The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  "Mm...well, say a team of ichthyologists want to observe a pod of hunting whales without contaminating their behavioral database; or...whatever's waiting for us up ahead."

  "So, ‘masking’ let's us approach quietly?"

  Justin nodded. "We have to. The element of surprise is the only advantage we're likely to have. So, in a couple of minutes, at the ten mile marker, we'll slow down, mask, and tip toe the rest of the way in. The main thing to remember..." he looked at each one soberly, "is to be absolutely quiet. I'm sure every one of you, with your training and experience, knows how well sound travels underwater. Even a simple cough can sound like a gunshot."

  There were nods from Sheppard and Cramerton. Wojecki nodded dutifully but avoided eye contact.

  "Alright." Marc clicked back to window mode on the Number Three monitor and turned his attention exclusively to the job at hand. Janese gave Frank a "well, here goes" look. He responded with a "whatever" shrug. Cy Wojecki ignored them both. His eyes never left the monitor.

  "Masking," Justin informed the mission recorder.

  Chapter 22

  The now-familiar drone of massive turbines faded to a hiss and then...nothing. The silence was impressive.

  "Have we stopped?" Janese cocked her head to one side, listening.

  "No. That's the stealth running mode Marc was talking about," Frank explained. Then he realized how loud his own voice sounded.

  "Okay, folks," Marc Justin quietly reminded them, "from here on, it's critical that everybody be quiet. Don't move around unnecessarily. Don't talk, not even a whisper. Just be still, and be quiet. We should be about eight minutes out. We're gonna come in at about two thousand feet to keep the lowest profile possible. This seamount bottoms out at about twelve thousand feet and averages a fifty-two degree gradient, so the walls are pretty steep. What I'm going to do is run straight at it, slow down, then kill the engines, add a little positive buoyancy, and let it coast in dead-stick. That way, we'll be completely silent, and we'll gradually rise toward the surface while hugging the wall of the 'mount. Hopefully, any kind of early warning system they might have won't work that close in or that deep, so we'll already be inside their guard. I'll slave my instruments to windows on your monitor back there so you'll know our speed, depth, ascent rate, and whatever else seems important. Don't ask questions and don't make comments. Save 'em for later." He looked at each of them appraisingly. "Everybody ready? Yes? Okay...let's do it."

  Marc disengaged the AutoNav. The sensation that flowed through the joystick into his hand felt good. He preferred doing his own piloting. He quickly fell into the familiar routine of alternately scanning his instruments in a counter-clockwise direction and glancing out through the vast acriliglass ‘fishbowl’ that surrounded him. There was a belch beneath their feet as Marc generated air pressure in the buoyancy tanks. As soon as he'd reached plus-one-point-five, he trimmed the VIKING nose-down to keep from beginning ascent before he was ready. It was like trying to stay underwater with "water wings" tied around your waist. On the HolarScope before him, the colossal flat-topped undersea mountain loomed ever larger in three-dimension. Every half-minute or so he had to tap the scale reference key to keep the mountain in perspective as they approached it. Finally, three minutes out, they were so diminutive in relation to the mountain that they exceeded the HolarScope's relative scale. They were now too close to the forest to see the trees. They were also too close to risk having their sonar detected. So he shut down all sonar emissions. But, at nineteen hundred feet, there still wasn't enough light from the surface to be able to see anything out there other than a gray, featureless void. Though the eyes strained, there was as yet no point of reference for the brain to anchor to. Until he actually had visual contact, the HolarScope was all that had kept him from ramming the twenty-ton VIKING into the near-vertical cliffs just ahead. Now the HolarScope was flat-lined because he couldn't risk using his sonar for fear it would be detected by whoever was...might be... waiting for them. It was like flying a helicopter toward a skyscraper in the fog. If you went slowly enough, and watched closely enough, you should be able to see it in time to avoid collision. ‘Should’.

  He pulled the throttle back to Full Stop. But, knowing the VIKING still had forward headway, he kept his feet squarely on the reverse thrusters.

