“I wish I knew,” Pete rasped.
“Smart-ass,” said Frank, training the Taser on him. “Hana was blind to it, she liked you for some reason, trusted you. Maybe she was just sick of looking at all of us after all these years, happy to have a new man onboard. But now I’ve got you. And I’m going to get some answers.” He pointed to the screen. “How did you access this?”
“Fuck off.”
Frank smiled and pulled the trigger of the Taser.
Pete’s entire body went rigid again with pain. He blacked out momentarily, waking with the taste of blood in his mouth. Frank was looking down at him with a broad smile, the Taser still trained on him.
“I missed your balls,” he said. “Hit you in the belly. But I think I know how to aim this thing now.”
“OK, OK,” said Pete, raising his hands. He was having a hard time forming words. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Frank snorted. “What a pussy. I thought you would at least take one more shot.”
“What do you want to know?”
“This, dumbass!” he said, rapidly tapping the computer screen with a thick finger. “How did you access all this? It looks like everything in the entire main computer. And more! I’ve never seen any of this.”
“McCallister showed me how,” said Pete. “He gave me a key.”
“A key? Like a code word?”
“No. An actual key. A backdoor into the computer system only he knew about. He gave me the key and told me how to access it. He designed it himself.”
“Bullshit,” Frank said, raising the Taser.
“See for yourself,” said Pete, gesturing toward the deck. “There’s a keyhole there, under that tile, it gives you access. Right where your left foot would be when you’re sitting at the console.”
Frank looked skeptical. “You show me. Open it.”
Pete dragged himself over, and reached for the tile with one hand. He lifted it up so the keyhole was visible. The effort exhausted him.
“Shit,” said Frank. “You weren’t lying. Give me that key.”
“I can’t do that,” said Pete.
“Now,” said Frank. “I’m not fucking around.” He slowly raised the Taser.
“OK,” said Pete, surrender in his voice. “Whatever you say. Just don’t shoot me again.”
Reaching into his pocket as Frank smirked, Pete put his hand on the gun that had killed Ramirez. Aiming as best he could through his pocket, he pointed it, and shot Frank through the stomach.
A look of utter shock on his face, Frank fell on top of him.
Pete pushed Frank’s body aside and stood up. Frank still clung to life, but wouldn’t live for long, as his blood poured onto the deck. He clutched the bullet wound with both hands. The shot had been deafeningly loud; Pete knew he wouldn’t be alone much longer. When Hana discovered that he’d killed Frank, there would be no doubt in her mind anymore that Pete was either a traitor to the Alliance or a dangerous psychopath.
Pete quickly closed out the main menu on the console and returned it to the normal sonar display. To his shock, he saw immediately that the tactical situation had changed — the shadow submarine had maneuvered closer to them. Much closer. He heard hard footsteps in the passageway outside control, footsteps that he now recognized as Moody’s, running to investigate the gunshot in control.
Suddenly a bright red light came on above the console, and a recorded alarm sounded: “Torpedo in the water!” Red lights flared and sirens screamed.
Even more ominously, Hamlin could hear the sonar of the weapon itself through the hull, pinging rapidly as it homed in on them.
He grabbed a microphone and shouted, “Battle stations! Torpedo in the water!”
He was thrown to the ground as the ship was rocked by an explosion.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The ship took a huge upward angle, and Pete slid aft, against the conn. Frank’s dead body did as well, leaving a red smear of blood along the deck, all the way to the dive chair.
Somehow Moody had fought her way to control. “What the hell is going on?”
“Torpedo!” said Pete. “They’re trying to stop us before we get to Eris!”
She stepped over Frank’s body, barely giving him a look. “What happened to him?”
“He was getting in the dive chair as the torpedo hit. He fell—”
“How far are we from the shoals?” she interrupted. “From the island?” Pete needn’t have worried about providing a detailed explanation about Frank. For the moment, Moody was laser-focused on saving the ship and fighting the enemy.
Pete pictured the chart in his memory. “We’re right on top of the shoals… maybe two miles away… nine miles from the island. Four miles until we’re inside the safety radius…”
“Safety radius?” She looked at Pete quizzically.
“Just trust me,” he said. “That’s where we’ll be safe from the drones.”
“Four miles at twenty knots…”
“Twelve minutes.”
“Good enough,” she said. She lunged for two red levers over the dive chair and pulled them forward: the emergency blow system.
An enormous whoosh of air filled the control room as the actuating valves opened. All around them, huge banks of compressed air shot into the main ballast tanks of the Polaris, pushing out thousands of tons of seawater, making them instantly buoyant. The submarine shot to the surface.
“Ahead flank!” she yelled, and the automated system acknowledged the order with a ring of its bell.
The computer counted down their depth as they raced upward. Ninety feet… eighty… seventy…
Finally they broke through the surface, the ship actually rising fifteen feet into the air. It crashed back into the ocean with a splash, and soon reached equilibrium.
“We’re still at an angle,” said Pete.
“Because of the torpedo hit,” said Moody. “We’ve taken on a lot of water aft, weighing it down… maybe we’re still taking it on. Automatic flood control should limit the damage. On the surface, like this, can we make it over those shoals?”
Pete raised the scope after briefly glancing at their speed. Even at ahead flank they were moving at only seventeen knots, perhaps limited by the flooding and the angle of the ship. Moody scrambled forward and operated the trim system to limit the damage, frantically cutting out alarms to limit the noise in control.
The scope came up and Pete put his eye to it, quickly trained it toward the island. Directly in front of him, he could see the discoloration in the water that marked the shoals that surrounded Eris. Farther ahead, he could see the low brown shimmer that was the island. Above it flew a swarm of drones.
“We’re right on top of the shoals…” said Pete. Just then, they heard the hull scraping bottom. The whole ship shook as they slid over the top.
Just as soon, it was over. Pete kept his eyes on the scope. A drone, a scout, was directly over them, soaring into the sky, signaling their presence.
“It doesn’t sound like that worsened the flooding,” Moody said when the scraping stopped. “Flood control has completely sealed off the engine room.”
Pete took his eye off the scope to check speed; it was dropping. When he looked back outside, three drones were low to the water, flying directly toward them.
“Drones!” he said. They disappeared from view as they flew directly overhead.
The first bomb hit the missile deck directly behind them and exploded. The noise inside the ship was deafening. That part of the deck, however, was superstructure, and acted as armor for them, absorbing the explosion without further damaging the pressure hull. Through the scope, Pete saw a hole ripped in the steel, a jagged gash, but the pressure hull below was still watertight.