation room. The atmosphere had become heavy without anyone really noticing. Now that the submariners were apparently in control of the upper decks of the Lance, much of the tension was released.
Brian reported shortly after.
“We have found the prisoners. They’re in a bad way. Alert medical that we will be bringing in twelve, repeat twelve crew who will require immediate attention.”
Someone from the Red Team must have gone back to the engine room, because shortly after that message was relayed, the lights came back on.
• • •
Blissfully unaware of the events unfolding just a kilometre away from the other side of the ship, Grace Garet was up early again. And again, she was writing up the report of her previous night’s exploits. Her pocket notebook lay open on her little square desk, and she referred back to it frequently as she wrote a more detailed narrative of events in a much larger book. It wasn’t something she had any intention of showing Max, at least not yet. It was more a matter of being professional and doing the job she had been trained for.
She put down her pen, shook the cramp out of her hand, and read back through what she had written.
After having had my cover almost blown by the indiscretions of the gardener, I proceeded to follow Mrs Heyton as she walked away from the Pytheas Restaurant, in the direction of the front of the ship. More than once she turned around. I believe she was making sure that she was not being followed. Each time, I was able to avoid being seen.
Mrs Heyton summoned an elevator and entered it alone. This made following her very difficult as I had to wait for her to exit in order to determine which floor she got out on. The elevator stopped at deck eleven. I had already summoned the other elevator, and it arrived presently. I used this to take me to deck eleven, where I began to search for Mrs Heyton. My first thought was to avoid the outer sun deck and concentrate my search on the inner area. My hunch was proved correct as I found her not far away, still carrying two portions of dinner rations. I exited onto the sun deck and followed closely, keeping her in sight at all times through the windows.
Mrs Heyton stopped at cabin 1124. She did not knock, but the door opened from the inside. I conclude from this that someone was waiting for her, watching for her arrival from the spy hole in the door. Before entering the cabin, she once again looked around, as if making sure she had not been followed. Her behaviour can only be described as suspicious.
At this point I made a judgement to stake out the cabin with the aim of finding out if anyone other than Mr Heyton was present. The sun deck provided me with cover, and I was able to position a deck chair in such a way as to keep the cabin in view. Mrs Heyton left the cabin shortly after arriving. I was unable to follow her and maintain my surveillance. Over the course of one hour, I watched five people arriving at and leaving cabin 1124. All of these were women in their sixties, and all carried two portions of rations. One of these women was Mrs Moran, who had previously been reported missing.
Mrs Moran was the last woman I saw arrive. When she left, I decided to follow her. She led me (unknowingly) to another cabin on the other side of the ship, cabin 1182. The door was opened to her without her knocking.
Due to the position of cabin 1182 it was not possible to watch it without being seen by anyone who may have been using the spy hole, so I returned to 1124 and took up my position there once again. For a half hour nobody came to the cabin, but then there were many more arrivals. This time they were mainly young people. I noted the following during the next thirty minutes:
- A young man, estimated mid-twenties.
- A middle-aged man.
- A couple I estimated to be in their thirties.
- Two women, one mid-thirties, the other a bit older.
Most of these people looked nervous as they arrived, and all looked relieved when they left. Nobody stayed in the cabin for more than ten minutes. On every occasion, the door was opened from the inside.
After an hour of surveillance I left deck eleven. My next stop was Mrs Silvia Brook, where I was able to look up the cabin assignments. Mrs Brook advised that cabins 1182 and 1124 are currently listed as unoccupied, awaiting allocation. She found this surprising as they are both large multi-room suites.
Conclusion: It is my belief that some kind of illicit trade is being carried out in cabin 1124. The women in 1182 may be willing participants in this trade, but I believe it more likely that they are being coerced into delivering food there. It is my conjecture that these women — and their husbands — are being held against their will. The women collect meals from the restaurants and deliver them to the black market, which uses them as currency in exchange for other goods.
Grace nodded slowly to herself. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced there was a black market operating from the deck-eleven cabin. She needed to get in there to be sure. There was little point going to Max without proper evidence, so she’d have to go undercover and try and collect some. Her shift began at nine, so she had just enough time to put her plan into action before turning up for work.
• • •
The Lance was to be met by Jake, Vardy, Max, and Martin. They were the official greeting party. Unofficially, word had got out that the ship had been taken. Gunshots in the early hours of the morning hardly went unnoticed, and many on the port side of the ship had been awoken by the violent sounds of the liberation of the research vessel. News, as always in the confines of the cruiser, spread quickly. So by the time the Lance approached, there were a great many early risers on the outer decks, trying to catch a glimpse of the very first survivors to be seen since the asteroid.
As soon as it had become clear that the operation to take control of the Lance was a success, Jake and the other officers had begun final preparations for her arrival. While the submariners de-clogged the propeller and got the engine started up again, Vardy went in search of nurses, who had been allowed to sleep as late as possible.
Jake had called in on Lucya. He’d suspected she wouldn’t be sleeping, and he’d been right. Now she knew that the operation was over, she could try and get an hour or two of sleep before it would be time to get Erica up and ready for school, then take command on the bridge.
Martin had gone straight to deck two to wait for the Lance’s arrival. He was keen to take a look around the captured ship to get an idea of how they would proceed to their next destination with her. Either in tow, or under her own power.
The Lance circled around the Spirit of Arcadia, eventually drawing up against the starboard side of the cruiser. A cut-out in the high rim of her hull made it easy to rig up a wide walkway between the research ship and the starboard passenger hatch.
By then, the first rays of the morning sun were already scattering through the dusty clouds. Illuminated by natural daylight rather than the artificially white floodlights, the ship looked less menacing than it had overnight, although the great scaffold in the back still gave it a somewhat alien quality. Jake felt a shiver run down his spine as ropes were secured to the cruiser, and the walkway was heaved into place by a couple of sailors.
