Shadowboxer

by Nicholas Pollotta

  It was late afternoon when the Manta crested a mountainous ridge and the forward vidcams showed a wild flurry of movement on the plateau below.

  “Life, at this depth,” breathed Silver, astonished. Her hands moved over her console, activating the disk memory and replaying what they had just seen in slo-mo. As the submarine crested the ridge, there came into view a valley below them with a horde of merrows fighting a huge kraken. As the lights of the Manta illuminated the fight, the creatures all darted away.

  “Sea is full of it,” commented Delphia, polishing his sunglasses with a pocket handkerchief. Both went into a pocket. “But I didn’t think either merrow or kraken could go this deep. Guess I was wrong.”

  “How much further to the center of the target zone?” asked Thumbs, reclining in his chair.

  “Just over those mountains,” said Silver, hunched forward over the console. Her hands never stopped tapping keys, turning dials, or adjusting the controls. “Range eighty klicks.”

  Filling the dark bow screen were the faint outlines of an undersea mountain range. The jagged granite peaks registered taller than the Andes.

  “High or low, Skip?” asked Boomer, retarding their speed.

  “Umm?” asked Delphia. “Oh, ah, keep us low. Can you maneuver through that central pass over there? Between those two jagged peaks?”

  “Def. Plenty of room.”

  As the submarine started forward again, Moonfeather shuddered violently from head to foot. Deathly pale, she gasped out as if in pain, nearly falling from her chair.

  “Mother goddess, stop,” she pleaded in a strained whisper, as if mortally wounded. “P-please, s-stop the b-b-boat!”

  23

  Smoothly, the megakiloton Manta glided to a complete halt.

  “W-what did we just go past?” Moonfeather stammered, hugging herself as if freezing cold.

  “Umm? Nothing,” reported Silver. She checked her board. “Bare stone below us. Just an empty plain. We’re not even close to the foothills of the mountain range yet.”

  “Empty, my hoop,” chattered Moonfeather, going to the aft starboard screen. Only blackness showed. “Go back.”

  “Why?” asked Thumbs, puzzled.

  “Just do it!”

  “Skip?” asked Boomer, looking over his shoulder. Drumming his fingers on the arm rest, Delphia was studying Moonfeather. She was staring at the aft screen intently. Her whole body said she was looking for something she knew was there. “You heard her,” he said at last. “Reverse course.”

  A shrug. “Aye, aye.” Slowly, the submarine eased into motion and started the long slow process of backtracking to its earlier position.

  “Stop!” cried Moonfeather after a few minutes. Boomer did so. With trembling fingers, she reached out to touch the screen. “There. Can you feel it? Cat, it’s big. Huge!”

  “What?” asked Delphia, checking the monitors in the arm of his chair. “Thermal is clear, no metal registering, no movement, no magnetism.”

  “There’s nothing there,” affirmed Thumbs at weapons. His view screen was black, the sensor panel underneath showing a vector graphic of the area below them. In glowing green outlines was a cartoon seabed, rippled sand dunes, a few copses of hundred-meter-tall kelp, a couple of rocks, some brain coral, and not much more.

  “Sonar is clear,” added Silver, touching her ear. “Not even any fish in our immediate vicinity.”

  “No fish?” said Delphia, shaking his head. “That’s not right.”

  She gestured. “See for yourself! There’s nothing out there!”

  “Something invisible?” demanded Delphia, slipping on his sunglasses. He frowned. “Damn, nothing.”

  “A magical shield,” she confirmed. “Biggest I’ve ever seen. Ever heard of! Must have taken some hotdrekking mages to create it!”

  Twelve.

  “Who said that?” barked Moonfeather, whipping around.

  “Said what?” demanded Thumbs.

  “You okay?” asked Delphia in concern, lowering his glasses.

  “Nothing. Forget it. Just nerves, I guess,” she said after a tick, and went back to studying the black screen. But she began to hum softly, a wordless song none of them had ever heard.

  “This could be the Yamato,” Boomer said eagerly. “Maybe somebody else found her first and left her protected by magic.”

  “Get us closer and lower,” said Delphia, loosening his necktie. “Z minus one hundred. But go slow. I want elbow room.”

