“Yes, ma’am,” said Frank.
“And how are our systems?”
“Everything vital is running, with the exception of radio. Propulsion is good, all combat systems are good.”
“Oxygen is low,” interrupted Pete. They both looked at him.
“How low?” said Moody.
“Fourteen percent in the forward compartment.”
“Christ, no wonder I was falling asleep up there. Can we increase the bleed?”
“One bank is empty,” said Pete. “The other is less than twenty-five percent.”
“And none of us can operate that oxygen generator,” said Moody. “We’ll just have to ventilate when we can.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said both Frank and Pete.
“One more thing,” said Moody, looking at Frank. “After the degaussing range, take Ramirez to the torpedo room — let’s shoot his body overboard as soon as possible. Before long he’ll start to… smell. Bad for morale. And we’ve already made an unholy racket — one body shot overboard won’t matter much at this point. Do you need help?”
Pete froze, filled with dread that he might have to help move the body of his dead friend, the friend he killed.
“No,” said Frank as he smirked and involuntarily flexed his arms. “I can get him down there.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Moody, rolling her eyes. “Can you operate the torpedo tubes? Shoot him overboard?”
Frank bristled. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve operated those tubes a dozen times.”
“OK,” said Moody, doubt in her voice. “Just checking. Get help if you need it, just get it done. The sooner the better.”
“Do we want to do the whole burial-at-sea ceremony?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” said Moody. “We won’t ring any bells for a traitor.”
Frank stood and snapped to. “Aye aye, Captain. I’ll do it right after we finish at the range.” He started to turn.
“Wait,” she said. “Grab a bowl.” She tossed a small box of cereal at him. “Let’s eat dinner first.”
After a silent, quick dinner of slightly stale cereal and thin artificial milk, the three of them headed to the control room together.
Pete stepped up to the command console and took it in.
Their own ship was represented right in the middle of the screen by a small green silhouette of a submarine. Behind them, about two miles aft, an upside-down V represented their mysterious shadow submarine. And directly ahead of them were two bold, parallel lines. From the scale on the screen, Pete could see they were about five miles away.
“The degaussing range,” said Moody. “I was privy to this part of your orders. I’m assuming for the drones…”
“Yes,” said Hamlin. “To reduce our magnetic signature.”
It came back to him with a powerful clarity. Not only the mechanics of the degaussing run, but the entire control room as well. It came, he realized, from a different layer of memory than the one that had been somehow erased. It came from a thousand hours of practice in this very room, etched on his brain like acid on glass. For the first time since he’d awoken on his stateroom floor, he knew what was going on, what he was doing. The feeling was intoxicating.
He stood on a small raised platform in the middle of the control room: the conn. On each side of him were the polished steel cylinders of the two periscopes, both lowered into a forty-foot well beneath his feet. In front of him, Frank climbed into a large pilot’s chair. At Frank’s knees was a control yoke that would actually drive the ship. To the left of the yoke was an old-fashioned brass engine order telegraph he would use to control the ship’s speed. Despite the gesture toward nostalgia with the brass control, Pete knew that it was an entirely automated system, channeling his orders for ship’s speed directly to the engine room. And while Pete would give the rudder and depth orders from the position of command on the conn, Frank would actually be driving the ship from his seat, his hands on the controls.
Directly in front of Pete was a console with several selectable displays. Currently it showed the sonar display: the two bright parallel lines that marked the walls of the degaussing range, and the shadow submarine behind them. He could turn a switch, and the same screen could display the status of the drone cloud, sensed via a floating wire that trailed behind and above them, registering each drone as it passed. If he turned the switch yet again, he could read reports on all the ship’s vital systems.
Where Frank could see them from the dive chair were the controls and indicators for the ship’s non-tactical systems: the hundreds of pipes and valves that kept the ship and crew alive. The panel was speckled with yellow warning lights and a few red alarms. Pete couldn’t read them from his perch on the conn, but he knew most of the alarms represented damage done by the mutiny. Of all the valves and controls, the most imposing were the two large yellow levers directly over Frank’s head: the “chicken switches” that activated the ship’s emergency blow system. They controlled a direct mechanical linkage that would fill the main ballast tanks with air and shoot them to the surface in the event of a severe emergency. It was the last-ditch safety measure they possessed, something they could use only once and only when nothing else would do, the submarine’s equivalent of a fighter pilot’s ejection seat. Both were designed to get vessel operators safely to the surface of the earth, albeit from different directions.
Pete flipped the switch back to the drone display. Hana looked over his shoulder.
“Medium density, undirected,” she said. “That’s expected given our proximity to the island. A flyover every ten minutes or so; doesn’t look like they’re actively seeking us or dancing each other in.”
“Very well,” he said. “Prepare to go to periscope depth.”
Moody looked at him, and Frank guffawed.
“PD?”
“I want to see the action of the drones myself, before and after. It’s the only way we can assess if the degaussing has been successful.”
“And?”
“And it’ll help us get away from our friend out there.”
“How’s that?”
“She won’t be able to do what I’m about to do.”
“That’s my boy,” said Moody, an intense smile on her face. Frank grimaced in disgust, and turned back to the controls in front of the dive chair. Hamlin hesitated for just a moment before giving the order. He thought about McCallister locked in the escape trunk, and Hana here in control. Who exactly was he working for now? He wondered if Moody and McCallister were wondering the same thing.
“Dive, make your depth eight-five feet.”
“Make my depth eight-five feet, aye, sir,” Holmes responded. He pulled slowly on the yoke in front of him. Pete felt the angle in his feet as the big ship began to drive upward.
“Ahead one-third,” he said.
“Ahead one-third, aye, sir,” repeated Frank. He reached down to the engine order telegraph to order the slower bell, and the automated system immediately answered with a ding. Pete and Hana watched the speed of the ship drop on a red digital indicator until it fell below ten knots. Any faster than that, and the scope could be damaged.
“Raising number one scope,” said Pete. He turned the orange ring over his head. He put his eye to the scope as it rose, and he began turning slowly around, looking through the optics underwater. Even though he knew their shadow sub was too far behind them to see, and too deep, he found himself pausing briefly on that bearing directly behind them, looking into the murky ocean for their invisible pursuer.
The darkness in the scope turned steadily lighter as they came shallow, from black to gray to green. Suddenly, the scope broke through.
“Scope is clear,” said Hamlin, exhilarated both by his sudden proficiency and clarity of mind, and by the view of the sky — for as far as he could see, glorious sunny blue sky. He didn’t realize how imprisoned he’d felt by the steel walls of the Polaris, and the gloom that pervaded her, but in an instant, through the pristine optics of her periscope, he could see for miles. “No close contacts.”