They were definitely up to something. Farther out, past the horizon, were dozens of enemy surface ships, standing guard in a twenty-mile ring. But none of them dared come as close as she had. She wasn’t remotely worried about being found out here. No one, not even her own command, expected her to operate this far out to sea, sailing the deep blue water. To them, submarines were not strategic assets; they were designed to patrol coastal waters and pluck off an occasional container ship, or deploy a landing party of saboteurs to blow up railroad bridges and other quaint targets. The Alliance submarines carried ballistic missiles; she carried a platoon of marines with rifles and hand grenades.
“Here,” she said, handing off the scope to Banach. “Tell me what you see.”
He turned his hat backward and stooped over, adjusted the eyepiece, and looked toward the island. He stared a bit, and then turned slowly, a complete circle, looking around them.
“No surface contacts,” he said.
“They are keeping their distance,” said Carlson.
He was pointed back at the island now, his eyes refreshed. “It looks like…”
“What?”
“Something is flying.…”
She took the scope back and stared on the same bearing. She now saw it, too.
“You have good eyes, Lieutenant Banach,” she said.
It looked almost like a flock of birds, but she could see the sun glint on parts of them. They were too big to be birds, if they could see them at this distance, but flew with too much agility to be airplanes, swirling and looping into the air.
“Some kind of airplane?” she said.
“Surveillance craft maybe? Cruise missiles?”
“Too many of them,” she said. She tilted the right handle of the scope toward her, tilting the lens to look upward. She saw nothing but clear blue sky.
When she turned the scope back down to the waterline, she was startled to see, directly in front of them, two plumes of water erupting from the sea, a deep V of spray and foam: a fast surface ship. Heading right for them.
“Surface contact!” she said. “Arm tube one, prepare to fire!” She pushed the button on the scope, marking the bearing and sending it to fire control. She was down to five torpedoes, and badly wanted to save them for something big — a carrier or, better yet, another submarine. But this little shit was heading right for them, and she might not have a choice. How had they found her? They might have sensors mounted on the seabed, she thought, or perhaps their silhouette, just a few feet beneath the surface of the clear, tropical water, had been spotted by surveillance in the air, a plane or even a satellite. The white boat was hurtling toward them, going at least 30 knots.
“Solution is ready!” said Banach. “Ready to fire!”
She watched the boat approach, still debating whether or not to fire. It was small, she noted, with a shallow draft, shallow enough to pass right over the shoals. “Prepare to fire on this bearing…” she said.
Suddenly, she noticed a formation of those small, odd planes flying directly behind the craft. Pursuing it.
“Wait!” she said. She looked down to confirm that they were recording the scene through the scope, for later study.
The planes were closer now, and they were like none she’d ever seen. They were small, and there was something odd about them. She realized they had no windows.
“Captain…”
At that moment, following some unseen cue, the planes attacked the speeding boat. The ship disappeared in a series of bright, small flashes. None of it stayed afloat long enough to burn. After a short delay, she felt the concussions of the explosions reach the hull through the water, a rapid series of dull thumps.
The planes pulled up, maneuvered excitedly, and returned to the island.
“Captain, what did you see?”
She took her eye away from the scope and looked at Banach. “I’m… not sure.”
They stayed at periscope depth for six hours after that, Banach and Carlson taking turns on the scope. Carlson watched the sun go down, and a few lights began to twinkle on the Alliance’s odd little island.
“Tea, Captain?” Banach had appeared at her side. She handed over the scope so she could have a drink. It was strong and heavily sweetened, like she preferred.
“Thank you,” she said. “You might make commander after all.”
“You flatter me, Captain.” He adjusted the scope, took a quick swing around, made sure nobody was sneaking up on them. “Have you figured it all out yet? We’re all waiting for you to tell us what is happening.”
“You’ll have to keep waiting,” she said. “I have no bloody idea.”
“Oxygen has drifted down to sixteen percent,” he said. “Shall we ventilate, Captain? As long as we’re up here?”
She knew it was a good idea. Her oxygen generators were overtaxed, and fresh air was good for morale. It was dark, they were quiet, and nobody seemed to know they were out there. They could raise the snorkel mast and let the ship take a deep breath of the warm, tropical air that surrounded them. But like she told Banach: she didn’t know what was going on. And she remembered those satellite pictures of the island, with its animal pens and medical scientists. Maybe breeding murderous germs and bacteria…
“No,” she said. “Not this time.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After defeating the seagulls, the commissioning of the drone station at Eris Island was a triumph. The success rate was higher than their most optimistic projections, the failure rate negligible. In the first few weeks, the drones took a deadly toll on enemy shipping, both military and civilian. Silent, grainy video from the drones was shown on breathless newscasts and widely viewed Internet clips. The clips were always roughly the same. An open, featureless ocean. A ship comes suddenly into view, far below. The ship would seem to grow rapidly as the drone swooped down, details becoming visible, the outlines of the cargo containers or the flash, rarely, of defensive gunfire. A single bomb would fall and explode with a silent white burst, momentarily drowning out all the visuals with the washed-out lightning of its high explosives. Then other drones would come into view, and the screen would become awash in white as they dropped their explosives in force. When the explosions dimmed and an image returned, what had been a ship was transformed into an oil slick and jagged wreckage, and drones were everywhere, drawn to the kill.
Enemy countermeasures were even less effective than Pete had predicted. Automated gunfire from bow-mounted guns would throw clouds of twenty-millimeter shells into the sky. Clouds of chaff would surround ships under attack, distracting the drones and degrading their sensors. But drones could overcome every countermeasure with sheer quantity. Whatever the enemy could come up with that could defeat ten drones couldn’t defeat twenty. If it could defeat twenty drones, it couldn’t defeat a swirling, relentless swarm of fifty. Enemy tactics evolved quickly from attacking to impairing to evading, until finally, inevitably, submerging.