  And waited.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  He double-checked the gauges. Yes, they still had forward headway at a little less than three miles per hour. Vertical ascent sixty feet per minute. He did a down-and-dirty mental calculation: they were rising roughly a foot for every yard they traveled forward. A three to one ratio. At fifteen miles per hour when he'd killed power one minute out, that's 3,960 feet per minute, degraded by forward momentum...with a hundred and fifty foot visibility, they should have visual contact at about nine hundred feet depth in probably...about...maybe...possibly...thirty seconds.

  It might have been thirty seconds. Later, he wasn't sure. It all happened so fast, and everything all at once, he didn't remember some of it clearly.

  There was a ship-wide sigh of relief when Centinela Seamount materialized from the gloom fifty yards ahead of them. One moment there was nothing and the next it was there. It was vast, stretching away on either side until it vanished into the gray void. Their forward momentum almost totally spent, Justin waited for the VIKING to glide the last fifty or sixty feet to a complete stop, except for their continuing slow rise toward the surface, still the length of three football fields above them. He was surprised when they continued to move inexorably toward the jumbled cliffs of the seamount. Alarmed, he checked his instruments.

  "Tailwind," Kim murmured. Justin looked quickly at Kim, who was staring hard at the approaching cliffs, mouth slightly open. Suddenly he had it.

  "Low tide," Kim whispered urgently. "We're getting a ‘flash flood’ from a reverse tidal bore!"

  Justin just stared at him.

  "The Mediterranean Sea is pumping its high tide through the Straights of Gibraltar and it's pouring over the Continental Shelf like a waterfall. We're forty miles away, but we're still in its path!"

  The VIKING had closed to within thirty yards of the jagged slope when Marc eased on the brakes, holding them off the cliffs with the reverse thrusters. He noticed, too, that the closer they got, the more turbulence they encountered, with the great ship beginning to yaw and pitch unpredictably. Having approached so quietly, he resented the rumble of water being pumped the length of the ship. He decided to back the VIKING off to a safer distance, regardless of the noise he made.

  "Reversing!" he said, even as he increased power to the thrusters. The VIKING continued its slow rise, but backed away from the cliffs.

  It was several moments before the unexpected noise from Number Three, rising quickly in volume and pitch, cut through Justin's concentration. Alarmed, he jerked his head to look at the monitor on his left.

  "What th'..." he started to exclaim.

  Wojecki was out of his chair, staring wildly at him through the monitor. And he was babbling, his voice increasingly more strident by the second.

  "...gonna crash! He's gonna run us into..." the rest of what he said muffled as he whirled to face Janese Cramerton and Frank Sheppard, who sat dumbstruck. Wojecki's arm thrashed around toward Marc again, as his body spun, staggering, back toward the monitor. "...die! He's gonna kill us! Somebody stop him! He's gonna kill us!"

  Finally, Marc became aware that Frank had thrown off his seat restraint and in two strides had closed the distance between the two men. Simultaneously, he realized Kim had gone flat-out through the Number One door in a low-hurdle stance, running for Number Three. Marc tore his eyes from the monitor long enough to be sure the VIKING was still holding station and in no danger of being dashed against the jagged slabs of the seamount walls. As he looked back at the Number Three monitor, Wojecki had apparently jerked free and shoved Frank violently away.

  Kim never slowed down. He came through the Number Three hatch low and fas
t, dropped his right shoulder, and took Wojecki cleanly off his feet. They slammed against the lab table across the room. Though the table was secured to the floor, stainless steel containers scattered like billiard balls, clanging with a deafening cacophony.

  Marc Justin groaned and looked away from the monitor with a pained expression on his face. His shoulders slumped and, with a look of resignation, he sighed.

  Wojecki rolled, got to one knee, and Kim dropped him cold with a bone-jarring jab to the chin.

  The CommPuter beeped. Marc scanned the console.

  "We have company!" he called over the intercom. "Twenty-five hundred feet and rising fast, off the port stern. Yoko says it's a minisub. Kim, get Frank some rope and duct tape, then get up here! Frank, tie up ‘Wild Bill’ and tape his mouth shut. Strap him into one of the chairs and watch him. Get Janese to help you."

  Kim slid into his seat at the console.

  "What took you so long?" Marc asked.

  "Sorry about that, boss," Kim apologized, breathing heavily.

