Something strange was happening.
The lights surrounding the drill began to fade just as the giant drill bit finally pierced the hull, plunging several inches through to the other side.
“More power!” shouted Lightfoot.
Tay cranked the power up as high as he could, resulting in a horrible grinding sound from the tip of the drill.
The whole wall in front of them now gleamed a brilliant bright white, illuminating every square inch of seafloor around them. At the same moment, both Tay and Lightfoot felt something change. The magnetism that they’d felt earlier became stronger, pulling their gear and their tanks toward the radiating hull.
Both men fought against it. They resisted the force with all their might as their metal tanks twisted them around, toward the giant wall.
“What the hell?!” Tay yelled.
Lightfoot was unable to answer. Instead, he struggled against the pull of his own tank and dive helmet before ultimately losing his grip on the drill and slamming backward against the wall.
As the screeching of the drill loudened, Tay managed to turn his helmet enough to see the spiraled cone drill bit begin to expand, slowly widening its hole in the alien wall.
Zhirov stumbled as his submarine suddenly lurched to port. Unable to break away from the erratic sideways and downwards momentum, the boat’s entire crew struggled to stay in their chairs.
“We’ve lost stabilizing control!”
Zhirov looked back to the periscope feed. The screen was black, its camera long since having disappeared beneath the swirling ocean water.
His men remained hunched in front of their displays, desperately fighting for whatever control they still had. Something was pulling hard on the sub, literally dragging it downward toward the depths of the ocean.
Through intermittent interference, the Russian sonar operator, heard the sound of the splash and braced himself in his chair. The Sea King’s Mark 46 aerial torpedo plunged through the water, directly toward them.
“Fish in the water!” he yelled. “Bearing one-four-two degrees! Distance six hundred meters!”
94
“Ali! Ali, can you hear me?!”
“Lee?!” she pressed her buds in tightly. “Yes! I can hear you!”
“Ali, can you hear me?!”
“LEE!” she screamed. “I HEAR YOU! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!”
After a slight delay, Lee’s voice returned. “Yes. I — hear you. Barely.” He continued. “Ali, listen — me. You have to — out of th — now!”
“What’s happening?!”
Alison was struggling to hear him over the static. The transmission sounded faint. As if it was being drowned out by something.
“— fast, Ali! Fast!” There was another pause before Lee’s voice faded back in. “—torpedo is coming! — sub!”
Alison froze. Her eyes shot back to the submarine that now appeared to be rolling onto its side. And those last four words were all she needed to hear.
“Sally!” she yelled. “SALLY!”
Waiting a few feet away, Sally heard the translation and circled back around.
Alison, I here.
“Sally, we have to leave. Now! Escape!”
An error sounded in her ear.
“We must leave! Now! Or we will die! Go fast!”
The translation from the vest seemed to take forever, but there was no error this time. Sally stopped, then immediately turned back around and called again to the other dolphins. This time her signals were very short and very loud.
Emerson’s sonar officer called out the distance. “Four hundred meters. Three hundred and fifty meters. Three hundred—”
His announcements ceased abruptly. When he didn’t continue, Captain Emerson stepped forward.
“What is it?”
The officer was still watching his screen. “It’s the torpedo, Captain. Its bearings are changing!”
“Changing how?”
“It’s… turning.”
“How the hell can it be turning?!”
“I don’t know, sir.” The officer zoomed in on his screen. “The torpedo seems to be… arcing.”
Will Borger moved closer and looked at the display in front of the officer. A three-dimensional map with grid lines outlined the ocean below them. The position of the Russian sub was clearly marked, with the path of the torpedo displayed as a white line moving through the bottom of the picture. At its head, the line was beginning to bend.
“Where the hell is it going?”
“I don’t know.”
Borger pressed even closer, still studying the screen. Part of the three-dimensional map was an area that he recognized. It was where Tay and Lightfoot were now… with the drill.
“That’s the alien ship,” he murmured.
“What?”
Borger pointed at the screen. “That’s where the ship is buried.”
The path of the torpedo curved further into an even wider arc as it passed the alien ship. Its course had now been diverted directly between the ship and the Russian submarine.
Will Borger maintained his fixed stare on the screen. “What’s that torpedo made out of?”
“What?”
“I mean what kind of metal?”
Emerson frowned. “How the hell am I supposed to know? The damn thing is malfunctioning.”
Borger continued watching the path of the warhead as it began to follow an elongated loop. “Captain. That torpedo is not malfunctioning.” He looked at the commander. “The alien ship is magnetic and is pulling on its metal casing.”
Lee Kenwood stepped in next to Borger. “It looks like a planet when it does an orbit.”
Borger nodded. “But the alien ship isn’t round. It’s oblong, which means that torpedo isn’t going to circle it.”
It was at that moment that the final piece fell into place for Will Borger. The questions he had about the alien craft but could not answer now made sense — why it was magnetic, and more importantly, why it was so damn big!
It wasn’t the ship at all.
The core of the ship couldn’t take that kind of damage while traveling through space. It needed to be shielded. What they saw, the giant wall buried deep within the coral, wasn’t the main ship. It was the ship’s shield! A shield that was designed not to deflect the energy of an impact, it was designed to absorb it!
The epiphany washed over Borger like a wave, carrying answers that left him breathless along with it. And Will was immediately fearful for Tay and Lightfoot, who were both still on the bottom.
On the screen, in front of all to see, the path of the torpedo began to slow and turn inward.
“Captain,” Borger said. “That torpedo isn’t going to hit the sub. It’s going to hit the buried ship.”
95
Tay and Lightfoot could barely move. No part of the giant wall behind them remained green. The entire massive structure was now bright white.
Why was the whole thing lighting up? It couldn’t just be the drill. Tay stared again at the powerful tool, its bit churning deep into the metal and expanding in size. It had now created a huge hole in the craft that appeared pitch-black inside.
Over the whirling, both men heard something through their helmet speakers.
“Tay! Lightfoot! Can you hear me?”
“Borger?”