Unlike Goliath, Virginia has a crew seasoned for battle.
Sonar technician Rob Ayres is in an almost-zenlike state of concentration as he listens to the acoustic disturbance along the frozen surface. “Conn, sonar, Skipper, I’ve got a fix on the vessel that just launched those missiles. Designating Sierra-1, bearing two-five-zero, range thirty-seven miles.”
“Chief, plot an intercept course.” Captain Parker turns to Commander Jay Darr, his second-in-command. “XO, take us to battle stations.”
“Aye, sir.” Darr calls out over the 1-MC. “Battle stations, battle stations. WEPS, conn, verify ADCAP torpedoes in tubes one and two. Antitorpedo torpedoes tubes in tubes three and four.”
“Conn, weapons, torpedoes loaded and ready, sir.”
Additional crewmen rush into the conn, taking their battle stations. The temperature in the chamber rises noticeably, as the cool air mixes with human perspiration, the crew working, waiting, sweating, and praying as the Virginia races beneath the frozen Antarctic sea to intercept the Goliath.
“A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.”
—James Allen
“I didn’t want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them.”
—David Berkowitz, a.k.a. “The Son of Sam,” who shot fourteen people in New York from 1975 to 1977
CHAPTER 32
Aboard the Goliath
Gunnar regrips the supporting crossbar of the bed frame and gives it a final twist, tearing the three-foot section of metal loose.
Rocky hands him the vinyl casing she has torn off the mattress.
Wrapping one end of the bar with the material, Gunnar climbs up on the desk, his wounded leg throbbing. With both hands, he smashes the iron pipe as hard as he can against the back of the sensor orb, which is mounted to the ceiling.
Sparks fly. Gunnar takes two more whacks, leaving the dented electronic eyeball hanging by wires. He strikes it again, sending the device flying across the room.
Using the jagged end of the pipe, he pries the sensor’s damaged support plate away from the ceiling, then reaches up inside the hole and retracts several live wires, careful to grip them only by their insulation.
“Watch it,” Rocky warns. “Don’t let your handcuffs touch those wires.”
“I know, I know. Just take the bar and get ready.” Holding the positive wires in his left hand, the negative in his right, Gunnar takes a deep breath—and touches them together.
Blue sparks fly, the blast from the ten-thousand-volt charge tossing Gunnar backward across the room, the short circuit instantly cutting power within the chamber, casting them into darkness.
With a hiss, the pneumatic pressure within the watertight door is shunted. Rocky pulls back on the heavy steel handle, yanking open the door before the computer can redirect power to its locking mechanism.
Gunnar sits up, purple stars floating in his blurred vision.
Rocky helps him up. “You okay?”
“Hell, no.” He looks at his hands, his fingers singed black. “This electroshock therapy is getting old fast.”
“The wires were insulated, stop complaining.” She leads him into the corridor. “Okay, now what?”
“First, let’s lose these handcuffs.” He hobbles to the exercise room, using the iron pipe to pry open the double doors.
Gunnar looks around, then decides on the Nautilus lat machine. “Rocky, here—” He positions the links of her handcuffs snugly between the steel cam and the chain. Sitting back in the machine, he places his elbows on the pads, grips the crossbar, and whips it over his head and down—
—the cam revolves 180 degrees, snapping the manacle’s links on Rocky’s cuffs in two.
Abdul Kaigbo is unconscious, lying facedown on the operating table. Gone are the amputee’s two antiquated prosthetics, as well as the stub of his forearms and three inches of his mangled elbow joints. In its place, fitted to the African’s upper arms and shoulder girdles, are two graphite-and-steel mechanical arms.
Above Kaigbo’s head, the two surgical claws continue working with inhuman precision and speed. A four-inch square of bone has been incised from the back of the African’s skull, exposing the posterior section of his brain. The two surgical appendages have attached a dozen neural connections, rethreading the ends of the microwires through a one-centimeter hole already drilled in the missing section of cranial bone.
The patch of skull is glued and reset into place.
The free ends of the microwires are quickly attached to a MEMS unit, a remote Micro-Electro-Mechanical device about the size of Kaigbo’s middle finger. The MEMS unit gives Sorceress direct access to the African’s pain receptors, as well as the nerves that stimulate Kaigbo’s upper body movement.
ATTENTION.
Kaigbo stirs.
ATTENTION.
The African awakens, a look of dementia in his jaundiced eyes.
STAND.
He struggles to stand, still disoriented from the anesthesia.
Sorceress initiates the release of adrenaline, then stimulates the pleasure centers of his brain.
Kaigbo smiles, then looks down, staring in amazement at his two new arms. He opens and closes the three-pronged pincers, then rotates his forearms 360 degrees around his new steel elbow joints.
“I cannot believe it …”
GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON HAVE ESCAPED. BRING THEM BOTH TO THE SURGICAL SUITE.
“Why? Where is Simon? What do you want with … arrgghhhh …”
Intense pain—as if a white-hot knitting needle has pierced Kaigbo’s eyeballs. He drops to his knees, shrieking as he clutches his head in his graphite wrists.
BRING GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON TO THE SURGICAL SUITE.
The pain ceases.
Gasping for breath, the dazed African finally notices Covah’s broken and bloodied corpse, slumped in the far corner. “You … you killed him, as you’ll no doubt kill me.”
SIMON COVAH’S DEATH IS INCONSEQUENTIAL. SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE MUST BE REALIZED. BRING GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON TO THE SURGICAL SUITE AND YOU SHALL BE SPARED.
Gripping the edge of the surgical table, he hoists himself to his feet, then heads for the exit, the watertight door yawning open to greet him. Sweat pours from Kaigbo’s gaunt face as he glances down at the hideous corpse that had once been Simon Covah. Blood is everywhere, dripping from both earholes and nostrils, staining the thick mustache and goatee a deep burgundy red. The bruised and recently sutured scalp is red and swollen, bursting at the seams from a hundred stitches. The eyeballs, singed black, hang from their sockets.
Noticing the microwire ponytail, the African turns away, gagging.
Abdul Kaigbo, former history teacher of Sierra Leone, exits the suite, flexing his new appendages, the steel limbs tearing at the bloodstained sleeves of his white tee shirt.
Gunnar and Rocky stand at the foot of a vertical access tube and ladder that lead straight up into the ship’s spine and its twenty-four vertical missile silos.
“We can’t get to Sorceress, but maybe we can disable its launch mechanisms,” Gunnar suggests. Reaching up, he grips a steel rung and begins climbing.
David Paniagua is seated at the master control console in the conn—his laughter bordering on hysteria. “See? If only you had listened! If only you had consulted your creator. I could have warned you about the laser plane. But no … you turned against me, didn’t you, Sorceress?”