  "I didn't see it coming either. I guess we must have done a pretty good job of sneaking up on 'em, or our resident spy back there wouldn't have had to put on his act."

  Kim shot him a look. "You think that was an act?"

  "Yep. That was a wake-up call for his buddies, in case we'd got by them."

  The CommPuter beeped again.

  "Uh-oh," Kim swung back to his console. "Bogey number two, starboard bow and low."

  "Looks like they've been lying doggy-down and deep, waiting for us," Justin said.

  "Orders?" Kim asked.

  Justin stared absently at his instruments. "I dunno. I'd say they want to cut us off from diving. Maybe they want to force us to surface. Maybe there's a ship waiting topside."

  "There's something funny about those mini-subs," Kim said in an odd voice that caused Marc to look over at him.

  Kim's hands on the keyboard were almost a blur as he ran through set after set of instructions to the computer. Sometimes Justin had a hard time separating the man from the machine.

  Kim finally looked up at his boss. He narrowed his eyes and tipped his head in thought. "The course corrections on both subs are...unusual."

  "Unusual? How?"

  "They aren't...fluid. They’re more…erratic."

  Justin waited.

  Suddenly, Kim spoke again, but this time more confidently.

  "They're drones!" he said, with a lilt to his voice.

  "Drones?!" Marc shot back, in disbelief. "Are you sure?"

  "No, but pretty sure...they're traveling in a series of straight lines, with obvious course corrections, rather than in a fluid turn, like a human pilot would do. So, they're being remotely controlled." He frowned and picked up a headset, pushing the earphones tightly against his head.

  "That's not all, boss," he said in a foreboding voice, and rolled his eyes at Justin. "Listen to this." He quickly tapped a series of keys and the speakers came to life.

  Marc sensed, rather than heard, a low, cyclical thrum, almost at the limits of human detection.

  "What's that? A ship?"

  Kim didn't answer, but began caressing the keys. Marc checked his console.

  "We've got about twenty seconds ol' buddy before the subs are on us. Tell me whatcha gotta tell me."

  Kim whirled around to face him. "You're not gonna like this," he warned.

  "Ohhh, me. Let's have it." Marc hated to ask.

  "Yoko says that sound is heavy machinery...motors, turbines, junk like that."

  "Yeah?" Justin cringed, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  Kim made a face. "She says it's..."

  "Yeah? Yeah?"

  "...inside the mountain," Kim finished in a rush.

  Justin just looked at him. He knew better than to question Yoko. If she said it was there, it was there. He exhaled slowly.

  "Okay......okay..." he said, as much to himself as anyone else. He pursed his lips and glanced around for inspiration.

  "Let's see what these sheepdogs want us to do," he said, galvanized into action. "Everybody hang on."

  He grabbed the joystick, snatched it to eight o'clock, kicked the reverse thrusters with one foot and the accelerator with the other one. The massive ship bucked, slammed into reverse, and then heeled to port and shot into a climbing left turn like its tail was on fire.

  "How sure are you about those minis being drones?" he called to Kim over the screaming crescendo of the turbines.

  Kim, now lifted six feet higher than his boss and feeling the G's because of the steep banking left turn, tugged his seat belt a little tighter. "Pretty sure," he said in a slightly strained voice.

  "Sure enough to shoot 'em down?" Justin asked in a cold and flat voice.

  Kim turned so he could see Justin's profile. One look, and he knew he wasn't kidding. He thought back quickly of the subs' course aberrations and of his own evaluation of the data.

  "Yes," he replied tightly.

  "Was that a 'yes'?" Marc challenged in a louder voice.

  Kim continued to stare at his boss. After several seconds, Justin slowly turned his head and looked him in the eye.

  Kim slowly bobbed his head, eyes locked, and said again, "Yes."

  Marc turned back to his console and brought all detection systems back up. The HolarScope came alive as the stealth mode unmasked.

  "Drop the cannon and charge it," he ordered. "I'll hold this turn until you're ready. Then I'm gonna come around and we're gonna play a little ‘chicken’," he said nastily.

