“On the other side of this coin, we’d be defying some legal restrictions ourselves.” He aimed a thumb to starboard. “There are three navy ships out there, and I suspect that they’re going to be determined to uphold the law. They’ll tell us ‘no.’”
Brande took a deep breath. “I’m probably going to break the law. But you don’t have to break it with me or assume the risks. Bull has the Mighty Moose nearby, and we’ll transfer anyone who wants to return to San Diego.”
“Not me,” Kontas said. “Someone else can captain her.”
“Nor me,” Dokey said.
“I’m staying with my ship,” Mel Sorenson said over the intercom’s overhead speaker. He had been listening to Brande’s spiel from the bridge.
Connie Alvarez-Sorenson spoke over the intercom, “It’s my ship, too.”
“Let’s see some hands,” Thomas said. “Who wants to go back?”
There were no raised hands.
“All right, Dane,” she said. “We stop AquaGeo, but I want a say in the tactics.”
“What do you suggest, Rae?”
“We’ve been chasing after the problem, trying to anticipate the next nuke event, and look where it got you. We’re on our last set of replacements for the submersible, and she may be close to the envelope of safety. The hull may have suffered stresses we can’t find. If Ingrid were here, doing a competent structural analysis, I’m sure she wouldn’t allow us to launch again.”
She was probably correct. Ingrid Roskens was even more conservative than Brande in safety matters.
“We don’t know for sure,” Thomas went on, “where the next charge will be placed.”
“I’ve got a damned good idea about that, though, Kaylene,” Emry said.
“Give or take a few hundred yards, Larry? But we do know the exact coordinates of the root cause of our problem.”
“The seabed habitat?” Brande said.
“If you want to risk riding out another subsurface hurricane looking for floor crawlers to disable, Dane, you can do it by yourself. If you want to confront the real problem, which is people, I’ll dive with you.”
The fire was back in her cheeks, and Brande thought she had made her determination.
Brande crossed the deck to Emry’s monitor. He checked the symbols indicating the known locations of test sites. To the south-southwest was the square designating what he now knew that Deride called Sea station AG-4.
“Mel, you still listening?” he asked in the direction of the intercom.
“Got you, Chief.”
“Let’s come to a heading of one-ninety.”
“Coming to one-ninety. Aye aye.”
The deck heeled slightly to port as the ship began to come about.
Brande turned to the others. “Anyone else have another good suggestion?”
Otsuka, standing next to Dokey, smiled at him. “The next time, Dane, that you order bomb materials, consult with me first. I’d have chosen better components.”
Thomas shook her head in resignation.
A seaman second brought the visitors to the officers’ wardroom, showed them in, then closed the door behind them. Captain Mabry Harris and Commander George Quicken were waiting for them.
Harris walked around the table, smiled, and extended his hand.
“Dr. Thomas, I’m Captain Harris. This is Commander Quicken.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Captain,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. She introduced Dr. Lawrence Emry.
“I’m sorry Dr. Brande couldn’t join us,” Harris said.
“As I told you on the radio, Captain, he’s extremely busy with the repairs to the submersible.”
She had been forthright, and perhaps justifiably angry, in her description of the maelstrom to which the sub had been subjected.
They took seats around the table, and a steward served coffee and rolls. The rolls went untouched.
“I asked for this meeting,” Harris said, “because I thought it was time to discuss several issues.”
“What’s on your agenda, Captain?”
She was a striking woman, Harris thought. He had expected that the president of Marine Visions would be, somehow, more severe. He also noted some subtly recognizable features — the color of her eyes, the shape of her nose, the jutting of her chin.
“Are you, by any chance, related to Admiral Charles Thomas?”
“He’s my father,” she said.
“A terrific man and commander,” Harris said. “I served with him in the Med.”
“Stubborn and irascible, too,” she said.
He grinned. “Yes, there were times. At any rate, I feel we need to talk about, first of all, this injunction.”
“We’ve turned off-course, Captain.”
“Yes, I noted that, though you haven’t turned back to San Diego.”
“We want to remain in the area, should we be needed when the legal matters are ironed out. Our contract is still in effect, so far as we know.”
Was she being overly optimistic? Given the normal speed of the courts, Harris thought so.
Emry dug into a large plastic envelope he had placed on the table and came up with an oversized chart. He handed it to Quicken. “That’s a map we’ve compiled of the test sites. You’re aware of the implications?”
Quicken scanned it quickly. “We’re aware, Dr. Emry. This is nice chart. There are structures we weren’t aware of.”
His first mate handed it to him, and Harris looked it over. Their own computers had stored the detonation sites, but this map also detailed a great many seabed features.
“It’s yours,” Emry said.
“Thank you. Let me say,” Harris said, “that I’m completely sympathetic to your cause. Conversely, my orders are to be certain that you comply with the injunction. For however long it is in place.”
“You don’t care about what Deride’s doing down there?” Emry said.
“I care. Still, we live in a civilized world.”
“It’s a free ocean,” Thomas said. “We….”
“I believe that’s the argument AquaGeo’s attorneys are making, Dr. Thomas.”
“We can still go where we want to go.”
“My concern is with the heading you’ve taken.”
“Why is that?”
“A hundred and twenty nautical miles south, on your present heading, you will run into the Outer Islands Lady.”
Thomas’s surprise appeared to be valid.
“I don’t know anything about her.”
“She’s AquaGeo’s submersible maintenance ship, and she arrived in the area this morning. Along with her is a freighter that, until yesterday, had taken up a station a couple hundred miles to the east. I’m suggesting that the Orion steer clear of her. Just to avoid potential unpleasantries.”
“I’ll bring the subject up with Dane when we go back,” she said.
“Good. Now, you can imagine that the information I get has been filtered through Washington and a few other commands. Would you be so good as to provide Commander Quicken and myself with a first-hand account of what has taken place to date?”
Thomas quickly told them of her own encounter with the AquaGeo submersible — he hadn’t realized that she was also a qualified diver — and of Svetlana Polodka’s death. She also seemed convinced that the AquaGeo people knew that the DepthFinder would be endangered when they set off the charge at Site Number Eleven.
Quicken was taking shorthand notes of the testimony.
If her version of the facts was correct, Harris would agree that Paul Deride’s people had shown extremely reckless disregard for human life. If she were unbiased. Sometimes, though, the cold, objective scientist’s view could be slanted. So far, though, Harris didn’t think there was anything provable, in the matter of intent.