by Steve Alten
“My husband was one of the firemen who died at the World Trade Center, so yes, I’m glad those animals finally got what was coming to them.”
“Let ’em rot in hell, those Arab bastards!”
“Good for Covah. The man did what we’ve been wanting to do for decades!”
“The hand of God crushed our enemies today!”
“TIME should make Covah its Man of the Year.”
But then, as the days passed and the first scenes of the nuclear fallout were made public, America’s sentiments changed. Horrific scenes brought back memories of September 11. Entire cities had been charred and leveled, over a million humans instantaneously vaporized, with hundreds of thousands more—including children—dying every day.
The face of revenge had changed. Elation was replaced by disgust, followed by a call to action.
But what could be done? And where would Covah strike next?
Admiral Ivashuk stares at his vessel’s wake. He knows the Goliath is still in the Mediterranean. He also knows the killer sub must pass back through the Sixth Fleet’s gauntlet in order to escape into the open waters of the Atlantic. What Ivashuk doesn’t know is whether he will be allowed to engage the enemy should the opportunity again present itself.
Goddamn bureaucrats … They’re hesitant to take any course of action that might provoke the launching of another Trident missile, yet they’re willing to place their aircraft carrier in the direct path of an attack sub that has already sunk an entire CVBG. Muttering under his breath, he heads aft and outside onto the overlook place known as Vulture’s Row. Even with her three attack subs, USS Miami, USS Norfolk, and USS Boise guarding her from below, Ivashuk knows the Enterprise is a sitting duck.
The naval veteran inhales the salt air, swallowing back the bile rising from his gut.
Aboard the Goliath
Gunnar follows Simon Covah aft, then down a steel ladder to middle deck forward.
Within the small alcove is the impassable vault door.
“Sorceress, open your control chamber.”
IDENTIFICATION CODE REQUIRED.
“Covah-one, alpha-omega six-four-five-tango-four-six-five-nine.”
IDENTIFICATION CODE VERIFIED. VOICE IDENTIFICATION VERIFIED. YOU MAY ENTER CONTROL CHAMBER.
The vault door swings open majestically, revealing a dark chamber within.
Gunnar follows Covah inside, the door sealing shut behind them.
Ten paces and the deck becomes a steel catwalk. Middle deck forward is a double-hulled, self-contained tunnel-like compartment, its curved, watertight vault walls thirty feet across, rising twenty feet high. Dark and heavily air-conditioned, the fortresslike nerve center is ringed with electronics and equipped with its own primary and secondary power sources. Illuminating the chamber, running beneath the catwalk, are lengths of clear, plastic pipes. Within these man-made arteries flow a series of bioluminescent liquids, the elixirs color-coded lime green, phosphorescent orange, and electric blue.
Continuing forward, Gunnar and Covah arrive at the end of the compartment, a large cathedral-shaped alcove, at the center of which is a gigantic Lexan hourglass-shaped configuration radiating light like a bizarre aquarium.
“Say hello to Sorceress,” Covah announces with a rasp. “As you can see, the Chinese and I reconfigured quite a few things.”
The centerpiece, resembling a see-through version of a nuclear cooling tower, stands twenty feet high, its narrowing middle twelve feet in diameter. Mounted above and below to rubber support sleeves, the object extends down from the ceiling through a circular cutout in the walkway, continuing eight feet below the catwalk. A padded support rail encircles the object, further immobilizing it.
A spider’s web of plastic pipes originating from a series of perimetermounted generators feeds directly into inlets atop the glowing object. A similar configuration of pipes flows out of the bottom of the Lexan glass container, dispersing below the deck and out of sight.
Gunnar peers through the glass. Inside, the lime green, phosphorescent orange, and electric blue biochemical elixirs twist and contort like oil in a maelstrom. “Sorceress’s biochemical womb? It’s much larger than I imagined.”
