“Extra fuel,” said the admiral.
Finn walked over to the boat and pulled himself with his good arm up the small ladder that led to its deck. He had a huge smile on his face.
“Admiral, I’ll be your XO.”
“No, you be the commanding officer,” said Stewart. “I’ve been thinking about retiring.”
They spent two days carrying all the food they could from the tower to the boat: powdered milk, powdered eggs, canned vegetables, canned beans, and hundreds of tiny boxes of cereal. Whatever the impact of the war, thought Pete, the Alliance’s Frosted Flakes production had remained strong throughout. On the way back, they each carried a five-gallon plastic container of diesel fuel and positioned it in the control room.
They also practiced with the grenade launcher that had been salvaged from Carlson’s team. The thing was supremely well designed for war: tough and easy to use. With no instructions of any kind, all three men were soon shooting it accurately, until they were down to the last six grenades. They judged Hamlin to be the best shot.
That night, they decided to rest, and leave at dawn.
The sun was coming up as Finn started the twin diesels. They had tested them out the day before, and they required some minor work. Pete could see pure pleasure in Finn’s eyes as he worked on some last-second adjustments, his shirt off.
“You just going to stand there while I work?” said Finn.
“I’m an aeronautical engineer,” said Pete. “Can’t help you.”
Finn rolled his eyes. “Well, you’re second-in-command now.”
He gave a hand to Stewart to help him on deck, and then Pete untied the two lines that held the boat to the small cleats inside the pen.
“What will we name her?” asked Finn. “A ship needs a name.”
“How about Polaris?” said the admiral.
“No,” said Pete. “That boat was unlucky.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Pamela,” said Pete, without hesitating, and they all nodded in agreement.
“Are we sure there are no drones out there?” asked McCallister.
Pete nodded. “As sure as we can be. They must be self-destructing all over the place by now. And all of the ones within range of the island have probably made it back by now and self-destructed.”
“Who do you think will get here first when they realize the drones aren’t a threat anymore?”
Pete shrugged. “Not sure it matters. We’ll make sure there’s nothing left of value here. For either side.”
Finn turned a switch, and the little boat’s diesels roared to life. Pete could feel the power in the rumbling in his feet. Two plumes of black exhaust shot from the stacks as Finn gunned the engines slightly, and ably pulled the boat out to sea.
As they exited the pen, the bright sun almost blinded them.
“At this point in my career, I never thought I’d command a surface ship!” yelled Finn. Pete was hauling in the lines.
“Think about this,” said Pete as he worked. “You’re probably commanding the largest surface ship in this ocean.”
“I might make admiral after all,” said Finn.
He revved the engines slowly and pulled away to the leeward side of the island, the side that went hard against the control tower, right by the bluff where Carlson and her men had died. Finn cut the engines, and Pete made his way to the aft deck. The grenade launcher was waiting for him.
“Close enough?” shouted Finn from the bridge.
“Should be,” said Pete.
The deck undulated slightly in the calm water, something Pete hadn’t practiced for. He lifted the launcher to his shoulder, aimed it at the tower, and waited too long to shoot. The grenade went wide. It exploded impotently on the ground with a spray of gravel.
“Nice shot,” said Finn.
“That doesn’t help,” said Pete. He raised the grenade launcher again, and exhaled deeply.
He pulled the trigger again, and the grenade arced gracefully into the air. It went right through the middle of one of the broken windows; they could actually hear it land with a thump on the carpeted floor. There was a pause — then an explosion. Glass and smoke shot out of all four sides of the tower, followed by orange flames and black smoke as the diesel fuel ignited.
“Well done!” said the captain.
“Let’s do one more,” said Pete, breaking down the launcher and reloading it. “Make sure there’s nothing left in there.”
When they were done destroying the tower and all traces of what had happened inside, Finn gunned the engines and swung the bow toward open ocean. They surged forward and starting cutting through the waves instead of riding on top of them. Pete leaned against the aft railing as the boat accelerated. Behind them, Eris Island shrank into the distance. A dolphin jumped exuberantly in their wake. For the first time since he’d awoken on the Polaris with his memory erased, Pete smiled.
A FEW NOTES ABOUT TECHNOLOGY
One of the nice things about setting a book in the future is that any outlandish technology can be excused as artistic speculation. I’ve written two submarine novels set in (more or less) the present, and I can assure you that submariners, while a generous and enthusiastic group of readers, do hold me responsible for the smallest technical inaccuracies. So I welcomed the idea of writing a book set in the future, because it seemed to offer me unlimited ability to make technology do what I wanted it to do. That being said, I tried to ground this book’s technology in reality wherever possible. The age we live in offers many technological marvels, many of which require no embellishment by an author to make them soar.
For example: the Robobird. This anti-seagull weapon exists, a wing-flapping replica of a hawk (the company also makes an eagle) used to scare away seagulls and other offensive birds. There are several videos available on the company’s website, clearflightsolutions.com.
The big drones in the book required a little more embellishment than the Robobird, although we are clearly now living in the age of drone warfare, and advances in capabilities and tactics are hard to keep up with. The leap to make the drones purely autonomous, rather than directed by a “pilot” on the ground, doesn’t seem like it would require much of a technical leap, but rather one of doctrine. Many of us are squeamish about the killing done on our behalf by drones now; taking humans out of that decision is still some time away. But for some of the mere physical specifications of the drones, the actual dimensions of the thing, I borrowed from the ScanEagle, a drone made in a joint operation between Boeing and Insitu. The ScanEagle has been flying for the US military since 2005, and just like the imaginary drones in this book, it has a wingspan of 10 feet and a length of 5 feet. It weighs just about 40 pounds, and can carry a payload of up to 7.5 pounds. It can soar up to 19,500 feet at speeds up to 80 knots. So while my drones certainly are the product of my imagination, they aren’t too far off from a drone that has been flying over the world’s trouble spots for a decade. More details can be found at http://www.insitu.com/systems/scaneagle.
Degaussing, the process of reducing a submarine’s (or a surface ship’s) magnetic signature, is a very real thing. I have been through it myself while serving onboard the USS Alabama, a Trident submarine. The degaussing range I went through, however, was very much above the surface of the water. And the Soviets really did build a fleet of titanium submarines to avoid this problem.