  “Gotcha, Skip.”

  Moving in a long slow curve, the submarine adjusted the angle of its hydroplanes to descend to a lower level. Time passed in silence, everybody straining to see whatever was out there on the ring of screens. The Manta was coasting at dead slow over the empty vista, every sensor on the trips, sonar beeping steadily when the monitors suddenly winked out and the lights died. Silence engulfed the bridge as the sonar, sensors, ventilation fan, everything stopped working at the same time.

  “Trouble,” came Silver’s voice. “We got trouble.”

  “Aye, roger that,” said Boomer, the clicks of dead buttons being pushed painfully loud in the darkness. “We’re dead in the water. Motors off line. We got nothing.”

  “Starting to drift,” said Thumbs, voice tight.

  “How can you tell?” asked Delphia.

  “I can see just fine. There’s plenty of heat in here,” he said. “Power’s off, but the compass and bubble float are still working. We’re .. . five, no, six degrees off plumb and getting worse.”

  “Caught in a cross current,” Boomer reported emotionlessly. “I can’t see drek,” Moonfeather complained.

  “Chemical lights,” said Delphia.

  “Nada,” said Boomer, releasing the non-functioning controls. “Haven’t replaced the ones used up earlier when you sprang your surprise.”

  “Great. We blow a fuse?”

  Swiveling his chair, Boomer turned to face Delphia. “Hey, you tell me. I got thrown off-system when the mains died.” There came a low hum from the captain’s chair. “Ah, that’s better,” said Delphia. “Everything looks okay.” There came the sounds of him walking surely across the bridge, his steps going around the periscope.

  The deck was canting seriously by now, the angle of degree steadily increasing. Somewhere aft in the boat, something crashed and a loose hatch swung open to slam into the bulkhead with a thunderous boom.

  “We’re gonna be floating sideways real soon,” said Thumbs nervously. “Hey, there’s no seat belts!”

  “What? Oh, of course not,” admonished Boomer. “If we hit something hard enough to throw you out of your seat, the boat’s busted to drek and you’re already dead.”

  “Silver, was the current going in the direction of the mountains or the plains?” asked Delphia from the darkness beside her.

  She turned toward the sound of his voice. “Sorry. I honestly don’t remember.”

  “Just in case we’re heading for the mountains, did anybody think to check the escape pods?” asked Delphia. “Are they in good shape? Do they have air and battery power?”

  “They’re gone,” rumbled Thumbs. “We ain’t got one on board.”

  “All of ’em?” gasped Boomer. “But that means we’re trapped!”

  “Yar. Unless you wanna walk home.”

  “So we just sit here?” Moonfeather hissed. “Boomer, do something! You’re the expert. It’s why we kept your hoop intact, chummer.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” he muttered. His chair squeaked once, and was silent.

  Then a spark flashed in the darkness, and a heartbeat later a hundred lights winked over the boards as they rebooted. The overhead bulbs flickered and strobed back on with full power as the floor gently vibrated from the engines kicking on.

  Caught halfway across the bridge, Boomer scowled and returned to his chair. “We’re on line,” he announced, jacked back into the controls. “Fusion plant at full power. I’m taking us away from that freaky plain.”

  As the submarine lev
eled off, Delphia made no direct response as he reclaimed his seat and removed his sunglasses.

  “Was that a magical attack?” asked Thumbs, rubbing his forearm nervously.

  Exhaling, Moonfeather ran fingers through her hair, brushing it away from her face. “No, that was some sort of technological interference.”

  “Technological interference?” Silver seemed shocked, and repeated the word. “Technological, eh? Can you do an astral projection to check it out?”

  Going back to the map table, Moonfeather barked a laugh. “Against juju like that? Frag you and the horse ya rode in on. Lots more easy ways to get my butt kicked.”

  “Then how about sending a water elemental to check it over?” asked Delphia. “Or an ally spirit. Don’t you have any spirits?”

  Moonfeather shook her head and pointed a finger at the view of the empty plains. “I don’t want anything to do with that thing!” She shivered again, in spite of the fact that the bridge was a balmy twenty-two degrees Celsius.

  “Want some hot soykaf?” offered Thumbs, rising from his chair.