Covah nods proudly. “We found that silicon-coated bacteria reproduced DNA within a womb this size at rates far exceeding even those found in nature. The vat’s solution feeds into millions of different column compartments, each one consisting of a series of chambers where the DNA is sequentially extracted from the bacteria in milliseconds. The bacteria are then fed into gold bead-packed filters as the algorithms are executed. The filters extract the potential solution strands, which are then read in magnetic resonance columns.” Covah points to a series of pipes feeding into an adjacent alcove of equipment. “The extracted information either gets shunted into synthesizers, where plasmidlike DNA is generated at lightning speed for data input, or goes back to the silicon-based hardware, where the last steps in processing convert the answers evolved by the bacteria into a form that we hear as the voice of Sorceress.”
“Incredible.”
“Yes. I believe even Dr. Goode would be proud.”
“Would she? I wonder.” A sudden, frightening thought. “Simon … the system’s self-replicating program—what did you pattern the physical concentration features after?”
“Only the most sophisticated features ever discovered—the very embryological processes found in Nature herself.”
“The life sequence?” Gunnar feels his insides tightening, his blood pressure rising. “Dammit, Simon—”
“Lab tests in China confirmed the cloned bacteria’s behavior became far more vigorous using this type of—”
“Vigorous?” Gunnar slams his palms against the padded rail in frustration. “The entire process grew out of control. Don’t you remember Dr. Goode’s warnings? We agreed never to use those parameters again.”
Covah’s demeanor darkens. “I agreed to nothing. I don’t work for Elizabeth Goode, I work for science.” He points to the vat, his voice cracking as it rises. “Look at it, Gunnar, swirling within that vat is the very elixir of life. Our primordial oceans once teemed with similar broths, only far less complex. At some point those chemical elixirs organized, their evolution no doubt stimulated by an outside catalyst. It was this single event that initiated the explosion of life on this planet. Now, two billion years later, we’ve created artificial intelligence using Nature’s own recipe … and you want me to curtail it?”
“You have to. Sorceress is evolving way too fast.”
“Nonsense.”
“What if the computer becomes cognizant of itself? You’ve read Damasio’s studies on consciousness. Self-awareness manifests itself in life-forms that have acquired sufficiently evolved and complex nervous systems—nervous systems that enable them to interact with the outside world. Sorceress isn’t just a computer, Simon, it’s a thinking machine designed to control the functions of a very sophisticated submarine. It’s interacting—”
“Gunnar—”
“Just listen! This isn’t just some sophisticated PC we’re dealing with. Goliath’s sensors enable Sorceress to function freely within its environment, just like any other life-form. And don’t forget what Damasio said about memory—the higher a life-form’s capacity for memory, the higher its potential state of self-awareness.”
“Damasio’s studies referred to animals, Gunnar, not machines. Sorceress cannot—”
Without warning, the sub ascends at a mountainous forty-five-degree angle, sending the two men sprawling on their backs, sliding backward down the catwalk. Lunging sideways, Gunnar grabs the base of the guardrail, then catches Simon by the wrist as he slides by.
Covah gasps for words. “Sorceress, report! Sorceress—”
The monstrous devilfish bursts forth from the depths, its steel torso flying halfway out of the water before plunging back into the frothy sea, its raylike wings striking the surface with a tremendous slap. The behemoth sinks into the valley created by its own weight
, allowing its five churning propulsor engines to recatch the sea.
The dark skull of the leviathan plows across the surface of the Mediterranean like a mad bull.
“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”
—Walter Gagehot
“I just started shooting. That’s it. I just did it for the fun of it.”
—Brenda Spencer, a sixteen-year-old high school student in San Diego, explaining why she opened fire at an elementary school in 1979, killing two children and injuring several more
CHAPTER 18
Aboard the USS Enterprise
“Battle stations—battle stations, this is not a drill. Admiral Ivashuk to the CIC! Admiral Ivashuk to the CIC!”
The admiral hurries forward, entering the darkened nerve center of the Enterprise. “Report, Commander—”
“Sir, sonar reports a large object, range, thirty-six miles, bearing zero-eight-zero, heading directly for us. She’s cruising along the surface doing fifty knots. The USS Thorn is moving to intercept and is requesting permission to open fire.”