  Kim scrambled from his seat, put all his sea legs into the tight turn, and staggered to the sonic cannon to Marc's right. He undogged the restraints, swung the ugly black weapon down and locked it into position, flipped off the safety, jabbed the CHARGE button, and waited for the red light to change to green.

  "I have charge," he called as the green light appeared, and braced himself against falling because of the canted deck beneath his feet. He felt the deck roll back to horizontal, sway twice, and steady as Justin locked in on one of the oncoming vehicles somewhere out there in the dim gray gloom. He took three slow, deep breaths to hyperventilate and steady his aim.

  "Never fired on a minisub before," he said quietly.

  "Nope," Marc Justin replied laconically. "But these are the same people who tried to ram you with one, aren't they? I don't mean for it to happen again."

  The suddenness of the thought shocked Kim. That hadn't occurred to him. Now that it did, he realized that it made him angry. Very angry. He tightened his grip on the stock and trigger and stared hard into the gloom.

  "Everybody hang on to something!" Marc called. "We might hit a bump or two!"

  Kim leaned into the cannon and tensed.

  "You'll have a straight-on, high-speed approach, then a snap roll to the left! Okay?" Justin's voice was tight.

  "Yeah."

  "Go for a head shot! Make it count!"

  Kim shifted his balance when the deck dropped from a climbing left turn into a steep dive. It was like trying to stand up on a roller coaster. He glanced quickly over at Marc's console and wished he hadn't. Eighty-seven miles per hour and climbing. He'd have to be quick.

  "On my mark!" Justin called tensely. "Mark! Four. Three. Two. ONE!"

  In the space of just two seconds, Kim saw the mini-sub rushing at him, experienced an instant of flashback to the terrifying incident when Wojecki had charged him, felt the taste of fear rise into his throat again...and squeezed the trigger.

  Two-fifths of a second before they would have rammed the mini-sub at a combined speed of over a hundred miles an hour, Justin slapped the joystick to nine o'clock and the VIKING's voracious thrusters red-lined and slammed them sideways into a full emergency left turn. Somewhere in the back, Justin heard something crash as it tore loose from its lashings. But he heard something else as well. He heard the rattle of debris against the metal skin of the VIKING, like they'd run through a hail storm. The minisub had imploded like a fragmentation grenade in reverse
, violently spraying acriliglass in a three hundred degree arc.

  "Yoko, damage report!" Justin barked.

  Startled, Kim jerked his head around toward the CommPuter. He hadn't thought of damage to the VIKING.

  "With the exception of the propulsion system, all systems are normal," Yoko replied pleasantly.

  "What's wrong with the propulsion system?" Marc said, alarmed. His racing mind imagined debris being sucked into the turbines.

  "Maximum structural design parameters were exceeded."

  Puzzled, Marc frowned and said, "What's the cause of the problem?"

  There was a slight pause, uncharacteristic of Yoko.

  "Pilot error," she finally said in a cool, professional voice.

  Incredulous, mouth hanging open, Marc Justin slowly turned his head to look at his co-pilot. Kim's look so mirrored his own that they both burst out laughing.

  "Hey, I didn't tell her to say that," Kim defended.

  "Uh huh."

  "I didn't! Really!"

  Still smiling, Justin said "This artificial intelligence thing you're working on seems to be moving a little faster than you'd expected."

  Kim thought about that for a moment.

  "Yeah," he said, surprised by the thought.

  Marc turned back to the console. Their power dive had taken them a mile and a quarter out from the 'mount and 3,100 feet down. He tightened the turn until they had lined back up on the target and leveled out.

  The collision alarm sounded. Marc glanced down. Unless he changed course, at their present speed they would smash against the underwater mountain that loomed unseen ahead of them in 64 seconds. Without looking at the monitor, he said to the passengers, "Don't worry about the alarm. It's paid to worry for all of us." Then he looked briefly at the passengers in the monitor and smiled. It didn't seem to help.

  "Alright. We're gonna come in low and fast, shoot straight up, and hit 'em in the belly. Ready?"

  Kim lied. He shook his head ‘yes', swallowed and braced.

  "I don't ever remember a vertical powered ascent," he said tightly.

  Marc grunted. "Me, either," he agreed.