  She gave a chattering nod. “Cat, yes. But I’ll get it. Thanks.”

  “Hey, Boomer,” said Silver, eyes glued to her screens.

  “Any chance we’re in an especially cold area of the ocean?”

  He looked at her quizzically, then checked his board. “Yeah, we are. Smack in the middle of a polar stream. An undersea river that comes straight from the North Pole. Howdyaknow?”

  “Technology,” she murmured, keying in commands. “Deep underwater, icy-cold area, took us out in a nano. Everything but the batteries. Magically protected by a shield of invisibility. Can’t be anything but that... What else could it be? Nothing. So there’s the answer.”

  “A coldframe?” said Delphia, incredulous. “Down here, in the middle of nowhere?”

  “What better location?” she responded.

  “Possible,” he mused, stroking his chin. “Unlikely, but possible.”

  “They’re almost always war computers,” Silver reminded him. “And combat always generates a lot of heat.”

  “Nyah, can’t be a cold frame,” said Thumbs. “Of this size?”

  “What size?” asked Delphia. “Damn thing’s invisible!”

  “Yeah, but the shield seems to cover the whole rocky plain . . . oh, I guess that’s just to help hide its location. It wouldn’t be no larger than a refrigerator, right? Just a big cube.”

  Silver studied him carefully. “You know about this stuff?”

  “Got a cousin who’s a drekhot decker, loves to talk about uniques and specials as if they’re bedpartners.”

  “How many cousins you got?”

  “I dunno, fifty, sixty, the usual.”

  “Lucky you,” said Boomer. “What’s a coldframe?” Delphia nodded at Silver, who answered. “It’s a computer built to operate on modified electronics. Superconductor wires and circuits that allow electrons to move without hindrance. Only gravity itself slowing them down, and that’s barely appreciable.”

  “And this stuff is faster than maser relays?” Boomer asked. “Drek. Fiber-optics operate at light speed!”

  “Don’t you believe it, cobber,” Silver told him. “Best cables in the world—even Fuchi lab bench stuff—only goes at about ninety percent LS. Cables are never a hundred percent clear, even under perfect conditions, which means distortion and reduced speed. But still a quantum leap faster than the best electronics.”

  She glanced at the plain below. “Till now.”

  “Why’s it called a cold frame?”

  “The original superconductor wires wouldn’t operate unless chilled to hundreds of degrees below zero. Pretty fragging useless for inner city work. But decker talk says that just before the Awakening some big brains got it up to room temperature. Down here, in this arctic subzero cold water, there’d be no variations of temperature to affect processing. No regular deliveries of liquid nitrogen for competitors to hijack, etcetera, etcetera. A coldframe is delicate and expensive, but will go a million times faster than anything in existence.” Silver stroked her deck and closed her eyes. “Ghost, what it must be like to jack into that mother!”

  Delphia exchanged glances with Silver. “Maybe.”

  Keeping his head low, Thumbs stood and advanced to the map table. Pressing buttons, he scrolled undersea charts across the flat screen. Some of them were hand-drawn from hundreds of years ago, some brand new and bearing the marks of Atlantic Security. None of them showed anything but water in their present location.

  “No record of something here that was moved. And this thing musta cost a fragging gazillion nuyen to build,” said Thumbs, accelerating the scroll function, maps flashing by at flickering speed. “Had to be somebody strictly major league.”

  Serenely, the sub continued to circle the suboceanic plain. “Maybe it’s some other pirates,” Moonfeather said from the hatchway, a steaming mug cupped to her chest.

  Throwing back his head, Boomer laughed heartily. “Sweet Davy, no! Freaking IronHell don’t have that kind of nuyen, and neither do any of the others.”

  “Silver, can we jam this phenomenon—whatever it is they’re doing?” Delphia asked.

  She pursed her lips in thought. “Maybe. We still had battery power during the blackout. I checked as soon as I could jack in again. But there wasn’t enough power to run anything important. It was the fusion reactor that scrammed on us. And I have no idea how they did that little trick.”

  “So we move on?” asked Boomer, sounding disappointed. “Leave? Frag, no,” whispered Silver, caressing the chrome jack in her temple. “If it’s technology, then it has to have a control system. All I have to do is find an access port or locate the fiber-optic cable connecting the coldframe to whatever system it’s operating.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll go jack into that mother and find out.”