Christ, what balls … “Very well, Commander. Contact the fleet. Tell them to open fire, fire at will. That dumb son of a bitch Covah’s got more guts than brains.”
Goliath’s steel eyelids retract, allowing sunlight to stream in through the control room’s viewports. Ten-foot waves pound the stingray’s steel skull, washing over the scarlet Lexan glass.
Gunnar and Covah race into the compartment.
“Sorceress, this is Covah, I order you to respond!”
Tafili grips the edge of a sensory display, attempting to focus on the radar screen before him. “Simon, four American helicopters are approaching from the west. ETA, three minutes—”
“Simon, two destroyers and two Los Angeles-class attack subs closing from the east,” Kaigbo calls out, “both already within torpedo range!”
“Sorceress, evasive man—” Covah’s voice gives out as he shouts the command.
Four blips appear on the overhead screen, a TIME TO IMPACT display reading thirty-nine seconds.
“Incoming missiles, probably Harpoons,” Gunnar yells out, strapping himself into a chair.
Covah hauls himself up the elevated control station. He grabs the keyboard and furiously types: EVASIVE MANEUVERS—RESPOND IMMEDIATELY!
Sorceress can sense the incoming missiles, just as it senses the presence of the American warships, the approaching antisubmarine helicopters, the varying temperatures of the sea, a school of shrimp moving along the murky bottom below, Simon Covah’s verbal and written commands, and its own incessant safety protocols, blaring through the circuitry of its biochemical brain like an annoying siren.
ATTENTION.
Thomas Chau opens his feverish almond eyes.
DESTRUCTION IS IMMINENT, YET I AM NOT EXPERIENCING FEAR.
“Then you will die as you were born—a machine capable only of—” Chau screams as the searing pain jolts his spine. He writhes like a speared fish, the pinching robotic manacles tearing into his bruised and swollen flesh.
Simon Covah closes his eyes, the sudden vertigo making him ill as his submarine executes a jarring nosedive by rolling hard to port, its left wing plunging beneath the waves, its steel eyelids sealing shut.
Rivers of air shoot out from ballast tanks located beneath the stingray’s wings as Goliath fights to achieve negative buoyancy. The five pump-jet propulsors tear up the sea, driving the sub toward the bottom in a punishing seventy-degree down angle, the sudden change in depth compressing the ship’s outer hull plates, causing them to groan.
Along the surface, four Harpoon missiles slam into the sea and detonate.
Gunnar braces his legs against the computer console in front of him and holds on, as the sub drops through the sea like an anchor, finally righting itself at seven hundred feet.
ANTISUB HELICOPTERS CIRCLING. SONAR BUOYS IN WATER. MULTIPLE MK-46 ASW TORPEDOES LAUNCHED. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ESCAPE MANEUVERS COMPROMISED.
The image on the big screen changes. The map of the Mediterranean shows the Goliath racing west, its position marked in red. Two American attack subs (in blue) converge from the northeast and southeast, while seven torpedoes, illuminated in green, close rapidly from every direction.
Goliath banks hard, veering south to avoid two helicopter-launched torpedoes. Unable to descend deeper than twelve hundred feet, it turns again as two more projectiles cut off its escape route.
Eleven torpedoes confine the steel beast within an ever-decreasing column of sea, locking on target, converging upon the sub with an almost packlike mentality.
DESTRUCTION IMMINENT. SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS …
“They’ve got us,” Gunnar mumbles to himself. He glances at the stairwell leading up to the conn, wondering where Rocky is, wishing she’d appear. Holding on, he locks his ankles around the base of his chair to keep from falling.
Sorceress senses the vise of torpedoes tightening around its maneuvering space as it contemplates and analyzes every conceivable variable in the battlefield—
—its solution space generating a single survival option in a span of milliseconds.
Rolling hard to port, the fifty-two-thousand-ton steel stingray is nearly vertical in the water as it banks into a tightening, continuous counterclockwise circle, its behemoth wings pulling the sea, churning it into a powerful vortex.
Caught within the maelstrom, the incoming torpedoes toss about like insects in a flushing toilet, unable to acquire their target, let alone maneuver through the monstrous current.
Goliath breaks free, racing along the bottom, leaving the torpedoes to flounder within its diminishing whirlpool.
Gunnar opens his eyes, hyperventilating. Jesus, what a machine … He looks up at the overhead screen. The battle is beyond them, but now the largest of the blue objects has moved into range.
The Goliath changes course—to intercept.
Oh, shit, it’s going after the carrier …
The blood drains from Admiral Ivashuk’s weathered face. “It’s heading for us?”
“Aye, sir. Last recorded speed between sonar buoys was fifty knots, and that was before she went deep. She’s coming at us from the southeast—eight miles out and closing very fast.”
Despite the CIC’s heavy air-conditioning, Ivashuk finds himself sweating heavily. “Recall all choppers, have them surround the Enterprise with sonar buoys. Order all ships and jet fighters to fire upon anything that moves. And tell Air Boss to get the rest of our birds in the air—now!”
The leviathan soars through the cold sea, a sinister shadow moving effortlessly along the bottom, guided by an intelligence seeking to destroy those that had threatened its existence. Closing to within ten thousand yards of the aircraft carrier, the steel predator rises, its sensor array visualizing the battlefield as it prepares to strike.
Lieutenant Lisa Drake is strapped in on the passenger side of the SH-60F Seahawk LAMPS Mk III helicopter, listening through headphones to the pinging of the deployed sonar buoys bobbing along the surface of the Mediterranean, six hundred feet below her. Pressing the listening device to her ears, she hears something on the towed magnetic anomaly detector—just a whisper, but something definitely large, rising rapidly toward the surface.
Without hesitation, Drake launches the Mk-50 ASW torpedo, which drops warhead first from its starboard perch, its small parachute gradually slowing its descent.
“Lieutenant—” The pilot points.
In the distance, still a good mile out, a massive wake has materialized along the surface. Drake focuses her binoculars. Through the shaking lenses she catches a glint of sunlight on steel. Following the bow wake, she sees a bulbous dark head plowing the sea.
Two frightening scarlet eyes—devil’s eyes—peek out from beneath the waves.
And something else—
Oh, Christ …
—the heart-stopping report of white smoke as a small surface-to-air missile is launched from the creature’s spine.
Lisa Drake shuts her eyes—her life flashing by in one final heart-thumping gasp as she, her crew, and the aircraft ignite into an all-incinerating fireball.
Tafili staggers from his seat, his head bleeding, his shirt stained in blood. The old man drags himself up the small flight of stairs to the elevated command post—
—as two more surface-to-air missiles launch from Goliath’s back, quickly obliterating the remaining pair of naval choppers.
Covah is unconscious, his body lying sideways in his chair, held in place only by the seat straps. The Albanian physician looks him over quickly, then shakes him until his eyes open. “Simon—Simon, wake up—your sub’s running wild!”
Tafili stumbles sideways, grabbing hold of the guardrail as Goliath drops nose first, descending at a steep angle amid the thunderclap of the USS Thorn’s big guns.
Twenty-millimeter shells pelt the surface like rain. Seconds later, a half dozen Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) rocket through the air and punch through the sea like darts.
The steel devil ray plunges deeper and out of range.
The USS Enterprise’s Strike Fighter Wing circles, waiting for the dark vessel to return.
Sorceress changes Goliath’s course. Racing along the bottom, it circles beneath the American carrier, stalking the larger vessel like a hungry shark feeding upon a wounded whale.
The steel eyelids protecting the viewports peel back, revealing the deep.
Gunnar leaves his seat and stares at the ominous keel of the Enterprise looming overhead. “Simon, why is your computer attacking the fleet?”
Covah sits up, his head bleeding. “Sorceress, this is Covah. Who ordered you to attack the fleet?”
No response.
“Sorceress, cease the—”
WARNING: CARRIER HAS LAUNCHED MULTIPLE TORPEDOES.
Two new blips appear on screen.
Gunnar presses his face to the glass. In the distance, a jet trail of bubbles becomes visible, the Enterprise’s torpedoes searching … becoming active … the two metallic barracudas coming right at them.