  “No. Too dangerous,” said Delphia. “Any other ideas?” Fiddling with the controls, Thumbs spoke from the map table. “Perhaps we should damage the machine. Stir up a little mess. See who comes out to repair it.”

  “And talk to them,” said Boomer, grinning. “We got a special room down in the hold, strap-down chair, electrodes, all sorts of toys.”

  “Silver, can coral live at this depth and temperature?” asked Thumbs, turning off the table and going to a port screen.

  It still showed the large clump of pinkish brain coral, all alone in the vasty rocky expanse and receding in the distance.

  “No way,” she replied. “It’s too cold, too deep. They like warm shallows. But storms do break off chunks and send whole reefs off into depths like these.”

  Thumbs tapped the screen. “Completely undamaged?”

  “No,” said Delphia excitedly. “And it’s the right size too. You twigged it, omae. Silver, sweep that coral with the sonar. Let’s see if we get a picture of irregular branches or a compact cube.”

  “Done and done.” Her hands moved over the console, and the sonar screen sounded with a single powerful ping. It returned almost instantly. “Cube!” she replied. “We found it!”

  “It’s beyond the depth the sub can go,” Delphia noted. “We’ll have to use the Jym suits to get closer. Where are they?”

  Boomer was studying the signal image of the cube. “Down aft of the conning, near the portside machine shop.”

  Suddenly, the sonar was beeping wildly, the pings coming faster and closer together with every tick.

  “Holy Davy, red freaking alert!” screamed Boomer, staring horrified at the navicom screen.

  “Incoming!” shouted Silver, grabbing hold of her console. “Brace yourselves!” The entire vessel shook as if it had just rammed the world, throwing everybody out of their seats.

  “Report!” snapped Delphia, hauling himself upright.

  “Did we get hit by a torpedo?” asked Thumbs from the deck.

  “No, drek for brains,” said Moonfeather. “We’re still here, ain’t we?”

  The
Manta shook again, more violently, whole sections of the control boards going dark as klaxons sounded.

  “Both Of those were hits,” reported Silver, standing at her console. “We’ve got a double breech in the engine room. Fusion reactor dying, engines dead.” She tapped the controls with a finger. “Something odd here. The internal temperature is down a hundred degrees. How the frag can that be?”

  “Down? High explosives should make our internal temp go up, not down,” snorted Thumbs.

  “It’s a Snowball. We’re being hit by bloody Snowballs!” shouted Boomer, slapping the panels as if playing the drums. “Reactor to max! Life support to max. Sealing off the . . .” He rattled the controls. They sounded loose and lifeless. “Frag it, they’re all dead again!”

  Another tremor.

  “Hit again!” cried Silver. “Hull breach sectors nine, ten, and eleven. Bilge temperature is at minus four degrees!”

  “Boomer, what the frag is happening!” demanded Delphia standing, Crusader cradled in one arm.—

  “Snowballs! Armor-piercing torps loaded with liquid nitrogen. Kills the crew, saves the ship. A fav tactic of AtSec. Why the frag did you pinpoint it with the sonar, ya stupid slitch? Drek! There’s flooding along the main corridor and the cargo hold,” Boomer ranted, checking everything on his board. The boat shuddered again. “Propeller is gone, aft section damaged and taking on water. Auto-seals have closed the internal bulkheads, pumps gone.” He swiveled about. “We’re sinking like a rock.”

  “Depth at five hundred meters,” reported Silver, stuffing the Fuchi into her bag, fiber-optic cables dangling like tails. “Five hundred fifty meters, six hundred, six-fifty ... a hundred till crush depth!”

  “Abandon ship,” said Delphia, shouldering the chattergun. “How?” asked Thumbs, slinging the Mossberg over his neck. “Escape pods are gone.”

  “Head for the Jym suits!”

  As everybody dashed for the hatchway, another tremor shook the submarine, nearly knocking Thumbs over as he frantically typed commands into his console with his oversized fingers. “There,” he grinned, stepping away. “Whoever boards this baby will never know we were here.”